Because Everybody Else Has One

Oh, I believe in Yesterday... No, really, you have to be pretty cold-hearted not to go along with this movie, even though it was clearly just made for me. My review has been up over on Channel 24 for, like, a week. So hope you saw it there. What it’s about Jack Malick is a struggling singer/ songwriter whose only fan is his best friend and manager, Ellie. When an unexplained worldwide power-outage has him riding his bicycle into a bus, Jack wakes up with a stunning realization: no one but him remembers the music of the Beatles. Now, passing the entire Beatles songbook (or the parts that he can remember, anyway) off as his own, Jack quickly becomes the biggest pop star on the planet. He seems to have gotten all he ever thought he wanted but is fame and fortune built on the uncredited work of others really how he wanted to get there? And, with the whole world at his feet, what place does that leave for Ellie, the woman who stuck by him through his ups and many, many downs? W...

Posting this late again but hopefully, you already say this over on Channel 24 . Not that you need another review telling you how much fun the latest Spider-Man movie is but hey ho... What it’s about Picking up from the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker has to come to terms with a world irrevocably changed. After helping to save the world from Thanos and his minions, all Peter wants is to get away from superheroing for a bit by going on a school-sponsored, educational European trip with his friends and to declare his feelings to MJ at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately for Peter, Nick Fury and a mysterious new superhero from another Earth have other plans for our Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man...  What we thought Warning: It’s impossible to talk about Spider-Man: Far From Home without spoiling the end of Avengers: Endgame. If you still somehow haven’t seen the biggest movie on the planet and don’t want to know what happens in it, do not read any f...

It may well be a freaking awful horror film but as a surprisingly self-aware mixture of teen comedy and schlock, Annabelle Comes Home is a surprisingly fun time. I still think it's way past time to close the book on the "Conjuring Universe", though... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The Conjuring Universe continues in this third Annabelle film. After their last harrowing encounter with the titular evil doll, Ed and Lorraine Warren are on their way to their next case but, for the sake of them and everyone around them, they drop off Annabelle at their home, where they know she will be kept under control behind a pane of sacred glass in their room of occult objects. Leaving their young daughter, Judy, at home and in the care of her trusted babysitter, Mary Ellen, they head out with the comfort on knowing that their already well-behaved and responsible daughter is in the hands of an equally well behaved and responsible teenage girl and that ...

The subject matter may have deserved a better, or at least more substantial, film but Stockholm certainly deserved better than to crash and burn at the worldwide box office. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Based on the true story that gave rise to the psychological condition known as Stockholm Syndrome in the early ‘70s, an American criminal doesn’t so much rob as hole up in Sweden’s biggest bank by taking hostage a handful of its employees, demanding a million dollars, the immediate release of notorious Swedish bankrobber, Gunnar Sorensson, and safe passage for the both of them out of the country. As the situation roles on, it becomes clear that not all is quite as it seems – and that’s before one of the hostages, Bianca Lind, starts to form an increasingly tight bond with her captor. What we thought Stockholm – or Captor, as it is boringly known in some territories – is one odd duck of a film. The story itself is a textbook example of “truth being str...

Solid movie is solid. On the other hand, not everyone agrees. My review is also up on Channel 24 but, for something of a change, you will also get Channel 24 editor, Herman Eloff's more enthusiastic take on the film right along with it. What it’s about The true story of J.R.R Tolkien who, before becoming one of the most famous and acclaimed fantasy writers ever with the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, faced more than his fair share of troubles. From being orphaned as a young boy to a complicated love affair with a fellow foster child to fighting in World War I, his life was almost as eventful as his novels. These struggles would ultimately shape both the man he would become and the magical worlds he would go on to create but perhaps nothing played a greater role in shaping who he would become than the literary club that he formed with a group of like-minded boys; a “fellowship” that would accompany him through high school, university and, ultimately, the Gr...

This, I believe, is what a stream of consciousness review looks like. The review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about Anna Poliatova may look like your average supermodel with the rags to riches story that often goes along with it but there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye. Beneath her beautiful façade lies a trained killer with the sort of keen intelligence and cold ruthlessness that only the best spies have. Who is she working for, though, and what part does she have to play in a showdown between the CIA and KGB in the final years of the Cold War? What we thought Anna has been shrouded in secrecy with a worldwide embargo to prevent any reviews going up before its day of release (today, internationally) and with no regular press screening of the film, at least in this country. This is only worth mentioning because a) I have literally just gotten out of seeing the film at a packed public preview mere hours before the film is due to be released to the public so I...

