Because Everybody Else Has One

Sometimes even messes can be fun.  And I'm sure that's not the first time I said that. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about When Harold Soyinka, a Nigerian immigrant to America, learns that he's about to be summarily fired from the job he worked tirelessly at and that his wife is about to leave him for another man, he decides to fake his own kidnapping in Mexico to fleece his duplicitous boss out his employee insurance. As is ever the case, though, a simple plan gets very complex very quickly and the usually upright and uptight Harold soon finds himself way in over his head. What we thought Gringo taps into a long tradition of crime caper comedies that is mostly about a normal schlub getting tied up in impossibly convoluted plots with shady, though often colourful, mobsters, hitmen, police, drug-dealers and eccentric locals, all coming to head in a way that brings all the plot threads together, sometimes in a jangled mess and some...

Almost definitely not the film you've been advertised... and it's all the better for it. This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it's about After an accident brings her dancing career to a sudden end, Dominika Egorova is left with no money, no prospects and a mother to support. When her uncle, a powerful man in the Russian government, comes to her with an offer, she reluctantly accepts but what should have been a simple one-shot mission goes horribly wrong and she soon finds herself recruited to the infamous “Sparrow School”, which trains young people to use their sexuality against the State's enemies. What we thought If there was any doubt that the Cold War is back, Red Sparrow is the film to convince you that the the Russians are once again the ultimate villains of freedom and the liberal ideals on which most of the West rests. Obviously, this isn't about communism any more and, unlike most classic Cold War movies, this is less about all ...

Welcome back Mr Depp but this ain't exactly Goodfellas. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about The true story of Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, a small-time Boston gangster, who, by working with the FBI to take down Boston's major crime family, soon finds himself with free rein to become the most ruthless, most feared criminal in the city. What we thought Black Mass is a gangster movie that can perhaps be admired for how utterly unglamorously it portrays the casually violent gangster lifestyle (which makes for a particularly interesting contrast with Legend, the upcoming portrayal of the infamous Kray brothers) but it's a very hard to film to be invested in, let alone actually enjoy. Everything from the beige-and-tweed '70s fashion to the slow, downbeat direction to the utterly humourless script, adds up to an incredibly dour portrait of some of most spectacularly unlikable and unsympathetic low-life scum to hit our screen in quite s...

There's no "Rock Angels" in sight here... but Exodus: Gods and Kings is all the worse for it. This review is also up at Channel 24 .  What it's about You know the story. Sent down the Nile river in a basket to avoid Pharoah's decree of the drowning of all baby boys new-born to their Jewish (or “Israelite”) slaves, Moses was saved by Pharaoh's daughter who raised him as her own in Pharaoh's court. As he grows older though, Moses is made aware of his alien lineage and through a particularly uncanny encounter with a burning bush, his destiny is revealed to him: to stand up and lead his nation out of their bondage in Egypt to the promised land of Canaan. What we thought As a practicing Jew, I am, shall we say, quite familiar with the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. It's an event that is seen as perhaps the crucial moment in the formation of the Jewish people and is not only alluded to constantly in Jewish prayers, it is som...