Seneca (5 Stars)

Seneca is the kind of film that seems almost designed to slip through the cracks on first release, only to be rediscovered later by a small but fiercely devoted audience. Ostensibly a historical drama about the Roman philosopher Seneca and his final days under Nero, it is in practice a far stranger and more provocative work, one that feels deliberately out of step with mainstream expectations.

Part of its cult potential lies in its tone. Seneca refuses the polished prestige-movie sheen that usually accompanies films about ancient Rome. Instead, it leans into theatricality, artifice and anachronism. Dialogue often sounds more like modern political or philosophical debate than period drama, and the staging frequently recalls experimental theatre rather than epic cinema. This creates an unsettling effect; viewers are constantly reminded that this is not history being reconstructed, but ideas being argued. Films that make such bold stylistic choices tend to alienate casual audiences while captivating those who respond to them.

John Malkovich's performance in the title role is another key factor. He does not attempt to play Seneca as a conventional sage or dignified martyr. His Seneca is ironic, weary, self-aware and sometimes uncomfortably smug. It is a performance that invites disagreement as much as admiration, which is often a hallmark of cult acting turns. Fans of the film are likely to quote his lines, debate his interpretation and defend it passionately against detractors.

The film's portrayal of Nero also contributes to its cult appeal. Rather than a straightforward monster, Nero is depicted as a volatile mixture of childish insecurity, performative cruelty and desperate need for approval. The dynamic between Nero and Seneca feels disturbingly contemporary, echoing modern discussions about power, complicity and the moral compromises of intellectuals who serve authoritarian regimes. This thematic resonance gives Seneca the kind of relevance that encourages repeated viewings and late-night discussions.

Finally, Seneca is unapologetically talky and idea-driven. It foregrounds philosophy, rhetoric and ethical contradiction over action or spectacle. For many viewers, this will feel dry or pretentious. For others, it will feel like a refreshing provocation, a film that trusts its audience to engage intellectually rather than emotionally. Cult films often thrive precisely because they reject broad appeal in favour of a clear, uncompromising vision.

In short, Seneca is unlikely to be widely loved, but it is very likely to be intensely loved by the right audience. Its eccentric style, divisive performances and philosophically confrontational approach give it all the ingredients of a future cult favourite; a film discovered not by marketing campaigns, but by word of mouth, debate and the slow accumulation of devoted admirers.

Dragon Lord (4 Stars)

Jackie Chan's Dragon Lord (1982) sits at a crucial turning point in his career; it is the moment where the lessons of his early kung fu comedies and his growing obsession with cinematic control finally begin to fuse into a recognisable auteur style.

By the early 1980's Chan had already escaped the Bruce Lee clone phase that defined his unhappy early years at Lo Wei's studio. Films like Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master had established his comic persona; the cheeky underdog who combined elaborate choreography with slapstick timing clearly indebted to silent comedy. Dragon Lord arrives after The Young Master and just before Project A, and it feels like a laboratory for ideas Chan would soon perfect.

The plot is slight even by Chan standards. He plays Dragon, a mischievous village idler whose athletic talents repeatedly land him in trouble before he is drawn into a nationalist struggle against foreign smugglers. Narrative coherence is not the point. What matters is the physical storytelling; Chan is less interested in character psychology than in how bodies move through space, how a joke can be constructed from rhythm and escalation.

Visually, Dragon Lord marks a step forward in Chan's ambition. The action scenes are longer, cleaner and more punishing than in his late 1970s work. The now famous extended kicking duel in the courtyard is not simply a fight; it is a display of stamina, precision and repetition that borders on masochism. Chan is clearly testing the limits of both himself and his audience, a tendency that would define his Golden Harvest peak years.

Comedy is still central, but it is more disciplined. Where Drunken Master often feels anarchic, Dragon Lord shows Chan learning control as a director. Gags are built patiently, often starting with sport or play before mutating into violence. The film's elaborate opening game sequence, absurdly prolonged and meticulously staged, may frustrate some viewers; it also reveals Chan's growing confidence that pure physicality can sustain interest without plot.

In the context of his career, Dragon Lord is less immediately satisfying than Project A or Police Story, but it is arguably more revealing. You can see Chan moving away from broad parody towards a synthesis of action, comedy and national identity. The hints of patriotic subtext, rough though they are, foreshadow his later embrace of heroic, almost mythic roles.

