Because Everybody Else Has One

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

How the hell did they get this one so wrong?! This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about The true story of Mark Felt, the FBI assistant director who acted as the informant for Woodward and Bernstein, the journalists who broke the Nixon Administration's infamous Watergate scandal. Then known only as Deep Throat – his true identity was only revealed in 2005 – Felt saw the corruption in the White House but because of an increasingly bureaucratic presence in the FBI in the form of its new director, he was powerless to do anything through normal channels. For the good of the country, then, he betrayed the bureau he had been a part of for decades and ensured that nothing, not even the FBI, would stand between America and its free press. What we thought By all rights, it should be absolutely impossible to turn a story this gripping into a dud of a film, but writer/ director Peter Landesman somehow managed to do exactly that. Dreary, humourless and d...

No, really, why? This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it's about A loose remake of the 1974 film of the same name; Dr. Paul Kersey is a successful surgeon with an apparently perfect family but when his wife and daughter are brutally attacked in a house robbery gone bad and the police are unable to help, he takes justice into his own hands and starts a one-man war on crime in the violent streets of Chicago. What we thought It's impossible to look at Death Wish without addressing the wider context into which it has been released – particularly in the United States of America. After a seemingly unending string of mass shootings in America, the recent school shooting in Florida that left 17 students and teachers dead has spurred a major movement, led by the country's youth, against America's infatuation with guns, with the National Rifle Association, with the politicians who are owned by the NRA and even against the Second Amendment itself. The ...

So simple a title, such a mess of a movie. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about After his personal life is ripped apart by a brutal terrorist attack, Mitch Rapp starts a one-man war against radical Islamist terrorism. His actions soon catch the attention of the CIA who enlist him to be part of their most elite counter-terrorism group – if, that is, he can survive training by Stan Hurley, a celebrated, tough-as-nails CIA and army veteran known for breaking his recruits. What we thought American Assassin has the sort of title that immediately brings to mind fairly straightforward action-thrillers that, more often than not, find their home on late night TV, where they can be enjoyed by insomniacs and undiscerning action junkies. I've long railed against these kinds of films taking the place of much worthier films in our local cinemas – and I stand by that – but in the case of American Assassin things aren't quite so simple. And, sadly, ...

Question: How do you turn 15,000 pages of story into a 90-minute movie? Answer: You don't. This review is also up on  Channel 24 What It's About Loosely based on the Stephen King fantasy series, the Dark Tower tells the story of Jake, a teenager whose visions of another world may be written off as a sign of madness by his parents, doctors, teachers and friends but when a series of events leads him to that other world, he comes face to face with his visions brought to life: an eternal battle of good and evil between the The Man in Black who wants to bring darkness and death to multiple worlds and Roland, the last Gunslinger, the one man who could stop him. At the centre of their conflict is the Dark Tower, a single structure that lies at the centre of reality and is the only thing standing between the Multiverse and whatever darkness lies outside it. What we thought Spanning three decades, seven novels, a number of spin-off books, comics and thousands up...

Too soon? This review is also up on  Channel 24 What it's about As the Twin Towers are attacked on that fateful day in September 2001, a group of people stuck in a broken down elevator in the North Tower struggle to survive, while confronting their own and each other's personal demons. What we thought 9/11 is an uncomfortable watch – unfortunately, not always for the reasons that the filmmakers clearly want it to be. On the one hand, it is a taut, if overly generic survival thriller with, to be honest, fairly b-grade level performances from most of the cast and some seriously creaky dialogue. On this level it works, just about, even if there's little about it that demands paying the high price of a cinema ticket to see it. The problem is that this perfectly adequate b-movie is taking place within the context of a still fairly recent tragedy; a tragedy whose effects still resonate with even those of us who have never been within a thousand miles of...

Soon to be known as the one where Anakin Skywalker acts John McClane off the screen. This review is also up on Channel 24 . What It's About A big-time city man returns to his small-town home to take his young son hunting but while they're on the hunt they witness one man shooting another after a clearly illicit deal goes wrong. Things quickly go from bad to worse as they are drawn into a web of dirty cops and dangerous bank robbers. What we thought It says something about just how far Bruce Willis has fallen that he is acted off the screen at every turn by Hayden Christensen. Christensen will clearly never be able to escape being the man who played Darth Vader as a whiny adolescent but, to be fair, he is probably never going to be a genuinely good, let alone great, actor. He's certainly a much better actor than the Star Wars prequels suggested but when you consider the pool of seriously talented young actors out there right now, he seems destined to co...

The Summer Movie season has finally kicked in and we're off to... a start. There are still loads of blockbusters to come (and one or two of them are not based on a comic book) but the season did kick off with some of the year's biggest and most anticipated films. Are any of them any good, though? Well, that may be something else entirely. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. Saving the best for first, Guardians 2 may not have either the element of surprise on its side in the way that the first film did and it does lack somewhat in its predecessor's sheer sense of movement but it's a fun, funny, thrilling and weirdly moving mix of superheroics and space opera, with loads of character development thrown in for good measure. While most sequels live (and sometimes die) by the motto that "more is always more", the pleasures of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 lies in its much more intimate scope and its focus on the characters themselves. Yes, a big, galaxy-ending threa...

