Matt Shakman’s vision of the The Fantastic Four: First Steps may gesture towards greatness in its retro-futurist production design, but ultimately retreats into hollow grandeur, leaving behind a world rich in style for a superficial simulation that never dares to challenge its own utopian ideals.
Through Danny Boyle’s return to the horror series which redefined the zombie genre, 28 Years Later delivers an unexpectedly touching coming-of-age tale, confronting an apocalyptic world stripped of its humanity yet fostering a melancholy beauty that so many survivors stubbornly reject.
James Gunn’s blend of emotional sincerity and stylish flair in Superman offers a workable blueprint for the DC Universe, rejuvenating the alien hero with a radical, countercultural kindness, and nudging the genre towards stories that prioritise character over spectacle – without entirely sacrificing either.
Joseph Kosinski swaps jets for race cars in F1’s thrilling sports drama, stylishly redressing familiar tropes with sleek technical mastery, and turning its predictable rivalry into an electrifying, finely choreographed dance of collaboration.
Amid The Phoenician Scheme’s epic entanglements of assassins, terrorists, and bureaucrats, it is within a dysfunctional family reunion where Wes Anderson unravels an unlikely spiritual redemption, mending broken bonds through one wealthy industrialist’s mission to execute his most ambitious project yet.
What Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning lacks in deftness it makes up for in raw impact, unleashing a heart-pounding conclusion to the nuclear threat posed by a rogue AI parasite, and standing as an overstuffed, operatic monument to what practical filmmaking can still achieve when pushed to its edge.
In Philip Barantini’s refusal to cut away from his camera’s long, uncomfortable takes, Adolescence pushes a quiet form of insistence, bearing witness to the raw, fragmented, and unresolved mess left in the wake of one teenager’s horrifying crime.
Music is a supernatural force that can pierce the veil between life and death in Sinners, and it is through its bluesy harmonies that Ryan Coogler resonates a timeless riff between warring cultural ideals, setting one 1930s African American juke joint against an insidious band of vampires.
True to Bong Joon-ho’s savage class critiques, the endless cloning of expendable workers in Mickey 17 examines the fragility of identity in a capitalist system, aiming its broad satire at the repackaging of exploitation and colonisation as economic progress.