As a standalone film, Dragon Lord is uneven and indulgent. As a career milestone, it is invaluable. It captures Jackie Chan in transition; no longer the scrappy imitator of his youth, not yet the fully formed superstar, but an artist obsessively refining his craft through bruises, broken bones and relentless repetition.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (4 Stars)

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) is less a continuation than a collision. Arriving seven years after The Mummy Returns, it feels like a franchise trying to reinvent itself by grafting one cinematic mythology onto another. In that sense, it works as a crossover film; not between studios or properties, but between the Hollywood adventure serial of the first two films and the wuxia-inflected fantasy epics that had gained global popularity in the early 2000's.

By shifting the action from Egypt to China and replacing Imhotep with Jet Li's Dragon Emperor, the film attempts to fuse the familiar Mummy formula with elements drawn from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. Terracotta armies, immortal emperors, shape-shifting witches and snowbound monasteries all signal a desire to tap into a different cinematic tradition. On paper, this is a promising idea. A globetrotting franchise built on resurrected legends should be flexible enough to roam across cultures and mythologies.

In practice, the crossover is uneasy. The film never fully commits to Chinese myth in the way the earlier entries embraced pulp Egyptology. The Dragon Emperor is visually impressive but dramatically thin, and the mythology around him is sketched rather than lived in. The result is a film that borrows iconography without absorbing tone. Where Imhotep felt operatic and obsessive, the Dragon Emperor often feels like a boss character waiting for the next effects sequence.

The sense of dislocation is heightened by the recasting of Evelyn, now played by Maria Bello. Bello brings intelligence and energy to the role, but the change breaks the emotional continuity of the series. Combined with the decision to age Rick and Evelyn into quasi-parental figures while pushing their son Alex to the foreground, the film struggles to balance nostalgia with renewal. It wants to pass the torch while still leaning heavily on Brendan Fraser's established charm.

There are clear ways the film could have been improved. First, it needed a stronger thematic link between the two mythologies it was crossing. Instead of simply swapping Egyptian curses for Chinese immortality, the script could have drawn parallels between imperial hubris and ancient religion, giving the crossover an intellectual spine rather than a geographical one. Second, the film would have benefited from slowing down. The relentless action leaves little room for atmosphere, humour or romantic banter, all of which were key pleasures of the earlier films.

Most importantly, the crossover should have extended to character rather than spectacle. Imagine Evelyn engaging more deeply with Chinese history and philosophy, or Rick forced to adapt his roguish soldier persona to a culture he does not understand. Those frictions could have generated comedy and tension far richer than yet another CGI avalanche.

As it stands, The Mummy 3 is an instructive failure. It shows how a franchise can attempt a cultural crossover without fully respecting or exploring the traditions it borrows from. The idea of a Mummy film that travels the world is a sound one, but this entry proves that mythological mash-ups require more than new locations and bigger visual effects. They require curiosity, patience and a willingness to let the crossover reshape the series rather than simply decorate it.

Success Rate:  + 0.8

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Contempt (3 Stars)

Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963) occupies a strange and fascinating place in Brigitte Bardot's career; it is both a culmination of her star image and a deliberate dismantling of it.

By the early 1960s Bardot was arguably the most famous woman in the world, a symbol of sexual freedom forged through films like And God Created Woman. Producers expected her to sell films through her body and her availability; Godard, reluctantly accommodating those expectations, opens Contempt with the notorious nude scene. Yet even here the film signals its intent. The scene is cool, interrogative, almost clinical; Bardot's Camille asks her husband which parts of her body he loves, turning erotic display into a questionnaire about desire and ownership. This is Bardot the icon being examined rather than celebrated.

As the film progresses, Bardot's performance becomes one of her most controlled and tragic. Camille is not the carefree sex symbol audiences expected, but a woman retreating into silence and resentment, her emotional withdrawal mirrored by Godard's austere compositions. Bardot strips away charm and spontaneity in favour of something harder and more brittle; contempt itself becomes her defining expression. In the context of her career, this is striking. Few of Bardot's other roles allow her such interiority, or ask her to play emotional annihilation rather than erotic vitality.

Contempt also reflects the pressures Bardot faced as a star trapped between art and commerce. The film's story of a marriage corroded by compromise echoes Bardot's own uneasy relationship with the film industry, which demanded constant availability while rarely granting artistic respect. Godard uses her presence to critique the very system that made her famous; Bardot becomes both the commodity and the victim of commodification.

