Alexander Larman

Had the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Flight Risk, which topped the US box office last weekend with a modest but far from disastrous $12 million gross, been directed by most competent journeymen filmmakers, then it would have been a case of job done, box ticked and onto the next project. If you were told, however, that it was made by an Oscar-winning filmmaker whose previous movies have been large-scale dramatic epics — and who, frankly, would have done a far more interesting job with The Brutalist, although its overtly Jewish themes may have given him considerable difficulty — then the first question most people would ask is “Why?” And then when you’re told the director in question is Mel Gibson, the response is usually “Ah” and “Oh.

Shortly after Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon was released in American cinemas in 1975, it was mercilessly parodied in the satirical publication MAD magazine. Over seven pages, “Borey Lyndon,” as it was called, was treated as an embarrassing flop, something to be ridiculed and regretted. The opening caption set the tone: “So you think Historical Movies are a thing of the past?! So you think no one wants to see Costume Epics any more?! So you think they’re too dull and slow-moving to hold your interest?! Then you probably just woke up after seeing this latest dull extravaganza! Well... here’s a chance to be put back to sleep — with MAD’s even duller version of ‘Borey Lyndon’!

This year’s Oscar nominations were always going to be more low-key than usual, overshadowed as they inevitably have been both by the fires in Los Angeles — which has led to repeated delays in their announcement — and by Donald Trump’s inauguration, the after-effects of which are still rippling in Hollywood circles days later. It was therefore amusing to see that The Apprentice, the highly controversial biopic of the young Trump, has been Oscar-nominated for two of its actors, Sebastian Stan as Trump and the much-admired Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn. Strong faces quite a challenge in the Best Supporting Actor from, among others, his Succession co-star Kieran Culkin, who is widely tipped to win for his performance in A Real Pain.

The Robbie Williams biopic Better Man opened in American theaters last weekend and, as every single box office commentator predicted, it flopped, and flopped hard. A gross of just over $1 million in its opening three days — less than the Golden Globe-winning The Brutalist, which is only showing on sixty-eight screens nationwide — is utterly disastrous, all the more so because this wasn’t a $10 million indie, or even a $40 million Rocketman, but a movie that it cost $110 million to make.

Regardless of what you made of the winners, 2024’s Golden Globes ceremony has gone down in infamy as one of the very worst in its history, entirely due to its terrible host Jo Koy. He was justly ridiculed for his incompetent, weirdly aggressive hosting style, and so the onus was on this year’s compère Nikki Glazer to bring basic professionalism back to the event as much as humor and slickness.

You may, or may not, be planning on seeing the third film in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise when it is released this Christmas, but whether or not your taste for CGI pugnacious animals encompasses this latest cash-in for the Nintendo character, the presence of Jim Carrey should provide some distraction. Carrey is playing the villainous Dr. Robotnik for the third time, and has been offering some amusingly candid comments in interviews about his decision to return to the role. He announced that he came back to this film’s universe for two reasons, “first of all, I get to play a genius, which is a bit of a stretch” and “I bought a lot of stuff, and I need the money, frankly.

The Anglophiles reading this will know that the Carry On series represents some of the very best of British humor — or, alternatively, the very worst. The jokes were broad and basic, the stereotypes egregious and the production values negligible. Nonetheless, for the two decades that the series continued to attract viewers, they were enormously popular films because they did not attempt anything surprising or unpretentious. Instead, millions of viewers enjoyed them because they were just as the title promised — a carry on — with no hidden depths, or shallows.