Still punching way above its weight.
★★★★
Category: pesos
When a small-town Irish cop with a crass personality is partnered with a straight-laced FBI agent to bust an international drug-trafficking ring, they must settle their differences in order to take down a dangerous gang.
This is the kind of film that you quote lines from, to yourself, and chuckle. Then a colleague asks you what you’re laughing at and you try to explain but end up looking like psychopath. Sorry, sociopath.
★★★★
A great student, avid gamer, and voracious fan-fic scribe, Kamala Khan has a special affinity for superheroes, particularly Captain Marvel. However, she struggles to fit in at home and at school — that is, until she gets super powers like the heroes she’s always looked up to. Life is easier with super powers, right?
Swings hard for style over substance and pretty much pulls it off. The recap at the start of E6 contains the whole “story”, so it’s disappointing on that front.
Iman Vellani is a wonderful Ms Marvel. To be honest, the only bit of casting I didn’t warm to was Bruno 🤷♀️
The multigenerational story of Kamala’s maternal heritage really worked for me.
★★★½
Investigative journalist Eddie Brock attempts a comeback following a scandal, but accidentally becomes the host of Venom, a violent, super powerful alien symbiote. Soon, he must rely on his newfound powers to protect the world from a shadowy organization looking for a symbiote of their own.
My expectations for this movie were rock bottom. But this movie knows exactly what it is and goes for it.
It’s based on a comic about a dude that bonds with an alien, symbiotic lifeform. Others have tried to “elevate” this type of source material and failed.
This doesn’t try to be anything more than it is (total nonsense) and on that basis it fully succeeds.
I’ve not seen Michelle Williams in anything since Brokeback Mountain. She’s great.
★★★
A research team finds a mysterious cylinder in a deserted church. If opened, it could mean the end of the world.
After returning home from the Vietnam War, veteran Jacob Singer struggles to maintain his sanity. Plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks, Singer rapidly falls apart as the world and people around him morph and twist into disturbing images. His girlfriend, Jezzie, and ex-wife, Sarah, try to help, but to little avail. Even Singer's chiropractor friend, Louis, fails to reach him as he descends into madness.
The people behind the Denzel version of The Manchurian Candidate loved this movie, I reckon.
But, this is actually a story about the power of love, I guess.
★★★★
When Giratina is discovered to be able to create parallel dimensions, it's up to Ash and his friends to stop a mysterious stranger from using its powers for evil.
Another thumbs up from the Pokénuts.
Fairly standard Pokémon film. I do like the positive environmental messages. The baddie in this one is exceptionally unhinged.
★★
Queen Poppy and Branch make a surprising discovery — there are other Troll worlds beyond their own, and their distinct differences create big clashes between these various tribes. When a mysterious threat puts all of the Trolls across the land in danger, Poppy, Branch, and their band of friends must embark on an epic quest to create harmony among the feuding Trolls to unite them against certain doom.
When her husband's sex game goes wrong, Jessie (who is handcuffed to a bed in a remote lake house) faces warped visions, dark secrets and a dire choice.
A thriller that revolves around the key people at an investment bank over a 24-hour period during the early stages of the financial crisis.
Disgraced, accused sex offender in the lead aside…
Still think this holds up well on a repeat watch. In a similar way to The Big Short, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t understand what has technically gone wrong at this particular firm. The responses and emotions of the characters tell you everything you need to know, which is a testament to the quality of the acting. For a film that mostly involves talking in offices it fairly zips along. There is some neat work going on with the sound too.
The one niggle I have is that Demi Moore’s character isn’t overtly absolved, having been set up very early on as a “cunt”. And since she is one of only three women in the whole thing, it does feel a bit like women are taking the lion’s share of the blame here.
However, it’s mentioned that Cohen, and Tuld himself, have tacitly endorsed the position, and therefore ignored any concerns she raised. She is hardly solely to blame.
The movie ends on notes of self-justification and evaluations of the worth of “banking” to humanity. Closer to the crash this felt like a fairly open mockery of banking attitudes and that we were being invited to laugh at their hubris. Now I’m not so sure.
★★★★