Because Everybody Else Has One

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...

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...

First, no, I'm not suddenly starting to review porn: the film's title is a very pointed reference to Let It Be, Naked by the Beatles and is a crucial part of the plot, so no jokes from you smartasses in the corner, thank you. Second, I made the mistake of rereading my original review so I, inevitably, had to change a few things that I didn't like so this is a somewhat longer and altered version of the review you will find on Channel 24 . I'll try not make a habit of this but, as any writer knows, looking back at your own work is never a smart move as all you see is the mistakes you made and the things you wish you did differently. What it’s about Annie Platt and Duncan Thomson are a couple with a fairly comfortable, if unexciting relationship, living in a small coastal town in England but if there is one thing that constantly places a strain on their relationship, it’s Duncan’s obsession with the life and music of Tucker Crowe, an American indie-rocker who, two d...

Don't look now but we have a couple of truly terrible films to talk about this week - though, fortunately, one really good one too. Nobody's Fool is the latest film by Tyler Perry and all these years later and he still hasn't convinced me that he's an even barely competent filmmaker, let alone a truly good one. Maybe he should stick to short appearances in David Fincher films? And, while we're at it, has Tifanny Haddish set a record for the speed at which she burned through all the goodwill that she has accumulated over the past year?   This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about Danica is a successful career woman and after having her fiancée leaving her for another woman, is in a long-term relationship with a man she’s only talked to on the phone. When her sister, Tanya, gets out of prison and moves in with her, both aspects of her life threaten to come undone after Tanya comes to the conclusion that the mystery man Danica is seeing is reall...

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...

You've got to love how Mama Mia had the title of its own sequel right there in its originating song's lyrics for decades! We already knew that Benny, Bjorn and (sometimes) Stig were masters of the pop hook but who knew they were clairvoyant too! And, yes, this is exactly the sort of film that deserves to be reviewed with as many exclamation marks as possible! Though, to spare everyone's sanity, I'll do my best to refrain from doing just that... Mama Mia: Here We Go Again is slightly better than its predecessor - which, much to my horror, apparently came out a decade ago! - but this being a Mama Mia film that also means it's slightly worse. As this hilarious, classic review from Mark Kermode proves, Mama Mia was always about totally shattering any preconceived notions of good taste and quality; where bad became good and dumb became brilliant. From Pierce Brosnan's laugh-out-loud bad but highly spirited singing of S.O.S to Meryl Streep over-dramatizing even t...

Rolling with the positivity of my American Animals review, here are some thoughts on a couple of other good to great films on circuit right now that I haven't covered yet. I actually don't have too much to say about Ant-Man and the Wasp  - but I actually mean that as a compliment. After the sheer hugeness of Avengers: Infinity War and its less than upbeat ending, this sequel to Marvel Studios' smallest film (in every sense of the word) is the perfect tonic. I loved the hell out of Infinity War and I can't wait for the still-untitled fourth Avengers film, but this is a nice reminder that Marvel's films don't have to be epic to be tons of fun. Ant-Man and the Wasp offers just more of the same as the first film but with a better semi-villain and more Morrissey (and solo Morrissey at that!) jokes, as well as a nicely expanded role for Evangeline Lilly, who proves, once again, that she really should be a much bigger star than she is. Michelle Pfeiffer, Lawrence...

A light, fluffy middle-to-late-age romcom that's far more enjoyable than it should be. This review is also on Channel 24 What it's about Sandra is a snobbish, upper-middle-class woman whose life is upturned when she discovers her husband having an affair with her best friend at his retirement party. Storming out of her old, privileged life, she moves in with her estranged older sister, Bif, whose bohemian, free-spirited life couldn't be more different. What we thought Finding Your Feet – a title, incidentally, that I find astonishingly difficult to remember – is a big-hearted, quaintly British romantic-comedy-drama about an older woman finding a new lease on life by embracing the small joys of life after reconnecting with her quirky, joie-de-vivre-living sister who teaches her that all the money in the world can't replace a life well lived and true love comes from those who respect and love who you are, not for what they want you to be. As this ...

