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This saga which began in 1977 ends now with episode nine, unless you’re cynical... but as a saga it’s no spoiler to say that it is complete. It seems weirdly resonant that a little science-fiction film that was the weird imagining of young George Lucas would turn into a four-decade long cinematic epic that would dominate the director’s reputation; weird that he would be feted for a while; weird that he would upset some people enough for them to make a film called The People Versus George Lucas ; and weird that when the whole lot was sold to Disney for $4.2bn, they would fire creatives at the drop of a hat before letting Rian Johnson make an episode which alienated a lot of people who weren’t already disenchanted with the whole thing. Making a Star Wars film is a trick that few people would master, and maybe someone will one day write about why, and about fan feelings has to be balanced with the need to sell as many tickets as possible. It’s a saga that began with a farm-b...

A couple of years ago Jumanji was rebooted . The Robin Williams fantasy movie about a board game suddenly became a film starring Dwayne Johnson about a computer game and the disparate high-school kids who end up living the game. They all took on computer game characters and had to work through the game in order to be returned to their regular lives, changed. And now there’s a sequel, still starring Dwayne Johnson ! In the time since the last film, Spencer has broken up with Bethany and is reluctant to join Fridge and Ashley. Moodily he goes into the basement and triggers the Jumanji game. The elderly games console is in pieces on a bench, so it’s not working properly so when it’s triggered it also takes his grandfather Eddie (played by Danny DeVitto ) and Milo ( Danny Glover ), ex-friends who used to run a restaurant, which happens to be where Spencer’s friends hang out. In the game Karen Gillian , Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and Jack Black play the protagonists avatar...

Walk past any place where movie posters are seen, and a movie poster that you might see is for Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. It sounds like a London gangster caper, the type of film which which Ritchie is associated—although the Sherlock Holmes films and Aladdin are all a successful departure. And Martin Scorsese is famed for GoodFellas and Casino… but he has also made Age of Innocence. This isn’t to say that Ritchie is the British Scorsese, but rather that when a Director returns to his point of greatest success it’s either a source of much positive press (in the case of Martin Scorsese) or eye-rolling (for Ritchie). And maybe this isn’t fair. Scorsese has made some comments about populist film sagas, and has made his latest film for Netflix. It screened in cinemas but in a way Netflix is good because at almost three and a half hours, The Irishman spans the clock the way its story spans the calendar. This is done through digital de-ageing of its stars Robert DeNiro and Joe ...

Rian Johnson loves to take classic Hollywood staples and putting a twist on them, like taking the Forties hard-boiled detective movie and moving it to an 80s High School in Brick . And whilst he previous film might be a whole different thing, Knives Out is a country house murder mystery in the Agatha Christie mould, but Christie wouldn’t have done anything like this… Some people get murder mysteries straight away and scorn the bit where the whole story is re-told at the end by the investigator, but watching this film is a delightful experience of enjoying the impressive performances and script, and hoping that somehow everything makes sense when the credits roll! And although you’d possibly need to watch it again to see how it fits together, it is so much fun the first time. The story is of a wealthy crime novelist Harlan Thornbey ( Christopher Plummer ) is found dead in his big house. Along with the feds, a hired investigator is called. And this is the film’s biggest la...