Frozen II (2019) - Movie Review

Discussing the worldwide phenomenon that is Frozen is… difficult. Mainly because, for pretty much every single day since its initial release, it’s been damn-near impossible to escape the bloody thing. Overplay is something that can sour a film to an immense degree, and between the moichendising, the sing-a-long screenings that continue to this day, and the ubiquity of Let It Go, it is all too easy to understand why a lot of people have grown plain sick of the whole thing.

For me personally, though… no amount of overplay can kill this thing. It remains one of the single greatest things Disney has ever produced, an astounding feat of sophisticated storytelling and mesmerising animation and music that, upon first watching, it basically became the subconscious watermark that every other animated film has to measure up to for me. Whether in comparison to the media juggernaut that is Frozen’s afterlife, or just the sheer brilliance of the film itself, making a feature-length follow-up to it was going to be a Herculean task. And man oh man, I don’t think anyone was expecting this to be the end result.

A Dog's Journey (2019) - Movie Review

Fiction is manipulative by design. It’s a story featuring events and people that, for the most part, don’t exist and yet, in spite of that, it’s meant to make you care about what is happening and who it is happening to. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the general idea: Manipulate a given audience to buy into something that didn’t happen. But even with that in mind, few things in recent memory have strained that necessary evil as much as A Dog’s Purpose, a film that still gets on my nerves a good four years after watching it for just how shameless it was. You can imagine that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to its sequel, even with the kinda-sorta pre-show we got earlier in the year with A Dog’s Way Home, but surprisingly, this film was a lot better than I was expecting.

Murder On The Orient Express (2017) - Movie Review

Kenneth Branagh, when all is said and done, is a filmmaker who operates best in the realm of adaptation. Starting out by bringing some of Shakespeare’s greatest stories to the big screen in roaring fashion, right down to what has become the definitive version of Hamlet (all four hours of it), he has since gone on to give the same treatment to operas, spy thriller novels, superheroes, even Disney princesses. The respective qualities of each of those examples definitely differs, but I would argue that the man always manages to leave an impression on whatever genre he decides to take on. Today marks yet another new avenue for the man, this time delving into a murder mystery adapted from legendary writer Agatha Christie. Do we see the little grey cells go off in Branagh’s head once again, or are they sitting this one out?

A Dog's Purpose (2017) - Movie Review

Even though I have a dog at home myself, I’ve never really gotten the “point” of having pets. I see ordinary life for your standard human as complicated enough to get through without needing to simultaneously take care of a living thing that just barely counts in terms of intelligent life. I mean, people seem to take care better of their dogs than they do themselves; they certainly dress their canines better than themselves sometimes, I’ll tell you that for a fact. However, that’s not to say that I’m against it or anything like that; there’s a reason why cute pet videos still dominate the Internet to this day, and some of them are legitimately heart-warming by showing just how much animals mean to their owners. Such a shame that film never really seems able to translate that properly, with the box-office curse that is the talking animal movie still very much in effect.

 

So, as I continue dreading the point where I end up watching last year’s chatty-cat failure Nine Lives (or Mr. Fuzzypants as it was retitled over here, because fuck knows that I’m not embarrassed enough to watch the bloody thing), let’s take a look at this recent shaggy offering.

Beauty And The Beast (2017) - Movie Review

The 1991 version of Beauty And The Beast, to put it simply, is fucking perfect. Yet another classic film that took a modern reimagining for me to check out in the first place, I can scarcely recall a supposed ‘classic’ that made me fall head-over-heels in love as quickly as that film did. The animation, the music, the sharp characterisation, the voice acting, the morals; it’s rare that I’ll ever define a film as being beyond improvement but, quite frankly, that’s how hard I fell in love with this thing. Yeah, I’m late to the party but I’m sure as hell not leaving in a hurry.

 

Now, I would ordinarily get a bit anxious in the face of this because, well, remaking this film seems like a bad idea on the surface. However, given the quality standards of the recent string of Disney live-action remakes, I have at least some faith that this film will at least be entertaining. I’ve been making it a habit of talking about how most if not all of my expectations for this year’s releases have been proven categorically wrong… and now, it’s time to see the absolute nadir of that effect.

The Angry Birds Movie (2016) - Movie Review

With all that I’ve willingly come across, I’ve mostly detached from any feeling that a particular film has something against me personally. Sure, films like Mommy and God’s Not Dead offend certain aspects of my being, but I mean just in terms of the film’s existence itself. This is a marked difference to that. When the trailer came out, and a long while until I discovered the existence of an Emoji movie (no, I'm not kidding), I wanted to throw my hands up and officially declare that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Then the posters started cropping up everywhere, complete with the slogan “Why so angry?” like Rovio was actively trying to taunt me. As if the prospect of a film based on one of the most inexplicably popular and bugged beyond belief mobile games wasn’t daunting enough. What makes this even weirder is that this notion of the film trying to make me hate it? It isn’t exclusive to the marketing. Let’s dive in and I’ll explain.

Pixels (2015) - Movie Review

I may not be as frequent a gamer as I used to be, but these square eyes aren’t something that have faded since then; I may suck when going against other players, but I still have a large piece of heart dedicated to the bit-bound medium. However, this is another one of those ideas where people actively attempt to create a Reese’s-style combination: People love video games and people love movies. Now, over the last several years, games have become increasingly cinematic thanks to the works of Hideo Kojima and the staff at Naughty Dog, among others, and have yielded some truly amazing results. Transferring the other way, not so much, as I’ve discussed before in great detail. So, with the idea of a video game-centric movie not exactly having the best pedigree to support itself, how do you think it’ll work when backed by the likes of Happy Friggin’ Madison

The Wedding Ringer (2015) - Movie Review

Kevin Hart is one of those comedic actors that I just don’t get the appeal of. He always felt like Chris Tucker: The Next Generation, except at least he was in the outstanding Silver Linings Playbook where he was legitimately funny. Hart, on the other hand? Any time I see him in movies, like in Scary Movie 3 and 4 as well as last year’s abysmal Ride Along, he comes across as either annoying without being funny or just being there without standing out; he hasn’t had his Silver Linings role yet. I put off seeing this film last week when it first came out and that was purely because Kevin Hart was in it. But, I have softened a bit concerning other comedic actors like Melissa McCarthy after seeing more of their work, and hell, One Direction seem to get more likeable the more films I see them in. Let’s see if the same happens here.