John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) - Movie Review

John Wick may be the single most important non-superhero action franchise still active today. While Fast & Furious and Mission: Impossible may have the longevity and their respective fanbases, it’s hard to argue that John Wick didn’t still have the larger impact on the landscape. Whether it’s the fight scenes, the visual style, the kind of world-building that puts most comic books to shame, or even just the moment when people finally started to take Keanu Reeves seriously as an actor (even The Matrix, as popular as it remains, couldn’t manage that), it has captured the zeitgeist in a way that very few film franchises ever could, both past and present. And with how Chapter 2 concluded, stakes are very high for the latest in this series to measure up to the grandeur of what came before. To the surprise of likely very few, this film manages to do just that and with gusto.

Top End Wedding (2019) - Movie Review

I’ve ragged on romantic comedies a fair bit in past reviews. Part of that is simply the nature of the beast, since rom-coms tend to make for rather clichéd viewing even at the best of times, but I feel like I haven’t the sub-genre nearly enough credit. I mean, with both critics and general audiences, rom-coms tend to be the most accessible features to get into, and that accessibility can lead to some opportune moments for demographics to get screen time. I looked at this last year with Crazy Rich Asians, a film that was ostensibly just a standard narrative boosted tremendously by its cultural aesthetic. Today’s film very well could have the chance to do the same thing for Tiwi indigenous Australians, but… I can’t lie, I’m not nearly as hyped about this one.

Missing Link (2019) - Movie Review

I’m starting to get worried about Laika’s foreseeable future in mainstream cinema. Not out of a fear that their work is going to start taking a serious decline any time soon, but out of a worry that there might not be enough people willing to see it. This film came out roughly a month ago, but because of an embarrassingly sparse release schedule over here, I’ve only just now gotten around to it. I know that Kubo And The Two Strings didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, but the reputation the company has garnered as doing far better with critics than general audiences could mean trouble. At any rate, we’re here to look at their latest, and needless to say, it’s another fine entry into their healthy artistic canon.

Long Shot (2019) - Movie Review

One of the oldest tropes in romantic comedy is the idea of mismatching someone conventionally attractive with someone unconventionally attractive. If you’ve seen any movie or any sitcom in the last handful of decades, you’ve seen this in action. It usually takes the form of a schlubby guy who is either going out with or is married to a beautiful woman, with the internal joke being the audience questioning how he got her.

Today’s film, the latest from my favourite film studio working right now Point Grey Pictures, is another in this grand tradition, and after narrowly dodging a bullet with their last film, I was honestly worried that this was going to be the point where the bottom fell out of this studio’s fantastic track record. I should really stop underestimating these guys because, while this is indeed a rom-com, its real ambitions are bigger. A lot bigger. Like, this is the kind of shit we need in circulation right now.

The Night Eats The World (2019) - Movie Review

I’ve gone on record a few times in previous reviews that I have a serious weakness for zombie movies. Far as I’m concerned, the weirder, the stupider, the more outright insane, the better. And yet, with how much I’ve delved into my love for this sub-genre, one question still seems to elude me: Why? Why is it this specific brand of genre cinema that sticks to my heart the easiest? I could just chalk it up to nostalgia for Planet Terror, the film that made me realise I loved film at large, let alone zombie films, but that still doesn’t seem to fit. I bring all this up because today’s entry in the genre makes for a distinct diversion from the norm… and honestly, it helped me finally pin down why I love this genre so damn much.

The Chaperone (2019) - Movie Review

Time to delve into what is quickly becoming my critical kryptonite as we take a look at another costume drama. Not only that, it’s a costume drama from both the writer and director of Downton Abbey, the former of whom has already made it onto my watchlist for penning the incredibly misguided Crooked House. Knowing that a big screen adaptation of Downton Abbey is set for release later on this year, it seems I had better get used to this level of drabness. Honestly though, I’m just hoping we’ve hit the bottom of their respective barrels because I don’t think I can take something that turns out even blander than this did.

The Curse Of The Weeping Woman (2019) - Movie Review

While Marvel and DC continue to hash it out for the place of the kingpin of mainstream superhero cinema, horror has its own monarchy: The Conjuring Universe. Not since the days of Saw consistently blowing up the Halloween schedule has James Wan had this tight of a stranglehold on mainstream horror, having fingerprints on The Conjuring, Annabelle, last year’s The Nun, not to mention outliers like the Insidious series as well as the bane of my existence that is Lights Out. Today’s film technically doesn’t fall under the Conjuring canon, but through a brief inclusion of Annabelle herself, it still has a marked place within it. Think of it as the Redman to the larger universe’s Wu-Tang Clan, or (in more genre-appropriate terms) what The Marked Ones was for Paranormal Activity.