Reviews

The original Road House is one of the most fun action movies ever made. This is dull not just in comparison, but dull even by the standard of today's dull movies. Jake G is the only good thing in this movie. The rest of the distractingly diverse cast are bland beyond belief. The original had a group of bouncers and bar staff that all had personality. Even the idiots drinking in the bar were memorable. This movie has no memorable staff working in the bar, just a diverse mix of young people who all seem to have a chip on their shoulder for no reason. There is no character development at all and when Connor McGregor shows up the movie basically dies. They spend more time on speedboats and yachts than they do in the bar, which is barely a bar anyway. It's more like a beer tent on the beach. You don't get to see Dalton gradually turning the bar into something better like you did in the original, he just has a fight every fifteen minutes or so. What happens in between is of zero interest or relevance most of the time.

Jake G is really trying to do something with his character, but he's stuck in a 2024 action movie so he's basically wasting his time, much like I was when I watched this.

Watching The Last Stand I had a sneaky feeling like there had been some major reshoots going on or something. There are two separate movies in this production, one is a car chase movie featuring a gangster who breaks from prison and goes on the run in a super Corvette. He's pursued by Forrest Whittaker and the FBI. The other movie is a Schwarzenegger movie where he's a sheriff in a small town protecting his residents from a gang of gun-toting maniacs. And he's doing it on his day off. I found the Arnie storyline to be absiolutely brilliant, whereas the car chase part of the movie left me cold. If you're a petrol head you would probably love that part though.

It looks like a late rewrite took place to merge these two stories together. The car chase guy, Cortez, is supposedly the leader of the gang attacking Arnie's town, but he's never in any scenes with them, and it's only at the end of the movie that he shows up in Arnie's town for the finale of his car chase. Without this storyline the movie would be awesome, but someone obviously felt the original idea needed spicing up or reshoots were required, well that's what I think anyway.

Arnie's best film of the last twenty years.

This film was so fantastic, so original, so funny and so well made that it makes me despair for the garbage that Hollywood churns out these days. If the Hollywood bigwigs ever remake this you just know they'll completely ruin it.

It's a really clever story full of twists and turns. It has a bit of everything and it has a real feel good factor. A group of outsiders bond and become great friends over a series of events and misunderstandings. The film has a great message, in fact it has many great messages and it surprised me so many times I can't believe it. Hollywood would rip all the subtlety and humour out of this in their efforts to get some political message across. It was so refreshing to see a film that was just entertaining and had a script that was created to develop characters, plot and keep the audience amused and surprised for the entire running time. I'm so glad I saw this.

This film had so many good things and so many bad things. To start with the good, Shailene Woodley is great. Some of her best work comes when she's listening to others. The camera hovers on her face and without doing much she draws the viewer in. There are also some really tense scenes and Woodley's character does some clever stuff in high pressure situations. Ben Mendelson is watchable but it's hard to work out his character's motivation most of the time. He just does what the script wants him to do.

But on the downside, the third act is so tonally out of sync with everything that came before that the film was ruined for me. There is also some laughable dialogue throughout the film. It's as if someone wrote a great script then a bunch of other people rewrote chunks of it and added in some ludicrous soundbites. Then there's the political messages rammed down the viewers throat, often these are irrelevant to the plot - someone just wanted to get their views in there. One senses that the filmmakers wanted everyone to know how evil eating meat is. We're also treated to a scene of a gay couple eating dinner, which adds nothing to the plot at all. And there's some preaching about guns and mental health - important issues but none of it was done with any subtlety or finesse. It should have worked, but it was handled so badly.

I also found some of the camerawork distracting. It was like being constantly reminded that you are watching a film. Whenever I was getting absorbed in the story the camerawork would pull me back out.

There's also a bunch of scenes that add nothing to the story and serve only to slow the pace down. In particular, we get scenes showing Woodley in the bath, on the toilet and in a swimming pool. One wonders who insisted on filming these scenes and why? At least in 80's movies they just told actresses to get their boobs out. This feels like voyeurism for the benefit of someone on the production.

The final thing that really bugged me was the mumbled dialogue. Characters talk fast and with the weird phrases they spout out it was so hard to hear what they were saying. I had to put subtitles on, something I have never had to do before in any film.

Overall, this is a big disappointment because it had such great potential.

