Reviews

A nice little family adventure film in the style of "Spy Kids". However, the "deadbeat dad" theme running throughout it is lazy and just feeds into a misandrist theme that actually makes it wholly unsuitable for children to watch, which is a shame. The notes say that this film has been in production for 20 years, well, that's as maybe, but they could have removed the 20-year-old casual sexism before it finally made it to the screen. Owen Wilson does a good job with what he's got, but, even he sounds slightly embarrassed to delivering some of the more cringeworthy lines. Michael Peña makes a great villain though, and he should play the baddie more often.

The final episode of this excellent series ends on a cliff-hanger, which is extremely irritating as the morons at the TV network then cancelled the show meaning no S3, despite the scripts being written.

Please, there's enough dreary Scandi-noir police dramas. Please make more of this.

I loved the first two films in the "Beasts" franchise - original, well paced, and with interesting story lines.

However, this third installment is slow, confused, with too many plot lines and just plods to a fairly predictable conclusion in half an hour more than it needs to be.

This film had significant script problems, and it shows. The originator of the franchise has obviously run out of ideas, and the studio lack the courage to bring someone else in that can take the franchise and keep the quality up.

It's said that authors should never adapt their own work, and although this is an original story, rather than from a book. The same reasons are true. The author gets too attached to irrelevant story lines and character arcs, whilst fresh eyes can trim the fat and produce a more coherent work. Added to this is the heavy handed allegory of the rise of European socialism in Germany in the 20s and 30s driven by Rowling's somewhat dubious politics, and it's a recipe for nearly two and a half hours of turgid self-indulgence.

It is said that if you love something, set it free. Well, Rowling obviously hates this franchise. She should set it free and let a professional take over.

Inept getaway driver and incompetent MI5 agent fall for each other whilst pursued by even more incompetent Irish hitmen whilst hiding out on a Greek Island.

If the story sounds a little derivative it's because that's what the RomCom format calls for! What makes or breaks a film like this are how the characters are drawn and whether you believe their incompetence which makes the humorous scrapes that they get into funny or just effected.

Thankfully, the film holds up very well, with some lovely individual performances and set pieces - the highlight being the sheer grumpiness of the hotel receptionist (actually played by one of the writers) whose disdain for the hotel's guests seems to know no limits!

Mike Reid puts in one of his final performances as a very effective Laaaaandan mob boss. And, the answer to the trivia question "what was the final film of The Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist?" is this one...

A nice little "date night" film, especially in the middle of a cold winter when you can do with a little Greek sunshine in your life.

I started watching this film in the expectation of it being a by-the-numbers boxing drama. And, indeed, it does start off that way and I was fully expecting a classic "personal growth through boxing" film with "the fall" followed by "the journey" and ending with "the redemption". And, it was chugging along quite merrily in that direction in a competently entertaining style.

Until about halfway through... Then everything changes... Suddenly, it becomes a LGBT+ musical.

Yes. Imagine that about halfway through "Rocky", it suddenly becomes "Hairspray". Ok, maybe not that dramatically, but, it does take a little bit of mental adjustment to get your head around it. But, once you've made that leap you get to enjoy the film all over again - with original songs, well sung, and believable characters with believable relationships.

It may be a very small genre, but, if you're looking for a LGBT+ musical boxing film set in Ulster, then this is the best in the field!

The film isn't bad for a low budget crime caper - the story cracks along, Martin Kemp plays Martin Kemp, and the other actors do a pretty good job of portraying various cheeky chappies and chapesses.

There's no denying that this film was made on a budget, but, there are some excellent characters here and it seems a shame that they were crammed into 90 minutes. The story would have made a great mini-series and given the characters room to breathe.

I'd like to spend a bit more time in the company of these people - maybe a bit bigger budget and a bit more screen time could flesh them out a little.

Worth a watch.

Starts off as "Raiders of the Lost Ark", spends some time as "Iron Sky", and ends up seqwaying nicely into the original film. If you're going to have a Stargate marathon, then watch this first.

I have just seen the worst film of my lockdown marathon. The cast list was good (Helen Mirren, Mickey Rourke, Ikea Knightly) and the premise of a sort of "Euro Porridge" version of "Love Actually" seemed interesting. But, instead, it's as if an EU grant funding committee sat around a table and decided "what we need is a European version of "Love Actually", but, we'll take out the jokes, remove the competent dialogue, tell all the actors to either phone in their performance or chew the scenery and get the script written by someone who usually does party political broadcasts". It's simply awful. I know that "Love Actually" has it's problems, but, not on this scale. And for all its heavy handed and clunky wokeness and political correctness the one segment of actual political worth that was directed by a Chinese dissident in exile was cut out from the film in order to pander to the Chinese market. So, they may talk the talk, but, when given an opportunity, they don't walk the walk. Two hours of my life that I'll never get back. I liked the talking car though.

I was looking forward to this as a fan of sci-fi, comic books, and post-apocalyptic stuff, and although I'm not a big Zombie genre fan, I did enjoy 28 Days Later, etc.

However, this goes beyond mediocre.

Rather than dealing with the massive issues surrounding the end of the world, this is essentially a soap opera with the main dramatic themes being a shopping trip, and "who's shagging whom".

With tighter writing and editing, the whole first series could have been condensed down to a single episode without losing anything.

Let's hope it gets cancelled soon.