Sauron shows no signs of stopping even as Isengard crumbles. His eyes are on Minis Tirith, the last beacon of hope for Gondor. While Merry and Pippin are reunited with the Fellowship (though not for too long), Frodo and Sam are now right under Sauron’s eye, behind the gates of Mordor. There’s treachery afoot, battles to win, fathers to impress, and cities to conquer. And a king to return.

Will Middle Earth succumb to evil? Will Sam ever see the Shire again? Will Pippin be a fool until he dies?

Will Frodo destroy the ring?

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are counting down the most impactful, hilarious and memorable moments from the gripping conclusion of Peter Jackson’s fantasy saga, for this: the 10 Best The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Moments.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

10. Mount Doom Erupts

Inside the volcano things aren’t moving fast enough. The ring isn’t melting. Just as it looks like our King will be defeated, Sauron’s tower falls and the eye implodes. The ground surrounding the heroes disintegrates, taking the orcs and trolls with it.

It’s over. They’ve won.

Or have they?

In the seconds after everyone’s elation, Mount Doom explodes. Everyone looks crestfallen as Sam and Frodo are still up there. This device has been used before with Gandalf and the Balrog, Aragorn and the warg. For a second, this feels different. There is a moment when we truly believe that Sam and Frodo made the ultimate sacrifice.

Recommended for you: 10 Best Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Moments

9. Merry and Pippin Lead the Charge

Vastly outnumbered, Aragorn and his followers head to the black gate to draw Sauron’s eye while Sam and Frodo make the final leg of their journey into Mount Doom. Aragorn’s “not this day” speech is stirring and emotional. This is it. It’s now or never.

“For Frodo!” Is the battle cry.

And, in an army of a thousand experienced soldiers, it is Merry and Pippin who run first. They’ve come so far from the firework stealing miscreants of the first film. They are warriors as brave as any man or elf.

Middle Earth is under threat as Sauron, a great malevolent force, is gathering power. The lands of men, elves, wizards, and dwarfs have lived for hundreds of years believing the great evil had been vanquished. Wowzers, were they wrong.

It’s all down to the hobbits – long-living, hairy-footed, ale-swigging, home-comfort-loving people about the size of a human child – to fix it. Turns out Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) has been in procession of a very precious, very dangerous artifact since his exploits in “The Hobbit” 70 years prior.

The task to return the ring is placed in the tiny hands of his nephew, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood). It’s all fine though, because Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has arranged for a band of warriors, a fellowship if you will, to help him on this perilous journey.

The Fellowship of the Ring thrust director Peter Jackson and its cast members into the stratosphere of fame. While some depictions may be considered problematic by today’s standards, and Lord of the Rings certainly isn’t passing any Bechdel test, the classic struggle of good versus evil means it remains popular over twenty years later.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are counting down the most impactful, hilarious and memorable moments from Peter Jackson’s timeless epic, for this: the 10 Best Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Moments.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

10. Gardening

The scene has been set, the Hobbits introduced, and Frodo (Elijah Wood) has begrudgingly accepted his mission. While Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is asserting the grave danger the young hobbit will face, he hears a crack outside. An eavesdropper? A spy from the very depths of Mordor? Or perhaps, just a gardener? Gandalf lunges with his staff, and pulls out of the perennials, Samwise Gamgee (Sean Austin).

This is a great introduction to Sam as it shows his cheek, tenacity, and loyalty.

Recommended for you: The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit Movies Ranked

9. The Ringwraiths Attack

Tolkien built a very serious world with realms of peril and intense men conversing. Peter Jackson’s rendering of this world adds a much-needed dose of humour. The Fellowship of the Ring is not afraid to poke fun at itself a little bit.

The Ringwraiths are a terrifying sight (and sound). These are the creatures that all of Middle Earth is afraid of. The wraiths with their metal hands and black cloaks attacking pillows hidden beneath the bedspreads in the Prancing Pony is a scooby-doo-esque flash of comedy.

Frankly, choosing the ten best films ever made is incredibly difficult. When considering such a list there are endless criteria from which one could choose to base their list off: popularity, originality, box office success, how it did at the Oscars. Really, there is no one single way of creating a definitive list of the greatest movies ever made. Even if I were to only take in my own personal opinion, I know that I would change my mind week to week. After all, I haven’t seen every film ever made, I have a lot of catching up to do; who’s to say I wouldn’t swap out something for Interstellar or Stagecoach when I finally get around to ticking those off the list?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there is the fear of the backlash I may receive by leaving certain films off the list. I don’t have any John Ford on the list, which means that Steven Spielberg will hate me, and I just know the middle class art students are going to come for me due to the lack of Godard, Truffaut or Varda.

