Spycies (2020) - Movie Review

Oh look, another decent animated film that got shafted by terrible marketing. Only this example might be even worse than Red Shoes And The Seven Dwarfs, as the slip-up here is… well, you can see the title; it doesn’t get any more obvious than that. And I’ll admit, my initial interest in this movie came out of wanting to find the story behind what is easily the worst pun title I have ever seen. But, like I said, I’m not here to rag on yet another dreadful talking animal movie. Instead, I’m here to highlight a surprisingly solid feature.

The Jungle Bunch (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: After encountering the jungle hero squad The Champs, maniacal koala Igor (Keith Silverstein) is left stuck on a desert island. In his absence, the Champs Natacha the tigress (Dorothy Fahn), Tony the sloth (Kaiji Tang) and Goliath the rhino (Richard Epcar) decide to retire with Natacha and Tony taking care of the penguin cub Maurice. However, years later, it seems that Igor has returned to seek revenge. This time, it’s up to a now grown-up Maurice the tiger penguin (Kirk Thornton) and his own hero team, The Jungle Bunch, to stop Igor before he destroys the jungle.

Bad Santa 2 (2016) - Movie Review

Over many decades of cynicism burrowing their way deeper into the collective subconscious, what was once the most wonderful time of the year is now incredibly demented. Yuletide cheer has given way to soaking those festive colours in many darker shades, resulting in a time of year that is joyous but for entirely different reasons and for entirely different people than it was originally intended.

It’s with this in mind that Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa might be the most perfect representation of our incredibly warped and yet still loving attitude towards Christmas. Dark and bitter with a foul-mouthed and violent demeanour, Billy Bob Thornton’s titular character brought a whole new kind of Christmas champion to mainstream attention, one that was more likely to smack the baby Jesus than bring it any gifts. It was delightfully demented without really sacrificing the sense of goodwill associated with the holiday (not entirely, at least) and made for a quite enjoyable watch, especially around this time of year. And then the guy who made Mr. Popper’s Penguins was brought on to make a sequel to the story thirteen years later. Insert your own joke about unlucky numbers here because, quite frankly, this film has had enough unnecessary derision laden on it already.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016) - Movie Review

Well, after looking at the lion’s share of films about war and films about journalism over the past year and a half, I wasn’t exactly expecting to see one so soon that would combine the two together. Now I’m just hoping for a crossover between films about sub-par opera singers, films about evil witches and films about terrorist plots in Europe. Maybe I’m the only one who wants to see Gerard Butler kill the Snow Queen through the power of bad singing, but I still don’t doubt a nearby announcement for the release of The Phantom Of The Opera 2.

Anyway, tangent: I’m here to discuss Tina Fey, not the dregs of my fanfiction folder. Tina has essentially become this generation’s Meg Ryan, the actor that is meant to represent the average generally dissatisfied older woman. The main difference between the two being that Ryan gave us Sleepless In Seattle and Kate & Leopold, and Fey has so far given us films like Mean Girls and even Sisters from earlier this year; Ryan made chick flicks, Fey makes real flicks. Far as I’m concerned, at any rate. So, time to dip into that pool again with the latest of Fey’s filmography.

Entourage (2015) - Movie Review

Some days, I just don’t like doing intros for these reviews. I make it a point of trying to make these intros have some point beyond just opening each review like discussing certain topics like film trends or giving backstory on the creative teams behind certain works. However, given what’s on the chopping block this time around, I get the feeling that I would just end up trying to type out a weird abstraction that, when read aloud, would approximate the sound of a cat being crushed by a meteor so as to simulate the experience of how unpleasant it is to recollect this thing. But even then, such an image could at least make for something funny with the right emphasis or caption added to it, and this film and ‘funny’ are barely on speaking terms with each other. Time to get into the review before this ramble keeps going, even though it allows me to put off talking about this thing for a bit longer and my, the sky outside my bedroom window is probably the clearest I’ve… dammit.

The Judge (2014) - Movie Review

Whenever people bring up how great actors like Jack Nicholson or Liam Neeson are, it always kind of confuses me since they play every role they get exactly the same. Really, the only difference between the roles they, and a few other actors, get is that they may swear more in some of them. Ultimately, another actor who is making a fortune with this practice is one Robert Downey Jr.: An intelligent, cunning, anti-social prick that really has a heart of gold and wants to do good; the Sherlock Holmes movies, his cameo in Jon Favreau’s Chef, Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe… actually, pretty much anything he’s been in since Iron Man in 2008 has had him in this role.