This is the lowest ranked episode of the show on imdb and for good reason. It has nothing to do with any of the other episodes. It's as if this episode was sent back from an alternate future where there was a third season. Not only does it not fit into the timeline of these episodes, but it's really boring. The last few episodes were building towards something, but then suddenly in this episode Sarah is in a sleep clinic because she's had insomnia for 2 weeks. Eh?

The insomnia wasn't mentioned in the previous episodes. In this one she's just having lots of boring dreams, and occasionally talking to a sleep therapist in the clinic. Then when this episode ends having achieved nothing, the next episode carries on like this never happened. It's the ultimate filler episode. I'm only giving it a two because there was a brief and entirely unnecessary shot of Cameron in her pants.

I worked out a few weeks ago that this show it infinitely better if you skip the flashback scenes. They've been dragging the show down ever since they were introduced. By skipping them in this episode I found I was watching a fast paced heist full of tension. If you watch the flashbacks it just kills the show's momentum. The heists are always good in Animal Kingdom and this one was elaborate and very well staged because as a viewer you weren't sure what the plan was. I'm a bit miffed about what they've done to Craig's character though. He used to be a hardcase, now he's a bit mopey.

I saw this film back in the day and my only recollection was that it was boring. I watched it again last night and was surprised by how entertaining it was. I suppose when it came out there were plenty of other films like it that were better. But seeing as how we're in the era of endless superhero movies and tired, woke reboots, I found this to be quite refreshing second time around.

The first 20 minutes or so is kind of dull, but then as soon as Cindy Crawford's house gets blown up the movie turns into a real cat and mouse thriller very similar to Enemy of the State.

William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford are both ok in this, even though the script occasionally lumbers them with bad dialogue and ludicrous behaviours. There are times where Crawford's character flounces off in a huff for no reason, other than the script requires her to be apart from Baldwin so he can rescue her again. If you can get past these occasional annoyances this is a decent fast-paced flick.

If the two lead characters had been played by someone like Mel Gibson and Rene Russo this would have been brilliant. As it is, it's still decent, but obviously has been largely forgotten. There's not even a blu ray of it as this point, which is a shame.

Victor Maitland from Beverly Hills Cop is good as the villain and there's an early appearance from Salma Hayek which almost steals the show. Pus Shooter McGavin is in it. There's lots to like!

I stuck with this film for a lot longer than I thought I would simply out of morbid curiosity. I don't know what happened with the script. Maybe they lost the first ten pages? The film just starts with zero explanation of what is going on. There's a bit with Ron Perlman riding a ship in the desert in a far away world. Then it cuts to some soldiers in jeeps riding through a desert when a storm comes and transports them somewhere else (I think?). Anyway, the storm was a copy of the one in Fury Road. In fact everything here is borrowed from a classic movie (Aliens, Predator, Fury Road, Dune, even the soundtrack was very Fury Road). There was a really good chunk of action fairly early in the movie. Milla Jovovich was good in this and so were the special effects. The production levels were good in general and it looked like it had a decent budget, but, and it's a big BUT, what the hell was going on? There was just no set up and after about a third of the film it just got boring. I eventually started fast forwarding before just switching off about 20 minutes before the end. A shame because it had potential.

The plot of 21 Bridges, while not exactly original is quite decent, but the execution of this movie is terrible. The script is riddled with cliches and bad B Movie dialogue. At one point after some naff dialogue, Boseman answers his phone with the line "Talk to me". No one outside of movies ever answers a phone this way. That's not even the biggest crime, all the cops spew out weird phrases that you only ever hear in movies. Someone at one point even reels off the classic Shooter McGavin "I eat pieces of sheet like you for breakfast". And it's not just the dialogue that's bad. Every character is one dimensional. The cops are either "playing by their own rules" or completely by the book. There's nothing in between.

This film has a good cast but their performances are unusually bad. Sienna Miller is usually very good, but she's so bad in this it's really distracting. I can only assume the director has a hand in this because I've never seen Miller be bad in anything before.

The film speeds along at a fast pace, coming in at 99 minutes, but I got the feeling that 20 minutes had been cut out in the editing room, possibly due to bad test screenings, because there are numerous occasions where the cops just keep turning up at the right place at the right time, without any clues leading them there.

There was real potential at the point when Boseman calls for the 21 bridges out of the city to be closed down, but we never even see a 20 second montage of the bridges and tunnels being closed, we're just left to assume it happened.

The production values are decent and it looks like there was a sizeable budget, but Hollywood just doesn't seem to know how to do these crime movies any more. In the hands of Tony Scott and Denzel Washington this would have been a great movie. Instead it's very average and very predictable.

