Superman (2025)

On his own initiative, Superman (David Corenswet) has sought to prevent a war between an allied nation of the United States and its neighbour, much to the annoyance of the American government and tech billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult).

A social media campaign is orchestrated to turn the American people against Superman, and even his girlfriend, Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) starts to question him.

Superman is not another origin story, rather throwing readers into the non-stop action in media res. However, Superman's backstory is explained episodically throughout the movie as it's a central theme of the story.

This brand, spanking new iteration of the Man of The Steel unapologetically blends the wholesome positivity of the Christopher Reeve era of Superman movies with both Silver Age comic book zaniness and modern sensibilities.

It's clear from the get-go that writer/director James Gunn loves comic book superheroes and has a deep knowledge of his chosen universe, presenting deep cuts - such as Superman's robots and flying dog, Krypto; Metamorpho The Element Man (Anthony Carrigan); bowl-haircut-sporting Green Lantern Guy Gardener (Nathan Fillion); Mr Terrific (Edi Gathegi); and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) - in a matter-of-fact way, rather than tongue-in-cheek.

Superman isn't embarrassed to be a comic book movie, rather it dives headlong into the superhero genre tropes with relish, emerging as one of the finest and most accurate adaptations of the beloved source material that we've yet seen on the big screen.

Gunn's film captures the brightness and optimism of the best, most truthful, Superman stories, yet still manages to weave in the character's inherent "look after the little guy" political nature that has been part of the Last Son of Krypton's makeup since he was created by a pair of Jewish immigrants in the 1930s as a rebuttal to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Launching the new DC Comics cinematic universe, Gunn brings his A-game to his iteration of Superman, meaning I was hooked from start to finish, and came away totally smitten by this work of art.

However, something I kept to myself until I actually saw this film: I actually wasn't sure if Superman was going to work under the character's current cinematic stewardship.

While I adored Gunn's Guardians of The Galaxy trilogy for Marvel, for embracing the wackiness of comics, his other recent superhero-related shows, such as Peacemaker, Suicide Squad and Creature Commandos, have left me cold. These attempts to force "mature themes" (ie. swearing, crass humour and graphic violence) onto DC characters just doesn't work for me.

These are attitudes I'll embrace on more independent  "superhero" worlds, such as Invincible and The Boys, because they are their own thing and their "edginess" is there for a reason, but for me the 90-year-old beating heart of the DC comics universe isn't like that at all, it's purer, family-friendly and more aspirational.

And that's exactly what Superman is.

Cloverfield (2008)

My expectations were low going into Cloverfield. Could a monster movie shot entirely from the point-of-view of the people on the ground, on a handheld digital camera, really hold my interest for 85-minutes without giving me motion sickness from all the shaky camera work... and would it really be that good?

Well, for the first three-quarters of the film, it lived up to its hype.

The story kicks off at the leaving party for yuppie Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and unfolds, for about the first 10 or 15 minutes, like a soap opera episode as characters are sketched out and emotional sub-plots revealed amidst the banter and camaraderie.

Then suddenly the monster arrives in Manhattan and things start blowing up, people panic and mayhem ensues.

The combination of Drew Goddard's naturalistic script, Matt Reeves' fine direction and totally convincing performances from the cast of unknowns give Cloverfield an incredible verisimilitude that you really believe this is how ordinary people would behave if a monster attacked New York!

There are no scenes of military commanders spouting exposition or the President reacting to the emergency; we are given no explanations and only fleeting glimpses of the giant, mutant-Godzilla monster itself... we, the audience, only ever know as much as the man holding the camera.

The important thing to remember about Rob and his pals as protagonists is that are nothing special - the monster isn't targeting them specifically and they play no role in the possible downfall of of the creature either - they are just the everyman-on-the-street... who happens to have a camcorder.

Sure, it's a YouTube version of The Blair Witch Project on a big budget, but, here the action is more visceral and less psychological, here you know there's really a big damn monster because its knocked the head off the Statue of Liberty and is stomping its way round the city... dropping off little skittering critters along the way!

Then, with about 20 minutes left, and coming on the heels of incredible sequences in the darkened subway tunnels under the city and in an emergency military hospital, the film goes all Hollywood blockbuster.

