Tag Archives: Movie Review

Movie Review – The Flying Fish

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TL;DR – An interesting experimental short film that unfortunately never graduates from allegory into something more.    

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

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

Rocky Head in The Flying Fish. Image Credit: Murat Saygıner.

Review –

Today we get to step back and look at something a little bit different with a film that is less a narrative exercise and more an experimental experience. This was a little bit of a new area for us so it was a nice change of pace and an interesting twenty minutes.  

The Flying Fish is a composition of a number of short films by artist/filmmaker Murat Saygıner assembled into one work of art. It is here where the strengths and weaknesses of the work come to the surface. Because it is a collection of many different works, there is always something new entering into the frame to switch things up. However, because there are many different works being combined together there is not a strong unifying force that makes it feel like this is one work.

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Movie Review – Back to School (La Grande Classe)

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TL;DR – Mistaken identity, reflections on the past, and the scourge of time, all of these and more in a school reunion that goes very wrong.    

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Back to School (La Grande Classe). Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –


School reunions are a fraught time, especially if school was not a fun time for you. It can be crash into past emotions, get a blunt showing of the passing of time, and revisit a time when you were at your most awkward. Well, this means that if you set your film around this event you have a set of emotions that everyone can understand but that universality can work against you if you get it wrong.

So to set the scene, growing up Johnathan (Ludovik) and Pierre-Yves (Jérôme Niel) did not have the best of times at Diderot Middle School being constantly bulled by the dragon gang. Well, in the preceding years the boys have gotten out of the town and all the way to Paris where they have just found ten-years funding for their algorithm. In their moment of triumph, they run into an old acquaintance from school who casually mentions that they’ll be talking more on the weekend. Confused they discover that everyone in the school had been invited to the reunion but them. Well there is only one thing to do in that situation, rock up as if you were invited, the first of many mistakes they make.

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Movie Review – Kardec

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TL;DR – A biopic that had a real chance of being something interesting that unfortunately could never quite stick the landing.     

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

Kardec. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

For a while now in the evening before going to sleep I have been taking to watching a couple of episodes of Penn and Teller: Fool Us. Penn and Teller are American magicians and one of the many things they are known for is debunking a number of things including the techniques behind spiritualism and mentalism. It has been interesting getting little hints as to how some of these tricks are done, so when a biography of one of the key spiritualists in France dropped on Netflix I was really interested to see how it would go.

So to set the scene, it is the 1850s in Paris, France and Rivail (Leonardo Medeiros) is a professor and teacher. He is a man of reason of logic and takes deep offence when a priest bursts into his classroom to give the catechisms. The influence of Catholicism in the classroom is a deal-breaker for the teacher and he retires. Struggling to find work, he agrees to do some translating work and it is here that is he is drawn into the new fad exploding among the fringes and not so fringes of French society.

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Movie Review – Falling Inn Love

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TL;DR – A really solid rom-com with a kiwi twist.   

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Falling Inn Love. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

As time marches on there are three things that remain inevitable, death, taxes, and Netflix will drop another adorable romantic comedy on you when you least expect it. Now while we hope your day is not filled with the first two, the question that we will try to answer is if it should be filled with the third.

So to set the scene, Gabriela (Christina Milian) works in an investment firm in San Francisco and is getting ready for her first big pitch only to get stuffed over by her dude-frat-bro colleagues. Well, time to regroup, but then the company she works just collapsed and then she finally realised that her wanker of a boyfriend has severe commitment issues. Well time to smother your sorrows in ice cream and then sign up to what is clearly a scam to win an inn in New Zealand. Well surprise she won the inn, but like all things the profile pictures on the internet can be misleading.

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Movie Review – Kaake Da Viyah

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TL;DR – A really interesting scenario with some memorable performances, but it could have been streamlined a bit and it could have dialled the zany back a bit.

 Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Kaake Da Viyah. Image Credit: Yogmaya Productions.

Review –

If there is one genre that I always find interesting, it is the family politics of conflicting generations. There is that divide between tradition and the future, people taking sides, and in the case of Indian cinema a good song or two. Well, today we get to look at a film that is just that as three generations try to use marriage to outmanoeuvre the rest.

So to set the scene, Navi (Jordan Sandhu) is studying and spending as much time away for home as possible because he has found his one true love Mahi (Prabh Grewal). That is because at home his mother Tej (Priti Sapru) and his grandmother Bebe (Nirmal Rishi) are constantly fighting. As Bebe never forgave that her son married Tej without her blessing. He wants to marry Mahi, but he is not sure how to break it to both of them, well the one day he finally finds the courage disaster strikes when he discovers that both his mother and grandmother have found wives for him and they are not Mahi.

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Movie Review – Angel Has Fallen

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TL;DR –  I don’t think anything here will surprise you, but it was still a solid action flick, touching on all the big buzzword fears of the moment.   

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Angel Has Fallen. Image Credit Roadshow Films.

Review –

A couple of years ago I popped and on a whim caught a showing of London Has Fallen. It was a perfectly fine if boilerplate action film and overall I did quite enjoy it. Though my mileage was a lot further than a lot of people as I had not seen the first film, so the fact that they hit almost the same plot beats was not as much of an issue. Well the third film in the series is out today and overall it’s pretty much the same as last time, with maybe a little something extra.

