So this has had a lot of bad reviews, but a few friends who'd already seen it seemed to enjoy it. The good news is it's an improvement on Scream 6. The loss of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega has helped especially, because the Carpenter sisters were the most boring new characters from the reboot as it is and certainly not worthy of replacing Sidney Prescott. The bad news is it's not really a proper Scream film at all.. it gets off to a great start at the house in Woodsboro but then the first kill scene rapidly turns gratuitous and unpleasant, and it's at that point you instantly realise this is just a bog standard gory slasher film with Scream characters in it. The typical rules of the franchise have been thrown out now and it plays out more like your average Blumhouse slasher or Saw movie, with all the same problems - characters get absolutely no development before being immoliated, impaled through the head or ripped open with their guts falling out. There's a 10 minute scene with Mindy, Chad and the other young characters in a bar discussing who the killers could be, which turns out to be nothing more than paying lip service to the series rules because immediately afterwards, all the plausible prime suspects are murdered one after another in a single scene. Beyond the return of Sidney, the only sign this is any way related to the Scream series is a huge amount of surface-level fan service that adds nothing to the plot. We're back in Woodsboro again and Stu Macher, Nancy Loomis and Dewey Riley return as deepfakes. Even the boyfriend of Sidney's daughter Tatum is an obvious Cotton Weary lookalike that I'm certain was a deliberate casting choice. Gale Weathers is also back with the newer characters Chad and Mindy working for her. But as with Scream 6, Gale gets about 5 minutes of worthwhile screen time and adds nothing to the plot - as do Chad and Mindy, which makes you wonder why the writers bothered bringing them back in the first place. The film would've been much better off without adding the whole AI deepfake plot device just to bring back long dead characters for no reason. Overall, Scream 7 had a lot more going for it - it's far less chaotic and convoluted than Scream 6, with none of the repetitive fake plot twists or unrealistic scenes of people running away from Ghostface after being stabbed multiple times. It's good to have Sidney back and her daughter Tatum is a great addition to the series. Ultimately though it's been let down by a ton of unnecessary fan service, careless writing, and unnecessarily graphic death scenes that have no place in a Scream film. At its best, the Scream series is clever, witty and fun to watch, whereas this one is mostly just gory, depressing and joyless. As I say it's still an improvement on Scream 6 but the next movie HAS to be better than this. What a disappointment.
I was really looking forward to this one based on the trailers, as there's been a severe lack of entertaining cinema releases recently. I feel like I expected more from it as a result but what is there is really good, largely because of the two lead actors being so good together. For a Sam Raimi movie, it's not nearly as gory or violent as I expected - it's certainly gory and makes you watch through your fingers at times, but the violence doesn't happen very often. The two main characters Linda and Bradley don't really get much development or growth - Bradley is just a **** from start to finish, while Linda goes exactly the way you'd expect considering she wanted to be on Survivor. It also felt a lot shorter than it actually was, because it gets going pretty much straight away. I think overall it's carried by Rachel McAdams, although its hard to take her seriously when we see her as Linda from strategy and planning because anyone who's seen her in previous films knows she's a genuinely beautiful woman. So not quite what I expected but certainly worth a trip to the cinema.
I've seen a good few negative reviews for part 2 of Wicked. I think whether or not you'll enjoy it depends on what you're expecting, and what you really want from films in general. For good or bad, it's a faithful adaptation of the second act of the musical. That means it's naturally much darker than the first movie, and thankfully also shorter. For these reasons I personally enjoyed it more than the first movie, which was too long and also incredibly frothy. This movie has much more action, even though it's missing some of the comedy of the first movie. While theT songs aren't as good as the first one, they're not as over the top and intrusive, so it feels more like a proper film. And of course, "For Good" is the highlight of the whole thing. There are two new songs in the film which were unnecessary - "No Place Like Home" works but "The Girl In The Bubble" really doesn't and sounds incredibly generic. The one problem this film really has is it's not really a stand alone film or a sequel - it's the second half of a two-parter. I think if both films had been shorter (especially the first) and combined into one 3 hour film, then it could've been an absolute classic.
ARRRGHHH! I'm not really sure what to say about this. I can't speak for it being any closer to the book than the 1987 film, as I've never read the book. For what it's worth, it's a really solid action movie if that's what you want - there's about 10 minutes of setup then it's straight into the action to the finish. It's got a lot of satirical humour in the vein of the original Robocop which is great (I definitely laughed a good few times) and of course Glen Powell is fantastic in it. I think it's fair to say he's probably the first proper movie star we've had in years, which is what attracted me to watch it in the first place. The problem I have with it is the ending - after so many frantic action set pieces, the ending seemed very anti-climactic and a massive cop out. It's like the whole thing just grinds to a halt and stops dead. It's easy to compare it to The Long Walk - another recent Stephen King adaptation. The plot is quite similar and the world its based in is too, but while The Long Walk is a depressing slog to get through, this is like the action packed, humorous answer to it. It made me think of the old arcade game Smash TV in places, which was pretty much based on the 1987 Running Man concept. I would have given this an 8 or maybe a 9 if it weren't for the ending, which I felt really undermined everything that came before it, especially in a film that's over 2 hours long. Had the ending been more fleshed out and satisfying this could have been truly great.
