Because Everybody Else Has One

The culmination of ten years of Marvel films deserves a longer review than usual, don't you think? Please note: I have done my best to avoid anything even vaguely resembling a spoiler, but if you really want to know NOTHING going in, feel free to read this only after seeing the film. This should give away even less than the trailer, though... This review is also currently up on Channel 24 . What it's about A culmination of the past ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos, the Mad Titan, puts the final plans in motion to collect the final four Infinity Stones: six gems of incredible power formed from the Big Bang that, when uses together, allow those who wield them the power to instantly rewrite the Universe however they wish. All that stands between Thanos and his insane wish to rid the universe of half of its living beings are the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy – but do even the Galaxy's Mightiest Mortals have what it takes to stand up to...

This also came out this week. Not that you should care. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Anne Fredericks is a wealthy American woman living in Paris who decides to throw a dinner party for a group of Paris' rich and influential but when her husband's roguish son decides to invite himself for dinner, she suddenly finds herself with thirteen guests – an unlucky number that she fears would sink the party. With no time to make any changes, she quickly enlists the help of her Spanish maid, Maria, to fill up the guest list but things quickly go wrong for her as one of her guests, an esteemed art appraiser named David Morgan starts flirting with Maria. What we thought With Avengers: Infinity War taking over cinemas this long weekend, it's no real surprise that the only other major release this week is its direct opposite. Madame is a very small film, consisting mostly of people talking to one another, where not a whole lot happens for ...

Now, this is really something very different from the usual content I post on this blog. I include this not just because I spent a while writing this and am about as proud of it as any other piece of criticism I've ever written, but as an introduction to my Goodreads reviews. Along with the stuff I post on this blog, I have very sporadically been posting super-short book reviews on Goodreads.com. They're mostly on novels and graphic novels/ comics but I do occasionally review non-fiction too. This particular review is obviously a major outlier as it is very long but it's the sort of book you can't review in just a few sentences. Even this is only scratching the surface of such an incredible piece of work. Please follow me or friend me on Goodreads by going to my profile here .    Oh, if you have a particularly narrow view of Jewish theology, avoid both this review and the book itself. Or, much better yet, read or don't read my review but do run out and buy yours...

How the hell did they get this one so wrong?! This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about The true story of Mark Felt, the FBI assistant director who acted as the informant for Woodward and Bernstein, the journalists who broke the Nixon Administration's infamous Watergate scandal. Then known only as Deep Throat – his true identity was only revealed in 2005 – Felt saw the corruption in the White House but because of an increasingly bureaucratic presence in the FBI in the form of its new director, he was powerless to do anything through normal channels. For the good of the country, then, he betrayed the bureau he had been a part of for decades and ensured that nothing, not even the FBI, would stand between America and its free press. What we thought By all rights, it should be absolutely impossible to turn a story this gripping into a dud of a film, but writer/ director Peter Landesman somehow managed to do exactly that. Dreary, humourless and d...

A surprising stinker, this. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about When a group of cavemen have their valley home overtaken by the greedy Bronze Age governor of a nearby city, young caveman Dug discovers a way to save their home: a bet with the same governor where a team of cavemen would go head to head with the city's star football team. If they win, they get their home back, if they lose, the entire village will have to work in the bronze mines while living in the deadly badlands. What could go wrong? What we thought However much I admire his craft, I've never really been a fan of the claymation work of Nick Park. Heck, even in terms of the wider work of the company with which he is most closely connected, Aardman, I'm the sort of lunatic who thinks their best movie is their sole excursion into CGI, Flushed Away. It's hard to deny the quality of something like Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, of course, or the a...

Major computer issues (are there any other kind) stopped me from posting this and a few other updates in time.  Look out for more content in the next couple of days, including, would you know it, a book review! This has been up on Channel 24 for over a week now so you may have caught it already. If not... What it's about Roman J Israel, Esq. is a brilliant civil-rights lawyer but, as someone not blessed with the greatest social skills, his expertise is behind the scenes work, helping his partner prepare the very best defence for his clients. When his partner has a heart attack, however, Roman is forced to come to the fore and face not only the realities of a failing law practice but who he really is as a person, as a lawyer and as a once-fierce but now potentially obsolete fighter for human rights. What we thought A brilliant, searing character study, wrapped in a fairly mundane and occasionally dull law-procedural plot, Roman J Israel, Esq. is as awkward a...

Just a quick one, this time. OK, maybe not... I had the pleasure to see Ready Player One again with visiting friends from Cape Town in IMAX 3D this past weekend and the difference between my first and second reactions to the film is really quite profound. Certainly profound enough that this may just be the first re-review in all my years doing this blog. A few of my issues do remain with the film but it's a much better and much more enjoyable experience than I first gave it credit for. It's true, for example, that the (admittedly super impressive) video-game-inspired CGI is something of an alienating factor and it does at time feel like watching someone else play a video game but I do think that Spielberg actually does give even these sequences some weight by having them transposed against the dangers of what's going on in the real world of the film. This is especially well done later on in the film but it's true in all but the introductory sequences - which ar...

Blah, blah, blah. Who really cares about Hampstead when we have a cracking horror movie by Jim from the Office. I will get to that soon, though. Also, I have a few words to say about a film that I may have gotten just a bit wrong. And no, it's not the Last Jedi! Anyway... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Emily Walters is a recently widowed American living in the United Kingdom who has been left adrift both by her husband's death and certain revelations about his past but while she fails to connect with her small social group of upper-middle class women or the men they try to set her up with, she starts to fall for her “neighbour”, Donald Horner, a dishevelled homeless man who has been squatting for years in a small shack on Hampstead Heath and who now has to fight for his right to remain there when Emily's friends want to use the land for a new, high-priced development. What we thought Proof that not even the greatest actors...