Expend4bles (2023) - Movie Review

2023 has been a really, really fucking good year for action movies. John Wick: Chapter 4, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, Sisu, Dead Reckoning Part One, the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, even Transformers has really started to turn back around.

In light of all that, while it’s been a long-ass time since anyone paid any heed to the Expendables, it at least makes sense that the ultimate action team-up fantasy would get another crack during this time. The third film may have come woefully short of what the first two accomplished, but even that had its moments. Unfortunately, with this fourth instalment… can this even be called an Expendables movie at this point?

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) - Movie Review

In the realms of modern comedy, there really only seem to be two groups that are holding the charge in terms of white guys doing funny but still well composed comedic hip hop: Epic Rap Battles Of History and The Lonely Island. One of the few properly consistent acts to spawn from the current era of Saturday Night Live, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone have entered the realms of meme legend on numerous occasions with hits like Jizz In My Pants, I Just Had Sex and their Yuletide slow jam Dick In A Box. Their music, while not exactly the most consistent on an album basis, combined a keen eye for poking fun at pop music trends with an actual ear for beats and music to create some seriously funny songs.

Naturally, when news hit that they would be bringing a full-length cinematic production this year, you better believe that I was anxious for it… until, for some reason, it was pulled from Australian cinemas. Luckily, this did get a DVD release so I could include it in this year’s list of films, but how is the film itself? Is it a gem that our screwed-up priorities just let slip through the cracks, or should we be thankful that this didn’t get a wide release?

Southpaw (2015) - Movie Review

Jake Gyllenhaal might be one of the last few ‘actor’s actors’ still working today that hasn’t become dulled with age. Between his obsessed cartoonist in Zodiac, his bubbling-under-the-surface detective in Prisoners and his complete psychotic in Nightcrawler, he has proven time and again that he throws everything he has into the roles he’s given. Well, save for The Day After Tomorrow, but barely anyone survives an encounter with Roland Emmerich and has a career left to tell about it. So, one look at Gyllenhaal’s scrawny visage in Nightcrawler to the gritty muscle he’s packed on for today’s film gives hope that this will be much the same.

Spy (2015) - Movie Review

One of the first reviews I wrote for this blog was on 2014’s Tammy. Now, while I can kind of get why other critics didn’t like it (maybe not to the extent that they do, but to a certain degree), I will always give it credit because it was the film that did what The Heat was unable to: It made me like Melissa McCarthy. It got me to better appreciate her sewer-rat mouth sense of humour as contrasted with her meek and rather downplayed side, and also because it didn’t involve nearly as much over-the-top shouting as The Heat did. So, when trailers for this film hit, I… was mostly into it because it featured king of British badassery Jason Statham, but McCarthy’s limp-dicked unicorn line caught my interest as well. So, with this year’s increasingly strong pedigree of action films, will she continue the trend or be the one to break it? This is Spy… and immediate points deducted for quite possibly the most generic film name I’ve ever seen.