After the emotional tug of Asteroid City, The Phoenician Scheme feels like Wes Anderson operating in first gear – an archetypal caper akin to Grand Budapest Hotel where a cunning man of considerable importance and hegemony becomes embroiled in an international conspiracy to bring him down. There’s no meta-commentary and no stories-within-stories, just an espionage black comedy operating at surface level. From this perspective, it’s Anderson’s simplest film since Moonrise Kingdom. But despite this simplicity, it’s clear that the American auteur…

I hate to be the party pooper here because, like most of us, I am a huge Tom Cruise fan (easily top five favourite actors) and a huge Mission Impossible fan too. But watching The Final Reckoning was at times a spectacular culmination of Cruise’s stardom while also being one of the most indulgent, stupid entries in the series. And that’s a bit of an achievement in of itself.

What’s really important to note about Mission Impossible series is despite how…

After a few weeks of watching some bang average films at the cinema, a film like Rye Lane swoons along as a breath of fresh air away from the Hollywood gluttony. I read in a review somewhere describing this as a goofily Gen-Z Before Sunrise but this comment actually warrants disservice to the film. Because like Richard Linklater’s masterpiece from 1995, Rye Lane is about two like-minded people embarking upon a conversation via urban exploration, only this time it’s around…