It's been a while since Russell Crowe made a good movie. He's not quite on the Robert De Niro / Al Pacino spiral of stinkers but he's getting there and with The Nice Guys he continues on his own little run of movie dross. This is about a pair of 1970's private detectives who are hired to find a missing girl who is caught up in corruption involving the porn industry and people high up in office. That may sound interesting but believe me it's not. I found the whole plot of this film utterly dull and If that isn't bad enough the chemistry between Gosling and Crowe was non existent. I didn't laugh once. This film tries so hard to be a Lethal Weapon or a 48 hours and never comes close. The one plus point from this film is 14 year old Angourie Rice who plays the clever kid really well.
Re. The Nice Guys, the reason it comes across like Lethal Weapon is the writer/ director, Shane Black.
Black wrote the LW movies (you'll recognise him more from his slightly bizarre casting in Predator), he also wrote The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Last Boy Scout, The Last Action Hero and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Those films all have one thing in common: the two leads are love/ hate buddies. That's his schtick. (He also writes good kid roles in most of those films).
He spent years in the Hollywood wilderness, after Long Kiss Goodnight bombed (Last Action Hero wasn't entirely his fault but didn't help). He's spent more time tidying up other people's scripts than writing his own. He made a comeback with Kiss Kiss, where he hooked up with Downey Jr. who got him the Iron Man 3 gig. (Again, there's a wisecracking kid and a bit of a love/ hate buddy thing between them).
I think a lot of people hoped Nice Guys would be better than it was, but Black isn't in the wilderness again - he's been charged with reviving the Predator franchise...
Just watched The Invitation and really enjoyed it. One of those films where you are constantly questioning what is really going on, thinking you have it twigged and then it gets a bit more twisted and your mind runs wild again with thoughts of how the story is going to unfold. Well made, suspenseful thriller that will have you gripped to the end.
Re. The Nice Guys, the reason it comes across like Lethal Weapon is the writer/ director, Shane Black.
Black wrote the LW movies (you'll recognise him more from his slightly bizarre casting in Predator), he also wrote The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Last Boy Scout, The Last Action Hero and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Those films all have one thing in common: the two leads are love/ hate buddies. That's his schtick. (He also writes good kid roles in most of those films).
He spent years in the Hollywood wilderness, after Long Kiss Goodnight bombed (Last Action Hero wasn't entirely his fault but didn't help). He's spent more time tidying up other people's scripts than writing his own. He made a comeback with Kiss Kiss, where he hooked up with Downey Jr. who got him the Iron Man 3 gig. (Again, there's a wisecracking kid and a bit of a love/ hate buddy thing between them).
I think a lot of people hoped Nice Guys would be better than it was, but Black isn't in the wilderness again - he's been charged with reviving the Predator franchise...
Black is a bit of a one (maybe two) trick pony - the love/hate main pairing and lots of wisecracks. Often but not always a child character at least as smart as the adults. It's not really a bad trick and he does it pretty well but it's always variations on this exact same theme...
I thought Nice Guys was decent but it's mostly because Gosling and Crowe turned out to be a better pairing than expected rather than any brilliance of direction/scripting.
I grew up as a kid watching Tarzan on telly , I took my son aged 5 at the time to se the cartoon film 15 years ago (his first ever film), and loved both.
The film however... what a turkey of a film, despite the presence of Samuel L Jackson, this film literally is all over the place, ( I know it's meant to be through the trees) and a big let down, could have been so much better, preferred the new Jungle book a lot more.
I'm a big fan of Star Trek (2009) and while I understand Trekkers' issues with Star Trek Into Darkness, I thoroughly enjoy watching it.
The third outing promises to be a bit closer to the original series, in that it's set far from Earth during the five-year mission to boldly go....
Simon Pegg's script is witty and sharp, some of the plot beats are really well realised. Some of them are repetition of the first two movies, for both good and bad.
It is, however, still an action movie. There are few, if any character arcs, interesting potential subplots around aliens don't materialise and there's even less relationship stuff than before. Director James Wan does an impression of JJ Abrams, occasionally brilliantly (he has a lot of fun shooting the Enterprise) and sometimes incoherently (some moments were impossible to follow).
Seeing Anton Yelchin is eerie, while the rest of the cast do well enough with what they've got, which is disappointingly simplistic by the final act.
Finally, the 'sabotage' sequence is brilliantly stupid. It shouldn't work but it does.
