Tag Archives: Dan Stevens

Abigail – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A bloody joy when it is working and a bit of a slog when it is not.

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

Abigail reveals herself.

Abigail Review –

Have you ever heard a film premise and immediately thought, “I need to see that”? Well, that is what happened to me when I first heard about Abigail. A group of thugs think they are kidnapping a little girl, but they actually take a monster. I mean, there are whole fairy tales based around concepts just like this and how they turn out. Add in the team behind Ready or Not, and you will have me sold.

So to set the scene, one evening, a group of professionals start casing out a house, waiting to capture the person within. Frank (Dan Stevens) is the boss, Joey (Melissa Barrera) is client control, Sammy (Kathryn Newton) is their hacker, Rickles (William Catlett) is the sniper, Peter (Kevin Durand) is their muscle, and Dean (Angus Cloud) is their car man. But the person they are kidnapping is a little girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir), who just got back from ballet practice. People are not okay with kidnapping a kid, but $7 million is $7 million. However, when they arrive at the creepy house run by Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) and must hold the child for 24 hours, it would be a shame if there was also a monster stuck in there with them.

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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – Movie Review

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TL;DR – While this is more of a Kong film, I love that they leaned into the camp, but some hollow aspects held it back.

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

Kong finds a realm under Hollow Earth.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review –

One of my joys in recent years has been the big Kaiju punch-em-up that has been the Monsterverse. There is just a lot of fun seeing two giant creatures rumble their way through a city. But now that we got the big team-up film last time, the question then becomes: where do they go from there? Well, that is the question we will look at today.

So to set the scene, at the end of Godzilla v Kong, Godzilla becomes the alpha of the surface world, and Kong becomes the alpha of Hollow Earth. A sort of detente that exists only if nether of the two strays into each other’s territory. But when Kong heads up to get some dental surgery, and Godzilla starts ripping out nuclear reactors in Europe, it feels like something is coming their way. This is then when we ask the question: Is Hollow Earth as far down as you could go?

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The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, 君たちはどう生きるか) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A heartbreaking and devastating exploration of grief set to a beautiful backdrop and wacky characters.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid to see this film.

Mahito walks through grass.

The Boy and the Heron Review –

When you look at the great animation studios of history, one name does tend to stand out, so much so that we wrote a whole article about The Beauty of Ghibli. For a long time, we thought that there would be no more films because creator Hayao Miyazaki had retired. However, it seems like Miyazaki-san does not like to take it easy, and it means that we get another of his movies, and who am I to disagree?

So to set the scene, Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki/ Luca Padovan) is a young boy during WW2 who is haunted by the day he watched as the hospital with his mother inside burned to the ground. He has not really had a chance to process this when his father Shoichi (Takuya Kimura/ Christian Bale) marries his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura/ Gemma Chan) and moves into her estate in the countryside, where a Grey Heron (Masaki Suda/ Robert Pattinson) pays a particular notice to the new arrival.  

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The Sea Beast – Movie Review

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TL;DR – You will probably see the shape of this film for the first couple of minutes, but that does not take away how delightful the time is as we go diving through a world of monsters.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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

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

Red stares down the crew.

The Sea Beast Review –

I think animation, especially animation focused on younger audiences, gets a bad rap. Sure, there is a lot of nonsense out there made to fill time, but that does not mean that an animated film directed toward children will be inherently bad. There are films where you can see the artistry and craft that have gone into every moment. Well, today we look at just such a film with the nautical adventure The Sea Best.  

So to set the scene, for over a hundred years, there has been a war across the seas of this world. Great sea beasts stalked the oceans taking ships to a watery grave, even swiping people from the coastline as they were tending their gardens. To fight this menace, the royalty of Three Bridges hired great hunters to take the fight to monsters and keep the waters safe. The Hunters live by a clear code that all must follow, even those on the most famous hunting ship, The Inevitable. Under their Captain Crow (Jared Harris) and his forebears, they have kept the seas clear, with only the great red beast alluding them. Well, the King (Jim Carter) and Queen (Doon Mackichan) have become tired of paying Hunters to kill the beasts, so they make their own ship, The Imperator, to do the work for them. Seeing their future fall apart, Jacob Holland (Karl Urban) makes a deal with the royals, a race, and if The Inevitable gets the sea beast before The Imperator, well then, they keep working with the Hunters.     

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Movie Review – Beauty and the Beast (2017)

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TL;DR – It is a beautiful recreation of the original film with a great cast and music, but while it is good, it does not do enough to separate itself from its animated inspiration.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Beauty and the Beast. Image Credit: Disney.

Review –

Beauty and the Beast was the crown jewel of the Disney Renaissance in the 1990s and were one of the few animated films to ever be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. As a film, it is as majestic today as it was when it was released, and that’s a testament to the original songs and animation. So for any movie that adapts the classic La Belle et la Bête is going to have the issue of being compared to one of the greatest films that have been made, so how do you compete with such a legacy, how do you set your work apart from that classic film … well, how about you do a mostly shot by shot remake of the original. So not only is this the 3rd remake we have had in the row (see Power Rangers & Ghost in the Shell), it is also the next in this long line of live-action remakes of classic Disney films (see The Jungle Book) which only Pete’s Dragon has really worked for me. So with all these remakes floating around how does Beauty and the Beast compare with its past as well as the current cinematic landscape, well that is the question that we will be exploring today. Now since this is a movie based off a 1991 movie based on a story written in 1740 there may be some spoilers here, but the movie has been out for quite a while.

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