The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) - Movie Review

This is going to be a difficult film to write about. Not because it’s the latest cinematic addition to a franchise that really shouldn’t exist, given the highly disposable nature of its source video game series. Not because it’s a follow-up to a film that I gave a fair amount of slack to while everyone else was gawking at the utter memeage of its soundtrack (Limp Bizkit’s Behind Blue Eyes is one of those songs that shouldn’t be in any movie). Not even because of my recurring issue with family films about talking animals. Rather, it’s because this film defies any semblance of a ‘good or bad’ binary, as it sits snugly in both at the exact same time. Read on and I’ll try and explain.

Booksmart (2019) - Movie Review

Between Blockers and Eighth Grade, I’m quite glad that we’re getting a bit more variety when it comes to high school-set coming of age stories on the big screen. Not only is it making the teenaged multiplex less of a sausage fest, it’s also highlighting that there’s a whole heap of narrative opportunities that we’ve been missing out on as a collective audience. What’s more, we’re once again dealing with a directorial debut in the form of Olivia Wilde. Knowing what happened last time we checked in on her cinematic efforts, not being left with any good things to say about her, I am both surprised and quite relieved that this film works out as well as it does.

Next Gen (2018) - Movie Review

 

Streaming services are going to completely replace the traditional cinema in a few years. That’s not even speculation on my part, I’m taking that as a given with how much services like Netflix have changed our media consumption. And today’s film, I feel, is the penultimate signifier of that. Ads for Netflix series have been popping up on cinema screens for a while now, but this marks the first time I can recall a Netflix movie getting that kind of screen time. To the point where I’ve likely seen more ads for this than a decent amount of films I actually saw in cinemas this year. While we can consider the bigger ramifications of this elsewhere, the specificity of this has me curious: Is this film worth that much marketing push, or is this just another lacklustre effort being put on an artificial pedestal?

Downsizing (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: As a means to combat overpopulation, a group of Norwegian scientists have come up with a ground-breaking solution: Literally shrinking the population down to a height of only five inches. Suburban couple Paul (Matt Damon) and Audrey (Kristen Wiig), unsatisfied with their current living conditions, decide to take part in the procedure… only for Audrey to back out at the last minute. Now shrunken and alone, Dave takes part in this brand new miniature society, only to discover that even this scenario has its drawbacks.

Masterminds (2016) - Movie Review

Zach Galifianakis, for as varied and kind of inconsistent as his filmography is, might be the quintessential modern comedian. He embodies our still-growing fascination with random and rather annoying occurrences, working with some of the biggest suppliers of that style of humour like Funny Or Die and Tim & Eric, yet he has enough common sense to not let the actual humour of those occurrences just get washed away. Hell, his breakout role in The Hangover was a serious lightning-in-a-bottle scenario that even that film’s sequels weren’t able to replicate. Not only that, he’s managed to move into more down-to-earth fare with Birdman and did a damn good job keeping up with the already stellar cast. He has two theatrical films out in cinemas right now, and even though this film’s poster has been lingering and instilling a form of dread in me for many months now, this is the one that I’m looking forward to by comparison.

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.

Mother's Day (2016) - Movie Review

I haven’t seen much of Garry Marshall’s work, and remember that I’m mostly familiar with more recent cinema so I have a lot of older films to get to including a few of his, but what I have seen in no way sets my hopes high for consumable product this time around. His brand of heavy pandering under the guise of empowerment with The Princess Diaries (BOTH of them) and the plain-old twisted sense of festivity of the last two holiday-centric releases makes him the kind of filmmaker who is quite poisonous to people like me. This should come as no surprise for those of you who have read my earlier gripes on chick flicks, but yeah; I really friggin’ hate these kinds of movies almost on principle by this point. Not that that is reason enough for me to hate anything though, just that it makes what I am sure is going to be pure bile come up a lot more smoothly. So, let’s get this gastric excavation of a film over and done with already. This is Mother’s Day.

Sleeping With Other People (2015) - Movie Review

Maybe because it’s due to my own social hermitism, or as an extension of my aversion to certain labels, but I’ve never understood the notion of a ‘date movie’. The reason this confuses me as it does is that, more times than not, it’s applied to rom-coms; this is assuming that the only thing that a couple going out would want to watch is two people who could potentially be having a better relationship than they are. Isn’t that more defined by what the couple has in common in terms of genre interests? Hell, first time I went on anything remotely close to a movie date, we saw Up; aside from some emotional scarring considering how that relationship turned out, I don’t really associate that film too heavily with romance. Well, unless you have a sick mind and consider the old man and the scout to be a couple… in which case, seek help. Oh well. Until the day comes that I see ads for the next David Cronenberg release promoting it as a couples movie, I guess I’m stuck with rom-coms then. And right from the title of today’s subject, I’m already worried.

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) - Movie Review

Given my compulsion to review every new film I see, I will inevitably come across some films that are easier to talk about than others; whether it’s because it’s easier to talk about bad films than good ones or because some films engage me more and leave me more to work with in terms of writing, not every film will give me the same amount of content. This is such an occasion, only for different reasons than usual. It isn’t because this film is entirely good, leaving me with less to talk about, nor did it fail to leave me with much to talk about. No, this time the difficulty in writing a review for this movie is, put simply, because it is just plain unpleasant to recollect.