Saw the new Ghostbusters movie with the Missus and daughter. It's all women with 'Thor' as the Bimbo. Totally absurd of course but I did laugh out loud and my wimmin loved it! 6.5/10
Lets face it , it's very easy criticise Micheal Bay and he's movies. He's made some real stinkers in recent years but credit where credits due , even though 13Hours The Secrets Soldiers of Benghazi is by no means perfect it's not terrible either in fact I quite enjoyed it. This is the true story of the attack on a U.S. embassy outpost in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, which killed four Americans (including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens) . The bad out of the way first , its 45 minutes too long and it is a little bit flag waving at times but i was impressed the cast , especially John Krasinski who I would never have seen in this role but it works. James Badge Dale and Pablo Schreiber are good too. The special affects are pretty good as well and thankfully not a transformer in sight!. Not bad at all.
A film about this French lunatic who saw the world in a beatific way. Him and some of his acolytes manged to string up a high wire between the twin towers just before they opened. When I read what the film was about I wondered how they would stretch the film out but it works. Being as ignorant as I am I had no idea if he survived the walk or not. The tension and the way the film was shot gave it a very credible feeling of vertigo. I'm glad I watched it against my better judgement. Very decent film
8 out of 10
Grimsby
Very silly, Sacha baron cohen does what he does and it was fun. Some absurdity and some real stupidity but I live his films for all of this. A few scenes had me in tears laughing, one of the scenes, maybe two made me retch whilst also laughing. It will be one on those films I watch whenever it is on the box because of some really funny bits. Like the dictator which I found very funny in some parts but as a whole a lot of silliness padded it.
6/10
The elephant scene and the daniel Radcliffe scene 10/10
To say that Youth is a little odd would be a bit of an understatement. But not odd in a bad way , odd in a very , very good way. I absolutely loved this film. This is the story of a retired orchestra conductor ( Michael Caine) on holiday in a lavish retreat with his daughter and his film director best friend ( Harvey Keitel) in the Alps when he receives an invitation from the Queen to perform for Prince Philip's birthday. In all honesty this isn't really about the invitation , it's about getting old and how you reflect on life so differently than when you are younger. This looks fantastic . Sure it can be classed as a bit arty but director Paolo Sorrentino hasn't gone over the top with it instead he has got Michael Caine , to produce one of the best screen performance I have ever seen him perform. There are a few surreal moments that don't quite fit , like the cameo from Paloma Faith which seems to have been shoehorned into the film just to get her on screen but on the other hand I loved the scene with a fat Diego Maradona doing keepy uppies with a tennis ball. This won't be everyone's bag but it got me big time.
Star Wars never really did much for me. I was always a much bigger Star Trek fan so I was anticipating this much more than The Force Awakens . This the first of the rebooted films that isn't directed by J.J Abrahams so it was always going to be interesting to see if Justin Lin could follow in J.J's footsteps. The film was definitely enjoyable . It was absolutely jam packed full of action , so much so that it felt a little too frenetic at times. It's also quite dark . Literally . Many of the scenes do not feel lit enough so it was hard to see what was actually happening. I loved the continuing character build up , especially with Bones and Spock . It's amazing how these actors feel like a seamless continuation of the original cast. The story isn't without gaping plot holes but that doesn't take away from what is two hours of pure Starfleet adrenalin.
Paul Rudd is a good personality, Michael Douglas is smooth and wistful and Evangeline Lily is smoking hit. Michael Pena stole the show as he is well capable of doing.
I got bored quickly, I'm not a massive fan of the Marvel films. I liked the Ants and the fight at the end was funny, probably the highlight of the film. But overall I wouldn't have regretted now watching this. In hindsight of course.
Eye in the sky is about a British colonel (Helen Mirren) who requests a drone strike to take out a group of terrorists in Kenya who are planning a series of suicide bombings. While trying to get political getting permission a 9 year old girl turns up to sell bread right outside the building which they plan to blow up. To say this film is dumb is an understatement. It's full of characters who look like they haven't been in their job for more than five minutes despite supposedly being experts in their fields. Helen Mirren doesn't look like a Colonel , Aaron Paul is no drone pilot and Monica Dolan is doing her W1A character. You also have to wonder if the drone technology is anything like we see in this film. Despite cameras being twenty thousand feet above or inside a mechanical bug ( no i'm not joking) the pictures are in perfect HD quality. It's not a terrible film. In fact it is quite watchable but you have to take your brain out before watching otherwise you will find yourself picking holes in it constantly. If you really want to see a film about drone attacks , Good Kill starring Ethan Hawke is the much better film.
The infernal Bradley Cooper plays the most obnoxious character in one of the most obnoxious films I've ever had the misfortune to watch. Nothing happens, nothing. Everyone is horrible and I couldn't see that the lead character had any redeeming features.
