“JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2”

It has shown how long I have been doing this that I am not starting to get to the stage where I can now say I have reviewed multiple times follow-ups to films I have already reviewed for the website. I reviewed John Wick when it got its UK release, way back in 2015 and to be honest I probably didn’t give it enough credit. On the second viewing of this film, I actually think I like it more. When I closely examined it, it had everything I like about what you can do with an action film right now, paired with the rather under-used 80’s revenge film plot. John Wick was nothing ground breaking, but it was still dam good and it got to show a side of Keanu Reeves that he hasn’t displayed in a long time. Now, when a sequel was announced, I was rather sceptical because the story was pretty much over by the end of the first film. Was there anywhere for it to go? Well, yes, apparently, there is because the movie has been made and has been put out there, or at least you hope so. The film not only returns starring Keanu Reeves, but also the director Chad Stahelski, a former stunt coordinator, who has worked on several high profile films, including many of the Hunger Games films (see my review of Mockinjay part 2 for my opinion on those films) and 300, though John Wick is his only directorial credit. Although, apparently he is going to be the director of the up-coming Highlander re-boot. He is once again joined by the first film’s writer, Derek Kolstad. In all honesty, considering how poor the recent action films I have seen like Resident Evil the Final Chapter, which I did a mini review of last week, and xXx The Return of Xander Cage, I was really up for a proper good action film. The question is, did I manage to get that?

John Wick: Chapter 2 is a rather apt title, because it takes place directly following the conclusion of the first movie. John Wick (played by Keanu Reeves) believes he is completely out of the game having killed everyone he set out to kill and avenging the death of his dog and getting back his car. There’s just one problem, however, out there, Santino D’Antonio (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) says that he owes him a debt now that he is back in the game and he won’t be able to escape it unless he assassinates his sister Gianna (played by Claudia Gerini) in Rome. Now Wick has assassins on all sides after him with a 7 Billion Dollar bounty on his head, including Cassian (played by Common) and Ares (played by Ruby Rose). What is Wick’s way out of this one?

Now as I said, I appreciated John Wick on a second viewing. I was expecting that this one might be the same deal, that I would be reviewing it saying that I suspect I will appreciate this more when I have a second viewing, but right now I think it’s ok. Fortunately, that is not the case, I actually think that John Wick: Chapter 2 is my must see film right now. It would have been easy to turn this into a carbon copy plot of the original film, fortunately that is not the case. In the original film it was a basic revenge plot, so we had John Wick the hunter and it was a case of not ‘if he’ll get his target’ it’s ‘when he will get his target and how’. In Chapter 2 we see Wick more in space of being the hunted and we see what John Wick is like when he is not in complete control. The film seem to be going for a real anti-Bond vibe and not in the sense that it hates the James Bond films and wants to comment on how crap it believes they are, it’s more he wants to be a anti-hero version of James Bond, not helped by the fact that there’s a bit of globetrotting in this one. Though I will say that the Rome setting is used to its full advantage, what’s more, we also seem to be getting a lot of the Q gadget type people turning up in the film as well. That doesn’t mean, however, that it has lost its edge and it’s now going to be Wick girls, believe me, it’s still recognisably a John Wick film and you would never confuse the two. It seems like Keanu is really moulding this character into his own. He seems to really like the character and it seems like this is a role where he has had the most fun in a long time. If there is an issue to have with the film, it’s the fact that we are seeing more of this world and we are feeling the various rules like no fighting in areas associated with the company, i.e. the hotels that the assassins are staying in. We realise something, which seems very much like the director is preparing for his Highlander remake and you begin to realise that they have not answered a lot of questions about how this whole thing works. That being said though, they don’t really have to. It has a similar quality to another great action film in the last couple of years, Mad Max Fury Road. As the nostaglgia critic pointed out at the start of his review, with that film, it doesn’t give you everything, but it gives you enough to connect the dots yourself and the John Wick films seem to have the exact same quality. I would say there is absolutely no issue I had with the film in that sense, however, I did feel that they needed to put a little more meat on the bones. The only issue I can find with the plot, is that a lot of the characters that were rather popular in the last film get rather fleeting amounts of screen time in this one. I would say, however, that I am glad it’s that way round rather than they become over exposed and take up too much time on the plot, as we saw an example of in films like the Hangover movies, where popular side characters got way too much screen time in the sequels.

If there is one weak point in the film, it’s the villains. Not the other assassins. I actually kind of like the other assassins. We’ve got Ruby Rose’s Ares who communicates only in sign language and is giving off a dam better performance than what she did in xXx The Return of Xander Cage and this time comes off as a really great bad ass and I appreciate the fact she looks like she has taken the time and effort to learn the sign language and as a result she looks natural with it. Common is also surprisingly really good as an action star, he really puts his effort into this role and I really appreciated it, and he really raises the game for the standard of rappers in films. Santino D’Antonio, however, is kind of a weak villain, he is not really on screen enough to leave much of an impression. The only thing he does really is destroy John Wicks house at the beginning of the film, other than that, he is more of an outside figure in the whole thing. Granted, when he is allowed to be on screen, he is a good villain, I just wish we had felt more of his presence throughout the entire film, plus, if all the other assassins can tell he is an obvious jerk and is clearly out for himself, why haven’t they excommunicated him by now? I’m pretty sure he has broken several rules. The only other complaint I could say is that there are a few too many side characters to facilitate a few of these cameos, but, that being said, they don’t take up too much time in the film, so I am not bothered by it. Honestly, it’s a really simple but good plot and I liked it very much, there’s not much more I can say about it than that.

