Dominic Corry

What feels like a pretty thin premise ends up being the setting for some very welcome character comedy in this animated lark with more laughs than you might expect. Already being a fan of Andy Samberg isn’t a prerequisite for enjoying the film, but it would definitely help as Junior, the character he voices, is […]

A nasty little addition to the minor 2016 horror boom, Don’t Breathe tops up its surfeit of straight-forward jump scares with an impressively disgusting third-act reveal. Coming in the wake of the success of fellow mid-range horrors like Lights Out and The Conjuring 2, Don’t Breathe has a comparatively grittier aesthetic, which it confidently leans […]

Early on in Star Trek Beyond, we hear Kirk, via his Captain’s Log, amusingly describe things on the Enterprise as having become “episodic” after several years in space. It’s an articulation of the film’s stated intention to evoke the spirit of the original series, a goal the film achieves without devolving into a nostalgia run. […]

He got his break as one of the MILF guys in American Pie, went on to become a stoner icon playing Harold in the Harold & Kumar movies, and now stars as Sulu in the rebooted Star Trek universe. In anticipation of the release of Star Trek Beyond, Flicks recently sat down with John Cho […]

It wasn’t hard to picture the big screen possibilities when the original Lights Out short went viral a few years ago. The resulting film, written by Eric Heisserer (Final Destination 5, 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm St remake), isn’t the most interesting extrapolation of the short imaginable, but its central hook remains effective enough to […]

Even when you set aside the curse of the video game adaptation, Warcraft: The Beginning‘s status as the first really ambitious big screen fantasy since Jackson met Tolkien means the odds were always stacked against it. Although only marginally brighter in tone and colouring than Jackson’s films, the so-called “high” fantasy world portrayed on screen […]

It can be a glorious thing when movies attempt to boil down public rancor over a certain issue into a fictional story about one man’s struggle – the power of cinema to distill widely held feelings into a propulsive, personal story is unmatched. That was clearly the goal here, to spin the widespread enmity for […]

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to pronounce their undying love for Tim Burton’s 2010 adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, but the film made over a billion dollars at the global box office, so here we are. Alice and the Commercially Mandated Sequel asserts itself as a large scale blockbuster in its thrilling opening […]

In a mainstream cinema landscape that often seems driven by concession – to the studio, the investors, the marketers, the distributors, certain demographics, the foreign market, the domestic market, the Stone Cutters – there are few things more satisfying than seeing a populist filmmaker getting to do exactly what he wants on a large canvas. […]

Despite a welcome enhancement of the futuristic aesthetics on display and an increased emphasis on faintly gritty action scenes, this third entry in the Divergent series suffers greatly for the over-familiarity of its generic YA dystopian aspirations. Possessing neither the mildly mythic heft of The Hunger Games franchise nor the nimble genre efficiency of the […]

The buoyant chemistry between Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Bell keeps this slight comedy afloat in the face of a thin storyline and an uneven tone. In full-on firecracker mode, the limber McCarthy is clearly enjoying herself revisiting a character she first developed in her days as an improv performer with the famed Groundlings troupe. The […]

The sub-title of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice suggests a movie that emphasises set-up, and thankfully that isn’t really the case – director Zack Snyder wrings plenty of drama from the justice and power themes that Man of Steel and Watchmen also touched upon, and he sets up his characters’ conflicting motivations judiciously. The world-building that does occur here is […]

Although not especially well-regarded by history, 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen delivered a very watchable stream of slickly executed violent action movie tropes. The old school swagger on display helped push the film beyond its initial status as the Pepsi to White House Down‘s Coca-Cola. Very little of that unapologetically fascistic appeal has made it into […]

It may be because I’m a sucker for any movie that strives to recapture the joy of the glorious action comedies of the 1980s, but I enjoyed the original Ride Along, which is quite possibly the most financially successful film ever ($130 million at the US box office) to not receive a theatrical release here. […]

Even without its Ashton Kutcher-led predecessor, this Steve Jobs biopic would likely have suffered from the perception that there may be nothing left to say about the much-discussed Apple innovator. Thanks to the specific talent involved in the film, it does not live down to this perception at all. Instead, it feels as vital and […]

Irish director Lenny Abrahamson, who made his mark with 2012’s underappreciated thriller What Richard Did, follows up 2014’s festival favourite Frank with this sensitive adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel. A much more direct cinematic experience than the intriguing-but-inscrutable Frank, Room leans in to its harrowing subject matter and delivers an uplifting and rewarding tale of […]

It’s easy to be wary of The Finest Hours – it gives off the whiff of an earnest, manipulative, straight-arrow film, the likes of which could only be released by Disney. It is all those things, but if you’re willing to hold your cynicism at bay, it’s also an often stirring, highly enjoyable tale of […]