Making a top ten greatest films ever made list is a lot of pressure, something that is not lost on me. All I can do is provide the top ten films which, until this point in my life, have had the most profound effect on me. Those films that I have not stopped thinking about since the day I first saw them, that I have introduced to whomever will let me, and that I have watched and rewatched until my heart’s content over the last twenty-six years. Wish me luck.

Follow me on X (Twitter) – @MarkJurassic

10. Aftersun (2022)

Aftersun Review

The only film on this entire list that was released during my time writing for The Film Magazine. Thus far, only one of two new releases I have given full marks to (alongside Celine Song’s beautiful Past Lives).

Since I first saw Charlotte Wells’ debut feature film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I have seen it a further three times in the cinema and have both directly and indirectly introduced many to the film. My passion shines brightly for this one.

With Aftersun, Charlotte Wells introduced herself to the world as an immensely talented director whose delicate portrayal of a father-daughter holiday in Turkey plays out like a gentle hand on your shoulder, leading you carefully through the complex relationship between the pair that eleven-year-old Sophie is yet to understand.

Releasing the same year as the wonderful Everything Everywhere All at Once, another film that handles the relationship between a daughter and a parent, Aftersun handles the relationship in a much more natural manner, making use of the finer details of the film to provoke the issues facing the pair, and equally providing two of the years most natural performances from Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. 

It is a simple film told in a relatively simple way, but one which is filled with layers of subtext that linger on the mind long after the credits have rolled. Frankly, given more time to cement its legacy, the debut feature of Charlotte Wells could find itself much higher on this list.

Aftersun is not only one of the greatest feature film debuts of all time, but could be one of the greatest films of all time.

9. North by Northwest (1959)

Let’s not kid ourselves, this spot is essentially a revolving door for Hitchcock projects, and though the likes of Psycho and Rear Window have not been chosen this go around they most certainly would be any other time. Right now, I do genuinely believe that North by Northwest is the great director’s most impressive achievement.

Coming years before the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), North by Northwest is incredibly ahead of its time in regard to not only what would come in the form of the Bond series but how action cinema would evolve as a whole.

Cary Grant’s advertising executive Roger Thornhill is no secret agent, though after being thrust into a story of espionage and mistaken identity he proves that he has all the charm, wit and cunning that one would hope for. Given its immortal recognition as an early formulation of the James Bond-style film, Cary Grant more than lives up as an early iteration of that type of character. And of course, Hitchcock more than lives up to the Bond style with sex references and innuendos galore.

Most importantly, however, Hitchcock takes the action scenes needed to make a film of this magnitude work and crafts sequences that are impressive by today’s standards but simply revolutionary for the cinema of the 1950s, ultimately changing the way action movies would be created forever.

Recommended for you: Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films

The films that have been selected are, I believe, the peak of cinematic mastery. They span nearly the length of cinema’s existence, and are deliberately chosen to reflect a wide range of genres, countries, and times. One major reason for this is to force myself to list films that are not exclusively 1980s horror movies, which I could quite easily do. The second is because that list would be wrong, as although they could be peak horror, some would undoubtedly be worse than films outside the genre.

Therefore, for better or for worse, at the time of writing, listed from oldest to youngest and with no system of ranking, here are my picks for the 10 Best Films of All Time.

Follow me on X (Twitter) – @KJudgeMental

10. La Voyage dans la Lune (1902)

It is impossible to understate how important this film was.

From the grandfather of special effects, Georges Méliès, come fifteen minutes of sheer adventure, adapting the Jules Verne novels “From the Earth to the Moon”, and “Around the Sun”, along with H. G. Wells’ “First Men on the Moon”, it is a film which pushed the limits of the medium, bringing thrills beyond the stars to the screen for all to see.

Hand-painted frame by frame to add a splash of colour, employing all of Méliès’ stage magic knowhow, it still has the power to captivate to this day, despite being created only seven years after the Lumiere brothers demonstrated their kinematograph at the 1895 December World Fair. The rocket splatting into the eye of the moon is an image almost everyone in the world has seen, despite rarely knowing where it comes from.

It is fun and joyous and, thanks to restoration work and new scores, able to keep its legacy going over 120 years later. Not a single cast or crew member from this film is alive today, yet A Trip to the Moon lives on.

