Because Everybody Else Has One

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

OK, so I am apparently entirely unable to spell McLane correctly (see the review at Channel 24 for further details) but because the idea of having Senator John McCain in a Die Hard film is way more fun than anything in this abysmal sequel, I've decided to leave my original, uncorrected review up for your enjoyment. What it's about In this fifth instalment in the Die Hard franchise, John McClain travels to Russia to save his wayward son, Jack, from a murder charge, but Jack turns out to be a CIA operative, in the middle of a crucial rescue mission. What we thought The first Die Hard film, released way back in 1988 (yup, Die Hard is 25 years old this year, how quickly they grow up), is, very simply, the greatest action movie ever made. It has an airtight plot, tense and terse action scenes, plenty of humour and great characters. It's the film that launched Bruce Willis' screen career as an action hero and can lay claim to one of the silver screen's...

Ignore the hogwash about Looper being this decade's Matrix... everyone knows it's this decade's Terminator (minus the robots and the Arnie and in reverse, but otherwise...)! Taking its cue from Austin Powers, there's a scene in the middle of Looper where the central character tells his younger self that "I'm not going to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it, we're going be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws," which serves as both one of the film's few truly funny moments and as a smart warning to its audience. Like all time travel movies - especially the great ones, oddly enough - it's better to simply go along with the story the film is trying to tell than to do your head in trying to work out the intricacies of its take on traversing the limits of space and time. And actually, to be fair, Looper's internal logic might not make a lick of sense, but it is at least consistently nonsensi...