In retrospect, Contempt stands as one of Bardot's most important films, not because it confirms her myth, but because it challenges it. Where much of her career traded on immediacy and physical allure, Godard freezes her into an image of loss and disillusionment. It is a reminder that Bardot was capable of far more than the roles that defined her public persona, and that her greatest performance may be the one that most openly mourns the cost of being Brigitte Bardot.

Cover Girl (5 Stars)

Cover Girl (1944) often gets remembered as a glossy Rita Hayworth vehicle, but its real historical weight lies in what it did for Gene Kelly. More than any of his earlier screen appearances, the film announces Kelly as a major Hollywood star and, crucially, as a new kind of musical performer.

Before Cover Girl, Kelly had appeared in films like For Me and My Gal, but he was still feeling his way into cinema. He came from Broadway, where his athletic style and masculine energy already set him apart, yet Hollywood musicals were dominated by a lighter, more elegant tradition. In Cover Girl, Kelly finally finds material that allows him to fuse dance, character and storytelling into something coherent and modern.

The film is important because it positions Kelly as both romantic lead and creative force. As Rusty Parker's press agent and love interest, he is not simply there to support Hayworth's rise; he embodies a working-class, artistic ideal that contrasts with the artificial glamour of modelling and celebrity. Kelly dances not as an exhibitionist but as a man expressing frustration, joy and desire. This approach would become central to his later work.

The famous "Alter Ego" routine is the clearest statement of Kelly's significance. Dancing with his own reflection, Kelly literalises an internal conflict through choreography. It is witty, technically daring and psychologically expressive. No other male dancer in Hollywood at the time was doing anything quite like this. The sequence effectively declares that dance can visualise thought and emotion, not just decorate a song.

Cover Girl also marks Kelly's growing confidence behind the scenes. Although officially co-directed by Charles Vidor, Kelly had significant input into the choreography and conception of his numbers. You can already see the seeds of the integrated musical he would later perfect in On the Town, An American in Paris and Singing in the Rain. Dance is not a pause in the story; it is the story.

For Kelly's career, the film was transformative. It proved he could carry a major studio musical opposite one of Columbia's biggest stars. It also established his screen persona; athletic, earnest, romantic without being foppish. After Cover Girl, Kelly was no longer a promising Broadway import; he was a genuine film star and a creative visionary.

In that sense, Cover Girl is less about fashion magazines and show-business fantasy than it first appears. It is the moment Gene Kelly steps fully into his own, reshaping the Hollywood musical from the inside and setting the direction for the genre's golden age.

The Mummy Returns (4½ Stars)

The Mummy Returns (2001) is bigger, louder and more self-conscious than its predecessor, which is both its chief strength and its central weakness. Stephen Sommers doubles down on scale and mythology, expanding the story into a sprawling adventure that sometimes improves on the original, but just as often loses sight of what made it work in the first place.

What is better is the confidence. The film no longer needs to introduce its world or its characters, and it barrels ahead with gusto. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are visibly more comfortable as Rick and Evelyn, now an established couple rather than tentative sparring partners. Their banter is sharper, their affection more relaxed, and the film allows them to operate as a team from the outset. Evelyn, in particular, is given more agency, becoming a reincarnated warrior scholar whose past-life connection to Imhotep adds thematic symmetry to the story. The mythology is also richer, weaving in the Scorpion King and a larger sense of ancient history, which gives the sequel a grander narrative ambition.

The action is more elaborate, with set pieces that push the pulpy serial aesthetic to its limits. There is a sense of joyful excess in the chases, battles and collapsing temples, and the film rarely pauses to catch its breath. For viewers who wanted more spectacle from the first film, The Mummy Returns delivers it in abundance.

However, this escalation comes at a cost. Where the original balanced adventure with character development and romantic tension, the sequel often feels overstuffed. The emotional core is diluted by subplots and supporting characters who compete for attention. The introduction of Alex, Rick and Evelyn's son, adds family stakes but also shifts the tone towards a broader, more juvenile adventure, occasionally undercutting the danger and romance that once grounded the story.

The film also suffers from its reliance on early 2000's CGI. While practical effects and locations helped the original age gracefully, the digital creatures here, most infamously the Scorpion King, have not stood the test of time. These effects pull the viewer out of the narrative at crucial moments, diminishing the sense of peril rather than enhancing it.

