Dan Says its Alright

The Fantastic Four : First Steps marks the third cinematic imagining of the first family of superheroes (not counting the unreleased Roger Corman movie of the 90's) and their introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, sort of. It's sort of because the story takes place in a separate dimension from the rest of the films. This is Earth-828, where the Fantastic Four are seemingly the only super heroes. More than heroes, in fact, they are the de facto most important people on the planet and via science and diplomacy they have ushered in an era of worldwide peace and unity. The world itself is a fantastically realised retro-futuristic version of the 1960's, something like Fallout crossed with the Jetsons or, closer to home, a live action Incredibles. The Four consists of; Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal),  brilliant scientist with stretchy powers, his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who can go invisible and create force fields with her mind, her brother Johnny (Joseph Qui...

  Unlike say, Final Destination, I Know What You Did Last Summer is not an idea ripe for remakes and sequels. Once you've told the story of a group of people leaving someone for dead, only to be hunted down a year later in grizzly revenge, there isn't really anywhere else to go while sticking close enough to the formulae to warrant being a successor. Its not a major surprise then that this sequel to the 1997 movie of the same name does little more than tread most of the same water as its precursor while trying to reference and acknowledge the original at every opportunity.  This time round, the central cast are a little older than the high school graduates of 97 but still act like teenagers. Some of the clunkiest exposition dialogue of recent memory attempts to fill out their back stories but you're left with a group of characters you can't wait to watch die. This would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that, for most of the runtime, the inept hook wielding killer ...

When James Gunn was placed in charge of rebooting the ailing DC cinematic universe the move came with a declaration, from now on the focus would be on creating great individual movies with loose connections, rather than to obsessively cram everything into a convoluted cinematic continuity. With that in mind, here is the first of their new films,  DCU : Phase 1 : Gods and Monsters : Superman .  Glibness aside, it is just called Superman, and while there is certainly some filling out of the world going on, it does all seem to be in service of telling the story. A brief bit of text fills us in on Gunn's world, letting us know super powered people are fairly common place and Superman is the strongest of them all, before we are introduced to a bloodied Supes, his dog Krypto and his robot staffed Fortress of Solitude. The plot has plenty going on, with a potential war, revelations about Superman's parents, citizen's mistrust of the Man of Steel and interactions with "The Jus...

2025 is halfway done so its time to get ranking. Only films I've seen for the first time in the cinema are eligible and we are talking UK releases from 1st January to 30th of June. If your favourite film of the year isn't here, I didn't see it on the big screen. If it is here but low, feel free to tell me how wrong I am.  39.  Hurry Up Tomorrow When a musician decides to write and star in their own movie the results are often pompus nonsense, so the problem with this effort from Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye isn't that its ridiculously self-aggrandizing (although it very much is), its that its unrelentingly dull, hideous to look at and worse to listen to. The star should have just made a concert movie.  38. A Working Man Jason Statham is the perfect Hollywood action man, able to look cool shooting guns, punching peoples lights out or driving fast cars. Sadly, the meandering script and piss poor production values on display here give him no chance to shine and leav...

  Dangerous Animals features a psychotic Jai Courtney feeding unsuspecting tourists to sharks and videoing the carnage for his (and possibly other peoples) pleasure. It's an unhinged performance and the film has some of the same sweaty ickiness that permeates classic Australian horror movies. Unfortunately, proceedings are hindered by some cringeworthy dialogue and focus on a hard to buy romance. The film opens with an unsuspecting couple of travellers hiring Courtney's shark diving boat, despite the fact he instantly identifies himself as shady (he literally checks with them that nobody knows where they are), and sure enough, one of them is soon dead and the other a prisoner.  We then cut to a meet cute of sorts between hard shelled American drifter Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) and local real estate agent Moses (Josh Heuston). They are stereotypical opposites, her cynical and untethered, him a romantic and stable, but bond over a love of surfing and end up having a one night sta...

John Wick spin off,  Ballerina , swaps out Keanu Reaves (mostly) for Ana de Armas but almost everything else remains pretty similar. We still have the intricately choreographed fighting in a dark gloss colour palette, minimal plot propped up by ridiculous lore and the same waffling dialogue. Series die hards rejoice, but for someone who zoned out somewhere during Chapter 3 and was distinctly unimpressed with John Wick 4, these films are becoming something of a chore. Eve Macarro (de Armas) is orphaned at a young age when assassins break into her home in an attempt to abduct her and her father (also an assassin) dies fighting them off. She is then raised by the "Ruska Roma" (more assassins, roughly 40% of the worlds population are assassins in the world of John Wick), who train her in the arts of both ballet and murder. After somebody from the faction that killed her dad attempts to off her, she embarks on a revenge quest, despite being explicitly forbidden from doing so by R...