The Movie Addict

Doctor Who has had a bit of a rocky road since Russell T Davies came back. It was hoped that after the Chibnall debacle, we were going to go back to the glory days of 2005 but Ncuti Gatwa’s first season was underwhelming to be kind. Thankfully this season has been a lot better with the occasion misstep. The final two episodes were seen at the cinema and this is the first time I have watched Doctor Who at the cinema since 2013’s ‘The Day of the Doctor’ which remains one of the best moments of my entire life. There are rumours that this might be the last episode of Doctor Who for a long time (possibly 2027) so it felt like a finale in more ways than one. Wish World This episode sees the Doctor and Belinda lead a domestic lifestyle where they have a child and doubt is seen as a bad thing. The Rani wants the date of May 23rd to keep going like a bad episode of Groundhog Day so that reality falls apart and the underworld appears and the return of a lost individual. The idea of the Doctor no...

Having enjoyed Asteroid City, I was looking forward to The Phoenician Scheme. The film sees Zsa-zsa Korda played by Benicio del Toro appoint his only daughter Sister Liesl as the heir to his estate as he tries to secure funding for a project. Like a typical Wes Anderson film, this has an all star cast including Michael Cera, Scarlett Johannson, Willem Dafoe, Richard Ayode, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright and a fantastic looking Benedict Cumberbatch. Mia Threapleton steals the film as Sister Liesl. She is trying to become a nun but is being persuaded to change her mind by her father who might not be her father. The reason why the character works so well is because Threapleton’s delivery is so dry that it was like she was born to play a part in a Wes Anderson movie. Benicio del Toro is very good as Zsa-Zsa but it was hard to really warm to him when he was in a scene with Threapleton because she is so good. The supporting cast is great. Bryan Cranston...

29 Years after the first Mission: Impossible film, we see the ‘final’ outing for Ethan Hunt as played by Tom Cruise. Whether this will be the final one is debatable but at 63 it's hard to say how many more films Cruise can actually do. Although I do think they will do them for as long as Tom Cruise wants to, the way that the film brings things from the past that most people have probably forgotten about suggests that this might be final. The film sees Ethan Hunt is on the proverbial hunt to find something so that the entity can get inside a computer system for long enough that something Luther has made can kill just before the US President launches missiles to effectively start the end of the world. The Mission: Impossible films have sort of become a running joke that they are basically known for the stunts. I can't remember the last time that there was a film that didn't have Tom Cruise hanging from it. Another way that they have become a literal running joke with all the ...

With 28 Years Later coming out, it seems like an opportune moment to see the previous two instalments. 28 Days Later is a film that reset the zombie horror genre even though they aren't zombies in this film but infected. The film starts with a trio of animal activists who release one of the chimps that are being infected with rage and things go quickly wrong. If only they hadn't done that then the next three films would never have happened. The film then moves along appropriately enough 28 days and we see a naked Cillian Murphy wake up. I’m not quite sure why he’s naked. I saw this after The Walking Dead and it's weird to see how similar they are. The film sees Jim walk around a deserted London which is strange to see and then comes across Naomie Harris’ Selena and Noah Huntley’s Mark and they go to Jim’s family home but then Mark gets killed then Jim and Selena carry on and come across Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns). Together they decide to go to Manchest...

I saw Pulp Fiction for the first time last year and couldn’t decide what people saw in it that made it a cult classic. With it being shown at the cinema, I felt that this film was worth seeing in the hope that the large screen experience would improve my opinion.  The film boasts a very good cast. One that could only be appreciated 31 years later. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Christopher Walken, a barely recognisable Steve Buscemi and Bruce Willis. Everyone is on top form and there isn’t a weak performance. Tim Roth’s accent is slightly distracting but that is about the closest I can get to saying something negative about these people. The only person who slightly lets things down on the acting front is Quentin Tarantino but he has a bigger issue. Another good thing that the film has going for it is the soundtrack. There isn’t a terrible song and it makes me want to buy the soundtrack to add it to my collection. I will give Ta...

Normally I wouldn’t see a documentary at the cinema. After all even the way that documentaries have turned into movies doesnt make they special enough to take time to go to the cinema to see something that they could see on TV but I had heard some good things about this and whilst on holiday I thought I would take advantage of my free time. Luckily for mid-afternoon on a Sunday when its very warm outside, it was nice to see a dozen people in the screening. Despite being 99 years old, David Attenborough shows us things that we have never seen before in the oceans and even if you have seen everything that Attenborough has been involved in, the chances are that you haven’t seen things like this.  The thing about this documentary is that it shows us how destructive we have been to the oceans and yet how there is still hope. There is one moment which is jaw dropping at how destructive it is. Essentially there is this net type thing that scrapes along the bottom of the ocean and scoops u...

Hallow Road stars Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys who are Maddie and Frank who are woken up in the middle of the night by their daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) who has been in an accident and the movie is basically Maddie and Frank driving to the location talking to their daughter and it all takes place in the car.  The film is basically led by Pike and Rhys. Maddie wants to call the police and use a sympathetic police officer to help their daughter and yet Frank wants to take the blame and this leads to conflict between the two. One of the reasons why the film works in the way that it does is that these two work well together despite their characters being polar opposite. The fact that the film takes place inside the car apart from the opening couple of minutes and the final few minutes and still manages to be entertaining and gripping shows how good the performances were and also the writing. Credit has to go to director Batak Anvari for keeping things ticking along and never le...

