My Blog

Red One review

Red One was awesome. Santa gets kidnapped by mercs and his head of security (Johnson) gets a person famed for his ability to find people (Evans) to help rescue him. It is very funny and silly. Just the sort of thing to take your mind off the drudgery of life. I think I prefer Violent Night, but that is more because the violence is more realistic - with this being a kids movie, you know that no-one is going to get actually hurt even though they really should. Like when Evans' character is slapped into oblivion and comes away with barely a scratch. But you're not watching it for the violence, you're watching it for the laughs which like a lot of movies aimed at kids, it has some humour aimed for the older audience too. I'm also seriously impressed and envious of how ripped J. K. Simmons was, although maybe he's always this buff, but cos he's usually wearing a shirt we didn't notice? #MovieReview

My thoughts on Anora

I can't remember where I read it, but someone likened Anora to Pretty Woman. Whilst there are some basic similarities, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree though. It has the basic premise of sex worker meets a rich man and there's the plot element of him buying her for a week. But Ivan is not at all like Edward - he's an immature, spoiled brat who is only rich because his parents fund his lavish lifestyle. And also the majority of the movie concerns the fall out from them getting married and his parents trying to get it annulled. Overall, I think I enjoyed it though - it has some funny parts, some sad parts, but the story is crucially engaging. And ultimately it is not the fairy tale that Pretty Woman portrays - it is a very realistic plot of what would happen in this situation I think. #MovieReview

Venom 3 review

Venom: The Last Dance is not bad, but it doesn't feel quite right to me and I'm not entirely sure why. Sure, it felt a bit too "busy", like Spiderman 3 was. And there were lots of inexplicable things popping out of nowhere to solve whatever the current problem was - the most random example being Eddie finding himself in Vegas casino with no money and happens to spot that Mrs Chen is there too and has just won big. I guess it felt like there was lots of distinct set pieces with lots of hand waving to tie them together to give some semblance of a story, but one that didn't seem to fit in with the previous 2 movies. And whilst there was what appears to be a definite ending to the Eddie/Venom story arc, the post credit scenes seem to imply there were going to be more movies. On the plus side, it isn't as bad as Morbius. I'd certainly watch it again. #MovieReview

Kids movie week review

I ended up one week watching 3 movies intended for kids. I started off the week re-watching Hocus Pocus. I don't feel the need to write a #MovieReview of a film that is over 20 years old. If you don't know anything about it now, you're probably not the kind of person who'd care anyway.

And then I saw The Wild Robot. It is about a robot who boots up on an unhabited (by humans) island. In an effort to find a user and a task to do, it terrorises the local wildlife and accidentally wipes out a family of geese except for 1 egg. So it takes it upon itself to raise it. It's a very heartwarming and endearing tale about growth and acceptance. And funny in places too. I also liked the visual style.

Finally, was Transformers One - the new Transformers animated movie which was also good I guess. I'm not sure who needed an Optimus Prime/Megatron origin story, but this is exactly what this is. Both start off as lowly miners who couldn't transform and until they go off on an adventure which changes them into the hero and villain we know today. Not sure there is more than meets the eye to this otherwise. Maybe if you're more aware of the Lore, this movie means something. For the kids, it's just a fun couple of hours with robots fighting and stuff.

More recent movie thoughts

So first off; Megalopolis. I have no idea what I watched. It was kind of pretty, but didn't make any sense. It reminded me of the sort of film you got in the Golden era of Hollywood, mixed with some Shakespeare and set in some kind of futuristic Roman version of New York.

The Outrun, however, I enjoyed. It's about a woman trying to overcome an addiction to alcohol. There are lots of cute animals and picturesque shots of the Orkneys. There isn't too much to say about it really as the concept and plot is not at all complicated. Which is in stark contrast to Megalopolis which is trying to be this clever, complicated film and has just ended up a mess. #MovieReview