Tag Archives: Fred Armisen

The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Movie Review

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TL;DR – While frustrating in more places than it should be, it shines when it lands on the fun.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I was invited to a screening of this film

Bowser arrives.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review –

When this film was first announced, you could feel a general odd bemusement permeate through the internet, with relocations back to the last time they tried this in live action [a film that I have fond remembrances of, but that might be just the distance of time and youth as I have not seen it in decades]. That amusement was only highlighted when the lead cast was announced. A feeling that was only slightly abated when the first trailers landed. However, 2023 has been the year for good video game adaptations, so maybe this could work … maybe.

So to set the scene, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are two brothers that have just started their own plumbing company in Brooklyn and Queens. They are trying to make a name for themselves when a water main bursts, and only they can fix it. But as they go underground to find the source, they stumble across a giant green pipe lying open. What harm could that do? Was the thought right before both brothers were sucked into a new world, one full of mushrooms and the other dark and foreboding.

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Wednesday: Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – Wonderful characters crammed into a generic “insert narrative here.”

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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

Nevermore Academy sign

Wednesday Review –

When you take a beloved property from the past and create a modern adaptation, you need to translate a text into a future it was not ready for. This transition can help you find a new voice for an old work or what can drown an old work as you lose what made it work in the first place. Today we look at a show that hits both of these extremes in its wild ride to make it to our screen.

So to set the scene, Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is an odd duck in the straight-laced Nancy Reagan High School. However, she is and always will be intensely protective of her family, and no one gets to torture her brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) but her. Well, one application of piranhas during water polo practice later, and she is expelled from another school. Wondering what to do, her parents, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán), decide to enrol her in their old school Nevermore Academy. Aghast at being forced to live in her parent’s shadow and her roommate Enid’s (Emma Myers) colourful room, Wednesday decides to run away. But that is when one of the students tries to murder her, and she is saved by a creature that might be disembowelling local hikers, and maybe there is a place for her here after all. Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

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The Bubble – Movie Review

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TL;DR –  While the central conceit  is good, and the cast is there for it, unfortunately, the concept runs out of steam about halfway through

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

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

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

The Bubble. Image Credit: Netflix.

The Bubble Review –

I don’t think it is a surprise that the pandemic has sucked, impacting every industry, including motion pictures. We have seen films like Spider-Man, where it is clearly filmed in social distancing but were still written beforehand. However, now we are starting to see films that were both written and produced during COVID, and it is going to be interesting to see how it all pans out.

 So to set the scene, in the era of big-budget franchises, one of the somewhat more successful runs was that of Cliff Beasts staring Sean Knox (Keegan-Michael Key), Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan), Lauren Van Chance (Leslie Mann), Dustin Mulray (David Duchovny), and Howie Frangopolous (Guz Khan). Having several successful sequels like Cliff Beasts Re-Extinction, Cliff Beasts Oceana, Cliff Beasts Beijing Beast, and Cliff Beasts Space Fury, the team have come back together to film Cliff Beasts 6. Unfortunately, this occurred during the COVID pandemic, which this documentary explores. How does a film get made in the age of a bubble?       

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TV Review – Final Space: Season One

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TL;DR – This is cool animated series that sways between the absurd and heart whelming in a way that shouldn’t work but totally does.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

Final Space banner

 

Review –

I went into Final Space with absolutely no idea of what it was, bar the fact that it was animated and was set in space, and since some of my favourite TV shows of all time fall into that particular Venn diagram I thought I would give it a watch. Now from the opening titles I didn’t have the greatest opinion of the show, but hey they are only half an hour I can give this a look, well ten episodes binged in one sitting later I am really glad I did.

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Movie Review – Battle of the Sexes

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TL;DR – When it actually gets to the Battle it is a thrilling film, you just have to get through a lot of setup beforehand, a lot of setup, too much setup.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Battle of the Sexes. Image Credit: Fox Searchlight.

Review –

This is a really odd film, some aspects of it work amazingly, yet other parts fall flat, so it is both fascinating, yet also hard to recommend. Whatever the case, it was interesting to read up on this real-life event, this is because I was not born when it happened, and until this film came out I didn’t even know it existed. So today we are going to look at what did work and what didn’t of this both frustrating and yet also fascinating film.

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Movie Review – Zoolander 2

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TL;DR – It’s not the worse film I have ever seen, but it’s not that great, the last third is even pretty good, it is unfortunate that you have to sit through the rest of the film to get to it.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Zoolander 2. Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

So at the start of this film, you are reminded that the first Zoolander came out in 2001, wow, it has been a long time between sequels. So the question is, was it worth the wait? did we need a sequel to a reasonably good comedy from 2001?, will the fact that they killed of Justin Beiber in the first 5 minutes of the film absolve it of all wrongs? well not really. With that being said it’s not the worse film I have ever seen, it is just, well, to be honest, a bit of a disappointment.

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