Because Everybody Else Has One

Not as good as it should have been, but way more fun than it could have been. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A young orphan girl, raised by her very specialized orphanage to be a master assassin, finally gets her chance to be a regular teenage girl when a mission gone wrong allows her to fake her own death and enter herself into a foreign exchange program where she gets to live with a perfectly “average” American family. Escaping her past, however, proves to be a lot harder than it looks. What we thought Barely Lethal is, frankly speaking, a truly brilliant title for a movie. It's the kind of title that is so good that an entire movie can spring out, fully formed, from nothing more than those two little words. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if that was the case here. It's not particularly surprising that the actual film is never as good as its punny moniker might suggest but even if it does feel like a very real missed oppo...

Hugh Grant is back doing his Hugh Grant thing. Not that I'm complaining. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about With his career in the dumps, Keith Michaels, a once celebrated Hollywood screenwriter, heads off to be the lecturer of a screenwriting course at an East Coast college. What we thought There is nothing at all surprising or remarkable about the Rewrite and there's definitely something ironic about a movie with this unoriginal a script set around a screenwriting course. And yet, there is something oddly comforting about just how familiar it all is. At the heart of all this, of course, is Hugh Grant who is on full-on bumbling, foppish cad mode and though this is nothing we haven't seen a thousand times before, to me at least, he's as endearing and as funny as ever. If you don't like Hugh Grant, you need to stay as far away from this as possible but if you liked him in Four Wedding and a Funeral and any one of the ...

Oh, how wrong things can go. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about George Pemberton's thriving timber empire is threatened by the pressures of the Great Depression, but when he meets and marries the enigmatic Serena, things take a turn – but perhaps not in the ways he was expecting. What we thought Serena should really have been something special. Based on a beloved novel, it reunites the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence with her increasingly impressive Silver Linings Playbook co-star, Bradley Cooper, for a thematically rich and complex period-drama, directed by Susanne Bier, an Oscar-winning Danish filmmaker. And it is something special. As long as by “special” you mean a stunning and singular example of a calamity of a film that is infinitely less than the sum of its parts. Serena had absolutely everything going for it but the result is a disastrous mess and one of the year's most tedious, dirge-like and frankly badly told movies...

Quite a bit to talk about (however briefly) so let's get right to it. The Age of Adeline.  (7/10) Despite some overbearing narration, some hilariously daft pseudo-science and a none-too-interesting male love interest for our titular character, the Age of Adeline is a surprisingly charming and moving romantic fantasy. Its story of a woman who can never age because of a freak accident and can't really live because of it, is never as fully explored as it could be but it does raise some interesting themes, the characters are largely sympathetic and it features terrific performances from three of its main stars, Blake Lively (with a very well played "transatlantic" accent), Ellen Burstyn and, most especially, Harrison Ford at the absolute top of his game. It's both kind of silly and kind of wonderful at the same time.. Hot Pursuit. (4/10) A largely laugh-free action comedy that seems to think that the mere act of teaming up such diametrically opposed actresses a...

Almost forgot to post this. Which is kind of fitting if you think about it... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A convict with ten months left on his sentence makes a deal with the devil to get out of prison early to spend with his terminally ill son. The cost: making use of his brilliant forgery skills to create a fake copy of a Monet with which his former boss can replace the real one he intends to steal. What we thought Aside for doing weird, weird things on stage at a couple of awards shows and being the subject of not a small amount of controversy, we haven't seen much of John Travolta these past few years. Frankly though, even if The Forger is nowhere near as bad as most critics suggest, I can't really say that it was a particular pleasure seeing Travolta again. It's a pity, he was rather good for a little while there, back before he torched his own career with the whole Battlefield Earth debacle, but he has since become a ...

Pardon me if this feels slightly more like a book report than your typical review. It's just that kind of movie. This review is also up, in slightly altered form, at Channel 24 What it's about After being arrested for trying to sabotage the dismantling of a NASA base, Casey Newton, a passionately idealistic and fiercely intelligent young woman, finds a mysterious pin from the 1964 World Trade Fair in her belongings; a pin that alerts her to the existence of a far happier future than the one towards which our world is heading. As the mystery of the strange pin deepens, Casey soon finds herself teaming up with a former boy genius, Frank Walker, to save the world from an apocalyptic fate. What we thought Despite a few iffy reviews from the American press, Tomorrowland: A World Beyond has plenty going for it. Its terrifically retro-futuristic art design, its likeable characters, its very solid cast and the fact that it's a creative genre film that is nethe...

