Film

The Thing (1982) Review

David Hogan1 Comment

Time to end the mini-Halloween Thing with the reason for it in the first place: The Thing from 1982. It was a film I watched at some point in the 90s when I was an age that meant I shouldn’t have been watching it and due to that some of the scenes with the practical effects scared the hell out of me, and those are always the horror films that stick with you as an adult. I saw the 4K release of this pop up a while ago and here we are, in 2026, time to watch The Thing again safe in the knowledge that unlike a certain prequel we looked at yesterday, this one still stands the test of time even before re-watching it.

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The Thing (2011) Review

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Continuing this mini Halloween Thing (tee-hee-hee etc) is the prequel to the all-time classic I’m saving for Halloween itself (also called “The Thing”, which makes this film’s name extremely confusing), and frankly the fact it comes first chronologically is handy because the film was pretty… middling and it would’ve been a shame for it to be on the night itself. I can’t say it’s bad per say but nothing about it was captivating and the switch to CGI creature effects just rams home how great the original was and that’s all I could think of watching it. Still, I like how it ends with the same shot that the original starts with, that’s… something!

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The Thing from Another World Review

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Kicking off this mini-Halloween Thing (get it?) with the original adaptation of classic book “Who Goes There?”: “The Thing From Another World”. If you’ve watched either of the other two “Thing” movies or indeed other sci-fi/horror stories set in an isolated arctic base then this is where a lot of it comes from. Well, again, the book is where it really comes from, but I’ve always struggled with early 20th century and earlier written word… sorry! Anyway, this is a classic 50s sci-fi movie, but pre-technicolour, which makes it feel older than the other small handful of 50s movies I’ve seen. Anyway, let’s take a look!

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Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu Review

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The Mandalorian and Grogu has the sad “dishonour” of being the first Star Wars film released post-1998 I didn’t see in the cinema (due to… “unfortunate personal events”, let’s say) but that does mean I missed out on one of the main complaints about the film: that it felt just like an extended episode of the show rather than a big blow-out movie experience. Watching at home meant it was just like a special episode of a favourite TV show of mine (though with a far higher budget, obviously…) and for that reason I enjoyed myself, for the most part. Let’s take a look.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review

David Hogan2 Comments

Time to catch up with the MCU and talk about “First Steps”, finally introducing an MCU version of The Fantastic Four… sort of. The film takes place in another universe entirely, presumably explaining why they haven’t appeared before now and due to the events of Doomsday/Secret Wars will be integrated into the MCU proper at that point. Due to this distance from the MCU though they decided to create a much more comic-accurate version of the super team and world they inhabit, which was really fun. Let’s take a look…

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Thunderbolts* Review

David Hogan1 Comment

Thunderbolts, or “Thunderbolts*  *The New Avengers” was probably one of the most uninteresting MCU films announced in recent memory, but I don’t know whether it was because of extremely low expectations or if it is just that good, but I really enjoyed it! The cast was fun, the lead “villain” was a good adaptation of a particular favourite obscure comic character of mine and generally it was a good time. Was it perfect? Well no, for example the ending felt a tad anticlimactic, but it was at least a whole film that didn’t feel like it was coming apart at the seams like some recent efforts… Let’s take a look!

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Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Review

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It’s time to immediately finish off this return to the Game to Movie Marathon as I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the third live action Sonic film, a series that still baffles me how it’s not only a thing but a good thing and a successful thing. My main gripe over STH2 was a few long scenes of the human characters and some really poor humour and thankfully for this third film they seem to have fixed both of those issues as the human characters take a backseat for the most part and the humour is the fun kind of kids film humour that I can still enjoy as an adult, rather than … whatever that stuff was in the long wedding scene last time… Let’s take a look!

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba The Movie – Infinity Castle Anime UK News Review

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Another one of those rare “cinema screener” reviews from myself (plus a review from a co-writer who actually went to a physical screening!) this time for the latest, insanely high-Japanese-box-office offering from the Demon Slayer franchise. It can be viewed by clicking HERE.

Basically, it’s more of the same, which given its the (first third of the) final arc makes sense!

Captain America: Brave New World Review

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Catching up with the MCU now, with a film I’d been putting off for a while just because I hadn’t heard it was terrible or great, just lots of middling reviews. “Brave New World” had lots of rewrites and re-shoots and by the end of the film it was obvious that it was a bit of a jumbled mess, and hey guess what? Decidedly average, as “promised”. Oh well, at least it tied up a few loose ends in the MCU canon, that’s something, right?

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