9. Psycho (1960)

We could argue over Hitchcock’s best film for decades. Indeed, many have done, and we still never will agree. Vertigo famously dethroned Citizen Kane in Sight and Sound magazine as the best film ever in 2011, a title the Welles film had held for many decades. Yet Psycho takes my vote for numerous reasons.

Not only is its story iconic – the shower scene one of the greatest sequences in cinema history – and its production history something of legend, but it is supreme mastery of cinematic craftsmanship.

Every shot is glorious, every moment timed to perfection. Suspense is at an all-time high, mystery around every corner. Yet perhaps what is most startling is its efficiency, Hitchcock’s most underappreciated skill. If a scene required 50 cuts, he’d have it. If it required a simple shot/reverse shot with the most subtle of powerful, timed camera cuts to a tighter or a lower angle (see the dinner between Marion and Norman), he did it. It is an exercise in extreme precision, in efficiency of storytelling, and it cuts deeper than almost any other film.

Recommended for you: The Greatest Film Trailer of All Time? Psycho (1960)

That’s fine, generally, when the movie is an original piece or a sequel to a long-beloved franchise – Jungle Cruise and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker spring to mind – but in an age in which the superhero reigns supreme in all multiplex cinemas, where Marvel stands tall among your options and DC offer more films, the blockbuster sphere’s choices in representation must face more scrutiny. Both Marvel and DC should be praised for an often interesting route of colour-blind casting, shifting the films away from a sea of white faces like their comic book counterparts, but when it comes to sexuality the cinematic multiverses of both comic book companies have been let down. 

Things change in adaptations – outfits are modified, origins tweaked, sometimes even superpowers are added or subtracted – but characters’ sexualities are often so intensely a part of who they are that taking them away is undoubtedly detrimental to their representation. What would Spider-Man be without his pining for MJ or Gwen? What would Batman be without his flirtations with Catwoman? The comic books they’re based on are filled with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters. But, while generally gay, lesbian or trans characters have just been flat out avoided, bisexual characters have been straight-washed into oblivion. 

From the start of the modern era of comic book movies, canonically bisexual characters have been dumped into the wasteland of being depicted as straight. The “X-Men” comics, for example, have always been political stories – Stan Lee based Professor Xavier and Magneto on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X – but under the tenure of Chris Claremont, the stories dovetailed into addressing the oppression he saw en masse: that faced by the LGBTQ+ community. 

Claremont wrote in the 80s, during the AIDS crisis, and his stories followed similar routes. Rogue is one of the central heroes of the original X-Men trilogy, and yet for the three films she is only ever presented as straight. Much was made about how Ian McKellen suggested certain scenes in X2 allude to “coming out”, and yet the sexualities of the canon characters remained ignored. This is even more interesting given that Rogue actress Anna Paquin is bisexual, and the director of X-Men and X2, Bryan Singer, is also bisexual, yet Rogue is reduced to someone pining for a boy. Notoriously homophobic director Brett Ratner, brought in to helm the third film, even forces a pointless love triangle for her, Rogue being pined after by both Ice-Man and Shadowcat. 

What becomes more perplexing is that the prequel quadrilogy – X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix – pivots to focusing on the young iteration of Mystique. In the original films, Rebecca Romijn’s interpretation is a loyal, and lethal, second-in-command to Magneto until she is turned “normal” by the mutant cure. But in the prequels Jennifer Lawrence is given a much more substantial role, eventually becoming the focus of the second film. Yet, despite the prequels being even more overt in their allusion to LGBTQ+ issues (Mystique’s final line in First Class is “mutant and proud”), she is depicted as straight, First Class presenting her burgeoning romance with Nicholas Hoult’s Beast and her growing interest in Michael Fassbender’s Magneto. 

Despite going off on her own for the subsequent two films, there is nothing made of her sexuality. She is depicted as straight despite Mystique’s status as a bisexual woman. What makes this worse is that there is plenty to mine in terms of representation. Mystique’s list of powers includes shapeshifting. This provides ample chance to explore the concept of passing for straight. Had they used her sexuality properly, this could have been a way to look at how people sexually express themselves – her blue form representing her interest in men and women, her “normal” form being a way of conforming to the sexuality binary of gay or straight. 