The chef he plays is some sort of tainted maverick who had it all then blew it by taking drugs and shagging. After sentencing himself to the most contrived punishment in cinematic history he just pitches up in London and builds a team of kitchen staff who is then then horrible to. I don't understand why this film was made or what the point of it was. And god knows how they assembled the cast they did unless it was some kind of tax swindle.
I think Bradley Cooper is a good actor even if he has just got one facial expression Daniel Bruhle too but this was a massive turd farted out onto a plate.
Nicolas Hoult is good. Unsurprisingly the film doesn't match the book but it's a decent effort. Some of the scenes from the book felt shoehorned in but it made me genuinely laugh several times also such as the pivotal scene whereby someone discredits Paul Weller
New Star Trek film is not as good as the others although it improves in the final third. Escapist fun but overall disappointing. Hadn't realised Simon Pegg was co-writer.
Comments
Apologies if already been mentioned on here but a decent watch
It's been a while since Russell Crowe made a good movie. He's not quite on the Robert De Niro / Al Pacino spiral of stinkers but he's getting there and with The Nice Guys he continues on his own little run of movie dross.
This is about a pair of 1970's private detectives who are hired to find a missing girl who is caught up in corruption involving the porn industry and people high up in office.
That may sound interesting but believe me it's not. I found the whole plot of this film utterly dull and If that isn't bad enough the chemistry between Gosling and Crowe was non existent. I didn't laugh once.
This film tries so hard to be a Lethal Weapon or a 48 hours and never comes close.
The one plus point from this film is 14 year old Angourie Rice who plays the clever kid really well.
4 out of 10
All the main actors I thought were very good especially the bloke who played Rom. Made me hate him.
Margo Robbie is just unreal
Black wrote the LW movies (you'll recognise him more from his slightly bizarre casting in Predator), he also wrote The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Last Boy Scout, The Last Action Hero and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Those films all have one thing in common: the two leads are love/ hate buddies. That's his schtick. (He also writes good kid roles in most of those films).
He spent years in the Hollywood wilderness, after Long Kiss Goodnight bombed (Last Action Hero wasn't entirely his fault but didn't help). He's spent more time tidying up other people's scripts than writing his own. He made a comeback with Kiss Kiss, where he hooked up with Downey Jr. who got him the Iron Man 3 gig. (Again, there's a wisecracking kid and a bit of a love/ hate buddy thing between them).
I think a lot of people hoped Nice Guys would be better than it was, but Black isn't in the wilderness again - he's been charged with reviving the Predator franchise...
I thought Nice Guys was decent but it's mostly because Gosling and Crowe turned out to be a better pairing than expected rather than any brilliance of direction/scripting.
More funny moments than I expected. Lost its way a bit about 2/3 through but as a bit of escapism for a couple of hours it's worth a go imo
I grew up as a kid watching Tarzan on telly , I took my son aged 5 at the time to se the cartoon film 15 years ago (his first ever film), and loved both.
The film however... what a turkey of a film, despite the presence of Samuel L Jackson, this film literally is all over the place, ( I know it's meant to be through the trees) and a big let down, could have been so much better, preferred the new Jungle book a lot more.
4 out of 10
I'm a big fan of Star Trek (2009) and while I understand Trekkers' issues with Star Trek Into Darkness, I thoroughly enjoy watching it.
The third outing promises to be a bit closer to the original series, in that it's set far from Earth during the five-year mission to boldly go....
Simon Pegg's script is witty and sharp, some of the plot beats are really well realised. Some of them are repetition of the first two movies, for both good and bad.
It is, however, still an action movie. There are few, if any character arcs, interesting potential subplots around aliens don't materialise and there's even less relationship stuff than before. Director James Wan does an impression of JJ Abrams, occasionally brilliantly (he has a lot of fun shooting the Enterprise) and sometimes incoherently (some moments were impossible to follow).
Seeing Anton Yelchin is eerie, while the rest of the cast do well enough with what they've got, which is disappointingly simplistic by the final act.
Finally, the 'sabotage' sequence is brilliantly stupid. It shouldn't work but it does.
I liked it, but it's the weakest of the three.
3.5/5
It's all women with 'Thor' as the Bimbo.
Totally absurd of course but I did laugh out loud and my wimmin loved it!
6.5/10
13 Hours The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Lets face it , it's very easy criticise Micheal Bay and he's movies. He's made some real stinkers in recent years but credit where credits due , even though 13Hours The Secrets Soldiers of Benghazi is by no means perfect it's not terrible either in fact I quite enjoyed it.
