David R. Walker

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Director: Matt Shakman

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ralph Ineson, Julia Garner, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Mark Gatiss, Sarah Niles

Running Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

It’s the third time lucky for the Fantastic Four franchise, with two previous remakes in 2005 and 2015 and now in 2025, director Matt Shakman’s Fantastic Four: First Steps is the flashy remake that Marvel needs to reboot itself for the next five years.

Reuniting Pedro Pascal with his Gladiator II co-star, Joseph Quinn, Fantastic Four: First Steps also stars Oscar nominee Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman) as Reed Richards wife Susan Storm along with The Bear star Ebon Moss-Bacharach as Ben Grimm making up the superhero quartet.

What makes this Fantastic Four: First Steps so brilliant, is that the entire production design by Kasra Farahani is comfortably nestled in a 1960’s nostalgia, down to the sleek cars and retro décor as the city of New York and the wider world is threatened by a malevolent celestial being called Galactus voiced by Ralph Ineson whose rapacious hunger turns to the destruction of Earth.

Naturally the inhabitants of New York turn to The Fantastic Four for salvation from utter annihilation. However in order to save the earth the Fantastic Four or more specifically the love child of Reed Richards and Susan Storm has to be offered up as sacrifice.

Fortunately the onscreen chemistry of these four actors that make up The Fantastic Four is superb particularly the two lead stars, Pedro Pascal, the it man of the moment in Hollywood who made his famous debut in HBO’s Game of Thrones and British star Vanessa Kirby who rose to fame in the hit Netflix series The Crown.

With great acting from both stars, Kirby and Pascal are comfortably compatible together while Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are perfectly suited as the goofy uncles. Audiences should look out for cameo roles by TV star Natasha Lyonne as Ben Grimm’s love interest and Julia Garner (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) as the intergalactic silver surfer Shalla-Bal who brings news to earth of the planet’s imminent destruction.

Other cameos include Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell, Cruella, BlackKKlansman) as the underground leader Harvey Elder along with Mark Gatiss as the talk show host who helps to create media hype about the blue clad Fantastic Four.

With retro 1960’s costumes perfectly designed by Oscar winning costume designer Alexandra Byrne (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) and visually arresting special effects, Fantastic Four: First Steps is a thrilling galactic adventure about the power of family and the resilience of unity amidst impending doom, as the Fantastic Four all stick together to save earth and the baby boy, whose cuteness factor rivals Krypto in Superman.

From directing episodes of great TV shows like Succession, Game of Thrones and Billions, director Matt Shakman effortlessly transfers his talents to the big screen with this highly successful 2025 version of Fantastic Four: First Steps.

As Joseph Quinn’s character Johnny Storm says to the silver surfer, I am just trying to save my world, Fantastic Four: First Steps saves the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reinvents it for the arrival of the Avengers. This fantasy adventure features a focused cast, fabulous production and costume design, astonishing visual effects and a clean retro set narrative filled with rejuvenation and hope.

Fantastic Four: First Steps gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is by far the best film of the 2025 American summer blockbuster season. See it now in cinemas.

God’s Work

Director: Michael James

Cast: Thobani Nzuza, Mbulelo Radebe, Zenzo Msomi, Omega Mncube, Aaron McIroy, Nduduzo Khowa

Running Time: 2 hours and 7 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Festival: Durban International Film Festival  – https://ccadiff.ukzn.ac.za/

Durban based film director Michael James expertly and inventively shines a light on the plight of the city’s homeless population or the unhoused in his debut full length feature film entitled God’s Work which had its glittering and packed South African premiere at the 46^th Durban International Film Festival on Sunday 20^th July 2025 at Durban’s Suncoast Casino and Entertainment Complex.

Often as urban dwellers we simply drive past the homeless population in Durban or just ignore them. Durban like many cities around South Africa and the world has a growing homeless situation and James creates a self–reflexive tale about a group of homeless men lead by the haunted drug addict Simphiwe played by Thobani Nzuza along with fellow actors Mbulelo Radebe, Omega Mncube, Siya Xaba, Zenzo Msomi and Nduduzo Khowa who star in supporting roles.

God’s Work bravely explores the plight of homelessness in a mockumentary style film which is both poignant, uncomfortable and shocking.

Shot around Durban’s inner city, the story also written by Michael James follows Simphiwe and his friends as they are initially approached by a film director to make a documentary about homelessness and then the group’s struggle with drug addiction, extreme poverty and harassment by less than savoury law enforcement officers. Some of the films scenes did go on too long and needed to be edited for the sake of brevity.