I really enjoyed this one - I wasn't a huge fan of the first film, but this one was a good laugh, and the animation is fantastic (although some of the backdrops look like they were rendered with AI). It's probably a little too long for this sort of film, and the plot is utterly ridiculous, but it's definitely a fun way to spend an afternoon at the cinema especially if you have kids to take along with you.
This is yet another film that I heard about at the start of the year and instantly thought "why are they rebooting THIS?"... only for it to end up being one of my favourite films of the year so far. The thought of Liam Neeson replacing Leslie Nielsen's character was a red flag at the start, but he actually does a really good job as Frank Drebin Jr. However what really makes the film work is it's not trying to be anything other than good hearted, silly fun. There's barely any pretense of a plot (the bad guys literally try to take over the world with something called a PLOT Device!), and the whole thing is a non stop barrage of dad jokes and complete silliness, but that's pretty much what the original Naked Gun films were, and both Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson pull it off quite well. I don't think it's up there with the original films but it's definitely as funny as Leslie Nielsen's other films like Repossessed, which a lot of people slate but it's one of my favourite films from that era of Nielsen's career. The one thing that did surprise me was how short it felt - it's exactly the same length as the original movie and was probably about right for a comedy with such a threadbare plot, but it still felt like it was over a little quickly and could have maybe done with an extra 10 minutes. Overall though, if you go into it expecting nothing more than a giggle for an hour and a half (and you appreciate a good dad joke) you'll absolutely enjoy it. Probably even more so if you've had a couple of drinks first!
I'm shocked to be writing this but this was actually the first film I've properly enjoyed for quite a while! It's incredibly cheesy, but in that classic 90s teen slasher kind of way that actually works. The original was a naff knock off of Scream anyway, and this works in the same way that Scream 5 did - it's not trying to be any more than what it is. The most pointless characters are dispatched quickly which gives you time to get invested in the leads before anything bad happens to them. There's some amusing call backs to the original including a cool cameo from Sarah Michelle Gellar (who's been de-aged really well, considering the low budget). And it ignores the poor direct-to-video third movie and the TV show. And unlike the latest Scream movies, people don't get up and run around with multiple injuries after being sliced like butter - the violence is more realistic. There's a quite hilarious girl-on-girl scene which screams "90s" because it's basically two hot girls going at it in a toilet. It's absolutely not going to win any awards and will probably be forgotten in years to come because it's just another Sony reboot of one of their old hits, like the Flatliners one from 2017 (but much better). Also the "last summer" incident in this one is strange as they didn't really do anything wrong? But it is VERY good fun to watch at the cinema and I'm glad I went to see it.
I really don't know what to make of this one. I mostly enjoyed it, as it feels more like a "classic" Superman movie rather than an overly serious one and it's enjoyable enough, especially in the first hour. I really like David Corenswet as Superman too. However, it just feels too bloated to work. There's a hell of a lot going on in it which isn't entirely necessary. For what it actually offers, it's at least 15-20 minutes too long but at the same time it feels like there's about 40 minutes cut out of it, because in the second half, plot points and characters disappear and come back with no real explanation, to a point where it completely stops making any logical sense by the end. Krypto was a fun addition but seems like he's there to keep the kids happy... people were clapping and cheering whenever he appeared on screen when I went to see it. I enjoyed the first 80 minutes or so but by the end it just became quite tedious and annoying. There's no need to keep stalling the ending in a film like this. We know Superman is going to win so why bother pretending he's going to die every 10 minutes for half an hour?
I enjoyed this but it felt like a massive build up to the second film that's coming out in January. It's worth a watch especially if you're a fan of the first film, as it's much closer to that than 28 Weeks Later. However there's not really a lot that happens in it until the final 40 minutes. I think I'll have more to say about it once I've seen the second part.
After seeing the trailer for this earlier in the year I was really excited to see it,, as the original Final Destination is one of my favourite horror films of all time. The third and fourth films in the series were pretty poor but Final Destination 5 was a fantastic (and very clever) sequel that showed there was still life in the franchise, so I was keen to see what they would do to freshen it up after so many years away. I have to say, I was a little disappointed by this one in a couple of ways. For a start, it doesn't seem to be anywhere near as gory as the last 3 movies - I don't think gore is necessary to make a good horror film, but the Final Destination franchise was built on a similar premise to the Saw movies in that we basically watch them to see people die in horrible, OTT ways. On the same note, the deaths in this series have always been the sort of watch-through-your-fingers, cringe inducing discomforting ones, but this time they almost seem to be played for laughs. That being said, I did really enjoy Bloodlines in the cinema. The trailer does give a little too much away about the first death scene unfortunately, so other than the obvious bit of gore it didn't really come as a surprise. However the scene in the tattoo parlour that was featured in the teaser trailer was very cleverly played as a red herring with a hilarious twist. There's one quite gratuitous death scene which is ridiculously far fetched even for this franchise, but it is fun to watch. The ending is a little predictable, but if you're a fan of the series you can't really complain about that since the basic premise of every FD movie has been the same from the start. The opening premonition sequence is very well done, the changes they've made to the standard FD storyline are clever (if a little underdeveloped at times) and you can tell the writers had great fun with the soundtrack choices too! Overall, it's a slightly underwhelming follow up to the fantastic FD5, but in the context of the whole series it's the second best out of all the sequels so far. It's definitely miles better than FD3 & 4, and it's great to see one of the original "death porn" guilty pleasure franchises back - I would take this over another bloody Saw movie any day. If only the death sequences had been stronger, scarier, less comedic and more suspenseful, this could've been a classic.