This also came out this week. Not that you should care. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Anne Fredericks is a wealthy American woman living in Paris who decides to throw a dinner party for a group of Paris' rich and influential but when her husband's roguish son decides to invite himself for dinner, she suddenly finds herself with thirteen guests – an unlucky number that she fears would sink the party. With no time to make any changes, she quickly enlists the help of her Spanish maid, Maria, to fill up the guest list but things quickly go wrong for her as one of her guests, an esteemed art appraiser named David Morgan starts flirting with Maria. What we thought With Avengers: Infinity War taking over cinemas this long weekend, it's no real surprise that the only other major release this week is its direct opposite. Madame is a very small film, consisting mostly of people talking to one another, where not a whole lot happens for ...

Blah, blah, blah. Who really cares about Hampstead when we have a cracking horror movie by Jim from the Office. I will get to that soon, though. Also, I have a few words to say about a film that I may have gotten just a bit wrong. And no, it's not the Last Jedi! Anyway... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Emily Walters is a recently widowed American living in the United Kingdom who has been left adrift both by her husband's death and certain revelations about his past but while she fails to connect with her small social group of upper-middle class women or the men they try to set her up with, she starts to fall for her “neighbour”, Donald Horner, a dishevelled homeless man who has been squatting for years in a small shack on Hampstead Heath and who now has to fight for his right to remain there when Emily's friends want to use the land for a new, high-priced development. What we thought Proof that not even the greatest actors...

Yeah, I feel bad for not liking this more than I did but what can you do... This review is also on Channel 24 What it's about Based on his own memoir and set in 1970s Liverpool, Film Stars in Liverpool tells the story of Peter Turner, an up and coming young Liverpudlian actor, whose fortuitous meeting with aging black-and-white-cinema legend, Gloria Grahame, quickly turns into a whirlwind romance with the older woman. Years later, Grahame once again connects with her former young lover in his home town after calling for him after suffering a major health crisis while headlining a small stage production there. What we thought There's something incredibly British about how Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool tells its Hollywood story in a way that is not at all different from your average working class, “kitchen sink” British drama. It's very small, very intimate, a bit grimy and, for me at least, a little uncomfortable. It's also, it has to b...

I'm hoping to have at least a few quickie reviews for all the Oscar movies out before the Awards themselves on 3 March but, for a start, here's a look at three major contenders, all hitting South African cinemas this week.  I should say that two of these are my easy favourites of this year's best picture contenders. I don't think it will take too long to figure out which. Call Me By Your Name.  Easily one of the most lauded films of the past year - though, to be honest, a very long shot for winning best picture at the Academy Awards - Call Me By Your Name is a leisurely paced, achingly honest and beautifully put together adaptation of an acclaimed novel. I hate to be the voice of dissent, then, because though the film is all these things and probably more, I didn't like it very much. It's impossible to deny how beautifully shot it is, how committed its performances are or just how much heart and soul clearly went in to telling this simple story of an ad...

Well, at least they didn't split this final book into two movies! This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Anastasia and Christian are now married but their new life as blissful newly weds is complicated when Anna's former boss returns to claim his pound of flesh from the couple he believes to be responsible for destroying his life. What we thought The Fifty Shades of Grey series of novels started life as erotic, slightly kinky Twilight fan-fiction and despite becoming a huge literary sensation in its own right once it changed a few names and dumped the whole sparkly vampires thing (even E.L. James has limits, apparently), no one in their right mind would claim it to be anything other a light bit of smutty romance whose only real achievement was making the reading of such a thing socially acceptable; at least for a little while. Adapting it to the screen, however, was always going to be something of an uphill battle as there was no way...

Exceptional? Maybe not. But pretty worth seeing. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Set during the height of World War 2 where Adolf Hitler had effectively exiled the German monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm, and his wife to the Netherlands to “wait out the war”, a young soldier is assigned to the Kaiser's home as head of security but whose main mission is to spy on the household and to report any seditious, anti-Nazi activities going on there. He quickly falls for a bold, outspoken housemaid who has plenty of secrets of her own – not least of all being that is Jewish. What we thought Despite its setting and its plot, it would be a stretch to call the Exception a “Holocaust film” - both because it only touches on the Holocaust and the rampant anti-Semitism going on in Europe at the time and because these truly dark historic events are used mostly as context for the story it's trying to tell, rather than the story itself. The result is a film th...

