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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
2020 Comicbook fantasy for young children ONLY!
Could have been so much more.
Steals heavily from Superman The Movie, Spiderman 2 & many other better classic comic book movies. Actors are not the problem the story makes little sense & also steers away from being dramatic enough to make you believe any of its real!
Action suddenly drops away as well. WB must have pulled the budget when they realised it was never going to get a proper global cinema release due to the pandemic. It stops looking like a mega budget movie about the halfway mark & never recovers.
Also deeply confusing it does not clearly explain major plot points are just left hanging in the air for you to either be confused by or make your own answers up for!
This is a hallmark channel movie at best its so lightweight, predictable & simply not credible at any time. They should quit while they are ahead it makes little sense to film another the story has been told & does not deserve another sequel.
The Rhythm Section (2020)
Very poorly produced movie
Nothing worthwhile to see & such a grim depressing story overall.
What a waste of money!
Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)
Johnny Depp was great! Everything else was so boring & poorly conceived
I would give Johnny 7 or 8 stars here he was so sinister & creepy as a sadistic & insane colonel.
Everything else was literally terrible. Full of poor actors who were not effective in their roles.
Such a boring story which heavily borrowed from elsewhere. If only Johnny Depp had been the focus of the story & had much screen time it might have been more watchable but as it stands the movie does not work on any level afaic!
Stalked by My Mother (2016)
Good thriller with lots of twists & unexpected plot turns
Well acted. Lots of twists you do not easily see coming & some decent acting.
Well worth watching.
Capone (2020)
Very poor movie
Tom Hardy is literally the only thing you will remember from this movie. He gives such a bizarre performance which is weird, unusual & quite embarrassing due to how hard it is to even understand what he is saying most of the time.
The actual movie is very weak & most of it is the same setting inside a large mansion. With several disjointed flashbacks & fantasy sequences.
Editing is very choppy, the direction is terrible & the storyline is very weak. You can tell that behind the scenes they struggled to make anything at all from the weak footage they gathered onset.
Godfather slash Scarface wannabe with no likeable characters whatsoever. Tom Hardy is literally in every scene & really the only thing worth watching it for but its hard work to even sit through due to the poorly constructed movie, weak direction & very weak storyline.
Wounds (2019)
Creepy but poorly directed & edited
This is what works:
Creepy atmosphere.
A couple of really creepy scenes.
Gross creature FX.
Disturbing horror imagery.
Armie Hammer gives a decent performance as a deeply unlikeable character!
This is what does not work at all:
Way too much emphasis on alcohol & the main character using it to hide from their loser choices in life.
Not enough clarity on the actual story.
Poorly directed & edited.
PC casting just for the sake of it instead of using the best actor for some parts they use actors just because its a PC casting decision!
Overall an average horror movie with a few glimpses of what might have been.
The Call of the Wild (2020)
Superb family adventure movie
Harrison Ford gives a really good performance here. One of his best in many years.
Buck the CGI dog is the real co-star as well even though he is CGI the team of animators did a great job on bringing him to life in such a successful way. Harrison Ford does a great job interacting with him as well! (considering he is not even there!).
The locations & environments were stunning as were all the action sequences. Music by John Powell was very effective. The supporting cast were also good & Chris Sanders did a great job with the direction bringing it all together in such a seamless way.
Color Out of Space (2019)
Fantastic creepy horror movie
Great horror movie. Nic Cage as always giving it everything. Fantastic creepy atmosphere. Great practical FX which are really gross at times as they should be. Wonderful use of restrained yet effective CGI as well to show the full spectrum of colour & its effects.
Richard Stanley brings a creepy vibe to this movie & does really well with the limited budget to make it stretch so far.
Supporting cast are all ok as well. Do not expect a mega budget horror movie this is just a very low budget horror made really well on a slow pace to let the story flow & deserves to be very popular!!
Cannot wait for the 4K UHD Disc to come out as well buying that as soon as I can for the extra detail 4K brings!!
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
Solid sequel to T2
Most of the movie worked really well. Linda Hamilton just owns the signature role she created in T1+2 & feels like she never went away she is so effective here.
Gabriel Luna is a really terrifying screen presence & outstanding bad guy.
All you really need to know is that this is a marvel superhero type action Terminator movie with several intense sequences which will really have you on the edge of your seat.
This movie changes the way you will look at T2 as well so if you want to really know how Sarah & John's fate worked out then you simply must see this movie as it answers those questions really well.
Creepshow (2019)
Fantastic series very faithful to the 1982 & 1987 Creepshow movies
This is a fantastic anthology horror TV series.
Very faithful to the 1982 + 1987 Creepshow movies. Looks fantastic due to great talent behind the camera on production design, direction, set lighting especially are outstanding & highly atmospheric. All the actors are well cast as well they suit their small parts perfectly.
