Reviews
The Substance (2024)
Not much Substance after all!!
Wow! I mean wow! What the hell was this? Well the first hour trots along at an intriguing and decent enough pace, setting the plot decently enough. We see snippets of a medical experiment where an egg is injected with a mystery liquid and the promptly separates into two eggs. Then we see an overhead shot of a young actress (Elisabeth Sparkle) receiving adulation as she opens her star on walk of fame (ala Hollywood Boulevard). We then see time gradually age and damage the star, whilst peoples apathy towards it gets worse. (So far, so many analogies). Next we see said actress numerous years later filming an exercise work out TV show, (think Jane Fonda for those old enough to remember). Elisabeth then overhears her producer Harvey, de facto fire her for being too old and him wanting a younger woman to do the show. Upset by this Elisabeth runs a red light, crashes her car and ends up in hospital where a strange nurse stashes a USB pen and a note which directs Elisabeth to a shady address where she is given The Sunbstance and various explicit instructions on what to do and a warning that 'You are One'?? Despite hesitating, Elisabeth injects herself with a yellow liquid with a warning to use only once and then a type of embryo forces itself from her back and a younger woman emerges taking the name Sue and then taking Elisabeth's old job and her old fame. The pair then have a maximum of seven days consciousness before they have to swap bodies back and repeat the process, though in the meantime Sue has to inject herself with fluid that she extracts from Elisabeth's spine. From here the film gets even more bizarre!!! Sue's fame goes to her head and craving more then her 7 days, she starts taking liberties with the instructions. This though causes irreversible damage to Elisabeth when she awakes, as she ages rapidly, becomes housebound and edges towards madness!! This then leads to the finale where after being conscious for three months as fame takes hold, Sue discovers the spinal fluid has ran out and has to allow Elisabeth to become conscious to replenish the fluid. Upon waking, Elisabeth now an extremely old aged hunchback decides to end the situation and kill Sue by injecting her with a dark fluid, but before she finishes she realises the fame she wanted back has occurred and Sue will present a huge New Years Eve TV show she resurrects Sue. Now both are awake, Sue discovers the kill injection and promptly beats Elisabeth to death, but with half of herself dead she begins to deteriorate at the studio and in a desperate attempt to become beautiful again she injects herself with the initial substance, which creates a monstrous hybrid which returns to the TV studio and then chaos ensues!! Ok so to the positives. Well the acting is pretty good and the practical effects are well done, if over the top (think Peter Jackson's Braindead). Unfortunately there are numerous issues. Bar Elisabeth's initial introduction, no characters are very likeable and are all egotistical, non empathetic and vapid. The male characters in particular are all weird, chauvinistic and perverse in various ways. There's also an odd undertone of voyeurism, we see lingering shots of females naked and even more of Sue's body as she films her workouts. Yes we get it as a metaphor, woman have been sexualised in Hollywood, but that's been par for the course for Hollyweird for decades. The finale is just bat guano crazy. The Elisasue creature manages to get past a guard into the studio, get on stage past numerous nude dancers, then reveal herself to a studio audience who don't react for ages!! Then the creature splatters them with blood and viscera, escapes and falls over which causes complete body splatter. Only for Elisabeth's face to crawl away to her Walk of Fame star, remember the good times and slowly turn to pulp. The End, thankfully!!!
