Because Everybody Else Has One

 I haven't posted anything on this blog in a while, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about what is this year's biggest cinematic surprise so far: a "legacy" horror prequel/ sequel/reboot that is actually really good! After approximately seven hundred thousand Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel, prequels, and reboots and especially after last year's crushingly terrible The Exorcist: Believer, you would be excused for believing that the carcass of '70s horror classics had been well and truly picked clean.  Not that there haven't been decent follow-ups to the big horror hitters of the 1970s. The Exorcist had The Exorcist III, a genuinely pretty great horror film in its own right, even with all its flaws. Alien had Aliens. Halloween had at least a couple of sequels/ remakes that are well regarded. But overall, abominations like The Exorcist II - and The Exorcist: Believer - are more the norm than the exception. Which brings us to The First Omen. ...

Godzilla Minus One has been out for weeks in South Africa and even longer elsewhere, but I only just saw it yesterday and I simply had to share a few quick thoughts on it. For context, I've seen a few of the American Godzilla movies, but I've always felt like I should enjoy Godzilla, and Kaiju (giant monster) movies in general, more than I actually do. I have no real connection with these movies and may well have skipped right past Godzilla Minus One as I wasn't asked to review it by my editor at News 24 were it not for the exceptionally good reviews and enthusiastic word-of-mouth. And let me tell you, the glowing reception to the film could not be more deserved: I was blown away by this truly brilliant film. I may not be a major fan of the approximately seven million Godzilla films that have come out since 1954, but even I know that a large part of what made the original Japanese version of the film such a hit was that it was about a giant lizard monster rampaging through ...

However tempted I am to give The Marvels 10/10 just to piss off the women-hating troglodytes who have, for months, been piling hate on the film for committing the unforgiveable sin of being led by not one, not two, but three female superheroes, that would rather be stretching the point. What I would say, though, is that they're wrong, wrong, wrong: not just morally, but because for all its faults, The Marvels, which is directed by Nia DaCosta and written by DaCosta, along with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, is really rather good.  And perhaps more importantly, considering that the real world is such a horrifying shit show right now - especially for those of us who have the audacity to be both Jewish and Zionist - it's just such a relief to sit back for 100-odd minutes with something that is this joyful, this funny, and this centred on three women - well two women and a teenage girl - of different races, religions and backgrounds, literally tied together to a single fate, ...

I'm somewhat swamped with paid work right now, but I needed to jot down some of my thoughts about Martin Scorsese's latest juggernaut of a film. And by "jot", I mean I'm mostly just going to expand slightly on the comment that I already made on Mark Kermode's review of the film on YouTube. In very short, I think there's a brilliant two-hour, even two-and-a-half, long movie buried in here, but I found the punishing runtime to be very much to the film's detriment. Especially the middle section, which focuses almost entirely on a succession of murders, which just dragged and dragged. It also had a major problem in that Lily Gladstone's character, Molly, was the only really sympathetic or, to be honest, well-drawn character out of the main cast. Frankly it was only in the final hour that I became at all invested in DiCaprio's Eugene, which is a major problem considering he's clearly the film's main protagonist and POV character. And while D...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a phenomenon that has been quietly blowing me away since the late 1980s when I discovered the original cartoon at the impressionable young age of seven (or thereabouts) and became a massive fan almost at first glance. Like those famous Marvel and DC superheroes before them, the Turtles have managed to transcend their humble comic book origins to become an entertainment juggernaut that have caught the imagination of now generations of kids and even some adults along the way. All the more so because unlike the massive success of, say, those early Superman or Captain America comics, the Turtles started life as a truly independent, self-published, black-and-white comic book that were written and drawn mostly as a parody of Frank Miller's gritty, neo-noir takes on Daredevil and Batman. And here we are, most of four decades later, with the seventh (?) big screen outing for our heroes in a half shell (following countless TV series, comics, video games and a...

So, You People on Netflix. I have thoughts.  And none of them positive.  (Reprinted in part from my Twitter multi-post). First off, on a simple, artistic level how the hell did they get this many excellent comedic actors in a movie this unspeakably bad? David Duchovny, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Rhea Pearlman, Matt Walsh, Nelson Franklin, and Eddie frickin' Murphy, but not a single laugh between any of them. But not only is it horrifically unfunny, its racial politics are also genuinely grotesque. Now, to be clear, I tend to roll my eyes when films and TV shows are criticized for being "woke" because normally such criticisms come from basement dwellers whinging about women or minorities having the audacity to, you know, be represented on screen, but this film is pretty powerful proof that there is a serious argument to be made against "woke" identity politics from a liberal, (centre-)lefty perspective.  You People is clearly, by today's standards, entirely "p...