Let's get the positives out of the way first... out of all the Disney remakes, this is easily one of the better ones. I would probably put it somewhere between the 2019 Aladdin and Lady & The Tramp live action remakes. The actresses playing Nani and Lilo are fantastic, and Hannah Waddingham is great as the Grand Councilwoman with a few funny lines. There's also a good few laughs, although a lot are copied straight from the original. And compared to all the other remakes from 2019 right up until the recent Snow White, it's an absolute masterpiece. That said, if you've seen Lion King, Snow White, Pinocchio, Peter Pan and the rest, you'll know that's not saying much AT ALL. Even bearing in mind the current terrible state of Disney, a Lilo & Stitch remake should have been an easy win if it was done right - the original was by far the best Disney animation of the 2000s (a grim time for Disney movies) and is still one of their very best, and not only that, it completely fits modern Disney values. Unfortunately it's been done on such a low budget that you can feel the pennies being pinched through the screen. If any film needed and deserved a $200million budget and strong CGI it was this, but instead they've stripped it so far back that there's none of the space scenes from the original, Captain Gantu has been removed and Jumba & Pleakley clone themselves as humans for most of the film (why they couldn't do this with Gantu, I'll never know). Also they've made a good few changes that seem completely bizarre and unnecessary - Cobra Bubbles is no longer a social worker, another character has taken that role and Cobra is now an undercover CIA agent. David is no longer Nani's love interest and he now has a relative that takes most of his role from the original. It's as though they've split Cobra and David into 2 separate characters that aren't fully fleshed out, so we now have 4 half characters that don't really do very much. Lilo doesn't teach Stitch the Ugly Duckling story any more. The ending has been changed in a way that feels unsatisfying, unearned and seems to render the rest of the film pointless if you think about it for more than 2 minutes. The scene with Lilo using Stitch as a record player is there but Nani ignores it so it's completely redundant. By far the most bizarre change though is an added plot point about health insurance that repeatedly pops up and tries to be interesting, when it's extremely boring and irrelevant. The only reasonable explanation for including this incredibly dull plot point is the writers trying to make up for sanding the edges off the original's gritty drama, when all they had to do was stick to the original story. The 2002 original beautifully combined gritty, down-to-earth, relatable family drama with sci-fi and anarchic madcap fun, and that's why it's such a favourite with Disney fans of all ages - all Disney had to do was give it a decent budget and do what they did with Beauty & The Beast, IE do a live action carbon copy with decent CGI and a little more back story and character development. This is a good 20 minutes longer than the original and while it doesn't feel like a long film (it's certainly not the slog that the Little Mermaid and Lion King remakes were), it doesn't add anything worthwhile and far too much of the original has been lost to make it memorable. It's definitely worth a watch, the young Stitch fans will enjoy it, and I'd rather my kids watched this over mindless slop like A Minecraft Movie. But it shows how lost and incompetent the modern Disney company is when they choose to spend nearly $300million on a disaster like Snow White or the forgettable Lion King & Little Mermaid remakes, and only $100million on their most marketable IP of the 21st century. With a good budget and a decent writing team this would have been an absolute slam dunk, but they still managed to mess it up. It's aggressively mid as opposed to truly awful, and sadly, this is the best they've had to offer for years.
Another of those films that's enjoyable but is probably more suited to streaming than watching in the cinema. It's a well acted spy thriller with some good comedic moments, but it's quite slow burning and the dramatic climax feels a bit tame after so much build up. I'm not sure how it cost $50million to make, and it's surprising how a film that cost so much to make had less promotion than The Substance - I wasn't even aware this film existed until it had been in cinemas for a few weeks. Marisa Abela and Cate Blanchett are definitely the high points of the film.
This has got to be the dumbest film I've seen since Spiceworld. I went to see it with a couple of friends and their kids, and only the youngest one really enjoyed it. I can't decide what the point of it was at all other than being a massive advert for toys and the game. The film starts with a massive exposition dump from Steve, which doesn't get any more meaningful development than that. The plot is paper thin but the characters are even worse - there seems to be absolutely no point to the human characters being there other than Steve as most of them don't get any development at all, least of all the female characters and especially Dawn, who has absolutely zero character arc and could have easily been removed from the film without losing anything. There's also a weird subplot with Jennifer Coolidge playing a divorced headteacher that starts dating a Minecraft villager that's crossed over to the real world. It has absolutely zero connection to the main plot at all but thankfully it is actually very funny and offers some comedic relief to the sheer banality being hurled at the screen. The whole film just seems to be things happening for no really good reason, and there's weirdly some very sexual humour in it which seems to be aimed at the adults in the room but just comes across as very out of place. I think the worst thing about it is the absolutely appalling green screen effects. The CGI animation of the Minecraft world looks great but there are some scenes with the human characters which aren't the slightest bit convincing - in particular there's a flying scene which is so obviously fake I couldn't tell if it was deliberately made that way to take the mick or not. It was up there with Superman 4 and only looked marginally better than the green screen camera on TikTok. I can imagine very young kids enjoying this and we already know this is going to be one of the biggest films of the year, and I would say it's at least a better film than Snow White, but it's sad that people think a film this dumb is what kids deserve. They could have built this up into a decent movie franchise but it's so nonsensical and stupid that there's nowhere for it to go from here.