Wolf Man (2025)
An Average Tale of Lycanthropy
Being a fan of the werewolf genre I went into this film with high hopes, considering that compared to other horror film monsters good old lycanthropes are generally not utilised very well. Sadly this film continues that trend. The movie starts promising enough with a decidedly awkward relationship between a father Grady and his son Blake and some outstanding visuals showcasing of the Oregon wilderness. But here the issues start. During a hunting trip the father and son duo are stalked by a strange wolf man creature, whom Grady shoots at and scares off. Later a lingering shot of a tattoo on Grady's arm foretells a plot point later. The scene then shifts 30 years later where Blake now married to a cold fish called Charlotte, but with a loving daughter called Ginger, who he has a relationship that's a polar opposite to the one he had with his father. Upon hearing that a missing Grady had been declared dead (are those plot points joining yet), the family decide to visit the farm in Oregon which Blake has now inherited. Here they bump into Grady's neighbour Derek, who they take with them to find the farm. En route they bump into a wolf man who makes them crash, kills Derek, injures Blake and then chases the family to the farm. The family then fortify themselves in the farm, but Blake now seems to be turning animalistic with heightened senses, physical changes and can no longer understand English and speaks in a weird language. An enemy within scenario? The family attempt to escape, which eventually leads to the wolf man getting into the farm where he battles a now almost fully wolf Blake, who then proceeds to rip out the wolf mans throat. Then surprise surprise we see the wolf mans arm, which has Grady's tattoo on it (didn't see that coming!!). Then Blake turns more predatory, stalks Charlotte and Ginger for a while, but maintains enough humanity to not harm them and eventually allow Charlotte to shoot him. The End!! Wow if you're still here, you may think that's a long film synopsis, but I have missed lots of filler out. The issues with this film are mainly the characters. We only have 5 main characters and bar the daughter Ginger, they are all are pretty emotionless, unsympathetic and undeveloped and I found it hard to care what happens to them!! The father/daughter relationship between Blake and Ginger has it's moments, but these again prove to be a preempt to the end. The practical effects are decent enough, but the creatures are more man than wolf in physical appearance and therefore not particularly scary or threatening. Also, bar heightened wolf senses (which to be fair are given a fantastic POV effect), the creatures aren't particularly fast, agile or intelligent and are outrun by the human characters more than once. There's also a scene in the last quarter where the family escape to the roof of a 15 foot high greenhouse made of plastic sheet!!! The wolf man doesn't attempt to jump at them and instead jumps from within clawing at the roof!! I mean most movie werewolves are fast, fierce and agile hunters, but here they're pretty much hairy aggressive humans! Overall an average and underwhelming werewolf film. 6/10.
Azrael (2024)
Badly Flawed with Little Context!!
What was this? I mean seriously what was this? I can only assume it was the writers self indulgent pet project, as the film has almost no context and assumes the audience will join the plot's dots. Yes this could be seen as allowing the audience to fill in the gaps, but bar a few religious texts pooping up on screen now and again, the plot is a confusing mess. The fact there's also little dialogue might be seen as a novelty, but half way through it becomes grating, unnecessary and detrimental, as again the audience receive little context to what the hell is happening!! The fact the reasoning behind this plot device of everyone being mute is only explained about half way through in the most half witted way, was ridiculous. The gist being that our protagonist Azrael and presumably her boyfriend (last seen about ten minutes in), have done this to themselves for religious reasons. The religion in question seems to be some post-Rapture off shoot of Christianity which she and her boyfriend have seemingly absconded from and are now being hunted by their former cult friends. These cultists have working cars and automatic weapons, but live in the woods!! I mean what?? Adding to these cult antagonists we have some weird creatures that resemble burnt people, but who hunt by smell and sound as they are seemingly blind! Do our protagonists and antagonists keep quiet? Nope they fire guns, whistle, fight loudly and as said earlier, they drive around in working cars!!! Oh and the creatures only seem to sense the smell of blood when convenient to the plot. Still with me? Good, well if that's not all bad enough, we then have a out-of-place Estonian guy in a heavily flood lit, undamaged SUV who arrives at night, saves Azrael from the creatures then gets promptly sniped by a cultist. Are these woods in Estonia? Don't know! No context remember?!?! This leads to the final third where Azrael turns into Joanne Wick, survives numerous heavy blows, punches, strangulation and then takes out most of the cultist camp, before finding their pregnant 'leader' in the cult's church. After a fight, Azrael bites the 'leaders' throat out, thus bringing on premature labour. We then hear a weird animalistic growl/cry from the newborn, which then turns out to be some weird goat like demon. The 'leader' then kills herself, leaving Azrael to pick up the baby as the burnt creatures descend on the church. Azrael smiles, movie ends. As I said at the start, what was this??????
Smile 2 (2024)
Not bad, just not as good as the first movie!!
Smile 2 definitely has it's moments and has it's predecessors knack for unsettling visuals and easily identified, but still unexpected jump scares. The antagonists sadistic 'smile' trademark still gives a creepy vibe and the gore is on par with the first movie. The main issues are firstly the characters! I never got the feeling that they were worth rooting for as they all come across as self centred egotistical idiots, even the main protagonist Skye whose obvious involvement in the cause of a car crash a year earlier is almost telegraphed. Therefore the reveal in the third act that she grabbed the steering wheel off her boyfriend whilst arguing and under the influence, thus killing him and maiming herself, is no surprise!! If her character is bad, then her mother is way, way worse! Her we have a character with zero care or empathy for her daughter and who cares only for Skye's fame and cares little for her daughter's welfare. Finally there are two twists in the tale. One again which can be seen a mile off, where the entity takes over and makes Skye kill herself on stage to a full arena, thus asking the question will the entity torment all in attendance who witnessed it?? The second twist though is so convoluted, you wonder what part of the story was reality? As we learn that basically the last hour or so of the movie was in Skye's mind and the machinations of the entity. This for me ruined the end of the movie, as it felt the rug had been pulled from underneath me. A sort of 'it's not real' dream sequence is a major cop out. 6/10.