Bryan Singer also directed Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, thus making his four X-Men films notable for being so lacking in representing their characters properly. In Apocalypse, for example, Olivia Munn’s Psylocke is reduced to a near-mute henchman of villain Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). Munn is given nothing to do. In fact, she has the least of the four Horseman that follow Apocalypse, and by the end is the only one not to die (ArkAngel) or defect (Storm, Magneto). She skulks off into the shadows never to be referenced again. 

The argument could be made that these are films aimed at children and a large mainstream audience, and that in the early 2000s having two prominent bisexual characters would have been hard to do. But, as the world has changed, the fact that the X-Men films stuck to borrowing from LGBTQ+ culture without properly showing it becomes all the more troublesome. It extends further than just the mainline films, too. R-rated swear-fests like Deadpool and Deadpool 2 don’t offer much in the way of showing people. 

Much was made of Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead being shown in Deadpool 2 to be in a same-sex relationship with Yukio (Shiori Katsuna). This would be a huge step in the right direction, incorporating Hildebrand’s own sexuality into her character and staying true to the roots of the comics, if it weren’t for the fact that despite three leading appearances (once in a poor Wolverine prequel and twice in his own films) Deadpool himself is reduced to being straight. 

In the comics, Deadpool is an out, proud and extremely loud pansexual character flaunting his sexuality at any chance he gets. The first film opts, instead, to offer a love story of him trying to cure his own cancer to be with his love Vanessa. Despite Ryan Reynolds being perfect for the role, and having a very sex-positive attitude – a funny scene of him being pegged for International Women’s Day is a highlight – the first Deadpool film still presents the character as straight. Even in the sequel where Vanessa is unceremoniously killed in the opening act, the film becomes a long meditation on loss and Deadpool’s pining for his heterosexual love.

Deadpool is never shown as anything other than straight. Flirting with men sure, but never expressly showing himself engaging in sex with men. Given that the film is excessively violent, and filled with bad language, showing Deadpool having sex with a man would not be out of the realm of doable and certainly negates the excuse of avoiding such to reach large family audiences.

Marvel Studios, under the guidance of Kevin Feige, have tried in part to offer better representation. It’s clear that, for a period of time when Feige answered to Ike Perlmutter, there was a tension between Feige’s desire to show the full spectrum of the universe and Perlmutter’s bottom-line decisions to not make black or women-focused films, meaning that the time it took to get Black Panther and Captain Marvel are indicators as to why no LGBTQ+ characters appeared until Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, released in 2021.

This excuse can only extend so far, however. Perlmutter has been ousted for some time, and yet the Marvel Cinematic Universe has still not done much to course-correct this oversight. Loki, perhaps one of the MCU’s most popular characters, is a prime example. Having first appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film Thor, Tom Hiddleston has played the role across five additional films and a spin-off Disney+ series. In the films, little is shown about Loki’s internal life, the focus being squarely on the family dynamics of him, his brother Thor, and his parents Frigga and Odin. 

The issue arises in his self-titled series ‘Loki’. While much was made about showing variant versions of Loki, the exploration of his sexuality boils down to one conversation in which he summarises his companion Sylvie’s sexuality as both, before confirming that his is also both. The focus on looking at Loki falling for his female variant undoes what was genuine chemistry between Hiddleston and Owen Wilson as his mentor-figure Mobius. Showing a more sensitive side to Loki, and him being the central character, could have allowed for his sexuality to come into its own. 

Even when variant versions of Loki are introduced, none are afforded any insight. A sexually liberated Loki, replete with both male and female partners, could have been presented to offer an insight into Loki’s head and heart. It is telling that, for all the potential Lokis we are presented with (an ageing one, an arrogant one, one that is a crocodile), they opted for one of them to be a child, as doing so has long been a guaranteed way for comic book adaptations to avoid inevitable questions regarding sexuality representation.

Kid Loki actor Jack Veal, at 14, is much too young to be depicted as sexually liberated. And he’s not alone. X-Men spin-off Logan took bisexual character Rictor and made him a child too, robbing him of his sexuality. But even within the MCU this tactic has been used multiple times…

‘WandaVision’ explores the world of Wanda Maximoff, and her creation of her two sons Billy and Tommy. Both are shown primarily as children around the age of ten. For anyone familiar with the comics, both children are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Julian Hilliard’s Billy/Wiccan is gay in the comics, while Jett Klyne’s Tommy/Speed is bisexual. Putting them into the world as children might mean there is longevity for their arcs, but we are yet to see any representation of these fundamental character traits in their appearances across ‘WandaVision’ and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. 