I hope they continue to make these shows. I love the narration which really adds some humour to proceedings. The Die Hard and Back To the Future episodes are my favourites, but I find them all fascinating as it's so good to get a retrospective look at what went on in the development and production of some of my favourite movies. Keep up the good work.

Watching this film was an odd experience. On several occasions I felt bored and started to fast forward a bit. But each time I did I found myself engaged in it again. The problem is there is a lot going on in this film, and while it's not particularly confusing it is overly complicated for a film that should be good fun. It's a mix of horror, comedy, drama and fantasy. There are a number of storylines running concurrently and while none of them are bad, they all have moments where they get a bit dull. So you switch from a really exciting scene in one story to a slow plodding scene in another, and it gets a bit irritating. The acting is all decent. This is the second Maggie Q film I've seen in recent weeks and both were mystery / horror affairs set in exotic locations. And while neither film is great, I've found her very watchable.

At times this film has some good twists, turns and surprises but it's one of those films that, as it gets closer to the end, its twists come in thick and fast. Every five minutes the story seems to get turned on its head. Some twists are good, others just feel forced.

The film does tie every storyline up in a reasonably satisfying way, but overall this feels like a missed opportunity. It's a good idea, it's well made, but it's just a bit too messy and complicated when it could have been a little simpler and therefore a bit more fun. It's worth a look, and the 4.9 rating on imdb seems harsh, but only a little. With perhaps one less story thread this could have been a 7/10.

I caught this film on Sky Movies. Normally if it's a film I haven't heard of I end up turning it off after 15 minutes. This one had just enough to keep me going at the start and then it became quite an interesting mystery. After half an hour I checked the score on imdb and saw it had a 5.3 rating. That was an indication that the answers to the mystery weren't going to be great. I carried on, preparing to be underwhelmed by the ending. With my expectations lowered I ended up not hating it. I understood the point of it, it's just that I hoped for a bit more.

The acting is good, the soundtrack is great too and for the first hour the film creates a good sense of mystery. It veers between horror, mystery, black comedy, relationship drama and sci fi at times, but ends the ending didn't have the big wow twist I was hoping for, but that's why it had a rating of 5.3. Even so, I'm glad I watched this film. It's better than most of the smaller films that show up on Sky Movies. It's a good example of a film with a small budget and fairly big aspirations. It had a little bit of originality in it, and for that it's worth a look.

Like most of the other reviewers here I initially watched Battle of the Planets when I was a kid. It was my favourite cartoon, but when I tried to watch it again as an adult I found it to be quite incoherent. I was never a fan of 7Zark7 anyway (was anyone?) but the way the action was constantly interrupted by cutaways to him assuring the viewers that no one ever got hurt were quite jarring.

I first heard about Gatchaman about ten years ago but I didn't think I could watch it because the characters have different names to those in BOTP. But earlier this year I watched a few episodes online and after I'd seen about 20 of them I was so hooked I coughed up for the collectors edition blu ray. It turned out to be one of the best purchases I've made.

If you can get past the first 15 episodes the quality of the show really improves. The animation and the storylines really crank up a notch. There are a few duff episodes, but out of 105 in total that is to be expected. I quickly realised that BOTP was actually a very poor imitation of Gatchaman. BOTP cut out all of the violence (of which there is a lot) and it also ditched the storylines that ran all the way through the 105 episodes.

From about the halfway mark the story becomes a real cat and mouse affair between Gatchaman and the bad guys, Galactor. The race to catch Berg Katse (formerly Zoltar in BOTP) really hots up. I was particularly impressed by some of the darker storylines, many of which look like they were a big influence on many of the big Hollywood movies that followed (Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc). There is also some great humour in here. Katse has henchmen called Willis and Daltrey, and I'm certain it's just so the writers could make him say lines like "What you talking about Willis?" and "Roger, Daltrey"

Also, unlike BOTP a lot of people die in Gatchaman. The Galactor henchmen get burned alive on numerous occasions, but also the good guys don't always make it out alive. There are a few significant deaths that were never shown in BOTP which omitted to show about 25 of the Gatchaman episodes (usually the best ones). I also liked the fact that the good guys didn't win every time. There are many episodes where the bad guys triumph or kill someone important.

When I was finished watching this (I did one episode a day for 105 days) I was genuinely sad as I'd become very attached to the show and its characters, which is something I never imagined possible all these decades after I first watched BOTP. If you were a fan of BOTP and you were thinking of watching Gatchaman, I would recommend you get right on it. I thought it was brilliant and light years ahead of its time.

