Matt Goddard

The new DC Universe is warming up as a concerted effort to transfer DC’s decades of comic book storytelling to movie theaters, TV, games, and more.
Of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) stands in front of DC like Galactus. Marvel’s decade-plus experience of creating a shared universe on screen may not always please everyone, but it’s undoubtedly the most successful Hollywood franchise in history.
When Iron Man’s armor was being welded and oiled in 2008, few could have foreseen the sp...

Independent cinemas used to be a premier hang-out for students. But with multiplexes pushing smaller venues out of picture, Matt Goddard asks whether it's curtains for the art-house cinema.

It's been a long time coming, but the world finally has its Toxic Avenger back—surely just the tonic comic book movies need.
Macon Blair steers Legendary Entertainment's attempt to bring Troma's superpowered poster boy screaming and ripping into the 21st century, along with an impressive cast and an ‘unrated' stamp. But while the noxious results will get whoops in the cinemas, it‘s hard to miss the smoking remains of a wasted opportunity...

No Other Choice starts with a family barbecue. Two parents, two children, two dogs, under falling blossoms. Few viewers will expect that perfect scene to tell the whole story, but even if they're braced for the sublime to turn ridiculous as the seasons change, even fewer will anticipate where this dark comedy thriller heads. A sprawling triumph of filmmaking, it's likely to hit you in successive tiny hits: satire by a hundred paper cutsa...

Night and cinema heat up in Ryan Coogler’s impressive horror fusion.
Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan have produced some incredible work together. The biographical debut Fruitvale Station; the tragic Marvel wallop of Black Panther; and effortlessly fusing the past and future in the drama of Creed...
It’s saying something, but Sinners is easily their most successful collaboration yet.
The Smokestack twins (both played by Michael B. Jordan), slick Stack and pragmatic Smoke...

Fantastic Four: First Steps is determined to sell the idea of heroes a world can get behind, and Marvel hopes that audiences can too. An opening ‘television recap' gives us a brief refresher on the Fantastic Four's origin, and then bombards us with their heroic successes. Classic villains get cameos in a medley that gives us a real sense of the team, the family, and the force for good. In short, things are fantastic, but the universe won't let things stay that way.

John Constantine always felt bigger than comics. Years after his mid-1980s debut in the pages of Swamp Thing, his co-creator Alan Moore would claim to have encountered John in real life on two occasions. But Constantine's path to immortality is even more intriguing than a creation conspiratorially keeping an eye on its creator. Moore and company didn't so much tap illicit knowledge like Frankenstein as chip away at a block of marble like Michelangelo to reveal what was always inside…

Gold has long held a special place in the James Bond franchise. It was Goldfinger, the third film in the EON-produced series, that established many of the elements we now consider essential to the Bond formula in 1964. From the gadget-packed Aston Martin DB5 to the full pre-credit sequence and a pounding gold-soaked title sequence, many of its innovations were soon inseparable from the superspy's adventures...

Casting a light on the relationship between two famous figures is irresistible, especially when they are, on paper, chalk and cheese. Moss & Freud is a rather formally titled film that recounts the meeting of supermodel Kate Moss and figurative painter Lucien Freud and how, against the odds, they became friends despite their age gap and lifestyles. ...

Before New Line Cinema took a bet on a Hobbit, it was nicknamed “The House that Freddy Built.” The studio made its name through the ‘80s and ‘90s with the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, producing seven films in 10 years, and giving Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger a good stab at being THE slasher of the era.
Finally, that original run has made it to 4K, with a box set capturing the whole fascinating journey. On screen, it runs from Wes Craven's original dark, subconscious-baiting vision ...

Shown as part of the Dare strand at the London Film Festival, Alpha is an audacious and astonishing film that reaches deep into the human condition as much as it responds to recent world events.
This Belgian and French film finds the world gripped by a fatal disease that turns the infected to marble. When troubled-teen Alpha ill-advisedly gets a tattoo of the letter ‘A' on her arm, it triggers a prolonged period where her doctor mother fears she has contracted the incurable disease...

As any Seinfeld fan will know, a New York City apartment is the perfect place for nothing to happen. And nothing always means something.
In December 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) invites her photographer friend Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) over to her apartment on 94th Street to record his recollections of the day before. But while Hujar's pinpoint remembrances and reflections capture the minutiae of the day as morning turns to night and the sun sets over the Hudson...

The Exhibition on Screen series has grown into an incredible archive of immersive artist profiles featuring expert talking heads, biographical insight and of course, the chance to see the artwork itself. Their latest subject, however, requires a slightly different approach.
The Milanese painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio poses an interesting challenge: He's left us little to go on. Unlike many of the Exhibition on Screen subjects, he was “not a man of letters.”

Orwell: 2+2=5 directly confronts the reason George Orwell's name feels increasingly inseparable from political discourse.
The title is taken directly from Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a concise equation that symbolises the authoritarian playbook. On screen, it's heard in a clip from The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura, the BBC's 1983 film that starred Ronald Pickup as Orwell. Likewise, the documentary picks up during the writer's latter years living on the Inner Hebrides...

M: Beyond Wasteland treads post-apocalyptic ground that will be familiar to most viewers, but thanks to its commitment to its point of view, this compelling story of survival and isolation is soaked in warmth and fear.
In a mysterious forest, Marko (Matej Sivakov) lives alone with his father (Sasko Kocev), simultaneously caught in a state of restrictive safety and fear. He recites a fairy-tale that simultaneously distracts him, gives him hope and might just help him to survive...