Because Everybody Else Has One

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...