The Don't Bother, Man. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about A guy moves into a new house with his girlfriend and best friend but when strange things start happening in the house and tensions rise between all three of them, it becomes evident that a powerful evil is residing among them. What we thought If you think that plot synopsis sounds generic, just wait until you've seen the film. Drawing heavily from every haunted house thriller you could think of, along with everything from Nightmare on Elm Street to the Ring to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bye Bye Bad Man is a highly derivative horror flick that fails miserably to live up to even its humblest of inspirations. And the worst thing is that though it is an abject failure on every level imaginable, it's not even notably bad enough to be interesting on that level and nowhere near rubbish enough to be so bad that it's good. It's just... meh, taken to the extreme – which...

So, a non-Star-Wars related movie also comes out this week. Not that anyone cares - or, frankly, should care. It's rubbish. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A slacker manager of the local office of a major corporation is told by his cold-hearted sister and boss that unless he pulls in an unreasonable amount of money by the end of the quarter, she will have no choice but to fire him and close down the branch. And, effective immediately, the office Christmas party is canceled. In a last ditch effort to save the branch, he enlists the help of his best friends and number two at the company to throw the biggest Christmas party ever in an effort to boost his employee's morale and maybe, just maybe, sign up a huge client who would singehandedly bring in enough money to save the branch. What we thought Jennifer Aniston has long ago proven to be the kiss of death for most major Hollywood comedies – and she certainly doesn't buck the tren...

Are we done with this series yet? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about The third film in the Robert Langdon series, Landon wakes up in a hospital in France with no memories of what he's doing there or how he got there. It's not long, however, before he and the doctor treating him find themselves on the run for their lives from the followers of an eccentric billionaire who believes that the only way he can save the world from overpopulation is by wiping out most of humanity. What we thought Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code was rightly criticized for being a laboriously boring and badly lit conspiracy thriller but, by the sheer force of the madness of the conspiracy at the centre of the film, I couldn't help but have a bit of a soft spot for it. I have real trouble believing damn near any conspiracy I've ever heard but I tend to find they make for good fiction; the more far out the better, of course...

Give me great movies, give me terrible ones but what the hell am I supposed to do with this? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about After criminals hit a chain of banks owned by the same person, a group of FBI agents start putting the pieces together that there may be more going on than just your garden variety bank robbery. What we thought Marauders is the type of generic crime thriller that makes so little an impression that, for the purpose of this review, I literally had to check out a couple of trailers just to remind me what the hell it was about. It also probably doesn't help that, in this case, the plotting was convoluted and incoherent that it was something of a struggle following it even while watching it. And not in a cool Mulholland Drive kind of way. It's a pity because the basic plot is actually fairly interesting, with plenty of potential for fun conspiracy-thriller thrills and even some good old social commentary. Ins...

I know it's "only a kid's movie" but don't kids deserve better than this? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about The fifth installment in the Ice Age series finds Manny, Diego and the gang on a rush against time to prevent an asteroid from hitting the earth and wiping out life as they know it, as one did 100 000 000 years ago when (almost) all dinosaurs became extinct. What we thought It kind of says everything you need to know about the movie that I started praying, and quite early at that, for the asteroid to actually hit the earth and bring an end to this tired and tiresome series once and for all. Spoiler: No surprise, it didn't, and I'm sure we'll be stuck with “Ice Age: Still No Bronze Age in Sight” in just another a year or two. On the plus side, once again credit must go to the animators and artists involved in the film because it is, unquestionably, very easy on the eyes, with loads of pretty colour...

About as pointless as it sounds. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Based on the massively popular series of games, Angry Birds tells the story of a colony of flightless birds and Red, an angry outsider who has spent his life separate from his close-knit community, who discovers a plot against the birds by the apparently friendly pigs that show up on their shores one day. What we thought If you're wondering how on earth they're going to make a movie out of a bunch of games with nary a narrative between them, I'm afraid that the Angry Birds movie does nothing to actually answer that question. I enjoy Angry Birds Friends on Facebook, it's a fun little game to play for a few minutes at a time, but turning it into a film makes about as much sense as Pong: The Movie or the True Adventures of Tetris. Sigh. I just gave the hacks in Hollywood the idea for two new cutesy animated moves, didn't I? Anyway, Angry Birds plays...

Completely forgot to post this. Not that it matters much. Everything about the Forest is forgettable so why shouldn't this be. This review has also been up at Channel 24 for a few days.  And, yes, there are some much more interesting movies up for review coming up - even if just in capsule form. What it's about Sara Price heads off to Japan to look for her twin sister, Jess, who was last seen entering the notorious “Suicide Forest”. What we thought Tapping into a real-world phenomenon like Japan's infamous suicide forest, Aokigahara (though actually shot in a forest in Serbia, apparently), which, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't featured in an American horror film before, should be almost enough to give the Forest an edge over most modern day horror movies. Sadly, though it's not without one or two vaguely creepy moments, the film constantly falls foul of the same trappings that have put the genre into such disrepair over the last decad...

Loads of things out this week, almost all of which I've seen. Check out my full review of the Young Messiah below but here are my extremely short thoughts on four other films. Knight of Cups I missed and I have no earthly idea what Safe Bet is but a) the latter wasn't shown to the press and b) I've long given up on Terence Malick's waffling, self-important and indulgent films, but, hey, I'm sure it looks great. Zoolander 2. A definite disappointment this, but it's nowhere near as bad as some have suggested. It's amiable and just about funny enough to get a pass from me but it doesn't have the quotability of the first one and the smart-dumbness has largely been replaced with dumb-dumbness. Not something to rush out and see, then, but check it out on TV in a few months with lowered expectations and you'll most probably enjoy yourself. Unless you hated the first one, of course, then you'd have to be as dumb as Derek Zoolander to watch its sequel...