This movie is a mess but I love it. The visual style, especially the saturated colours is gorgeous to look at. The soundtrack is super energetic too. The story could have done with some trimming though. The main storyline is excellent, but it's surrounded by Domino telling the story to an FBI agent in an interrogation room, the backstory of Domino's childhood, a drug trip in the desert and a subplot about four sassy black women who work for Delory Lindon's character. Without these distractions this would be a very watchable masterpiece. Instead it's a very complicated film that took me several viewings to appreciate. The three bounty hunters, Rourke, Ramirez and Knightley are great when they are together and their chemistry is fantastic. If you can persevere with Domino it's a really vsually beautiful film with a sense of energy I've never seen in anything else.

This is a comical episode. Galactor creates a song that drives people insane. The voice actors (and translators) seem to be having fun with this episode. The Mysterious leader does a Monty Burns "Excellent" impression at one point. Katse says "Groovy baby" in an Austin Powers voice, and also tells his musicians to "turn it up to eleven". And to top it all off someone utters the immortal line, "What you talkin' about, Willis?" It was one of the weaker episodes of the show so hats off to the writers and voice actors for livening it up with these sneaky little gags.

The storytelling in Gatchaman really steps up a notch after the first 20 episodes. This was my favourite so far. It has elements of an atmospheric horror movie with some great mystery surrounding a flute player at a theme park and a giant neon demon that is killing off the world's scientists one at a time. Plenty of action, kung fu and mystery.

I remember seeing the first Grown Ups film and not finding it very funny. I tried watching it again recently on TV and recorded part 2 as well. I still didn't find the first one funny and switched off after half an hour. I then decided to watch ten minutes of GU2 to see what it was like. Wow, I was in hysterics in the opening scene with the wild animal in Sandler's house. I stuck with it after that, and while there is almost no plot whatsoever there are some epic laugh out loud gags in this film. I can see why some people hate it because for long spells it feels like a bunch of unconnected scenes. However the final showdown / party is fantastic fun and makes a lot of earlier scenes make sense. On the whole this film made me laugh enough times to put me in a really good mood and for that I can forgive the lack of structure.

This could have been amazing. A guy escapes from Hell to stop some devil worshippers from using his baby granddaughter as a human sacrifice. I'm not a fan of Nic Cage at all but in this film he puts in a decent performance, only surpassed by Amber Heard as his sidekick. Whenever Heard is on screen this is very watchable. She and Cage have pretty good chemistry and the plot in a nutshell is simple and fun. Unfortunately there are way too many dull subplots going on that really kill the pace of the film. One minute you'll be marvelling at what fun this film is. Some of it is bonkers, action packed and funny. And then there are tedious scenes that go on for ages where characters just explain the plot or reel off dull dialogue in very slow monotone voices. Billy Burke is sadly miscast as the bad guy. He has little in the way of motive and he's just mincing around making evil speeches. It should be a fun part, the kind that Gary Oldman used to do in his sleep or John Travolta did in Broken Arrow. Instead you find yourself wanting to skip scenes looking for more Nic and Amber and fast cars. William Fichtner is added into the mix too and although he's okay, many of his scenes could have been deleted. At times early in the film it felt like he and Burke were playing the same character. Overall it's worth a watch. I love this kind of film. It has fast cars, nudity, gun fights, slapstick violence with garden tools, a sexy sidekick, a guy who escaped from Hell, and devil worshippers. It could have been the best film ever. But it's just ok.

I like a good murder mystery and Hollywood hasn't been making them since the 90's so I was looking forward to this based on the glowing reviews and the 8.1 rating on imdb. Unfortunately as murder mysteries go this one doesn't really have anything original to add. It's also quite boring. It started very slowly with loads of scenes of people sitting in rooms talking in long boring monologues. I love a good dialogue driven movie like The Social Network, Reservoir Dogs, A Few Good Men, Moneyball, The Lincoln Lawyer etc, but the dialogue in Knives Out is bland and full of pretentious waffle. It finally got interesting in the last half hour, but the way the crime was solved was lazy. Daniel Craig calls the guilty party into a room and then explains exactly how the crime was committed despite the fact he hasn't really done much in the way of investigating. It's just lazy. It's meant to be clever, but I was expecting a further twist because I couldn't believe it would be this basic, but it is. Basically Daniel Craig chats to everyone for an hour or so then in classic Columbo style reveals he has all the answers and you're supposed to be blown away by how clever it all is. I wasn't. I'm giving it a 5/10 because at least it was something different coming out of Hollywood for a change. I'm fed up with reboots, superhero movies and big franchises so I'm happy that this was made. I just wish it was better.

