DVD of the Week: Chappie

Neill Blomkamp burst onto the conciousness of the average cinema going geek (like me) with the all-round excellent District 9, a smart, well designed movie that started as a thinly veiled allegory for apartheid-era South Africa and turned into a roaring, battle-suit driven action film. It's the sort of movie that gets you excited not only because it's damn good, but because as the breakout movie of a new talent you can't wait to see what they do next. What he did next, of course, was the dissapointing Elysium, which layered on the heavy-handed allegory and really struggled to be any sort of coherent thing in the end. Expectations corrected, he now has a third film, Chappie, about a police robot acheiving sentience. So, how does that fare? 

DVD(s) of the Week: Ex Machina and Foxcatcher

Yes, it's catch-up time. I've been pretty busy - exams, Thoughtbubble, attacks of Real Life, but we have managed to squeeze in a couple of movies in the last couple of weeks. So, lets dive right in. 

Movie Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Marvel's Avengers Assemble burst onto our cinemas screens as a remarkable Victory Lap for "Phase 1" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These days, with "universes" being quite the thing for big franchises, it's easy to forget that it was a really astounding achievement - a series of stand-alone movies with different characters that build to a giant cross-over incorporating elements from each of them. Not only did all these films get made - but they were all pretty good, and all pretty successful, and Avengers Assemble went on be a enormous smash hit, a rowdy, crowd-pleasing smash hit. A fews year on the MCU has become a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut; it's last two films, The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, are amongst it best, and most successful, and now "Phase 2" is rounded out with another great big crossover - Avengers: Age of Ultron. (warning: light spoilers) 

DVD of the Week: Robot and Frank

Looking back over the last few weeks this has seemed in danger of turning into some sort of Doctor Who blog, and whilst that may be expected given the sheer volume of 50th anniversary stuff, it does throw into sharp relief that it's been over a month since we last sat down with a movie to watch in the comfort of our own home. And in many ways thats a good thing, because one of the risks of being a parent is that it's easy to spend all your time once the kids have gone to bed watching movies in the comfort of your own home. But in many ways I've missed it, and it was nice to get back to the habit, especially with a low-budget charmer like Robot and Frank.