Because Everybody Else Has One

Or will it? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about After being involved in a tragic car accident that resulted in the death of a young child, author Tomas Eldan is forced to come to grips with what happened, even as his writing career starts to take off. What we thought It's been a long time since a Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire) film has seen a cinematic release in this country but the extremely clumsily titled Every Thing Will Be Fine is far from his best work - even if it is, in some respects, quite representative of his enormous talents as a filmmaker. Wenders has always made glacially-paced, elegiac films that are as much about simmering emotions and overall mood as they are about traditional plot mechanics so it's hardly the case that Every Thing Will Be Fine is a major departure for him. It's also every bit as gorgeously shot and evocatively scored as his very best work and even if his experiment with 3D effect...

Less cancer, more angst - how does the new John Green adaptation hold up? Beloved YA author, John Green, may not be a filmmaker himself but he is well on his way to being the Millennial answer to John Hughes with the release of the second movie based on one of his novels, Paper Towns. Much like the late and much missed writer/ director behind such teen classics as the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Green has proven himself to have an uncanny grasp of adolescence in all its messy, uncertain and often funny glory. After the blackly comic and unbearably moving The Fault in Our Stars, with its examination of how terminal illness might affect those who are too young to have lived a full life but too old to be unaware of what they're going to be missing out on, Paper Towns is a much breezier affair that nonetheless shows that you don't have to have cancer for adolescence to be a pretty painful experience. It's not as good as the Fault in Our Stars, to be ...

Guy Richie's weird career path takes another unexpected turn... After turning Sherlock Holmes on his head, Guy Richie continues to stay away from the more "personal" films that have dragged his name into the mud (see Swept Away, Revolver, RocknRolla) and has turned his attention to a new franchise; this time trying to translate the '60s James Bond cash-in TV show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, to the big screen for modern audiences. This being a Guy Richie movie though, things aren't quite so simple, and I'm still undecided on whether he actually fulfilled his goals here or not. The Man from U.N.C.L.E is many things but mostly it's a very intriguing mess of one part traditional spy movie, one part spy spoof and fifteen parts Guy Richie indulgence that irritates as often as it impresses, bores as often as it thrills and is as likely to make you laugh as it is to make you groan. One thing it certainly isn't, though, is Swept Away and for that we should al...

Fortunately NOT living up to its title... After Judd Apatow's last directorial effort, the narcissistic, whinging, unrelatable and thoroughly unlikable This is 40, you'll excuse me for not expecting very much from his latest slice of R-rated comedy-drama. And, to be honest, for the first fifteen minutes of Trainwreck, I became more and more worried that my low expectations were going to be met. Fortunately though, once the film finds its rhythm - interestingly, precisely the point at which Bill Hader first appears on screen - it settles into becoming a genuinely funny and heartfelt romantic comedy, with two particularly great characters at its centre. Mind you, it's pretty surprising that Apatow actually directed Trainwreck, as its the only film of his that he hasn't had an active hand in writing. Either way though, this certainly explains why it is such a departure from This is 40 and seems to pick up right where Bridesmaid's (and, oddly enough, Celeste and ...

I cannot overstate how much I love this movie. The one half isn't quite as brilliant as the other but this is very, very close to a 10-star film. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Telling the true story of Beach Boy and all round musical genius, Brian Wilson, Love and Mercy explores two crucial periods in Wilson's life. In the first, we meet Wilson (as played by Paul Dano) at his creative peak in the mid-sixties, about to record the seminal album Pet Sounds but whose already fragile self starts crumbling as pressures, both inside and out, start playing on his mind. The second portion of Wilson's life, which is told concurrently to the first and set in the mid 1980s. finds him (this time portrayed by John Cusack) a broken man, medicated up to his ears by his controlling psychiatrist and estranged from his family and friends and lacking any independence whatsoever, but when he meets Melinda Ledbetter, a beautiful car-saleswoman, his life tak...

