X-Men: Apocalypse – The End Is High

This review may contain minor spoilers.

Fittingly, ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ is a film that relies heavily on gene-splicing. Bryan Singer’s second mutant trilogy conclusion plays out like the original three films on a comeback tour: we have the the heavy-handed Holocaust memorial of the first film; the snowy locations and Jean Grey sub-plots of ‘X2’, and the CGI-reliant, inconsequential deaths of ‘The Last Stand’. The latter film is openly mocked in one scene, as one of the X-Kids, after seeing ‘Return of the Jedi’, claims that the ‘third film is always the worst’. Thank En Sabeh Nur, then, that ‘Apocalypse’ just about avoids this seemingly inevitable doom.

Deadpool: Predictably Unpredictable

If ‘Deadpool’ were an emoji, it would be a winky lick. It’s your sexy, bitchy millennial friend who you see once a year to distract yourself from the fact that you, the sensible one, put on a tie and joined the system. It tells you to ‘shut the fuck up’ in an affectionate way; it never passes the opportunity for an willy gag; it concludes its sentences with ‘#LOL’. And yet, after a while, your occasional, disbelieving belly laughs make way for polite titters as you realise how exhausting it is to be with someone so predictably unpredictable.

Trailer Trash: December

The holiday season is all about giving. While for most of us, this means a clumsily-worded Moonpig and a hastily-purchased gift card, in MovieLand it means trailers: sackfuls of them.