Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Jason Bourne

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TL;DR – This movie is everything you have come to expect from a Jason Bourne film, but that means all the good and the bad is here.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Jason Bourne. Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

Review –

I have to say before we start that the original Bourne Trilogy (Identity, Supremacy & Ultimatum) is probably one of my favourite trilogies of all time, for me I put it up there with the original Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The follow-up Legacy had some interesting ideas but it lacked the style and understanding of the previous films, and it felt like they had just inserted the Bourne universe into an original IP. So given how high my impression of the first films was, and how low the follow up was, I was preparing myself for this iteration to be a train wreck, but thankfully it’s not. For me, it is everything the old Bourne’s were, however, the last of those films were made almost 10 years ago, and that is a bit of the problem if you are just doing the same thing over again.

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Movie Review – Star Trek Beyond

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TL;DR – They finally found the right formula for the reboot series and it is glorious, the cast is amazing, the action is good, and every joke hits its mark.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Star Trek Beyond. Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

I think I need to start with some context before jumping into this review, on the whole, I do really like the Star Trek franchise, however, I have not been a fan of this rebooted Star Trek movie series. The first movie had great casting, but the story was full of logical problems and lazy short-cuts, that it removed any real emotional weight to killing off Vulcan, and I just really did not like it (2/5 stars). The second film Into Darkness did a little better with me, as it had some reasonably good character moments, and some interesting set pieces, but the need to recreate one of the most iconic conflicts in Star Trek, and then the ability to not quite pull it off left the movie feeling quite flat (2.5/5 stars). I want to say this upfront so you understand this 5 out of 5 I am giving the film (only the second one of 2016) is not because I am enamoured completely with everything Star Trek, I am giving this film a 5 out of 5 because it has bloomin’ well earned it.

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Movie Review – Ghostbusters (Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) (2016)

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TL;DR – If you have never seen a Ghostbusters film then you should really enjoy this, if you have, it will take a bit to get use to the cast, but by the end you will be all on board.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

P.S. there is a post-credits scene

Ghostbusters. Image Credit: Sony.

Review –

Ghostbusters as a movie is really quite simple, you have a bunch of people that stop Ghosts. The title of the film pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the story before you go to see it.

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Movie Review – The Legend of Tarzan

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TL;DR – There are some aspects of this film that just work, but there are others that just don’t, if you do go to see it you will probably enjoy it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

The Legend of Tarzan. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

Hollywood remaking movies from the past are all the rage at the moment, with Disney doing live versions of their classic cartoons, we’ll have a Magnificent 7 film later this year, and the list goes on and on. This week we have the remake of the Classic Tarzan film/book series with The Legend of Tarzan. As far as reboots go, it’s ok, but there are a lot of issues with it, well one big one really, and all of that draws it down quite a bit.

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Movie Review – Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

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TL;DR – About as enjoyable as an overseas destination wedding

Score – 1.5 out of 5 stars

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

You know this is a movie I have seen so many times now, to the point I was going to have my review be same as – The Night Before, Dirty Grandpa, Grimsby and on and on and on. It feels like when The Hangover exploded on the screens, and Hollywood realised that people would go watch an R-rated comedy they decided that this would be the only type of R-rated comedy that would sell, so they change the setting and the cast, well actually no, not the cast because you see the same cast members over and over again, I’m looking at you Zac Efron, and the same wacky adventure, with the same jump scare humour, the only difference is trying to outgross the last successful film to see where the line in the sand is. All of this, at best, gets quite boring to watch, and at worse can actually drag down really important issues with it, see Bad Neighbours 2. I would like to say Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates breaks this trend and tries to do something different like Deadpool, but alas not, it is the same old shtick with a new colour of paint over the top.

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Movie Review – The BFG

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TL;DR – Beautiful, touching, funny, heart-warming, if you go you will have a good time

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

The BFG. Image Credit: Disney.

Review –

I grew up during the Disney Renaissance, in a time of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Mulan. It was a great time for fairy tales … but they all have that Disney-fication about their stories that removed a lot of the weird, I mean have you ever read the One Thousand and One Nights, or the original Hans Christian Andersen version of The Little Mermaid, that stuff be messed up. So when I was growing up the were two sources of weird that you could come across, the first was Paul Jennings which was adapted into the Australian mainstay of Round The Twist, and the other was Roald Dahl. His work was wired and wonderful, books like The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, were irreverent, weird, wonderful and full of heart. Now, movie adaptions of Roald Dahl’s books have been hits and misses, and Roald Dahl himself had been generally really negative about all the movie adaptions of his books. So with this in mind we have The BFG, a book I loved as a child, but with movie adaptions of books being such a mixed bag, how does this one go? The BFG is one of the best I have seen.

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Movie Review – Independence Day Resurgence

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TL;DR – If you want spectacle, it has it, and indeed it still has a really good message which I think we need now more than ever, but it just does not hit the same mark as the first film.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Independence Day Resurgence. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

The original Independence Day is a masterpiece of cinema, it was technically quite brilliant for its time with the effects, it reinvigorated the genre in a time of stagnation, it blew the roof off the standard of what a blockbuster is, and at the heart of it, it had a really good story and theme. Seriously, go watch that speech at the end, I’ll link it below, it still is amazing.

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Movie Review – Warcraft (Warcraft The Beginning)

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TL;DR – A film with a lot of promise, held down by too many competing demands.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Warcraft (Warcraft The Beginning). Image Credit: Legendary.

Review –

So there is this stigma about movies based on Video Game franchises, that they simply will never be good, indeed Good Game did a whole episode on this very issue. To be fair, at best we have only ever got passable Video Game movies, and the only good film in this genre was Wreck-It Ralph and it only used Video Games as a setting, and of course the less said about Pixels the better. So with all this, is Warcraft the movie that will break the curse? No, no it won’t. So before we go on I should qualify that I never played World of Warcraft, so I am coming to this movie with only the knowledge that you get from being on the Internet, Alliance and Horde and all that jazz. That being said, for a movie to be good I should be able to understand everything without playing the source material, and a good adaption would make that happen.

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Movie Review – Hunt for the Wilderpeople

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TL;DR – A beautifully filmed story, with real depth and heart, a great cast, and more so since the Lord of the Rings makes the most out of its New Zealand setting

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Image Credit: Madman.

Review – Wow, people had recommended ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’ to me, but nothing prepared me for just how good it would be. It runs the gamut of emotions from humour to sadness, from absurdity to quiet contemplation, from grief to rejoicing. Wilderpeople tells the story of Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) who is a general problem child and on his last chance when he is sent out into the bush to live with Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and Hec (Sam Neill). Bella is a loving woman who takes an immediate shine to Ricky even though Paula (Rachel House) the social worker insists he is a problem case. Hec is a more gruff character that seems to more tolerate than actual like Ricky. It is within this framework that we get the motivation for act two and three when people are propelled forward and have to fight for what they believe in.

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Movie Review – The Nice Guys

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TL;DR – A pretty solid buddy/cop film, not something I have seen in a while, it does have a lot of style, but it hasn’t quite got the substance to go along with it.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Nice Guys. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

This is an interesting film in that it is a good old fashioned buddy/cop film, and it has been a while since I have seen a good one, yes I am looking at you Bastille Day, in fact it is a genre that you just don’t see that often anymore, which is a pity because while it can be very cliché, when done well it is a lot of fun to watch.

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