Tag Archives: review

Movie Review – Searching

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TL;DR – A film that is both revolutionary filmmaking, but also deeply centred on the question of what would you do if you lost everything

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Searching. Image Credit: Sony

Review –

Films can be revolutionary for a number of reasons, maybe they have a new actor that blows the world away, maybe they are looking at a subject that no one dared venture before, or maybe they revolutionise filmmaking in some way. With Searching, we have the later because this is a film that is shot entirely from the perspective of a computer screen. We see the YouTube video, the webcam, the documents as if we were living in the screen and peering out in the world. It is both disorientating but also oddly comfortable as it has all the tactile notions of the world we live in. With that in mind, today we are going to see if this is a film that is just a gimmick, or if it is using this new technique to tell a story.

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Movie Review – Mandy

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TL;DR – This is a film that is all about the style, and if you dig it you find it to be one of the best movies ever, or like me you if you don’t, well then it turns out to be a dull frustrating mess

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a post-credit thing, but you don’t need to stay for it

Warning – There are several scenes that have extensive strobe effects

Mandy. Image Credit: RLJE Films

Review –

Style is something that can make or break a film for people, it is one of the reasons that you tend to see a lot of dull monotonous films pumped out, desperately trying to be something for everyone. So in this regards, I deeply respect Mandy, for in no way playing it safe, and committing to its style like there is no tomorrow with a full line-up of sex, violence, and nudity. Unfortunately, the style did not gel with me at all, so while I appreciate what the film was trying to do, I cannot say I found it to be a particularly good film at all.

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TV Review – The Orville: Season One

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TL;DR – While at first look this might have been just a Star Trek homage or at worst a blatant rip-off. Instead, it finds its feet and becomes a charming exploration of the future and the mess and opportunities that could come.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

The Orville. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox & Fuzzy Door Productions.

 

Review –

I have been wanting to catch The Orville for quite a while but there was no streaming or TV that picked it up here in Australia, so I was expecting this was something that I might only get to see when it dropped on Blu-Ray. But with SBS announcing they had picked it up and would be showing Season Two I jumped on a watched the whole first season in one night, which meant that clown appeared at a very confronting time late at night. But binged the first season I have, and now it is time to jump in and see if it was worth the wait. Now before we dive in, a quick reminder that as we will be looking at the season as a whole, there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Movie Review – Ladies in Black

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TL;DR – This is a film that is filled with joy from start to finish, a truly beautiful film   

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Ladies in Black. Image Credit: Sony

Review –

There are times when you need to delve into the complex machinations of a political intrigue or see two superheroes brawl in the ruins of a fallen civilization or explosions in space as ships rocket past. However, there are times when you need to take a step back and just immerse yourself in the world of other people living extraordinary lives filled with glamour and beauty.

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Movie Review – Mile 22

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TL;DR – This is a film that fails at almost everything it sets out to do bar maybe one or two decent action sequences

Score – 1.5 out of 5 stars

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

Mile 22. Image Credit STX Entertainment

Review –

I really enjoy action films, I appreciate the skill that has gone into the fight choreography, the explosions, and gunfights, brawls, all of it. While films that are about something are better for incorporating those themes, I don’t think it is necessarily barrier to enjoy an action film if the craft is there. This week I had not been feeling the best so I thought I would go see Mile 22 as I kind of pick me up, and well the fact I was the only one in the cinema should have been the first clue that this was not going to go as planned.

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Movie Review – The Predator (2018)

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TL;DR – There is a lot of great production here, and strong acting, but it has clearly been hacked apart in the edit leaving a disjointed mess.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

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

The Predator. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox

Review –

The first Predator film was maybe the pinnacle of the 1980s macho-action film genre, I can remember watching it for the first time, probably far younger than I should. It was Arnie at his best hunting down an alien hunting people for sport and while there were sequels nothing ever captured the intensity of the first film. When I heard they were bring it back and giving it to Shane Black I had high hopes that at the very least it would be an interesting film … and then the last week happened and I can’t believe how disappointed I could be at such a promising director. Now the film is here and well, you can see the vision, but you can also see where the studio has taken a hatchet to it.

