Oliver Battershall

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) 4/5
About halfway through this I thought, hold on, why/how is this so good. Then I check the studio and it’s the lads who made Coraline and I’m like ahhh okay. Absolutely stellar animation with brilliant voice acting. Plus, there’s great action and good messages that kids can appreciate, but it’s wrapped up in enough good dialogue and beauty that any age can appreciate it. And I know that’s what the foul-smelling lot who only watch kids shows say about all animation but it’s true here!

Dog Man (2025) 3/5
Chirpy and very energetic with a heart and a good message. Nothing special but it feels like a pretty bankable one to take the kids to. The fast pace made it feel like quite the sensory overload at points but maybe that’s appropriate given its origins as a comic drawn by two excitable kids from the Captain Underpants universe likely coked to the gills on sugar. It joins the Nanny McPhee sequel in the slowly growing list of films I’ve watched while at work! My occupational duties are nothing if not eclectic.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) 4.5/5
Decided to give this niche little indie flick a try. There’s something really staggering about the experience of finally watching a film that’s so insanely iconic and important that you can put some of the pieces of what it influenced together in your head as it goes along. There’s a documentary about how this impacted David Lynch’s work which I’ve been wanting to watch for a while and now I feel well up for it. Not sure what I can say about it beside the obvious beautiful colours, production design etc. So moving, and somehow both more harrowing and more funny than I was expecting.

Empire of the Sun (1987) 4.5/5
The kind of film you’d expect from a director with the flawed and overly-whimsical view that all war films are anti-war. But I can’t pretend this isn’t astounding, Spielberg gets one of the best acting performances I’ve ever seen out of 13-year-old Christian Bale. Also you know Michael Douglas’ pretty good performance in Wall Street, the most okay movie of the 80’s? That WON the 1988 Best Actor Oscar, and Bale wasn’t even nominated!

Hero (2002) 3.5/5
Fantastically choreographed fights that felt like such graceful, meditative experiences. Also, such wonderful use of colour! I did find the storyline a bit complex to follow though and by the end I was getting a little tired of hearing characters find different ways to say “Swordplay and calligraphy are the same, because they uhhh both require precision, or artistry, or something”.

The Kid (1921) 4/5
Ah, Mr. Chaplin getting up to some tomfoolery with a mischievous little scamp by his side. Deceiving the rozzers and local small business owners to comedic effect while learning to relish each other’s company, it’s enough to bring a smile to even the grumpiest of cynics recovering from a tepid day at the football. There’s finally no blanks between 1920 and 2025 on my Favourite Film of Every Year list and I’m happier than I reasonably should be about this.

The Expendables (2010) 2.5/5
A film made by and for people who wish they were twenty years younger. I went into this hoping for an Ocean’s Eleven type thing with fun characters and inventive action but instead it’s like an unintentional parody that made me feel a bit embarrassed to be male. Some of the over-the-top stuff I liked but was sadly uncapitalised on, like the more gory up close and personal kills, and the ludicrous character names (Yin Yang, Toll Road, Hale Caesar, etc). The dialogue is so so bad and despite the amount of exposition I never really knew why anything was happening or why I should care. Arnie shows up for a few minutes at the start then we never see him again, boooo! Anyway, the credits hit and The Boys Are Back in Town started playing, which somehow managed to gaslight me into giving this an extra half star purely on the basis of dudes rocking. Curse you Thin Lizzy.