Chaos Walking (2021) - Movie Review

I love Patrick Ness’ writing. While I freely admit that I haven’t read his novels, I still have a great affection for the man’s art based purely on his work for the big and small screen. I mentioned in my review for it how much I dug his approach to storytelling with A Monster Calls, and for as little attention as it got, his work on the Doctor Who spin-off Class had quite a few moments of true inspiration within its stunted 8-episode run. At a time when young-adult storytelling has gone from strength to strength in the mainstream, the way Ness approaches incredibly morbid topics like grief, trauma, and loss, has already revealed him to be in the upper echelon of that grouping. So, when news hit that his Chaos Walking trilogy of books were going to get the cinematic treatment, with Ness himself co-writing the script, I was ready for him to impress yet again. What I actually got, though, is… not that.

Arctic (2019) - Movie Review

Maybe it’s because of my own origins as a YouTuber, but I always get a kick out of seeing someone from that sector of the Internet making it onto the big screen. It doesn’t always turn out for the best, and there’s definitely something to be said about YouTube stars getting brought into productions just for name value, but as someone who has also been trying to turn my extended hobby into something legitimate (stop laughing), it fills me with a sense of comradery. And this film is part of that legacy, coming from writer/director Joe Penna, AKA MysteryGuitarMan, one of the old guard of the YouTube scene and someone who has been chipping away at the short film grindstone for a while now. His feature-length debut, if nothing else, shows him as a cinematic creative who knows his shit.

Polar (2019) - Movie Review

There are many ways in which a filmmaker can screw up an action flick. Making the hero unconvincing as an action lead, making the villain unconvincing as a viable threat, making the action scenes incoherent or just plain dull to sit through, making the dialogue stringing the action together flat or threadbare, or just making the production as a whole uninteresting. In a genre built on viscera and heart-racing engagement, being boring to sit through is the worst thing an action film can be. Enter this film, which manages to one-up all of that. It’s not just boring; it’s so bafflingly constructed that it should rationally stumble into being interesting purely by accident, and yet can’t even manage to get that far.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) - Movie Review

As I explained around this same time last year, I’m not the biggest fan of Star Wars. I recognise its cinematic significance and I get a certain amount of enjoyment out of the films themselves (even the ones that the rest of the world seems to hate with a passion), but I never really bought into the hype that those films carry to this day. Incessantly pushing The Force Awakens in my face for pretty much all of last year definitely didn't help, even with how much I ended up liking that film.

So, with all that in mind, even I am legitimately hyped for this film. The lack of obnoxious advertising could be a part of it, but there’s something else here that makes me anxious to check it out. Knowing how other cinematic continuities have been going of late, with even DC figuring out that some form of variety would be much appreciated, this film could present something different and help strengthen the series, considering this will be the first of the Star Wars cinematic Anthology with more already on the way. But even I couldn’t have expected this film to be this different.

Doctor Strange (2016) - Movie Review

It’s Marvel time again and, while not quite as problematic as Civil War, we are once again dealing with a rather tricky bit of comic book adaptation history. We’re furthering our way into Phase 3 of the Cinematic Universe with an origin for yet another superhero who doesn’t exactly have the best on-screen history. Way back during the days of the Bill Bixby Incredible Hulk TV show, Stan Lee and CBS attempted to kick-start a Doctor Strange series to run alongside Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man. Needless to say, it didn’t end well and the series wasn’t picked up for glaringly obvious reasons. However, unlike Spidey and the Hulk, this was the first and, up until now, only live-action appearance; there isn’t any form of reputable precedent for this one. Say what you will about Guardians Of The Galaxy, at least that film was able to completely blindside audiences thanks to a complete lack of mainstream recognition. Strange, on the other hand? Not so much. This may be one of the bigger tests of Marvel’s uncanny ability for consistent quality standards, even more so than the talking raccoon who is best friends with a talking tree.