Hurry Up Tomorrow is perhaps not the sort of film that I would go to see but I thought as it featured Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan that it might have something worth seeing. The film sees Abel (The Weeknd) trying to get back into contact with his ex but is in the middle of a tour. Meanwhile Jenna Ortega plays Anima who starts the film by setting fire to someone’s house she then goes on her way to his concert and in the middle of a song their eyes meet and before we know what’s what, they run off to a fun fair to have a good night. The next morning he is about to leave for the next stage of his tour and she batters him over the head and they have a philosophical debate about what his songs mean. The Weeknd might be a good singer and performer but he isn’t very good as a leading man and when the film goes into weird mystical moments he doesnt help us understand what is supposed to be happening. Jenna Ortega is easily the best thing in this film and after really enjoying her performanc...

With the remake from Edgar Wright about to hit cinemas this year, it seemed like the perfect time to rewatch the original at the cinema. My original rating was a 3.5 but seeing it on the big screen has made me increase my rating to a 4. Set in the futuristic year of 2019, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richard’s who after refusing to fire on innocent people is sentenced to a detention zone and after escaping he is recaptured and made to appear on a very popular show, the titular Running Man.  Then along with Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto) and Weiss (Marvin J. McIntyre) they have to try and outrun the chasers. Later on they are joined by Maria Conchita Alonso’s Amber as they also try to tell the truth to the citizens. This is a great film that might not have aged well as some films from the 1980’s but that is part of the charm. There are plenty of Arnie puns which got a great reaction in the screening that I attended. Arnie was never the greatest actor but his physic and charm helped an a...

Sometimes I go into a screening knowing absolutely nothing about the film and ‘An Unfinished Film’ was one of those times. An Unfinished Film sees Director Xiaorui try and finish a movie that got abandoned a decade earlier. We see some of what was shot and it's clear that even if they do remake the film it will never get past the censors and so it is more of a personal mission to tie up a loose end. As the film is close to being completed, Covid his and the hotel is placed in lockdown and the rest of the film becomes about the remaining crew trying to keep their spirits up which for Jiang Chen’s (Qin Ho) is tougher than for others as he has a new baby at home. As I didn’t know anything about this film I genuinely thought that this was a documentary. It was only during a skirmish with some officials that I saw there was no cameraman when there would have been one that would have appeared in shot. Truth be told, there were a couple of shots that looked too well framed to be a docum...

The Surfer was a mystery screening at my local Showcase and this is the sixth mystery screening that I have attended and to be honest it is the worst. The premise of the film is that Nicholas Cage plays the titular Surfer who wants to buy a house with a view of the sea. At the start of the film he takes his son to the beach with the intention of showing him the house but they come across locals who say that the beach is for local people only and the film then becomes the locals making the surfers life a misery, things would happen that would go from bad to worse and everyone seemed to be a local.  By the time the revelation comes about the surfer being broken down to see how badly he wants the house, I was completely bored and didn’t care. Had this happened 20 minutes earlier then I might have cared a bit more but the pacing was so bad that when something happened I was quite excited because I thought this might be the point when the film means something but then that moment quick...

I honestly can’t remember the last time that a major motion picture was released that had the level of hatred aimed at it in the same way that Snow White. I won't go into all of it because I think films should be reviewed based on what you see on the screen instead of all the noise surrounding a film. The story sees Snow White (born in a snowstorm in this version), become a servant to the Evil Queen (Gadot) but when the Evil Queen orders the murder of Snow White, she runs off into the forest and comes across the house of the Dwarfs and with the help of a Bandit they try and overthrow the Evil Queen so that Snow White can become the leader she knows she is meant to be.  This film might be one of the worst cast films I have seen for a long time. Normally there is someone that stands out in a sea of badness but I honestly can't say that there was someone worth praising. Even Megalopolis had Giancarlo Esposito to make some scenes worth watching. Rachel Zegler can sing and that is o...

There is a long running conversation about whether cinemas are dying and to be honest I don't think it is but films like A Minecraft Movie buck the trend. As of writing this review, it has made nearly $900 million worldwide making it the highest grossing English language film of the year so far. I should confess I know next to nothing about Minecraft. I know that it's very popular and that is about it. The set up of the film is Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers) move to a new town after the death of their mother and Henry goes into a 80’s shop run by Garrett (Jason Momoa) and they end up in the over world when they meet Steve (Jack Black) and try to take on Malgosha to get back to the real world. The world that they have created is really good and the $150 million that they spent on it looks like it's been spent quite well. The film cost about double what Captain America: Brave New World and yet A Minecraft Movie looks a lot better. I enjoyed how thing...

Thunderbolts* has a lot to achieve coming just three months after Captain America: Brave New World stunk out cinemas and I was hoping that this would be where the Marvel films would start to get back on its feet after several years of mainly below average stories with the exception being the third Guardians film and the Deadpool & Wolverine film. The set up of the film is Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) are sent separately to a bunker at the request of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine who is trying to survive an impeachment hearing and so in an attempt to get rid of any evidence she tries to kill them and along with Bob (Lewis Pullman) trying just survive. Bucky Barnes who is now a politician (briefly seen in Captain America: Brave New World) collects them in an attempt to testify against de Fontaine but they soon form a new avengers. Bob has been tested on and his dark side becomes the villain. My worry about this film bein...