I totally forgot to post this last week. Ah well, I'm sure no one really cares that much about the new Men in Black flick, right? Either way, it's been up on Channel 24 since last Friday so hopefully, you saw my review of it there. What it’s about After finding her way into the Men in Black, new recruit Agent M teams up with the roguish Agent H on the seemingly simple assignment of showing an alien VIP a good time before he leaves Earth the next day. When things go horribly wrong, M believes that a mole in the MIB organization betrayed them but can she prove it before a new enemy threatens Earth’s human and alien populations alike. And, worse, can that mole be her new partner, H? What we thought Between the fact that both Men in Black sequels were, at the very least, disappointments after the fresh, funny and inventive original film took the world by storm and helped solidify Will Smith as one of the era’s definitive leading men, and that news of this new sequel/ r...

Not a sequel to Black Swan.  And all the worse for that. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The true story of Rudolf Nureyev, an acclaimed Soviet ballet dancer who, in the early 1960s, defected to the West after the KGB viewed his behaviour during a successful tour in Paris as seditious and a betrayal of communist values. Nowhere more so than in his increasingly intimate relationship with the “aristocratic” Clara Saint, who introduces him to a world far livelier and freer than anything he has ever known. What we thought It’s hardly unheard of for a film to be less than the sum of its parts but it’s hard to think of a film in recent memory with such excellent constituent parts adding up to a massively frustrating and unsatisfying whole. Ralph Fiennes has yet to fully translate his exceptional skills as an actor into his still fairly nascent career as a director (Coriolanus did nothing to make palatable one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously difficult...

You wanted more Godzilla? Well, you got that at least. A good movie, though... not so much. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Five years after Godzilla wreaked havoc on Chicago, Dr Emma Russell has finally broken the code on how to communicate with Godzilla and other Titans like him. This is not a moment too soon as an eco-terrorist organization unleashes a succession of other Titans on the world – including Godzilla’s arch nemesis and rival apex predator, King Ghidora. As different human factions squable over how to deal with the new threats, humanity’s last hope may lie with Godzilla himself. What we thought When Gareth Edwards took on the gargantuan task of bringing Japan’s biggest and most classic movie-monster to a new generation of filmgoers, he came up with something that was significantly less effective than his own low-budget monster movie, Monsters, as it delivered far too little of the titular monster and far too much of instantly forgettable h...

More John Wick? Is it still quantum, baby? Well, maybe. Baby. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Picking up immediately after the events of John Wick 2, John Wick is now classified as “ex communicado” by the shadowy syndicate of assassins known as “The Table”, which means that every other assassin on the planet is out to get him and he is entirely cut off from all the resources that the Table offers their assassins. Cashing in on every favour owed him, Wick has no choice but to either re-enter the syndicate's good books or vanish so completely off the face of the Earth that no one will ever bother him again. What it’s about After being pretty lukewarm about both of the previous John Wick films, the third instalment hasn’t exactly changed my mind about the series but I can quite confidentially declare John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum to be by far the best John Wick flick to date. If you haven’t liked the other John Wick movies then you won’t...

OK, this isn't quite as bad as you may have heard. It's certainly not good, though. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about When low-level con artist, Penny, worms her way into her life, high-class hustler, Josephine, does her best to remove Penny from her life as quickly as possible before she has a chance to ruin the life she has built for herself on the French Riviera. When everything she tries fails, she challenges Penny to a wager whereby the first to swindle a young tech-billionaire out of $500,000 gets to stay in this swanky riverside paradise while the loser has to leave for less desirable climes. What we thought The Hustle is a gender-swapped remake of the ‘80s Steve Martin/ Michael Caine comedy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which was itself based on the lesser known Marlon Brando/ David Niven vehicle, Bedtime Stories from 1964. Third time, as it turns out, is not always the charm. Despite a certain amount of snobbishness by some critics at the t...

Not a good week for female-led comedies, I'm afraid... This review can also be found on Channel 24 . What it’s about After being diagnosed with cancer and refusing treatment, Martha moves to a retirement village to simplify her life while she awaits the end. Though prickly at first to all the other residents, she soon sparks up a friendship with the vivacious Sheryl and, despite the protestations of the communities queen bee, the two decide to start a cheerleader club for older women. What we thought They may serve the same purpose but there is a world of difference between saccharine and sugar. Neither may be exactly healthy but while sugar provides a natural, pleasing sweetness, saccharine provides a sweetness that is hollow, artificial and leaves a ghastly after-taste. This applies to sweetening a cup of coffee, obviously, but it also applies to sweetening that most deadly of film genres: the so-called “feel good” comedy. This might seem an over-exaggeration and i...

