Because Everybody Else Has One

I'm still in shock. This review is up on Channel 24 as well. What it’s about With the war between Decepticons and Autobots tilting very much in the favour of the former, Optimus Prime sends one of his scrappiest fighters, B-127, to Earth to find refuge for their group of righteous rebels but things don’t quite go as planned when B-127 gets severely damaged and is forced to transform indefinitely into a VW Beetle for self-preservation. The years is 1987 and when B-127 is discovered some months later by an alienated teenage girl named Charlie in a junkyard in her small, coastal hometown, the two form an unlikely friendship. It’s not long, however, before both the US Army and a pair of Decepticon scouts start closing in on Charlie and B-127 – or as Charlie has renamed him, Bumblebee. What we thought I’m writing this review just half an hour after the credits rolled on the preview screening of Bumblebee that I attended and I’m at something of a loss for words. D...

Boy, do I have a lot to say about this one. And for good reason.  Please note, though, that the opening section is some background to the character of Miles Morales and my current and initial reactions to him in his comic book form. The review of the film proper only begins with the second heading but if you're looking for more information about this new Spider-Man, I have hopefully filled in some of the blanks. This isn't available on Channel 24 but it is *spoiler*  included in my top 3 films of the year that will be available there soon. I'll post the link when it's up but, yes, this is that good...   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: A Look Back When Brian Michael Bendis killed off the Ultimate Universe version of Peter Parker in 2011 to make way for a new, half-black, half-Hispanic Ultimate Spider-Man with artist Sara Pichelli, he received no small amount of often fairly ugly criticism. A lot of the pushback came from those who decried the change as a c...

I noticed that this has a somewhat limited release in South Africa so you may have to hunt it down but, boy, is this one worth the effort. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Nadine is a smart, sardonic and socially awkward teenage girl who already hates everything about being a teenager but when her best friend starts dating her much loved (by everyone but Nadine, anyway) brother, things go from bad to unbearable. What we thought The Edge of Seventeen has exactly the kind of plot that should have all but the most emo of teenage girls running for the hills in terror, so how exactly did it become - and quite easily at that - one of my very favourite films of the year? And not at all in a guilty pleasure kind of way either, but in the sense that I am absolutely willing to go to bat for it as one of the year's most satisfying and perfectly conceived and executed films. Well, for a start, it does once again prove the old (or perhaps just ...

One day, a truly great "feminist Western" will come along. Sadly, despite its best intentions, this ain't it. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about In the latter days of the American Civil War, a young woman, her teenage sister and their former slave have to fend off their home from a couple of rogue Northern soldiers. What we thought Following in the footsteps of Jane Got a Gun, the Keeping Room is another “Feminist Western” that has almost exactly the same strengths and weaknesses of that troubled Natalie Portman vehicle. The very idea of telling a western from a female point of view is a great one, as it should, in theory at least, breathe some new life into a genre that seemed for a while there to have run out of things to say. This is a story of the civil war told by those that were left behind; traditionally domicile women trying to fend for themselves while their “protectors” and breadwinners are away, perhaps never to ...

Not as good as it should have been, but way more fun than it could have been. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A young orphan girl, raised by her very specialized orphanage to be a master assassin, finally gets her chance to be a regular teenage girl when a mission gone wrong allows her to fake her own death and enter herself into a foreign exchange program where she gets to live with a perfectly “average” American family. Escaping her past, however, proves to be a lot harder than it looks. What we thought Barely Lethal is, frankly speaking, a truly brilliant title for a movie. It's the kind of title that is so good that an entire movie can spring out, fully formed, from nothing more than those two little words. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if that was the case here. It's not particularly surprising that the actual film is never as good as its punny moniker might suggest but even if it does feel like a very real missed oppo...

After that murders row of horrible, horrible comedies that I've reviewed over the last couple of weeks, boy did I need this! The first Pitch Perfect was an unexpected smash and an even more unexpected comedy gem, but it wasn't necessarily one that was begging for a sequel. Of course, when the numbers add up, a franchise must be born so here we are three years later with a followup that is very nearly as good as the original. It has a couple of slight flaws, to be sure, but it's overall a real delight that easily deserves the big box office numbers it's sure to get. The story this time around does not quite have the perfectly measured simplicity of its predecessor, but it works well enough. And even if the film's half dozen or so subplots do often threaten to overwhelm its primary plot, they still work perfectly well on their own terms. As such, the main narrative thread of the Bellas needing to climb their way back to respectability after a disastrous sh...