OUT NOW: Supergirl (Craig Gillespie, 2026)

In the middle of celebrating her birthday with a galactic booze-up, Kara Zor-El (Molly Alcock) is roped into helping a young girl (Eve Ridley) seeking vengeance for the murder of her family.

I was in and out on reviewing this movie. I was underwhelmed by last year’s Superman. And I caught some early reviews which put me off.

It had been awhile since I had been out to the theatre, I had a free ticket and I had also heard some interesting news about the production of Superman 2, so I booked.

One can always be hopeful.

I am not the best at tracking story problems, but this movie is a mess.

Repeatedly during the first couple of scenes, I felt like context and structure were missing.

When we first meet Supergirl, she is waking up from a bender in the middle of her shit-heap of a space ship (her costume is shoved in a corner).

But beyond these aesthetic choices, and some poignant flashbacks, the character has no real character, and gets no real arc.

We are meant to leave this story feeling like something has changed - but the film has not done the work to establish her character, nor provided a real turn in the story.

In the lead, Molly Alcock is fine, but the script does not provide her with any structure to build off of.

What makes the film frustrating is that the film ignores the more immediate and compelling story - the snippets of Kara’s life and journey to Earth.

These scenes pack the most emotional impact - unlike Clark, Kara grew up with her family, with Kryptonian language and culture. While born after the planet died, she carries the trauma of watching the survivors die. 

And when she arrives on earth, Kara and Clark cannot communicate with each other. Her origin is a fascinating story, about an immigrant and a refugee grappling with her place in a new world.

The problem is the scenes have potential but they are so abbreviated. The film seems to think these moments amount to enough grounding, but they feel like a missed opportunity.

The film does not seem to recognise how important this material is, and how poorly integrated it is with the story this film wants to tell.

The film also gives no real arc to her relationship with Rutheye (Eve Ridley), the young girl who is supposed to ultimately help pull Kara out of her personal doom loop.

On top of this, the film is let down by its aesthetics. The film is so dark and under-lit, and there are a lot of random needle drops that feel like the filmmakers reaching for the James Gunn playbook but with no understanding for how they are supposed to function.

In its favour, the film has a lot interesting aliens and some fun sci-fi ideas (Supergirl having to catch the space equivalent of the Greyhound bus; a planet with a yellow and green sun). But the film is so deliberately colour-graded to negate and hide these elements.

The action scenes are poorly edited and - aside from a fight involving teleportation - lack any imagination or wit.

The biggest sin is how forgettable the movie is. Nothing about it stands out as particularly interesting or egregious.

It suffers from the same issues as other superhero movies - a generic villain, too much weightless CGI, and no real difference or definition to the respective power sets. Aside from one moment involving a green sun, I never really felt like Kara was in real danger.

It ultimately feels like a movie rushed into production.

Alcock - and the character - deserve better than this.

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Prince - Sign O’ The Times (Prince, 1987)

All the concert docs I have covered featured some staged sequences - Sign O’ The Times plays like a full-on musical, with musical numbers linked by a story. 

It features live concert footage, but it is bracketed by vignettes featuring Prince becoming infatuated with a dancer called Cat (Catherine Glover).

Based mostly around the track-list from the same name, with a few tracks from other periods of his career (‘Housequake’ and ‘Little Red Corvette’), Sign O’ The Times is significant because it is the one directed by the artist himself.

It can be a little scrappy - there are some dirty edits in some of the live footage which are understandable - but it also manages some remarkable transitions, moving between live performance and staged sequences which turn the stage into a more fantastical space, where the music shatters any separation between live concert and the dreamlike artifice of a cinematic musical. I particularly enjoyed the camera going through Cat’s bedroom window out onto the stage.

The backdrop of sleazy neon signs and looming buildings is striking, and feels like foreshadowing for Prince’s involvement with Batman the year after this film’s release.

Despite the amazing musicians and the sheer scope of the stage setting, Prince’s knowing, teasing presence is the main attraction. There is something mischievous about the way he leads the viewer through the film.

Under-seen for years, it took Prince’s tragic passing a decade ago for the film to be rediscovered by a wider audience. 

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The Last Waltz

Stop Making Sense

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The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)

Directed by Martin Scorsese, The Last Waltz chronicles the final live performance of the Band (Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm).

I watched The Last Waltz because of its reputation and pedigree.

I was not that familiar with The Band, or Bob Dylan - I know the song ‘The Weight’, and a couple of the artists in the lineup. 

It did not resonate with me, but that is a case of personal taste. As a document, it is fascinating. 

The film includes a few moments of self-reflexivity, including starting ‘scenes’ when the camera starts rolling. These moments attempt to create a sense of authenticity, to immerse the viewer. 

