The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Although they've never been my personal favourite superheroes, The Fantastic Four certainly hold a special place in the hearts of many comic book fans. They are, after all, often referred to as the "first family" of Marvel, and many other characters made their first appearances in Fantastic Four adventures. They've been ill-served at the movies though. In fact, most people can agree that the best Fantastic Four movie to date is actually The Incredibles. The Fantastic Four: First Steps hopes to change that though. It wants to be a fun slice of retro sci-fi adventure, establishing the main characters as new key members of the MCU.

So it's a shame that I left the cinema feeling more like shrugging than rushing to tell others to get along and see it. 

It's quite a familiar set-up, behind the camera anyway. The writing team (Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer) has a mix of old hands and newcomers. Director Matt Shakman has no other movies under his belt, but he has been honing his skills in the land of TV, and has clearly shown something that made him seem to be a good fit for this property. Maybe his handling of the family relationships explored in WandaVision.

There's no need to give a plot summary, but I will nonetheless. Marvel tries to pretend that we're not getting any origin story here, with a lot of the background related by Ted Gilbert (Mark Gatiss) on his TV show, but it still very much feels like one, considering the standard structure about our heroes coming growing into their roles as they face a new and major threat. The threat this time is the planet-destroyer known as Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson), and his coming is heralded by the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). The timing of this encounter would never be good, but it couldn't be worse as Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) prepares to give birth to a baby. Not only is Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) worried about the fate of the world, he gets very anxious as he tries to baby-proof their home. That means smoke alarms that go off whenever Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) flies by and safety gates that are far too easily broken by Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).

There's nothing really wrong with this movie. The cast are generally good, and a good fit for their roles (although I suspect Joseph Quinn must say a prayer every single day for the Duffer brothers taking his career to a whole other level thanks to his Stranger Things character), the retro look and feel is appropriate and sweet, and the grand plan is played out well enough. It just doesn't ever really impress. Maybe it's a case of superhero fatigue, although I didn't have that feeling with the other big superhero movie released this month, or maybe the central quartet are just a bit too bland in comparison to so many other options we've had in recent decades.

Pascal, Kirby, and Moss-Bachrach are wonderful casting choices. Quinn does okay, but is arguably the weakest Johnny Storm onscreen yet (and, yes, I am including the Corman-produced film from 1994). Ineson and Garner are both brilliant, and there are also fine moments for Gatiss, Sarah Niles, Natasha Lyonne, and Paul Walter Hauser. Oh, and there's a cute little robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. Unfortunately, you get the usual tease during the credits, which is perhaps another reason for me leaving the cinema without the spring in my step that I have had after some other big movies from this year. 

There's a suitably fantastic score from Michael Giacchino, a smattering of humour that felt a step removed from the winking punchlines that became the MCU standard for a while, and some genuinely impressive spectacle in the second half, leading to a super-sized finale. There are no surprises though, and no risks. Marvel wants to recalibrate, to get fans back on board with their cinematic outings, and this feels like a very safe and tame way to do that. I have no major complaints, but nor do I have any major compliments. 

7/10

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Warfare (2025)

There has been at least one comedian who has noted that America will invade other countries, kill a lot of people, and then make movies decades later about how it made them so sad. It happened after Vietnam, of course, and it has happened even more frequently in the years after the two times that the USA ended up in Iraq for reasons totally not to do with oil. Warfare is another in this ever-increasing selection of movies.

Co-written and co-directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, the latter a former US Navy SEAL and a military advisor for some in the film industry, Warfare is interested in nothing more than placing viewers right in the heart of a tense war-time situation. Sadly, once again, it really is interested in nothing more than that, similarly to how Civil War was interested in nothing more than placing viewers as passive spectators in the unfolding titular scenario. 

While much more intense and impactful on a visceral level than his previous movie, Warfare underlines the fact that Garland no longer wants to use art to provide any insight into complex aspects of the human experience. There are main characters we don't really get to know (despite learning some names and superficial identifiers for them), they're ready to fight an enemy for reasons that are never probed and examined, and it's only the bullets and tanks appearing onscreen that will save viewers from slipping into a bored daze.

I get it, I really do. War is hell, and it's also really boring for people in between major life and death moments. But that boredom is also accompanied by tension and a sense of paranoia (although just because American soldiers are paranoid doesn't mean that lots of people around them aren't out to get them). Garland and Mendoza may aim to provide an immersive and authentic experience of life during a specific wartime, but it's all so disappointingly . . . pointless. People are familiar with this particular kind of modern warfare (and I can recommend at least half a dozen movies to anyone who isn't . . . each one better than this) and I would argue that none of the immersion and authenticity here is new or unique. 

The cast includes D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Aaron Mackenzie, Michael Gandolfini, and many more. Everyone does good work, but they're avatars, coming perilously close to being portals into some Call Of Duty game for those who prefer their wars without any context or complexity. I'd offer a financial reward to anyone who could name more than two of the main characters without double-checking the details online.