The protagonists find themselves scrambling around inside collapsing tower blocks and surviving helicopter crashes; the believability factor is stretched a bit too much and our total immersion in the story wavers.

Also, seeing the monster in daylight, as we do towards the climax, however, briefly, still shows it to be a big CGI creature that wouldn't have looked out of place in Men In Black.

As an experiment in making a different sort of monster movie, Cloverfield is a roaring success, a mix of thrills and chills that just went too far at the end, possibly - and ironically - giving the audience too much of what they were used to and not sticking to its original conceit.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Conan Digests

When we were readying ourselves to move house half-a-dozen years ago, I was shifting boxes in the 'office' part of my attic-gamesroom and 'discovered' a long concealed bookcase; squirrelled away in the corner, on which was my collection of eight, old Conan The Barbarian digests.

These were pocket-sized, British reprints (in black and white) from the early '80s, of Conan's original stint in the pages of Marvel Comics, each around 50-pages long.

These were my first exposure to both Conan The Barbarian and the works of Robert E Howard, I would have been about 14 or 15 when I picked these up.

I guess I was a comparative latecomer to the exploits of the mighty Cimmerian, having cut my sword-and-sorcery teeth - soon after being introduced to Dungeons & Dragons at the tail-end of the '70s - on Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Harry Turtledove's stories of Gerin The Fox, and then Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, years before I encountered Conan The Barbarian.

In truth, I think, after the comic book digests, my first actual Robert E Howard book was a remaindered copy of The Gods Of Bal-Sagoth, an Ace Science-Fiction collection of non-Conan stories, that I purchased in a discount book store while out shopping with my parents.

Like pretty much everything at that time, my early interest in Howard's work - and Conan - was fuelled by my desire to make everything about my blossoming passion for roleplaying games, and particularly Dungeons & Dragons.

A passion they still serve today.

The Last Exorcism (2010)

The Last Exorcism comes tantalisingly close to being one of those rare, perfect horror movies, an intelligent blend of The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project (two of the most unnerving, pure horror movies ever made, in my opinion), until it derails into silliness for the final sequence.

I can understand and see what the filmmakers were trying to do in these closing scenes because, in all honesty, up until that point, no matter how good the film was, it wasn't really saying anything new, but it was such a sudden lurch in focus that it didn't quite work.

The film - shot on hand-held camera as a documentary - follows the charismatic and charming Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a former child minister grown into a performing preacher, disillusioned with the idea of exorcisms, who agrees to bring a film crew along on his last exorcism to expose the practice as fakery.

Rev. Marcus and the camera crew travel to an isolated farm in rural Louisiana, where widower Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) believes his teenage daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell), is possessed by a demon and is slaughtering his cattle at night.

For the first half-hour of this comparatively short (83 minute) movie nothing out of the ordinary happens as we get to know Cotton, his family, his motivations and his beliefs and the groundwork is laid for future events. But after his 'phony' exorcism things start to get creepy and then escalate in wonderfully unpredictable ways as it becomes clear there is a real demon at work (one disappointment is that the scene on the cover of the DVD doesn't appear anywhere in the movie!)

In this era of Grand Guignol torture-porn it makes a refreshing change to see a horror film that uses intelligence, magician's misdirection and subtly to unnerve it audience. I was completely taken in by the fact that I couldn't guess what was going to happen next during the core of the movie and believed in the actors one hundred per cent.

All the performances are spot-on, but particularly powerful are Patrick Fabian as the 'con man' forced to re-examine his cynicism and Ashley Bell as the unnerving innocent victim, twisting her demon-wracked body in all sorts of contortions  (without the aid of special effects, I am led to believe).

Compared to, say, Cloverfield the shaking, hand-held camera isn't too intrusive and there are moments (mainly when Nell steals the camera in the night) that the film couldn't have worked any other way.

This isn't a film that relies on sudden shocks to get it scares - although there are a couple - rather it relies on suggestion and psychological manipulation, dropping hints along the way as to what's really going on, although the chances are you won't piece everything together until the credits are rolling.

For the most part, The Last Exorcism relies on subtle, edge-of-the-seat tension (in the style of The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project, as I've already said, which is why it was a shame that the ending veered off into pseudo-Lovecraftian territory with a set-up that sadly reminded me of both Hot Fuzz and K-9 And Company: A Girl's Best Friend, neither of which exactly rank as the pinnacle of horror cinema.

