The Duke (2022) - Movie Review

A little over a year ago, I found myself in the midst of quarantine brain and, in a desperate attempt to return things to what can charitably be called ‘normality’ as we know it around here, decided to pick out a random film that was showing at the time and just… get the hell out of the house for a bit. Said film was Blackbird, an ensemble film that, while I honestly haven’t thought much about it since publishing my initial review of it, I can at least look back on with some fondness for not totally wasting my time.

And here I am again, in need of getting myself out of a static rut I have found myself in of late, and once again deciding to essentially throw a dart at the Now Showing list as an excuse to get back to work and (more importantly) get back into a stable routine. And once again, I find myself looking at a film by Roger Michell, who also made Blackbird, and… well, let’s just say that my previous criticisms about not feeling as strongly about the material don’t apply here. Hell, if I’m being honest, there’s a lot about this that I like.

A Boy Called Christmas (2021) - Movie Review

I’ve encountered quite a few films like this over the lifespan of this blog. These family-friendly, secular-reason-for-the-season Christmas origin stories like Klaus and The Man Who Invented Christmas that, rather than just retell the Biblical genesis (heh) of the holiday, take a more contemporary approach that acknowledges that it’s not just the religious that celebrate this time of year.

And coming from these particular creatives, I’d lying if I said I was entirely hopeful that this could hold up alongside those other two classic efforts. This is directed and co-written by Gil Kenan, who is not only co-writer on the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but who we last checked in on with the totally unnecessary remake of Poltergeist, and also co-written by Ol Parker of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again fame. If nothing else, this should be make for some interesting write-up fodder.

King Of Thieves (2019) - Movie Review

In some of my other reviews, I’ve bemoaned what feels like the status quo in regards to the treatment of older actors. The notion that, in order to get anything of worth out of folks like Robert De Niro or Morgan Freeman, they have to be stripped of their dignity and paraded around in stories where their age is part of the joke. Now, I get the underlying reason why people like De Niro accept those kind of roles (they want to put money away for their kids, so they’re not exactly picky with their scripts), but at the same time, essentially selling out doesn’t mean that one has to throw away any and all standards in the process.

Mary And The Witch's Flower (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Red-haired scamp Mary (Ruby Barnhill) has moved in with her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron) and, with a week left to go before school starts, she has found herself struggling to find ways to occupy her time. However, that all changes when a chance encounter in the nearby forest leads her to the Ender College, a prestigious school for witches and warlocks, with headmaster Madame Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) remarking that Mary could be a truly incredible witch. To make things even more surreal, it seems that this college isn’t all that it seems, and it’s up to Mary to get to the bottom of the college’s less-than-virtuous ambitions.

The Legend Of Tarzan (2016) - Movie Review

Since getting back into a regular routine with my movie-watching again, I’ll admit that what I’ve been looking at over the last little while have been pretty good overall. Hell, the only real down point of late (Jem And The Holograms) was only watched by yours truly as a Plan B; I originally set out to see Suicide Squad with a friend but, due to matters outside of both of our controls, we were unable to. Will that film break the streak when I eventually get to it? Too late, honestly, because this film seems to have done it for me. Now, even though the classic Disney iteration of Tarzan was the first film I ever remember watching in the cinemas, that isn’t going to factor into how I see this. The problems with this one are so numerous that I don’t even need to.

Eddie The Eagle (2016) - Movie Review

Even though buddy cop action films may hold the crown for the most widely recognised clichés, they still don’t hold much of a candle to the oddity that is the inspirational sports movie. The wide-eyed innocent of the genre family, it walks this weird divide where it is often based on actual events and yet is easily one of the most fantastical forms of drama (or dramedy, as a lot of these turn out) out there. Don’t get me wrong, films like the Rocky series show that gritty realism is just as welcome in this sector of filmmaking… when they aren’t inserting helper robots and Russian super soldiers into the narrative, that is. We’ve even looked at a few of these before like Paper Planes and last year’s update of the Rocky canon with Creed; between them, we have a pretty decent spectrum of what could be expected from a film like this. Needless to say, this is very much in the former category this time, but maybe that need not be such a bad thing. This is Eddie The Eagle.

The Lady In The Van (2016) - Movie Review

Maggie Smith is one of a cavalcade of British actors that, thanks to a pop culture phenomenon that the original creator keeps bringing back in public consciousness every few weeks or so, everyone should be at least partially familiar with. Of course, just calling her Professor McGonagall would be a massive disservice to a very prominent actor, having done numerous Shakespeare adaptations as well creeping into the collective consciousness through the side door thanks to her portrayal of Wendy in Spielberg’s Hook. However, even with her storied history behind her, the last few years haven’t been kind to Dame Smith. Don’t get me wrong, I hear good things about Quartet and My Old Lady, but in the space of 4 years since Deathly Hallows Part 2 was released, she has appeared in the mindfrag Shakespeare pissing-on-grave that is Gnomeo & Juliet as well as the previously reviewed death knells that are the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films. I can be forgiven, even considering her definite skill in the craft, for being a little hesitant with this one.

Brooklyn (2016) - Movie Review

Along with the better appreciations for the names of directors attached to a film, which has led me to go back through their filmographies in prep for their latest as you’ve probably noticed on this blog already, I have also taken note of specific writers as well. While last year got me to really take note of Mr. Alex Garland, whom I can only hope continues his ride in the director’s chair, it also gave me my first proper exposure to that footy-loving music junkie Nick Hornby. His penned film Wild mainly made my best of the year list thanks to the amazing production qualities of the overall film, but I’d be lying if I said that this guy’s spellbindingly warm writing didn’t factor into it as well. As such, when the posters came in for his latest write-up, it became one of those situations where I knew I’d check it out regardless of my current compulsions. But, even though I fixate on the writing of films far more than I probably should if I want to keep my film buff membership ID card, I still admit that that is only one part of a larger process that is filmmaking. So, even with my affinity for the writer’s work aside, how does today’s film fare?

Paddington (2014) - Movie Review

When one of the most prominent trailers for your film contains your main character licking earwax from a toothbrush, we can be forgiven for assuming the worst. Add to that that we’re dealing with a film aimed primarily at kids and we’re dealing with a high probability of running from the theatre wanting to burn everything. I have never read any of the original books, and only have marginal knowledge about the character itself; this means that I only had the very disheartening trailer to go on. This is the kind of recipe that results in clouds of thick black smoke, melted lab equipment and possibly the need for several HAZMAT suits. What does this cook up in practice? Let’s dig in and find out: This is Paddington.