Last Christmas (2019) - Movie Review

Seems like Paul Feig is sticking to his wannabe-European kick. After last year’s quite surprising tribute to French cinema with A Simple Favour, a pretty damn good effort all things considered, Feig’s latest appears to be his attempt at a British rom-com, akin to Love, Actually or Bridget Jones’s Diary. Snagging the co-writer of Bridget Jones’s Baby to both co-write and star in this film is probably part of that attempt, although it’s not as if people need much of an excuse to show off Emma Thompson still being enjoyable after all this time.

Between its Christmas setting, and its main gimmick involving the discography of George Michael (2019 has indeed been the year of the jukebox musical), I can’t say I was really expecting anything from it other than maybe some good laughs and a few feels. I certainly wasn’t expecting a big heap of coal to get dumped in my lap.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Asian-American Rachel (Constance Wu) is invited by her boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) to attend his best friend's wedding in Singapore and meet his family. However, Rachel discovers that Nick's family are among the richest business magnates in the region, and while she's coming to terms with that fact, she also has to deal with Nick's mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) insisting that Rachel is the wrong girl for her son.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword Of Destiny (2016) - Movie Review

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon may not be a perfect film, but it is most certainly a great film. Officially putting Ang Lee on the map, and given his output we can debate the worth of that till kingdom come, its combination of breath-taking fight scenes and phenomenal writing, not to mention outright iconic music, resulted in what I would genuinely consider to be a work of art. But more so than its merits as a film in its own right, its place within film history is difficult to ignore as well. An international co-production, it has gone into legend for basically breaking the Hollywood system and what films should be expected to make an commercial impact, becoming an exception to the rule that would end up having new rules written around it. With all this in mind, and considering the unexpected quality control that can go into Netflix releases, the prospect of a sequel to a film like this is certainly interesting. But considering the Sequel Rules made around those that are made over a decade after the fact, and the low expectations for success, how did it turn out?

Morgan (2016) - Movie Review

Among the many things that can affect the initial impressions we have when watching a film, from the marketing to word-of-mouth to just our mentality concerning what makes a good story, one of the bigger contributors ends up being other films. Once the realisation sets in that pretty much everything is a remix of everything else, and brand spanking new ideas aren’t as prevalent (or as important) as some of us may assume, the fact that we will end up seeing a lot of similar shit on screen is a little easier to swallow. Of course, when it comes to discussing what gets used and re-used, especially if it’s from more popular works, we end up drawing comparisons to the same works over and over again. Now, even though this runs the risk of limiting the overall conversation, just because it’s an easy point to make doesn’t mean it’s any less true. Tl;dr this is basically me covering my own arse because this film makes it impossible not to bring up comparisons to last year’s phenomenal sci-fi effort Ex Machina… even though pretty much every other critic already has. Ugh. Let’s just get this over and done with.