Stylistically, the shaky-cam/faux documentary approach certainly carries the movie, adding an air of Truth that helped sell the discrete horror, but it also rather undermined the ending - not that we needed to see everything that was going on, but frankly it made the audience all the more aware of how ridiculous the scenario was and somehow managed to undo the carefully stitched verisimilitude that director Daniel Stamm had created.

It's as though the ending actually showed too much and was almost unnecessary, which is a massive shame because, although produced by Eli Roth (and it was his name used to, rather misleadingly, sell the film), The Last Exorcism is the total antithesis of the gore-splattered horror - in the vein of Saw and Hostel - one usually associates with Roth's work.

He Answers To Only One Name: Deathstalker!

In Deathstalker, the Kingdom of Abraxeon is under siege by the Dreadites, heralds of the long-dead sorcerer Nekromemnon. When Deathstalker recovers a cursed amulet from a corpse-strewn battlefield, he's marked by dark magick and hunted by monstrous assassins. To survive, he must break the curse and face the rising evil. Death is just the beginning… of great adventure!

Deathstalker is a reimagining of (or sequel to) the cult 1983 classic of the same name that became the poster child for blending sleaze and gore in low-budget "barbarian and babes" fantasy flicks (usually direct-to-video).

This Kickstarter-funded revival of the franchise is written and directed by Steven Kostanski, who gave us the delightful Psycho Goreman in 2020 and the magnificent Lovecraftian horror of The Void in 2016.

Vivarium (2019)

Given the weakness of the the most recent series of the Twilight Zone (I must confess I've only managed about half the episodes), I'm reticent to make the comparison, but Vivarium is a classic Twilight Zone-style story.

Young couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking to buy a starter home and are taken by a strange estate agent, Martin (Jonathan Aris), to an out-of-town development of identical homes on identical streets.

Martin leaves while the couple are looking around Number Nine... and suddenly they discover there's no way out of the, otherwise unpopulated, estate.

Wherever they go, they end up back at Number Nine.

Then a parcel is left for them: containing a baby, with a note telling them to raise the child and they will be set free.

Time passes; bland, tasteless food is left for them and their rubbish is taken away by unseen hands.

The couple are trapped there for days, weeks, months, and the baby blossoms into a creepy young boy (Senan Jennings), with an oddly deep voice and a habit of screaming like a banshee if he doesn't get what he wants.

If the static clouds in the perfect sky don't give it away, the clue is in the title, as they say.

Segueing swiftly from a dream-like idyll to nightmare fuel, Vivarium follows Tom and Gemma's life as they try to figure out what is going on, while coping with the demands of a freakish cuckoo in their familial nest.

With all the hints that are dropped along the way, there is only really one explanation for the goings-on that makes sense, but the script takes the bold step - given that it is so clear to anyone versed in this kind of weird storytelling - of not actually spelling it out.

Which is probably quite frustrating for the casual viewer.

But, in all honesty, Vivarium isn't a film I could imagine many casual viewers opting for.

However, for those of us that love this style of obtuse, almost surreal, art house, paranormal mystery and psychological horror, it is magnificent.

Twisting the conceit of nightmarish, suburban conformity way past its logical ends, Vivarium is a British spin on '50s American sci-fi horror mixed in with an almost live-action Rick and Morty level of stark brutality about the unfolding events (I was reminded of one episode in particular from the first season, but I can say no more as it would give away a bit too much!)

The performances, across the board, are mightily impressive - as we would have expected from Poots and Eisenberg - with Senan Jennings' turn as the strange child being memorably unnerving and peculiar.

After a single viewing, I have to say I have already become rather a champion for this little gem, written by Garret Shanley who shares credit for the story with director Lorcan Finnegan.

I know Vivarium will only appeal to a small percentage of the movie-watching audience, but for me I was hanging on every clue that our protagonists acquired about their "captors", trying to piece together my own ideas of who was "on the other side of the glass".

Mama (2013)

A banker goes mental, kills his work colleagues and his wife, then kidnaps his two young daughters and drives away with them. Before he can get too far though his car skids off the road, down an embankment and crashes into woodland.