After that murders row of horrible, horrible comedies that I've reviewed over the last couple of weeks, boy did I need this! The first Pitch Perfect was an unexpected smash and an even more unexpected comedy gem, but it wasn't necessarily one that was begging for a sequel. Of course, when the numbers add up, a franchise must be born so here we are three years later with a followup that is very nearly as good as the original. It has a couple of slight flaws, to be sure, but it's overall a real delight that easily deserves the big box office numbers it's sure to get. The story this time around does not quite have the perfectly measured simplicity of its predecessor, but it works well enough. And even if the film's half dozen or so subplots do often threaten to overwhelm its primary plot, they still work perfectly well on their own terms. As such, the main narrative thread of the Bellas needing to climb their way back to respectability after a disastrous sh...

Who knew I'd be fighting so hard against the tide about this of all things! Everyone and there grandma seems to love Fury Road. I, however, do not... I'm not sure if it was bravery or stupidity to have the latest Mad Max movie rely so heavily on the events of the original trilogy but, either way, I would be lying if I said it paid off. It has been many, many years since I've seen any of the Mad Max films and, considering that the final part of the original trilogy came out some thirty years ago, I'd wager I'm not alone in that. Indeed, I would wager that a huge portion of the film's target audience (read: teenage boys) have never even seen any of Max's previous cinematic exploits. Now, since I remember next to nothing about any of the previous films, I can't say with any certainty just how much Fury Road actually references them. What I can say though, was that for the opening act of the film I really had no idea what was going on. Oh sure, I go...

Yup, another stinker from the once quite funny Vince Vaughn. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about A middle-aged entrepreneur is one deal away from finally turning his nascent business viable. All he needs is that one “handshake”. But when his old employer sets her sights on the same deal, he and his two employees head off on a world-wide business trip to get that increasingly elusive “handshake”. What we thought After having already reviewed Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Get Hard, I'm running out of things to say about terrible, one-star Hollywood comedies. It's slightly better than Paul Blart and slightly worse than Get Hard and if the idea of one of these things coming out once a year wasn't bad enough, trying to deal with three of them in all of two weeks is almost too much to handle. Like the others, Unfinished Business' biggest crime is just how staggeringly unfunny it is. Vince Vaughn hasn't been good in years, it...

I'm going to need to do a review roundup soon because Avengers: Age of Ultron isn't, in fact, the only halfway decent movie out there - which is something you may well think when you consider my most recent batch of reviews for Channel 24. Take this little masterpiece for example... This review is, as mentioned, up at Channel 24 . In my gleeful desire to rip Paul Blart several new ones, I did let a few grammatical errors slip through, so this "bloggified" version of the review should read slightly better. What it's about Paul Blart heads off to Las Vegas with his daughter in tow for a mall cop convention but, once again, they find themselves at the wrong place, at the wrong time, as she stumbles upon a gang of art thieves in the middle of a heist. What we thought Kevin James' losing streak of starring in terrible movie after terrible movie continues, as he once again dons the mantle of Paul Blart to deliver what is easily the worst mainst...

There has to be something half way decent released this week, right? Just to be clear, this really, really, really isn't it. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about After a hunting trip in the Mojave Desert goes horribly wrong, a young guide becomes the target of the corporate shark he was supposed to be accompanying. What we thought Despite some beautifully filmed American vistas and a gleefully demented (though often misjudged and occasionally irritating) turn from Michael Douglas as a very deadly corporate fat-cat, Beyond the Reach is unfortunately something of a dud for newcomer director, Jean-Baptiste Leonetti, who clearly wanted it to be his great calling card for a wider, non-French-speaking audience. Sadly, I can't make some terrible pun about Beyond the Reach exceeding its reach or anything because, ironically enough, the film actually doesn't have much reach – neither in terms of ambitions or mainstream accessibil...

Get Lost. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about James King is a millionaire businessman who finds himself sentenced to ten years of hard time in San Quentin State Prison for various counts of fraud. In order to prepare himself for the ordeal (read: potential rape) of living life in maximum security prison, he approaches Darnell Lewis, the owner of the car-washing business he frequents, with a lucrative offer of $10 000 cash to teach him how to survive his next ten years. The catch though, is that despite James' racist assumptions about him, Darnell is actually a hard working family man and not the hardened criminal that James thinks him to be. Still, Darnell could really, really use that money... What we thought I'm getting kind of sick of saying this about damn near every comedy that comes out these days but, seriously, where the hell are the laughs? Yes, Get Hard has been the subject of a lot of controversy for its questionable racial an...