Pete Messum Reviews...

After being delayed from it's November 2018 release and rumours circling of a straight-up cancellation, Fox has finally reaffirmed that X-Men: Dark Phoenix will be released on 14th February 2019, and have unveiled the very first trailer for the film. They've also confirmed that the US title will simply be Dark Phoenix , while the UK title will actually include the X-Men main title, which is...confusing. I mean, this is clearly an X-Men movie as opposed to a spin-off. What's wrong with including the X-Men label? Regardless of Fox's strange title decision, and a whole ten months after Entertainment Weekly previewed it for its November 2018 release, the trailer is out and...it's a teaser. I don't think Fox have really made it clear that this is a teaser trailer, but that's essentially what it is. Lots of slow moody shots, vague ominous dialogue, no exciting reveals and very few visual effects shots. Saying that though, didn't this movie finish shoo

Last Friday I started watching Killing Eve on BBC iPlayer. It's now Monday, and I've just finished watching the eighth and final episode of the series. I might have just been a little bit *too* into it. For those who haven't heard of the series, Killing Eve follows Vilanelle, a young assassin working for a mysterious organisation. Her childish glee extends to both nice clothes, murder and interesting people, and no one's more interesting to Vilanelle than Eve Polastri, an MI5 agent investigating her murders. Eve might have just worked out who Vilanelle is, but needs all the help she can get if she'll have any chance of finding and stopping her. The series is based upon a novella series by Luke Jennings, and has been developed for television by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, incorporating a very strange, almost whimsical style and black humour. Some may be put-off by the frequent gags, but the show's humorous sensibilities separate it from other thrillers on TV at

After what felt like months of advertisements, Amazon finally released their original series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan last month and...it's fine. Just fine. I mean, considering how much they seemed to be pushing it, I was expecting something much more impressive. Amazon have been trying to make a big event series to compete with Netflix for some time now, but I don't feel like any of their shows have really taken off. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan seems to be the biggest series Amazon have made so far, but having watched the first season in its entirety, I have to say that it's far from the blockbuster Amazon seemed to be selling. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan : Season 1 is quite methodically-paced across its eight episode run. It isn't constantly working in big action sequences in an effort to feel more like a mainstream blockbuster, but because of the lack of action, most of the show consists of characters talking. There's very little in the way of visual story-

Am I allowed to say I really liked this trailer? Cos I really liked this trailer. For the record, Captain Marvel is, and has been, my most anticipated Marvel film for a little while now, mostly because it just sounds like a general film I'd be interested in watching. I mean, the story is Brie Larson fighting space aliens. Plus, the movie's got a really, really good cast (most of whom aren't shown off in this new teaser) and intends to tell the story from the perspective of "yeah, Carol Danvers has got powers already, so what?", which after seeing so many origin stories (and that's just in the superhero sub-genre), is quite refreshing. I've got no idea what relation this has to the comics other than that Captain Marvel's costume looks like her's, and her iconic helmet briefly features. Other than that, I think the green aliens are shape-shifters...? If there was one element I was hesitant about, it was the directors Ana Boden and Ryan Fleck,

*Sigh* This movie... Initially I found the prospect of a Shane Black-directed Predator movie a really fun idea, despite having never seen the original ' Predator ' (something I'll fix at a later date). The marketing had felt a little lackluster, but given that this was Shane Black I assumed that the trailers were watered-down advertisements for a much more exciting and original movie. I was wrong. The first...I think maybe half of ' The Predator ' is a really fun, old school monster movie, even as far as the opening titles. The big orchestral score, the amazing practical Predator suit, it all seemed to point the film in the right direction. However, the editing in this film is incredibly choppy, with many scenes notable by their absence, and there's very little sense of structure. ' The Predator ' jumps from character to character, location to location, with very little narrative progression until these plot threads *eventually* intertwine. Eve

The first season of Marvel's Iron Fist has been much derided since its release last year, but there's been a clear passion from people for what the show could've been. Enter M. Raven Metzner, a new showrunner determined to shake-up the series for the better, with much more of an emphasis on martial arts action and street-level heroism. The cinematography is more vibrant and colourful, the fights more slick and action-packed, and a new composer has been brought on to really showcase that this is indeed a fresh start for Iron Fist. I just wish the show had gone further with that. For starters, "The Fury of Iron Fist" (an amazing title for a ho-hum episode) almost instantly places some drama around Rand boardroom logistics with a meeting between Joy, Danny and Ward. While this meeting is about Joy putting everything together for her plans with Davos, there's still a sense of "oh no, not another one of these". Had Metzner ended the meeting with some

We're now mere weeks away from the start of Doctor Who's eleventh (technically thirty-seventh) series on BBC One, and with a huge shift behind the scenes, the show is hoping to reclaim some of its lost magic with viewers and fans alike. Whether or not this will succeed is up in the air until the series finishes later this year, but there's certainly some controversy behind many of the new creative decisions. Chris Chibnall's selection as showrunner for the series was strangely-enough the most logical, despite him not being at the top of many, if arguably any fans' lists. Having written and executive produced three incredibly successful seasons of Broadchurch for ITV, it makes sense that the BBC would want to draw Chibnall back, and given his interest in writing Doctor Who beforehand, selecting him as showrunner seems like a safe bet - at the very least from a production standpoint, given that he'd be the most experienced of the regular writers likely to take