Because Everybody Else Has One

Big, dumb and fun might not sound like a ringing endorsement but for an installment in the DCEU (aside for the genuinely fantastic Wonder Woman), it's pretty much an A+ rating. I'm still surprised we got an Aquaman film before a Flash or Green Lantern (oh, right...) movie but it's not like much of anything in the DCEU makes much sense anyway (WW aside, once again). Regardless, DC still has some ways to go before catching up with Marvel but this is definitely another step in the right direction.  This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about Based on the DC Comics character of the same name, Aquaman, real name: Arthur Curry, was born to an Atlantean queen-in-waiting and a land-dwelling fisherman, whose elicit relationship leaves Arthur as a renowned superhero but one without a people of his own. When word gets to Arthur that the current king of Atlantis and his own half-brother, Orm, is planning to launch a concentrated attack on the countries of Earth, the...

I'm still in shock. This review is up on Channel 24 as well. What it’s about With the war between Decepticons and Autobots tilting very much in the favour of the former, Optimus Prime sends one of his scrappiest fighters, B-127, to Earth to find refuge for their group of righteous rebels but things don’t quite go as planned when B-127 gets severely damaged and is forced to transform indefinitely into a VW Beetle for self-preservation. The years is 1987 and when B-127 is discovered some months later by an alienated teenage girl named Charlie in a junkyard in her small, coastal hometown, the two form an unlikely friendship. It’s not long, however, before both the US Army and a pair of Decepticon scouts start closing in on Charlie and B-127 – or as Charlie has renamed him, Bumblebee. What we thought I’m writing this review just half an hour after the credits rolled on the preview screening of Bumblebee that I attended and I’m at something of a loss for words. D...

Boy, do I have a lot to say about this one. And for good reason.  Please note, though, that the opening section is some background to the character of Miles Morales and my current and initial reactions to him in his comic book form. The review of the film proper only begins with the second heading but if you're looking for more information about this new Spider-Man, I have hopefully filled in some of the blanks. This isn't available on Channel 24 but it is *spoiler*  included in my top 3 films of the year that will be available there soon. I'll post the link when it's up but, yes, this is that good...   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: A Look Back When Brian Michael Bendis killed off the Ultimate Universe version of Peter Parker in 2011 to make way for a new, half-black, half-Hispanic Ultimate Spider-Man with artist Sara Pichelli, he received no small amount of often fairly ugly criticism. A lot of the pushback came from those who decried the change as a c...

If the box office so far is any indication, "mortal" is just about right. Whether it deserves to be neglected in quite the way it has been is, perhaps, a different question altogether but you do have to wonder what the idea was of releasing something like this against a half dozen films that are all but guaranteed to bulldoze over it. Did studios really have that much faith in the Peter Jackson name? This review is also on Channel 24 .  What it’s about In a distant future, Earth has been ravaged by man and nature as anything that massive shifts in the tectonic plates hadn’t done to destabilize the old world order, man-made warfare certainly did. The world now consists of small pockets of Easterners who are able to maintain some of the past in hermetically sealed cities where peace and prosperity are matched by glorious natural landscapes and roaming, mobile cities that pillage the land of any resources left, both natural and man-made. When a young woman with a trauma...

Now this one is just a really pleasant surprise. Though, I don't know why it should be: it does star Rose Byrne, after all. This review is also on Channel 24 What it’s about Pete and Ellie are a happily married couple who decide that it’s finally time to take the plunge and have kids. Opting to adopt rather than give birth, the couple ends up fostering three siblings from a broken home: a headstrong teenager, a hyper-sensitive pre-teen and a lively but tantrum-prone pre-schooler. As kids and foster parents learn to come to terms with one another, the children’s birth mother returns to make an already complicated situation even more difficult. What we thought Instant Family’s flaws are pretty much exactly what you might expect them to be based on the premise. It’s a family drama that is predictable, somewhat clichéd and sentimental bordering on mawkish. At nearly two-hours long, it’s also much longer than such a film should be. What is perhaps less expected, though, is j...