Stories are just long enough to draw you in yet you never get bored as something is always happening to retain your interest.
Greg Nicotero did a really good job getting this series made & I hope its popular enough to get many more seasons as its almost perfect in every way & has such a great 1980s retro horror vibe to it.
Only thing I would really love to give it a perfect 10 score is hear The Creep speak again!!
American Exit (2019)
Decent road movie drama about fahter & son trying to re-unite
All about the father & son getting to know each other a little. Dane Cook is very good in this.
He deserves to be given a lot of credit for solid acting dealing with a difficult subject matter in a sensitive way.
The Prodigy (2019)
Excellent modern horror movie
I love this movie & I am very hard to please I hate most new movies but this is very good indeed!
Its creepy, scary, well acted by the lovely Taylor Schilling especially she is amazing here & is going to become a big movie star I hope!
Very well directed by Nicholas McCarthy & the editing is also flawless.
If you want a genuinely scary horror movie this is a very good choice.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Fantastic Queen Music. Weak, bland TV movie quality film
Queens music was, is & always shall be fantastic. The late great Freddie Mercury was such an incredible talent & is still sadly missed to this day by his friends, family & many fans.
Sadly this film is very low production quality. Its more of a Lifetime TV movie of the week than cinematic story. The direction is terrible & very disjointed. So is the confused editing. Story is very weak & the screenplay is utterly appalling. It gives the actors nothing to work with & makes the 4 Queen band members appear as bland 1 dimensional impersonations with zero charisma.
Freddie Mercury was an incredible talent but here he is depicted as a selfish & unlikeable diva. The actor playing him is pretty weak & unconvincing to me.
Brian May is another incredible musical talent & is given literally nothing to do in the movie despite being at least 50% of Queens success story.
Same for Roger Taylor he comes across as a very unlikeable serial womaniser. The real Roger is nothing like that!
John Deacon is given so little to work with & depicted as a dumb buffoon. The real John Deacon is a highly skilled musician!
I am shocked May & Taylor allowed this movie to go ahead its not flattering to them & just serves as a music company promo docudrama rather than a proper tell a story about the band cinematic movie event.
Massive letdown for me as a lifelong Queen fan.
Rust Creek (2018)
Solid well made crime thriller with excellent acting performances
Was not sure what to expect but this film is actually very solid & entertaining.
I hope it does very well financially as it covers a lot of crime based drama with a small budget.
Minimal setup easy to follow story & character motivations. Well worth your time & money as its such a well crafted movie.
Barren bleak Kentucky wilderness also adds a lot of extra atmosphere to the story.
Halloween (2018)
Extremely poor sequel & very low quality horror movie
One of the worse in the entire franchise. Do not believe the hype this is a very low quality low budget horror movie. Without the Halloween name attached it would sink without a trace its one of the worse horror movies made in quite some time & a terrible waste of time.
1: Deeply unlikeable characters & the actors playing them do not generate any interest.
2: Confusing, lifeless plodding story. Could easily have been 30 mins shorter.
3: One of the worse Halloween sequels if not the worse.
4: Dumb Michael Myers kills with minimal gore & shot to minimise any impact (so they can get PG13 on PPTV most likely).
5: Very poorly directed & edited with no interesting locations, setups or camerawork.
6: So poorly conceived, acted, & edited.
If you want to see a decent Halloween movie go back to the 1978 original (now on 4K UHD) or even Halloween 3 (1982) on Bluray. Both are excellent even Halloween 2 (1981) Bluray is way more entertaining.
This is a failure on every single level. The amount of box office it generated in N America (ONLY) is staggering. At least audiences outside N America could see through the extreme hype & did not pay it much attention.
I am also shocked John Carpenter would even think it was a good idea to be linked to this as the content was a very cynical cash grab!!
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Poor sequel. Over hyped, long, slow & boring
What a letdown & massive creative failure.
Good: 1: Sylvia Hoeks as LUV. Good looking, cold hearted, ruthless ice maiden. 2: Dystopian atmosphere & set design. 3: Believable decayed future Earth setting. 4: Visual FX were seamless although not as pretty as Blade Runner (1982).
Bad: 1: Editing was missing in action. Most of the film needed a lot more editing shots ran for ages which needed trimming. This created an overblown excessively long movie which was boring for long stretches of screen time.I feel asleep at least twice due to how boring it was. 2:Directing was very weak from the usually reliable Denis Villeneuve. 3:Story was very weak. Actors were given nothing to work with character wise. 4: Harrison Ford was utterly wasted. He has perhaps 10 min's screen time & about 30 lines of unmemorable dialog. Waste of the actor in an extended cameo for about 3 key scenes only.
