Movie & TV Show HD

The first Creed felt like a minor miracle, a Rocky movie that reinvented the franchise by tapping into its core greatness even as it brought the story forward into a very different world. Creed II tries something even more difficult: it sets out to redeem Rocky IV, the silliest, most over-the-top (and yet somehow not the worst) film in the series. The result has its flaws, but when it works it takes the franchise’s biggest dead weight and lifts it high over its head. On one level the story is little more than a series of fights and training montages as Creed (Michael B Jordan) initially wins the heavyweight title against a clapped-out champ, only to find a slick boxing promoter (Russell Hornsby) has a surprise for him: Russian punching machine Viktor Drago (Florian “Big Nasty” Munteanu), son of Rocky IV 's Soviet killbot Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Everyone wants to see Creed take on the son of the man who killed his father – everyone except Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) – but ...

There’s a certain kind of Disney film that, given a hundred million dollars, you could probably make yourself. You know the type: after a brief handful of scenes set in a twee version of the recent past (the more English the better) to establish various rote character conflicts almost always involving family (dead parents usually come in handy here), our plucky lead finds themselves transported into a magical fantasy world that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense and can possibly be read simply as a metaphor for our lead’s personal issues.  Once in that fantasy world - which is almost always vaguely medieval and somewhat rural rather than steampunk urban or, say, Roman - she or he (but usually she) meets a collection of characters – some CGI, some big-name actors in outlandish costumes – while wandering through a variety of lavish yet somehow generic locations. Forests are good but castles are better, and once you throw in a couple of waterfalls or a mountain or two you're pre...

  Watching Romper Stomper , the six part series based on the original 1992 film (out now on DVD and blu-ray), it’s clear the producers - which include the movie’s writer / director Geoffrey Wright - were faced with a dilemma. The original film is notorious for its right-wing politics, but the film itself is more about ceaseless motion and senseless violence than arguing any coherent philosophy. It’s a string of high-energy scenes of action, destruction and dancing (it’s largely structured like a dance movie), loosely justified by some racist slogans and Nazi flags. But trying to sustain that level of energy and intensity across six hours would clearly be impossible; the film struggles to keep it up for 90 minutes. So instead of following up on the original’s focus on a bunch of manic clowns trashing Footscray largely because they can, this series is all about the politics, presenting a variety of people and groups united by their connection to an aggressive strand of righ...

There are a lot of interesting things going on in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald . It's just that none of them manage to turn it into an interesting movie. It's been pointed out by more than one reviewer that this is a bridging movie in the Fantastic Beasts series, a film that is mostly setting things up for what is to come. That's clearly true; it's just that it fails to provide a reason why anyone would want more of this incoherent wand-waving. But we all know why we'll be back. The Harry Potter franchise has built up such massive reserves of goodwill that seemingly nothing - not social media turning on creator J.K. Rowling, not films that are nothing more than blatant cash-grabs, not continuing Harry Potter's story only as a massively expensive stage play - can dissuade the fans. The fact that about 80% of Harry Potter's appeal was that it was a fantasy version of an already romanticised version of high school and Crimes of Grindelwald is a...

Why remake Suspiria ? The original is so distinctive and so successful - on its own terms; if you're a fan of storytelling logic, move along - the idea of doing it over to get it right seems foolish at best and arrogant at worst. So Italian director Luca Guadagnino ( Call Me By Your Name ) turns the original on its head: gone are the garish colours, garbled plot and throbbing sense of mystery, replaced by..., well, let's put it this way: if you're interested in office politics within a coven of witches living in a dreary 70s office block, then this is the horror film for you.   If that sounds a bit harsh, well... fair call. This is clearly striving for a different effect than the original, and to do so it needs to use different methods to achieve its goals. There's still a Berlin dance academy, only now the 70s setting is highlighted as the divided city is rocked by the fallout from the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The dour nature of the city is well evoked; these are people l...