Well, this one was a total bitch to review.  This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about When an uncle he never met promises him a new start in Nova Scotia, Canada, Londoner Alec Bailey finds himself in a small town where seemingly everyone in the community believes him to be some sort of magical healer. He first believes this to be the result of a mistake in an ad he placed offering his service as a “healer of machines” but it soon becomes clear that there’s a whole lot more going than he first imagined. What we thought The Healer is a bit of a tricky one to review. For a start, there’s the matter of its marketing, which posits this as a “faith film” (“faith”, of course, meaning Christian, in the way “religion” means Christianity in your average bookstore) but even with religious belief being an important part of the film and even if Christian faith is taken as the default setting for most humans, its “message” is a bit of a jumble. I’m no Christian so mayb...

The first of what I hope will be a bunch of reviews for the rest of the year. Looking back, there were way too many notable films that I didn't talk about that I really would like to. That said, let's start things off with a brand new (to South Africa) release that is just begging to be discussed. For a band with a story as straightforward as Queen, it's sort of astonishing that it took this much time and this much effort to get a proper biopic of the band - though, most especially, the band's enigmatic lead singer - into cinemas. Freddie Mercury was an intriguing guy and extremely talented singer/ frontman but Queen was never exactly the Who in terms of complexity, explosive personalities and self-destructiveness. Queen came along at such a time that their story really is as simple as a solid band finally finding its voice by hiring the pivotal member that would define their sound and set them on the way to stardom, which would result in the usual sex, drugs, an...

A number of fairly big films came out this week and they're all worth checking out, to some degree or another. I actually hope to get to the others - as well as a bunch of other notable releases from the past year that I haven't reviewed as of yet - as I'm largely finished with professional writing for the rest of the year. Reviews for Channel 24, aside, of course. Anyway, speaking of which, onto this week's Channel 24 review: Creed II...   What it’s about With Rocky Balboa in his corner, Adonis Creed has lived up to his father’s good name as the heavyweight champion of the world, while his personal life is no less rosy as he proposes to his longtime girlfriend, Bianca. When the past comes crashing into his life with a challenge to his title by Viktor Drago, the son of the man who killed his father, Ivan Drago, Adonis comes face to face with a chance for revenge but one that may cost him everything he has. What we thought Seen widely as a return to form fo...

I know, I know, a decent Gerard Butler film. Who saw that coming? This review is also on Channel 24 What it’s about After a coup removes the controversial Russian president, Zakarin, from power, a submarine crew, captained by the newly promoted Captain Joe Glass, must infiltrate Russian waters to rescue President Zakarin and the team of Navy Seals tasked with getting Zakarin out of the clutches of his captors. All that lies between their success and failure is a full-on war between the USA and Russia and a nuclear World War III. What we thought Playing out like an old-fashioned Cold-War/ submarine thriller, Hunter Killer may pay lip-service to the current geopolitical climate (or, at least, since it was clearly made a few years ago, what the current geopolitical climate would look like under Hilary Clinton) but with just a tweak or two, it could easily have come out around the same time as Crimson Tide or even the Hunt For Red October. This is both its greatest strength and...

Repurposing Lisbeth Salander as an emo James Bond was definitely... an idea. This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about Based on the first Lisbeth Salander novel not written by Stieg Larsson, the Girl in the Spider Web finds Lisbeth once again teaming up with journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, as she navigates her way through Swedish officials, Russian mobsters, American NSA agents and old family ties in an attempt to steal back a potentially devastating nuclear program called Firefall from the NSA for the program’s inventor, who, racked with guilt over the destructive power of his creation, wants to destroy it once and for all. What we thought After David Fincher’s English-language remake of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo failed to ignite enough interest to bring the rest of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster Millennium Trilogy to Hollywood – and it’s still not entirely clear why this happened as it did solidly both critically and commercially – the latest attempt to make...

