Game Night (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Every weekend, Max (Jason Bateman), Annie (Rachel McAdams), Ryan (Billy Magnussen), Kevin (Lamorne Morris) and Michelle (Kylie Bunbury) get together for a game night. But when Max's brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) rolls into town, he wants to try something a bit different: A role-playing mystery night. The group goes along with the theatrics initially, but before too long, it seems that they might be in the middle of a real mystery as Brooks is kidnapped. In order to survive the night, they not only have to follow the clues but also figure out how much of what is happening is part of the game and how much of it is part of something more dangerous.

Office Christmas Party (2016) - Movie Review

I mentioned our current morbid take on the festive season earlier this month, but I think it’s now that I should bring up why that has taken hold of the collective mindset. In lieu of a dry and lengthy ramble about human evolution and how it is both a blessing and a curse, I’ll just say that with how complex our lives continue to get, things like actually having time every year to relax and let go of all the year’s grievances aren’t realistic. Christmas may be recognized as a time of goodwill toward men but anyone who has recently attempted a family Christmas dinner will know that that isn’t even close to the case. Add to that how this has been a particularly mournful year in terms of beloved icons, and we’re less likely to sing Joy To The World than we are to just roar The Pogues’ Fairytale Of New York before drowning our sorrows in hard liquor. The world sucks and it only seems to make people even more stressed out during the holidays. So, with all that in mind, maybe this hedonistic Christmas party movie is just what we need right now. This is Office Christmas Party.

Zootopia (2016) - Movie Review

It’s Disney time again! It’s also discussion of modern-day racism time again! … I can’t be alone in thinking that these two shouldn’t be together. Sure, teaching kids from an early age that discrimination be bad is always good, but when directly dealing with racist attitudes, it tends to get a lot more complicated than even the more intelligent filmmakers give it credit for. Yeah, treating someone differently because of their skin colour is pretty basic stuff, but then there’s the continuing discussion about the root of such things. Hell, the word ‘racism’ seems to wildly vary in terms of definition, some attributing more direct labels to it than others. Now to add Disney to the mix and, while I give them all the goddamned credit in the world for making something as poignant as Inside Out, their habit of Disneyfying complex issues is well on record by this point. I mean, one of the last times they looked at racism was with Pocahontas and… well, let’s just say that ‘surface level’ would be putting it very generously. But, given how the world has decided to heap on the praise for this film’s approach on the subject, I figure looking into the background of its depiction in family films was worth delving into first. If for no other reason than to set myself up for a fall in case it should happen; in the name of Katzenberg, I hope I’m wrong.

The Gift (2015) - Movie Review

Yep, another actor deciding to take up the mantle of director… and he’s Australian to boot. I can only hope that this fares better than last time this happened. Well, okay, this doesn’t have nearly as bad a lead-up as The Water Diviner. For starters, our aspiring director Joel Edgerton is also penning the script for this film and, judging by his role from the trailer, this should be less ‘vanity project’ and more ‘passion project’; something a bit more heart put into it. It also helps that he isn’t being funded by a television station; instead, he’s being backed by Jason Blum, the most prominent hack producer working today. Not entirely sure how one becomes a producer-for-hire, but given how he’s been attached to at least 11 films this year alone, something tells me that his attachment here is nothing too special. So, do we get another Crowe or is this actually good?

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) - Movie Review

Given my compulsion to review every new film I see, I will inevitably come across some films that are easier to talk about than others; whether it’s because it’s easier to talk about bad films than good ones or because some films engage me more and leave me more to work with in terms of writing, not every film will give me the same amount of content. This is such an occasion, only for different reasons than usual. It isn’t because this film is entirely good, leaving me with less to talk about, nor did it fail to leave me with much to talk about. No, this time the difficulty in writing a review for this movie is, put simply, because it is just plain unpleasant to recollect.

This Is Where I Leave You (2014) - Movie Review

Given my habitual watching of everything that comes my way, expectations on how a movie looks and sounds before seeing it means something different than what it used to. Before, as it probably does for a lot of you reading this, I would look at a film’s cast, premise and trailer and judge whether or not I would go and see it based on that. Now, since I watch most if not all of the movies I get trailers for, it feels more like opening a birthday present from somebody I don’t know; it could be good, bad, bizarre or any mixture of the three, but I won’t know till I open it. I’ve had movies that were good that I thought would be bad (The Fault In Our Stars), vice versa (22 Jump Street) or had my assumptions proven right (Divergent sucked). What am I getting at with all this? Well, tl;dr I thought This Is Where I Leave You would be hilarious just because Tina Fey is in it.