Because Everybody Else Has One

Just so, so, so lame... And yet I DON'T love it anyway! This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about A mortal thief teams up with the Egyptian god Horus to try and stop the latter's uncle, Set, from bringing Egypt and the rest of the world into darkness in his quest for ultimate power. What we thought Way back in the late 1990s director Alex Proyas delivered one of best science fiction films of the decade in the occasionally flawed but largely brilliant Dark City. Sadly, since then he has struggled to match it with much less impressive fare like I, Robot and Knowing. Who ever would have thought he would sink so low, though, that his first film in seven years would be one of the more embarrassing examples of the ever more embarrassing sword-and-sandals fantasy genre. Gods of Egypt is an overblown, overlong and over-CGI-saturated mess that is saved from an even lower rating only by the fact that, for a while at least, its sheer, unapolog...

So close to being good... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about On the run from an abusive ex-boyfriend, Greta Evans takes a job as a nanny in an English country home. When she gets there, however, she finds that the young boy she's supposed to look after is actually a life-size doll that its “parents” treat like the son that died years previously. But that's only the beginning of something far stranger than she could ever have imagined. What we thought Note: I won't be going into any plot details here but my criticisms of the film might give certain things away so if you're particularly weary of even suggested plot spoilers, maybe see the film first and then read the review below. In a nutshell: it has its moments and a nice lead performance but it's far from being a modern horror classic... The Boy spends much of its time defying many a convention of the modern American horror film; playing out as something far closer ...

There's no way I wasn't going to review what is easily the best of the Oscar-nominated films. Frankly, I will be very, very surprised - ande delighted - if a better film is released this year. Also, please note, I will be revealing no more than what was revealed in the film's trailer and in its general promotion, but, in terms of plot, there's actually not much the trailer doesn't cover. If you haven't seen the trailer or, obviously, read the book, consider this a slight spoiler warning BUT, and this is important, knowing whether or not our heroes escape their captivity is absolutely not, in any way shape or form, what the film is about. Feel free to read up on the entire plot, in fact, because this is one of those films where the plot machinations are absolutely secondary to the much deeper aspects of the film. Still, if you want to know nothing going in, see the movie first and then come back and read this review. But, please, do see it. Room is one of...

I can't believe I'm still reviewing movies like this. Seriously, what ever happened to good spoofs? Oh, yeah, I remember... it starts with a 'W'... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A direct, scene-by-scene “spoof” of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. What we thought I'm not sure if the self-parody nature of Fifty Shades of Grey makes it easier or harder to take the piss out of the ultra-popular BDSM(ish) literary sensation but it's surely riper material for “spoofing” than Fifty Shades of Black would suggest. Marlon Wayans' latest crime against cinema and good taste starts off with this utterly perplexing sequence where Wayan's Christian Black (“Black”, not “Grey” because he's a black man – geddit? Geddit? Yeah, me neither) goes off on a petty theft spree. The sequence is so utterly laugh-free that it took me a full minute to realise this was supposed to be a joke about... about... well, that's exa...

Ah, it's been a while since I busted out that old zero-star rating.  Disgusting, crude, embarrassing, badly made and at least 105 minutes too long (the film is 102 minutes long), Dirty Grandpa's greatest sin isn't what it does with a living legend like Robert De Niro - no one forced him to sign up for it, after all - but that every single attempt at humour misses by a mile. Mind you, there are actually way less attempts at humor than you might think for a comedy as it seems more than happy to replace actual gags with skin-crawling ickiness. And no, seeing De Niro masturbating and an extended "gag" of apparent paedophilia cannot possibly count as actual jokes: not even of the shit-stained toilet variety. Pardon my vulgarity, but really, if you've seen the film, it's the only way to describe just how unrepentantly, wrong-headedly revoltingly unfunny it all is. I do generally think that comedy is the one genre that can generally really get away with b...

That exclamation mark is definitely earned. Even by their standards, the Coen Brothers' latest comedy is an extremely ramshackle, structureless affair, but is precisely this restlessness that gives Hail, Caesar! much of its sparkiness. Effectively a love letter to post-War Hollywood (as opposed to the troubling depiction of the same period in Trumbo), the film flits from the film's main star and grounding force, Josh Brolin, a studio man confronted with the chance to leave the madnes behind for a much cushier job in the arms business, to what are basically small, extremely funny vignettes of the Hollywood machine running at full steam. The all-star supporting cast are largely relegated to, at best, extended cameos but they're all utterly brilliant in however long their screen time happens to be, as the Coens once again get only the best comedic performances from their actors. Similarly, just because the film's plot is extremely loose and it seem sto be mostly a co...

The first comic book movie of the year... and it's a doozy! Also, to try and get stuff out on a slightly more timely manner, I'm going to start doing shorter reviews a bit more often. Especially for those films that all but review themselves. Though it's certainly true that Deadpool is nowhere near the first film to deconstruct the superhero and that in terms of its basic plot, it's actually a fairly straigtforward superhero origin story, it nonetheless feels like a breath of fresh air in an increasingly overcrowded genre. And I say this as someone who largely loves superhero movies. After being solidly burned by both Green Lantern and X-Men: Origins - Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds finally has a decent comic book movie franchise to call his own. It couldn't be a more perfect fit as Reynolds is clearly having an absolute blast playing our potty-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking anti-hero and for all the great work that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (both of Zo...

I'll hopefully have some reviews for the week's bigger movies but, for now, here are my thoughts on a flawed but worthwhile alternative. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about In conflict-torn Bosnia, a group of UN aid workers attempt to extract a corpse from a well that is poisoning the local water supply. They soon find out, however, that nothing is ever easy in a war zone as obstacle after obstacle builds up to prevent them from accomplishing even this most basic of tasks. What we thought Mixing nicely drawn characters with a focused story line and smart, funny dialogue, a Perfect Day is a fine look at a day in the life of a bunch of ordinary aid workers, trying their best to make a real difference in a climate that seems intent on doing anything it can to prevent that. It's also, unfortunately, somewhat less than the sum of its parts: never quite gelling into something as satisfying as it feels that it really should be. It...

And... we're back. Sorry for the lack of updates recently but this particular film is a particularly great way to get back into the swing of things. I do fully intend to have a roundup of all the major Oscar films and a full review of the achingly beautiful Room (spoiler: it gets a 10/10 from me) at the very least. Watch this space, as they say... This review is also up at Channel 24 .    What it's about The true story of a team of investigative journalists from the Boston Globe who, in the early 2000s, uncovered a conspiracy to hide a widespread epidemic of child molestation at the hands of Catholic priests throughout the city. What we thought By turns a glowing tribute to the power of a dying breed of investigative journalism, an exploration of institutionalized evil and an examination of how a city's power structure affects an individual with lifelong ties to said city, Spotlight may not exactly be big on high-octane thrills but it's a highly ...