First, no, I'm not suddenly starting to review porn: the film's title is a very pointed reference to Let It Be, Naked by the Beatles and is a crucial part of the plot, so no jokes from you smartasses in the corner, thank you. Second, I made the mistake of rereading my original review so I, inevitably, had to change a few things that I didn't like so this is a somewhat longer and altered version of the review you will find on Channel 24 . I'll try not make a habit of this but, as any writer knows, looking back at your own work is never a smart move as all you see is the mistakes you made and the things you wish you did differently. What it’s about Annie Platt and Duncan Thomson are a couple with a fairly comfortable, if unexciting relationship, living in a small coastal town in England but if there is one thing that constantly places a strain on their relationship, it’s Duncan’s obsession with the life and music of Tucker Crowe, an American indie-rocker who, two d...

And now for bad movie #2.  Not to be all reductive about this but we already have an atrocious "chick flick" being released this week (Nobody's Fool for those of you who don't read every review I ever post) so why not have an atrocious "dude flick" to balance things out. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about It’s been years since Ray Breslin fought his way out of a maximum-security prison and in that time, he has built up a top-of-the-line security force. When Shu, one of his top guys, gets kidnapped and imprisoned by mysterious forces, Breslin’s team works from the outside to free Shu as Shu himself starts to concoct an incredibly risky plan for his own escape. What we thought For a film that featured Stallone and Schwarzenegger teaming up as a couple of tough guys breaking out of a futuristic prison, Escape Plan was an astoundingly forgettable movie. It was released all of five years ago but, as far as I’m concerned, it may as ...

Don't look now but we have a couple of truly terrible films to talk about this week - though, fortunately, one really good one too. Nobody's Fool is the latest film by Tyler Perry and all these years later and he still hasn't convinced me that he's an even barely competent filmmaker, let alone a truly good one. Maybe he should stick to short appearances in David Fincher films? And, while we're at it, has Tifanny Haddish set a record for the speed at which she burned through all the goodwill that she has accumulated over the past year?   This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about Danica is a successful career woman and after having her fiancée leaving her for another woman, is in a long-term relationship with a man she’s only talked to on the phone. When her sister, Tanya, gets out of prison and moves in with her, both aspects of her life threaten to come undone after Tanya comes to the conclusion that the mystery man Danica is seeing is reall...

Another biggie this week - and it's not even the only film really worth seeing this week. I may cover it at some point - there's a bunch of great films that came out this year that I haven't reviewed and I really should do a roundup of all of them towards the end of the year and things slow down - but do check out Searching if you get the chance. It's really good. Anyway, this review, like all of those that I've been doing of late, is up on Channel 24 too. What it’s about Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon and this is the story of how he got there. From dealing with the death of his young daughter in 1961 through returning as a hero after completing the first successful, manned mission to the moon in July 1969, we see Armstrong struggling to come to terms with his loss even as each step that brings him closer to the moon is littered with obstacles, both practical and emotional. What we thought Quite unlike Hidden Figures and less ev...

Well, this one's interesting at least. This review is also on Channel 24 What it’s about In the early 20th century, a small-time thief named Henry “Papillon” Charriere is wrongly convicted of murder and is sent to the hellish, maximum-security prison on Devil’s Island in French Guiana – a penal colony known for being all but impossible to escape. Upon arriving at the prison, Papillon – or Pappi, to his friends – teams up with the bookish rich but physically weak, Louis Dega, in an effort to first survive the place and then, ultimately, do the impossible and escape from the inescapable prison. Based on a true story. What we thought One week after the release of a Star is Born, we are once again back with a remake of a well-known and largely well-received film from the 1970s. Unlike a Star is Born, though, Papillon probably should have stayed in the 1970s. Here’s the kicker, though: Papillon is a genuinely good, well made film – it’s just one that I find all but impossibl...