He leads the girls away from the wreck to an abandoned cottage where, five years later, the two girls are found by trackers employed by their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game Of Thrones), an impoverished illustrator who lives with his hot rock chick girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).

The sisters, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) are pretty much feral but the eldest - Victoria - tells psychiatrist Dr Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) they were looked after by "Mama" who ran away from a "hospital for sad people" with her baby.

Because Lucas and Annabel can't afford to care for the children, Dreyfuss arranges - in return for continued access, so he can study the children - for them all to move into a large house owned by the hospital.

Soon after they move in though, Annabel begins to suspect that the girls might have brought someone - or something - back from the woods with them.

Mama is a well-made, very old school ghostly horror story carried by the wholly convincing performances of the central characters, some clever scares along the way and a plot surprisingly unburdened with unnecessary red herrings.

As well as praise for the actors, I have to give credit to director Andrés Muschietti, who co-wrote the script with Neil Cross and Barbara Muschietti, as he uses a fair degree of smarts and subtlety to weave the movie's creepy atmosphere - instead of simply relying on jump-scares (and even when they are used they are done well).

Mama, herself, (portrayed by both Javier Botet and Hannah Cheesman, aided by the vocal talents of Laura Guiteras and Melina Matthews) has a rounded backstory and convincing motivations for her jealous guardianship of Victoria and Lilly and it's this that drives the story.

Unfortunately, that's not to say Mama's perfect. There's a stand-out moment of rank stupidity that surely could have been addressed in a less clichéd way: Dr Dreyfuss goes back to the spooky cabin to follow some clues, but goes in the middle of the night. In the pitch dark. You just know that's not going to end well and is quite groan-worthy, especially given the generally high calibre of the screenplay.

There's also a rather clunky moment when Lucas is in hospital and Mama is coming to pay him a visit and a computer starts spelling out the word "Mama" over and over again. Once you discover Mama's backstory the idea of her having any concept of a computer or its operation seems totally incongruous.

But my biggest gripe, and it's an odd one, is on account of "Chekov's gun" - the dramatic principle that if you have a loaded gun on stage in act one it will eventually be used. For some reason, and I can't believe it was penny-pinching, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays not only Lucas but his brother Jeffrey (the guy who goes nuts at the start). It's never even stated that they are twins, just brothers.

I thought this might pay-off in some way relating Mama's interaction with Lucas back to her first encounter with Jeffrey in the pre-credit sequence. But no. Nothing. And I'll be honest it's slightly distracting.

I've seen a fair bit of criticism of the ending of the movie, but for me it worked and tied off the plot with a neat little bow. It's neither the entirely happy ending this style of storytelling often has nor the sudden, shocking reversal where everything unexpectedly goes to hell in a handbasket just when you thought everyone was safe.

Barring a couple of bumps along the road, Mama is a solid, intelligent, old fashioned ghost story with a downbeat ending.

Psycho Goreman (2020)

 A nameless, near-omnipotent force of evil is finally overthrown by the "forces of light" (aka The Planetary Alliance) and imprisoned on an out of the way world... which just happens to be Earth.

Playing in their suburban garden one night, two young siblings - borderline sociopath Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and her put-upon brother Luke (Owen Myre) - unearth a glowing gemstone.

The next day they discover 'something' has dug its way out of their garden, and they track the creature to a nearby abandoned factory, where it's hiding out.

The creature (played by Matthew Ninaber, with Stevn Vlahos providing the voice) is the "nameless evil", but the kids soon realise that it must obey Mimi's every command, because she holds the gem.

It reveals that its enemies refer to it as the Arch-Duke of Nightmares, but the kids decide to call it Psycho Goreman ('PG' for short) instead.

While the youngsters are having fun with their new 'toy' (for instance, one of their friends gets turned into a brain creature and a cop into a soulless, half-melted zombie... you know, crazy kid stuff), the forces that imprisoned PG on Earth become aware of his escape from captivity.

The Planetary Alliance sends Pandora The Templar (Kristen MacCulloch) to recapture the monster while he is still in a weakened state.

As this is all unfolding Psycho Goreman lives up to his nickname and enters Luke's dreamscape, trying to convince him to steal the gem from Mimi, but Luke sticks by his sister.

Until, she playfully orders PG to kill him one day!

