A Profound Journey
Est. 1995
Travel, technology, reviews, projects and diary — newest first.
Marvel takes its least fashionable hero back to 1942 and lets Joe Johnston make an honest wartime adventure out of him. Sincere, handsome and endlessly rewatchable, it is better than its slightly grudging reception suggests. 9/10.
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Matthew Vaughn drags the X-Men back to 1962 and hands the franchise to two terrific actors. A stylish, confident reboot that I admired more than I loved. 7/10.
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Joe Cornish turns a South London estate into a siege movie, and a teenage mugger into a hero, with more nerve and wit than its budget has any right to. 8/10.
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Joe Wright leaves the drawing rooms behind and makes a fairy-tale spy thriller, scored by The Chemical Brothers and built around a remarkable Saoirse Ronan. Strange, stylish and endlessly rewatchable. 8/10.
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Duncan Jones follows Moon with a tight, clever time-loop thriller that does a lot inside ninety-three minutes and a single train carriage. Lean, humane and built to rewatch. 8/10.
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A blocked writer swallows a pill that switches the whole brain on, and a slick wish-fulfilment thriller runs with the idea harder than it thinks it through. Style and pace win out over depth. 8/10.
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A Philip K. Dick premise reworked as a chase romance, carried by Matt Damon and Emily Blunt and a city full of men in hats. Lighter than its source and all the more rewatchable for it. 8.5/10.
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Danny Boyle takes a man, a boulder and ninety minutes, and somehow makes the most static premise in survival cinema feel like a chase. 8.5/10.
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Disney revives a 1982 cult oddity as a sleek, Daft Punk-scored ride through the Grid. The story is thin and the critics are unconvinced, but on atmosphere, sound and sheer rewatchability it is the science fiction I will keep going back to. 9/10.
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Gareth Edwards builds a credible alien-infected world on a holiday budget and points the camera at the people, not the creatures. A quiet, atmospheric debut that earns its scale. 7.5/10.
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