What appears to be the changing status of the MCU is Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder in which Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie will be searching for a Queen to rule alongside her. Thompson and Waititi confirmed before the release of Thor: Ragnarok that Valkyrie is bisexual, but a scene depicting her leaving her room with a woman was cut for “pacing”. Even so, introducing your first proudly bisexual character after 29 films feels a little too late given that Valkyrie isn’t the main character of the film anyway. 

The rival to the MCU, the DC Extended Universe, is not much better, despite a rich history of bisexual characters to choose from. One of the cornerstones of the DCEU is Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, first introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Diana Prince has gone on to star in two versions of Justice League and two solo films. Her first solo film, Wonder Woman, plays out like an epic war story romance, with director Patty Jenkins opting to tell a story of compassion and love during World War I. Diana is shown to have been raised on the mythical island of Thymescira, populated only by Amazon women. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is the first man she has ever seen. 

Their romance forms the backbone of the narrative, allowing her to see the contradictions of mankind, and his heroic sacrifice convinces her that mankind has redeeming qualities. In the follow up, Wonder Woman 1984, Trevor is resurrected via a wish. The main point of contention is that his resurrection means he possesses the body of a totally different man. Despite the film’s epic runtime, WW84 underdeveloped one aspect of its narrative: the clear flirtations between Diana and Kristen Wiig’s Barbara (who becomes the villainous Cheetah). In the comic books, all Amazons engage in same-sex relationships. As such, Diana has been portrayed consistently as bisexual, as has Cheetah. Their relationship or, more aptly, their lack thereof, seems dismissive of a fundamental part of each of these famous comic book characters.  

Jenkins’ exploration of love could have extended to showing Diana and Cheetah falling in love and Cheetah’s villainous turn being the emotional point of contention. While the comic code authority put a stop to most explicit depictions of Diana’s attraction to women for some, her creator William Moulton Marston was a professor who theorised that the world would be better under the loving authority of women. Diana herself was based on two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and their mutual lover Olive Byrne. Byrne was also the daughter of radical feminist Ethel Byrne and niece of Margaret Sanger. The fact that Wonder Woman was explicitly based on two bisexual women, and radical feminists, is as key to her character as the lasso of truth, yet in Wonder Woman and WW84 it is absent.

Similarly, the DCEU’s other consistent character is Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, first introduced rather unfortunately as the abused and lovelorn sidekick of The Joker in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. As one of only two female members of the team, Harley is the sexual object, the one who walks into battle against an ancient witch in hot pants and a crop top.

Given that the most praised aspect of the negatively reviewed film was Harley Quinn, it’s not a surprise a spin-off was green-lit. For some reason, instead of taking her away from a team and allowing her to shine on her own (or at least with her on/off girlfriend from the comic books Poison Ivy), DC pushed her into a group, the all-girl Birds of Prey. Director Cathy Yan begins the film with Harley narrating her life story over animation, including her lamenting failed relationships. Here, an image of her with another female is shown briefly and then nothing is made of it. 

Despite Yan’s best efforts to subvert the tropes of many women-centred comic book films – practical outfits, decent fight scenes, etc. – the film falls into queer-baiting tropes. Despite the prominent role for Rosie Perez’s lesbian detective Montoya (who is shown to have an ex-girlfriend briefly), the film does nothing with its LGBTQ+ characters. There are no references made to Harley’s sexuality outside of the opening animation, and given that this is entirely her emancipation, that is noticeable by its absence. It should also be noted that there is heavy queer-baiting on the part of villains Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) and Victor (Chris Messina), without ever properly exploring it. 

It’s this lack of care shown to Harley’s sexuality that best illustrates how studios continue to consider bisexuality as something to be erased. And this is made worse in James Gunn’s R-rated gore fest The Suicide Squad in which Harley’s subplot is based entirely around her falling in love with her captor (a nondescript Latin-American fascist). Gunn’s genuine attempt to inject emotion into the caper is admirable, but making her subplot entirely about this romance with another man once again robs us of the full spectrum of her sexuality. 

Much of the erasure comes in the midst of these large multi-film franchises, but 2005’s Constantine is not such a film. Francis Lawrence’s take on the main character from the ‘Hellblazer’ comics is so radically different it should be laughed at. Alan Moore’s creation, a Sting-lookalike Liverpudlian occultist, dons a trademark pale trench coat and red tie to do battle with the forces of the unnatural. In Lawrence’s film, Keanu Reeves plays him as an American, black haired guy in a black suit. What’s more, the film makes no reference to his bisexuality which is ever-present in the comics. 

