Because Everybody Else Has One

No, this isn't Captain Marvel. I do hope to review the latest entry in the MCU very soon but first, my latest Channel 24 review: White Boy Rick. Frankly, I'd rather be talking about Captain Marvel. What it’s about The true story of a teenager who worked as a mole for the FBI in one of Detroit's leading drug-dealing gangs and, after being cut loose by the same agents after an event that nearly cost him his life, he becomes a major drug dealer himself. What we thought The story on which White Boy Rick is based is fairly extraordinary and its payoff is a poignant criticism of the American justice system, so why is the film itself just so underwhelming? It’s certainly not the excellent cast that includes the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ben Powley or newcomer Richie Meritt who plays our anti-hero, the White Boy Rick of the title, in a manner that highlight just how incredible it is that a kid like this could possibly be an FBI...

Question: How do you turn 15,000 pages of story into a 90-minute movie? Answer: You don't. This review is also up on  Channel 24 What It's About Loosely based on the Stephen King fantasy series, the Dark Tower tells the story of Jake, a teenager whose visions of another world may be written off as a sign of madness by his parents, doctors, teachers and friends but when a series of events leads him to that other world, he comes face to face with his visions brought to life: an eternal battle of good and evil between the The Man in Black who wants to bring darkness and death to multiple worlds and Roland, the last Gunslinger, the one man who could stop him. At the centre of their conflict is the Dark Tower, a single structure that lies at the centre of reality and is the only thing standing between the Multiverse and whatever darkness lies outside it. What we thought Spanning three decades, seven novels, a number of spin-off books, comics and thousands up...

Not even bronze. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Based very loosely on true events, a gold prospector, desperate for one more chance at striking it big, joins forces with a geologist to find gold in the jungles of Indonesia. Is what they find there, however, to good to be true? What we thought Though a step up from the last movie starring Matthew McConaughey as a man in search of gold (the pretty but stupidly vacuous Fool's Gold), Gold takes one part Romancing the Nile (minus the romance), one part the Wolf of Wall Street and one part, oddly enough, Fool's Gold and churns out something hopelessly and profoundly mediocre. McConaughey himself is pretty great, of course, as the “McConaussence” shows no sign of slowing down, especially when he eerily but presumably unintentionally channels his former True Detective co-star, Woody Harrelson, but he's the only remotely notable thing about a film that resolutely refuses to leav...

A very quick look at one of the best animated films of the year.  And, yes, I do like this more than Finding Dory. What it's about: Kubo lives a quiet life in a small Japanese village, tending to his ill mother and entertaining the people of the village with his magical ability to transform simple pieces of paper into animated origami just by plucking the strings on his old, trusty guitar-like instrument, bringing to life fantastical but possibly true stories of heroism and adventure. It isn't long, however, before the turbulent, violent past that brought Kubo and his mother to the village in the first place, up-ends his quiet existence and sends him on a dangerous mission to acquire the three objects needed to stop the ancient, immortal evil that threatens all that he holds dear.        What I thought:  Kubo and the Two Strings may sound like an orientally-themed indie band but it's actually the wonderful fourth film from the animation wizards a...

It's Christopher Nolan's most ambitious film yet, of course I was going to talk about it... Also, this is probably going to be a bit of a long one so I have included heading breaks for ease of reading.  Finally, I will do my utmost to reveal as little about the plot as is humanly possible because, despite some fairly predictable story beats, it's probably best to go in knowing as little about the film as possible. Consider this review free of spoilers but if you haven't seen the film yet, you may want to avoid the section marked "plot and themes". Drawing heavily from all sorts of existent science fiction (novels like Childhood's End, TV shows like Babylon 5 and, of course, films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact and Silent Running), Christopher Nolan's latest is both his most ambitious film ever and his most intimate, spiritual and sentimental. It's also highly divisive, unquestionably flawed - though what the actual flaws are, is perha...

Ah this is more like it. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Based on the true story, it's 1985 and Ron Woodroof has just been diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live, but his determination and sense of self preservation gives him a new lease on life as he takes on the medical establishment and starts offering help – for a price, of course – to AIDS patients like himself by bringing in non-FDA-approved drugs into America from Mexico. What we thought Whatever else you might say about the film, Dallas Buyer's Club features what may be the highpoint in Matthew McConaughey's career-reinventing “McConeissance”. After making a career of starring - generally sans shirt - in truly awful romantic comedies, the past couple of years have found McConaughey consciously correcting the course of his acting career and giving breathtaking performances in some truly impressive films. From playing a romantic fugitive in Mud to wowing everyone as a parti...

The McConeissance continues... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Two young boys, living on the banks of a river in Arkansas, meet and befriend a mysterious fugitive who has taken up residence on a nearby island and promise to help him escape the bounty hunters who are after him and to reunite him with his lost love. What we thought Finally, after having been pushed back and then pushed back again, Mud has finally arrived on our shores (insert own pun here) and it's more than worth the wait. It's even worth the fact that they had the press screening of the film something like three or four months ago so I had to head over to Google to get a refresher course on the specifics of the plot. Continuing both Matthew McConaughey's career-revitalizing “McConeissance” and the recent trend of excellent coming-of-age films, Mud is far more deserving of your time than its pun-tastic but otherwise completely non-descriptive title would suggest. This...