Sigh. Back to the slums with a movie that I really wish I liked a whole lot more. This review is also up on Channel 24  (though I actually changed a couple of lines later on in the review to make them a bit less clumsy than my initial review. This is why I shouldn't reread my work - it just makes me notice all the mistakes.) What it’s about After years of war and man-made climate change, the Earth is on the brink of becoming entirely inhospitable for human life so a group of scientists, working both with the United Nations and a part of the US military, launch a program to allow humanity to withstand the hostile climate and general inhospitality of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and our greatest hope for survival. Assembling a crack team of military men and women, the scientists behind the program start experimenting on them to transform their human physiology into a new kind of human that can survive on an entirely different homeworld. It’s not long, however, before it ...

Another week, another bad mo- Wait, this one is actually good!  This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The third remake of the 1930s classic, this modern retelling of a Star is Born tells the story of a troubled and ageing rock star, named Jackson “Jack” Maine, who finds a new lease on life when he discovers a promising young singer/songwriter, Ally, by accidentally and drunkenly stumbling into the drag bar where she has a regular spot covering other people’s songs. All it takes is one performance of La Vie En Rose and he is smitten. The two quickly fall in love, even as he discovers that she is in possession of a keen songwriting talent to match her knockout vocal skills and stage presence. Shortly after convincing her to join him on stage to sing some of her own songs, Ally is discovered by a music manager who puts her on a quick and dirty road to guaranteed pop-stardom. As her career sky-rockets, though, Jack is torn between his love for Ally and...

The streak of weak to terrible films continues with the worst film to bear the Marvel name since the awful Fantastic Four reboot.  This review is also up on Channel 24   What it’s about Eddie Brock seems to have it all, including a fiancée who loves him and a massively successful news show, but when he asks the wrong sort of right questions to Carlton Drake, a mega-wealthy geneticist/ business mogul, he soon finds himself out of a job and, having attained his information from privileged files on his lawyer fiancée’s computer, out of love too. Down on his luck and desperate, Eddie decides to take a more hands-on approach at investigating Drake’s experiments but, while doing so, he becomes infected with a Symbiote – an alien parasite that grants him incredible powers.  What we thought Between the initial decision to make a Venom origin story without Spider-man, a trailer that made it look like a c-grade superhero (or is that anti-superhero?) flick from the ...

OK, this one isn't bad at all but, eh, for someone as super-talented as Rowan Atkinson, it's nowhere near as good as it should be either. This review is also up on Channel 24 , where you might have seen it over the past five days! What it’s about After a cyber-attack on British Intelligence leaks the names of all operative agents, MI7 are forced to call back into the field one agent they really hoped to have seen the last of: Johnny English. Now, with his trusty sidekick, Boff, at his side and a beautiful Russian spy on his tail, English is all that stands between order and technological Armageddon. Heaven help us all. What we thought You would think that by the third entry in this underwhelming spy-comedy series, I would have learned to temper my expectation that a Johnny English film would ever be anything more than a moderately amusing but instantly forgettable footnote in the career of one of the UK’s greatest comedic talents. Predictably enough, Johnny English...

Once again late with posting my Channel 24 reviews from last Friday. I feel particularly bad because some of you, my dear (few) readers, may not be aware of just how rotten this film, in particular, is. I mean, I've heard that there are other reviewers out there - all of whom feel the same way as me, apparently - but that can't be right, can it?  What it’s about The true story of John Gotti, the notorious mob enforcer who worked his way up the ranks of the Gambino crime family to become, the “Teflon Don”, the face of organized crime in Boston in the 1980s. What we thought It’s not often you come across a film based on a potentially interesting true story of one of the most notorious mobsters in history that turns out to be this much of a turkey. Gotti isn’t just a film that pales in comparison to dozens of gangster films – Goodfellas, being a particularly obvious touchstone here – but looks all the more embarrassing for how it looks like nothing more than the result...