Given that Constantine was an action-horror aimed at adults, there is no excuse for this to happen. Moreover, Constantine wasn’t tied to any ongoing franchise so did not need to curtail to bigger universe needs. While the film is interesting for casting Tilda Swinton as Gabriel, giving the angels an androgynous look, it’s still questionable why sex is barely present. There is a hint that Peter Stomare’s underused Lucifer is sexually interested in everyone (he is also bisexual in the comic books), but nothing is made of it. 

More so than any other comic book character, John Constantine has been a symbol of the punk era, showing Moore’s ability to imbue a subculture with stakes. His bisexuality, at a time when AIDS was a very real threat to the LGBTQ+ community, makes him more than just a cool guy who fights demons, he’s one of the first comic book characters to proudly have that sexuality. This is lost in his film translation. 

It remains to be seen if proper strides are going to be taken to change this kind of flawed ideological process. With films taking on long-form narratives now, and no sign of the big superhero machine stopping, it’s probably time to question if we’re really “respecting canon” by not representing a key aspect of any given character. After all, the importance of people being represented has been spoken about time and time again.

For now we have to settle on the promise that something might become of people gesturing to an interest in “both”, that superhero cinema will one day be brave enough to take a stand against sexuality inequality and discrimination just as it has long taken a stand against demons, aliens and gods. 

Written by Paul Klein

You can support Paul Klein in the following places:

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Cats (2019)
Director: Tom Hooper
Screenwriters: Lee Hall, Tom Hooper
Starring: Francesca Haywood, Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Laurie Davidson, Rebel Wilson, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, James Corden, Jason Derulo, Ray Winstone

Yikes. My reaction to the initial ten minutes of Cats was visceral…

The film opens with a rich view of the streets of London as a kitten, Victoria (Hayward), is left for dead by her owners. I felt a little ill in my stomach. Not because as an ardent fan of real-life cats I was distressed for Victoria’s fate, but because the slinking, nightmarish CGI-cat people were far worse than I could have ever imagined.

While the set of London’s West End is rather beautiful (even in it’s odd proportions) the strange fur bodies combined with human-like hands and feet, are uncomfortable to say the least. But, having seen the musical “Cats” at the grand age of 9, I told myself to, in the words of Taylor Swift, “shake it off”. This is what the cats looked like on stage, silly. Move on.

Based on T.S. Eliot’s 1939 book of children’s poetry, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical was a surprise hit. First premiering on the West End in 1981, it was viewed as weird and fun with an almost universally acknowledged plotless narrative. Even though the show often left critics divided, it earned praise for an original and unorthodox concept as well as its visual choreography. It was also a commercial hit and remains the fourth-longest running show on Broadway.

The stage show’s frail plot line remains the same in Hooper’s adaptation; a tribe of cats who call themselves the “Jellicle Cats” introduce themselves through song and dance. At the Jellicle Ball that evening, the cat patriarch Old Deuteronomy (Dench) is to choose which of the cats is to travel to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn.

While the set of the original show remains the same throughout (a junkyard of oversized items), one of the film’s small delights is that they move through different, richly styled locations (a milk-bar, a neon-lit street, a London townhouse) before ending up in the Egyptian Theatre for the ball. The cats are widely out of proportion with their locations, which is distracting, but partially made up for through the bold and vivid colour palette of their surroundings.

Other redeeming qualities include both Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judy Dench’s endearing performances as Gus the Theatre Cat and Old Deuteronomy respectively. McKellen especially throws himself into the role, with a softness and fragility, although I could not help but to wonder how he (a Sir!) had ended up here. Taylor Swift’s brief appearance as Bombalurina is also a highlight, with her belting out the catchy tune “Macavity” in high heels and genuinely seeming thrilled to be involved. Jason Derulo is also surprisingly delightful as scene-stealer Rum Tum Tugger.

Otherwise, the film is nothing sort of a nightmarish ride that couldn’t have ended sooner.

The adaption of this musical was never going to be easy, but the audacious, bawdy style of 2019’s Cats is almost too much to take. The creative choices seem mind-boggling. Some of the cats are wearing shoes, some have human feet. At one point during Jennyanydot’s (Rebel Wilson’s) song, the cats eat cockroaches. Old Deuteronomy wears at fur coat, of seemingly her own fur. Nothing makes sense inside this unearthly universe I will happily never visit again.

