Wicked forever: the enduring appeal of The Wizard Of Oz

Musical sequel Wicked: For Good, enchanting audiences across the world, arrives as the 1939 fantasy continues to dominate pop culture Most of the biggest streaming services are notoriously neglectful of any movie released before the 1990s (and in some cases, before the turn of the millennium). Even the big theatrical nostalgia screenings are starting to creep into the 21st century, as movies that, to the older among us, don’t seem ready for a multi-decade anniversary. (Did Batman Begins really just turn 20 ?! Is Mean Girls seriously old enough to drink ?) So it’s all the more impressive that one of the hottest properties of the past few years has been ... The Wizard of Oz , a movie far closer to its 100th anniversary than its 25th. Of course, The Wizard of Oz as (shudder) intellectual property dates well before the 1939 release of the beloved MGM musical. L Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at the turn of the previous century, in 1900. It spawned 13 increasingly eccentr...

Renegades review – veteran musclemen team up for ‘geri-action’ caper

Nick Moran and Lee ‘Six Million Dollar Man’ Majors are the star names in this UK thriller, but they are let down by inept action sequences and stilted banter

Cheap as undercooked chips, this British thriller about elderly ex-soldiers avenging a friend’s death belatedly cashes in on the 2010s trend for “geri-action” films, to borrow a term coined by Vulture’s Matt Patches. Though less slick, it resembles those American fisticuff- and gunfire-packed thrillers (the Red and Expendables franchises, for example) built around former big-name actors supplementing their pension schemes.

Directed by Daniel Zirilli, the film features Nick Moran (still best known for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) as the low-profile protagonist, Burton, a former SAS man suffering from PTSD. He gets scooped up on the street by an old acquaintance, American veteran Carver (former Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors), who has a beef with some gangsters in his London neighbourhood who are trafficking women, selling drugs and, given the age of everyone here, possibly dealing in black market ration cards.

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