Tag Archives: review

Movie Review – The Equalizer 2

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TL;DR – While not in any way revolutionary, it takes the familiar pieces and presents them in a really captivating way, anchored by a powerful performance by Denzel Washington.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Image Credit: Columbia Pictures

Review –

So I am going to begin this review with a confession, I have never seen the first Equaliser film, nor the TV series it is based off. Indeed I didn’t even know there was a TV series until I saw it in the credits. To add to this I was not even planning to go see The Equaliser 2 today so I didn’t have the presence to watch the first film before going in, so as I was going in I thought I should at least read through the synopsis. Just reading what happened made me truly wonder how I missed it? However, film history is full of sequels that don’t live up to the original, so let’s take a look at a world power does not protect you.

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TV Review – Star Trek Discovery: Chapter 2 and Season 1 Overview   

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TL;DR – We started with a group of people on a ship in space, and over the season, as adversity after adversity piled up, we ended with a crew. I mean I just wrote 1000 words just on the cast, the show is that good.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

The USS Discovery being all majestic and what. Image Credit: CBS Studios.

Review –

This year has been a strong year for Sci-Fi on TV we have Lost in Space, Altered Carbon, The Rain, as well as more Westworld, 3%, and The Expanse. In the middle of all this was a release, which for me was probably anticipated more than anything else, a new Star Trek series. Now the fact that I really like the Star Trek franchise should come as no surprise, indeed a wrote an article all about my love for Star Trek Deep Space Nine. However, there was also a lot of trepidation going in, since DS9 we had Voyager that had some great individual episodes but nothing really came together as a series, and Enterprise that took three seasons to find out what type of show it wanted to be and when it got there decided to end on just about the most insulting note that it could (yes I know it was not meant to be a series finale but still). However, I went into this thinking that I can at least give it a season, and boy what a season it was. So in the first season of Star Trek Discovery the broke it up into different chapters, we took a look at Chapter One here, and today we are going to take a look at Chapter Two which was the back half of the season but also some of the themes that transcend all of the season, you can also see all of our reviews for the individual episodes here. With this in mind, just a warning that we will be looking at the season as a whole, and as such there will be some major [SPOILERS] discussed in this review. So caution is advised if you have yet to finished Season One of Star Trek Discovery, and we would recommend you giving the first season a watch.

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Movie Review – Occupation

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TL;DR – Occupation is an Aussie take on the Alien Invasion genre, with a fantastic setup and ending, though it does meander a bit in the middle.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Occupation. Image Credit: Pinnacle Films/Sparkefilms

Review –

For those who have read my work before you would likely know that I am a big fan of the Science Fiction genre, and one of the types of media that falls under that banner is Alien Invasions. They can be on the small scale like Predator, or on the large scale like Independence Day and X-Com, or that one time with Battleship where it was weirdly mid-scale, that was an odd film. However, the basic premise of all these films is that one day everything is normal, you are going about your day without a care in the world and then everything changes. I really enjoy the Alien Invasion sub-genre, indeed I count Independence Day as one of my favourite films of all time, however, a lot of the recent films have been well disappointing, sorry Independence Day Resurgence (see review). Well, today I take a look at a film that is taking the genre in the right direction with an Aussie twist.

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Movie Review – TAU

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TL;DR – TAU is one of those films where there is an interesting core of an idea here, but then really the movie spends almost all of its time not exploring it.

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no Post-Credit Scene

TAU. Image Credit: Netflix

Review –

Watching a good film can be joyful, watching a bad film can at least be interesting, but watching a film that clearly had potential only to not deliver on it … well, that can be torturous. This week we look at TAU a film that unfortunately falls into the latter category. It is a film that is trying to take the AI computer genre in a different direction but unfortunately falls into just being a pastiche of other films, and not even a very good version of that.

