Film Review: Doctor Strange (2016)

In addition to being the fourteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange plays out like a microcosm of the juggernaut that birthed it. Like the MCU itself, Strange starts out relatively normal, gets odder as it goes along, is plagued by a lack of compelling antagonists, and is better at wry comedy than action or spectacle. For all the flashes of weirdness that are allowed to creep in around the edges, it is a quintessential Marvel movie, with all the positives and problems that entails.

Film Review: The Martian (2015)

Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is a very smart man in a very bad situation. A member of a manned mission to Mars, he was struck by a piece of debris during a storm which separated him from the rest of his crew. Believing that Watney had been killed, and faced with the agonising choice between leaving him or being stranded themselves, his crew left and started their long, mournful journey back to Earth. Fortunately, Watney survived. Unfortunately, he's alone on Mars with limited supplies, no way of contacting his crew or NASA, and no means of escape. Faced with the prospect of a long stay on a dead planet, with eventual starvation the most likely outcome, Watney would be forgiven for giving in to despair. Instead, he becomes a regular Robinson Crusoe on Mars (though not the actual Robinson Crusoe on Mars) and uses the tools at hand and his scientific know-how to try and survive, no matter how much the odds are stacked against him.

Film Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

When I first watched 12 Years a Slave back in November, I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I felt like I couldn't write about it. It wasn't merely that it was good, but I found the story of Solomon Northup so moving that I couldn't really put my thoughts into any cogent order. Despite that, I had no qualms putting it in my Top 20 of the year, and was pleased to see how much success the film enjoyed both critically and commercially.