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Showing posts from April, 2019

Avengers: Endgame (2019) - Spoiler-Free Review

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It's almost impossible to explain the full context of Marvel Studios' ' Avengers: Endgame'  to the uninitiated. It's the twenty-second film in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the culmination of eleven years of story-telling, and the second half of a huge 10th anniversary crossover epic. This isn't the last Marvel film per say, but the last to feature many of the key characters featured throughout the series up to this point, with the intention of moving future stories forwards with the more recent Avengers - Ant-Man and the Wasp, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther and Captain Marvel, as well as Avengers yet to be introduced. Whilst to some people Avengers: Endgame may seem baffling, to the fans who have watched this series unfold over eleven years, it's an epic of never-before-seen proportions. That does sadly mean that ' Avengers: Endgame'  is stuck in the shadow of its own greatness. Whilst ' Avengers: Infinity War '  coul

Crimson Peak (2015) - Review

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' Crimson Peak ' is the most gothic film Guillermo del Toro has ever made. It's brimming with the tropes and clichés of gothic literature, and it's no real wonder that the film didn't quite have the wide audience appeal needed to be a box office hit - it only made $74 million against its $55 million production budget. Ultimately, ' Crimson Peak ' represents a different kind of horror from what audiences typically expect now, and whilst I can imagine this doesn't appeal to some, this very much appealed to me. The story follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), who is trying to write a novel when she meets the enigmatic Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). As the two fall in love, mysterious circumstances lead Edith to live with Thomas and his rather unsettling sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) at Allerdale Hall, where the mysteries begin to unfold... Del Toro isn't exactly subtle with what the film is actually about. Earlier on in ' Crimson Peak

Doctor Who: Season 18 (1980-81) - Review

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Doctor Who's eighteenth season marked a clear change in direction for the show. With the departure of producer Graham Williams and legendary script-editor Douglas Adams (of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently fame), in came John Nathan-Turner (a production assistant prior to this) and Christopher H. Bidmead, taking on Williams and Adams' respective roles. Their goal was to revitalise Doctor Who for a new generation, and a new decade. New title sequence, new theme and incidental score, new TARDIS (police box, not interior), new costume for the Doctor, new companions, and by the end...a new Doctor. It's difficult not to think of Season 18 as a transitional season in the show's run, bridging the gap between Tom Baker's tenure as the Time Lord and Peter Davison's. So much of what made Tom Baker's era so unique is absent, replaced instead by new elements set to make the future Doctor's time more interesting. As someone who has grown-u