The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021) - Movie Review

If anyone ever got pissed off enough by one of my reviews to try and dig up dirt on me (wouldn't be the first time), here’s some for free: I actually liked The Boss Baby. I mean, beyond just being entertaining, I still maintain that that film is a lot smarter than it ever got credit for, with the kind of messaging that hits that family-friendly sweet spot that could benefit audiences of all ages. Yes, seriously. As such, I might be the only… respectable(?) film critic that is willing to give this sequel an honest chance.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) - Movie Review

I never thought I would get to this point but I think I’m starting to get burnt out on all these Marvel movies. I’ve mentioned before how much I love superhero and comic book inspired films, and I still stand by all of that, but as more time passes, I’m beginning to realize that my zeal to see these films in the cinema has severely diminished. Yeah, I’ve still seen all of the MCU to date, but I ended up getting to some of them like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming far later than I would have expected. Whether it’s down to the sheer volume of releases per year, the fact that all of them are interconnected so that they all need to be seen to get the full experience, or just down to me discovering other sub-genres that interest me more, some part of my subconscious is hesitant to keep seeing these. Not that it should be; I mean, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 is still an astounding work, Homecoming gave us the first real Spider-Man movie and even Doctor Strange has some of the greatest effects work I’ve ever seen full stop.

 

So, yeah, maybe it’s less that I’m losing my love for these films and more that they are starting to feel more like work. No change there then, honestly. Anyway, enough waffle; time to get into this latest MCU offering that seems to be taking the franchise in a different direction. A very weird direction.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) - Movie Review

There are few filmmakers working today that I so thoroughly despise as much as Roland Emmerich. The jester pretending to be the king of the modern disaster film, his understanding of science and history is matched only by his ability behind the camera; i.e. he fails at all of them. Ever since the late 90’s, the man has maintained a steady reputation for absolute garbage, latching onto conspiracy theories (or, in the case of The Day After Tomorrow, what the popular consciousness has warped into a conspiracy theory despite the reality of things) to create stories about that honestly feel like an alien’s attempt to understand humanity, relating to the common man only through the broadest and laughable of stereotypes.

People give Michael Bay crap for making money out of dumbing down his own audience, but Emmerich is far guiltier of the same sins while not getting nearly as much widespread loathing. His 1996 work Independence Day, the first real taste the world got of how he thinks the world works, is held in relatively high regard but, quite frankly, I don’t see it. I’d say that I welcome the chance to proven wrong in thinking that this sequel is going to suck, but let’s be honest: There’s no chance of that happening.

Mortdecai (2015) - Movie Review

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more versatile actor working today than Johnny Depp. Yeah, he’ll have a couple of auto-pilot roles like in The Tourist with Angelina Jolie, but when he’s on-point he can transform himself on screen: Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka, Ed Wood, even Guy Lapointe; say what you will about the quality of the writing for each of these roles, and it is varied between them no doubt, but these alone show the kind of range that some actors would give all their Golden Globes to get. But even the best of actors can appear in duds; how does he follow up his spellbindingly bizarre performance as Lapointe in Tusk?