Spider-Man: No Way Home

Spider-Man complete with arachnid arms

Spider-Man spun? Spider-Man: No Way Home is another gargantuan Marvel movie full of action, great power/great responsibility moments and the sort of emotion you’d expect in stories about a highly strung teenage superhero. Jon Watts is back as the director, and the writers are again Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers – all three have been behind the other webslinging adventures with “home” somewhere in the title, (2019’s Far from Home and 2017’s Homecoming, if you’re not up to speed). Fine craftsmen all. But. But. But. The suspicion lingers that this creative team knows what Marvel also obviously does – that these Spidey stories are done and don’t need doing any more, and that … Read more

The Impossible

Naomi Watts and Tom Holland in The Impossible

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 January Shaanxi earthquake, 1556 On this day in 1556, the world experienced the deadliest earthquake on record. At 8.0 (possibly 7.9) on the magnitude scale (the successor to the Richter scale) it wasn’t the biggest quake the world has seen but it did kill the most people, largely because many of the people who inhabited that region in China lived in loess caves. Loess (probably from the same English root as the word “loose”) is a wind-blown silt/clay mix held together loosely by calcium carbonate. It is very easy to excavate but is also highly susceptible both to collapsing and … Read more