You see, Mimi has become a living example of the old adage about "power corrupting", and while she started off with a mean streak, having PG at her beck and call has just made her worse.

Will the arrival of Pandora on Earth resolve the situation?

Written and directed by Steven Kostanski (who also made the brilliantly Lovecraftian horror The Void and the forthcoming Deathstalker reboot), PG: Psycho Goreman is truly bonkers, a gonzo, blood-spattered spin on the look of Power Rangers, interwoven with Japanese body horror, retro special effects, layered world-building, and a wicked sense of humour.

Even under Mimi's control, the invulnerable and superstrong Psycho Goreman has access to a broad arsenal of "dark magics" (such as transformation magic, telekinesis, paralysis etc) that ultimately means he is able to dole out whatever punishment he feels a target deserves.

Of course, if you fight honourably, you may well merit a "warrior's death"... which involves PG cannibalising your corpse in a most shocking manner.

With its tongue buried firmly in its cheek, PG: Psycho Goreman is most definitely not a film to be taken seriously, instead it feels as though Kostanki has thrown everything he loved from his childhood into a blender and splurged the results out onto the page.

Very much a comic book supervillain, there are shades of Thanos (and Darkseid) in Goreman's backstory, which makes his dominance by a young girl all the more humorous and rewarding.

He even has his own Paladins of Obsidian, a collective of unique villainous creatures, that he believes will come and save him.

The power dynamics of the PG universe are highly reminiscent of that employed by Michael Moorcock, with Psycho Goreman as the ultimate representation of chaos and Pandora as the definitive bastion of law.

Although the terms "good" and "evil" are bandied about, as is said at one point, the central battle is truly "evil versus an even worse evil".

Another geeky reference I grokked was the name of PG's homeworld, Gigax. Surely (even with the variant spelling) this is a reference to Gary?

And the anarchic and incomprehensible homemade game of 'Crazy Ball' that Mimi and Luke play all the time - and was always going to be a key element in the narrative - strongly reminded me of 'Calvinball'  from Calvin and Hobbes.

Coming in at just over an hour-and-half, PG: Psycho Goreman is like a well-made Troma Entertainment movie, a Full Moon Features film with a decent budget, or an unfettered student flick with a top-notch script.

Not so much subverting expectations as leaning into them, PG: Psycho Goreman is simultaneously reminiscent of so much trash cinema we've grown up loving, and yet wonderfully unique in its commitment to a solid story in a well-defined sci-fi universe.

What We Did On The Bank Holiday

Alice likes to 'ride in style' on my lap

The late August Bank Holiday weekend is traditionally the time when we visit "living history" shows, however our options were rather limited this year.

Given my current state of restricted mobility the Medieval Festival and Hever Castle were out because of the terrain.

However, fortuitously, a new company had stepped up to offer mobility scooter rental at Military Odyssey - so that's where we headed.

We hadn't been for a couple of years because of the lack of scooter hire (even when I could walk with my stick it was still too large an area for me to get round), so this was perfect timing.

Much calmer when she was indoors and away from the sounds of simulated warfare

There was plenty of wargame stuff at the show for me to coo over, as well as the usual displays of 'living history'.

Everyone we interacted with was really kind and considerate to us, given my disability, and also to Alice who did NOT like all the loud noises. She made herself very comfortable in several stalls where the traders showered her with attention, cuddles, and offers of water.

The further we got away from the cannons and muskets the more relaxed she became, but I blame myself - in my enthusiasm to visit the show - for forgetting how noisy it can be with just the kind of sounds that Alice doesn't respond well to.

Rachel and I agreed that if we go next year we'll probably leave Alice with Rachel's parents for the day.

It was terribly frustrating, though, for me that I was unable to get off the scooter this year and poke around the stalls - but that did mean we didn't return home with the usual selection of random books and minor militaria.

Leaning into my penchant for hats, I did weigh up the possibility of an American Civil War Union officer's kepi, a pith helmet, and a selection of baseball caps, but ultimately came to the conclusion that I could live without them.

In fact, the only thing we actually brought back was a bag of fudge, which didn't last long once it got through the front door. 

Rachel was nominated photographer this year and here's a small selection of the many great pictures she took:

Sheppey Models had some lovely games set up

The Spearfish Creek mining camp is always a favourite place to visit