Yes. Everything Is Rubbish.

The sequel to the Marvel Studios film which did over a billion dollars at box office but everybody hated, now has a sequel. Why though? Because that money talked louder than the haters. When I review stuff, I really do try to not let the thoughts of others and the drama surrounding the release have too much of a focus. But it really is difficult to talk about a Captain Marvel movie without any mention of the hate campaign which has driven so much of the discourse and straight-up toxicity around it. And it’s really unfortunate for Marvel Studios that it’s reached a point that this is going to hang over anything they put out with Captain Marvel. But some of this is of their own doing, and we’ll get to that. Not only was The Marvels having to release knowing there was a hate train for the first film and Brie Larson, it also had the unfortunate fate of releasing during the SAG-AFTRA strike. And it also had to release in the wake of the fallout caused by the critical and commercial pannings...

Where-as the first Wonder Woman movie felt like its own thing and a chance to redefine the female superhero movie, something that Marvel themselves hadn't done at the time of its release, and some would say Wonder Woman managed; its sequel beats a trodden path. Namely that of the Batman films. Specifically Batman Returns and Batman & Robin. We get more than one villain. A story of a geeky socially awkward woman girl turned sexy villainess. A maniacal man hellbent on making everyone bend to his will. A city / world thrust into turmoil. Wonder Woman 1984 becomes a film of tropes, off the back of a film that set it up to be anything but. Tropey films are not inherently bad. With Wonder Woman set in the 1980s and going to lengths to achieve the look, even down to being shot on film, it makes sense creatively. Stranger Things is as tropey as they come, but it was great in part because of that and how self aware it was. Yet, whilst WW84 seems like it wants to lean into this, it never...

Endgame is the culmination of over 10 years of films and planning. It is the closing of a chapter that started with an Iron man film. A film that released unbeknown to itself, or any of us, that it would play such a pivotal role in creating what has become one of the biggest grossing collection of interconnected films. Love it or hate it, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a game changer. And the film to bookend its first chapter is no different. It sets a standard and does unprecedented things. But as groundbreaking as the MCU has been, the films that make it up have been patchy, inconsistent and formulaic. And therefore, Endgame ends up being a byproduct of that. Oh. And this review is filled with spoilers from front to back.

I'm not a big fan of the Avengers movies. They're fine for what they are, but I never felt compelled to watch any of them more than once and left the cinema feeling not a great deal more than 'That was entertaining'. If I were to rank the movies within the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far, The Avengers movies would be at the bottom of the list along with Thor 1 and 2. So needless to say, I wasn't wonderfully excited about the third film, despite it being the culmination of all of the world building that Marvel had been doing on the big screen for the past decade. I'm not trying to be an arsehole here and be all 'Pffft. I don't care about this fucking movie', although I'm sure this is how its coming off a mere one paragraph into this shit. I just wasn't as thrilled to see this film as the billions of others were. And I say this from the perspective of somebody who has seen every film within the Marvel cinematic universe, including the N...

So I went to a screening of Call me be your name with a new wig, after Thor: Ragnarok sent my last one into Asgard . Only to have it snatched and thrown to some remote village in Italy in the 80s by Luca Guadagnino's Call me by your name. I'd first heard about Call me by your name back in 2016. Information of when the film was released and if it would ever be, were vague. But I was intrigued. Even if much of the story and what it was about was completely overshadowed by one of the characters at some point shoving their willy in a peach. But I had no real expectations of Call me by your name. I'd never seen any of Guadagnino's works before and had never seen Armie Hammer in...well...anything. All I was going on was everybody saying how good the book was and the trailer for the film which seemed pretty quirky. It was also nice to have a break from big budget Hollywood movies. Call me by your name will undoubtedly be categorised as a gay love story, but for me, it...