Tag Archives: Burn Gorman

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Movie Review

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TL;DR – While it does not hit nearly as hard 40-years later, it was still a fun ride from start to finish, if you can get through all the mess.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

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

Beetlejuice appears from the mist.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review –

While you should never say Beetlejuice’s name three times, today we are in luck because we are looking at the sequel which is just Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. However, delving back into the past and trying to find a sequel after 40-odd years since the first outing is a potentially fraught endeavour. Can you capture what made the first Beetlejuice a hit all those years ago? Well, that is what we will look at today.

So, to set the scene, in the many years since Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) helped the Maitland ghost’s out she has become a mother, and a host of a very popular ghost show called Ghost House with Lydia Deetz. However, every now and again, out of the corner of her eye she sees a man with green hair and striped suit. Lydia was in the middle of taping one of her shows with her producer Rory (Justin Theroux) when she gets an urgent call from her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara). Her father has been killed and the whole family is going back to Winter River for the funeral, including Lydia’s mostly estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who does not believe that her mother can commune with the dead. Mourning for the dead can be a difficult process, but when mysterious woman called Delores (Monica Bellucci) appears in the afterlife killing souls and sending Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) into hiding. Well, a fortunate timed funeral could be just what he needs to connect with his almost wife from all those years ago.

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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A an odd egg of a film, it reaches for the stars, and there are moments when it almost gets there even if everything else is messy.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

Viola Davis.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Review –

Well, I should put all my cards on the table before we start. I have never read the books that these films were based on. But I did watch the Hunger Games quadrilogy back in the day, and they never felt like they came truly together and sort of rode on some particularly well-timed casting. I was not sure how a prequel could work given how we know things end, even more so when I heard that the focus of the books was going to be Snow, one of the least interesting characters from the series, but I am glad to have been only partly wrong.

So to set the scene, it has only been a couple of years since the end of the Dark Days and the Start of the Hunger Games. Coriolanus “Corio” Snow (Tom Blyth) knows this pain well because even though he and his family live in the Capital of Panem, they lost everything in the war and can barely survive. He is looking forward to winning a prize only to discover that people have stopped watching The Hunger Games and that he can only get the money by being the best mentor to one of the tributes in the upcoming 10th Hunger Games. But he was not ready for his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) from District 12, who sang and almost murdered her way into the cage after being announced.  

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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A work of art that hits on every emotional level from start to finish.    

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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

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

Pinocchio but just a puppet.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Review –

Some names instantly intrigue you when you hear they are attached to a project. Which is entirely what happened when I heard that Guillermo del Toro was going to make a Pinocchio film. This alone was enough to interest me. Then you discover that it will be an animated film, not just that, a stop-motion animation film, and the masters of puppets, The Jim Henson Company, will produce it. Well, that is a combination that could not be missed, and I am fundamentally glad I watched it.   

 So to set the scene, master craftsman Geppetto (David Bradley) lost his only child Calro (Gregory Mann), during the Great War when he was only ten years old. A stray bomb destroyed the church that they were working in, and it is a loss that he has never recovered from. Sometime later, Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), a travelling cricket, came to live in the tree planted at Carlo’s grave and watched as a drunk Geppetto laments over his lost son. But as that is happening, some old spirits from the forest who typically ignore humanity hear the pleas of the grieving father and when he cuts down the pine tree that was planted at the grave to turn it into a puppet. So The Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) looks over the creation and then brings that puppet Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) to life.   

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TV Review – The Expanse: Season 4

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TL;DR – This series continues to be the benchmark for modern Science Fiction, the benchmark for novel adaptation, and the benchmark for great TV.  

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

The Expanse Season 4: Image Credit: Amazon Studios.

Review –

Last year I wrote an article about how we are in a new Golden Age of Science Fiction and at the heart of that theses was the joy that was The Expanse. At the time Season Three had come out, and we still were not sure if that would be the end of the TV show. It would have been sad if the show’s story had ended there, but at least we still had the books, which was a little consolation. However, I was overjoyed to hear that it got a last-minute pick-up for Season Four on Amazon, ecstatic when I discovered that it was already greenlit for Season Five, and over the moon now that I have watched Season Four and have discovered the joy that it is.    

So to set the scene, at the end of last season, disaster had been forestalled and new opportunities have arrived when thousands of gates to thousands of new solar systems opened up. Fearing the new disaster that could come for an out of control gold rush, or worse a new proto-molecule infection, the powers at be, the new alliance of Earth, Mars, and the OPA work together to set up a blockade at the Solar System side of the network. But before they could get it set up a bunch of Belter refugees took the gamble and broke through the blockade. Months later and somehow the Belter have survived, which is causing Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) all levels of grief because the Royal Charter Energy (RCE) Company has legal claim to the planet and has sent their ship the Edward Israel to what they call New Terra, but what the Belters call Ilus. So who better to go and meditate, well that would be the crew of the Rocinante James Holden (Steven Strait), Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), and Amos Burton (Wes Chatham). Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.    

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Movie Review – Pacific Rim Uprising

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TL;DR – Bombastic as always, but it doesn’t set itself apart from what came before, and the story struggles to find its voice.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a post title scene at the start of the credits

Pacific Rim Uprising banner

Review –

As we talked about in our look back at the first Pacific Rim (see review), I was a real big fan of the original. Guillermo del Toro’s film about giant monsters called Kaijus attacking the cities around the Pacific Ocean being stopped by giant mechas called Jaegers. There was something easy and yet compelling with the setup and the world they created. With Pacific Rim Uprising we get more of the same as the first film yet somehow it feels like something got lost along the way, and that, unfortunately, it just does not work as well as the first film. So with that in mind, we are going to dive into Pacific Rim Uprising to look at what worked and what didn’t.

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Exploring the Past – Pacific Rim (2013)

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TL;DR – “At one point a giant mech picks up a cargo ship to use as a cricket bat to take down a giant monster stomping its way through Hong Kong” you will probably know if this film is for you from that snippet alone.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Pacific Rim

Review –

Back in the relatively calm year of 2013, how five years can change the world, there was this little gem of a film. It was a homage to the mecha and giant monster films of Japan and at the heart was the simple message that we should all work together. Well, it has been years since I have watched Guillermo del Toro’s monster epic, well at least his giant monster epic, and with the sequel coming out later this week, now is as good as time as ever to dive back into the world of Jaegers* and Kaijus*.

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