Between this review being posted on Channel 24  and now, this tiny independent movie has made over a billion dollars worldwide and shattered every box-office record ever. The only reason I mention this is that, aside for this pretty definitively putting to bed the idea of there being anything approaching "superhero fatigue", I can't help but wonder if that means that a bunch of people who hadn't seen the previous MCU films, including Infinity War, went to see this anyway. That would be... interesting. But, to be fair, it's probably mostly just repeat viewings. And, as you'll see, there's definitely a reason for that... What it’s about After the events of Infinity War, the remaining Avengers put together a last-ditch plan to undo the universe-wide damage done by Thanos. What we thought These mega-event films are usually pretty tough to review as you want to give away as little about their plot as you possibly can, while also acknowledging ...

From the hideous to the sublime...ly hideous. No, really. This is a seriously, seriously good film that deals with very serious subject matter with real compassion and skill. But, boy, are you going to need a stiff drink/ joint/ Brooklyn Nine-Nine marathon (delete where applicable) after seeing it. And, maybe it's just that I'm familiar with Hebrew, but isn't Kfar Nachum so much easier to pronounce than Capernaum? Interesting title either way. This review is, as is so often the case, also up on Channel 24 .   What it’s about While serving a five-year sentence for a violent crime, thirteen-year-old Zain sues his parents for bringing him into a world that has done nothing but beat him down. During the trial, we flashback to the past few years that led him to such a dire situation. What we thought Capernaum – named after the fishing village in Northern Israel, Kfar Nachum, which, according to the New Testament, played a central role in the trials and tribulati...

Hell is right. This review has been up on Channel 24 all weekend. I hope it did some good and dissuaded at least some people from wasting their hard-earned money on this steaming pile of doo doo.  By the way, I wrote this immediately after seeing the film at a public screening last Thursday night (no critics screening, what a shocker), mere hours before it was to be released in cinemas so I'm sure there are even more typos and grammatical errors than usual. I also referred to Batman Begins coming out in the same year in the original review, but I fixed that to what Batman film actually came out in 2008: the Dark Knight.  What it’s about When a group of Nazis try to call up a demon to help turn the tide of the Second World War in their favour, it turns out that the demon they summoned is just a baby. Sent to stop this menace, the BPRD, a government agency dedicated to dealing with paranormal menaces the world over, is prevented from murdering the baby demon by one o...

I'm probably the last person in the world to review this but I can't help but throw in my own two cents on a superhero movie. Especially not one I enjoyed as much as this. Unsurprisingly, this review ran a little long and more than a little late but, as I'm about to post my *shudder* Hellboy (2019) review, spending some time on a film like Shazam feels all the more appropriate... The Plot : Billy Batson is a troubled teenager who has spent his childhood being shunted from one foster home to the next ever since he was separated from his mother at a carnival when he was a toddler. After stopping his latest "foster brother" from being beaten up by a group of school bullies, Billy finds himself before the wizard, Shazam, who bestows on Billy superhuman powers in an effort to stop Thadeus Sivana, a ruthlessly ambitious Evil Scientist who dedicated his life to finding the Wizard and stealing his powers but instead, in his failure, let loose the embodiment of the ...

Hide those razors... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Roy Cady is a professional hitman who has just been diagnosed with lung cancer and after escaping a trap set up for him by his own boss, he finds himself on the run with a young prostitute and her kid sister. The trio soon find themselves laying low in a hotel in Cady’s hometown, Galveston, where they are forced to confront where they came from and where they’re going. What we thought Galveston marks the English-language directorial début of Melanie Laurent, the fantastic French actress probably still best known to international audiences for playing Shoshana in Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards. I have never seen any of the French films she directed (South African cinemas seem to show less and less foreign language films with each passing year) but her first crack at the American and English-speaking market may be far from entirely successful but it does show a director very much in command of her abil...

It's amazing that we've reached a point where a film that portrays the various infidelities of a potential candidate for the US presidency can't help but come across as even quainter than period films set over a century ago but this is the state of the world right now. It's not a great movie, but those interested in US politics will find plenty to enjoy here. This review is also up on Channel 24 .   What it’s about The true story of Gary Hart, the US senator who was considered the front runner to be the Democratic nominee for president in the 1988 elections but whose entire political career was derailed by a series of extramarital affairs that are uncovered by a group of journalists. What we thought There is something almost adorably quaint about the Front Runner. This little film about a presidential front runner who was caught by the press having an elicit affair and whose entire political career collapses as a result, may have been set just thirty years ...

