Because Everybody Else Has One

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 ...