Category Archives: Movie Reviews

The Gorge – Movie Review

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TL;DR – The oddest meet-cute I have ever watched, which could have been interesting if that narrative was there to support it.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the AppleTV+ service that viewed this film.

A helicopter over a gorge.

The Gorge Review –

When you have been poorly sick for a while, it is hard to get that motivating spark going again. The more you are away, the more content you miss and the deeper the backlog gets. But sometimes, it is best to just dive headfirst into something and see what happens, which is what we did with our film today.  

So, to set the scene, Levi (Miles Teller) is a very successful sniper who has been out of the Marines for several years, working for private military contractors until he was deemed unfit to serve. He didn’t have a reason or drive to contest the results, but maybe an old spook that could command the Army around might give him that drive. He is taken to an undisclosed location in the middle of a no-fly zone, so secretive that they have scanners to stop it from being seen by satellites. Western powers control one side, the Eastern powers control the other, and there is one person on each side. But they are not stopping people from getting into the gorge. Oh no, they have to make sure what is in the gorge never comes out.   

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Captain America: Brave New World – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is a perfectly serviceable film saved by a strong rapport between the cast and perfectly fine action sequences, but it was aiming for a level it did not have the strength to reach.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is an end-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Celestial Island.

Captain America: Brave New World Review –

There are some films where you walk in with a healthy amount of trepidation, and for me, this was one of them. The Captain America films were always one of the highlights of the MCU for me, with Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier & Captain America: Civil War all scoring high on my best of MCU lists. I even enjoyed The Falcon and The Winter Soldier series, even if it was a bit uneven. But something about the production just felt off, and the need to drop the Red Hand into every trailer made it feel like they didn’t have much else to go with. Having watched it now, I think this was both a fair and, luckily, unfair suggestion.  

So, to set the scene, it has been several years since Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) took over the mantle of Captain America, and while things have been going well, they are about to be tested with the election of Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) to United States President. We open in as Cap flies a mission in Mexico, recapturing a container captured by mercenaries led by Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito). The mission was a success, and Sam, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) were invited to the White House to see the Celestial Island Treaty be signed. It was a perfect night right up until Isaiah stood up and tried to kill the president. Chaos erupts, and suddenly, the world is on the brink of war.

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Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – Movie Review

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TL;DR – In a cup, add a heaped measure of situational comedy, a tablespoon of second-hand embarrassment & a squeeze of authentic charm. Shake it up and pour over the realisation that you are getting older & serve with a garnish of the exploration of life after death.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There are items during the credits.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Three figures release a single balloon into the air.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy Review –

Now, I should be a bit clear: up until this point, I have never watched a Bridget Jones film before. When they first came out, I was very much not the target audience, but as you get older, you realise that target audiences are bogus and you should be experiencing a variety of medias. It also looked like this was going to be a bit of a soft reboot, so it was the perfect time to jump in. Little did I know just how right I was.  

So, to set the scene, it has been four years since Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) was tragically killed during a humanitarian mission overseas. Since then, Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) has been spending time at home trying to raise her two children alone, working through both their and her grief. But as the anniversary of Mark’s death draws near, Bridget is forced to look at her life and wonder if she is doing the right thing for her and her kids. But even though everyone has an opinion on how she should approach life, especially those nasty school mums, she needs to find her own way. But it won’t hurt if the new teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and local ranger Roxster (Leo Woodall) help change her perspectives.    

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Street Trash (2025) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a film that is catering to a very niche audience, and if that is you, fantastic, if you are everyone else …. It’s not for you.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and end-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.

Warning – Contains Scenes that may cause distress.

Scientist bathed in red light looks on to the horror he has created.

Street Trash Review –

There are times when you need to get out of your comfort zone, and if there is one area that I actively avoid, it is body horror. Well, today, it is the time to rip that Band-Aid off and dive into a weird example from South Africa that is a vague sequel of one of the Tentpole films in the genre.

So, to set the scene, we open with a volunteer getting an injection and not understanding why they are asking for his next of kin. Which is a question you ask before getting the injection that has you melt from the inside while still alive. As Cape Town burns down around them, the local people are just trying to survive between arrest by the corrupt cops and being exploited by the goons of the Rat King. In this world lives Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael), Alex (Donna Cormack Thomson), Chef (Joe Vaz), 2-Bit (Gary Green), Wors (Llyoyd Martinez Newkirk), Pap (Shuraigh Meyer), a bunch of ragtag castoffs trying to live, which is hard when Mayor Mostert (Warrick Grier) creates flying chemical weapon drones to exterminate the undesirables in the city.  

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Conclave – Movie Review

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TL;DR – An exquisitely acted and produced film that takes you into a world rarely seen with the weight of a drama but with all the fascination of a political intrigue.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

Red Cardinals against white marble columns.

Conclave Review –

It is tough to see honest explorations of faith and religion in modern cinema. When films exploring faith come out of Hollywood, they usually feel like hollow vessels divorced from reality. But then you watch movies that come out of the faith-based industry, and more often than not, you are watching trumped-up emotional blackmail hiding under the frame of faith. So, call me surprised when I sat down to watch Conclave and discovered something different.   

