Tuesday, 24 July 2018

Wonder Woman (2017)

Mediocre at best. Meandering, with some obvious twists and so many walking tropes in place of characters. There are three villains and not one has any depth - come back Spider-Man 3 and Batman Returns, all is forgiven. I think this movie got cut a ton of slack for being a non-terrible DC movie - if it were a Marvel movie it'd be getting rated down with Thor 2.
Rating: Fine

Thursday, 19 July 2018

The Tourist (2010)

It was okay. I thought Depp was pretty funny doing a Cary Grant thing and I enjoyed the espionage stuff at the start, but the romance angle takes over the movie without ever really convincing. And I twigged the ending within the first ten minutes of meeting Depp's character, although I assumed she was in on it so I started to doubt it in the last half hour.
Still, some good action and generally charming.
Rating: Fine

Wednesday, 18 July 2018

Incredibles 2 (2018)

SPOILERS BELOW

Some heavier-handed stating of themes and some issues with structure - mainly that it's essentially a re-run of the first movie, beat for beat, and that it's not really much fun when the Incredible parents get hypnotised. All the action sequences, acting and family dynamics are still great though. One final issue - no resolution with the Underminer! Rating: Good

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Not half as amateurish as the first JW, and it even has one legit great extended sequence (starting with meeting Blue all the way through the volcano exploding and then the escape from the island), but once that is over, it moves to a big mansion for the rest of the movie and goes through all the same tired old beats over and over - meddling scientists, greedy suits who get their gruesome comeuppance, some associate of Hammond popping out of the woodwork (the one in this film is so similar to Hammond that I was pretty sure he was going to turn out to be a clone), getting saved from one dinosaur when it gets attacked by another, and just endlessly getting chased around small rooms getting snapped at through handy clutter by raptor-type dinos.
The very ending was pretty sweet, though, even if it was pure sequel set-up.
Rating: Bad

Paddington 2 (2017)

The social commentary isn't so strongly entwined into the story (one could argue it talks about criminal rehabilitation but I'm not wholly convinced), but it is still full of wonderful slapstick, whimsy and action, and has a much better villain.
Rating: Good

Saturday, 27 May 2017

Mortal Kombat (1995)

If I had to pick a Paul 'What Script?' Anderson movie as a gulity pleasure it would be Mortal Kombat - it's goofy, painfully cheesy and totally metal. But I don't have to, so I will simply consign it to the list of bad films I will never watch again.
Rating: Bad

Monday, 2 January 2017

London Has Fallen (2016)

I was staggered to find out that this is actually a really solid, brutal action movie. I don't remember the first one being this good. Gerard Butler is fucking hilarious in it.
Rating: Good