EA Sports FC 25 (2024)
Even worse than the worst ever Fifa game!
Thankfully this was bought as a present, as I would not have invested hard earned funds in this travesty. EA you are a disgrace, once again you produce a copy and paste product with minimal tweaks and charge full price. Surely that's against consumer laws? The game has bare bones improvements that add little or anything. Rush isn't anything special and adds mere fluff to the game. Ultimate Team is once again a joke, where blatant poor card manipulation and obvious scripting, means that most players will fall into the trap of buying packs to improve their team!! Surely again this type of manipulation is illegal, if not immoral. The servers are as per terrible and again EA do not care. We as video football game fans need another option, as EA are parasites and do not care about their customers.
Alien: Romulus (2024)
Sadly a case of diminishing returns!!
Well the movie is not the worst Alien movie by any means, but it's nowhere near the best. The first hour or so goes by at a steady rate and neatly sets the scene, the characters and their motivations. Basically we are introduced to a rag-tag group of young miners, (Rain and her adopted synthetic brother Andy. Tyler and his cousin Bjorn. A pregnant miner called Kay and finally a pilot called Navarro. These people are doomed to work on a mining planet that due to its orbit never sees daylight. The planet is owned by Weyland-Yutani, who keep the people on this planet endlessly by changing their contracts to ensure they never reach their mining quota. The group desperate to escape, identify a seemingly abandoned Weyland-Yutani space station that's drifting close to orbit and decide to raid the station in order to steal hypersleep pods, which they believe they can use to travel to a planet they see as utopia. Once on the station, some of the group accidentally awaken some facehuggers and the fun begins, so far, so good. This first hour also contains some fantastic call backs to previous Alien movies and games. These are brilliant and well executed. The Alien Isolation save points, terminal read outs and door codes are here and excellently done. Then we see an early version of the pulse rifle from Aliens which is a nice call back, even if the rifle seems more advanced than in Aliens itself. The four big callbacks though relate to the original Alien. Firstly we see a salvage operation at the start, we don't see anything obvious until we see a part of a destroyed hull with markings indicating this was The Nostromo. Not long after, a distinctly identifiable object is pulled from near the wreckage, the original Xenomorph!!! Later though we see this Xeno dead on the station in all it's glory, with Ripley's harpoon still impaled through it's chest!! The detail here is bang on, including Giger's original human skull design behind the Alien's head plate. Here we also see a photo of the Xenomorphs 'father' Kane on a monitor. We then get an explanation that the Xenomorph was salvaged and DNA extracted from it, but it wasn't affected by the trauma Ripley inflicted upon it and it had awakened and caused havoc on the station. The narrator of this information is a synthetic called Rook, who just happens to be a Hyperdine Systems model 120-A2, the same as Ash from Alien!! The CGI work here is good and the resemblance to Ian Holm is well done. From here though things start to get worse, for the characters and plot wise. We see some good stuff, including a new part of the Xenomorph lifecycle, a Queen less nest, and some well designed adult Alien's. The bad stuff though is that the mythos from Prometheus and Covenant are included in the last quarter. This seemed shoe horned in for me and seemed out of place. Ultimately we see the black ooze created by The Engineers. This ooze ends up mutating Kay's baby into a 10 foot Xenomorph/human hybrid, which ends up being the final boss so to speak! This ultimately spoiled the film for me and didn't fit the narrative. 7/10.