Another film that I would definitely describe as something to watch at home, rather than a cinematic experience. But unlike September 5, I thoroughly enjoyed this for what it was. It's a very simple movie that doesn't really have much of a plot beyond it basic starting point, but what's there works, mostly because Pamela Anderson really sells it - if you're in the UK and you saw Samantha Fox on Celebrity Big Brother, you'll see the similarities between her and Pamela Anderson's character Shelly. There probably isn't enough in this film to really call it great as it's very short, and I think some audiences may dislike the Super16mm / Hi-8 style filming. I do love what was there though and its absolutely worth a watch!
This is a very tough film for me to review as I went to see it at the cinema out of boredom, and while it was a very interesting film, it's absolutely not a cinematic experience. I wouldn't even call it a typical straight-to-streaming movie or a TV movie - it's much more like a one-off TV drama. Considering its based on a real life terrorist attack that was televised at the time, there's no action beyond the sound of gunshots, and the entire film takes place in the ABC TV studio. What was there was definitely interesting but it started to lose my attention towards the end, simply because it was a bit too repetitive to concentrate on in a cinema. If this sort of docu-drama is your thing, it's certainly worth streaming. Just don't spend money going to see it on the big screen.
Obviously it's still a quiet time for new movies, and I was never a fan of Bridget Jones as a franchise - the first film was fun in its day, but the last two were terrible. I decided to give this a go as I thought the trailer was interesting, and I was pleasantly surprised! I would probably go as far as saying it's better than the first film. The first hour was hilarious, and Emma Thompson in particular is great as Bridget's gynaecologist. I thought the concept of Bridget becoming a widow and having to negotiate the modern dating scene was particularly interesting, and it worked quite well. My only real complaint was that the ending was a bit of a damp squib - it felt very much like a copy of the original film's ending and kind of felt a bit of a cop out, after a much more interesting premise being teased throughout the rest of the film. If I could give this 8.5 I would, as 9 seems too much but 8 feels a little unfair considering how much I enjoyed the first 80 minutes. Either way, I highly recommend this especially once its available on streaming worldwide. I went to see it at the cinema and it was absolutely worth it.
A tough film to review, because there's little to say about it. Is it as bad as many say it is? No. But it's still not good, and is certainly a gigantic disappointment. It's basically an episode of Perry Mason or Law & Order dragged out for over 2 hours with a few songs thrown in for absolutely no reason. As someone who enjoys movie musicals, I really wanted it to at least be good in that respect. But the whole point of musicals is that the songs are part of the narrative - they're used to introduce characters and drive the plot forward. Joker 2 doesn't even work as a musical because the songs are just there, adding absolutely nothing to the plot and ultimately just getting in the way. That's a real shame, because the choreographed musical scenes are actually extremely well done and aside from the scene where Arthur is cross-examining Mr Puddles in court, they're the few points when the movie really comes to life. The courtroom explosion is just an excuse to rehash the crash scene from the first film. Pretty much everything else there is just generic prison / courtroom drama stuff that does nothing to justify the film's existence, and is just boring as sin. I could've easily either walked out of the cinema or fallen asleep without the big musical numbers.
This was a film I went to see out of boredom above all else and I have to admit, as a piece of mindless entertainment, this was great fun to see at the cinema. I always felt the first 2 Venom films were really ultra vapid pound shop Deadpool knockoffs, but while this doesn't change anything, it was far more entertaining than I expected. It doesn't make any sense but what's there is great fun to watch, the goofiness doesn't feel forced (aside from the dance scene) like it does in the MCU movies, and the Venom horse was pretty badass! Tom Hardy seems to be having fun too, which is exactly what you want to see in a film like this. Venom 3 isn't going to win any Oscars or Golden Globes, and its not for people who want serious entertainment. But its still a vast improvement on anything the MCU has had to offer!
I went into this with low expectations as I was aware that despite being over 2.5 hours long it was only the first half of the story. , but this is very good for the most part. The musical numbers are brilliantly done and most of the actors did a great job. It's still definitely FAR too long - it starts to drag heavily around the 90 minute mark as it spends too much time at **** University. I think as the first movie of a two-part story it should have spent a little longer in Emerald City, as the last 45 minutes is great but feels rushed. That said, I look forward to part two!
