Matt Goddard

The movie trailers of 2022 posed some of the biggest questions moviedom has seen for years, like why is Mario’s butt so flat? The Super Mario Bros. Movie was just one of the surprisingly good teasers released in 2022 when cinema started to find its feet again after the upheaval of the last two years...

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 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...

The Ritual is a good old-fashioned slow-burner. It lets its characters do the talking, and when its subject matter is the ritual of exorcism, you'd reasonably expect the talking to fall on two sides of the equation of good and evil...

Towards the end of Michaelangelo: Love and Death, contemporary artist Tania Kovats notes that “genius” can often be a problematic word when it comes to artists. But it's a word she and this exhibition-paced stroll through the life and work of the Renaissance artist can't avoid...

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...

Our picks for the top 13 best post-apocalyptic movies of all time written by Matt Goddard

We’re gonna need a bigger Coliseum
The success of Gladiator in 2000 inspired a host of sword and sandal pretenders, but none came close to the film that returned Ridley Scott to the director’s top table and shot Russell Crowe into the stratosphere. A quarter of a century later, the expectations for the belated but inevitable sequel are as high as Maximus, or now Lucius, walking into the Coliseum...

The Banshees of Inisherin reunited Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson from Martin McDonagh’s first feature, In Bruges. McDonagh’s career has soared since that dark comedy crime caper debuted in 2008. It was clear when Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, fittingly McDonagh’s third dark comedy, earned seven Academy Award nominations and secured acting statuettes for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell.
The Banshees of Inisherin went two better in January 2023 when it picked up seven nods a...

T.S. Eliot's Romeo & Juliet with unlimited ammo.
The Gorge was released on Valentine’s Day, making it a big romantic gamble for Apple. Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and a mist-filled canyon of unimaginable terror? Scott Derrickson’s romance-doused action-horror isn’t lacking in concept but struggles under the weight of its many ideas...

DC’s premier superhero, Superman, is leading the charge of the DC Universe (DCU). It’s an exciting time for DC fans as the brand-new connected multimedia saga is set to unleash the comic publisher’s superheroes and supervillains from late 2024. The DCU’s first film will arrive in July 2025, and unsurprisingly, the Man of Steel will take the lead in Superman: Legacy. Superman is the archetypal superhero, and his latest cinematic incarnation has an incredible history to draw on, so it’s about t...

A mesmerising spin on destiny.
Broken, disrupted, brief. The Old Vic’s high-profile adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy may be the second in town in a few months, but it doesn’t mess around. The thumping and protracted dance routines scattered through this adaptation won’t be for everyone but make an intoxicating substitute for a Greek Chorus and highlight the sparse tragic chapters in Ella Hickson’s reinterpretation of Oedipus Rex...

April is a harrowing and visceral experience, but one that confidently keeps its audience at a distance. Graphic and uncompromising scenes sit alongside stunningly filmed shots of nature, leaving viewers unable to look away, but with plenty of room to think.
Writer and director Dea Kulumbegashvili established herself as voice in contemporary social cinema with 2020's Beginning. April is the follow-up that cements Kulumbegashvili's reputation with a study of an individual in extremis.
Nina is ...

One giant leap into these characters' shoes
Set in the stark subjugation of 1960s Florida, Nickel Boys is undoubtedly the most innovative film to make the 2025 Academy Awards’ Best Picture list. Usually found behind a documentary lens, director RaMell Ross brings his mastery of that form to take us inside the characters in this adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel.
In 1962, young African-American Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) is encouraged to look beyond Florida’s slanted Jim Crow-era ...

Doctor Who is a unique series in many ways, not least because it can feel saddled by its past while simultaneously brushing it off. That's been felt more acutely since the show became a BBC and Disney+ co-production. While it's meant larger budgets for the 62-year-old show, the partnership has set some of the more old-school fandom quivering...