Alone in the Dark (2024)
A true mixed bag
As a fan of survival horror games in general and having played and loved The New Nightmare way back in 2001, I was highly anticipating the release of this game. Alas after a great start, this iteration of Alone in the Dark sadly falls flat pretty quickly. The game starts really well with an oppressive Deep South vibe very similar to the start of RE7. The initial exploration of the mansion is very atmospheric and sets a great tone, unfortunately things go downhill as soon as you get teleported to a dark misty street setting. Here the limitations of the combat are laid bare and the linear nature of these levels becomes a bit grating. Later levels transport you to a dig and temple in Egypt, a steamboat, a bridge and later to the Arctic. Though some players may appreciate this variety, they offered nothing special for me and I was relieved when I could explore the mansion further. There is also a strange trait of the main character not totally questioning why these strange occurrences were happening, which seemed out of place. The final gripe was length, even on the highest difficulty this game can be cleared in 10 hours without missing anything of note. On the positive side, well the story is pretty good and keeps you engaged and the NPC characters have their own unique quirks, which suggest more is afoot with the situation and adds to the mystery. The puzzles are also pretty good and though not very challenging, they are a nice distraction. To sum up, not in any way the worst survival horror I've played but I ultimately feel an opportunity was missed to bring the AITD franchise back to it's glory.
Doctor Who: Hell Bent (2015)
Hit and Miss Moffat
This episode sadly cements the steady decline of New Who, which starting to set in around the middle of Matt Smith's second season as The Doctor and reached it's peak in the Whittaker era. Moffat has produced some great Doctor Who stories, but his era as show runner sadly showed that the job was beyond him and his ego and canon breaking decisions began ruining the show. Here The Doctor breaks all his own rules to save Clara, which basically renders the previous two good episodes mute and breaks the 'A Fixed Point in Time' ethos as nonsense. Moffat's era will be defined by making Smith's and Capaldi's Doctor's as generally poor decision makers who are frequently saved by Clara. And in doing so, Clara became less of a humanising counterweight to the Doctor (as other companions were), an more of an overbearing and frankly divisive character in the end, who Moffat pushed far beyond the boundaries of what companions are to The Doctort. Moffat also was the one who started pushing feminist ideology into the show. First The Master becoming Missy in season 8, then The General in this episode regenerating to a female who then berates 'male ego'. From here New Who gets worse, season 10 despite Capaldi's best efforts is generally unwatchable due to another terrible companion and some atrocious writing. Then we get the Whittaker era, where somehow Chris Chibnall made Moffat's run seem like Russel T's heyday. Let's hope Mr. Davies can recapture the magic in his return as show runner.
EA Sports FC 24 (2023)
Absolute Horror Show
Wow where to start, well the mechanics in previous Fifa games were bad in parts, but this has atrocious mechanics throughout. Players are static, move like they've got diarrhoea and are generally unresponsive. The gameplay is really clunky, on first play I was thinking ok I'll get used to it, but no it's not improved. Add to that the fact that all of the glitches or gameplay exploits from previous instalments are still present (scripting, kick off glitch and cut back exploit notably), show that once again EA have just slapped a kit and squad update on Fifa 23, whilst somehow making the gameplay ten times worse. Add to the fact that Ultimate Team is an utter slog this year already, where obvious monetisation has become the only way to get a decent team and you see that rather than evolve after losing the Fifa license, EA have just regressed and lazily plopped out arguably the worse football game (soccer to our American cousins, so not to confuse the Madden franchise), they have ever released. With eFootball also being a shambles again, we desperately need new developers to release new football games and break EA's horrific monopoly.
Invasion (2021)
Utter Dross and that's being kind!
One of the most boring, unrealistic sci-fi shows I have ever watched. Every character is totally unlikeable, story arcs go nowhere and the CGI is really poor. Realism is thrown out of the window in every episode. This includes a scenario where teenage school kids on a trip has their bus crash into a deep quarry. The teacher driving said bus dies, but all the kids survive unhurt, bar cuts and bruises. If that's not ridiculous enough, they then manage to climb around 80 feet to safety. How many fall during this epic climb? You guessed it, none! As for the U. S. army character, well he manages to survive an alien attack which kills his squad, then he wakes up, follows a goat herder who leads him to pretty much where he needs to go. Then he boards a plane that escapes Afghanistan and somehow makes it to England! Here the British Army officer in charge of the airport, after a brief diatribe sends the US soldier on his way with a sidearm! The stories set in the US and Japan include the Malik family in the US and Mitsuki in Japan are easily the most annoying, stupid and selfish characters I have seen on a TV show in a long time, I'd suggest they were a parody, but alas not. I can only assume positive reviews here are paid shills, bots or simply Apple fanboys!
eFootball 2022 (2021)
Abysmal!!!