Because 14:22 isn't catchy enough a title... This review is also up on  Channel 24 . What it's about Dylan is an air-traffic controller whose preternatural ability to see patterns in everyday events makes him both very good at his job and gives his life a certain amount of predictability. His life soon takes a turn for the decidedly unpredictable, however, after he nearly causes two planes to crash into one another and meets the woman of his dreams – who also happens to have been a passenger on one of those planes – on the same day. It's around this time, as well, that he starts to notice certain events repeating themselves day in and day out – all culminating in a “bang” at 2:22 PM – a “bang” that may be related to an act of violence that happened decades previously. What we thought The fact that 2:22 bears more than a passing resemblance to a mixture of the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episode, “Amends”, the X-Files episode, “Monday”, and whole chunks of ...

Making Fifty Shades of Grey look like a perfect masterpiece... This review is also up at Channel 24 . However, since I wrote it rather late at night, soon after seeing the film, there are quite a few grammatical errors on my Channel 24 version, which hopefully I caught for this slight revised review. But no, my opinion on the movie has hardly softened over the past few days so the general gist is much the same... What it's about Following on from the events of Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia and Christian try to give their relationship another chance, even as obstacles – both inside and out – threaten to tear them apart. What we thought In my review for the film, I went through some lengths to defend Fifty Shades of Grey as a film that never really had a chance to transcend its dodgy source material, but one that gave it the old college try anyway. Director, Sam Taylor-Wood gave the film a sense of style that elevated the clumsy trashiness of its source mate...

Middle School is most definitely not the movie that most people have been looking forward to this week. As such, here are a few thoughts on two of the week's truly noteworthy films. As you may have guessed, my Middle School review can be also be found at Channel 24  but my thoughts on the other two films, no matter how short, are exclusive to Because Everybody Else Has One. Man, I really should have come up with a shorter name for this blog, though... Hacksaw Ridge is a potent reminder of both Mel Gibson's very real skill as a director of visceral, affecting, engrossing cinema (albeit cinema with all the subtlety of a very, very large sledgehammer) but it's also a reminder that it's not always easy to separate the artist from the art. However much this may be Gibson's "repentance" movie where he makes up for his past sins by shining a spotlight on a genuine hero whose story absolutely deserves to be widely known, I couldn't help but be distr...

You might need patience with this one but I, for one, think it's worth it. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A lighthouse keeper and his young wife, living alone on the outskirts of a remote Australian town and struggling to have a child of their own, come across a rowing boat marooned on the deserted beach containing a dead man and a crying baby girl. Deciding to keep the child for themselves, their relationship and their values are put to the test when, two years later, he has a chance encounter with a woman who is clearly their child's real mother. What we thought Based on the highly acclaimed 2012 novel by M. L. Stedman, which I admittedly have never read, The Light Between Oceans is the rare adaptation of what is ultimately a relatively lengthy novel that feels neither overstuffed nor rushed (nor horribly overdrawn like the ten-hour slog of the Hobbit, of course). Even more impressively, it manages to stay true to its source...

Another big week with only one or two truly notable movies. Here are my quick thoughts on everything but The Divergent Series: Allegiant, which will get its own full review by the weekend. Sink. Starting with a local, Afrikaans drama, Sink is clearly better than the vast majority of those godawful Afrikaans movies but, unlike something like Dis Ek Anna, it only really holds up against its own, quite particular Afrikaans film industry. Taken as a film in and of itself, it is very well intentioned and it makes it pretty clear that newcomer Brett Michael Innes has enough writing and directing chops that he can definitely grow into a very accomplished filmmaker in the future. He isn't there yet, though. Sink, which tells the story of a white couple trying to come to terms with the death of their Mozambiquen maid's young daughter under their watch, uses a non-linear approach to storytelling that robs the film of all its emotional power to the point that the first hour, at the ve...

Killer title, not so killer movie. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A chauvinistic, womanizing Cambridge poetry professor heads for a new life in Los Angeles with his beautiful and very pregnant, young student, but it's not long before his new commitment to being a faithful husband and father is challenged in the most unlikely ways. What we thought Any film that has as many alternate titles as How to Make Love Like an Englishman (we get its original title, but it's also known in other territories as Some Kind of Beautiful and Lessons in Love – which sound for all the world like 1980s John Hughes teen comedies) is bound to be the sort of crass, crappy product that even those soulless studios are pretty embarrassed about. And, mostly, they kind of have the right to be. It's a plodding, misjudged and nowhere near funny enough romantic comedy with a cast that probably should know better and an ass-backwards kind of morality that yo...