The CGI is unfinished, with the cats appearing ungrounded and slightly levitating in many of the large outdoor dance scenes. Dame Judy Dench’s human hands are highly visible in the film’s final scenes. The much-publicized “digital fur-technology” is… disturbing.

The pace is frequently too slow and the cats lack depth, backstory and any character development. Newcomer Francesca Hayward, who plays the lead Victoria, seems resigned to making one facial expression for the majority of the film. The attempt at humour falls flat. Yet, if we can learn anything from Cats, it’s that we should take pleasure in art forms separately. Film and stage have different goals, and do not need to be integrated. If studios can take anything away from this cat-tastophic film, it is that there should be, and is, space for both mediums to be enjoyed.

3/24

Written by Pagan Carruthers

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Have an opinion? Make sure to leave a comment!

6. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Gross USA: $255,119,788
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $956,019,788
1 Academy Award Nomination
1 BAFTA Award Nomination

The best part of this film was the battle with Smaug.

The previous film had concluded on quite the dramatic moment with the dragon about to wreak destruction on the defenceless Lake-town, and The Battle of the Five Armies brilliantly jumps straight back into the action. There’s fire, there’s destruction, people are dying and the audience is gripped with anxiety for Bard and his sickeningly sweet children.

Bard defeats Smaug, his children survive, and the rest of the villagers who avoided peril all go and meet on the nearby shore. It’s all down hill from there…

We are given a few dramatic moments that we are supposed to care about, but there aren’t strong enough foundations built for us to be particularly moved. Tauriel barely knew Kili, how can she claim to have loved him? Why did the Elves suddenly decide to help the Dwarves for no apparent reason? It is generally a film with poor storytelling and a dependence on expensive CGI to make up for it.

Other than the opening battle, the most popular moments were those that referenced the predeceasing trilogy, such as Galadriel’s encounter with Sauron and Thranduil telling Legolas to seek out Aragorn.

Legolas running up falling boulders was pretty sick too!

5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Gross USA: $258,366,855
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $960,366,855
3 Academy Award Nominations
2 BAFTA Award Nominations

For anyone who had read the book at a younger age, it was so exciting to see so many scenes taken directly from the book in this film – the Spiders were just as scary as when we’d read about them years ago and Beorn was just as mysterious and intimidating. This made the film so much more enjoyable for nostalgic reasons, especially comparing it to The Battle of the Five Armies which contains a lot of made up moments that didn’t take place in the book.

The accomplishment in animating Smaug blew away many who’d approached the CG-heavy prequels with a critical eye. Special effects progress so fast that it’s easy to forget how making Smaug talk was a major feat, especially since the dragon was what people were anticipating most about this film. In this respect, The Desolation of Smaug absolutely delivered! The mouth movements of the dragon matched up with what he was saying so perfectly without looking silly, which we all know is far more impressive than a CGI tiger.

4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Gross USA: $303,003,568
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $1,021,103,568
3 Academy Award Nominations
3 BAFTA Award Nominations

There were a lot of immediate reactions to this film which criticised it for being a little messy and full of unrelated content. Although many criticised The Battle of the Five Armies for similar reasons, An Unexpected Journey had a different purpose to the last film in the trilogy. After an almost ten year gap since The Lord Of The Rings ended, An Unexpected Journey is our first dip back into Middle Earth; it has to set the scene and starts the story.

The Hobbit Trilogy may have been about one film too long, but this is an opinion only forged in retrospect. In this first instalment, it was exciting to see things like the rock giants fighting in the mountains and Radagast with his woodland pals being intimidated by the Spiders. It felt like a promise for all the goodness that was yet to come, it’s just a shame that the promise was not fulfilled.

As a huge fan of Disney fan and the original 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast, I went into the cinema for the live action version feeling a little sceptical. I grew up with the original and it is the epitome of a Disney classic, so I was rather protective of its legacy. However, after only a few minutes of the film being on screen my concerns were gone. I thought that Disney really worked their magic in their live action version of The Jungle Book but, for me, Beauty and the Beast really knocks it out of the park. This version is filled with the sort of nostalgia any Disney fan can enjoy and really does justice to the original in how it embodies the magic of its predecessor.

I am going to try and keep this review as spoiler free as possible.