Ultimately, The Mummy Returns is a sequel that understands what audiences liked about the original, but assumes that more of everything automatically means better. It succeeds as a piece of exuberant blockbuster entertainment, and its leads remain immensely likeable, but it lacks the charm, focus and romantic spark that made The Mummy feel special. Where the first film surprised by how much it cared about its characters, the sequel sometimes forgets that spectacle alone is not enough.

Success Rate:  + 2.4

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The Mummy [1999] (5 Stars)

Stephen Sommers' The Mummy from 1999 may be sold as a rollicking adventure, but its enduring charm comes from the slow burn romance between Rick O'Connell and Evelyn Carnahan. Amid the sandstorms, scarabs and reanimated corpses, the film invests surprising care in letting a relationship develop through personality clash, mutual respect and growing attraction.

Rick and Evelyn begin as near opposites. Rick is a pragmatic survivor, all cynicism and physical confidence, while Evelyn is bookish, excitable and socially awkward, more at home in a library than a desert. Their early interactions play like a screwball comedy; Evelyn's breathless intellect collides with Rick's dry understatement, and the film allows their banter to establish chemistry before any overt romantic signalling. Importantly, Rick never mocks Evelyn's intelligence, and Evelyn never attempts to civilise Rick. Instead, each becomes intrigued by what the other represents.

As the expedition to Hamunaptra unfolds, the romance deepens through shared danger. Evelyn proves that her knowledge is not merely academic, repeatedly saving the group through translation and historical insight. Rick, in turn, becomes her protector without reducing her to a helpless damsel. The film consistently frames their partnership as complementary rather than hierarchical, which gives their affection a sense of earned equality. When Rick risks his life to rescue Evelyn from the Mummy, it feels like the natural progression of trust rather than a stock heroic gesture.

Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser deserve much of the credit. Weisz plays Evelyn with warmth and vulnerability beneath the comedy, allowing moments of genuine fear and wonder to surface. Fraser gives Rick an easy charm that never tips into arrogance, and his gradual softening around Evelyn is played with restraint. Their romantic scenes avoid sentimentality, relying instead on looks, pauses and gentle humour.

By the time Rick and Evelyn finally admit their feelings, the audience has watched two people grow closer through curiosity, admiration and shared experience. In a genre often content with instant attraction, The Mummy offers a romance that feels lived in. It is this human connection, as much as the spectacle, that has helped the film endure as a beloved classic.

Success Rate:  + 3.2

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Pearl Harbor (5 Stars)

Pearl Harbor (2001) frames Japan's attack on Hawaii with a melodramatic love triangle that drives much of the film's emotional weight.

The story centres on two lifelong friends, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, both pilots raised together in rural America and bound by loyalty and shared ambition. When they arrive at Pearl Harbor in 1941, Rafe quickly falls in love with Evelyn Johnson, a naval nurse. Their romance is intense and idealised, presented as a brief moment of happiness before the war intrudes. Rafe volunteers to fight with the RAF in England and is soon reported killed in action. Evelyn, devastated but trying to carry on with her life, gradually grows closer to Danny, who has remained at Pearl Harbor.

Danny and Evelyn's relationship develops slowly and uneasily, shaped by grief and guilt. Both feel they are betraying Rafe's memory, yet they also find comfort and genuine affection in one another. By the time they fully commit, Evelyn is pregnant, and the pair begin to imagine a future together, still shadowed by the absent third presence in their relationship.

The triangle is violently reopened when Rafe unexpectedly returns, having survived his mission. His reunion with Evelyn turns bitter when he realises she has moved on with Danny. The friendship between the two men fractures into anger and resentment, and Evelyn is caught between her past love and her present reality. Their personal conflict comes to a head just as the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, forcing Rafe and Danny to put aside their rivalry in order to survive and fight back.

After the attack, the triangle briefly gives way to duty. Rafe and Danny volunteer for the Doolittle Raid, where Danny is killed, effectively resolving the triangle through tragedy rather than choice. In the aftermath, Evelyn mourns Danny while reconciling with Rafe, who accepts responsibility for the future, including Danny's child. The film ultimately treats the love triangle as a symbol of innocence lost, using romance and rivalry to personalise the larger catastrophe of Pearl Harbor and the emotional costs of war.

Success Rate:  + 1.2

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Wheels on Meals (4 Stars)

Wheels on Meals is often remembered as a buoyant slice of mid 1980's Hong Kong action comedy, but what gives the film its lasting charm is Jackie Chan's clear affinity with the traditions of silent era physical comedy, particularly the work of Buster Keaton. More than plot or setting, this is this lineage that defines the film's tone and Chan's performance.