God’s Work is at time very funny and also quite shocking as it explores the misadventures of Simphiwe and his friends as they attempt to rob a shady drug dealer named Biko, run into a crazy political activist featuring a great cameo by Durban comedian Aaron McIroy (Spud, Spud 2: The Madness Continues, Spud 3: Learning to Fly) and also deal with the impending political march of a militant political party determined to recruit them.

As Simphiwe’s journey is both emotional and physically exhausting, he confronts his turbulent relationship with his absent alcoholic mother in a confessional scene in St Emmanuel’s Cathedral in central Durban, after which he and his friends get arrested for vagrancy and deported out of the city to a distant rural location.

God’s Work highlights both the tenacity of the unhoused and also their determination to survive in gruelling conditions on poverty stricken streets while battling addiction and harassment.

Director Michael James wants the audience to feel uncomfortable watching this film, which makes the film relevant and difficult to watch.

While the humour is appreciated, the film’s tone is unrelentingly sombre, which serves its purpose of highlighting the dire circumstances of the unhoused in the face of government, social and economic indifference.

God’s Work is a creative and social journey into the unwanted areas of urban society, a brave and fearless tale of hope, loss and survival.

This film is not for everyone, but it will strike a chord with the socially conscious and will definitely serve as a talking point for deeper conversations about complex urban problems which many cities face, both in South Africa and abroad.

For sheer inventiveness and bravery, God’s Work gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is recommending viewing for those that enjoy gritty urban cinema.  

Four Letters of Love

Director: Polly Steele

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter, Gabriel Byrne, Donal Finn, Fionn O’Shea, Ann Skelly, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo

Running Time: 2 hours and 5 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

British director Polly Steele directs a magic realist love story set in Ireland in the early 1970’s in the film adaptation of the novel by Niall Williams entitled Four Letters of Love.

This quirky Irish film has a solid supporting cast including Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter (The Wings of a Dove, The King’s Speech), Pierce Brosnan and Gabriel Byrne but it is the young stars who shine in this uneven tale of forgotten chances, artistic temperaments, mistakes and miracles.

Four Letters of Love focuses on the lives of two young people, Nicholas Coughlin played by the dashing star Fionn O’Shea and the headstrong Isabel Gore wonderfully played by Ann Skelly.

As Nicholas and Isabel’s lives almost cross on a bus one afternoon, it is their families that force fate to intervene and eventually the two meet at the home of Isobel’s eccentric parents beautifully played by Helena Bonham Carter and her father the poet played by Gabriel Byrne.

Nicholas’s family circumstances are somewhat more complex as his father William Coughlin well played by Pierce Brosnan decides to chuck in his work as a civil servant to rather go painting in the West of Ireland leaving Nicholas’s mother to have a nervous breakdown and the young man to fend for himself. Soon Nicholas follows his father to the remote part of Western Ireland and the artistic temperaments earn his father a formidable painting which is put up as first prize in a community poetry competition ironically won by Isabel’s father Muiris Gore.

Gabriel Byrne is perfect as the brooding poet who is angry with God for allowing his young strapping son to have a stroke and is battling to deal with his headstrong daughter. Isabel defies the nuns and soon meets a wastrel of a young man Peader played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (CODA, Sing Street).

Four Letters of Love only takes off in the second half of the film and while the odd touches of magic realism in the story generally confuse the narrative as opposed to clarifying it, director Polly Steele allows some scenes to linger too long and only realizes that she has such a talented actress as Helena Bonham Carter in her film, breathing life into her character only towards the end.

As Nicholas accidentally meets Isabel and her poet father and crafty mother, Four Letters of Love is a bizarre Irish film which is both charming and confusing at times.

Unfortunately this Irish film is not a touch on the Oscar nominated Banshees of Inisherin but it is worth seeing. Four Letters of Love is a quirky romantic drama held together by two strong performances by Fionn O’Shea and Ann Skelly.

Four Letters of Love gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that enjoy obscure Irish cinema. Good to see Pierce Brosnan in so many films again.

Superman

Director: James Gunn

Cast: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Alan Tudyk, Nicholas Hoult, Bradley Cooper, Nicholas Hoult, Michael Rooker, Wendell Pierce, Nathan Fillion, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Frank Grillo, Skyler Gisondo, Edi Gathegi, William Reeve, Milly Alcock

Running Time: 2 hours and 9 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

If it wasn’t for clever casting of the two main leads for Superman this film would have collapsed. In actual fact at some point the narrative caved in on itself in a horrific pastiche of social media, aliens, technology and monkeys on keyboards that for a moment I thought I wasn’t watching a superhero film.