So, to set the scene, the Pope is dead, long live the Pope. If there is ever an organisation that has embraced the pomp and circumstance, it is the Catholic Church, and this happens in death just as much or even more than life. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), who is Dean of the College of Cardinals, has to convene a conclave to pick the next Pope even though he feels unworthy of the task. However, as cardinals fly in from across the globe, it is clear that there is tension regarding how the Church will move forward. Will it embrace tradition or modernity? Or maybe somewhere in between.

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Year 10 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A descent into a world holding on by an edge, oh and mud, so much mud, you would not believe how much mud there is.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.

Pine forest.

Year 10 Review –

One of the reasons that Post-Apocalyptic stories do so well is because they strip all vestiges of society from us and shine a light on who we are as a people. Sometimes, that light reveals a tenacity to overcome trials, a goodness that powers through no matter the situation, or it shows the base animals that we are. Today’s film very much leans on that last point as we get down and dirty in the mud of humanity.  

So, to set the scene, it has been ten years since civilization collapsed, and it has reached the point where people have resorted to cannibalism to survive. It is a dangerous world where packs of dogs roaming the countryside can be just as deadly as the people looking for one last scrap of food. When one single careless act leads a band of thugs back to their hiding place, Jake (Toby Goodger) is forced to take a trek across dangerous ground to get antibiotics for his Girl (Hannah Khalique-Brown), the last person he has left in his life.

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Star Trek: Section 31 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – There are some interesting ideas here and some fun action sequences, but it is held back by serious pacing issues that occurred when they crunched this into a movie.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this film.

A Section 31 communicator.

Star Trek: Section 31 Review –

Well, if there is one series of Star Trek that always seemed to get brushed aside, it was Deep Space Nine, and while a lot of people have come around on it in recent years, even the other Star Trek production teams at the time didn’t truly understand it, which meant that up until maybe Lower Decks, we have never seen the impact of the show on the broader universe. Well, almost never. Because there was one part of the show that nearly everyone since has picked up and run with: Section 31. Which would be great if that was not the one bit of Deep Space Nine that I didn’t like. Well, if Star Trek is going to dabble in making movies again, and they are going to use Section 31 as the base, then headlining it with Michelle Yeoh absolutely should be the best way to start it off.   

So, to set the scene, Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) was the Terran Emperor of the Mirror Universe, brought into our Universe before being sent far into the future. There, she was unable to live, and she was sent back to a time that would be more stable for her by The Guardian of Forever [sometime in the early 2300s]. Here, Georgiou has been living under the guise of Madame du Franc at the space station Baraam. But there is an alien selling a bioweapon Godsend, and a Section 31 team led by Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick) was sent into to neutralise Georgiou and take out the weapons dealer. But of course, it all goes wrong.  

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A Complete Unknown – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A wild exploration of one of the most prominent musical writers of an age or two, but also of a time and movement in American music that I don’t think we’ll see again.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a screening of this film.

Bob arrives in New York.

A Complete Unknown Review –

There are a lot of musical biopics out there in the world, some more earned than others. But there is an understandable power behind them, given music’s ability to move your soul. But when you think back to which songwriters have had the most impact on music in the modern era, few names are in the same ballpark as Bob Dylan, and it makes sense to explore his life and the effect it did have and well is still having to this day.   

So, to set the scene, one cold New York night, a young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arrives at the hospital bed of his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) after hearing he was unwell. Bob is an expert in Folk Music, having picked up sounds from across America. Luckily for Bob, who was also visiting Woody at that time, was famed folk musician Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), who brought the young man under his wings. Soon, Bob will be captivating the New York Folk Music scene, but being a singular talent comes with as many downsides as successes.  

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The Brutalist – Movie Review

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TL;DR – Elegant, stunning, and powerful, it is a film that will stay with me for a long time even though I don’t think I will ever watch it again.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

An upside-down Statue of Liberty.
An upside-down Statue of Liberty.

The Brutalist Review –

Today, we look at a film that absolutely captivated me from start to finish, and given that it is three and a half hours long, that is a lot of runtime to have to keep you engaged. However, I think you might see how each and every step captivates, even when the film can be deeply uncomfortable.  

So, to set the scene, László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is a Hungarian Jew who was separated from everyone he loves during World War Two. Escaping Europe by himself, he manages to make it to America and go live with and work for his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) in Philadelphia. Things are tense in the closed environment. However, a chance encounter with Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) puts him into the orbit of the powerful, industrious Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), someone who might just let László create his brutalist masterpiece.

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American Dreamer – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It was a profoundly odd film that was also surprisingly charming.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film

Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine laugh in the sand.

American Dreamer Review –

There are times when you want a big, bombastic work of cinema, and then there are times when you want a smaller character work where an actor can really dig into a character. Today, we get to look at the latter, set in the odd world of academia, which I understand, and the stranger world of real estate, of which I do not.

So, to set the scene, Dr Phil Loder (Peter Dinklage) is an adjunct professor of economics, which means he is not high up on the academic totem pole. He is not well thought of and will never have the money for the house he wants [look … relatable]. As people say, “he is a dreamer, not a doer”. But one day, when looking at the houses he can’t afford, he comes across a listing for a home that is well out of his reach but with a ‘Live In’ option that cuts millions of dollars off the price. It seems too good to be true; the owner gets to stay there until they die, but she is old, so that shouldn’t be much of a wait. 

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