Tag Archives: American Cinema

Movie Review – Warcraft (Warcraft The Beginning)

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4

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 – The Nice Guys

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7

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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Movie Review – X-Men: Apocalypse

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11

TL;DR – Ok straight off the bat this is not as good as the last two, but it is still a pretty good outing for the X-Men, and leagues ahead of the Last Stand

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. there is a post credit scene

X-Men: Apocalypse. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox

Review –

So here we are with the six main film in the X-Men franchise, we’ve had one franchise killer, we’ve had one reboot, and a resurgence, so can Apocalypse continue the strong trend of First Class and Days of Future Past? Well no. Now I’m not saying it is a bad film, honestly it is just a disappointing one at times.

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Movie Review – Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

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2

TL;DR – This is a film I should not like because it has many of the problems that usually frustrate me, but somehow it charmed me, and in the end I have to say I really liked Whisky Tango Foxtrot.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a really interesting film for a number of reasons, it has Tina Fey in her first real attempt to move into more dramatic roles, it is dealing with the aftermath of the War in Afghanistan post-Iraq when everyone forgot about it, it is analysing the culture that gets created in such a weird situation of extremes, and also because it engages in so many of the things that I dislike in films yet I still really like it for some reason.

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Bad Neighbours 2 (Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) Movie Review –

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5

TL;DR – This is an interesting film however, it just does not work really well, it is not that the film does not bring up some interesting issues, it’s just that they are overwhelmed by a standard Seth Rogen comedy and everything that goes with that.

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Bad Neighbours 2 (Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising). Image Credit: Universal.

Review – So well, yer, this is quite a difficult film to review, because there are many things about Bad Neighbours 2 that are really interesting, and I really want to give the film props for talking about them. But, and trust me it is a big but, you have to wade through so much rubbish to get to those moments, and there are other films that do it better.

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Movie Review – Captain America: Civil War

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30

TL;DR – This is without a doubt the Marvel film so far, it gets the action right, the story right, the characters right, it is a fantastic film that I highly recommend.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

P.S. There is a mid and end credits sequence

Captain America: Civil War. Image Credit: Marvel/Disney.

Review –

Ok wow, what a film and so far the best film for 2016 and indeed the only one so far to get a 5/5 score. After the recent poor outing of Batman v Superman, I was wondering if Marvel could actually pull this off. Can they contrive a plausible reason these characters would be fighting, actually manage all the characters in a movie that is totally not Avengers 3, but let’s be honest, this is totally Avengers 3. However, I needn’t have been concerned, the Russo Brothers are masters of their craft and they show it here in spades. Ok to lay out how this review will go, the first part will just give a general spoiler-free analysis, and then in the second part we will be going full spoilers, there will be a warning so you can skip it if you have not seen the film.

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Movie Review – The Jungle Book (2016)

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TL;DR – While not a flawless movie, it is beautifully crafted and a great follow-up to the Disney classic.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Jungle Book. Image Credit: Disney.

Review –

The Jungle Book continues Disney’s campaign to recreate its classic animated films in live action remakes or hybrid live action. So far we have had the quite bold Maleficent, the serviceable Cinderella, and now it is time to take on Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece ‘The Jungle Book’. The choice to do The Jungle Book is an interesting one because it is not without its problems, the original cartoon while still a classic in every right, does have some very problematic depictions. As well as this, the author of the original work is Rudyard Kipling and whether Mr Kipling intended to or not his poem “The White Man’s Burden” became a literary justification for a new wave (or at least an intensification) of colonialism and imperialism throughout the world. So while none of this would have been problematic in the 1960s, it is today, and it is clear Disney or at least the director and writer had these issues on the radar when filming. So within this potentially problematic environment, it is really quite interesting to see Disney take quite a risk here, and it is a risk I do believe that has paid off for them.

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Movie Review – My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

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1

TL;DR – This film has a truly terrible first impression but it grows on you with a good story and amusing characters

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

The first My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a sleeper hit back in 2002 and succeeded because it had a lot of charm, and it was quite different than a lot of the films of that time. So it has been 14 years since the first film so was the sequel worth the wait or do we have another Zoolander 2 on our hands, well, it’s complicated.

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Movie Review – Kung Fu Panda 3

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10

TL;DR – A beautifully animated film with real heart and warmth, that elevates it above most ‘kids’ films that you see in cinemas.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Kung Fu Panda 3. Image Credit: Dreamworks.

Review –

Before we start, let’s be honest for a moment, it is not that hard to make a successful kid’s film. Kid’s love simple slapstick humour, vibrant colourful characters, and hey chuck in a sing-along CD and a toy line and you’re set. Indeed parents like anything that they can sit their kid’s in front of so they can have a moment of peace to clean up the carnage that kids leave in their wake. This is why Angry Birds will be a financial success and parent’s cabinets are filled with DVDs of whatever Cars knockoff is going at the moment. Making a successful kid’s film, not that hard, making a good kid’s film, well that’s another thing entirely. However, after last week’s Zootopia and this week’s Kung Fu Panda 3 we can see that it is possible to create a kid’s film that is both successful and in fact really quite good. Indeed it is a really good time for animated films at the moment, and kid’s films in general, because people are actually taking the time to create thought-provoking quality work, see Inside Out, Wreck-it Ralph, Big Hero 6, How To Train Your Dragon, literally anything by Studio Ghibli and indeed today’s film Kung Fu Panda 3.

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Movie Review – Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

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23

TL;DR – An utter mess of a film, disjointed, nonsensical, and a very poor foundation for DC to build their Justice League series on

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

You know I wanted to be surprised by Batman v Superman, it looked rushed, it looked like they had not given enough thought before rushing ahead with their Avengers competition, it looked like they were making all the same mistakes Sony made with Spiderman, but still, I wanted to like it, but alas this is an incoherent mess of a film with only momentary glimpses of being any good. To get us started, Batman v Superman starts with us experiencing the climax of the last film from Bruce Wayne’s (Ben Affleck) perspective, we then jump forward to two years later where a bat vigilante is attacking criminals in Gotham across the bay from Metropolis, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is in Africa being the damsel in distress (a role she will be stuck in for this film) and everyone else is politely pretending that Clark Kent and Superman (Henry Cavill) are not the same person.

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