This film has been pushed back so far, I completely forgot that I had reviewed it! Here it is at Channel 24 though. What it's about Set in 1988, Kat Connors is a fairly typical teenage girl but whose life is thrown in disarray when her mother disappears without warning one day. What we thought The latest film from cult director Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, Kaboom) is not exactly what anyone would call a flawless masterpiece. Its pacing is a bit off, its narrative often elliptical and its resolution feels almost like an afterthought. Add to that the film's confrontational attitude towards linear storytelling and “realism” (though its neither surreal nor hard to follow), and it's simply bound to piss a lot of people off. Personally though, not only am I very glad to have seen – or, more accurately, experienced – White Bird in a Blizzard (which is a beautiful, evocative title, regardless of the film itself), I'm also thrilled that a movi...

I blame Josh Trank. Incidentally, I do go through the plot of the film from beginning to end, pretty much, so this isn't technically as spoiler-free as my usual reviews. That said there is absolutely nothing about the plot that could actually spoil this for you. Fantastic Four is so bad, it really is quite beyond anything as simple as spoilers. Frankly, the only way you could spoil this film for yourself is by actually going to see it. Also, if you're looking for a dispassionate, professional review, I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere. Things are going to get ranty and fast...  It's only been a few days since the Fantastic Four reboot hit US and UK screens and already I feel like I'm just piling on to all of negativity that greeted the film by fans, casual movie goers and critics alike. What can I do though, Fantastic Four really is that bad. It's so bad, in fact, that walking out of it, it's hard not to look back at the 2005 Fa...

How the hell is this series still going so strong?! This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about As the MIF are disbanded as a government agency and Ethan Hunt is discredited by his superiors, Hunt and his team go rogue to stop a covert organization called the Syndicate and its shadowy leader, Solomon Lane. What we thought Four sequels in and the Mission Impossible franchise shows no sign whatsoever of slowing down, even as it has started to feel more and more like America's (very impressive) answer to James Bond, rather than anything to do with the original TV series. Rogue Nation may not quite be the best of series (its ludicrously mad predecessor still holds that particular honour) but it remains an exceptionally entertaining thrill ride that will have you clamouring for round six. Sticking to the series' accidental tradition of having a new director for each film, Christopher McQuarrie takes the helm this time as both director and co-w...

Big Stoopid (Fun), more like! This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about After Air Force One is shot down over miles of Forest in Finland, the President of the United States of America soon finds himself teaming up with the unlikely partner of a young Finnish boy who turns out to be his only hope of survival and the only one who can help him hunt down and stop the people that took down his supposedly impenetrable fortress in the sky. What we thought If Royal Night Out was the female version of a movie that's so silly it's impossible not to enjoy then Big Game is unquestionably its male counterpart. A very weird mix of an adventure story for boys, a coming of age story and an Air-Force-One-like action thriller, Big Game starts off on a level of abject absurdity and gets more and more ridiculous from that point on. And, would you know it, I really rather enjoyed it. It's impossible to talk about the film's most insane moments with...

Stop me if you've heard this one before... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A documentary about the detrimental effects of our daily sugar consumption as we follow documentarian, Australian and health-nut, Damon Gameau as he embarks on a carefully monitored high-sugar diet – that happens to be made up of regular, off-the-shelf products, rather than high-sugar soft drinks or sweets. What we thought That Sugar Film covers material that has already been covered very recently in the documentary Fed Up. If you feel the need to be lectured about how all of but the very, very few of us who consume nothing but the freshest of fresh produce (with a tiniest drop of meat for variety) are doomed for death by sugar, then, good news, That Sugar Film is every bit as preachy as Fed Up but it's much, much more entertaining. It is, however, significantly less trust-worthy. Now, to be clear, though I do have something of a sweet tooth, I would have ...

Marvel's funniest - and smallest - movie to date. The quick plot-synopsis bit: When his ambitious and amoral protege unlocks the secret to his "Pym-particle" - a scientific breakthrough that allows for the radical growing or shrinking of anything up to and including a human being, that would be deadly in the wrong hands - former superhero and scientist Hank Pym enlists the aid of his estranged daughter, Hope Van Dyne, and good-hearted cat-burglar, Scott Lang, to help him steal his own technology back. The not-so-quick review bit: Ant-man looked all set to be the first major failure for Marvel Studios - at least since they started building their cohesive universe with the first Iron Man film. Quite aside for the usual problem of the character being one of Marvels' lesser-known faces to non comic-book fans - something that clearly didn't make an iota of difference to Guardians of the Galaxy last year, to be fair - Ant-man has had by far the most troubled ...