Reviews

I snubbed this on release, putting it down to yet another shameless cash grab on the glory days.

Boy, was I glad I was wrong.

Just watch the first five minutes of this and if you have a heart, if you have lived, loved and lost, you will be hooked.

Like Californication's best episodes, with an emphasis on the drama, this is an uncompromising look at a side of life very few men get to experience. It details the spiritual damage incurred by what many would consider to be a 'dream life' and it does so with an unparalleled sense of style and grace.

Excellent writing and a poignant soundtrack conjure up rare magic for men of a certain make and vintage.

The first time I started watching Babylon, I gave up after an hour and a half. I felt that it was needlessly overblown and could only appeal to anyone who'd been a star in the 20's and was now crying in their whiskey over glories past.

By the grace of the movie Gods, I had the good fortune to sit down and fully watch it with a clear head. What a brilliant, brilliant film this was.

Chizelle is essentially offering commentary not only on the nature of Hollywood itself, but on peaking and falling into obscurity/irrelevance and how we deal with it. Your character will determine whether you retire gracefully or whether you will disappear into a maelstrom of disgrace and humiliation.

It's divided into roughly three acts. The first, is excess and champagne vain glory. Whilst visually and technically dazzling, this is by far the emptiest part and the one most likely to turn a viewer away, thinking that this is some pretentious flop.

Stay the course though and you will be rewarded by incredible second and third acts, that truly reach for the heart of show business. Extra props for the virtuosic depiction of Hell in Los Angeles and the Kubrick-inspired final montage.

A remarkable achievement, this is a modern classic whose legacy will grow with time.

When the agents and the rest of the music industry's assorted vultures are on screen, it almost comes across as clever satire.

Literally every supporting character does a better job than Lily 'In Love With My Insta Filter' Rose and 16 year old edgelord, Abel Tesfaye.

This is comparable to terrible 90's straight to TV soft porn, with dialogue so bad that it actually acquires comedic value. It's a parody goldmine and in a just world, it'd be ridiculed in equal measure to the god awful '50 Shades' franchise.

I liked some of the Weeknd's hits on the radio and considered grabbing a couple of records, but after watching this pretentious train wreck? Off the wishlist in a hurry.

The ony real danger this poses, is if any pre teen girls watch it and believe that its self absorbed nonsense has the slightest hint of romance about it.

This is not just Guy Ritchie in top form, but a reminder of the visceral impact a great, zero-pretense film can have on you. One of the year's best.

I expected a 'simple' war/guy movie to lightly entertain me. I got that and then some. The action sequences are magnificently balanced between suspense and all out action.

This is ultimately a movie about principle. About what motivates good men to do impossibly hard things in the name of integrity. It is not some self absorbed man-child mewling about how their espresso machine in the office lottery was the wrong color.

This is the truth, what went on in Afghanistan for 20 years. And you feel it.

TL;DR If you read the book and loved it, this is for you. It does it justice.

I only got around to watching this in 2023, influenced by the myriad negative reviews on release.

Boy, am I glad I did.

As a die hard King fan and Constant Reader, The Stand holds a very special place in my heart.

I had zero expectations going into this, fully believing that I'd turn it off in disgust after about twenty minutes.

I ended up bingeing the show in three days. It does the source material full justice (the teleplay was done by none other than Owen King) even including key sequences from the uncut edition of the Stand that I believed would be left out. There are some changes here and there but they fit in well with the overall tone of the source material. The epilogue is a great bonus and guaranteed to throw a curveball at Constant Readers not expecting any surprises.

Die hard DT fan here, been avoiding this one like the plague. As it was leaving Netflix and I found myself with some time to kill, I decided to give it a spin.

It's a surface reading of the Way Station, with bits and pieces of the Dixie Pig and Algul Siento/Institute thrown in. It gets some things right if you know the books by heart.

The can toi/taheen are as creepy as they should. The boy cast as Jake is good and McCounaghey was an inspired choice as Walter, even though his dialogue and characterization were terrible. Elba does an amazing job putting together a mythical action hero in a movie that should never have been made.

If a normal moviegoer watches this, they will walk away thinking that the greatest literary epic of the 20th century is C list, low rent SyFy trash. For hardcore DT fans, it's an interesting visual exploration of some of the books' themes, a brief sketch of what could be.

Shyamalan appears to have fully embraced the fact that he is unable to write interesting characters or plausible dialog and instead goes all in on what he does best : teenage storytelling hinging on a major gimmick.

'Old' comes across as the type of 'prestige' horror movie that we once upon a time flocked to movie theaters to watch on Friday nights. The way the director handles the main gimmick is clever and it holds your attention throughout its duration.

A good choice for horror fans, it manages to feel fresh and disturbing at points.

I approached this one with trepidation. The biopics of poets more often than not sink in self-satisfied navel gazing.

Not this one.

Every scene somehow rings true. Rhys Ifans is a revelation as Thomas.

Ideal late night whiskey movie.

There's a little bit of everything in the Many Saints.

Comically grotesque out-of-nowhere ultraviolence, complex characterizations, constant references to Sopranos history and lore and a riotous visual narrative of Silvio Dante's follicular misadventures. Highly eclectic soundtrack and an ultimately convincing look at young Tony's psyche.