So to set the scene, we open with United States Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) holding off a bunch of goons while under attack only for it to be just a paintball exercise. His old Army buddy Wade Jennings (Danny Huston) runs a training outfit and with Mike probably about to take over has head of the Secret Service he’s hoping he can send some training contracts his way. It is not likely as President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) has but a ban on contract armies. Well one day after visiting a doctor’s to discover how bad his back really is Mike is out protecting the President when they come under attack by drones. When he wakes up all of his team is dead, the President is in a coma and he is under arrest because they think he was the one who set it all up.

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Movie Review – Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood

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TL;DR – I have used many adjectives to describe Quentin Tarantino’s films before but dull is a new one here.    

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is an end-credit scene

Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood. Image Credit: Sony.

Review –

Quentin Tarantino is a very specific kind of director and sort of puts him in a category where I find a lot of people either love or hate his films. I have found myself falling into both categories in the past with me adoring some of his films like Django Unchained and really not liking some of his other works like The Hateful Eight. However, whatever the case may be, I have always walked out of his films with strong feelings one way or the other, but not this time, this time I walked out looking at my watch to see how much time that took.

So to set the scene, we open in on Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) star of the most popular show on TV Bounty Law as he gives an interview with his long-time stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Flash forward to the end of the decade and after a failed swing at movies Rick has been demoted to playing the bad guy or ‘heavy’ in other people’s shows and Cliff is still there as his driver and assistant. Well, one day a new opportunity arises for Rick, a real chance at something, but what neither Rick nor Cliff knows is that there are people out there that do not have everyone’s best interests at heart and a friendly smile might hide violent personality.

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Movie Review – The Little Switzerland (La Pequeña Suiza)

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TL;DR – A fun little film about small towns and that chaos they can cause for themselves.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is an end-credit scene

The Little Switzerland (La Pequeña Suiza). Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

Ah, small-town life. If there was ever a concept that can transcend language and culture it is the chaos that a small town can find itself in if properly motivated. Today we get to look at a film that has one of the more interesting setups that I have seen and uses it to tell a delightful story about what happens when many competing visions clash together.   

So to set the scene, we open in on the town of Tellería which is located in the Castile-León Automatous Community of Spain but they feel they should be in Basque given the vast majority of the town identifies that way. For years the town has campaigned for this and just when it looked like it would finally happen, politics above their heads means that they are stuck as part of a compromise. Well all is not completely lost, because on that same day as the great embarrassment, local son Gorka (Jon Plazaola), heritage specialist Yolanda (Maggie Civantos), and priest Don Anselmo (Secun de la Rosa) stumble across a secret tomb in the local church in it is the grave of the son of William Tell the famous Swiss hero and reveals that it is a lost Swiss Canton. Now, the town has an option because all of a sudden that is more Swiss than Spanish even though they are Basque.          

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Movie Review – Invader ZIM: Enter the Florpus

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TL;DR – A blast from the past that does the twin jobs of bringing closure to the past but also propelling the series forward.     

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Invader ZIM: Enter the Florpus. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

Back in the day, there was an irreverent, abstract, absurd series about an alien trying to conquer the world. Who spends more time yelling at the camera that accomplishing anything. This was a show that created a world that was based around a power hierarchy of who is the tallest among them and it just works. It was a series that was a half-ridiculous and half-scathing commentary on the modern world. However, it was a show that kind of just ended rather than going out on a strong note. Well, it seems this is the year of the rebooting old cartoon shows, and I could not be happier.    

So to set the scene, it has been ages since the alien Zim (Richard Steven Horvitz) and his companion Gir (Rikki Simons) have been spotted on Earth. While he has been hiding, his nemesis Dib (Andy Berman) has been focused on nothing else, including staying on a chair watching cameras forgoing all things like bathing. But when Dib was at his lowest, Zim returns because Phase 1 is complete and Phase 2 ready to start … if Zim could just remember what Phase 2 actually was.

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Movie Review – Toy Story 4

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TL;DR – A fitting end to a series that I have loved   

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Toy Story 4. Image Credit: Disney/Pixar.

Review –

I am not sure if I have ever walked into a cinema with as much trepidation as I did when seeing Toy Story 4. I have mentioned in the past how much I adored the conclusion to the trilogy in Toy Story 3, indeed it is one of my favourite animated films of all time. Given they had wrapped everything up so neatly in 3 I was wondering what was going to be the point? Was this just a cheap cash grab, was this going to be a victory lap or was this just an epilogue? Well, it ended up being a combination of the last two and thankfully not the first.

So to set the scene, it has been a little while since Toy Story 3 and Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and the rest of the gang are getting settled in their new home with Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw). It has been a difficult transition for Woody because he is no longer the leader of the group of toys anymore. Well, Woody needs to be helping so he sneaks into Bonnie’s first day of school and to comfort her he sneaks her some crafting supplies. All good, Bonnie is happy and Woody was not caught, so no problems. Okay, so there is one small hitch because Bonnie created a new friend Forky (Tony Hale) and he just came alive and he is about to go AWOL during their family vacation.

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