Madame Web – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is a film that shows that you can have a great cast and an exciting scenario, but that will still not lead to a coherent narrative that has an impact.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

Everyone sees the Spider-Person attacking them for the first time.

Madame Web Review –

Some of the best work that is happening in the superhero genre is coming out of Sony’s Spider-Man adjacent Marvel Universe. Unfortunately, that strength is found almost entirely in its animated division, and maybe Venom, if I have had a drink or two. Unfortunately, last year’s Morbius showed us that it is also the source of some of the worst films happening in this space. While we don’t reach those depths this week, we do get a movie that was screaming with potential but ended up being wholly lacklustre.

So to set the scene, in 1973, deep in the forests of Peru, a heavily pregnant Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) and her security partner Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) are looking for a spider whose venom is meant to have potent healing properties. Constance finds the spider but is betrayed by Webb and left for dead. A local tribe rescues her, but they can only save the life of her newborn. In the present of 2003, Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Webb (Dakota Johnson) is now a paramedic, but when a near-death experience rocks her world, there might be more than just some trauma unlocked.

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Drive-Away Dolls – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is a wild but somewhat inconsistent ride that will bring the laughs but probably does not have the lasting effect they were going for.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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

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

Love is a sleigh ride to HELL.

Drive-Away Dolls Review –

The early 200s was a wild time for the raunchy road trip film, with gems like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and EuroTrip. For a while, they had fallen out of fashion, maybe because the old focus of those films no longer ran true for modern audiences. However, in the last few years, we have started to see a resurgence in this genre, and it is just such a film that we are looking at today.  

So to set the scene, we opened in Philadelphia in 1999 on the cusp of the new Millennium or, as it was known at the time, the Willennium. Here, there are two good friends, Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), who could not be more different. But when Jamie breaks up with her girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), well more, she gets dumped after multiple cheating incidents. Jamie decides to tag along on Marian’s trip to Tallahassee, Florida, to help Marian get some. The only problem is that Jamie persuades Marian to use a service to cut down on the cost by driving a car down there for free (a drive-away). The only problem is that something else might be taking the trip with them, a something that many people want.

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith: Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – This fascinatingly compelling series that took the essence of the film and then turned everything up to eleven while providing a slightly more plausible scenario.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.

End Credit Scene – Infidelity & A Breakup have mid-credit scenes.

Donald Glover & Maya Erskine

Mr. & Mrs. Smith Review –

If you are of my age, then you know about the cultural moment that was Mr. & Mrs. Smith even if you never watched the film. I did get to watch the movie at the time, and it was funny, entertaining, and incredibly hot. However, that was such a moment in pop culture history that, understandably, no one has attempted to take another stab at it before now. But after a troubled production, can the show reach the heights of where it came from? I would say yes. 

So to set the scene, we open in a small house in the middle of nowhere. It is here where John Smith (Alexander Skarsgard) and Jane Smith (Eiza Gonzalez Reyna) are enjoying a glass of wine until an unannounced car arrives and kills the both of them. Later, we see two anonymous people going through the application process to join an independent spy agency. This application process is about finding a compatible partner as well as seeing if they are a good fit for the agency. But as John (Donald Glover) and Jane (Maya Erskine) Smith settle into their new brownstone in New York, they soon discover just how intense this job can be. We will be looking at the season as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Halo: Visegrad – TV Review

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TL;DR – In what might be the best episode of the series so far, we ratchet up the tension, and give some real danger.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

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

Warning – This episode contains scenes that may cause distress.

Reach before the fall.

Halo Review –

When you have a whole galaxy to play in, it can be hard to find your focus. You have so many competing demands on your story where you want to give it depth, but then all you do is bring complexity. Science Fiction shows can very much fall into this trap, but when it all fits together, well, you get today’s episode.

So to set the scene, in last week’s episode, Sword, we discovered a genuinely horrific fact: not only do The Covenant know where Reach is, but they are already on the planet. Given that The Covenant has been glassing every planet they find with humans on it, this is a bad, bad, bad thing. Thus, we find John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), Riz-028 (Natasha Culzac), Vannak-134 (Bentley Kalu) & Kai-125 (Kate Kennedy) making their way through the Visegrád Sector to a comms relay that has gone dark, hoping to find the Cobalt team alive. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Kill Me If You Dare (Zabij Mnie, Kochanie) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is an incredibly silly film, but if that is the vibe you are after, then it nails it.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

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

A knife falls to the floor.

Kill Me If You Dare Review –

I think there is one thing that is almost universal across most cultures: what would you do if you won the lottery, or as we call it here, the lotto? Just asking that question probably provoked a number of thoughts as to what you would do with such a large amount of money. But what would you do if you were married and things were not as good as they could be?

