The Screen Scribe

Side Notes: Why Adaptations Often Fail

June 27, 2025

There’s a particularly modern type of Hollywood executive who says things like, “We’re updating the themes for a modern audience” and somewhere, at that exact moment, a bookshop owner quietly weeps into a dog-eared paperback. Adaptations are Hollywood’s bread and butter and have been since before Technicolour. Novels, comics, video games, stage plays, toy lines,…
Recommendation: Top Gun – Maverick

June 25, 2025

Top Gun: Maverick, directed by Joseph Kosinski and released in 2022, is a rare sequel that not only lives up to its predecessor but arguably surpasses it in emotional depth, storytelling, and technical achievement. Coming 36 years after Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986), the film reintroduces audiences to Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) while embracing…
Review: Predator – Killer of Killers

June 23, 2025

Let’s not pretend this wasn’t on every Predator fan’s wish list: the Yautja finally doing what we’ve wanted them to do for decades, clash with history’s deadliest warriors in beautifully stylised, brutally efficient animated carnage. With Predator: Killer of Killers, the franchise finally gets ambitious in the right way, ditching the modern-day machismo and jungle…
Side Notes: Top 5 Directors of Modern Cinema

June 20, 2025

Let’s get one thing clear right up top: lists like this are never objective. They’re meant to stir debate, inspire a little outrage, and make someone in the comments shout “What about Villeneuve?!” like it’s a legal obligation. But with cinema in a strange, shape-shifting place with franchise fatigue setting in, streamers dictating budgets, and…
Recommendation: The Avengers

June 18, 2025

The Avengers, directed by Joss Whedon and released in 2012, is a landmark film in the superhero genre and a defining moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As the culmination of several standalone films—Iron Man, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Incredible Hulk—The Avengers brought together Marvel’s biggest heroes into a single,…
Review: Ballerina

June 17, 2025

In a world where everyone and their house cat seems to have a tragic backstory and a license to kill, it was only a matter of time before John Wick got a spin-off in slippers. Ballerina twirls onto the blood-slicked stage with Ana de Armas, aiming to blend grace with gunfire, pliés with point-blank execution.…
Side Notes: The Cinematic Universe Experiment

June 13, 2025

Remember when every studio exec seemed convinced the future of cinema was a web of interconnected franchises, each movie a thread in a glorious tapestry of IP synergy? Those were the days. Not necessarily good days, but certainly loud, shiny, and full of hope—at least in boardrooms. The shared cinematic universe, once Hollywood’s golden goose,…
Recommendation: Pirates of the Caribbean – Curse of the Black Pearl

June 11, 2025

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, directed by Gore Verbinski and released in 2003, is a swashbuckling fantasy adventure that revived the pirate genre for modern audiences. Inspired by the Disney theme park ride of the same name, the film blends action, comedy, supernatural elements, and romance into a high-energy cinematic…
Review: The Last of Us Season 2

June 9, 2025

There’s a fine line between bold storytelling and clumsy ambition and The Last of Us Season 2 spends a lot of time wobbling along that line. After the near-universal acclaim of its debut, expectations were understandably sky-high. But where Season 1 felt tightly crafted and emotionally precise, Season 2 lands with less sure footing. It’s…
Side Notes: Battle of the Summer Blockbusters

June 6, 2025

Ah, the summer blockbuster season. That time of year when studios hurl their most expensive, most explosive, most test-screened-to-death offerings at our faces and wallets in the hopes of birthing the Next Big Franchise (or at least staving off shareholder revolt until Q4). And 2025’s line-up? It’s a strange brew. Not bad. Not great. Just……