Like Keaton, Chan builds humour out of precision rather than chaos. Every pratfall, missed punch and near disaster in Wheels on Mealsfeels engineered rather than improvised. Chan's character, Thomas, is not funny because he mugs for the camera or undercuts the action with ironic asides; he is funny because he treats the absurd situations around him with total seriousness. This echoes Keaton's famous stone face, where comedy emerges from the contrast between extraordinary physical exertion and emotional restraint.

The film's action set pieces function much like Keaton's silent shorts, where narrative exists primarily to justify increasingly elaborate physical challenges. Chan navigates ladders, staircases, balconies and moving vehicles with the same architectural awareness Keaton brought to trains, houses and collapsing façades. Space is not merely a backdrop but an active participant in the comedy. When Chan fights, he is always reacting to the environment, turning obstacles into tools and mistakes into gags. This spatial intelligence is pure Keaton, translated into a louder, faster modern idiom.

Another point of similarity lies in vulnerability. Chan, like Keaton, allows his body to absorb punishment. He is not an invulnerable action hero but a resilient one, visibly tired, bruised and occasionally overwhelmed. The humour depends on this fragility; we laugh not at domination but at perseverance. In Wheels on Meals, especially during the extended climactic fight with Benny Urquidez, Chan's determination to keep going despite exhaustion mirrors Keaton's stoic endurance in films like The General.

Where Chan diverges from Keaton is in warmth. Keaton often appeared detached from the world around him, an existential drifter buffeted by fate. Chan, by contrast, projects geniality and camaraderie, particularly in his interactions with Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung. Yet even here the comparison holds, because both performers ground their comedy in sincerity. Neither winks at the audience. The laughs come from commitment, not commentary.

Wheels on Meals ultimately plays like a love letter to physical cinema, filtered through Hong Kong's kinetic energy. Jackie Chan does not imitate Buster Keaton so much as inherit his philosophy: that the human body, moving through space with intelligence and risk, can be a complete cinematic language. In that sense, the film stands as one of the clearest examples of how silent comedy survived into the sound era, not as nostalgia but as living craft.

Red One (4 Stars)

Disney Wednesday #29

Red One is a glossy, overpowered Christmas blockbuster that feels less like a festive tale and more like a Marvel superhero film that happens to involve Santa Claus. Directed by Jake Kasdan, it throws Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans into a hyperactive rescue mission when Santa is kidnapped, blending action, comedy and mythological lore with the confidence of a film that assumes scale alone will generate wonder.

Johnson plays Callum Drift, the stoic head of North Pole security, while Evans is a fast talking civilian reluctantly dragged into the operation. Their chemistry is serviceable rather than sparkling; Evans leans into his sarcastic charm, Johnson leans into his granite seriousness. The result is familiar buddy movie territory, albeit wrapped in snow, elves and CGI creatures that feel imported from half a dozen other franchises. Everything is big, loud and relentlessly busy, yet rarely magical.

J K Simmons' Santa Claus is the film's most interesting element. This is not the twinkly grandfather figure of tradition but a weary, muscular administrator of Christmas, closer to a CEO than a saint. That portrayal feeds neatly into the film's underlying question: is Santa Claus real, or just a story we collectively agree to believe?

Red One answers this in a very modern way: Santa is real within the film's universe, but his power depends entirely on belief. The more people believe in him, the stronger Christmas becomes; cynicism literally weakens the world. This allows the film to have it both ways. Children can take Santa at face value, adults can read him as a metaphor for generosity, kindness and communal faith. Santa exists because people need him to exist.

That idea is arguably the most Christmassy thing about the film, yet it is never explored with much depth. The script is far more interested in lore, chase scenes and setting up a potential franchise. Moments that might have slowed down to reflect on why belief matters are quickly buried under another explosion or wisecrack.

As a Christmas film, Red One feels oddly joyless. It acknowledges the concept of wonder without ever quite delivering it. Compared to classics that let sentimentality breathe, this one keeps moving as if afraid of sincerity. The result is entertaining enough in short bursts, but emotionally thin.

Ultimately, Red Onetreats Santa Claus as real in the way blockbuster cinema treats everything; real as long as it is profitable, expandable and endlessly rebootable. Whether that makes him any less real than the Santa of stories is up to the viewer. The film suggests that belief itself is the point, even if it forgets to make us feel why that belief once mattered so much.

Success Rate:  - 1.1

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