This is the true story of the attack on a U.S. embassy outpost in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, which killed four Americans (including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens) .
The bad out of the way first , its 45 minutes too long and it is a little bit flag waving at times but i was impressed the cast , especially John Krasinski who I would never have seen in this role but it works. James Badge Dale and Pablo Schreiber are good too. The special affects are pretty good as well and thankfully not a transformer in sight!.
Not bad at all.
7 out of 10
A film about this French lunatic who saw the world in a beatific way. Him and some of his acolytes manged to string up a high wire between the twin towers just before they opened. When I read what the film was about I wondered how they would stretch the film out but it works. Being as ignorant as I am I had no idea if he survived the walk or not. The tension and the way the film was shot gave it a very credible feeling of vertigo. I'm glad I watched it against my better judgement. Very decent film
8 out of 10
Grimsby
Very silly, Sacha baron cohen does what he does and it was fun. Some absurdity and some real stupidity but I live his films for all of this. A few scenes had me in tears laughing, one of the scenes, maybe two made me retch whilst also laughing. It will be one on those films I watch whenever it is on the box because of some really funny bits. Like the dictator which I found very funny in some parts but as a whole a lot of silliness padded it.
6/10
The elephant scene and the daniel Radcliffe scene 10/10
Truly wonderful and Mark Rylance delivers Roald Dahl's amazing dialogue perfectly.
9/10
Superb acting and lush screenplay.
Star Trek Beyond
Star Wars never really did much for me. I was always a much bigger Star Trek fan so I was anticipating this much more than The Force Awakens .
This the first of the rebooted films that isn't directed by J.J Abrahams so it was always going to be interesting to see if Justin Lin could follow in J.J's footsteps.
The film was definitely enjoyable . It was absolutely jam packed full of action , so much so that it felt a little too frenetic at times.
It's also quite dark . Literally . Many of the scenes do not feel lit enough so it was hard to see what was actually happening.
I loved the continuing character build up , especially with Bones and Spock . It's amazing how these actors feel like a seamless continuation of the original cast.
The story isn't without gaping plot holes but that doesn't take away from what is two hours of pure Starfleet adrenalin.
7 out of 10
Paul Rudd is a good personality, Michael Douglas is smooth and wistful and Evangeline Lily is smoking hit. Michael Pena stole the show as he is well capable of doing.
I got bored quickly, I'm not a massive fan of the Marvel films. I liked the Ants and the fight at the end was funny, probably the highlight of the film. But overall I wouldn't have regretted now watching this. In hindsight of course.
5/10
Eye in the sky
Eye in the sky is about a British colonel (Helen Mirren) who requests a drone strike to take out a group of terrorists in Kenya who are planning a series of suicide bombings. While trying to get political getting permission a 9 year old girl turns up to sell bread right outside the building which they plan to blow up.
To say this film is dumb is an understatement. It's full of characters who look like they haven't been in their job for more than five minutes despite supposedly being experts in their fields.
Helen Mirren doesn't look like a Colonel , Aaron Paul is no drone pilot and Monica Dolan is doing her W1A character.
You also have to wonder if the drone technology is anything like we see in this film. Despite cameras being twenty thousand feet above or inside a mechanical bug ( no i'm not joking) the pictures are in perfect HD quality.
It's not a terrible film. In fact it is quite watchable but you have to take your brain out before watching otherwise you will find yourself picking holes in it constantly.
If you really want to see a film about drone attacks , Good Kill starring Ethan Hawke is the much better film.
5 out of 10
Sorry.
The infernal Bradley Cooper plays the most obnoxious character in one of the most obnoxious films I've ever had the misfortune to watch. Nothing happens, nothing. Everyone is horrible and I couldn't see that the lead character had any redeeming features.
The chef he plays is some sort of tainted maverick who had it all then blew it by taking drugs and shagging. After sentencing himself to the most contrived punishment in cinematic history he just pitches up in London and builds a team of kitchen staff who is then then horrible to. I don't understand why this film was made or what the point of it was. And god knows how they assembled the cast they did unless it was some kind of tax swindle.
I think Bradley Cooper is a good actor even if he has just got one facial expression Daniel Bruhle too but this was a massive turd farted out onto a plate.
Don't waste any time watching this
1/10
Nicolas Hoult is good. Unsurprisingly the film doesn't match the book but it's a decent effort. Some of the scenes from the book felt shoehorned in but it made me genuinely laugh several times also such as the pivotal scene whereby someone discredits Paul Weller
7/10
6/10