The film also attempts to foreground the idea of authorship over the screen space. While Scorsese himself appears, he is a far less assured on-camera presence than he would become. 

The onscreen figure who gets the most focus is Robbie Robertson. One of the earliest scenes starts with Scorsese flubbing an interview segment with Robbertson, who then provides explicit guidance on what to ask.

The other band members get a few moments, but it is Robertson’s voice that has primacy.

One quality it shares with Stop Making Sense is capturing the dynamic of performers - the most memorable is when Clapton’s string breaks, and Robbie Robertson picks up his solo without missing a beat.

While the performances are great, my favourite set-piece was one re-staged after the concert took place - the duet between the Band and the Staple Singers on ‘The Weight’. There is something magical about the way the camera pulls away from the Band, then pans to introduce Mavis Staples. Pure magic.

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Stop Making Sense

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!

Whip It (Drew Barrymore, 2009)

Grating under her mother’s (Marcia Gay Hayden) thumb, Bliss (Elliot Page) yearns to escape her small hometown and make a new life for herself.

After a trip to Austin, Bliss thinks she has found an outlet in roller derby. As she grows in skill and confidence, Bliss’s greatest challenge is not the competition, but defending this opportunity from her mother’s expectations.

Whip It was one of my favourite movies when I was younger. 

I had not thought about it for a while until a recent conversation I had with a friend about Elliot Page’s casting in The Odyssey.

It got me thinking about his previous work, and I remembered what an impression this film made on me.

Watching it now, it feels like a time capsule. In the pre-streaming era, modest genre pieces like this would come out a few times a year. Some would hit big, but most would leave theatres quickly to become fixtures on TV or physical media. 

It was also one of Page’s big moves after Juno made him a name.

I remember at the time leaving the theatre thinking I was watching the next big sleeper hit. It happened with Juno, right?

While my prediction turned out to be wrong, Whip It has had an afterlife as a cult film. It is not brought up in the first breath, but I have seen it pop on a few lists covering movies about sports, women and teens. 

It is impossible to watch Bliss’s struggles with identity without thinking of Page’s transition. I cannot offer any great analysis of it as an allegory, but that context did give Bliss’s journey some metatextual weight. 

Bliss’s struggle with her mother is fundamentally about their differing ideas on what being a successful woman is. 

What struck me about the movie is how it never treats these struggles as purely ideological differences - this a dynamic between family, between two people with understandable motivations.

While she is an antagonist, Bliss’s mother never comes across as a caricature - she sees pageants as a way to help Bliss achieve a better life for herself than the one she has. 

Marcia Gay Hayden’s Brooke feels like a real person. Her motives are also understandable, and Hayden’s choice to underplay the big moments rather than go for histrionics carries more impact (Hayden also has the power to convey a disappointment that feels cellular).

The film is a collection of familiar beats, but the film is smart enough to subordinate plot mechanics to character. The big example is the reveal that rival Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) does not use Bliss’s lying about her age to enter the sport to sabotage her. 

This could have been an easy plot turn for the third act, but instead the movie focuses on the real conflict, between Bliss and her mother, or more deeply, Bliss’s conflict about what kind of person she wants to be (what does she ultimately want?).

While the film is savvy in how it plays with conventions, the one place where it feels a little too familiar is the romance with musician Oliver (Landon Pigg).

I believe Bliss’s feelings for Oliver but it still drags. The real romance is between Bliss and roller derby. 

It makes sense to have Bliss realise this, but on this viewing I caught myself checking out during the scenes with the pair connecting. 

It does not help that Page has better chemistry with Alia Shawkat as her best friend (they have such an easy rapport, why hasn’t anyone cast them together in something else?).

On top of her chemistry with Page, Shawkat’s dry wit is welcome, and her character Pash benefits from exploding an archetype.

She is a straight A student who also has a social life. There is a world where this character would be more of an outcast.

While she is just as anxious to escape, Pash is more ready to embrace new experiences - we see her drinking and hooking up without any reservations.

The supporting cast are excellent: 

Daniel Stern is great as Bliss’s warm but checked-out dad; he also has a great rapport with Hayden - he even gets a proper arc, finally taking a stand and giving an opinion.

The derby team are fun - Kristen Wiig, Eve, Zoe Bell and Barrymore herself have a believable group dynamic.

Andrew Wilson, brother of Owen and Luke, gets a rare meaty role as coach Razor, while a pre-cornball Jimmy Fallon has fun as a sleazy announcer.

It is a pity Barrymore has not directed any other features. She shows a strong understanding of tone; the humour never crowds out earnest emotion. The derby bouts feature some POV shots, but are clearly shot and choreographed.

Funny, moving, and featuring some surprisingly gnarly action, if you have not watched Whip It, you are missing out on something special.

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If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!