I'm back!

 So, yeah, it's been a while... 

I abandoned this blog some four years ago for the simple reason that it just wasn't getting very many hits and it wasn't really worth the time and effort to maintain it. 

A couple of significant changes happened recently career-wise, though, that I decided to bring this old blog back from the dead. First, with a new emphasis at News 24 on in-depth reviews and features rather than reviewing every single thing that comes out, there are a number of big movies (and TV shows) that I've seen of late that I haven't covered, and I've been itching to write about them.

Just as importantly, I finally have the chance to improve the readership of this blog, as I was recently accredited as an official critic on Rotten Tomatoes (as in, my reviews will now count towards the "Tomatometer score"), so hopefully, by having these reviews side by side with my "official" reviews, they might draw more than the dozen or so readers I used to get. It's probably also a good idea to constantly be uploading new reviews to my RT page once I have finally gotten around to uploading, what, 14 years-worth of old reviews?!

These reviews, incidentally, will (hopefully) be much shorter than my News 24 reviews, and they will always take second place to my paid work. I hope to add a new review fairly regularly, but they won't always be as timely as I might want them to be - as you'll see by the first batch of reviews I'll be releasing over the next few days.

And, no, it doesn't take a genius to work out just which films I'll be tackling first. Let's just say that it's been an exciting month or two in the cinemas... 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oppenheimer

Image
The other half of the Barbeheimer phenomenon, Oppenheimer, hasn't been quite as controversial as Barbie, but it has still drawn some controversy. Not controversy about the morality of atomic warfare, of course, but about Florence Pugh's nude scenes. Because that's the world we're living in, I guess. But I begin with a digression. Much like Barbie, there's probably not a ton to be said about Oppenheimer at this point, except to say that it's every bit as good as people are saying. Still, I'm going to take a run at it. What stands out most about Oppenheimer is how much it's both very much a Christopher Nolan film and quite a radical departure for him. Yes, loads of the old Nolan tropes are present and accounted for: multiple timelines, an epic scope, trouble writing female characters, practical effects shot on IMAX cameras, a booming and intentionally over-stuffed soundtrack, and of course, Cillian Murphy, finally taking centre stage.  On the other hand, i
Read more

Barbie

Image
At this point, is there anything more to be said about either part of Barbenheimer? Probably not, but that hasn't stopped people from continuing to weigh in on both films.  Just yesterday, Bill Maher was trending on I'm-not-calling-it-X-Twitter (yet again) for saying how much he disliked the film for being both preachy and presenting a militant feminist view of the world that doesn't actually exist anymore. Whatever. Bill is just being Bill, as usual. He manages to be both right and completely misses the point at the same time.  Barbie does indeed show a greatly exaggerated view of the world that represents a male-female power dynamic that is at least 10, if not 30 years old. It's also true that Gerwig is not afraid to hit us over the head with its anti-patriarchy messaging.  But what Bill misses - and what dumbasses like Ben Shapiro, who went on to have an embarrassing 45-minute hissy fit about a freakin' Barbie movie, certainly miss - is that a) it's a satire,
Read more

Godzilla Minus One

Image
Godzilla Minus One has been out for weeks in South Africa and even longer elsewhere, but I only just saw it yesterday and I simply had to share a few quick thoughts on it. For context, I've seen a few of the American Godzilla movies, but I've always felt like I should enjoy Godzilla, and Kaiju (giant monster) movies in general, more than I actually do. I have no real connection with these movies and may well have skipped right past Godzilla Minus One as I wasn't asked to review it by my editor at News 24 were it not for the exceptionally good reviews and enthusiastic word-of-mouth. And let me tell you, the glowing reception to the film could not be more deserved: I was blown away by this truly brilliant film. I may not be a major fan of the approximately seven million Godzilla films that have come out since 1954, but even I know that a large part of what made the original Japanese version of the film such a hit was that it was about a giant lizard monster rampaging through
Read more