Love, Rosie (2014) - Movie Review

One of the key events that lead me to watching new films as intently as I do was when my therapist recommended a movie for me to watch as part of my therapy. It was a British rom-com called About Time, which I thoroughly enjoyed and got me thinking more about the idea of movie-watching as a form of therapy, something I might revisit at a later date. Anyway, it was a short while later that I decided to go with my current plan of watching all the new releases, as well as revisiting as many of the movies from the last few years that I can, and with that I gained a certain… relationship with romantic comedies. While every other critic has cinematic PTSD, given how bad most rom-coms get, I look at new releases in the genre as a little reminder of something that got me to where I am now as a critic. Doesn’t hurt that today’s movie also comes from the same general geographic location.

Pokémon The Movie: Diancie And The Cocoon Of Destruction (2014) - Movie Review

Pokémon: A franchise so big that it may one day topple Japan’s own government; a TV show that is one of the few anime series that everyone knows about, guaranteed; and a game series that has a special place in the hearts of children and man-children alike. Yes, Pokémon is all of these things and I am a fan of the games myself. I specify ‘games’ because the TV show isn’t really my thing. Honestly, out of all the different anime titles that we grew up on (Yu-Gi-Oh!, Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, etc.), as a show Pokémon would have to be the weakest. Don’t get me wrong: The games are still awesome, even though with the advent of ‘Mega Evolutions’, my mother’s outcries that Pokémon and Digimon are exactly the same is starting to make too much sense, and while I haven’t played any games past Emerald (I kind of fell out with portable gaming somewhere down the track), I do still find myself playing homebrews on my computer (Zeta/Omicron is pretty damn good). So, with the 17^th instalment of the Pokémon movie series coming out at my local cinema, I decided to head out with a couple of friends and check it out.

Let's Be Cops (2014) - Movie Review

The trailer for this movie made it look absolutely awful; the premise at face value is one of the worst for any film this year, if not the last few years; the comedy bits we got were limp and just not funny; and when the best part of the whole thing is a Method Man song being played over it, you’re not doing a good job at selling your movie. But I have written before about my expectations with movies and how they aren’t always on par, so really this could go either way.

Maya The Bee Movie (2014) - Movie Review

Starting this habit of seeing every movie available to me has been simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve ever had. Best because it’s given me a chance to see movies I wouldn’t normally check out and broadening my cinematic horizons; Worst because it frequently puts me into weird positions of being incredibly out of place amongst the audiences for some movies. Today’s film represents one of those situations, where I’m the only guy in the cinema who doesn’t have a child watching the movie with him.

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.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014) - Movie Review

Before getting into this latest iteration of one of the most popular horror franchises of this generation, let's quickly get into what came before it. The first one was good, the second was even better and the third, while decent, wasn't as good as the other two. In all three, I loved the thick eerie atmosphere, and yeah they are pretty jump-scare heavy but I personally really liked them. Then I watched PA 4, which ended up being a crushing disappointment and easily one of the worst films of the year. After all that, I was very hesitant to check out this spin-off of the franchise, but I eventually gave it a go.

A Walk Among The Tombstones (2014) - Movie Review

Twice in a row I find myself talking about actors whom have become known for playing the same role over and over. And to make matters worse, the actor in question played pretty much the exact same character earlier this year. Liam Neeson, despite what my mother and I’m sure countless others would like to argue, is not a bad actor. He is just good at playing to type and prefers to stick to said type. He is best in movies like the Taken series (The fact that that movie became a series is testament enough to how good he is at playing that type), Batman Begins and of course Non-Stop from earlier this year: The soft-spoken but hardened ‘specialist’ who will beat you and everyone who’s ever looked at you senseless if you cross him. Here, he is once again doing his thing in the new thriller ‘A Walk Among The Tombstones’.

One Direction: Where We Are - The Concert Film (2014) - Movie Review

I don’t hate all boy bands; I myself have a certain affinity for 5ive (Everybody Get Up is a little too catchy for me to ignore) and even some songs by N*SYNC. That said, though, I have ears and a brain that would even scrutinize my baby brothers’ crayon drawings: I know emotional manipulation when I hear it and that is the crux of what every boy band does. They are tools of record companies to exploit feelings of Lisztomania in teenage girls (and some women… and some teenage boys, come to think of it) through songs with lyrics that are vague enough that they could apply to just about any girl listening, and yet specific enough to latch on to some minor part of said girl’s psyche due to basic probability (You drop a brick out of a plane, and it will hit something eventually). It’s almost clinically fascinating to see the effect boy bands can have on people.