Begging for an Oscar, deserving a raspberry.   This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Erin Bell is a washed-up, self-destructive detective who is drawn into a new case involving a group of criminals whose gang she infiltrated years previously in a disastrous undercover operation. Will this case drag her even further down as it reopens old wounds or will it giver her one final shot at redemption? What we thought Continuing Nicole Kidman’s return to prominence, Destroyer casts her in the sort of role that is almost entirely the opposite of the sort on which she built her name. Where once she was typecast in roles that called for a certain brittleness and fragility (see the underrated horror film, The Others, for arguably the best example of this), here she plays someone tough and almost entirely emotionally closed off. She is, in short, excellent as our anti-hero Erin Bell. Sadly, she is hampered by having to act her way through some distractingly overb...

This is probably the "biggie" of the week. It's a weird one, though. Some reviewers absolutely love it. Some hate it. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Alexander Elliot is a normal twelve-year-old boy but when he stumbles across a sword in a stone while fleeing a couple of bullies, he finds himself caught in an adventure where the fate of the Earth itself hangs in balance. The sword in the stone is, in fact, the Sword in the Stone – Excalibur – and the threat is no less than the evil half-sister of Arthur himself, Morgana. Excalibur may have deemed Alex worthy but can he, a now-young Merlin and a ragtag group of child-knights come together to battle this ancient threat or will infighting destroy them before they even get the chance? What we thought The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is the sort of tale that isn’t just timeless in the way it has resonated down the centuries but is pliable enough that it...

Three brand new reviews this week of films of varying quality and genre. Though, I must say, the best film released in SA cinemas this week was, by far, Cold Pursuit, which I haven't reviewed - though I might this coming week, time permitting. Anyway, up first, the silly but reasonably enjoyable, Escape Room. This review, like the next two, is also up on Channel 24 .  What it’s about A group of strangers is promised $10,000 for being able to complete a series of difficult “escape rooms” but when they get to the location they quickly find out that it’s not money but their lives that are on the line. What we thought Replacing the gruesome torture-porn of the Saw films with a no less deadly but significantly more PG13 series of puzzles and traps where one false move can mean a horrible end to one of its lucky contestants, Escape Room does an impressive job of making the puzzles smart enough and deadly enough to keep audiences quite solidly gripped throughout. Or, at least...

Been meaning to post this the past few days but load shedding kept getting in my way (thanks, Eskom!). Hopefully, you already saw my review of this delightful little movie over on Channel 24  but here it is in case you haven't. What it’s about The true story of Saraya “Paige” Knight, the youngest daughter of a family of wrestlers from Norwich, England who went on to become a famous wrestler for the WWE.   What we thought When we first meet Saraya Knight, the hero of our story, she is ten years old and in the middle of a pretty full-on wrestling match with her older brother with their parents cheering them on. The scene captures your attention immediately and sets the tone for what is to come. Fighting With My Family is a fairly straightforward sports movie in many ways but the sense of humour and sense of the ridiculous that are clear right from that opening scene give the film a real edge over most of its competitors.  Echoes of other true-li...

Considering just how many misogynist garbage-people have come out in protest of this film and its brilliant star, I'm tempted just to give Captain Marvel 10 stars, call it one of the must-see films of the year and leave it at that. But, let's be honest, unlike my reviews on Channel 24, which apparently get pretty good numbers, I don't think I'm going to make too much of a difference on the international box office by appealing just to you, my dear three readers, to be sure to catch this in cinemas. Most importantly, though, it has made a hilariously large sum at the Box Office, both "domestic" and international so that takes care of that. Here instead then, is my slightly more muted review of what just happens to be yet another damn good addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's not the best MCU film but it's far away from the worst. And, again, if it pisses off so many women-hating troglodytes, it must be doing something right!     Just a...

No, this isn't Captain Marvel. I do hope to review the latest entry in the MCU very soon but first, my latest Channel 24 review: White Boy Rick. Frankly, I'd rather be talking about Captain Marvel. What it’s about The true story of a teenager who worked as a mole for the FBI in one of Detroit's leading drug-dealing gangs and, after being cut loose by the same agents after an event that nearly cost him his life, he becomes a major drug dealer himself. What we thought The story on which White Boy Rick is based is fairly extraordinary and its payoff is a poignant criticism of the American justice system, so why is the film itself just so underwhelming? It’s certainly not the excellent cast that includes the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ben Powley or newcomer Richie Meritt who plays our anti-hero, the White Boy Rick of the title, in a manner that highlight just how incredible it is that a kid like this could possibly be an FBI...