Ahh yes Konami the killer of great franchises. They destroyed MGS by being petty with Kojima then releasing The Phantom Pain plainly unfinished, which in turn killed PT. Silent Hill has also been abandoned into the ether. Now PES has gone the same way. Lets be fair the announcement of having a free PES football game and them rebranding it efootball, seemed quite exciting. Unfortunately the reality is that Konami have released a bug ridden, half finished pile of crap, that plays like a football game from the PS1 era. The players run around like they are playing with concrete boots on and the collision detection is non-existant. The referee AI is borderline myopic, where they miss leg breaking tackles frequently. In a nutshell the game plays like a slightly advanced mobile game rather than a game befitting 2021. Looks like a free ride this year for EA and their own god awful FIFA franchise. As a football game fan, we need a 3rd candidate that'll mix things up and put the fear of god into EA and Konami. Until then, they will continue to take liberties with both fanbases.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
What could have been!
Well I was really looking forward to this, as a fan of the 1993 Maximum Carnage comic arc I was hoping that we would see some of that series' magic brought to the big screen. Unfortunately it hasn't quite turned out like that! Firstly the film is in no way bad and it is not the worst Super Hero film ever, but I came away with the feeling that opportunities were missed. The acting is generally good, though nobody will win an award. The SFX and action set pieces are excellent, though you get the feeling some parts were trimmed. Unfortunately the first three quarters of this film basically rehash quite a lot from the first film. We continue to see the internal conflict between Brock and the Venom symbiote and whilst some scenes are funny and add to both characters complexity, the majority are similar to what we've seen in Venom and add little to the plot. The Venom leaving Brock and 'finding himself' scenes, kinda dragged on and seemed out of place. Tom Hardy again does a decent job, but you get the feeling he doesn't get out of 2nd gear here. As for Carnage and Kasady , well though Harrelson is a master of playing manic and demented characters, again he seems to be cruising here. Naomie Harris and Shriek are criminally under-utilised and the tagged on relationship with Kasady does not feel true (would they really still be in love after not seeing each other for 25 years). Shriek's demise also seems cheap and wasteful. Speaking of cheap demise's, Carnage's is frankly a disappointment. After a mutual betrayal with Shriek who then uses here concussive shriek, he is separated from Kasady and whilst vainly attempting to re-connect with Cletus, he is unceremoniously eaten alive by Venom. As for Cletus, well after a brief diatribe, Venom simply loses patience and bites his head off!! Again pretty cheap for an iconic character. I also don't get the ongoing issue from the first film where the Venom symbiote is characterised as having low self esteem and lack of confidence. Pretty much all other versions of the character have him as single minded and psychotic at times, but ultimately brave and protective. Here he even states that "we cannot win and we will die" during his climactic battle with Carnage!! Whether Serkis and the script writers can be blamed for these shortcomings is debatable? What is more likely is the need to shoehorn the character into the SCU and now after the post credits scene the MCU, you have to feel they had to soften these characters to hit the PG-13 golden egg! Extra spoilers: The JJJ and Spider-man post credits reveal are very well done as is the Det. Mulligan/Toxin tease.
No Time to Die (2021)
Great first half, then unfortunately it runs out of steam!
OK this is no way the worst Bond film in the franchise, but it's not anywhere near the best either. If I were to summarise it, I suppose I'd coin an old football phrase and say "it's a game of two halves". The first half is action packed and coherent with some excellent dialogue and acting. The prologue and initial mission (kudos to Paloma's scenes by the way), were fantastic and the death of Leiter was very well done. Bond's interactions with the people he hadn't seen in 5 years (M, Moneypenny and Q), were amusing and in places quite tense and the oneupmanship with Nomi (the new 007), was excellent. Unfortunately after a great first half, the movie collapses a bit. The rest of the supporting characters seemed underdeveloped. Madeline (Mr. White's daughter), seemed strangely out of place for some reason. Blofeld is killed off after 5 minutes of screen time. Considering he was eventually identified in SPECTRE as the driving force of all of this Bond's adventures from Casino Royale onwards, it seems lazy and wasteful. Speaking of villains, the big bad's on display here are poor and not noteworthy. Safin and Ash are rarely seen and bar one major scene each being Ash killing Leiter and one a McGuffin for Safin (in the end he infects Bond with a nano-virus so he'll kill the people he loves if he touches them), the major villains don't do that much. All in all I have to admit this was better than I thought. The 1, 2 or 3 star reviews are not fair and considering Hollywood's tendency to edge towards wokeness since 2017 for it's major franchises, this was not one of them. MAJOR SPOILER............................................................. Bond sacrifices himself at the end and is seemingly killed heroically?!?!
