Enola Holmes 2 (2022) - Movie Review

Following up on 2020’s rousing Netflix success with the first Enola Holmes, this sequel builds on a lot of what that take on the Holmes detective formula so fresh and exciting: A different perspective on that same kind of analytical genius, with a warmer heart and a need to ask questions about the roles of women in the Victorian era. And through that building, this manages to… well, it might take a rewatch of both films to be absolutely certain, but there’s an argument to be made about this doing even better than the first film.

Enola Holmes (2020) - Movie Review

Time to close out our look at Jack Thorne’s screenwriting work for 2020, and quite frankly, this really could go either way. It could be another serving of bland nothing that feels like a shadow of a much better story, or it could be a solid, if uneven, breath of fresh air within its own genre. At either rate, I’m fully expecting every other aspect of production to be overclocked to make up for the weakness within the script. Well, nothing of the sort shows up here. It seems I have left the best for last by sheer happenstance, as this is easily Thorne’s most fully-formed script of the year.

Radioactive (2020) - Movie Review

Time for round three of our look at Jack Thorne’s scripted work over 2020, and judging by how the last two turned out, I admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this. Also, as a bit of a change of pace from my other looks at films adapted from comics this year, I haven’t read Lauren Redniss’ source material (mainly because the only access I have to it presently is the audiobook, which for a comparison between visual mediums is pretty useless), so I’m once again going to let Thorne’s writing stand or fall on its own. And while I concede that this is yet another instance of the visuals overselling the text, I’d also argue that this is way, way easier to recommend than Secret Garden or Dirt Music.

Dirt Music (2020) - Movie Review

With how much attention I bring to the names attached to the films I review, I really shouldn’t be in a position where I’m covering the same creative twice in a year by accident, but it seems that the Mighty Oak/Cats & Dogs 3 synchronicity from last month was just a harbinger of what’s to come. Today, we’re looking at a film adapted from a piece of classic Aussie literature by British writer Jack Thorne, who wrote the latest version of The Secret Garden to hit cinemas and screens, and who also has two other feature-length adaptations this year alone. We’ll definitely get to those at some point before the year’s out, but for right now, we’re dealing with this… and honestly, it’s got a lot of the same issues as Secret Garden.

The Secret Garden (2020) - Movie Review

Films like this are frustrating to write about, possibly even more so than films that are outright boring. Although weirdly enough, they’re both frustrating for the same reason: The challenge involved with writing about them in a way that’s worth reading. With boring films, it’s managing to get across how little of an impact it made on me as a viewer without resorting to just repeating the word ‘boring’ 500 times. With films like The Secret Garden, it’s figuring out how to explain that all the pieces for a satisfying movie are here, and it seems to have done what it set out to do… and yet somehow didn’t. Read on, and I’ll do my best to explain.