Gemma Chan

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: The Creator is high-end, low-tech sci-fi with middling ambitions

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 11th October 2023

    Apologetically plonked at the end of the September release schedule like a $100m afterthought, Gareth Edwards' The Creator is a movie that does a lot with a little, although that should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the director's prudent knack of making movies that look twice as expensive as they actually are. His first movie since Star Wars spin-off Rogue One - that rare Disney-era Star Wars feature that is universally beloved - Edwards finds himself back on imperious form, crafting a zeitgeisty tale about the dangers of A.I. that couldn't be more timely if it were written by ChatGPT itself.

  • Review: Captain Marvel is predictably great fun by numbers

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 5th March 2019

    It seems strange now to consider any new Marvel movie to be a risk. After 20 films, each amassing box office receipts equal to the size of entire national economies, surely a new instalment of the MCU can only ever be a sure thing at this stage? And yet, here we are, with a film that is about risky as Marvel gets now; not because this is its first female-fronted film (Wonder Woman has kapowed that glass ceiling already), but because we are dealing with a character most won’t know, with abilities that are supposed to be more powerful than anything we have ever seen before, played by a still relatively obscure lead actress. Oh and there’s that little thing of presenting her as the Endgame saviour of the Infinity War. Have no doubt, Marvel is rolling the dice here, even if they are safely loaded.

  • Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 20th January 2014

    Jack Ryan is unique in reboot terms, in that you could hardly call him a franchise: with four actors playing a single role over five movies, it feels more like a Doctor Who-esque regeneration than an attempt to rebuild the character from scratch. Despite his myriad abilities, Jack Ryan is not the most adaptable of fellows: there are few drastic differences between Chris Pine's interpretation of the Tom Clancy hero and Ben Affleck's take in The Sum Of All Fears. When you consider just how much America has changed in the last 12 years, in terms of global perception, geo-politics and national security, Shadow Recruit has to go down as a missed opportunity. Apart from an early nod to the September 11th attacks, it could have been written in 2004, 1994 or even 1984. It feels intentionally bland; homogenised so it can play to any audience at any time. Except Russians, obviously.