TL;DR – A beautiful movie that is well acted, well animated, and has a very thought provoking story, whilst still being amazingly funny.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Review –
For a while it seemed that the only good movies coming out of Disney were from its partnership with Pixar, but then something changed and we got Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, and Big Hero 6 which have all been outstanding, and now we have Zootopia which we can add to this esteemed group.
TL;DR – One of the better action films I have seen in a while, grab your popcorn and sit back, just don’t expect it to have a nuanced view on world politics.
Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars
Review –
London Has Fallen is a good little action film, it’s not the greatest I have seen, but given the poor showing so far this year, bar Deadpool, it was refreshing to see something done really quite well. So it should be no surprise that London is falling is about stuff blowing up in London, and since the film knows that you know, then it is able to really push the tension.
TL;DR – Wow, just wow, this film has just 3 actors, is basically filmed in the one set, and yet it is one of the most tense films I have ever seen.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Review –
Tension in films is a very difficult thing to pull off, if you keep things tense for too long the audience gets exhausted, but if you try to apply the brakes you can shatter the suspension of disbelief and you can’t get that back. I bring this up because 10 Cloverfield Lane is a masterpiece in managing tension, and is a testament to what you can do with such a small budget.
TL;DR – At this point I think we are clearly one film too many in this series, so we do we get for our wait?, a kind of meh ending and a poor film
Score – 2 out of 5 stars
Review –
So here we have the conclusion of the four movies series and more specifically part two of the adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay. So I should start out with the proviso that while I have seen all the films, I have not read the books, so I can’t tell you how good of an adaption of the book the film is, though I am reliably informed that Part One was much better without the constant inner monologue droning on. So I should say, because I know I am not one of the target audience for these films, that I genially enjoyed Hunger Games and Catching Fire, and while I didn’t enjoy Part One as much as the others, I saw it as an interesting set up for the finale. But honestly, Part Two just annoyed me from start to finish.
TL;DR – Hail Caesar is an interesting film, with a lot going on, but that is much of the problem, its scattershot nature means the film lacks real substance, but it still has a lot of spectacle to make up for it.
Score – 3 out of 5 stars
Review –
This is an interesting film, but it is also a very flawed film and that makes it quite difficult to review, or at least score. There are some really interesting ideas at play here, and there are also some amazingly wonderful set pieces throughout which are a joy to watch. However, it is trying to do so much, that it just can’t do any of the ideas justice, so it just feels like a scattershot of a film, which is a bit a disappointment.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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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50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
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freelance film critic with an interest in multilingualism, feminist perspectives in cinema and crime dramas.
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