The other half of the Barbeheimer phenomenon, Oppenheimer, hasn't been quite as controversial as Barbie, but it has still drawn some controversy. Not controversy about the morality of atomic warfare, of course, but about Florence Pugh's nude scenes. Because that's the world we're living in, I guess. But I begin with a digression. Much like Barbie, there's probably not a ton to be said about Oppenheimer at this point, except to say that it's every bit as good as people are saying. Still, I'm going to take a run at it. What stands out most about Oppenheimer is how much it's both very much a Christopher Nolan film and quite a radical departure for him. Yes, loads of the old Nolan tropes are present and accounted for: multiple timelines, an epic scope, trouble writing female characters, practical effects shot on IMAX cameras, a booming and intentionally over-stuffed soundtrack, and of course, Cillian Murphy, finally taking centre stage.  On the other hand, i...

At this point, is there anything more to be said about either part of Barbenheimer? Probably not, but that hasn't stopped people from continuing to weigh in on both films.  Just yesterday, Bill Maher was trending on I'm-not-calling-it-X-Twitter (yet again) for saying how much he disliked the film for being both preachy and presenting a militant feminist view of the world that doesn't actually exist anymore. Whatever. Bill is just being Bill, as usual. He manages to be both right and completely misses the point at the same time.  Barbie does indeed show a greatly exaggerated view of the world that represents a male-female power dynamic that is at least 10, if not 30 years old. It's also true that Gerwig is not afraid to hit us over the head with its anti-patriarchy messaging.  But what Bill misses - and what dumbasses like Ben Shapiro, who went on to have an embarrassing 45-minute hissy fit about a freakin' Barbie movie, certainly miss - is that a) it's a satire,...

  So, yeah, it's been a while...  I abandoned this blog some four years ago for the simple reason that it just wasn't getting very many hits and it wasn't really worth the time and effort to maintain it.  A couple of significant changes happened recently career-wise, though, that I decided to bring this old blog back from the dead. First, with a new emphasis at News 24 on in-depth reviews and features rather than reviewing every single thing that comes out, there are a number of big movies (and TV shows) that I've seen of late that I haven't covered, and I've been itching to write about them. Just as importantly, I finally have the chance to improve the readership of this blog, as I was recently accredited as an official critic on Rotten Tomatoes (as in, my reviews will now count towards the "Tomatometer score"), so hopefully, by having these reviews side by side with my "official" reviews, they might draw more than the dozen or so readers I ...

Oh, I believe in Yesterday... No, really, you have to be pretty cold-hearted not to go along with this movie, even though it was clearly just made for me. My review has been up over on Channel 24 for, like, a week. So hope you saw it there. What it’s about Jack Malick is a struggling singer/ songwriter whose only fan is his best friend and manager, Ellie. When an unexplained worldwide power-outage has him riding his bicycle into a bus, Jack wakes up with a stunning realization: no one but him remembers the music of the Beatles. Now, passing the entire Beatles songbook (or the parts that he can remember, anyway) off as his own, Jack quickly becomes the biggest pop star on the planet. He seems to have gotten all he ever thought he wanted but is fame and fortune built on the uncredited work of others really how he wanted to get there? And, with the whole world at his feet, what place does that leave for Ellie, the woman who stuck by him through his ups and many, many downs? W...

Posting this late again but hopefully, you already say this over on Channel 24 . Not that you need another review telling you how much fun the latest Spider-Man movie is but hey ho... What it’s about Picking up from the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker has to come to terms with a world irrevocably changed. After helping to save the world from Thanos and his minions, all Peter wants is to get away from superheroing for a bit by going on a school-sponsored, educational European trip with his friends and to declare his feelings to MJ at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately for Peter, Nick Fury and a mysterious new superhero from another Earth have other plans for our Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man...  What we thought Warning: It’s impossible to talk about Spider-Man: Far From Home without spoiling the end of Avengers: Endgame. If you still somehow haven’t seen the biggest movie on the planet and don’t want to know what happens in it, do not read any f...

It may well be a freaking awful horror film but as a surprisingly self-aware mixture of teen comedy and schlock, Annabelle Comes Home is a surprisingly fun time. I still think it's way past time to close the book on the "Conjuring Universe", though... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The Conjuring Universe continues in this third Annabelle film. After their last harrowing encounter with the titular evil doll, Ed and Lorraine Warren are on their way to their next case but, for the sake of them and everyone around them, they drop off Annabelle at their home, where they know she will be kept under control behind a pane of sacred glass in their room of occult objects. Leaving their young daughter, Judy, at home and in the care of her trusted babysitter, Mary Ellen, they head out with the comfort on knowing that their already well-behaved and responsible daughter is in the hands of an equally well behaved and responsible teenage girl and that ...