It's been a while since I did a blog-exclusive review but this little gem of a film can far too easily escape the attention of those looking for a worthwhile time at the pictures.  It seems to have become something of a tradition since I started reviewing films for there to be at least one truly excellent coming-of-age film released per year. From the Way, Way Back to Ladybird, what may well be my single favourite genre of them all has really come to the table this century with funny, poignant and humane films about that most peculiar and often painful period in anyone's life: adolescence. Eighth Grade not only stands tall in that tradition but for those of us who fell or fall anywhere on the spectrums of introversion, social-awkwardness or anxiety (I tick all three boxes; yay me!), it will pack a particularly powerful and far, far too truthful emotional punch. And I'm really not underplaying the power of the film to reach out and grab your inner socially-anxious tee...

We've already had Hollywood trying its luck with Ghost in the Shell so how does it fare with another iconic manga property? Like Ghost in the Shell, adapting Alita: Battle Angel has been, if nothing else, more interesting than one might expect... This review is also on Channel 24 What It’s About Hundreds of years in the future, much of the world lays in ruins as a nuclear World War between Earth’s sky-cities have decimated humanity. One of the planet’s last remaining sky-cities, Tiphares, hovers above a place known simply as Scrapyard City, so named because it is literally a dumping ground for the trash and waste coming from the affluent city above it. When biomechanical expert, Dr. Ido, finds a cyborg head amongst the heaps of garbage routinely discarded from Tiphares, he attaches the head to a mechanical body that he made for his deceased daughter. The transplant is a success but the cyborg has no idea who she is or where she’s from so Ido adopts her as his own and na...

After being spoiled of late with really excellent horror, is there still space for a horror film that is simply very solid? I hope so... This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about As Miles, a gifted child, grows from being a developmentally advanced baby into an exceptionally intelligent eight-year old, his parents start to notice that his brilliance is matched by increasingly worrisome behaviour. Are Miles’ increasingly anti-social actions a result of mental illness or something far more sinister? And what does the death of a ruthless serial killer on the day of Miles’ birth have to do with all of it? As mother, Sarah, and father, John, find their loving relationship taking strain, Sarah finds herself in a battle for the soul of her son, even as he becomes a greater and greater risk to them both. What we thought It’s been weeks since I finished watching it, but I’m still basking in the glow of Netflix’s sublime The Haunting of Hill House and it’s hard for ...

I apparently have a pathological inability to not talk about the latest superhero movies on my blog, here are a few quick thoughts on M Night  (or as my pal, Dr. Jan Itor calls him, "mmm")  Shyamalan's latest. I won't be giving away much beyond what the trailers and synopses already suggest but if you want to know absolutely nothing going in, maybe read this after seeing the film. Despite churning out more bad films in a row than almost anyone this side of Ed Wood, Uwe Boll and Michael Bay, M Night Shyamalan's film career was somehow not capsized by the chain of disasters that was Lady in the Water, the Last Airbender, and the Happening or even after that final explosion of shrieking awfulness: After Earth. These easily rank among the (inoffensive but still) worst films ever made and it's a wonder that Shyamalan was still able to find funding to do his thing. Amazingly, though, after a decade in the dumps, the man who I really can't help but call ...

I couldn't decide whether to go for the pun-tastic "Kea-NO!" or the simpler "I feel like we've seen this one before" as a pithy intro for this review so I'll go for both.  This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about After his wife and three kids are killed in a car accident a neuroscientist named William Foster joins forces with a biological engineer to first clone them and then implant an electronic copy of their minds onto the brains of their new clone bodies. Despite their ground-breaking work in their fields, nothing of the sort has ever been tried before – but even if they succeed, will things ever be the same again for him and his newly reborn family? What we thought Replicas is based on a very familiar but still always interesting science fiction premise that asks what it is to be human and if we were somehow able to transfer our minds to a new body, what does that say about our souls. Unfortunately, rather than even botheri...

I forgot to post last week's review but, as it turns out, these two films make for a very interesting double bill. Both reviews are on Channel 24 too. The Old Man and the Gun What it’s about  Forrest Tucker is a career bank robber who has spent most of his adult life in and out of prison – usually out, thanks to his uncanny ability to escape even the most notoriously impenetrable prisons – but when he falls for a woman named Jewel, his life of crime comes to a head. Can he stop doing the one thing he’s truly good at and can he do so before he is brought down by a persistent young cop who’s obsessed with his case? Based on a true story. What we thought The Old Man & the Gun has been reported to be Robert Redford’s final film and, though there might be something ironic about finishing such a momentous film career with so small and unassuming a swansong, it actually turned out to be a fairly fitting farewell. It is undoubtedly a very slow, very serene and ultimately ...