Director James Gunn went from Guardians of the Galaxy to bringing his bizarre off beat style to Superman which in some parts of this film were just terrible and in other scenes just like a CGI car crash overtaken by malevolent artificial intelligence.

Fortunately James Gunn had two superb lead actors to take on the iconic role of Superman and Lois Lane in the form of the highly talented duo David Corenswet (Twisters) and Rachel Brosnhan (The Amateur). The towering and smouldering David Corenswet was brilliant as Superman and his journalist alter ego Clark Kent as he tries to save Metropolis from the evil grip of the megalomaniac and lethal Lex Luthor this time underplayed by Nicholas Hoult whose villain was just not villainous enough. In the scenes between Superman and Lex Luthor, it just comes off as two grown men fighting over a dog.

That’s the other good thing about the film which kids will absolutely adore. Krypto the dog steals the show as Superman’s canine companion. Who doesn’t love a hunk in a cape with a misbehaving dog?

Superman as a storyline was all over the charts, with strange allegorical conflicts happening elsewhere along with additional superheroes arriving as a back up army to assist the Man of Steel. The action at some point just reveal a vortex of chaos, saved only by some really beautiful scenes between Lois and Superman.

The onscreen chemistry between David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan is exact and endearing however the rest of the storyline is a chaotic mess. If they do a sequel to this film, please employ a decent scriptwriter.

The backstory of Superman as Clark Kent growing up in rural Kansas is only briefly touched upon in one sparkling pastoral scene between Clark and his adopted father Pa Kent played by Pruitt Taylor Vince (Constantine, Monster).  

Nicholas Hoult who was so brilliant in such art house films as Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar winning The Favourite is slightly lacklustre as a frustrated tech billionaire who will stop at nothing to destroy Metropolis and take over the world. Hoult must have got his villain inspiration from a younger version of Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill, except that Walken made audiences believe he was a psychopath. It’s all in the eyes.

Superman is going to make lots of money at the box office and while it is not a bad film, it is not brilliant either and with expectations so high, unfortunately the chaotic scenes outweigh the shining moments.

See Superman for David Corenswet and his dog. The cinema experience rests shakily on a shambolic screenplay which will appeal to some but not many. Audiences should look out for former Superman star Christopher Reeve’s son William Reeve as a TV reporter.

Superman gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and has its moments and it’s definitely not as good as Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The best part about this cloaked drama is the ending.

Jurassic World: Rebirth

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Rupert Friend, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali, Manuel Garcia-Ruflo, Ed Skrein, Bechir Sylvain, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda

Running Time: 2 hours and 13 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Rogue One and Godzilla director Gareth Edwards returns to the big screen with the latest instalment of the Jurassic franchise in the impressive new chapter, Jurassic World: Rebirth.

Unlike 2022’s explosive and character heavy Jurassic World: Dominion, Jurassic World: Rebirth has a much tighter narrative and centres on the stories of four characters.

Rupert Friend (Canary Black, Asteroid City, The French Dispatch) plays slimy and well suited pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs who hires operations expert Zora Bennett wonderfully played by Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson (JoJo Rabbit, Marriage Story) to lead an expedition to the equator to extract DNA from three species of dinosaurs living on a remote tropical island in a bid to find the ingredients for a new drug to prevent cardiac arrests in humans. Zora Bennett is joined by palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis expertly played by Jonathan Bailey (Wicked, Testament of Youth) as they head to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The trio are joined by boat captain Duncan Kincaid played by two time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book) as they head to into the unknown to an island so treacherous that only heroes are left alive.

Parallel to their expedition, is a father sailing across the Atlantic with his two daughters, Reuben Delgado played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven, Murder on the Orient Express) whose beautiful yacht is capsized by a monstrous prehistoric sea creature

Reuben and his daughters are rescued by Zora’s expedition but soon things go horribly wrong just before they reach the island.

The storyline of Jurassic World: Rebirth resembles more of a horror thriller than an adventure narrative as the human contingent are slowly decimated by a T Rex and a couple more nefarious dinosaurs. This film is part a disaster movie and a survival tale but what makes it so much fun are the exciting sequences in which the characters try to outwit these prehistoric menaces, particularly the scene with the inflatable boat on the murky river and the end sequence in an abandoned DNA testing station complete with an eerie backup generator.