There's a level of skill on display here, technically, and that's one of the things that helps this to be a bit better than Civil War. It's a very close call though. Alex Garland said a while ago that he intended to take a break from directing. I hope he does so soon, because he's at risk of sliding further and further from the highs of the first half of his filmography into the tedium and mediocrity of his more recent projects.

4/10

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Gladiator II (2024)

While it's true that it may seem a bit too little too late when considering a sequel nowadays to Gladiator, there were a number of factors that could allow viewers some small sense of optimism. Ridley Scott back at the helm, and a cast including some hot stars of the moment, and a couple of people returning from the first film.

I couldn't really say whether or not that optimism ends up misplaced. Gladiator II is decent enough, there are some fun set-pieces and the focus is much more on the political scheming of one main character, but it pales in comparison to the 2000 movie that it is following. Maybe my opinion was tinged by watching both one after another, but what was I supposed to do when I wanted an excuse to work out my sound system while wearing a home-made toga (aka knotted bedsheet)?

Paul Mescal plays our hero this time around, a young man thrown into bloody battles after he has been enslaved during a Roman conquest of his home, in a sequence that shows him yearning for revenge after the death of someone very close to him. Pedro Pascal is General Acacius, the man who was at the head of that Roman horde, although we soon learn that he is weary of doing the bidding of Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), two twisted souls who seem to be leading Rome further and further way from the glory of what it once was. Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) is still trying to stay safe while positioned very close to the rulers, and there's a man named Macrinus (Denzel Washington) who will twist and turn around everyone I have just mentioned as he figures out a way to get himself into a position of great power.

Springboarding directly from the original movie, David Scarpa's screenplay does everything that everyone involved must have decided it needed. That's a bit sad, because what it apparently needed was plenty of callbacks to the first film, some unnecessary ret-conning that paints one or two people in an annoyingly different light, and fights that are all about entertainment and spectacle ahead of any sense of plausibility. Fair play though, the fights worked for me, but I can see why some would hate one or two of them.

As much as I like Mescal, and as good as he is here, he isn't quite good enough. There's some steely core missing, and he's not helped by the fact that the script doesn't give him much to work with. The same can be said about Pascal, another actor I tend to really like in the right roles. Washington gets much more to say and do, which at least makes everything easier to accept and enjoy as he steals scene after scene, and both Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun delivering a double dose of oddness (even if it feels a bit like someone went "Gladiator had one evil Emperor so we'll be twice as good because we'll have TWO!"). As for Nielsen. She's arguably more wasted than both of her male co-stars, and her journey, still intertwined with that of Gracchus (played again by Derek Jacobi), feels almost laughably overstuffed with coincidence and misfortune. 

None of the dialogue stands out this time around, apart from the lines that will make you either groan or laugh, the main arc for our hero feels more like a clumsy scribble than a satisfying straight line, and a bit too much obvious CGI gives it that problem that many other modern blockbusters have: a feeling of weightlessness and everything being of less consequence because so much of it is made up of computer programming. Sorry to sound needlessly snippy, but even the score from Harry Gregson-Williams fails to come close to the soaring Hans Zimmer music from the first film. 

Did I enjoy this while it was on? Yes. Did I feel the 148-minute runtime? Also yes. Will I rewatch this? Probably. Will I rewatch the original film ahead of this? Absolutely. That remains a bit of a modern classic. This is mildly diverting fun that may well be forgotten in a year or two (much like that sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . . . remember when that happened?)

6/10

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A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Look, I really liked A Quiet Place. It had some great set-pieces, a good core cast of characters, and just the right pacing and plotting to keep you from picking it all apart while it was on. Then came the sequel, which wasn’t as good, but enjoyed major success. And now we have attempts to develop this into a full franchise, which makes me feel as depressed and pessimistic as seeing a film advertised as coming “from the imagination of John Krasinski”.

There's very little to really say about this. It connects in a small way to the second film, but can easily be watched as a standalone "adventure" in this world where silence is golden. Lupita Nyong'o stars as Sam, a woman with terminal cancer and a cat she loves. Joseph Quinn is Eric, a man with no real character or depth (from what I could gather). Once our planet has been besieged by the creatures seen in the two movies preceding this, Sam and Eric eventually cross paths. But will they be able to help one another survive the perilous situation?

Written and directed this time around by Michael Sarnoski (although Krasinski once again helped with the storyline), this is a pretty disappointing piece of work from everyone involved. It certainly pales in comparison to Sarnoski's previous movie, Pig, and it's far down the list of Lupita Nyongo's films. Even Quinn, as relatively new on the scene as he is, looks set to quickly position this as one of his lesser films.

The visual effects are perfectly fine, but I didn't care about them. Some scenes with people in peril are fine, but I didn't care about them. Sarnoski tries to pace things well with a few key set-pieces on the way to the ending, but I didn't care about them. And those last few scenes? You guessed it . . . I didn't care about them.

A Quiet Place is the sort of thing you can get away with once. Keep going back to that well and all you do is draw attention to the flaws and plot holes. It's hard to maintain a vested interest in people when you can just as easily roll your eyes and wonder why they can't just sit still and be quiet until danger has passed them by. It's also hard to know what we already know about the creatures from the first two movies and then watch everyone fail to figure out how to fight back at them.