The movie just does not work properly either it needed at least 1 hour editing away to pick the pace up. As it stands now this is a very forgettable poorly conceived sequel which adds nothing to the original & even takes away a little goodwill due to how poorly this feels as you watch it unfold at a snail pace.
I cannot believe how badly they dropped the ball either it looks perfect but just feels empty as the actors are given nothing to work with so it does not work at all & deserves to be a massive financial failure as it does not deserve any box office success.
The power of the Hollywood hype machine cannot stop user reviews from telling the truth either!!!
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
ONLY just above Phantom Menace. Big letdown overall.
Saw it earlier in London, England.
Not a memorable experience at all. The movie overall is barely above The Phantom Menace. It has all the basic ingredients from the OT but sadly most are reduced to barely glimpsed cameos.
Han & Chewie carry the movie. Without them it would be in deep trouble. Rey is OK but the rest of the newcomers leave little impression apart from BB8 (who is not even human just a droid).
The new actors are all miscast (except for Daisy Ridley) & or the screenplay is weak so is the plot.
The movie barely works at all its confusing a lot of the time & very unconvincing the way the drama plays out is pretty amateurish.
John Williams is wasted his music is not very memorable at all. Big letdown.
ILM FX are also very average nothing special just stuff you have seen in other Star Wars movies.
George Lucas is lucky & wise he retired after 6 movies to let others take the criticism's. TFA deserves a lot of negativity mainly towards the story,screenplay, plot, direction & producers. Its a barely functional Star Wars movie which plays more like a mismatch of the OT SW movies than a new entry.
At best its A New Hope redux with barely different characters/locations.
At worse its a film school fanboy A New Hope redux.
My only hope is EP8 is way better otherwise Star Wars as a viable film franchise is finished creatively.
The Martian (2015)
The Martian = Gravity but on Mars (yet still an excellent film)
If you have seen Gravity then The Martian is similar in story concept ONLY.
The rest of The Martian is quite unique. Ridley Scott is back to his superb best this is one of his best directing efforts ever! The story is quite simple. Astronaut gets stranded on Mars & has to survive for 4 years......
How he survives is a mixture of: Cast Away, Apollo 13, Gravity & Flight Of The Phoenix (1965).
How/if he survives & his human spirit/ingenuity/endurance/survival skills are the core of the movie.
Everything about this movie works quite well. Direction is tight & smooth. VFX are flawless & long slow deliberate cuts allowing you time to take in the Martian & Outer Space vista'.
Acting across the board is of a high standard. Matt Damon carries most of the movie well but he is not alone as the rest of the main cast all contribute strongly when required.
If you want a near future science fact based disaster movie which is a mixture of Gravity, Apollo 13 & Cast Away then the Martian ticks all those boxes & the best compliment I can pay it is that the 141 min running time is never noticed the pace is slick & fast yet also measured. I guess a strong sign of how well directed this movie is & how well the story is told in an easy to follow manner.
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Superb experience & 2nd best movie in the franchise
Almost a masterpiece.
It contains everything you love about the movies. Suspense, mystery, drama, intelligent action & plot.
I did not expect the experience I got. A start to finish thrill ride which also contained intelligent characters & plot. Christopher McQuarrie has crafted a superb movie which moves at a fast pace but also slows down when it has to for some intelligent character interaction.
Tom Cruise gives one of his best performances & is in almost the entire movie. The rest of the cast are all great. Rebecca Ferguson is a strong character & female equivalent of Ethan Hunt.
Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner & Alec Baldwin all give great performances & have about the same screen time.
The villains lead by Sean Harris are effective & chilling & also a little mysterious.
Music is superb with many subtle bursts of the MI theme. The film does not contain hardly any CGI its nearly all practical real stunt FX.
Overall it just works from start to finish & Christopher McQuarrie has created a superb film experience which does not fail to entertain & deserves repeat viewings to enjoy the experience again & again.
This mission should you chose to accept it is to enjoy the movie & watch it at least once more at the cinema the way its intended to be seen on a massive screen with loud sound.
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Superb political action thriller
Just rewatched this again on Bluray.
Still holds up well saw it when it came to the cinema in 2002. This film is superb. it really stands the test of time all classic movies do.
Phil Alden Robinson's direction is almost flawless he deserved an Oscar nod for this its a shame he is not interested in directing more often because he is a very talented man! Jerry Goldmsith produces his last great score the music is terrific.
Ben Affleck was perfect as Ryan. Paramount made a huge mistake not making more Jack Ryan films with him.
Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Alan Bates, Bruce McGill, Philip Baker Hall, Ciaran Hinds, Michael Byrne, Liev Schreiber, Ron Rifkin, Colm Feore, John Beasley all produce a perfect performance & the rest of the cast also did well with very limited screen time.
