Because Everybody Else Has One

No spoilers here, folks. The only plot details I've revealed are those that are contained in the opening crawl. That doesn't stop this from being quite a long review, weirdly enough - but don't worry, another Justice League screed this isn't. It's just as geeky, to be sure, but in a much, much, more positive way. This review is also up on Channel 24  if you prefer to check it out there. What it's about Picking up immediately where The Force Awakens left off, Rey tries to enlist Luke Skywalker to train her in the way of the Force and to return to his sister's side in the fight against the First Order. Meanwhile, with the New Republic annihilated, the rest of the resistance fight for their life against overwhelming odds as the First Order bears down on what remains of their forces. What we thought J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens, the seventh film in the Star Wars saga, drew equal parts admiration and disdain for its reverent, back-to-...

Yeah, I know I'm late with this but after some less than effusive reviews of late, I figure it's only right to highlight some films that are actually worth your time. No promises, but hopefully this will only be the first of these this week. I'll do my best to keep these short to try and make sure that happens... Before I get onto the business of praising this film to, well, the Land of the Dead, in this case, a word or two about that accompanying Frozen "short" that has been the cause of so much controversy. The backlash against it has been so bad that Disney will be pulling it from all prints of Coco - at least in the US - from this coming Friday. And rightly so. It's very bad, it's very long, it doesn't fit at all with the main feature and it took the place of one of those usually wonderful Pixar shorts that we normally get with most of their movies. It's total rubbish and their plans to use it to advertise the upcoming Frozen 2 has clearly...

I missed the press preview for this so I went out to see it the midday screening on opening day and then wrote this straight after. So, if you think my reviews are too - haha - thoughtful this should be for you! Also, this really wasn't very good. I need to review something good to balance the scales, methinks. Stay tuned... This review is already on Channel 24 What it's about Andrew and Garrett Foster are half brothers and, as car thieves at the top of their game, are literal partners in crime. When the two accidentally steal from one of France's greatest crime lords, they and Andrew's girlfriend, Steph, are forced to carry out a car-robbery for the man they stole from, and in the process get caught up in a crime war that may end up making them very rich or very,very dead. What we thought Overdrive is, by any metric, a very bad movie. The acting is universally poor, the script risible, the plot overstuffed and the characterization thread-ba...

Or, as I like to think of it: Justice League of America in the Case of the Uncanny Moustache! Seriously, I know it's not politically correct or necessarily accurate to call it Justice League of America but "Justice League" always sounds to me like only half a title. Yeah, things are probably about to get a bit nerdy... Plot: With Superman dead and the world on the brink of facing a full-on invasion by an ancient evil, Batman and Wonder Woman recruit a team of like-minded individuals to stand for Truth, Justice and the American (?) Way! Review:  After Wonder Woman proved that films set in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe, for those not keeping track at home) don't have to objectively suck - and, in the case of Wonder Woman, could actually be pretty damn good - all eyes were on Justice League of America  to see if Warners/ DC would learn from its recent success, or if Wonder Woman was just a fluke and we would be back to the low, low levels of Batman V Superman...

Anthropoid-ish? This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about The true story of Operation: Anthropoid, where a pair of British soldiers teamed up with a small group of Czech resistance fighters at the peak of the Second World War to assassinate Reinhard Heidrich, one of Hitler's most ruthless generals and a major architect of the Final Solution. What we thought Based on the historical novel, HhHH by Laurent Binnet - inevitably, some of this story had to be based on conjecture and even pure fiction as the film will make very clear; but the basic events apparently really did happen – the Man With the Iron Heart originally shared the same title as its source novel but presumably out of wanting to spare everyone the embarrassment of having to try pronounce what is less a word than an exasperated sigh, they wisely opted to settle on this generic but far more comprehensible title. They could have also called it Anthropoid but, as it so happens, anoth...

Yes, that's how you punctuate this film's title. And, no, that's not the weirdest thing about it. Not by a very, very long shot. Please note, I may discuss some plot points in this review but I am reluctant to call them spoilers - because the film isn't really about its plot, which, as it so happens is literally thousands of years old. Still, if you want to know absolutely nothing about the film going in then feel free to not read this review until you've seen it. Then again, in this case, you might actually want to know a bit about what the film is before deciding to see it. That start-rating should give you an idea of how much I loved it but it's certainly not for everyone. Indeed, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who walked out of the screening I saw of the film who actively liked it. Take that as you will. Incidentally, I know I am guilty of using the personal pronoun a lot in my reviews, perhaps even too much so, but that practice has never...

A film that is almost as ridiculous as its title. And don't necessarily mean that in a bad way! This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Set in 17 th century Amsterdam, Tulip Fever tells the story of Sophia, an orphaned girl who marries a much older merchant named Cornelis Sandvoort but as her failure to conceive a child for Corenlis tears their already friendly but ultimately loveless marriage further and further apart, she meets and falls in love with Jan van Loos, the young painter that Cornelis hires to take their portrait. Sophia and Jan's illicit love affair soon turns out to be only the beginning of a series of events that spins all their lives out of control; all revolving around the rather peculiar practice of investing ludicrous amounts of money around tulip bulbs in Amsterdam's underground market. What we thought Coming hot on the heels of a racy “Red Band” trailer, Tulip Fever is a hot-blooded bodice-ripper that is as unafr...

Not the Hawkeye/ Scarlett Witch reunion you might be expecting. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about After the body of a girl is found brutally raped and murdered on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, Jane Banner, a rookie FBI agent sent to investigate the murder purely because of her proximity to the reservation, joins forces with Cory Lambert, a white man and wildlife tracker who has lived on the reservation ever since marrying his ex-wife, to solve the crime. The more they dig, however, the more is revealed – not just about the crime but about each other and Wind River itself. What we thought Taylor Sheridan has gone from being a respected, if not overly famous, character actor to a writer responsible for the scripts of two of the greatest crime dramas in recent years. Sicario and Hell and High Water – directed by Denis Villeneuve and David Mackensie, respectively – mixed the Outlaw Nation feel of your classic westerns with slow-b...

It's really hard to complain about Marvel's endless stream of movies when they continue to be this good. This review is also up on Channel 24 .  What it's about Thor and Loki join forces with unexpected allies against a new foe that has arisen unexpectedly out of the ashes of tragedy; a foe who intends to fulfil the Ragnarok prophecy and bring ruin and destruction down on Asgard and the other realms of the multiverse: their sister and Odin's first-born, Hella. What we thought By this point, it has become rather cliché to state that the latest Marvel movie is the quirkiest and funniest yet. After solidifying their formula with their so-called “First Wave” that culminated in the Avengers, Joss Whedon's excellent game-changer that made it clear just how much Marvel's “shared universe” works on the big screen, the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn't so much abandoned its winning formula as it has stretched it and played with it to create incre...

Yay, a new contender for the worst film of the year! This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it's about After Tiffany defies her father and goes to a Halloween party at a camp site where a string of murders once took place, she soon comes face to face with a number of apparently supernatural terrors that seem intent on replicating that bloody past. Things get increasingly complicated when Madea, Joe, Bam and Hattie set out to “rescue” Tiffany from the camp site – and that's before learning about the horrors that await them. What we thought This may be the tenth Madea movie but it is the first once I've ever seen. I enjoyed Tyler Perry is his small role in Gone Girl and I've endured some of his other films (and in the case of something like For Colored Girls, “endure” is definitely the word) but I haven't actually seen a full instalment of his signature series. Frankly, there was enough unbearable awfulness to be found in the two-minute trai...