From falling off cliffs to river rafting, from escaping burning boats to dodging dangerous dinosaurs, Jurassic World: Rebirth delivers on the entertainment front with an enthusiastic cast that keeps the survival narrative thrilling and edgy. The production design and stunts are amazing assisted by a great cast held together by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali in a film expertly directed by Gareth Edwards who keeps the pacing this side of panicky and that side of enthralling. The audience won’t be disappointed.

Jurassic World: Rebirth gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is fine entertainment for those that love the Jurassic franchise and are fans of vicious monster films. Highly recommended viewing. See it on the big screen.

F1: The Movie

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Shea Wingham, Tobias Menzies, Sarah Niles, Will Merrick

Running Time: 2 hours 35 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Director Joseph Kosinski follows up his hugely successful 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick with F1: The Movie starring Oscar winner Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as racing car driver Sonny Hayes who teams up with the young driver Joshua Pierce played by Damson Idris in a bid to revive his racing career in an around the world docudrama which possesses strong production values, great acting and a storyline which is average.

F1: The Movie is not going to appeal to everyone but it is saved by some great performances relying heavily on the star power of Brad Pitt who at 61 still commands the screen with his sparkling blue eyes and that screen charisma which is electrifying. Pairing Brad Pitt with Spanish Oscar winner Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) is a brilliant choice as Bardem plays the flashy Ruben Cervantes the talent manager of a racing car team which travels the F1 circuit from Silverstone in England to Abu Dhabi in the UAE with a pit stop in Las Vegas.

While screenwriter Ehren Kruger’s storyline reads more like a repetitive docudrama about racing cars, there are some significant scenes particularly between Pitt and Bardem and Pitt’s love interest played by Irish star and Oscar nominee Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) who retains her accent for this international racing film.

Initially the young driver Joshua Pierce clashes with the supposedly washed up driver Sonny Hayes who is recovering from gambling debts and failed marriages, Hayes and Pierce at the request of the first female technical director Kate McKenna expertly played by Kerry Condon urges the two drivers to work together as team because that is what racing car driving is all about.

Where F1: The Movie scores big is with the glossy production design by Ben Munro and Mark Tildesley along with expert cinematography by Oscar winner Claudio Miranda who won for Life of Pi. The film’s editing is also brilliant and while the storyline does lag in parts it’s really the acting which carries F1: The Movie across the finish line. Of particular note are the scenes in Las Vegas and the final race in the impressive Abu Dhabi F1 race track.

The screen chemistry between Kerry Condon and Brad Pitt is perfect while rising star Damson Idris does his best to hold his own on screen against these established stars.

Produced by Lewis Hamilton amongst others, F1: The Movie is an interesting film, slightly long but worth seeing without all the glamour and drama of Ron Howard’s 2013 film Rush.

See the film for Brad Pitt who is excellent as Sonny Hayes the man that proves that you can still drive forever.

F1: The Movie gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that love sporting films. The technical aspects of this film outweigh any narrative discrepancies. Just watch out for a cinematic experience crammed with strategic brand placement.

How to Train Your Dragon

Director: Dean DeBlois

Cast: Gerard Butler, Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Nick Frost, Gabriel Howell, Peter Serafinowicz, Bronwyn James, Julian Dennison

Running Time: 2 hours and 5 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10 

Canadian director Dean DeBlois directed the animated film How to Train Your Dragon in 2010 and it was nominated for two Oscars – best achievement in Musical score by John Powell and Best Animated Feature Film.

DeBlois makes the bold and impressive leap to remaking the film as a live action version retaining the excellent services of John Powell for musical score in the visually appealing new film How to Train Your Dragon starring Scottish action hunk Gerard Butler as a menacing Viking Stoick whose wayward son Hiccup played by Mason Thames does not believe all the Viking hype about how evil the dastardly dragons are that keep attacking their remote village on the stark isle of Berk.

The reluctant hero, Hiccup who at the start of this film does not impress his strong and overbearing father is told to join the dragon fighting academy along with a rag tag group of teenagers including Snotlout played by Gabriel Howell who is having the same trouble trying to impress his father Spitelout played by Peter Serafinowicz.

Joining the gang of misfits is the determined and fiercely beautiful Astrid played by Nico Parker (Dumbo) who immediately becomes a source of attraction for the mysteriously naïve Hiccup.

Obviously any narrative containing dragons and Vikings is pure fantasy and in this genre, director Dean DeBlois excels expanding on the success of the original animated version.

