Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil (2019) - Movie Review

2019 will likely go down as the year where Disney stretched too far, and I’m not just talking about their ever-growing monopoly on modern Western entertainment. What started out as interesting experiments to redefine their stable of animated classics (or, more likely, extend their copyright holding for said stories) has truly devolved into a collection of repeated and bewildering mistakes. Of the three that made it to cinemas this year, only one of them left me with anything positive to say, and even then, it has paled considerably since I first reviewed it.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) - Movie Review

While How To Train Your Dragon serves as a lot of people’s evidence that Dreamworks is far better than we give them credit for, the Kung Fu Panda films are also an example of the studio at their best. Admittedly, the entire franchise started on a rather ill-fitting note by casting Jack Black as the main character, and sure his mannerisms were quite grating to start out with, but it had a sense of excitement and fun that a lot of other recent family films were lacking. The animation was high-energy and very well-crafted, leading to probably some of the best fight scenes of any film series of the last several years, the acting was top-notch with an all-star cast that contained some real martial arts legends like Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Oh, and the writing took the standard “be yourself” theme of a lot of family-friendly fare and executed it so well that it managed to break the mould of its kind and surpass the genre clichés. You can imagine, with a pedigree like this, that this third film would have some rather high expectations. For reasons I will get into with the review proper, I was really not looking forward to this. But hey, after the weaksauce family offerings of the last long while, I’m still positive that this will be a decent watch. How decent is the question, though.

By The Sea (2015) - Movie Review

 

There are a great many reasons why people make films: To create capital-A Art, to portray a certain point, to give others a view into the psyche of the filmmaker(s), to showcase a person’s abilities, or even as a means to filter unchecked drug money. Hell, it can even be for reasons as simple as a given person has access to the equipment and means to film something. Now, given how I have watched, reviewed, loved and hated films that wildly vary in terms of the whys and hows, it would be rather foolish to say that any one reason is more meaningful than the other. However, with the advent of the 'film star' has come a particularly troubling reason: A means to get a paid vacation. Way too often, we see actors starring in films of questionable merit, featuring beautiful locales all strung together with the kind of writing that usually results in a combination of mashing one’s face into the keyboard and Spell Check. That said, today’s film is a bit different from that, as said star is also the writer, producer and director. Basically, if anything goes wrong, it’s all Angelina Jolie’s fault. Let’s get started as I focus my aim now that I know who the target is.

Unbroken (2015) - Movie Review

As Oscar season comes along in Australia, we of course have a period drama set in World War II. That's not to say that that automatically means it'll be bad; just that I have grown savvy enough in my short foray into film criticism to know that war stories make for great Oscar bait. With Angelina Jolie at the helm as director, a fact that blindsided me so much that I didn't even find out until recently that this isn't her directorial debut, and the Coen brothers as co-writers on the script, this film at least has some talent at its core. But how does it fare against its usually lofty competition?