As far as the story goes this version kept very true to the original, and it kept many of the most iconic scenes such as the ballroom scene, Gaston’s tavern and the final battle pretty much the same, only tweaking them ever so slightly. As can be expected there were some plot points added to the live action version as the film was two hours long compared to the seventy minute animated original. Don’t let the idea of additions to the story put you off though, if anything they only added more depth to the beloved story. It allowed for more complex character development, especially with characters such as La Fou who was a elevated from his status as sidekick to Gaston, to a fully developed character by the film’s end. We also get to see the relationship between Belle and Beast develop in a more complex and subtle way, and were really encouraged to grow to love Beast as Belle does, avoiding the often rushed romances of the Disney classics. One thing this version of Beauty and the Beast does so well is that it answers questions that the original does not; we get more backstory and more history. For example, without giving too much away, we get to see who the Prince was before the curse and we find out the reason for why he was not such a nice person. We also get to find out why Belle’s mother is not around and we get a glimpse of why Beast’s servants have stayed loyal to him all these years.

The way the characters are presented in the film is particularly great; their likeness to its animated twin is just close enough without losing every sense of originality. Every character’s traits seem to be amplified in this version – for example: when Gaston is funny, he is funnier, and when he is evil, he is more evil. Belle is also portrayed as stronger and more practical. She is an inventor, she is outspoken and she can stand up for herself. This is only amplified by small details such as how she wears trousers under her dress so that she can hitch up her skirt while walking or riding her horse. The triumph of the characters however comes down to the casting, which in my opinion could not have been better.

At first I had my doubts about Emma Watson playing the iconic Disney Princess as I could not get her performances as Hermione Granger out of my head, and initially I was worried that this would effect my viewing of this film. I am pleased to say that she did an excellent job of bringing Belle to life, as did Dan Stevens for Beast. The supporting cast were also excellent: Ewan McGregor as Lumiere, Ian McKellen as Cogsworth and Emma Thompson as Mrs Potts had such great chemistry it would be difficult not to feel joy when their characters were on screen. The stand out however was Luke Evans as Gaston, as he managed to perfectly embody everything that Gaston is, from the delivery of his lines and facial expressions to his interaction with Josh Gadd as La Fou, he really did justice to this classic Disney Villain.

As with any Disney film the music is spectacular; it includes all the songs from the original plus a few new numbers that hold their weight against the classics. Disney legend Alan Menken leads the way once again when it comes the the score and musical numbers, and he does a fantastic job once again. They have managed to breathe new life into the songs that people know so well without changing them so much they’re off-putting or easily rejected. Ewan McGregor’s rendition of “Be Our Guest” is one to particularly look forward to. The new songs also fit into the story nicely. “Evermore”, performed by Dan Stevens, is my personal favourite. Not only is this a rare occasion where we get a solo song from a Disney Prince, but it also adds a new level of emotion to Beast as a character. It is without a doubt that from the opening note of the iconic score in the prologue, the music adds to the overall nostalgia that brings back fond memories of the animated classic.

The overall visual presentation of the film is absolutely stunning, and while the majority of the visuals rely heavily on CGI effects, the animating team must be commending on their outstanding attention to detail. This is particularly evident in the reimagining of the cursed furniture in the castle, in particular Lumiere and Cogsworth, as their design is incredibly intricate and beautiful, and the human features are not as obvious as their animated counterparts, an element of the animation I feel works to enhance rather than diminish the impact of their characters. The castle itself  is also noteworthy in how it is incredibly ornate, creating a magical surrounding fitting for the story and the expectations of many a fan of whom would have carried the same levels of intrigue as I had. The one scene that stood out in the animated original was the famous Ballroom dance scene and therefore this version had a lot to live up to. In my opinion, it exceeded all expectations. From Belle’s infamous yellow gown and the beautiful dancing to “Tale as Old as Time”, this version gave us a scene that was just as stunning as the original.

Perhaps the largest criticism that can be levelled at the film is that it will likely divide audiences. I found the dialogue to be a little forced and unnatural in places, and while Emma Watson was by no means a bad singer, she certainly wasn’t as a strong as the rest of the cast in this regard. Perhaps most importantly, the amplifying of cartoon characters for live-action could be met with criticism, though I would argue that it serves the story well and it shouldn’t be expected that a Disney animation remake should be the place for serious and subtle performances.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Beauty and the Beast. It was visually pleasing and full of nostalgia for any Disney fan, but above all fun. Watching it in the cinema reignited my love for the songs, the story and for the original animated film. It is a great example of how Disney consistently manage to muster their now somewhat trademarked emotion and magic and makes me excited for the other live-action remakes that Disney have lined up. If they are as magical as Beauty and the Beast, we shall not be disappointed.

18/24