The scope & scale of this film was also impressive considering the low budget it looks/feels like a much bigger film than it is.
I would say its not quite the best Jack Ryan movie but also more interesting than Patriot Games & Jack Ryan (the worse in the series by a long way).
Finally, the themes covered & the way the story is presented are quite chilling as they mirror certain real life global political events recently.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Massive letdown not a film for Trekkies according to Paramount
Where to start. This movie misses the mark on so many levels it starts off strongly before the main credits but gradually falls apart & by the last hour it collapses into a clichéd by the numbers marketing driven summer action film for the masses.
According to Paramount's International Marketing head (Anthony Marcoly) its not for Trek fans this time & it shows you can see the influence on the story/action its so obvious & destroys most of what made the 2009 movie amazing. Paramount should have just left the film makers alone or the film makers should have held their line as the results are so poor in places it feels more like the behind the scenes making of footage than belonging in the movie (you will know when you see the numerous scenes which needed a lot more work).
This movie succeeds in making both McCoy & Scotty slightly annoying as they are given forced dialog which sounds so artificial it takes you out of the movie along with some very unnecessary plot elements/characters taken from an earlier movie.
Much has been made of the character John Harrison & the actor who plays him(Benedict Cumberbatch) but he has perhaps 20-25 mins of on-screen time & very few lines of dialog he is more of an extended cameo than a fully fleshed out character & the way the character is written is quite confusing on many levels due to the way its resolved you expected a lot more after all the hype & buildup.
The target audience for this movie is NOT anyone who is bothered by massive plot confusion & or undramatic life or death on screen portrayals its purely designed as a summer action movie set in the Star Trek universe but only using small elements of that to tell the story.
Anyone who is a die-hard trek fan will find some small moments entertaining but also some of it can be quite offensive. There are a few moments of off-screen/on-screen violence which are quite shocking when you consider them for a moment & a main character appears to share another's ultimate pain @ a very sensitive moment. Its hard to tell if this was intended or not but it feels wrong & could be considered by some to be highly offensive as the character appears to be doing this to further their knowledge.
Of the main 7 Enterprise crew actors Scotty/Bones are major letdowns due to the writing & forced line readings. Chekov has a tiny little part. Sulu does not get much screen time. Its really a Kirk/Spock/Uhura movie they are in most of it & give strong performances but some of what they are asked to do on-screen is pretty poor compared to the 2009 epic. You cannot blame the actors here its all down to the structure of the movie & the weak dialog/plot.
If you liked the 2009 movie you will find something to like here but only in very small doses this movie lacks most of what made the 2009 epic so enjoyable dropping that in the pursuit of chasing a summer popcorn audience & an increased box office take.
Such a shame this was a missed opportunity Paramount need to get new behind the scenes talent for the next movie in this series as this one felt quite tired in places it even re-uses some minor elements from 2009 not in a good way though in a tired they have run out of ideas manner.
The Enterprise crew are clearly suited to their roles they just need something well written to respond to as this movie suffers from the weak plot & dialog. You also have to question the director several major scenes felt very poorly directed/edited its time for new behind the scenes talent to bring something fresh to this series.
Oblivion (2013)
Thought provoking sci-fi drama/mystery
Just saw it in London, England as its on general release here now. Overall its a very decent movie. If you expect a slow moving sci-fi drama set in the not too distant future (2077) then this is that movie. Its by design a slow moving but interesting premise & feels a lot like a 1970's sci-fi classic. Not quite though as the reveals leave you wanting a little more exposition but for the running time it covers pretty much everything anyway.
As long as you do not expect anything more than a bleak & thought provoking sci-fi drama you will not be disappointed the visuals of a barren & almost destroyed earth are flawless. Acting is solid across the board & Tom Cruise gives a measured performance avoiding any opportunity to smile or make humour of the dire situation they are in.
Andrea & Olga have about the same screen time as Tom overall as the joint female leads but the chemistry between Tom & Andrea & Tom & Olga is just fine.
For once you have a modern film which does not fully reveal its ending until the last 2-3 mins up until then you have no idea how its going to end which is a strong example of just how skilled a director Joseph Kosinski is as for me personally I did not notice the 2 hour running time at all as I was so enthralled in what was happening on screen & how it was all going to resolve itself (or not as this does not give you many answers & leaves several questions).
8/10 from me.
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Better than MI2
MI1 is still the one to beat.
MI3 is bland and uninvolving for the most part due to confusing editing & not enough plot information.
A lot of it looks like an episode of 24 or Alias but with more exotic locations.
Acting is strong all round although Hoffman is totally wasted.
Action is pretty standard run shoot jump dodge stuff nothing you have not seen before.
If Tom Cruise were not in it then it would just be another XXX2 clone.
Good but unmemorable.