Because Everybody Else Has One

A light, fluffy middle-to-late-age romcom that's far more enjoyable than it should be. This review is also on Channel 24 What it's about Sandra is a snobbish, upper-middle-class woman whose life is upturned when she discovers her husband having an affair with her best friend at his retirement party. Storming out of her old, privileged life, she moves in with her estranged older sister, Bif, whose bohemian, free-spirited life couldn't be more different. What we thought Finding Your Feet – a title, incidentally, that I find astonishingly difficult to remember – is a big-hearted, quaintly British romantic-comedy-drama about an older woman finding a new lease on life by embracing the small joys of life after reconnecting with her quirky, joie-de-vivre-living sister who teaches her that all the money in the world can't replace a life well lived and true love comes from those who respect and love who you are, not for what they want you to be. As this ...

Wait, didn't we just have a Star Wars movie? This is going to take some getting used to. No spoilers for anything here beyond the first act, incidentally, but I do get into that first act slightly more than some may prefer. From where I'm standing that whole section may have its own twists and turns but it's still mostly just setup for the meat of the film. Still, proceed with some caution but, for fairness sake, I have provided a slight spoiler warning for the paragraph(s) you may want to skip if you prefer to go in knowing as little as possible. Just six months since the Last Jedi moved the Star Wars franchise in a fairly new and unexpected direction (much to the consternation of many fans - myself very much not included), here we are with a Star Wars movie that, once again, is all about looking back. It's a somewhat odd decision, not only because the prequels were generally not met with the utmost enthusiasm by fans but because it's the complete opposite t...

(Insert meta-joke here) This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about The Merc With a Mouth is back as Deadpool assembles a team of misfit superheroes (and, of course, a mustachioed Everyman named Peter) to try and stop Cable, a grimly driven time-traveler from the future, from killing a young mutant. What we thought The best and worst thing you could say about Deadpool 2 is that is just more of the same. If you've seen the first film you know largely what to expect. The sequel does have some nice, often darkly comedic plot twists to it it and a number of new characters thrown into the already hyper world of Wade Wilson but, despite a change in director (Atomic Blonde's David Leith takes over from Tim Miller), the same old writers and the same old main cast are back to deliver more of what worked (and some of what didn't work) about the first film. Familiarity doesn't exactly breed contempt here but it does make Deadpool 2 just that...

Solid stuff but, I hate to say it, they made the wrong film. This review is also on Channel 24 What it's about The year is 1982 and it is ten years since the day that Mason Skiles' life fell apart. As the US ambassador to Lebanon in the early 1970s, Skiles and his wife were living the high life in Beirut until she was killed in a terrorist attack perpetrated by the brother of the young orphan, Karim, who was living under their care. Now an alcoholic, working as a small-time labour negotiator, Skiles is called upon by the CIA to once again head back to Beirut to secure the release of an old friend: a CIA operative with in-depth knowledge of the Agency's operations in Lebanon who is being held by a renegade group of terrorists with a single demand, the release of the very man responsible for the death of Skiles' wife. What we thought The very definition of solid, Beirut, which is written and directed by veteran scribe, Tony Gilroy, is a perfectly com...

Sadly, the spelling isn't the only major misfire in this mess of a film. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about A weekend away in his friend's cabin soon turns into a nightmare for a couple as they find themselves in the midst of a human trafficking ring. What we thought Traffik – nope, no idea what's with the incorrect spelling – is a very strange mix of b-grade thriller and a tough look at human trafficking that works about as badly as you would expect. It's intentions are clearly honourable and it is a solidly, if unspectacularly, put together thriller but it is such a mess of tones and ideas that the very best you could say about it is that it's a fairly interesting failure. Even as a straight-ahead thriller, though, it's a rather strange beast. It's opening half-hour deals mostly with the relationship between our main couple - played surprisingly quite badly, it has to be said, by Paula Patton and Omar Epps –...