And the other terrible movie of the (last) week. Though, not for nothing, this one is even worse! This too has been up on Channel 24 since this past Friday. What it’s about While deployed in South East Asia, James Silva, an elite American intelligence officer is approached by a police officer with some invaluable, deadly information, which he will hand over in exchange for asylum in America. With competing groups after the cop and the knowledge he possesses, Silva and his team need to get him onto a plane heading out of the country before time runs out. What we thought Including shorts and TV episodes, Mile 22 is Peter Berg’s 28th credited directorial effort. It is also the fifth film he made with Mark Wahlberg in the leading role. I bring this up not just because in Mile 22 Berg seems entirely unaware of Wahlberg’s strengths and weaknesses as a performer but because it is a film so ineptly put together on even the most basic levels that it’s almost impossible to believe t...

Between Rosh Hashana and my desire to expunge these two films from my memory, I forgot to post my latest reviews. Time permitting, I hope to write at least a short review of the brilliant BlacKKKlansman but for now, here is the first of two films to skip that came out this past Friday. Both reviews have, however, been up on Channel 24 since then. What it’s about A prequel to the Conjuring, the Nun picks up in 1952 when a novice, Sister Irene, teams up with a veteran priest, Father Burke, on a Vatican-sanctioned mission to investigate the mysterious suicide of a nun in an ancient convent in Romania. What we thought Building on the groundwork laid by 2010’s Insidious, the original Conjuring film cemented the return to more traditional horror after years of increasingly ghastly “torture-porn” and found-footage drew the entire genre (or at least the Hollywood version of it) deeper and deeper into the mud. It may not have ranked right up there with the very best horror films e...

Denzel's first sequel. Eh, maybe he should have made Fences 2 instead. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Robert McCall is now a Lyft driver at day and a vigilante at night whose daily routine of helping the helpless is undermined when his past comes back to haunt him when his old friend and former CIA handler, Susan Plummer, becomes embroiled in the particularly grizzly death of one of her agents in France. What we thought The Equalizer is still the closest that Denzel Washinton has come to making a superhero film – picture the Punisher with some of Superman’s righteousness thrown in for good measure – so it’s fitting that its sequel would be the first time in his career that he has ever reprised a role. It’s all about franchises these days, after all. Teaming once again with director, Antoine Fuqua – the man who in many ways put Washington on the map (and, oddly, vice versa) – the Equalizer 2 almost gets by purely on Washington’s apparently endless r...

So much that's so good about this, that it's really too bad how a couple of major plot points all but entirely sink what the film is trying to be. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about When her husband, a famous, critically acclaimed author, is informed that he is to be the recipient of that year’s Nobel Prize in literature, Joan Castleman accompanies him to Stockholm to receive the prize but the trip quickly turns from celebratory into an existential crisis as she is forced to confront some of the biggest decision she has made in her life. What we thought There is something ironic about a film that spends an awful lot of time talking about the importance of creating realistic characters and believable plots in the crafting of a fictional story, when it itself falls prey to some very conspicuous plot-contrivances and characters who act in ways that strain credibility well beyond breaking point. This is an unforgivable, fatal sin for a film that is as pu...

A whole bunch of reviews this week... if only the films themselves were better. Starting things off with what is easily the stinker of the week... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Miles is a young, working-class motorbike racer struggling to make his way in a field dominated by those who can afford the most state of the art racing equipment and don’t have to rely, as he does, on shoestring repairs and salvaged second-hand parts. His fortunes take a sudden change when he comes across A.X.L. a robot-dog that was created by the military as a lethal weapon but with which he soon forms a bond. What we thought Based on his own 2015 short, Miles, Oliver Daly’s feature film début as both writer and director feels like a first film and, unfortunately, in all the wrong ways. What we have here is a fairly basic, borderline banal, take on a “boy and his dog” story (yup, the second in two weeks) but with some Short Circuit and Robocop thrown in for, frankly, no good measur...