The Thing (1982)
Arguably Carpenter's finest work.
Well what can you say about this movie that's in anyway negative? In my humble opinion, nothing!! The direction and writing is first class, breeding an ongoing sense of paranoia and dread as the movie progresses. The cast and their subsequent acting is excellent and every performance is top notch. The practical effects are so good, that they still hold up today, showing a level of logical gore and believability that most present (CGI laden) movies cannot hold a candle too. All in all, John Carpenter hit his zenith here, it's just a damn shame that it was so unappreciated at the time.
Black Widow (2021)
What, really???
Absolute crap, from the escape from Ohio scene (yes even a trained military operative can hang from a plane and snipe a car in front of him, apparently?). To the dodgy conclusion. The timeline is also all over the show, did you forget Marvel about the timeline?!?! Bar Black Widow and Ross, I doubt you would know this was part of the MCU!
It Chapter Two (2019)
Disappointing Conclusion
It (chapter 1 if you would call it that) and It the miniseries were both excellent adaptions of Stephen King's book. Unfortunately It chapter 2 falls way short of a successful conclusion. Whether it's the fact the adult versions of the original child cast don't quite gel right (bar Bill Hader's adult Ritchie), the laughable and none frightening scares, the ropey CGI or the unnecessary changing of the books canon, the film falls way short of it's predecessor in every possible way. Kudos though to Hader and Skarsgard for their performances and the odd funny moment that does creep in. But for a horror movie it's quite lightweight compared to chapter 1 or indeed the 1990 adaption.
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
Typically average from Bad Robot!
This could have been so good, as the premise is really interesting, unfortunately it fails on nearly every aspect. To be fair first 20 minutes are pretty solid, introducing the issues that the world is suffering from (a global energy crisis and the threat of war, as nations fight for these limited resources). We then get to see the solution, an orbiting space station that has what is essentially a miniature Hadron Collider that's the world's last hope to produce an unlimited energy supply. Finally we get an interesting insight into the multi-national crew and at least here there are some little bits of character development here. After this though when the expected disaster occurs, we unfortunately get an unintelligible and incoherent mess of a plot. We basically get a 'lets see how we can isolate crew members and bump them off' scenario, with little explanation of what the phenomena is that's causing these deaths. This leads to the A-Typical problem with all of JJ Abrams projects, there are too many questions and too little answers given! We then get various action set pieces thrown in to disguise glaring plot holes and any decent substance being established! Finally despite a few subtle hints, the link to the Cloverfield universe is only fully confirmed right at the end. This obviously shows this movies link to the overall universe was probably an afterthought and that certain characters and scenes were shoehorned in to this story to provide a tenuous connection to the two previous movies, then they could use the Cloverfield name to sell it to people.
The Descent: Part 2 (2009)
Descent into mediocrity!!
The first film had the brilliance of it's ambiguity; were the creatures real or was this just Sarah's literal descent into madness after the tragedy she experienced?? Unfortunately the sequel abandons this premise for a paint by the numbers creature feature. This unfortunately tarnishes the original and essentially retcons the story badly. There are a few positives, for a start the acting is pretty good again and the production values are nice. There are a few half decent jump scares and surprises here and there and fair play to the director for sticking with practical effects rather than ropey CGI.
The Witches (2020)
Not as bad as reviews make out!
So as someone who read the amazing book as a kid and watched the pretty good original 1990 movie adaptation also as a kid, I was dubious when I heard about a remake that had been relocated to 1960's America. But to be fair this movie is not as bad as some of the extremely negative reviews have made out! The cast is pretty good, Octavia Spencer plays the dutiful grandma very well and kudos to Jahzir Bruno as the young protagonist who plays the part excellently and is believable as the grief stricken young boy who has just lost his parents. Anne Hathaway hams it up as the Grand High Witch, but in a good way and she has some menacing moments. The SFX are quite a let down and are not up to scratch. All in all though an endearing tale that sticks pretty faithful to the original book.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Nice idea, shame about the plot holes!
