Poms (2019) - Movie Review

As someone who frequently watches and reviews all manner of films on this blog, the first question in response to most if not all of them is fairly straight-forward: Who was this made for? Whether it was made with my suburban early-20’s demographic in mind or otherwise, who is a given film meant to appeal to? More to the point, is it any good at doing the appealing? Today’s film is a relatively simple answer to that, the older demographic, but that question nonetheless persists because, frankly, I’m not even sure if the filmmakers themselves knew who they were aiming for.

Book Club (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: For the past thirty years, best friends Diane (Diane Keaton), Vivian (Jane Fonda), Sharon (Candice Bergen) and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) have met up every month for book club. One month, they choose Fifty Shades Of Grey as their book, and as they read on, they find themselves questioning where they are in life and love and whether they're going to do something about it.

Hampstead (2017) - Movie Review

A few times now in my reviews, I have mentioned a few ‘sentient red flags’ that have shown up in some films; actors whose recent track records are so consistently underwhelming that merely seeing them attached to films is enough to make sceptical. Usually, I’ve attributed that label to certain Aussie actors like Jai Courtney and Teresa Palmer, both of whom have been attached to some rather troubling works over the last few years. Well, it is my unfortunate duty to include another actor to that list: Diane Keaton. Over the last couple years, her live-action filmography has ranged from the bland with a touch of mean-spiritedness with And So It Goes to the casually spiteful and rather distasteful with Love The Coopers. Will today’s film show a change in that pattern, or will I have to see another lauded actor fall through the cracks of modern cinema? This is Hampstead.

Finding Dory (2016) - Movie Review

One of the brightest feathers in Pixar’s cap, 2003’s Finding Nemo is a film that I watched the hell out of as a kid. Hell, it was the first film where I actually took time out to watch the director’s commentary for, and this was all pre-Critic bear in mind. That said, looking back on it, I was rather perplexed at how much I adored this movie… until I watched it again recently for the first time in many years. Wow.

I seriously don’t recall the last time a film made me weep quite this much while watching it. A heart-warming story about family and the forces of nature, one without any real antagonist to it which is a serious rarity for family films, it holds up as one of Pixar’s genuine masterpieces. Naturally, with the studio in the process of making new instalments to some of their most popular works like Toy Story, The Incredibles and Cars (notice how I said “popular”, not “good” because of that last one), they also decided to make a follow-up to Finding Nemo. If this was any other studio but Pixar, I would question this decision; however, after seeing what utter perfection they could cook up for prolonged franchises like Toy Story 3, I have quite a bit of faith that this film could work out. Let’s dive right in and find out.