I don't usually make an effort to go to the cinema and watch horror films, but after hearing about this one and seeing the (thankfully rather ambiguous) trailer I had to give this one a go - and it really didn't disappoint. It wasn't as gory as I expected, but it was definitely completely demented! Demi Moore is great as Elisabeth, and considering some of the states we see her in as things go awry, I have to give her props for choosing to star in a film which basically sends up her image as an actress - especially during the 90s when she was basically famous for taking her clothes off in films. Margaret Qualley is also great as Elisabeth's "other self" Sue, although to be honest she's pretty vapid anyway, which is pretty much the point. The ending is extremely over the top but it needed to be, and it's not as difficult to watch as many are saying it is. I will say it drags slightly in the middle, and its definitely not for you if you don't like needles as there's a lot of close up injection scenes. However I had an absolute ball watching this - it's almost like a mix of Death Becomes Her and The Fly. If you like classic 80s horror movies I highly recommend it.
Every Alien film after Alien 3 has been terrible so I was sceptical about this one. As someone who liked Alien 3, I would put it on a par with that - IE its enjoyable but has lots of issues. It starts off great but starts going off the rails halfway through and gradually descends into nonsense. Rook just looks like a very unconvincing deepfake with a 2D mouth that looks silly. There's not enough gore for a modern Alien movie although its far from the PG-13 Disney violence of the Alien vs Predator movies. The last 30 minutes is just an incredibly convoluted and drawn out ending where everything seems to happen purely to stall the plot - it's the sort of plot driven action that wears thin extremely quickly. And finally the repurposed "get away from her" line is awful. Overall this could have been a lot worse and its a nice mix of elements from Alien, Aliens and the Alien Isolation game - but I hope at this point they stop making Alien movies unless they give us a DECENT Alien vs Predator action horror movie.
Yet another sequel that no one was really asking for, but actually works extremely well... if only because most of the original cast are back along with Tim Burton. When I first heard Beetlejuice was back I expected it to be poor but the trailers really got me excited and it didn't disappoint! It's not quite as edgy as the original but it's still hilarious with some gross physical comedy. As someone who's sick of seeing Jenna Ortega in everything I was sceptical about her character, especially since she's basically playing the same stroppy teenager act she played in Scream 5, but I actually preferred her role as Lydia's daughter in this. The plot twist with Jeremy (Astrid Deetz's love interest) is somewhat predictable but thankfully Burton gets the twist out of the way pretty rapidly, almost like he knew it was predictable and wanted to move the story on. Catherine O'Hara is great as always and Michael Keaton seems to be having great fun playing one of his most iconic roles again! The only let down is that he's not in the movie as much as you'd expect, and the promo for this has been so intense that if you've been visiting cinemas as regularly as I have, you've seen a lot of his best bits in the trailers. However I still loved it and I highly recommend it.
I'm surprised to see that this got such middling reviews on its release back in May! The first half of this year hasn't really been great for kids / family fare, and this really wasn't the goofy comedy I was expecting especially for a U-rated movie (remember we live in the age where even Tom & Jerry is rated PG). I wouldn't even call this a children's film - it feels like a "children's film made for adults". It's a bit of a slow burner and is probably a bit too long - you can feel the plot getting more convoluted and complicated than it needs to be. The animation is also somewhat overdone too as the full on cartoon elements seem at odds with the more serious live action scenes in the hospital. On the whole though "IF" is full of depth and heart that you don't get from most modern family / children's films, it's extremely well intentioned, and despite being a 41 year old man - and expecting an emotionally manipulative ending - the ending still caught me off guard and had me in tears for the last 10 minutes. Great film!
When I first read at the beginning of the year that a Twister sequel was coming out in the summer, my first thought was "why?". I remember going to see the original with friends when I was 12 and although we loved it at the time, none of us came out of the cinema thinking "I hope they do a Twister 2!" and I doubt most other people did too... almost 30 years on I'd completely forgotten it existed along with other disaster movies of the era such as Dante's Peak. I still maintain this is a sequel no one was asking for in 2024, but after seeing some very promising trailers in the cinema I went along to see this tonight, and I'm pleasantly shocked to say it's one of the best cinema experiences I've had this year. The plot and characters are a little cheesy and daft - Glen Powell once again plays a cartoon **** that turns out to be a good guy, and the plot comes very close to crossing the line of being too silly to take seriously towards the end. But ultimately you're there for the tornadoes and in that respect it more than delivers. The tornado scenes are shot in a very early 90s style which focuses on human peril above all else... rather than seeing buildings ripped apart we get lots of close up shots of terrified people clinging to lamp posts for dear life - it's only when the storms die down that we're shown the full extent of the destruction they've caused. This makes for some truly intense scenes that are much more visceral than the OTT carnage we see in most modern action movies. That's not to say we don't get to see wind farms and power plants being torn apart, or cars flying 50,000ft through the air though, especially in the last 30 minutes. It's genuinely exciting to watch on the big screen, although the change in tone between the intense storm scenes can be a little jarring, thanks to the pretty silly plot and goofy characters like Tyler (Glen Powell) and his journalist tag-along Ben. Luckily the cast have the right amount of chemistry to get away with it. Overall, even a half decent sequel to a long forgotten 90s popcorn flick would be more than anyone could expect nearly 30 years later. But to get one this good from a Hollywood studio in 2024, after months of disposable, incompetent sludge like Madame Web and The Marvels is a near miracle. Definitely one of the top 3 movies of the year so far!