I thought Joaquin Phoenix was very good, but the film itself is ponderous and boring, as well as preachy. As far as entertainment goes it fails really. I've read lots of reviewers saying it was brilliant but they couldn't watch it again. I won't watch it again either because it was so slow. It's just a film about a man with mental health problems who's let down by society. They've dressed him up as a clown and set it in Gotham with Thomas Wayne as a supporting character, but this could easily have been a script that's been knocking around Hollywood for years that's been dusted off and called Joker so that it will make some money. There's very little action and the gory violence I'd heard about was actually quite tame in my opinion. Not worthy of the hype.

This movie looks wonderful and I liked the characters Alita and Hugo, however this film has no suspense or tension. It's well shot and each scene on its own is okay, but I just didn't care about what happened.

The script has just borrowed ideas and scenes from lots of other sci fi films like The Matrix and I Robot, but where those films had elements of mystery and a story that unfolded gradually giving the viewer pieces of information gradually, this one just meanders along, switching between so-so CGI action scenes and boring exposition scenes. The script is just bad. In order to get from one action scene to the next, characters just phone Alita up and say stuff like, "Hey Alita something bad is about to happen a few miles away, can you get there?" And then the film cuts to the scene in question, Alita shows up and the action happens.

There are lots of bad guys but their motives are virtually non existent. It's just "Kill Alita, or Hugo" Why? "Because, the boss says so" And who is the boss? Dunno.

A series of action scenes involving Alita beating up the same characters again and again doesn't make for an entertaining film. And a villain who doesn't show his face or reveal his motives isn't interesting either. Total waste of some decent performances from the lead actors.

Disappointed.

I remember liking this film as a kid, particularly the ending. I also remember really liking the lead actor. Having recently revisited this film I still like both of these things. The first half of the film is excellent in my opinion. It's tense, the gorillas are still scary (to me anyway because I saw it as a kid) and Nova is wonderfully played by Linda Harrison despite her lack of dialogue. It's very easy to like her and root for her because she's terrified most of the time but can't verbalise her fears. Brent is a good character too, and what surprised me when revisiting the first two films of this series is that his performance outshines Charlton Heston's. I never imagined I would say that because Heston is a renowned actor and I've always liked him but he's prone to moments of really hammy acting in these films. It's probably very much "of its time" but I found the actor playing Brent to be much more understated and believable. The second half of the film is unfortunately a bit naff. The ideas are solid, but the telepathic humans kill the pace and mood of the film. Their motives are muddled too, to say the least. On the plus side the SFX are excellent for their time and I enjoyed the final showdown as much as ever. I love the ending too and it was good to see Taylor and Brent team up to take on the apes. As a side note, there's a scene when Zira and Cornelius are talking to Brent and it looks like an extra shot has been added in where they mention that Taylor arrived with two friends. It's almost as if the filmmakers forgot to mention them and had to add the scene in during post-production. It's quickly skated over and then never mentioned again. Overall this film is worth a watch.

This was recommended to me by a female friend who has pretty good taste in comedy. However, I was expecting not to like it but I thought I'd watch the first episode, fully expecting to turn it off after about ten minutes. The opening scene had me hooked. The writing is fresh, original, very funny and also very dark. It's some of the best storytelling I've seen in ages. Definitely the funniest British comedy since The Office. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has a very likeable quality, so her regular sideways glances at the camera, complete with off-the-cuff quips and smirks work brilliantly. I normally hate it when people talk to the camera, but it's done so well that it draws you as a viewer into the story and you feel like you're sharing the jokes with her because you know what she's thinking with every knowing look. On top of that the other characters are all so well drawn. I particularly liked Fleabag's sister and the relationship between the two of them. They get on each other's nerves a lot, and both of them are selfish at times, but that's what makes this show so real, the rounded characters and their relationships. Fleabag is without doubt the most realistic female character I've seen in a TV show or film in years. I know lots of women like this, and even though I'm a man I can relate to many of the problems she has. It's such a relatable character thanks to the excellent writing and acting. The comic timing is on the money and even a tired old gag like someone farting in a lift is done so well it had me in stitches. Thos show cheered me up no end.

The ending is brilliant too. And even though I loved this show, I hope it ends there.