How To Train Your Dragon is an action packed fantasy made more interesting by Hiccup’s unlikely friendship with a baby Nightfury dragon forcing him to challenge the long standing village attitude that all dragons are evil. In Stoic’s quest to find the Dragon’s Nest, Hiccup with the help of Toothless, the Nightfury dragon discovers the real source of these mythical creature’s true discontentment.

The visual effects are brilliant and John Powell’s musical score is superb along with the supporting cast including Nick Frost as Gobbler who offers sage parenting advice to Stoick. It’s refreshing to see Gerard Butler take a break from his action roles and star in a fantasy film.

The storyline is essentially how sons can find innovative ways to impress their fathers as Hiccup decides to challenge prejudices against dragons and his father’s stubbornness, changing the village completely.

How to Train Your Dragon is a fun filled fantasy adventure film with fantastic performances by Mason Thames, Nico Parker and Gerard Butler and is definitely worth seeing.

While some of the fight scenes could have been edited, How to Train Your Dragon gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is a suitable film for the whole family. Recommended viewing.

The Shadow Scholars

Director: Eloise King

Cast: Patricia Kingori

Running Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Festival: Encounters Documentary Film Festival, Tribeca, Thessalonki Documentary Film Festival, London Film Festival

Please note this film is a documentary

With Oscar nominated director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) as an executive producer, documentary film maker Eloise King creates a fascinating documentary called Shadow Scholars and poses a very interesting question. What if all the academic writing at colleges and prestigious universities like Harvard and Oxford, was not done by the research scholars but by a group of shadow scholars not based in England or America but in Nairobi, Kenya?

Shadow Scholars follows the fascinating story of the first black female professor at Oxford, Professor of sociology Patricia Kingori, a Kenyan born academic now living in the UK.

Professor Patricia Kingori explores the power dynamic made possible by increasing technological advancements that allowed undergraduates and graduates in British and American universities to use the services of thousands of unemployed yet educated young Kenyans living in Nairobi who write the essays for these graduates and then the European or American graduates take the academic credit for work that isn’t even there. This is known as the Kenyan essay mill which allows a system of contract cheating to exist at universities in which undergraduates at institutions like the University of San Diego, Harvard and others to employ the services of Kenyan ghost writers who would work tirelessly to get academic papers submitted in time for essay deadlines.

Obviously the credibility of these universities is at stake but what makes this documentary so interesting is that Professor Kingori travels to Nairobi to interview these essay writers who are making good money by posting fake European profiles online advertising ghost writing.

Many of these ghost writers, mostly young cannot find jobs in an over-educated yet unemployed Kenyan population so this becomes their livelihood in which not only do they make money but also as a means to support their families.

While documentary film maker Eloise King does veer off the main narrative focusing on British colonialism, post-colonial Kenya including an interview with recently deceased writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and looks at the history of slavery in the American deep South, her film Shadow Scholars highlights an academic flaw in a global industry in which technology has allowed these scholars to flourish and serve the wishes of first world academia.

Then artificial intelligence also starts threatening the livelihood of these Kenyan essay writers along with countries like Australia and America trying to ban ghost writing completely. The University of San Diego even had an international day of action against contract cheating.

Ghost writing as a topic for a documentary feature becomes a three dimensional issue in which Professor Kingori explores the ethical and economic implications of Western university students employing the services of African ghost writers and Kenya allowing this system to flourish without proper interventions. It’s not so much the Kenyan government’s fault as it is more the loopholes of an intricate global digital world in which 24 hour online work can benefit people in several countries simultaneously.

Shadow Scholars is primarily aimed at the academic world and despite its tangential storyline does pose some interesting ethical considerations. From Nairobi to London to San Diego, Shadow Scholars is an important documentary which should be seen. Shadow Scholars gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing.

References: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Famous Kenyan Post-Colonial Writer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C5%A9g%C4%A9_wa_Thiong%27o

Ballerina

Director: Len Wiseman

Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Norman Reedus, Lance Riddick, Sharon Duncan-Brewster

Running Time: 2 hours and 4 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Total Recall and Die Hard 4.0 director Len Wiseman returns to directing feature films after a long time in Television as he helms the new John Wick spin off film Ballerina starring Oscar nominee Ana de Armas (Blonde) as ballerina orphan turned assassin who is lethal with a flame thrower.

Audiences need to suspend their disbelief as they re-enter the John Wick universe which is hyper stylized, murky and extremely dangerous. This is a world filled with the Continental Hotels which is basically a B n B for contract killers. Obviously Keanu Reeves is back as John Wick but in Ballerina Ana de Armas firmly takes centre stage in an action film which is incredibly violent and filled with blood lust as the fighting intensifies when Eve travels from the sleek skyscrapers of New York to the bohemian mountains outside Prague to track down the evil tribe responsible for her father’s death.

