Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Gods of Egypt

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TL;DR – You will forget this movie within moments of watching it, I mean I had to take notes so I didn’t forget, average in every possible way.

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Gods of Egypt. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

Review –

Ah Gods of Egypt, you are the very embodiment of mediocracy, you are the ‘slice of white bread’ of cinema, nothing wrong with white bread, but it is inherently lacking in substance. So before I go ahead and rip into the film for the next few paragraphs I should make it clear that Gods of Egypt is just average, not necessarily bad, but just tremendously average. So what I am going to do is use Gods of Egypt as a case study on how an expensive film can come out just so bland.

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Movie Review – Three Wise Cousins

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TL;DR – It is a film that treads over very familiar ground, the ‘fish out of water’ scenario, however, it has a sense of humour and identity that elevates it above many of its contemporaries.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Three Wise Cousins. Image Credit: Madman.

Review –

This is an interesting little film, I didn’t really know anything about it going in and had not seen a single trailer, so I was intrigued to see how it would end up. Three Wise Cousins tells the story of Adam (Neil Amituanai) who lives in suburban Auckland with his parents and is doing pretty much nothing other than playing his PlayStation and sleep. One day he stumbles across the woman of his dreams Mary (Gloria Ofa Blake) and overhears that she is only interested in island boys. So Adam decides to drop everything and visit his cousins Tavita (Fesuiai Viliamu) and Mose (Vito Vito) in Samoa to learn how to be an island boy so he can impress Mary. Of course, once Adam gets there he finds out it is more than he bargained on as Mose and Tavita play a kind of good cop, bad cop, to get Adam to … well then that is the crux of the film so I won’t spoil it here.

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Movie Review – Zoolander 2

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TL;DR – It’s not the worse film I have ever seen, but it’s not that great, the last third is even pretty good, it is unfortunate that you have to sit through the rest of the film to get to it.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Zoolander 2. Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

So at the start of this film, you are reminded that the first Zoolander came out in 2001, wow, it has been a long time between sequels. So the question is, was it worth the wait? did we need a sequel to a reasonably good comedy from 2001?, will the fact that they killed of Justin Beiber in the first 5 minutes of the film absolve it of all wrongs? well not really. With that being said it’s not the worse film I have ever seen, it is just, well, to be honest, a bit of a disappointment.

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Movie Review – Deadpool

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TL;DR – Is it as good as its marketing campaign, no, that was pure genius, but it is still pretty darn good and a fun film to watch, though so so so so so not for kids.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

P.S. yes there is something after the credits

Deadpool. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

This is a really interesting film for a number of reasons, firstly most (if not all) comic book movies stick hard and fast to the American PG-13 rating, it’s safe and opens it up to a wider audience, instead, Deadpool went for its American R rating with gusto. It’s also a film that has to fit in the X-Men universe, but then it also has to stay true to the source which has a unique style that destroys the 4th wall at times. It has Ryan Reynolds as its lead, and unfortunately he doesn’t have many more chances left to be a headliner (after The Green Lantern, which to be fair was not his fault), it is also a film that has been in development hell since the early 2000s, taking a ‘leaked’ proof of concept trailer for people to greenlight the film. So here we are after a simply brilliant advertising campaign, what kind of film do we have? A pretty good one, but also a very adult film, I mean a very adult film, like seriously the whole 9 yards, like how did they get away with that, adult film.

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Movie Review – Dirty Grandpa

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TL;DR – What an awful steaming pile of effluent this move was, at best it is lazy, at worse it is deeply problematic, don’t waste your money on this.

Score – 1 out of 5 stars

Dirty Grandpa. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

Review –

Dirty Grandpa is a film about a recent widower taking his grandson on a trip to Daytona Beach, there is more to the story, but I could not be bothered to explain it.

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Movie Review – Spotlight

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TL;DR – This is a real life story that needed to be told, of scumbags who hurt children and them covered it up, I just wish it had been done a bit better.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Spotlight. Image Credit: Open Road Films.

Review –

Spotlight is the real life story of the Spotlight team of The Boston Globe. This is a team of investigative journalists who pick their own stories to investigate, sometimes spending years researching their cases. In early 2001 after some prompting, they start looking into the Catholic Church in the Boston area and how they handled sexual abuse cases. Here they discover that it is not just a couple of bad apples and that it is a much bigger problem, one the Church knew about and one they covered up.

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Movie Review – The Hateful Eight

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TL;DR – A beautiful film in a certain respect, filled with Tarantino’s trademark gore but not a whole lot of anything else

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

The Hateful Eight. Image Credit: TWC.

Review –

So two of the three films I have seen this year have been set in the snowy reaches of frontier America, both contain people battling against the elements and a lot of blood, violence and unsettling themes. However, while I walked out of The Revenant feeling that I had witnessed something truly remarkable, when I walked out of The Hateful Eight I felt, “well, yer, that was a thing”.

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Movie Review – Sisters

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TL;DR – A simple paint by numbers comedy, funny but ultimately a bit disappointing

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Sisters. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

I went and watched Sisters right after The Revenant, as a way to decompress after that spectacle of filmmaking. Given that both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are incredible comedians separately and together they are amazing I had really high expectations for Sisters. So was it funny, well in places yes it was, but it was also comedy paint by numbers, where you can chart the course of the film after about 20 minutes in.

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Movie Review – The Revenant

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TL;DR – Bleak but Beautiful, Though provoking but brutal, Heart-wrenching but uplifting, One of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen but one I don’t think I ever want to watch again

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

The Revenant. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

Wow, the first movie for the year and boy is this an amazing work of art, this is a movie that is at times hauntingly beautiful and at other times horrifically brutal, this is not a film to take your children to, there are vivid violence and some very disturbing scenes. The Revenant is fictional retelling of the real life story of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) who was left for dead after being mauled by a grizzly bear and has to try and survive in the barren frozen wastelands of (the now) The United States of America fighting his own body, the elements, and the indigenous population.

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Movie Review – Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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TL;DR – “Sing Hallelujah!, Sing it, Sing Hallelujah!, Sing it, yeah, Sing Hallelujah! … Sing Hallelujah!” – Dr. Alban

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Image Credit: Disney.

Review –

Ok before we start I am going to try my best to have no spoilers in this review, but you should be warned that while I may try my best there may be a couple of little tidbits throughout this review. Anyway, this is a great film and you should go into with as little information as possible, go see it before someone spoils it for you.

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