Tag Archives: Jamie Lee Curtis

Freakier Friday – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A delightful film full of silly shenanigans.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There are mid-credit scenes.

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

The whole family realising they were swapped.

Freakier Friday Review –

There is a lot of choice in the body change genre of comedy. You can take an older person and make them young again, or make a young person old. You can even swap some twins around if you want to change things up. However, sometimes you want to get more bang for your buck, and that is where we enter body swap territory. In today’s entry, we look at the film that might be the queen of the body swap genre, and it is time for a sequel to do it all over again.

So, to set the scene, back in the 2000s, calamity came to the lives of Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan) when they read a fortune cookie at the same time and swapped bodies, living each other’s lives until an act of selfishness broke the spell. It has now been twenty-two years since that fateful time. But with Anna about to marry her new fiancée, Eric Davies (Manny Jacinto), there is a significant change in the lives of her daughter Harper (Julia Butters) and new stepdaughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) coming. Well, it seems like it is the perfect time for another switch-up.   

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Star Trek: Section 31 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – There are some interesting ideas here and some fun action sequences, but it is held back by serious pacing issues that occurred when they crunched this into a movie.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

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

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

A Section 31 communicator.

Star Trek: Section 31 Review –

Well, if there is one series of Star Trek that always seemed to get brushed aside, it was Deep Space Nine, and while a lot of people have come around on it in recent years, even the other Star Trek production teams at the time didn’t truly understand it, which meant that up until maybe Lower Decks, we have never seen the impact of the show on the broader universe. Well, almost never. Because there was one part of the show that nearly everyone since has picked up and run with: Section 31. Which would be great if that was not the one bit of Deep Space Nine that I didn’t like. Well, if Star Trek is going to dabble in making movies again, and they are going to use Section 31 as the base, then headlining it with Michelle Yeoh absolutely should be the best way to start it off.   

So, to set the scene, Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) was the Terran Emperor of the Mirror Universe, brought into our Universe before being sent far into the future. There, she was unable to live, and she was sent back to a time that would be more stable for her by The Guardian of Forever [sometime in the early 2300s]. Here, Georgiou has been living under the guise of Madame du Franc at the space station Baraam. But there is an alien selling a bioweapon Godsend, and a Section 31 team led by Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick) was sent into to neutralise Georgiou and take out the weapons dealer. But of course, it all goes wrong.  

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Borderlands – Movie Review

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TL;DR – While I will give it points for getting some of the visual style right, and something must have gotten that cast to sign up. But the final product was a soulless mess of nothingness.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene that you don’t need to stay for.

Warning – There is strobing effects.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

Space Station around Pandora.

Borderlands Review –

For a long time, there has been a question about whether you can write an engaging video game adaptation? They have been hit and miss, and many were just made for tax write-offs [allegedly]. However, in recent years, we have found that you can make that translation on both TV and in the cinema, which makes it even more frustrating that we take a return to the past with today’s entry.  

So, to set the scene, we open around the planet of Pandora, where a secret vault containing alien information has drawn vault hunters for generations, leaving the planet trashed and strewn with violent gangs. One man who is after that power is Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), which makes it concerning when one of his own soldiers, Roland (Kevin Hart), kidnaps his daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) and takes her into the quagmire. It has been months, and no one has been able to find her, which is when he goes to Lilith (Cate Blanchett), the one bounty hunter that can take on the planet because she used to live there.

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True Lies (1994) – Exploring the Past

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TL;DR – While some parts of this have aged as well as blue cheese in the sun, you can’t help but feel the pull and allure of a story swinging for the fences at every opportunity. 

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this film

True Lies Review –

When getting ready for my 2022 best of lists, I discovered that I had revied 99 films this year. Which made me wonder, what could be the lucky number 100? Just as I pondered that, True Lies finally made its way onto streaming. I have not seen this in years, but while I loved it when I was younger, the years are rarely kind to films like this. But given the year that James Cameron has had with Avatar, it was all the better time to jump back to one of his classics.  

So to set the scene, an exclusive party is taking part on a snowy cold night at Lake Chapeau, Switzerland, at a heavily guarded chalet. But not all the guests are coming in the front door. Some are cutting through the gates to the lake under the ice. Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) works for a secret US counterterrorism unit called Omega Sector and is investigating the billionaire art dealer Jamal Khaled (Marshall Manesh) as a possible front for laundering money to Islamic Terrorists. But no one outside of the agency and his team, Albert “Gib” Gibson (Tom Arnold) and Faisil (Grant Heslov), not even Harry’s wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku), knows what he does. One tango later, Harry must make a less-than-quiet exit from the party. But while his work and home life are separate entities, they are about to come crashing together.   

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Everything Everywhere All at Once – Movie Review

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TL;DR – You may have been told how wild this film is, but trust me, whoever was talking to you was completely underselling it.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid to see this film

Everything Everywhere All at Once. Image Credit: A24.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Review –

The word surreal gets thrown around quite a bit and usually means something that might be a bit cerebral or weird or maybe both. But for something to be genuinely surreal, it needs to challenge the nature of reality, to contest the very bedrock we live our lives on. Films will often dip their toes into the surreal, but every now and again, a film will dive in headfirst. Today, we are looking at just such a film that just might nail everything it sets out to do.

So to set the scene, in a city in America, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) lives above the laundromat that she runs with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Things are pretty stressful for Evelyn at the moment. The IRS is auditing the business. She is trying to put together a party for he estranged father, Gong Gong (James Hong), she is feuding with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and Waymond is about to drop divorce papers on her. As they arrive at the IRS to be audited by Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis), Waymond suddenly changes into a completely different person. He declares that Evelyn is in trouble because a force from another universe is hunting her down, and it just might have found its prey, and that is when the alarms go off.

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Movie Review – Knives Out

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TL;DR – A charmingly delightful film about murder filled with fantastic performances and a real heart.    

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Knives Out. Image Credit: StudioCanal.

Review –

For reasons that are far above my pay grade, there are film genres that come in and out of fashion all the time. One of these is the murder-mystery. I honestly can’t remember how long it has since I have seen a good old-fashioned murder-mystery up on the big screen. A film where you don’t know who done it because everyone is lying about something and there are many motives to go around. Well fear no more because today I get to talk about a film that takes this genre and not only produces a great version of it, but it also elevates the genre in the process.

So to set the scene, one-night wealthy murder-novel writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is celebrating his 85th birthday with every member of his extended family in attendance. There is his daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) the real estate mogul and her husband Richard (Don Johnson), his son Walt (Michael Shannon) who runs his publishing agency, Joni (Toni Collette) the wife of his now-deceased son and her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford), and of course the black sheep of the family Hugh ‘Ransom’ Drysdale (Chris Evans).  It is a fun evening of catching up and putting plans into place but the next morning as Fran (Edi Patterson) the housekeeper brings up his morning meal she discovers that Harlan has killed himself in the night. A week later everything has settled but then Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s nurse, is called back to the house with the family by Detective Lieutenant Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield) because famed private eye Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has been hired to look into the matter. Why is he there? Well because someone does not think Harlon’s death was suicide… they think it was murder. Now because of the nature of the film, it is hard to discuss it without getting into spoilers, so keep that in mind if you have not seen the film.

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