Because Everybody Else Has One

OK, this one isn't bad at all but, eh, for someone as super-talented as Rowan Atkinson, it's nowhere near as good as it should be either. This review is also up on Channel 24 , where you might have seen it over the past five days! What it’s about After a cyber-attack on British Intelligence leaks the names of all operative agents, MI7 are forced to call back into the field one agent they really hoped to have seen the last of: Johnny English. Now, with his trusty sidekick, Boff, at his side and a beautiful Russian spy on his tail, English is all that stands between order and technological Armageddon. Heaven help us all. What we thought You would think that by the third entry in this underwhelming spy-comedy series, I would have learned to temper my expectation that a Johnny English film would ever be anything more than a moderately amusing but instantly forgettable footnote in the career of one of the UK’s greatest comedic talents. Predictably enough, Johnny English...

Once again late with posting my Channel 24 reviews from last Friday. I feel particularly bad because some of you, my dear (few) readers, may not be aware of just how rotten this film, in particular, is. I mean, I've heard that there are other reviewers out there - all of whom feel the same way as me, apparently - but that can't be right, can it?  What it’s about The true story of John Gotti, the notorious mob enforcer who worked his way up the ranks of the Gambino crime family to become, the “Teflon Don”, the face of organized crime in Boston in the 1980s. What we thought It’s not often you come across a film based on a potentially interesting true story of one of the most notorious mobsters in history that turns out to be this much of a turkey. Gotti isn’t just a film that pales in comparison to dozens of gangster films – Goodfellas, being a particularly obvious touchstone here – but looks all the more embarrassing for how it looks like nothing more than the result...

And the other terrible movie of the (last) week. Though, not for nothing, this one is even worse! This too has been up on Channel 24 since this past Friday. What it’s about While deployed in South East Asia, James Silva, an elite American intelligence officer is approached by a police officer with some invaluable, deadly information, which he will hand over in exchange for asylum in America. With competing groups after the cop and the knowledge he possesses, Silva and his team need to get him onto a plane heading out of the country before time runs out. What we thought Including shorts and TV episodes, Mile 22 is Peter Berg’s 28th credited directorial effort. It is also the fifth film he made with Mark Wahlberg in the leading role. I bring this up not just because in Mile 22 Berg seems entirely unaware of Wahlberg’s strengths and weaknesses as a performer but because it is a film so ineptly put together on even the most basic levels that it’s almost impossible to believe t...

Between Rosh Hashana and my desire to expunge these two films from my memory, I forgot to post my latest reviews. Time permitting, I hope to write at least a short review of the brilliant BlacKKKlansman but for now, here is the first of two films to skip that came out this past Friday. Both reviews have, however, been up on Channel 24 since then. What it’s about A prequel to the Conjuring, the Nun picks up in 1952 when a novice, Sister Irene, teams up with a veteran priest, Father Burke, on a Vatican-sanctioned mission to investigate the mysterious suicide of a nun in an ancient convent in Romania. What we thought Building on the groundwork laid by 2010’s Insidious, the original Conjuring film cemented the return to more traditional horror after years of increasingly ghastly “torture-porn” and found-footage drew the entire genre (or at least the Hollywood version of it) deeper and deeper into the mud. It may not have ranked right up there with the very best horror films e...

Denzel's first sequel. Eh, maybe he should have made Fences 2 instead. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Robert McCall is now a Lyft driver at day and a vigilante at night whose daily routine of helping the helpless is undermined when his past comes back to haunt him when his old friend and former CIA handler, Susan Plummer, becomes embroiled in the particularly grizzly death of one of her agents in France. What we thought The Equalizer is still the closest that Denzel Washinton has come to making a superhero film – picture the Punisher with some of Superman’s righteousness thrown in for good measure – so it’s fitting that its sequel would be the first time in his career that he has ever reprised a role. It’s all about franchises these days, after all. Teaming once again with director, Antoine Fuqua – the man who in many ways put Washington on the map (and, oddly, vice versa) – the Equalizer 2 almost gets by purely on Washington’s apparently endless r...

So much that's so good about this, that it's really too bad how a couple of major plot points all but entirely sink what the film is trying to be. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about When her husband, a famous, critically acclaimed author, is informed that he is to be the recipient of that year’s Nobel Prize in literature, Joan Castleman accompanies him to Stockholm to receive the prize but the trip quickly turns from celebratory into an existential crisis as she is forced to confront some of the biggest decision she has made in her life. What we thought There is something ironic about a film that spends an awful lot of time talking about the importance of creating realistic characters and believable plots in the crafting of a fictional story, when it itself falls prey to some very conspicuous plot-contrivances and characters who act in ways that strain credibility well beyond breaking point. This is an unforgivable, fatal sin for a film that is as pu...

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...

Okay, I have to be honest, for some reason actual production info was hard to be found for this film so I'm a bit worried about some of the facts I present - I heard from the PR person handling the film that the original cut was 3-hours but I'll be damned if I can find anything to back that up online. Also, I got the location wrong in the original review (which you can read over on  Channel 24 ), so I fixed that at least for this review. None of this actually changes my thoughts on the film at all but, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I'm not 1000% sure I got all the background details right. Anyhoo...  What it’s about The year is, roughly, 20,000 BCE and when the teenage son of the chief of a tribe of pre-historic humans is presumed dead after a hunt goes horribly wrong, he sets off for home with the help of an injured dog that he tends for after injuring. The only catch? This is well before dogs were domesticated and had more in common with feral wolves...

Oops, nearly forgot to post this. And undeservedly too for such a thoroughly charming little movie, albeit one with a very un-charming and very un-little title. The review has been up on Channel 24 all weekend, though! What it’s about The year is 1946 and Juliet Ashton is a successful writer still struggling to come to terms with what she lost in the war and is desperate to write something that matches the gravity of what she and her country had just been through, rather than the flights of fancy on which she made her name. When she receives a letter out of the blue from a pig farmer on the small island of Guernsey, only recently liberated from the Nazis, she finds exactly what she’s looking for – and a whole lot more as her investigation leads to her becoming drawn into the lives of the members of Guernsey’s mysterious book club, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, as it becomes clear that there’s a lot more to their story than anyone seems keen to let on. What w...

Must... Not... Make... Pooh... Jokes! This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about With Winnie the Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood long behind him, Christopher Robin is now a married man with a young daughter and a steady job. As the demands of his job threaten to make him lose sight of that which is most important in life, his wondrous childhood comes crashing into his life once again as Pooh comes looking for Robin to help him find his missing friends. What we thought Winnie the Pooh is a perennial childhood favourite that somehow continues to work its magic even on today’s kids; a generation of children brought up on the instant-gratification of the latest smartphones and gaming consoles, let alone the spacey, psychedelic horrors of the Teletubbies (that’s somehow still a thing, right?) or some of Cartoon Network’s most hyperactive cartoons. And yet, the quaint, genteel and notably uneventful world that A.A. Milne and Ernest Shepard created over a century ago ...