Because Everybody Else Has One

The other film to evoke animals in its title this week (wait, Ant-Man and the Wasp does too - and twice at that!) but American Animals is a rather different, um, beast to Show Dogs. And this is a rather different review. Once again, this review is also up on Channel 24 . What it's about A group of college students at Kentucky's Transylvania University fancy themselves the heroes of their own Hollywood-like story and attempt to steal a priceless art book from their college library. As things get increasingly complicated, they soon come to realize just how much life is not like the movies. Based on the amazing true story and featuring interviews with the real people involved. What we thought Even if you're getting a bit tired of heist films after the very recent Solo: A Star Wars Story and Ocean's 8, you're going to want to make sure you don't miss American Animals. It boasts all the snappy editing, plot twists and style that audiences have c...

Wait, didn't we just have a Star Wars movie? This is going to take some getting used to. No spoilers for anything here beyond the first act, incidentally, but I do get into that first act slightly more than some may prefer. From where I'm standing that whole section may have its own twists and turns but it's still mostly just setup for the meat of the film. Still, proceed with some caution but, for fairness sake, I have provided a slight spoiler warning for the paragraph(s) you may want to skip if you prefer to go in knowing as little as possible. Just six months since the Last Jedi moved the Star Wars franchise in a fairly new and unexpected direction (much to the consternation of many fans - myself very much not included), here we are with a Star Wars movie that, once again, is all about looking back. It's a somewhat odd decision, not only because the prequels were generally not met with the utmost enthusiasm by fans but because it's the complete opposite t...

Marvel's funniest - and smallest - movie to date. The quick plot-synopsis bit: When his ambitious and amoral protege unlocks the secret to his "Pym-particle" - a scientific breakthrough that allows for the radical growing or shrinking of anything up to and including a human being, that would be deadly in the wrong hands - former superhero and scientist Hank Pym enlists the aid of his estranged daughter, Hope Van Dyne, and good-hearted cat-burglar, Scott Lang, to help him steal his own technology back. The not-so-quick review bit: Ant-man looked all set to be the first major failure for Marvel Studios - at least since they started building their cohesive universe with the first Iron Man film. Quite aside for the usual problem of the character being one of Marvels' lesser-known faces to non comic-book fans - something that clearly didn't make an iota of difference to Guardians of the Galaxy last year, to be fair - Ant-man has had by far the most troubled ...

The one film being released this week that I really want to see is the one film whose screening I missed but hopefully I'll have a review up for The Descendants soon. For now there is... some other stuff. Also at Channel24 What it's about: After being falsely imprisoned for stealing a diamond, an ex-cop-turned-fugitive threatens to jump to his death from the top floor of a Manhattan hotel. As a disgraced hostage negotiator tries to talk him down, it quickly becomes obvious that things are a lot more complicated than they may first have appeared – especially when they realise that the hotel is across the street from the heavily-fortified bank, in which the diamond's original owner stores his most valuable possessions.  What we thought: If last year's  Tower Heist  was a heist film dressed as a comedy about the evils of capitalism then Man On a Ledge  is a heist film disguised as a drama about a wrongly convicted man trying to prove his innocence. Except, ...