Ballerina operates on one level as a revenge thriller and on another as a coming of age story of a female assassin who escapes from the beady eyed supervision of The Director wonderfully played with heavy makeup and attitude by Oscar winner Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honour) who adds a level of panache to a film about lethal assassins.

The villain in this piece is The Chancellor played by Irish actor Gabriel Byrne (Vanity Fair, The Usual Suspects) who heads up a cultish tribe whose only mantra is to kill people in a village in the Bohemian mountains.

When The Chancellor’s son Daniel Pine played by Norman Reedus tries to escape the cult with his young daughter, Pine meets up with the Ballerina Eve and literally all hell breaks loose.

Eve fights the whole village and even John Wick is called in to eliminate Eve but she proves to be more than he can contend with. In a bid for her own independence, Eve learns to fight like a girl and use all explosives necessary.

Ballerina is big on lush stylization, dramatic settings like New York nightclubs and snow covered Bohemian villages with killer inhabitants but unfortunately the narrative is a bit weak despite the appearance of a host of John Wick stars including the late Lance Riddick, Ian McShane as Winston and Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Nogi. There is an astonishingly fresh appearance by Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) as Lena the short lived relative, but her screen time like that of Norman Reedus is too short to be savoured. If the screenwriters were clever they would have given these minor characters more of a back story.

Ballerina is heavy on violence and light on plot, saved by great filming, superb fighting scenes and a heroine that proves that female action stars are forces to be reckoned with. It’s an entertaining film with outlandish characters brandishing weapons from samurai swords to hammers, from grenades to guns.

Recommended strictly for fans of the John Wick film franchise, Ballerina gets a film rating of 7 out of 10. Watch this film if you like your ballerina carrying flame throwers and not bouquets.

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story

Director: Sinead O’Shea

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Gabriel Byrne

Running Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Please note this film is a documentary.

Oscar nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) serves as the competent narrator with her clear and quirky commentary on life of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien in Sinead O’Shea’s riveting documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which is a must see film.

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story tells the scandalous story of writer Edna O’Brien who was a gifted novelist but got married very young to a much older Irish writer Ernest Gebler and had two small children in 1954. At a time of non-existent women writers that were telling tales of the sexual frankness and desires of young Irish women, Edna O’Brien’s early novels The Country Girls, Girls in their Married Bliss and August is a Wicked Month caused a major stir and were immediately banned in the conservative Ireland of the early 1960’s.

What made her initial fame even more precarious was that her husband took all her royalty checks from the publication of her first couple of novels and kept them himself. He gave Edna an allowance for groceries.

Then Edna O’Brien as a novelist who by 1964 was earning enough money from her writing to become independent made the bold decision to leave her husband and move into a house in the fashionable Carlyle Square in SW1 in London. Edna and her dreadful husband were divorced in 1968 after a four year separation.

Edna O’Brien as a controversial novelist who challenged the patriarchy in Anglo-Irish society and also expertly exposed the sexual desires of young women in her ground breaking novels became a cause celeb and was the centre of a bohemian social whirl in the 1960’s that included film stars and celebrities like Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, Joan Plowright and even Jackie Onassis.

O’Brien’s popularity as a novelist was cemented in America after the endorsement by prestigious writers like Philip Roth, John Updike and J. D. Salinger in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Heavily influenced by Irish modernist writer James Joyce, Edna O’Brien’s fame as a novelist was firmly established.

Irish documentary film maker Sinead O’Shea creates an impressive and elegant story of the life of Edna O’Brien in her brilliant documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately Edna O’Brien passed away in July 2024 just three months before the release of this fascinating story of her provocative life.

Featuring interviews with famous Irish actor Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Vanity Fair, Siesta) Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story is an interesting documentary on a female writer whose sexual frankness initially shocked conservative Anglo-Irish society and left a literary legacy which any avid reader should explore more thoroughly.

Documentaries on the lives of writers can be difficult to make but ably assisted with the tantalizing commentary provided by Jessie Buckley, director Sinead O’Shea brings to the cinema the life of a bold independent woman of letters whose novels scandalized the English speaking world and earned Edna O’Brien the moniker Playgirl of the Western World.

If audiences love literary documentaries then Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien story is highly recommended viewing and gets a film rating of 8 out of 10. An insightful film both politically and socially.