So to set the scene, we open in this grand romantic gesture as Piotr (Mateusz Banasiuk) races to catch Natalia (Weronika Ksiązkiewicz) before she leaves on the train. But while he misses the train, he does not miss the love of his life, and he instantly proposes. Five years later, the love is not as strong as it once was, but maybe a shock lotto win might change that. Well, perhaps not if each other thinks the other wants to murder them and take the money for themselves.

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Force of Nature: The Dry 2 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – There is a solid film in here; you just need to find it through all the messiness.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

The Victorian bush.

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 Review –

Back in 2020, there was a great moment when, thanks to the current circumstances, The Dry, Penguin Bloom, and High Ground were the top films in Australia, the first time in an age that three Australian films had managed that. Of those, there was one that was primed for a sequel, and that is what we are looking at today.

So to set the scene, it is a wet and cold morning as four women crash through the bush of the Giralang Ranges to the sound of a coming car. Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness), Beth (Sisi Stringer), Bree (Lucy Ansell) & Lauren (Robin McLeavy) are cold, wet, and hurt, but all the more importantly, they are missing one of their group, Alice (Anna Torv). It is a dense forest, and searching it will be difficult, but as we discover, Alice is an informant, and her last phone call to Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) was profoundly concerning, making people wonder just what happened up on that mountain.    

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Halo: Sword – TV Review

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TL;DR – A more contained story that was slightly frustrating until you understood its context.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

The green mountains of Reach.

Halo Review –

We are making a splash with the second of the two-episode opening for Halo’s second season. The first episode showed a bit more focus than we saw in Season One, and that intrigued me. More than anything, I want to see if this was a blip or if this is a new direction for the series.  

So to set the scene, we open with Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey (Natascha McElhone) in a beautiful room, getting all her favourite things, which, of course, means that she is in prison somewhere. It is a nice prison, with pomegranate, but a prison nonetheless. Meanwhile, on Reach, John (Pablo Schreiber) is struggling to find himself now his team has been grounded by Ackerson (Joseph Morgan), and the lies continue to build. On Rubble, Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha) discovers that their precarious position might be even more perilous than they thought. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Ashes (Kül) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A film that does a fantastic job of setting up a world and mystery that unfortunately can’t sustain itself all the way to the end.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

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

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

Warning – Some scenes may cause distress.

The manuscript Kül.

Ashes Review –

Today, we dive back into the world of romance but with a side of danger as we explore Turkish cinema for the first time properly on the site. Romance films can be fascinating because they can meld and merge into so many different genres and take on a broad scope of tone. In today’s film, we dive into the harder edge of the genre, where danger awaits.

So to set the scene, from all appearances, Gökçe (Funda Eryigit) is living her best life. She is a successful publisher with a talent for picking good manuscripts, something that has made her husband Kenan (Mehmet Günsür) fabulously wealthy. But her life feels like it is missing something, missing a lot of things. But when a manuscript called Kül arrives, she is immediately transported into its prose. Being captured by its narrative, it awakens a joy that she had not realised was missing. But when she discovers the bakery in the book is real, and more of the book is real, she hunts down the mysterious man.

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Halo: Sanctuary – TV Review

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TL;DR – It’s an intriguing start to the season, even if it flounders a bit in the middle.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

Master Chief gets Cortana removed from his head.

Halo Review –

Back in the first season of Halo, we got an interesting story that actively went in different directions from the Halo series it was adapting. Some of it worked, some of it was a mess. I was not all that attached to the original story, so I didn’t mind the story changes. However, since then, while I might not have a greater love of the story, I have found a great love of the Halo games itself, which made me wonder how they would take the story from there.

So to set the scene, on Sanctuary in the Branta System, a platoon of Spartans are helping with a particularly difficult civilian evacuation. This is made even more so when a Covenant cruiser is spotted on an intercept course. It should be a routine evacuation mission, bar the fact that maybe the Covenant are already on the planet, and maybe Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) is all by himself outside of comms range. Well, it is a good thing he is a super soldier. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Mapping Percy Jackson’s Quest – Map-It

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TL;DR – We map Percy’s Quest to the underworld and back again.  

Percy approaches the tree.

Mapping Percy Jackson –

Well, we have reached the end of the first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and you can read our review HERE, but spoiler alert, it’s good. However, when you have a quest that takes you across a continent, well, you know I will have to map it, and here is no exemption.

With our map, we used the locations where they state them in the show; sometimes, these are pretty vague, and we have to make educated guesses. Sometimes, it is the Empire State Building where you can list its address (350 Fifth Avenue for those playing at home). Now, where we are given no location whatsoever, I went back to the books and used the information we have there.

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