I've been looking forward to seeing this film ever since seeing the trailers, and I'm happy to say that after months of mediocre and disappointing films, this is the first film of the year that's delivered on it's promise! I was a bit worried about it in the first 20 minutes because Ryan Gosling's character seemed like he was going to be another Ken-like simp at first, but my fears were proven wrong. Him and Emily Blunt have great chemistry together. Blunt has always been a highly underrated actress in my view and once again she does a fantastic job. The film is a romcom at heart, so it can be a little cheesy and predictable, but it wouldn't be a good romcom if it wasn't at least a bit corny - and that side of the film is balanced nicely by some fantastic action scenes performed with real stunt work and practical effects, and enhanced with minimal CGI rather than fully animated with it against a green screen. This makes the action vastly more exciting and immersive than the majority of action movies these days. It moves at a decent pace, It moves at a decent pace and the plot actually makes sense and is reasonably straightforward (rather than being a convoluted, asinine mess full of nonsensical twists like most modern films). Also, the humour genuinely had most of us in the cinema laughing out loud at times. It has something for everyone - romance, OTT action, comedy and drama. The only issues I had with this film are the most minor quibbles regarding the first 15 minutes, because once the plot kicked in I really, really enjoyed it. The bar has been set very low for films so far in 2024 but The Fall Guy is easily 2024's best new movie to date and I highly recommend it to anyone.
I wasn't going to bother seeing this one but decided to give it a go. The best I can say about it is that I enjoyed a lot of what was there, and it was good to pass the time. Sadly, it doesn't give anywhere near enough back story or context to the war or the central characters for anyone to get invested in anything that happens. How did the war come about? Why did California and Texas join forces to overthrow the President? What made the journalists want to become journalists in the first place? None of this is explained AT ALL, you're just watching things happen with no real idea why. People say this is deliberate, as this is apparently what it's like to live as a civilian in a civil war, it's letting the viewer make up their own mind about the drama that unfolds, and it's going out of its way to be as un-political as possible. Sorry, but Star Wars was about a fictional civil war and even the opening crawl of the first movie gave more context to the war than this did. That being said, there are a handful of genuinely impactful scenes in the second half, such as the bodies being tipped into a mass grave, and the invasion of the White House at the end. On the whole though it's just a bit dull and un-engaging.
This wasn't as bad as most of the reviews are saying but it was definitely a disappointing follow up to Afterlife. To be honest the trailers did nothing for me in the slightest, so it was a little better than I personally expected, but it very much felt like "as long as it's better than Ghostbusters 2016 it'll do". It's actually a shame because it could have been a great follow up to Afterlife, if it weren't for a few problems that were just too great to ignore. First of all, the CGI is extremely hit and miss - it's fine for the most part but some of it is very poor. The CGI in the first 20 minutes is quite frankly some of the worst I've seen in years (worse than The Marvels), and Garraka looks like it's been composited in from a Disney animation. Also there's too many plot points going on, too many characters, and they aren't given enough to do in order to stand out. It was great to see Janine as a Ghostbuster but she turned out to be a massive let down, as soon as she put on the uniform she was given nothing else to do. Possibly the most irritating thing was all the completely unnecessary fan service for the sake of it. Slimer, the Stay Pufts and the ghost in the library are all there, for absolutely zero reason. They didn't contribute anything to the plot or even play a peripheral part in it, they were just there for nostalgia bait and took up far too much screen time at the expense of more action. They even recreated the original title screen, included the original theme tune and had a cringeworthy scene where Paul Rudd speaks the lyrics in conversation. None of this made up for the fact that Bill Murray was once again in "can't be arsed" mode, phoning in a (mercifully short) performance. Finally - James Acaster can't act for ****. He was just being his usual Kevin the teenager meets Jack Dee act from his stand up shows, while wearing a Ghostbuster jumpsuit. He was actually worse than Conor McGregor in the Road House remake, because at least Conor McGregor looked like he was enjoying himself. Other than that, it did make me chuckle a few times, and Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace, Carrie C00n and Ernie Hudson were great as always.
Blumhouse have done some fun and interesting low budget horror movies over the last few years, such as the hilariously grotesque Thanksgiving. Sadly this isn't one of them. They could have done so much with the "imaginary friend goes rogue" premise, but this is as dumb as any recent MCU movie and not even in an ironically amusing way. Barely anything at all happens for the first hour of the movie, with loads of false jump scares which don't actually lead to anything. Once it finally gets going in the third act, it's just a mish-mash of ideas and even scenes stolen from much better movies of the past. Much of the climax of the story feels like a rip off of the plot from Coraline, and other bits are just Easter Eggs from classic films randomly wedged into the movie - like "here's a building based on MC Escher's Relativity painting like the one in Labyrinth", and "here's someone stood facing the wall in the corner of a dark room a la Blair Witch Project". Also the evil version of Chauncey the bear looks like the yeti from Troma's utterly dreadful "Yeti: A Gay Love Story". It's a shame because it's reasonably well acted and could have been something great - in the years since trashy torture porn like the Saw movies hogged the box office, Blumhouse have always been good at putting out low budget horror that manages to be fun, light hearted and interesting. But this is the sort of poor screen-filler fodder you expect at this time of year. No wonder Universal rejected it.
