Because Everybody Else Has One

Sorry for the lack of updates this week but I should have a bunch of new content coming soon. Lets start off with this week's biggest and worst film. No wait, sorry, I'm not reviewing the latest Tyler Perry film because I haven't seen it, nor the new Tinker Bell movie for the same reasons, but I'm sure they're masterpieces. Still, this is definitely the worst of the next crop of films that I will be reviewing. This review is also up  in more spacious form (my editor likes paragraphs more than I do) at Channel 24 .    What it's about Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) thinks he's an ordinary guy, with a boring job and a beautiful, loving wife but when his strong desire to travel to Mars leads him to Rekall, a company that fulfils its clients wildest dreams by implanting fake memories, he soon finds out that his whole life is a lie. What we thought Back when it was originally announced, we were promised that this new version of Total Recall would...

Woody Allen's latest is done no favours by coming out straight after his most successful film, Midnight In Paris but it's still way, way better than some of the reviews would have you believe. To Rome with Love is one of Woody Allen's fluffiest films - but that certainly doesn't mean it's one of his worst. Throughout his career, Woody has balanced his more serious (if sometimes seriously funny) major works with lighter, more insubstantial offerings. Deciding which is which is something of a challenge, of course. We can all agree, surely, to classify Crimes and Misdemeanors and Annie Hall as major works and A Midnight Sex Comedy and Scoop as minor detours but where does that leave brilliant but frothy fare like The Purple Rose of Cairo, Midnight In Paris and, lets not forget, his early funny ones? Put simply: some Woody Allen movies are good, some are less so but it has surprisingly little to do with how "important" or "major" said films ar...

And the best talky, sweary teddy bear movie of the year goes to... Also at Channel 24 What it's about As a lonely young boy, John Bennet's (Mark Wahlberg) wish to have his teddy bear, Ted, come to life was magically granted and the two have been inseparable best friends ever since. Now, with John well into his thirties and in a long term relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis) he is finally faced with a life-changing decision: embrace adulthood and his life with Lori or continue his arrested adolescence partying and lounging about with Ted. What's a guy to do? What we thought Right off the bat, Ted has a premise that simply doesn't work. No, not the idea of a talking teddy bear: that is surprisingly easy to buy into. What really beggars belief though, is this certifiably insane idea that any straight male would rather spend their time with a teddy bear, talking or otherwise, than with Mila Kunis. As far as great moral dilemmas go, we're not exac...

First Step Up 4, now The Expendables 2: The guilty pleasures just keep on coming! Also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Mr Church enlists the expendables for what should be an easy pay day but when one of their own is murdered, an easy retrieval mission becomes a quest for vengeance deep within enemy territory. What we thought Without so much as taking a step towards reviewing this film, I feel oddly compelled to list my 80s/90s action movie credentials. As a thirty year old male, I was there for the hey day of the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme and Sly Stallone and I spent my teenage years watching both their better work (Terminator 1 and 2, the Rambo films, Hard Target and, yes, Last Action Hero), as well as the veritable boatloads of truly awful straight to video g-movies that bore their names. I loved it all – the good, the bad, the ugly and the face-shreddingly horrific, it made little difference to me. I like to think my tast...

Why yes, I am reviewing Step Up Revolution (or Step Up: Miami Heat, if you're from that part of the world)! Much like pretty much every Jason Statham film ever released, I somehow find it impossible to truly take against a Step Up film, no matter how technically bad it may well be. And make no mistake, the latest in the series is very, very bad indeed. Bad script, wooden acting, unbelievably stupid story - check, check and check again. I don't even get the whole break-dance thing beyond a "gee how do they move their bodies like that?" level, so why oh why did I enjoy the blasted thing as much as I did? I think what it comes down to is this: Step Up Revolution is a film that ends with a bunch of dancers fighting off the gentrification of their neighbourhood by doing what is effectively a really involved version of "the robot". Now, you'll either read that and think that that's the dumbest thing ever or you'll read it and think that is the...

