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.

The Strangers – Chapter 3 is more than just the final instalment of a trilogy—it's the end of a single psychological horror story told over the best part of five hours. For viewers introduced to Ryan and Maya (Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez) in May 2024, when they were forced to spend the night in a remote cabin outside Venus, Oregon, it's the end of quite a journey.

That's a journey that the director of all three films, Renny Harlin, described as an “amazing opportunity” when we spoke with him...

Renny Harlin's long-form treatment of psychological and slasher horror reaches its climax with The Strangers – Chapter 3. Concluding a four-and-a-half-hour storyline is a rare feat—the recent Halloween trilogy scotched the idea when the pandemic and thematic concerns intervened—but this trilogy is nothing but committed. With all three films shot simultaneously, and Harlin and the two scripting Alans (R. Cohen and Freedland) pulling the story strings throughout, it's certainly cohesive...

Silent Night, Deadly Night brings back serial Santa-suit slasher Billy Chapman with a twist: a homicidal voice inside his head guiding him to punish the “naughty.”

For this revisionist take on the seasonal scares, director Mike P. Nelson found his antiheroic lead in an actor who’s no stranger to stepping into horror franchises, emerging genre superstar Rohan Campbell.

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...

The latest season of Exhibition on Screen features has already brought the prolific series its second-most popular film, Caravaggio, so who better to follow than arguably Britain’s two greatest landscape painters? The 42nd Exhibition on Screen feature draws from the current blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain, Turner and Constable: Rivals & Originals, but once again proves to be far more than a gallery walkthrough.

The pre-eminent art series Exhibition on Screen rolls on, astonishingly, to its 42nd film, with further proof that it’s about far more than putting a gallery on screen. That’s no mean feat when the subject is this vast—there probably aren’t any names bigger than J.M.W.Turner and John Constable when it comes to landscape painting. But chances are viewers will have changed how they think about both by the end of this film...

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...

With The Tasters, director Silvio Soldini breaks new ground with a female-led film emphatically set in the later years of World War II. It’s based on the incredible true story of Margot Wölk, one of the women who risked their lives as Hitler’s food tasters, far from Berlin but in ‘The Wolf’s Lair.’ Focusing on a group of women put into a position of ever-present threat while the war is heard through rumour and radio broadcasts gives it an engrossing texture...

Apes may be swinging through a golden patch on the screen, but we're used to humans getting a look in. From Kong's chest-beating to the rising kingdoms of the Planet of the Apes, modern simian cinema tends to offer us a shred of hope. Well, that stops with Primate. Johannes Roberts's latest horror is a deliciously gruesome, slick, and menacing horror which turns a chimpanzee from family member to savage killer, with sharp intelligence and fast-twitch muscle fibre that won't be reasoned with...

When it came to realising the simian threat at the heart of its horror, Primate went old-school. With an eye on the tangible make-up and prosthetic horror of ‘80s classics, director and co-writer Johannes Roberts was determined to make the threat of a rabid ape as physical as possible. He found the perfect performer in Miguel Torres Umba, the man behind Ben the chimpanzee. Primate is a physical, visceral rollercoaster ride that draws on classic horror while playing with expectations...

Both of Jan Komasa’s recent English-language films are screening at Kinoteka 2026, with his keen vision darting over society on either side of the Atlantic. While Anniversary imagines the radicalisation of the American political system, British-based The Good Boy is the most intriguing by a whisker’s breadth. The title doesn’t refer to a dog, but a delinquent young man, subject to a family’s attempts to forcibly change his behaviour...

Jan Komasa’s political thriller imagines a dystopian future for America, distilled through the celebrations of a liberal family. With the household at its centre left increasingly battered and isolated, this isn’t so much ‘succession’ as (to quote one character) ‘obliteration.’ But packed with sharp touches that explore the space between belief and perception, loyalty and revenge, its adroitly satirical narrative doesn’t hold back...

A menacing quote and a shot across a lake to a burning building, backed by screams, is what goes as a respite at the start of Bury the Devil, an ambitious one-shot take on possession. Because 75 minutes ago…