It is well known by this point that M. Night Shyamalan is a frustrating filmmaker. His films are either mind-bending and brilliant (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Split), or shockingly awful with no redeeming qualities (The Last Airbender, The Happening, After Earth). Any movie of his from the last 20 years automatically comes with the question […]
Tag: Universal Pictures
The Croods: A New Age Review
The Croods are back for a second cinematic adventure. This time the tribe meets the first civilised family and faces the challenges of their culture crash. Since the events of the first film The Croods are searching for the fabled ‘Tomorrow’. They seem to have found it when they cross over a wall to a […]
Pop Culture Maniacs Podcast #23: Fast & Furious Franchise
Kieran Freemantle and Zack Walsh talk about the Fast & Furious franchise and the latest film from the series F9: The Fast Saga.
Freaky Review
Freaky is a horror-comedy that mashes up the slasher film with a body swap comedy. What was created was a wonderfully self-aware film that pays tribute to both genres. Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) is a quiet and bullied high school student. She lives in the small American town of Blissfield. But Blissfield has been plagued by […]
Fast and Furious Ranked
It’s almost that time again! After such a long break from cinemas, our society can once again gather in a loud dark room and watch some big men hit each other with their cars. Yes, with the arrival of F9: The Fast Saga close upon us, we here at Pop Culture Maniacs figured we’d take […]
Nobody Review
In a cinematic landscape of big CGI blockbusters and superheroes, the film Nobody was a wonderfully violent, small-scale offering from the action genre. Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is a seemingly ordinary man: he lives in the suburbs with his wife and two kids, has an office job and keeps forgetting to put the trash out. But […]
Britflix: Doomsday
In these troubled times the world is suffering from a pandemic, whilst within the UK the prospect of Scottish independence is on the rise. Due to these factors now seems like a great time to revisit the B-Movie homage Doomsday. In 2008 Scotland suffers from an outbreak of the deadly Reaper Virus. To protect the […]
Britflix: Children of Men
Dystopian fiction is a sub-genre of fiction that the British excel at. A film that is one of the best in the sub-genre is 2006’s Children of Men. In the year 2027, the world has gone to hell. No child has been born for 18 years, the youngest person in the world has been murdered, […]
Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Review
The fifth film of Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, was one of contrasts. The biggest being the conflict between a talented director and a terrible screenplay. Years after the events of Jurassic World the volcano on Isla Nublar is about to erupt and the dinosaurs would suffer a second extinction event. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) leads […]
Universal, Cinema Chains, and The Future of Film Releases
The Coronavirus has had a massive impact around the world, including in the film and TV industries. A major event in the world of film during the crisis was Universal’s release of Trolls World Tour, an action that may have started a war between Universal Pictures and cinema chains. When Lockdowns started in North America and Europe it […]