Illumination have been on fire with their movies over the last couple of years - Minions: The Rise Of Gru was hysterically funny and the Mario movie, while a little bit twee, was still fantastic. So it pains me to say that Migration is one of the most disappointing animated movies I've seen for a long time, possibly the biggest let down since the DC Superpets movie. As always the animation is fantastic, but there's not much humour to be found here, everything funny about it was in the trailer. I won't put any spoilers but a big chunk of the plot seemed to be stolen from the new Chicken Run sequel. Also for such a short film it really dragged and got quite boring - I could've easily got up and left the cinema after almost an hour had I not realised there was only about 20 minutes left. It's a shame as I was really looking forward to this one, but it's only marginally better than Disney's Wish. I hope Despicable Me 4 is much better than this.
Okay so I've just been to see this (mostly because it's had the worst reviews I've seen since Cats) and it really is as bad as most reviews say it is. It has precious little to do with Spiderman, and it's not really a "superhero" movie either - it's basically just a bad knock-off of The Terminator with elements of the 2004 Catwoman thrown in, in fact some bits have been completely lifted from Catwoman - most of all the egregious use of Misteeq's "Scandalous" in the soundtrack, and the "push the main character off a height to reveal their powers" bit. They even stole the "get to the chopper" line from Predator!Only the 4 lead characters get any real development - which is bad news when your lead actress is someone as poor as Dakota Johnson. The "flash forward" scenes are used as an excuse to keep re-using footage on most occasions. The dialogue is cheesy and predictable too, you know exactly what's going to be said before they finish a sentence. If I can say anything good about it, it's that the final action scene was enjoyable, but even that wasn't much and that scene alone feels like a massive Pepsi advert (even more so than the obvious product placement elsewhere).That said I enjoyed it more than The Marvels because it's so ruthlessly incompetent that it's just about bad enough to be watchable - not "so bad its good" by any stretch, but at least watchable!
First of all, know what you're getting from this... 1) it's a full blown musical and 2) it's not a patch on the original (nor is it trying to be). The original is my all time favourite movie and it's become such a seminal film that there would have been zero point in a straight remake, but when I heard they were doing a movie of the musical adaptation I was really looking forward to it. And while it's clearly been done on a tight budget - it was meant to be a streaming exclusive after all - I had a really good time with this new take on it. The musical sections have been brilliantly done, more like big budget pop videos than anything else. The inclusion of social media has been done really well too. Of course there are some bits that fall short though - a lot of the bits that have been copied from the original script feel exactly like what they are, a made-for-TV imitation. The film works best when it does its own thing or reworks parts of the original, however a couple of the new jokes which should have been really funny are ran through so fast that a lot of the audience missed them. The songs come thick and fast which is good, but at times it comes at the expense of the plot, so things happen a little too quick and key plot points feel unearned. Cady seems to turn into a total **** within the space of 10 minutes. Renee Rapp is brilliant as Regina, and she makes the role her own, but doesn't get enough screen time to stand out as truly iconic. That said, Auli'i Cravalho and Avantika are great as Janis and Karen, and the famous bus accident has been woven into the script just nicely enough to still feel shocking when it happens. I don't blame them for releasing this theatrically, because the pop video aesthetics look great on a big screen - if I can see this in IMAX then I'll definitely be going to see it a second time. However I think it's insane that they never promoted it as a musical because that's literally the entire (and only) point of this new version - if you don't like musicals you'll hate it. A good few people walked out of the theatre halfway through for that reason. Overall, there is no way this is going to be held in as high regard as the original, but as I said to start with it's not really trying to be - this is more like a companion piece to the original film, made mostly for fans of the original who enjoy the high camp that musicals offer. So go with an open mind and you'll have a fun time!
A really enjoyable film that Hollywood could learn a lot from. Considering the extremely tight budget it was made on, the effects looked great on the big screen - admittedly they still look quite primitive compared to the CGI-fests we get from the major studios these days, but they were much more impactful than what we see in modern Marvel movies, which are pretty much just cartoons with human actors composited in. The film gets going with the action pretty much from the start, which is great, because at times the film does drag slightly although that may just be because I'm not used to watching subtitled foreign languages movies. One thing that personally struck me throughout the action sequences was how weirdly cute Godzilla is in this movie - I couldn't help but giggle when he was on screen, particularly during the attack on Ginza, because it reminded me of the old Chewits advert from the 80s (which was based on Godzilla). I realise that's just me though!
I had no idea what to expect from this at all, and sports movies aren't usually something I'd choose to go and see at the cinema (being honest, the video game connection was what pulled me in), but this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable films of 2023 for me. It was really well done, Archie Madekwe and David Harbour were fantastic in it, and it had a nice balance between the biopic style of the Senna movie and the old Jerry Bruckheimer style of Days Of Thunder. My only complaint was the GT video game imagery during the police chase scene, I understand why they did it, but considering the film as a whole was more of a serious sports film based on a true story related to the video game, it seemed out of place and tacked on for the sake of it. Other than that though I highly recommend it especially if films like this are your bag.
