Sing 2 (2021) - Movie Review

Well, this year’s been turning out pretty well for movie musicals, and the few talking animal movies I’ve seen this year have been consistently good… sure, let’s take a look at this feature. Although I’m not entirely sure if I need to, since this film’s marketing/trailer might be one of the worst cases of “they put all the best bits in the trailer, didn’t they?” I’ve seen in quite a while. Yes, let’s take the big emotional finale of our nearly-two-hour film, and make it the first thing most audiences will even gander at leading up to its official release; why even release it in the first place if you’re going to pull something like that?

House Of Gucci (2021) - Movie Review

This marks the second Universal screening I’ve been sent to outside of FilmInk this year, and unlike with the ticket for Cry Macho, I consider this more of a personal favour because I’ve been hyped to see this film since I saw The Last Duel. I really treasure when one of my favourite filmmakers has two features come out in the same year, and with how well Last Duel went, I was really hoping that he would go 2 for 2. And I am so relieved to report that Ridley Scott has done it once again, albeit in a distinctly different fashion (heh) than last time.

Back To The Outback (2021) - Movie Review

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the talking animal set. I know that this sub-genre is something of a regular punching bag on this blog, but something I feel the need to point out is that that reputation doesn’t come from any real disdain for the sub-genre itself, or kids’ entertainment, or animals in general. It’s just that there are a lot of films that come out every year that feature talking animals, and most of them are made quickly and on-the-cheap to create disposable fluff because anthropomorphic animals are easy for kids and kids-at-heart to latch onto. I mean, I grew up in the era of PS2 platform mascots; I get the appeal. And yeah, this latest iteration is as light as light entertainment, but… something feels different about this one.

Vacation Friends (2021) - Movie Review

My come-up as a film critic is tied to a very specific subset of the old YouTube landscape: The caustic critic. The hyperbolic, foul-mouthed, ‘woe is me for choosing to watch this shit’ kind of entertainer, where just about every review choice was a film the reviewer didn’t like for bonus reaction fodder. Sure, some of these folx are still around, but it’s not the default like it used to be. Honestly though, even with how much progress I’ve made from when I was just a wannabe copycat trying to make it on YouTube… some of that is still in my DNA as a critic.

Part of that hyperbolic vitriol (born out of a shared ancestry from Mystery Science Theatre 3000) might lead someone to react to a comedy film they don’t like as if they’re being tortured against their will; like something that could traumatise them for life. Except I've gone through that shit without any hyperbole whatsoever. Readers who have been following me since way back when might remember when I looked at the 2015 reboot of Vacation, which to this day remains the single most painful experience I’ve ever had engaging with any form of media, let alone film. So when news hit that the directors/writers of that same film were co-writing another film with ‘Vacation’ in the title… well, cue the horrified flashbacks with The Sound Of Silence playing in the background. And while I can safely say that this isn’t nearly as egregious as Vacation 2015, that’s not to say that this is free of problems. Far, far, far from it.

My Little Pony: A New Generation (2021) - Movie Review

A few years ago, I reviewed the then-latest My Little Pony movie. I thought it was pretty good, but I also went into it with only one or two episodes’ worth of background information. Well, over the course of this introvert’s ironic hell that is lockdown, I have now watched every single episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, including those godawful Equestria Girls spin-offs. I would honestly rank it as one of my favourite animated shows, and where I was initially just confused at all the backlash its fandom has faced over the years, I am now even more annoyed at people drinking the Haterade just because people like something worth being invested in. So, as I take a look at this introduction to the newest incarnation of the show, understand that I’m not looking at it as a casual observer this time around.

The Misfits (2021) - Movie Review

This production is something of a meeting-of-the-minds for two creatives attached to some of the first films I ever reviewed on here. There’s director Renny Harlin, who gave us the raw forgettability of The Legend Of Hercules (and is also the guy who helped kill pirate cinema as a mainstream genre until Jack Sparrow showed up), and then there’s co-writer Kurt Wimmer, who managed to make the Point Break remake even more dated than the original, and who specialises in aggressively style-over-substance action flicks. This review is more a matter of curiosity than anything else, but even knowing their respective histories in the business, I still wasn’t prepared for just how atrocious this team-up would turn out.

The Power Of The Dog (2021) - Movie Review

The chances of me being able to get into a Western are about as the same as the average person liking Bender’s cooking: Unless there’s something wild and possibly psychedelic is mixed in there, it’s probably not gonna happen. But this is another one of those films that I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about over the last month, and while I’m still going in with a mild disinterest in the genre as a whole, I’m at least willing to give it a chance on its own terms, rather than making it adhere to my own. It coming from a filmmaker as beloved as Jane Campion definitely helps with that, but just bear in mind that I’m not exactly the target audience for such stories. Or, at least, that’s what I thought going into this.