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TV Review – Ultimate Beastmaster Season 3 (Survival of the Fittest)

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TL;DR – Another iteration and they have refined the formula even more and it works really well … also Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

Ultimate Beastmaster Season 3 (Survival of the Fittest). Image Credit: Netflix

 

Review –

There are many reasons people watch Beastmaster, for some, it is the athleticism, for other, it is the face plants into the water, and for some, it is the unique format of the multi-country multi-format show that only Netflix could pull off. This is the third iteration of the series and this time the format has been changed up, and we have new contestants, new obstacles, new countries, new hosts, and still one angry beast.

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Movie Review – A Simple Favor

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TL;DR – Crazy, absurd, ridiculous, tense, and an amazing ball of fun

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

A Simple Favor. Image Credit: Lionsgate

Review –

The tone is something that can make or break a film, and you would think it would be an easy thing to get right, but alas it can be a tightrope to walk at times. This is especially important when you are blending genres and still trying to make it feel like a constant whole. Today we look at a film A Simple Favor that walks that tightrope from absurdity to high strung tension and makes it look effortless. Now before we get into the review proper, I do want to say that I have not read the book so I will leave it to others more knowledgeable than me to let you know if it is a good adaption or not, and I’ll just focus on the film.

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TV Review – Adventure Time: Come Along With Me

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TL;DR – This is a beautiful end to a strong series, it might feel a bit rushed at times, but it packs an emotional punch and is one of the best series finales that I have seen

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

 

Adventure Time: Come Along With Me. Image Credit: Cartoon Network / Frederator

 

Review –

I grew up in the 1990s and like any child of that era, I am deeply protective of our cartoons like Gargoyles, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, X-Men, Captain Planet, Beast Wars, and more. I also found, like every generation before me and every generation from now on, that the next generation of animated shows from the 2000s never lived up to the same standard (spoiler alert it was because I was not a child anymore). However, for me and many other people, there was one show that was the exception to the rule, and that was Adventure Time. This was a short 15-minute show based in an absurd world of candy people, post-apocalyptic imagery, annoyed lemons, and lumpy space princesses. However, it was also a show that was beautifully animated, well written, a touchstone for a lot of people, and actually grew up with the people that watched them. For me, I loved the world building that happened mostly through visual cues, and writing that was both emotionally resonate but also didn’t treat the younger audience it was targeted at as being unintelligent like so many other children’s focused entertainment both past, present, and future has/will do. Unfortunately it got a bit hard to find the show in Australia and I was left to pick it up every time a DVD got released but a couple of months ago I found that Stan had the whole series and I binged about 3 seasons of episodes, to go to the end just in time to find out the next episode was to be its last. So today I being a look at the end of a phenomenon that for many are their first real TV show love, and boy what an ending it was.

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Movie Review – Crazy Rich Asians

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TL;DR – During the film, I along with the whole cinema, laughed, cried, gasp ‘oh no you didn’t and I can’t remember a film that had that same reaction

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

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

Crazy Rich Asians. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

There are some films that simply be being made are making a statement of intent. These are films like last year’s Black Panther (see review) and Wonder Women (see review), films that “conventional” Hollywood wisdom states that they shouldn’t be made because they won’t make any money. There is a long history of information coming from focus groups that people are not interested in films helmed by women and people of colour, information which is inevitable proven wrong time after time when the box office numbers are released. To put this in perspective, the last live-action film from Hollywood to feature a predominately Asian cast was The Joy Luck Club twenty-five years ago in 1993. This means a whole generation of people have grown up and not seen their stories or people like themselves up on the big screen, and well folks this is why representation matter. So while Crazy Rich Asians is important for just existing, it is even more power from the fact that it is also a fantastic film in its own right and one of my films of the year so far.

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