Another film I went to see mostly out of having nothing to do one evening, and I can find precious little to say about it, other than that it's chewing gum for the eyes. Typical Marvel fodder with the same overload of rushed CGI and generic save-the-universe plot they've been milking since the end of phase 3. The only positives are that it's relatively short, Iman Vellani is great as Kamala Khan, and it's better than the crushingly dull Ant Man: Quantumania. Overall though it absolutely deserved to bomb so hard.
I finally got round to watching this after seeing months of wildly mixed reviews. The only people who were right about it, were the people who said it's not the film that the trailers presented it as in the slightest. I don't know what to say about it, other than it's Black Panther for middle aged white women, and it's big budget, day-glo, sloppily written trash that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons. There's some great casting and the set design is utterly brilliant, which makes it worth the watch - Margot Robbie is perfect as Barbie and Helen Mirren's narration genuinely raised a few chuckles. I don't get all the hype around Ryan Gosling though - he looks the part but the way he played Ken was a tough watch. The writing is terrible as well - I appreciate that we're basically watching a bunch of toy dolls being dolls, but expecting us to believe that the Kens could overthrow a matriarchy and create a subservient class of women in the space of 10 minutes, that then overthrows the new founded patriarchy in the next 10? And driving past a bunch of Barbie construction workers while Helen Mirren tells us Pregnant Barbie was discontinued for being "too weird"? That's just expecting the viewers to replace suspension of disbelief with a complete vacuum of one. This is quite literally switch-your-brain-off stuff. On the plus side, the scenes involving Barbie's inventor Ruth Handler were genuinely quite moving and easily the high points of the whole thing, and if we'd seen more scenes like that it could have been a great movie. And once again, the set design is top notch stuff that kept me entertained enough to stick with it. Overall, I'm glad I watched it just to be able to form an opinion on what inexplicably turned out to be one of the few genuine cultural flashpoints to come out of the cinema this year.
It's been sad to see what Disney has become over the last 4-5 years, especially as someone who was a massive Disney fanboy for a good 30 years of my life. One thing you could always rely on Disney for was fantastic animated movies, and even in the 80s through to the early 2000s, even their worst animated movies were better than some of the best coming from other studios - and even in the last 10 years, they've managed to produce absolute classics like Frozen. So despite films like the disastrous Strange World, I was intrigued enough by the trailer for Wish to give them another chance - sadly it's just the latest example of how creatively lost they are. The animation in Wish is absolutely gorgeous, but there's precious little else here, in fact it feels like a Disney animated movie bought from Wish. It tries way too hard to capture the early 90s Disney vibe and fails spectacularly. The plot and characters are just a mish mash of the best bits of Tangled, Moana and Frozen, with a few bad imitations of characters from the Disney Renaissance. Magnifico wants so badly to be the new Jafar and ends up being the most vapid and pointless Disney villain ever - he's nowhere near the right level of evil, powerful, threatening or power-hungry enough to give the slightest damn about. The fact he's so easily defeated in the end feels entirely appropriate and crushingly unsatisfying, and the worst thing about it is that he's the most memorable character in the film other than Star. I couldn't even name a single other character or tell you anything about them - that's how forgettable they are. It's such a shame that this is the best Disney have had to offer since before the pandemic.
The first thing to be said about this is that Roald Dahl would not approve of this film in the slightest. If he'd written a script for a Wonka origin story, it would be more like a children's version of Joker than a sugary sweet tale of an aspiring chocolatier being done over by a couple of psychotic, slave owning innkeepers and a ruthless cartel peddling cheap rubbish to the public. That being said, we now live in a world where Roald Dahl's entire literary estate has been bought by Netflix, and their evil band of sensitivity readers have already vandalised the childish savagery and enjoyable nastiness of his books. And let's face it, from the very first Willy Wonka film, the biggest issue with the Roald Dahl film adaptations was that they were always a bit too nice - which is why he hated the ones made in his lifetime. So bearing that in mind, this film could have been so much worse. Paterson Joseph is brilliant as Slugworth, and Tom Davis looks sufficiently evil as Mr Bleacher, possibly because in character he strongly resembles Saddam Hussein. The new songs aren't amazing, but the musical set pieces are great, and there are some genuine LOL moments in there. I went into this with low expectations - in fact I only went to see it in the first place because I was bored one evening - and surprisingly really enjoyed what was there. If I could say anything was truly wrong with it as a film in its own right, it's that Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa feels really shoehorned in. Also it suffers from the same problems as the majority of modern popcorn films - a lot of stuff just happens for no reason other than the plot needs it to happen, and supposedly key plot points don't get fleshed out. And for an origin story, it's sure lacking a lot of backstory - like where did Wonka get all his magical ingredients from? He originally wanted to be a magician, so what made him want to mix his love of chocolate with his love of magic? What's there is certainly enjoyable though, even for a hardcore Roald Dahl purist like myself. One thing I've always been able to appreciate is that Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is a great book that doesn't really doesn't translate well to the big screen if you stay faithful to it, which is why the 2005 failed. It's definitely an improvement on that film, and it's been far better than anything Disney have been pumping out in the last few years. So if you go in with an open mind and accept this is definitely NOT what Roald Dahl would have done with his characters, you'll enjoy it.
