Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  How disappointing must it have been for co-writer-director Patty Jenkins not to see her superhero sequel, Wonder Woman 1984 in movie theatres in the summer of 2020? The commercial success and audience love shown to her 2017 movie Wonder Woman inspired her to make a follow-up that asks different questions. Jenkins really pays homage to the television series starring Lynda Carter that ran from 1975 to 1979 but does so on a scale that can only be done in a movie. While other big budget movies were moved to 2021, Jenkins allowed her sequel to be released simultaneously in theatres and on home streaming in December 2020, just before the mass closure of movie theatres across Europe. The audience response to the movie has been mixed – if you trust Rotten Tomatoes. The cinema box office numbers really don’t tell the full story either. According to Box Office Mojo, its current international gross is $118,200,000 , but it hasn’t opened in a number of territories yet, and in the United Stat...

  I have come late to the Wonder Woman party. By the time I caught up with the big screen version of the popular DC Comics series, on Thursday 13 July 2017, the film had already grossed 373 million dollars at the US box office, making it at the very least the highest grossing live action movie directed by a woman. Well, it is a superhero movie, you say. They have built-in audiences. Perhaps - but you remember Catwoman starring Halle Berry in the title role, directed by Pitof. No, you don’t because it tanked – as did Tank Girl and Aeon Flux . This is because filmmakers don’t know how to make female centred superhero movies that audiences believe in. The defining gesture that Diana ( Gal Gadot ) makes in the new Wonder Woman movie is the crossing of her arms in front of her face – a big ‘x’, a whacking great ‘no’.   ‘No’ means ‘no’, people. This is a message that we can – and should – believe in. Wonder Woman has at least one scene that should become iconic. ...