Shaft (2019) - Movie Review

John Shaft, the man who built the foundation on which the blaxploitation genre would be built, has had a weird after-life. From the two Richard Roundtree-starring sequels to the classic original, to the 2000 sequel/reboot with Samuel L. Jackson, to today’s film which serves as yet another sequel and another quasi-reboot. The original is a pretty solid effort with an all-time greatest soundtrack, and the 2000 reboot was a bit muddled but still quite entertaining, so maybe this one will turn out alright. Well, considering all three films have the exact same name, let it be known that the confusion with this mess only starts from there.

What Men Want (2019) - Movie Review

Situations like this are why I’m not as staunchly anti-remake as most others. What Women Want is an awful movie, the kind of attempt at gender analysis that does everyone a disservice and finds that lovely middle ground between hating men and hating women in equal measure. It’s really sad to think that the idea of casting Mel Gibson as the lead in a romantic comedy isn’t even in the top 10 worst decisions that went into making that pile of utter garbage.

But at the same time, the concept at its heart about being able to read the minds of the opposite sex is something that has potential for something that isn’t painful to sit through. So naturally, when this remake was announced, I admit to being a bit sceptical at first… but then I watched the original in full and realised that there’s nowhere to go but up with this story. And thankfully, this film actually does that.