Okay, I have to be honest, for some reason actual production info was hard to be found for this film so I'm a bit worried about some of the facts I present - I heard from the PR person handling the film that the original cut was 3-hours but I'll be damned if I can find anything to back that up online. Also, I got the location wrong in the original review (which you can read over on  Channel 24 ), so I fixed that at least for this review. None of this actually changes my thoughts on the film at all but, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I'm not 1000% sure I got all the background details right. Anyhoo...  What it’s about The year is, roughly, 20,000 BCE and when the teenage son of the chief of a tribe of pre-historic humans is presumed dead after a hunt goes horribly wrong, he sets off for home with the help of an injured dog that he tends for after injuring. The only catch? This is well before dogs were domesticated and had more in common with feral wolves...

Oops, nearly forgot to post this. And undeservedly too for such a thoroughly charming little movie, albeit one with a very un-charming and very un-little title. The review has been up on Channel 24 all weekend, though! What it’s about The year is 1946 and Juliet Ashton is a successful writer still struggling to come to terms with what she lost in the war and is desperate to write something that matches the gravity of what she and her country had just been through, rather than the flights of fancy on which she made her name. When she receives a letter out of the blue from a pig farmer on the small island of Guernsey, only recently liberated from the Nazis, she finds exactly what she’s looking for – and a whole lot more as her investigation leads to her becoming drawn into the lives of the members of Guernsey’s mysterious book club, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, as it becomes clear that there’s a lot more to their story than anyone seems keen to let on. What w...

Must... Not... Make... Pooh... Jokes! This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about With Winnie the Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood long behind him, Christopher Robin is now a married man with a young daughter and a steady job. As the demands of his job threaten to make him lose sight of that which is most important in life, his wondrous childhood comes crashing into his life once again as Pooh comes looking for Robin to help him find his missing friends. What we thought Winnie the Pooh is a perennial childhood favourite that somehow continues to work its magic even on today’s kids; a generation of children brought up on the instant-gratification of the latest smartphones and gaming consoles, let alone the spacey, psychedelic horrors of the Teletubbies (that’s somehow still a thing, right?) or some of Cartoon Network’s most hyperactive cartoons. And yet, the quaint, genteel and notably uneventful world that A.A. Milne and Ernest Shepard created over a century ago ...

Always nice to see original science fiction films - even when it's not as good as it could have been. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The year is 2028 and the city of Los Angeles is a warzone with cops on the one side, rioters and criminals on the other. In this hellscape lies Hotel Artemis, a secret hospital for criminals couched in an old hotel that is run by an old woman known only as the Nurse and admits only those who are members of the hotel. As a number of “guests”, both welcome and not, find themselves at the doors of the Artemis, the Nurse is forced to confront her own past and a suddenly uncertain future. What we thought Setting Hotel Artemis in 2028 is a fairly bold statement by writer/ director Drew Pearce as he presents a very near future when one of America’s largest cities has descended into absolute chaos, while the most incredible nano-technology is used even by outlaw doctors to heal even the most fatally wounded patients. It seems incre...

Six movies in and no sign of slowing down... watch out 007! And, no, I'm not apologizing for that rating. This film achieves what it sets out to do almost perfectly. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about After a mission to retrieve weaponized plutonium from a group of international terrorists goes awry, Ethan Hunt and his team must infiltrate the organization to stop them from launching a group of coordinated nuclear attacks against a number of major targets. His mission, should he choose to accept it, has him crossing paths once again with old loves and old enemies, as well as a new foe that may just be his match. What we thought Despite the protestations of Bourne fans, the Mission Impossible franchise is America’s most successful answer to James Bond and not only does the latest instalment further solidify the series as the ultimate spy franchise to come out of the good ol’ US of A, it makes a pretty good case for Bond now really being the British ver...