Star Wars Refuses to Grow Up In 2017, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi was released to the most divisive reception of any Star Wars film ever. Inevitably, the discourse around it soon became wearisome. I made no secrets about how highly I regarded it and spent far too much time defending it against most of the people I discussed it with. Fortunately, I never faltered, never ceded any ground and never suggested that The Last Jedi was anything less than the best Star Wars film since 1980. I maintain that position to this day and if anything I like it more, having retrospectively got over some minor issues that were absurdly over-analysed at the time. Johnson’s triumphant success with Knives Out (by far one of 2019's best films) has also vindicated my conviction that he is a genuinely wonderful filmmaker that fell prey to a toxic fandom. The fact is in 2017 Rian Johnson gave the Star Wars fandom a gift and they threw it back in his face. His rich, progressive and purposefully sub...

Or, Lo and Behold: The End of Idris Elba’s Career Who thought it was a good idea to make a film adaptation of Cats ? The 1981 Andrew Lloyd-Webber show is an innovative and highly influential spectacle that transformed stage musicals into the big-budget blockbusters we know today. But it also couldn’t be less suited to cinema if it tried. It is, first and foremost, deeply weird. Adapted from T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , a collection of whimsical and disconnected poems about — you guessed it — cats, the musical is effectively two and a half hours of character introductions with the thinnest plot imaginable. It’s a lot of campy fun, the vast majority of the song are bangers and the choreography is stunning but without a radical re-imagining nothing about it immediately lends itself to a film adaptation. Unfortunately, no one told Universal. Having acquired the film rights for Cats many years earlier, they decided in 2013 to finally get on with it. Presumably...

Joker’s (Probably) Accidental Identity Politics The discourse around Joker , the Joaquin Phoenix-starring origin story of the infamous Batman villain, has been exhausting. Beginning before most people had even seen the film, battle lines were immediately drawn between those decrying its allegedly alt-right sympathies and edgy gamers convinced this was going to be the greatest film of all time. Now that it’s actually in cinemas and I’ve seen it, it’s a lot more complicated than that, even if it isn’t on purpose. To get it out of the way, Joker is a fantastically constructed film. Whilst it’s certainly derivative of other prestige pictures (Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy have been regularly brought up) that doesn’t stop it from being spectacular and gripping in its own right. At the centre of it all is Phoenix, who’s performance is genuinely astonishing. The gruesome physicality he brings to the role is mesmerising, exemplified during the surreal dance sequences i...