Change Your Image
brandon-19950
Reviews
The Nice Guys (2016)
I laughed a lot
The comedy in this movie was right on point for me, seeing Ryan Gosling in a comedic role like this is great, he has perfect delivery.
I love watching Russell Crowe in just about anything, and while I don't think this movie was too demanding of his acting ability, he has such a natural presence on camera that with Gosling bumbling around in every scene, his more relaxed character was a perfect contrast.
The plot was a bit scattered, but to be honest it really just served as a vehicle to move from hilarious scene to hilarious scene, so I wasn't looking for anything too deep or intricate here.
I love that they say "to the Birds!" a couple of times in the movie with no explanation, but it's a nod to Gosling and Crow(e) and obviously an in joke for the 2 actors, who had great chemistry together.
Worth a watch IMO.
The Prince (2014)
Not bad, but not a Blockbuster
First up, I enjoyed this movie, but I think my expectations for it were about right. There's nothing original in the plot, but it sold itself as a "you get what's on the can" sort of film, so I wasn't looking for an intricate plot here.
Performance-wise I really enjoyed Jason Patric in this. The transition from concerned dad to ruthless killer was very smooth, and he convincingly gives that working class vibe of a man of many manual skills (unlike Orlando Bloom trying to pass as a blacksmith as an example).
Cusack was fine, I would have loved way more screentime from both him and Willis, this really felt like almost a weekend gig for them to get a bit of work between more major work.
I did feel Willis' character got a bit too cartoon-like at the end there.
All in all, this is a movie to kill some time, but it's no diamond in the rough.
The Card Counter (2021)
A lot of wasted potential
I'm not sure what happened with this movie. Oscar Isaac delivered some exceptional acting, but for me the writing, directing and editing were a complete miss.
I didn't feel like as an audience we were encouraged to buy into any of the character motivations. Cirq just seemed to wake up one day and decide to try some kidnap and torture, then puts that on hold to go traipsing around all the crappiest casinos in America.
Filling in the blanks based on what we're shown, I can somewhat understand Will's motives, but he goes to extremes for the kid of someone he didn't even know.
The attraction between Will and Lalinda is completely unbelievable, no chemistry between those 2 at all IMO.
The tone of this movie was bleak without relief, there weren't really any periods of prolonged tension, humour, action or really much of anything to add dynamic and keep the audience engaged.
I expected to like this movie and was ultimately pretty disappointed.
Treason (2022)
A good idea that IMO went a bit awry
I had mixed feelings about this show.
Solid acting from the whole cast, with a classic spy-thriller backdrop complete with MI-6, Russians and a London setting.
The acting was let down by poor writing IMO. Too many occasions of characters (mainly the protagonist's wife) acting in completely irrational ways for their character, simply to move to plot from point A to B.
Why would a wife (with military experience) of a career intelligence officer go off the rails about him keeping classified intel from her? She might not be happy, but it's not like it would be unusual.
Other characters also reacted oddly to situations and it mostly felt like the writers wanted certain events and situations to happen, but didn't really know how to logically bring their characters into those circumstances...so they did it illogically instead.
Given the cast and general idea of the series, it should have been a lot better than it was. There were a couple of legitimate surprises in the series which were cool, but I was mostly distracted by constantly thinking "why in the world would the wife think\do\demand\expect that?".
I've given it a 5/10 because I think there was legitimately about half the elements of the series that I enjoyed and I was hooked enough to watch until the end, but mainly because it was only 5 episodes.
Day Shift (2022)
This was fun!
Yep, this movie was packed with clichés and no one is getting an academy award out of this. But it was entertaining and delivered what it advertised, a silly action comedy with vampires.
Dave Franco seemed to reprise his role from Neighbors\Bad Neighbors but dropped into an action\comedy\horror movie - it was very in the pocket for him and I think he did really well as the awkward nerdy fish-out-of-water type.
Foxx was well in his comfort zone and I enjoyed the scenes with him and Snoop. Seeing Scott Adkins turn up in this movie as a random badass was great too, one of the best stunt fighters in the business.
The writing was ho-hum, the acting was ho-hum for most of the cast, but this was never intended to be Schindler's List and I think it was all on par with the genre and target audience who, I presume, are just a bunch of people looking to watch violence, have some laughs and eat popcorn.
I enjoyed this movie for what it was and had a good time.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
I liked it
Not sure what people were expecting out of a Matrix movie, but for me it delivered, and its always a joy to see Keanu Reeves on screen.
I liked the casting, and that moment when Lexy walked out of the mirror in the matrix was like "hot damn, that is one smoking hot woman!".
It delivered the action I wanted, the call-backs and symbolism were abundant, and the love between Neo and Trinity was heart-warming.
Blood and Bone (2009)
Good entertainment!
I caught on to this movie as a couple of clips of it turned up in some youtube vids of UFC fighters reviewing movies - the fight scenes looked cool so I gave it a shot.
It's a pretty formulaic 'Avenging Angel' plot and lowish budget but the acting is fairly decent and you certainly can't fault the fight choreography. Michael Jai White pulls off some of the most incredible scenes I can recall ever seeing, almost more impressive that presumably everyone walked away uninjured from the set.
Casting Julian Sands as the whitest evil white guy stereotype complete with a white suit was brilliant. He just seems to pop up all over the place and I think has made B movies his career-long niche.
Every time Dante Basco appeared on camera I just kept thinking "Rufio, Rufio, Ru-fi-OOOO!".
Definitely worth a watch if you're into martial arts flicks.
Blood Father (2016)
Nice one Mel!
I'll never get sick of seeing Mel on screen. A small scope movie that has just the right touch of grit, action and emotion. Erin did a great job here too.
I really enjoyed it!
Blackhat (2015)
Great movie, somewhat abrupt ending
I enjoyed this movie, but I'm fairly familiar with the subject matter and enjoy slow-burn flicks.
Probably because we're all used to a certain amount of resolution in the stories told in movie, I found the exploration into the villains motives pretty shallow and not really revealed in full.
That said, this film had more of a "snapshot" vibe to it in that there was simply going to be details the viewer would be kept in the dark about, that didn't really drive the focused plot anyway.
I liked it, but I can see why it wouldn't be for everyone.
The Courier (2020)
Excellent performances from a solid cast
I caught this movie over the weekend. I very much enjoyed it and felt that the story was well told within the constraints of a movie runtime.
Solid acting from all involved, and I can't think of a moment in the movie where a character acted other than in their nature to progress the plot, which is always nice.
I was interested in the handful of reviews that used words like "tired" and "cliché" with this movie. Given that it is a cold war era espionage movie, to expect other than was depicted was probably a bit foolish.
As the statute of limitations on government secrets allows more of these individual stories to be told, I'm always happy to go back to these times and locales to find out about the unsung acts of courage these people performed at the time.
I thought the writers did an excellent job of letting the audience get to know the main characters as human beings and feel the weight of their decisions and sacrifices.
Great film, well worth a watch.
Dark Places, Deadly Illusions (2021)
This was..not great.
I rated this 2 stars because I'm sure I've seen worse movies, just not recently.
This plot had potential, I legitimately thought I was going to see a movie that was derivative of Basic Instinct, a cool slow burn psychological thriller with sex appeal.
What we got instead was just..rubbish. There were very few scenes in which anyone acted appropriately to the situation. The dialog went from mediocre to atrocious scene to scene.
This was recommended on Netflix and my wife and I thought we would give it a go. We watched waiting for it to turn into something interesting, noting it was 20 mins from the end we had that sinking feeling that we had just wasted 2 hours.
Don't do it, there's better out there.