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Movie Review – Ant-Man and the Wasp

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TL;DR – A fun self-contained romp in the MCU that has all the charm of the first film with a bit more focus and a more interesting opponent.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Ant-Man and the Wasp. Image Credit: Marvel/Disney

Review –

Ant-Man (see review) was a bit of an odd duck of a film when it first came out. It followed on from Avengers: Age of Ultron (see review) as a kind of epilogue to Phase Two even though it didn’t kind of fit there. As well as this, it had the misfortune of being one of the two films in Phase Two where Marvel had big director missteps, with Edgar Wright stepping away from the project. It had all the makings of Marvel’s first big complete failure, yet it wasn’t. Indeed it was a fun little heist film with a lot of charm. Part of this has to be the groundwork Edgar laid down, but also the commitment of the actors to just go for it. Ant-Man was also one of those crystallising moments that showed that Marvel needed to work on a few things behind the scenes and the fruits of those decisions have been films like Black Panther (see review) and Thor: Ragnarok (see review). With this in mind, today we look at the first direct follow up which fixes one of the issues from the first film, and we see that right in the title because today we are looking at Ant-Man and the Wasp.

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Movie Review – Sicario: Day of the Soldado

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TL;DR – When you have lost so many of the components that made up the first film it is going to have an effect, and the follow-up never quite reaches the heights of the first.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

Sicario Day of the Soldado. Image Credit: Lionsgate/Sony

Review –

The first Sicario (see review) was a film that was equal parts facilitating, beautiful, and deeply problematic. It followed a new recruit as they worked through the often murky situation that is the US/Mexico border where cartels smuggle drugs and people. It was a film that was the master at crafting tension, it weaponised sunsets, had some truly phenomenal acting. However, it also engaged in some deeply problematic events but tried to ignore the ramifications. So with that in mind, I was interested to see where they would go with a sequel when through tragedy and unavailability they have lost their director, cinematographer, composer, and one of the lead actors. Can it hold up with such a change, well no, but it still does have its moments.

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Exploring the Past – Sicario (2015)

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TL;DR – A masterful look at how to use tension to build a story in a brutal world

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Sicario. Image Credit: Lionsgate

Review –
Today I got to cross a film off my pile of shame that has been sitting there for quite a while. Sicario was one of those films that were made by people I have come to deeply respect in the film industry but at the time when it came out, I was not in the right head space to give it a watch. Ever since then I have been meaning to go back and give it a go if only to add to my understanding of some of these filmmaker’s work, but it sat there. Well, today that changes as we take a dive into the world, or at least one perspective of the world on the American/Mexican border.

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Movie Review – Bao

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TL;DR – A beautiful look at what it means to be a family

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Bao. Image Credit: Pixar/Disney

Review –

One of the hallmarks of a lot of recent Disney and Pixar films has been the short films that run before the main attraction. These are little films that explore interesting topics, like exploring the love between volcanoes in Lava that ran before Moana (see review), or Lou a story of a lost and found box that comes alive that came before Cars 3 (see review) which was also nominated for an Oscar. Now while not all of these short films work, they are all really interesting, and today we are going to look at Bao, which was the starting show for Incredibles 2 (see review).

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Movie Review – Incredibles 2

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TL;DR – This is a fun ride back into the world of 60s spy film and superheroes, the story does not always work but the animation and setting more than make up for it.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post credit scene

Content Warning – There are a couple of sequences that could be dangerous for people that suffer from epilepsy.

Incredibles 2. Image Credit Disney/Pixar

Review –

Back all the way in 2004 Pixar was in its golden era where each film released by the studio was better than the last and in that moment we got The Incredibles. It was a fun romp through the world of superheroes four years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe launched the flood of superhero film into the world. The original was this fun mix of a 60s spy film with the trappings of a modern superhero film and to this day stands as the closest we will get to a decent Fantastic Four film on the big screen. Now I quite liked the first film, but it wasn’t the huge cultural touchstone for me like it was for a lot of people. So when I heard they were finally doing a sequel to it I was less in an ‘it’s about time’ frame of mind but more ‘hmm that might be a bit of fun’ and overall I do think it was all a bit of fun.

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Movie Review – Gringo

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TL;DR – There are individual elements of Gringo that are interesting, but as a whole, the movie just doesn’t really work all that well

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

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

Gringo. Image Credit: Amazon Studios

Review –

In some respects, Gringo is a really interesting film, because it is attempting something quite different from a narrative perspective, and it is clear that the cast is giving it their all. However, like a diver doing a front four and a half over-rotating and splashing into the pool, it just does not come together.

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