The subject matter may have deserved a better, or at least more substantial, film but Stockholm certainly deserved better than to crash and burn at the worldwide box office. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Based on the true story that gave rise to the psychological condition known as Stockholm Syndrome in the early ‘70s, an American criminal doesn’t so much rob as hole up in Sweden’s biggest bank by taking hostage a handful of its employees, demanding a million dollars, the immediate release of notorious Swedish bankrobber, Gunnar Sorensson, and safe passage for the both of them out of the country. As the situation roles on, it becomes clear that not all is quite as it seems – and that’s before one of the hostages, Bianca Lind, starts to form an increasingly tight bond with her captor. What we thought Stockholm – or Captor, as it is boringly known in some territories – is one odd duck of a film. The story itself is a textbook example of “truth being str...

Solid movie is solid. On the other hand, not everyone agrees. My review is also up on Channel 24 but, for something of a change, you will also get Channel 24 editor, Herman Eloff's more enthusiastic take on the film right along with it. What it’s about The true story of J.R.R Tolkien who, before becoming one of the most famous and acclaimed fantasy writers ever with the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, faced more than his fair share of troubles. From being orphaned as a young boy to a complicated love affair with a fellow foster child to fighting in World War I, his life was almost as eventful as his novels. These struggles would ultimately shape both the man he would become and the magical worlds he would go on to create but perhaps nothing played a greater role in shaping who he would become than the literary club that he formed with a group of like-minded boys; a “fellowship” that would accompany him through high school, university and, ultimately, the Gr...

This, I believe, is what a stream of consciousness review looks like. The review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about Anna Poliatova may look like your average supermodel with the rags to riches story that often goes along with it but there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye. Beneath her beautiful façade lies a trained killer with the sort of keen intelligence and cold ruthlessness that only the best spies have. Who is she working for, though, and what part does she have to play in a showdown between the CIA and KGB in the final years of the Cold War? What we thought Anna has been shrouded in secrecy with a worldwide embargo to prevent any reviews going up before its day of release (today, internationally) and with no regular press screening of the film, at least in this country. This is only worth mentioning because a) I have literally just gotten out of seeing the film at a packed public preview mere hours before the film is due to be released to the public so I...

I totally forgot to post this last week. Ah well, I'm sure no one really cares that much about the new Men in Black flick, right? Either way, it's been up on Channel 24 since last Friday so hopefully, you saw my review of it there. What it’s about After finding her way into the Men in Black, new recruit Agent M teams up with the roguish Agent H on the seemingly simple assignment of showing an alien VIP a good time before he leaves Earth the next day. When things go horribly wrong, M believes that a mole in the MIB organization betrayed them but can she prove it before a new enemy threatens Earth’s human and alien populations alike. And, worse, can that mole be her new partner, H? What we thought Between the fact that both Men in Black sequels were, at the very least, disappointments after the fresh, funny and inventive original film took the world by storm and helped solidify Will Smith as one of the era’s definitive leading men, and that news of this new sequel/ r...

Not a sequel to Black Swan.  And all the worse for that. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The true story of Rudolf Nureyev, an acclaimed Soviet ballet dancer who, in the early 1960s, defected to the West after the KGB viewed his behaviour during a successful tour in Paris as seditious and a betrayal of communist values. Nowhere more so than in his increasingly intimate relationship with the “aristocratic” Clara Saint, who introduces him to a world far livelier and freer than anything he has ever known. What we thought It’s hardly unheard of for a film to be less than the sum of its parts but it’s hard to think of a film in recent memory with such excellent constituent parts adding up to a massively frustrating and unsatisfying whole. Ralph Fiennes has yet to fully translate his exceptional skills as an actor into his still fairly nascent career as a director (Coriolanus did nothing to make palatable one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously difficult...

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...

More John Wick? Is it still quantum, baby? Well, maybe. Baby. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Picking up immediately after the events of John Wick 2, John Wick is now classified as “ex communicado” by the shadowy syndicate of assassins known as “The Table”, which means that every other assassin on the planet is out to get him and he is entirely cut off from all the resources that the Table offers their assassins. Cashing in on every favour owed him, Wick has no choice but to either re-enter the syndicate's good books or vanish so completely off the face of the Earth that no one will ever bother him again. What it’s about After being pretty lukewarm about both of the previous John Wick films, the third instalment hasn’t exactly changed my mind about the series but I can quite confidentially declare John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum to be by far the best John Wick flick to date. If you haven’t liked the other John Wick movies then you won’t...

OK, this isn't quite as bad as you may have heard. It's certainly not good, though. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about When low-level con artist, Penny, worms her way into her life, high-class hustler, Josephine, does her best to remove Penny from her life as quickly as possible before she has a chance to ruin the life she has built for herself on the French Riviera. When everything she tries fails, she challenges Penny to a wager whereby the first to swindle a young tech-billionaire out of $500,000 gets to stay in this swanky riverside paradise while the loser has to leave for less desirable climes. What we thought The Hustle is a gender-swapped remake of the ‘80s Steve Martin/ Michael Caine comedy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which was itself based on the lesser known Marlon Brando/ David Niven vehicle, Bedtime Stories from 1964. Third time, as it turns out, is not always the charm. Despite a certain amount of snobbishness by some critics at the t...