Author: James Ruzicka

We watched Sofia Coppola’s feature Marie Antoinette (2006) this weekend. Goodness knows what inspired the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola to make a film about how hard it is being the offspring of a great emperor. The costumes are doing the heavy lifting here, supported by some great hair and the easy charisma of Kirsten […]

So I saw the trailer for the new DC picture Black Adam the other day. I don’t know much about the character, he’s played by Dwayne Johnson, he looks bad-assed, a bunch of things blow up. But one thing about the trailer really stuck in my mind as a potent symbol of contemporary cinematic story […]

Don’t believe what your parents told you, monsters are definitely real. After watching Godzilla and Jurassic World, we talk at the Popcorn Counter about a few of our favourite monster pictures, explain why we’re wary of swimming in three feet of water and lament the end of the broadcast television late night scare movie.

We sometimes struggle to find family films to please everyone in our house. My children really dislike violence on screen, and it’s only when watching older films through their eyes that I realise how very violent many of the films I watched as a boy were. Roger Rabbit? They dissolve the cartoon characters in acid […]

We’ve been to see Jurassic World Dominion for this episode, the sixth movie in a franchise that now feels a little like it dates back 65 million years. There’s a lot of stuff on fire in this film, but can it hold a candle to 1954’s Godzilla, the original Jurassic monster movie that stamped out […]

One of the ideas that came up while we were discussing Jurassic World Dominion this week was the importance of introducing characters. It’s always worth going back to good films and exploring how the most memorable characters made their entrances, and my usual, go-to example is Terminator 2. The first time we see Sarah Connor, […]