I'm reviewing these two together because a) they complement each other nicely and b) I can complete last week and make further headway into this week at the same time. Neat, huh? Here are two action films that are oddly pretty perfectly encapsulated by their titles. Safe is every bit as unchallenging and as straightforward as its title suggests. Jason Statham stars as Jason Statham and, though his particular "mission" in this film involves his protecting a gifted young girl with an aptitude for numbers from warring mobs, it's a film about the Stath beating the ever loving crap out of an endless torrent of bad guys and that's really about it. It does exactly what it says on the can and it does it it well enough with all the gruff charm that we have come to expect from today's best action star - though the Stath's status as reigning ass-kicking champ is about to be put to the test. By a girl, no less. Which brings us to Haywire. The second, and as f...

Continuing with films released this past weekend is one that should be really thankful that That's My Boy came out on the same day to redefine how bad cinema can be. Distributors chose a very interesting time to release Chernobyl Diaries. On the one hand, putting it head to head against Adam Sandler's latest cinematic atrocity, That's My Boy, can't help but make it look like Citizen Kane - or if the new BFI list of the greatest films ever released is to be believed, Vertigo. (By the way, apropos of nothing, I never agreed with rating Citizen Kane as the best film of all time, but I'm really confused as to how they would replace it with any Alfred Hitchcock film other than North by Northwest.) On the other hand, it's also coming out at a time when Cabin in the Woods and Woman In Black are (only just but) still in cinemas and, boy, does it suffer in comparison. It actually has a pretty terrific premise in that a group of young people embark on a "dan...

I should have the rest of last week's films reviewed very shortly but for now here's my take on what is arguably this week's biggest release.  Check the review out at Channel 24 as well. What it's about Abraham Lincoln may spend his days as president of the United States of America but his nights are devoted to an even stranger cause: hunting and destroying the vampires who lives among us. Thing becomes especially complicated once he uncovers a brewing threat from the slave-taking vampires of the American South and he soon finds himself heading his country into a war for its very soul. What we thought Another year, another fantastically titled film that fails spectacularly to live up to the promise of its name and its basic premise. We've already had the decidedly lackluster Cowboys vs Aliens and a trip to the bottom shelf of your local video store should reveal such recent gems as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and Zombie Strippers but, even I h...

OK, onto this week's films. With the critical failure of Cars 2 under their belts, the mostly unimpeachable Pixar have decided to strike out in a fairly different direction before once again returning to more familiar ground with Monsters University. Brave is a departure for Pixar, not only because it's one of their few films to primarily be built around "regular" human beings, but because it is, at its core, a fairly straightforward fairy tale. Around half of Pixar's films are based on high concepts that have resulted in the brilliance of Toy Story (what if your toys were really alive when you aren't looking?), the charm of Monsters Inc (those monsters under your bed? they're real but you're just a job to them) and the unfortunate misfire of Cars (imagine a world populated by sentient cars and, er, that's it) and the other half usually put a bit of a spin on their subject matter, as best personified by the superhero family drama of The Incr...

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This review can also be found at Channel 24 . What it's about After getting his teacher pregnant at the age of 13, Donny (Adam Sandler) is left to raise their son, Todd (Andy Samberg) alone. Needless to say, he does a terrible job of it and the two drift apart, but mere days before Todd is due to get married, Donny comes crashing into his life in a desperate attempt to get some money to repay his building debt. What we thought A few, short months ago, Adam Sandler released a film that looked to be the absolute nadir of an endlessly long “comedy” career that was really never all that great to begin with. Jack and Jill was an absolute, unmitigated disaster that, at its lowest of low points, found Sandler dressed in drag as his own sister, being hit on by Al Pacino. Dressed up as a “comedy” film, Jack and Jill was a truly hateful, steaming pile of faeces whose only redeeming feature was that it surely meant that Sandler had n...