TL;DR –.A really frustrating film that nevertheless sucks you in and leaves you heartbroken.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
Well, last night I noticed Into the Wild had come onto Netflix. I had heard some good things
about it a couple of years ago and I thought it would be a nice relaxing film
to put on before going to bed. Oh wow, did I ever get that wrong.
So to set the scene, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) gets dropped off on
an Alaskan trail and walks into the wilderness a lot less prepared than maybe
he should have. Ignoring the concerns from the guy that dropped him off he
begins the march into the wilds of the north until he finds an abandoned bus
and uses that as a base of operation. When then jump two years into the past
and see why it is Christopher set off on this journey.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
TL;DR – This was such a surreal
experience even if it might have been the most uncritical political interview I
have seen in a while.
Score – 3 out of 5 stars
Review –
It has been a long time since I have been able to catch an episode of Man Vs.
Wild. Back in the day it was this weird yet deeply compelling story of Bear
Grylls dropping himself into the wild (or apparently wild) locations and trying
to survive by consuming some of his own urine. Well if anything is going to get
me back into a show it is Bear Grylls going on a trip with the Indian Prime
Minister.
I was wondering how if at all the show had changed over the years and in the
first five minutes of the show Bear picks up and examines some elephant dung.
So the more things change the more they stay the same. Over the years, there
have been some contentions as to how staged the show is if at all. Well here
when you have a world leader in a place that he could get killed by a tiger so
there is no chance they would be allowed to walk around by themselves and I
liked that they acknowledged that the Secret Service is around.
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
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.
TL;DR – There is a lot I could say about this film, but the most important thing is that there were times when I became overwhelmed with its beauty.
Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
Oh wow, just wow. I have seen a lot of films in my time, and a lot of animated
films, but rarely do they have moments that just take my breath away. Today
we get to take a look at a film that does just that by exploring a new world
and mythology that might not be as familiar to people.
So to set the scene, we open in on Hina (Nana Mori) as she holds the hand of
her mother in the hospital. Outside is nothing but rain, with the weather
matching her life at that moment. But out of the corner of her eye, she sees
one ray of sunshine and she runs to it. About a year later Hodaka (Kotaro Daigo)
arrives by boat to Tokyo, he has run away from home and is looking for a new
life in the big city. But life is tough and he ends up on the street where he
relents and starts working for Keisuke Suga (Shun Oguri) who runs an occult magazine
of dubious quality. However, while working he hears of a girl that can bring
the sun, which given that it has already rained for a month is something that a
lot of people are interested in.
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
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.
TL;DR – This is part Fast and the Furious, part Ninja Warrior, part tyre-screech aficionado
love letter. What a fantastic idea, however, to make an idea work you need execution
and here is where it falls down.
Score – 3 out of 5 stars
Review –
Rarely in my life have I heard an idea that clicked as much as I did today “Ninja Warrior but with cars?” I mean
just think of that and your mind is racing through all the possibilities.
Indeed, watching that first episode it all started to click and then as that
episode went on I started to notice things not quite coming together and as the
rest of the season went on it was only compounded by one odd moment after
another. So today we are going to have a look at a show where there is this
interesting divide between ambition and execution.
Hyperdrive is a show all about
putting the cars and the experts that drive them to the extremes. The drivers
come from America, Brazil, Japan, and Europe and are absolute experts in their fields.
Now before we move on I do want to say none of the critiques I have are for the
drivers who are clearly doing an amazing job with what they have been given and
are clearly skilled technicians and experts in their fields. Each round they go
through a set of challenges like doing a reverse 360° turn in-between tight
penalty pylons or drifting your car back and forth along the sides chicane
trying to hit targets with the back end of your vehicle. All while wanting to
be the fastest because if you are too slow you are eliminated. As far as a
concept goes you have a winner here and there are a lot of touches that help add
to this, like putting the commentary booth over the top of the finish line, or
having the targets full of balls that fly out when they are hit, or the
industrial setting that really gels with the aesthetic of the race. However,
while there are these small touches and some interesting challenges it is soon
clear that there are some things that just have not translated as well as they
wanted.
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
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.
TL;DR Movie Reviews and Analysis 