This was made exclusively for hardcore Sopranos fans. Not sure how much an 'uninitiated' viewer will get out of this, but I had a damn good time with it all.

This is a very goofy, lighthearted, 90's action comedy throwback that mostly fizzles horribly and is destined to be watched by men in their late 30's and early 40's, as we desperately reach for the warm, careless glow of our long gone adolescence.

Even though Van Damme is in on the joke and a couple of the character actors turn in amusing performances, it is almost impossible to watch in its entirety. Ultimately, it just reminds you why you can never really go back home again.

Even though it does not present anything revolutionary or ground breaking, The Chestnut Man is a confident, brutal and deeply engaging Scandinavian Noir. Once you start watching it, it's fairly impossible to stop.

This is tremendously well written and masterfully directed.

It is in essence, a very (VERY) dark take on Christian Easter dogma. Tremendously well written characters, it is on a completely different level than the rest of Flanagan's work and all the better for it.

Dynamite 'man-in-a-room' solo performance suspense thriller. Fuqua and Gyllenhaal in top form, this is a prime edge-of-your-seat, sweat-it-along thriller.

This is a very European film in the best possible sense.

Timothy Spall and Peter Stormare, two of the greatest character actors of their generation (and woefully unsung underdog heroes) put in thoroughly entertaining performances, as choleric genius architect Alfred Rott and the enigmatic Grand Duke, respectively.

The writing is terrific. Sharp wit, excellent pace and subversion of your expectations at every turn. This is not the film that you think it is going to be by looking at the poster and watching the trailer and it's all the better for it.

Also, the story is about 90% true :)

...but it is what it is.

The trailer made me believe that I was in for a profound and world-weary meditation of what remains after years of hard living.

What we have instead, is a delightfully syrupy, old fashioned 'buddy movie', straight out of a '72 matinee. Not bad and thoroughly enjoyable, but it really feels like a Disney channel, straight to video, feel-good-for-the-whole-family light and easy film versus the grit implied in the trailer.

Honest and heartbreaking look at Val's god-like past and current, diminished state. It's incredible how almost each and every one of the parts that he played throughout his career ended up being a generation defining archetype. Watching the sometimes painful, always brilliant auto-biography 'Val' I realized just how impactful the man's performances have been to my cultural upbringing.

I hope that he gets his voice back and gets to work again. If not, I pray that he finds peace.

As a die-hard Schrader-Scorsese-BRMC fan, I was over the moon when this was announced and the trailer had me super hyped.

It starts off really well and then devolves into an incoherent mess of such epic proportions that I kept watching thinking to myself 'There's no way Schrader dropped the ball like that, there's probably some clever twist or reveal that's coming any minute now and all of this disconnected, disjointed excuse of a plot will somehow make perfect sense!'

Nope. Never happened.

If nothing else, it kept getting worse. A sad waste of talent for everyone involved. As others have mentioned, the poker hands were the most intense sequences filmed for this, but hey, fun fact, absolutely zero card counting involved except for a short three minute intro sequence.

This one just never took off.

Being Greek, I approached this one with a fair bit of trepidation. I was worried that it might lean too heavily on easy clichés and gorgeous photography to have any substance.

I was delighted to be proven wrong. It's by no means THE Greek comedy (that honor is still held by Big Fat Greek Wedding) but it is thoroughly enjoyable and will surprise you with its humor and heart.

Also, add another star if you are stuck in the cold and rain and are craving a holiday in the sun more than anything right now.

The poster makes this look like a gorgeously styled neo-noir. It attempts to be, but fails.

Even if you approach it with tons of goodwill and appreciation for the talent involved, every thing about this movie feels cobbled together from far superior cyberpunk noir films of the 90's. If you are very young and have never watched seminal films like Strange Days, Johnny Mnemonic or Dark City, you may be impressed by some of the scenes and ideas presented, but long time genre fans will be disappointed.

Watchable, but absolutely nothing that you have not seen done elsewhere and better.

This is an utterly captivating visual tone poem (like all of Dominik's work) that explains at great length, what it means to be a real man. A masterclass in just about every aspect, films like this make a very strong argument for cinema as the highest artform.

American Wrestler is one of those true underdog stories that even though you've watched a thousand times before, still manages to feel fresh and immediate. There is something universal about Ali's struggle to fit in and excel that cannot but move the audience.

Trippy, inspired take on the Romance of Sir Gawain. This is not much about following a structured plot, as getting lost in the green haze of another time and place.

One where rules are softer and angles may not necessarily exist. Whilst not anything essential, life changing or profound, it makes a solid case for bold film-making breathing new life in overplayed subject matter.

This is pitch black and pitch perfect. Soderbergh is a master of his craft and the film oozes wit and the bleak truth about the nature of our world.

Best enjoyed with a fine whiskey by your side, this is the world, as it is.

Nine Perfect Strangers is an extraordinarily captivating show.

It reimagines 'Ten Little Indians' as a post modern fable of the present day. The casting is incredible and everyone puts in tremendous performances. It may also be the first time that Melissa McCarthy is actually acting consciously and dramatically and not just playing some typecast version of herself.

Cannavale and Shannon are in top form as well.

I cannot recommend this enough. Can't wait for the next episode!

'Mad Men' may be the single most realistic portrayal of adult life on television. A timeless masterpiece for the ages.