So the positives first. The acting is very good and the direction and cinematography does a great job for building tension and paranoia. The idea is novel and quite original, which modern Hollywood struggles with these days. Unfortunately the main issue with this movie is it's plot holes, which do take a lot of the gloss off. Having aliens (though this is not confirmed or explained in the film, there are subtle references), who are blind, but whose hearing is so good that they hunt by sound alone is an interesting concept, unfortunately the execution of it leads to plenty of inconsistency. For example how did the human race lose the fight in less than a year? Surely a weakness was found against the creatures? Yet it seems humanity was pretty much wiped out with little effort, yet towards the end of the film we see that the high frequency shrill from a girl's hearing aid hurts one of the creatures, who then exposes it's 'soft spot' and is then killed by a bog standard shotgun!! On a related note if the creatures are so sensitive to the slightest sound, surely even the hum of a light or an electrical device would alert them to potential prey, yet the father of the family has set up a vast array lighting and cctv cameras on the farm the family live in. Finally for an invading force that has seemingly killed the vast majority of 7 billion plus humans, their numbers seem tiny in comparison and we hardly see the creatures in a pack of more than two or three. As a movie it's a really nice idea, unfortunately it is executed with too many unanswered questions and plot contrivances.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020)
Pretty shambolic.
So another year and another underwhelming COD game, this one though is highly disappointing as the campaign is pretty solid, but as for the online yee gods!!! Where to start, well besides the cartoonish graphics the most obvious issue is the abysmal glitches that hamper the PS4 version (and the xbox one version so I'm told). Here in split screen online multiplayer, your team and the enemy will turn invisible every 2nd or 3rd online lobby, therefore meaning you cannot see the enemy and are basically cannon fodder. This glitch has been present for a while now, meaning either Activision/Treyarch don't know how to resolve it, or more likely they're to involved with next gen they do not care. For me if I were Activision I would step away for a year and re-build the franchise as it has now become stale and riddled with game breaking glitches.
White Men Can't Jump (1992)
The Perfect Storm
Wow a movie from 1992 showing how racial integration and non racist banter should be, nearly 30 years later and wow the regression! Look we're in an age now where some people default to white is bad, black is bad, brown is bad, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc, depending on their incorrect world viewpoint. Here though is a movie where you have two basketball hustlers who despite their ethnic differences form a bond and a friendship with almost zero racial intolerance, the racial elements are played off as banter and not what would be today classed as Twitter bait. The chemistry from Snipes and Harrelson is on spec and the script is absolutely excellent and kudos to Rosie Perez's performance as it is outstanding as Harrelson's more logical other half. A film that is a hidden 90's gem.
They Live Inside Us (2020)
Tedium ad infinitum!!
Well what do you say about this? If the convoluted plot wasn't bad enough, the total lack of pace is unforgivable. The first hour trudges along at a snails pace. I always assumed a horror film should have you know, maybe some horror in it! This
movie unfortunately ended up being about as scary as a Pixar film. So to the spoilers: Well the basic plot of the movie is about a man and his young disabled daughter relocating to an old 'spooky' house called The Booth House to help him find inspiration to write a horror story. Cue various odd goings on occurring, which could either be supernatural in origin or a blurring of reality. The crux of the film is basically a vastly inferior knock off of Shutter Island (the parallels may not be obvious, but if you have the patience to watch to the end, you'll catch my drift). The acting on the whole was extremely poor, though the dialogue didn't help one bit. I can only assume the 'questionable' 10/10 ratings on this site are either from hardcore fans of the studio or more likely studio plants.
Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Surprisingly Entertaining
Compared to most other video game adaptations (which let's be fair are usually absolutely abysmal), Sonic The Hedgehog is a pretty good family film. There are some very good comedic moments (the bar scene being a highlight), and Sonic himself as a character is funny and charismatic enough to not drag the film down. Marsden plays a decent enough foil to Sonic. Carrey being Carrey as always steals the show as Robotnik with his usual hyper performance. All in all considering it's base material and how we could have ended up with a Super Mario Bros 2.0, Sonic The Hedgehog is a superior video game film.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Pretty poor origin story
Bar all the negativity and the main stars, (Brie Larson) idiotic and suicidal political leanings, when you get to the crux of it, this is a poor origin story, with the main star herself unable to carry said story. The 90's nostalgia feels legit and Samuel L. Jackson adds his usual energy to the proceedings but this is rendered mute by the stupid way he loses his eye (spoiler alert), for those who watched previous MCU outings wondering how he got the eye patch? It's not worth it. Add to this quite a lot of paradox's from this era to the MCU that are hard to digest, then you get a mish mash that ultimately feels like a retcon filler, that's sole purpose is to involve a character that was invisible during the last 11 years of the MCU in the ultimate 'Endgame'!!!