The Phoenician Scheme review — Mia Threapleton shines in dour Wes Anderson
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
31 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
I am so disappointed by Karren Brady. She has traded in her inspirational boardroom chic to be a Kardashian clone... and I know the sad reason why: SUSANNAH JOWITT
Karren Brady is a hero of mine. Exactly my age at 56, she's an icon I've always worshipped: a woman of hard head and good sense, flying a feminine flag in a man's world. With just a jut of her chin she turns all footballers, Apprentices, her gorgeous husband and, now that she's Baroness Brady, the Lords of the realm, into putty in her hands. She is an inspiration to those who want to flourish not by denying our femininity but by flaunting it.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The Toxic Avenger review – strong cast struggles to revive stale horror franchise
The 1980s schlock-splatterfest franchise, originating from the famously low-budget, low-morale Z-list horror studio Troma, is now rebooted with an impressive cast and unimpressive script; it gets its somewhat delayed premiere at Edinburgh, two years after its completion. (It's billed as a world premiere, though a presumably different version screened at a couple of film festivals in 2023.) The original film was about a cringing nerd, sexually humiliated by bikini-clad women and brutalised by jocks, who then falls into a bin of bubbling toxic waste and is transformed into a hideously disfigured bulbous monster wreaking a terrible vengeance on all the bullies. This new version is not more progressive exactly, but the scantily-clad-babe factor, so important in bargain-bin 80s movies, has been dialled down. Now it is Peter Dinklage as our antihero, playing Winston, a humble janitor at a creepy corporation pumping out the poisonous waste – although Dinklage only has to act as himself in the film's initial scenes. After the big transformation it's another actor body-doubling his part in a green monster suit while Dinklage phones in his dialogue from the voice studio. Jacob Tremblay plays Winston's poignantly lonely and vulnerable teen son Wade (another factor that the 1980s original did not consider relevant or necessary) while Taylour Paige plays heroine JJ Doherty, who is out to take down the amoral corporation led by a slimy plutocrat, gamely played by Kevin Bacon with much panto villainy. He has a submissive brother-slash-helpmeet resembling the animated baddie Gru, played by Elijah Wood, and his uptight office assistant is played by Julia Davis. However this solid roster of acting talent can't do much about how frankly uninteresting and unfunny The Toxic Avenger is most of the time. As satire or spoof of both superhero movies and scary movies it is abysmally obsolete, and on its own terms as horror-comedy it achieves neither scares nor laughs. But in fairness, there are some good gags in Sunil Patel's cameo as a sorrowing doctor who has to break the news to Winston about his condition. The Toxic Avenger screened at the Edinburgh film festival, and is in Australian cinemas from 28 August and UK and Irish cinemas from 29 August.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Fresh royal family row as King's cousin launches astonishing attack on his 87-year-old mother and accuses her of being 'lazy': RICHARD EDEN'S DIARY
Lord Ivar Mountbatten seems to have taken a leaf out of Prince Harry 's book. For the television personality has chosen to attack his family in public. Lord Ivar, 62, who became the first member of the extended Royal Family to enter into a same-sex union in 2018, has given an astonishing interview in which he admits he does not like his mother, the Marchioness of Milford Haven, whom he accuses of being 'lazy'.