If it wasn't for Nyong'o here then this wouldn't even make it to the level of average. She's as good as ever, working hard in material that feels far beneath her. Quinn tries hard when sharing scenes with his phenomenal co-star, but he constantly comes up short, and isn't helped at all by a script that doesn't seem to know how to properly develop and nurture his character.

If you're after something that has the basic elements in place and does the bare minimum to trick people into feeling entertained for a while then knock yourself out. If you're after something that has actual tension and impact though then I'm afraid that you have to look elsewhere.

4/10

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Mubi Monday: Hoard (2024)

A feature debut from writer-director Luna Carmoon, after some time spent honing her craft in a variety of shorts, Hoard is a film as strange and difficult to pin down as the main character hiding in the litter-strewn heart of it. It's about mental health and unhealthy ways of showing affection, and it's about repeating cycles, but it's equally about making major mistakes as you struggle to find your place in a world that doesn't always make much sense.

Saura Lightfoot-Leon plays Maria, a young woman who has spent a lot of her life in the care of a foster mother named Michelle (Samantha Spiro). The opening scenes show us young Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) living her life in the orbit of her spiralling mother (Hayley Squires), and it's clear that her past is full of moments that cannot be easily forgotten and shaken away. In fact, things start to come back to the front of Maria's mind, just as Michelle has a visiting guest in the form of Michael (Joseph Quinn), a young man she cared for as a child. Michael and Maria start to connect, but maybe they would be best keeping away from one another.

This is a film with some interesting ideas, but those interesting ideas are often sidelined in favour of moments that don't feel worthy of inclusion. Carmoon has something to say, and she has a clear and strong voice with which to say it, but she seems to have perhaps done herself a disservice by assembling a cast that she knows can sell the more theatrical sequences, which also happen to be the least interesting parts of the movie.

Lightfoot-Leon is superb, giving the kind of performance that marks her out as one to watch over the next few years, and both Spiro and Squires are fantastic in very different ways. Deba Hekmat is also very good, playing Maria's friend, Laraib, and there are solid supporting turns from Cathy Tyson, in a very small role, and Tim Bowie, among others. It's Quinn who proves to be the weak link, sadly, but I blame the script for that more than his performance. He's asked to act in a way that never feels natural, and I know that there's a much better version of this film without his character in it.

The look and feel of the whole thing is great throughout, you can really feel and smell every bit of dirt and nastiness that occasionally fills the screen, and there's a third act that defies the odds to become an ultimately satisfying conclusion to a wildly uneven journey, Carmoon and her team, behind and in front of the camera, all deserve a good bit of praise. It's just a shame that everything is undermined by one or two major problems with the plotting, especially when one important event never seems to lead to the expected major consequences.

Certainly not rubbish, but there are times when you will want to wash your hands after rummaging through everything to find the small nuggets of treasure buried amidst the mess.

7/10

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Mubi Monday: Make Up (2019)

Whether intentional or not, writer-director Claire Oakley has made an interesting comparison here between relationships and small seaside holiday areas in the UK. You can spend so long looking forward to your mini-break that the fantasy becomes something almost impossible for the reality to match. And when you are there, perhaps having to put up with some typically bad British weather in between days of sea and sunshine, it’s all too easy to start thinking about other possibilities. People keep striving for an ideal, it’s what they have in mind, but that can stop them from enjoying what they already have. On the other hand, the seaside holiday area cannot expect to keep people happy if it just sits there, being a seaside holiday area with minimal effort made to retain some of the magic it once had.

Molly Windsor plays Ruth, a young woman who heads along to visit her boyfriend, Tom (Joseph Quinn). They’ve been in a relationship for a little while already, but this is their first time really sharing one another’s space. There is that “honeymoon period” glow for them, but it soon starts to fade. While working at the holiday site, Ruth befriends Jade (Stefanie Martini), someone Tom warns her to stay away from.

Having helmed a number of shorts over the past few years, Oakley comes to her feature debut with a vision and confidence that many other film-makers would do well to emulate. This may feel like a character study, and it is, but it is also a look at the phases of a relationship, the ways in which people can either move closer together or further apart while floating together in the rocky waters of what they hope could be a worthwhile love.

Both Windsor and Quinn are excellent in their lead roles, very effective at portraying two young people who aren’t sure quite how to act when their relationship ideals are tested by reality. Martini is easily on the same level as them, a wonderful lightning rod, shining brightly while becoming potentially dangerous for anyone who gets close enough. Theo Barklem-Biggs had a small, antagonistic, role, and there are a couple of very small, but solid, turns from Lisa Palfrey and Elodie Wilton.

Subtle and quiet without being too bleak, Make Up is actually a more uplifting film than any summary or review might lead you to believe. It is about someone finding happiness, despite the fact that it takes them a while to find out what their happiness really feels like. Moving from the straightforward reality depicted to one or two moments that use an air of surrealism to add some more cinematic elements, with one highlight mixing eroticism and horror in an unsettling and intriguing way, this is the kind of film that makes you excited to have discovered it. So don’t just take my word for it, go and discover it for yourself.

9/10

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