The actors are all pretty dam good. Italian actors Riccardo Scamarcio and Claudia Gerini do an excellent job in their positions. I already mentioned that I really liked the performances of Ruby Rose and Common. The cameos are also pretty good, including John Leguizamo, who unfortunately doesn’t get as much time as he did in the first film and Peter Serafinowicz, who seems to be turning up in minor roles in just about everything these days. Lance Reddick, who was my favourite performance in the first film is unfortunately rather limited in this one, but when he is on screen, he still gives a deliciously brilliant performance. There is also a small role for Laurence Fishburne as the Bowery King, who is another one of John’s contacts, though, while he does very well in this role, my cynical side says he has been put in this film just so he is paired with Keanu again as some wink to the audience to say ‘yes, these two were both in the Matrix together’. Honestly, when Laurence first turned up, I was half expecting him to offer him a red pill and a blue pill, so even I’m not immune to this. But the standout performance is Keanu Reeves, who I am glad has already expressed interest to be playing this character for a good amount of time. He really has been missing his calling as an action star. He’s certainly better in this than he was in any of the Matrix films.

Now, as for the presentation, well the only thing to really talk about is the cinematography and the fight scenes, and my goodness, they are both brilliant. The fight scenes are so brilliantly choreographed. I may be repeating myself from the previous review, but the fact that Chad Stahelski is coming from the background of a stunt coordinator means he knows how these action scenes flow and he knows how to get the best out of his performers. The scenes are shot perfectly, there are very few cuts and the cuts flow brilliantly together. You feel like you are watching a full fight because I can follow everything that happens and there has clearly been a lot of effort put into it. I have seen some footage from behind the scenes and the trainers that they have got to work on this have been excellent. Plus, the effects have really been spent to make the exit wounds of the blood look realistic, so as a result, it means that you feel the brutality of all the fight scenes. When someone gets stabbed, you feel them get stabbed, when someone gets shot, you feel them get shot and so on and so forth. Plus, they come up with some interesting creative locations to have these fights and make excellent use of it. Unlike the first film, John does not come off as being invincible from these fight scenes, you do believe one of these guys could possibly beat him, or at least seriously injure him. The cinematography compliments this beautifully. I loved the cinematography in this film and it really should be up for the Oscars in 2018 in that category.

John Wick: Chapter 2 complements the first one perfectly. They are both dam good action films that I thoroughly enjoyed and this one is no exception. The plot is really good, the fight scenes are expertly shot and the performances are very good as well. The dialogue can be hokey at times and there are a few plot holes to kind of fill in but they are nothing that break the film as a whole. Honestly, this could already be going into my ‘Best films of 2017” list. On a lot of levels I enjoyed it more than the previous film but on other levels I think the first film did certain aspects of it better. Honestly, I think its best to take the two as a whole, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like this film as an individual. Dam no, this was fantastic.

The ending indicates there is going to be a sequel and IMDB and Keanu Reeves are already speculating there will be and I really hope there is because I think they are primed to do it and this could be an excellent film series that I would want to come back to.

Well that’s it for this week. No mini reviews since I saw this only a couple of days after Lego Batman because there was a special preview screening on Valentines Day. Luckily though, I can now get the train back into Liverpool again, so I will start getting more mini reviews. Having said that though, there won’t be one next week because I saw another film between my last two!!!

Come back next week where I will be reviewing the first of the DC Animated films of 2017, Justice League Dark.

“LEGO BATMAN MOVIE”

So, how did Lego Batman Turn out?

Batman (played by Will Arnett) simply has to stop a plan by the Joker (played by Zach Galifianakis) whilst also raising his new adopted son, Dick Grayson, aka Robin (played by Michael Cera) and learning to work with new police commissioner Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl (played by Rosario Dawson). There’s really not much to the plot and there is really not much of a plot altogether, at least in the first half. It tends to be much more plot focused in the second half of the film. That being said, Lego Batman doesn’t need to have much of a plot, because, in short, it’s just a really good comedy. Yes, Lego Batman is really funny. The first 30 minutes of this film are fricking hilarious! Ok, not as hilarious as Deadpool per se, but I still laughed a lot during this film. The humour satirises various eras of Batman and the film even points out that this is a character that has been around for 78 years at this point. That means, there is a ton of material to work with and it somehow manages to satirise almost all of it brilliantly. It takes shots at everything from the 1966 series to some of the Frank Miller comics and even some of the recent Batman V Superman. Though, I was rather surprised how apt the parody was in that sense, considering that this film was probably in production around the same time as Batman V Superman. That’s perfect for someone like me, who is a big Batman fan, however, that’s where the humour has a slight problem because some of it is so focused on satirising several eras of Batman, I fear that much of the humour might go over some kids heads as well as some of their parents. In fact, some of the jokes seem like they are aimed specifically at comic fans. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, I would have probably have made the same complaint if those jokes hadn’t been in the film, but I feel like in the first half, especially, these jokes are really over abundant.

I kind of like the plot of this film, it has a thing about the Bat family and Batman theory that by getting close to people that he may eventually end up losing them like his parents, in fact, the reason why the humour works so well, is that the plot of this film could easily have been re-worked and been a serious Batman story. Yes, I am not joking, give it to a writer like Peter J Tomasi or Max Landis and I think you could have genuinely made a really good Batman story. However, it means that the humour fits and comic fans will get something out of it. It’s not a theme that has been completely unexplored in Batman films, in fact, I think I talked a bit about it in my review of Batman Bad Blood. I will, however, say it does one thing not as well as the Lego movie. Both Lego movie and Lego Batman have to do a transition from their first half to their second half, where they go from being all out comedies to actually having to have a meaningful plot. Lego movie handled it quite well in a way that I don’t think Lego Batman did quite as well. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a pretty good transition and it works as a whole, just not quite as well as the Lego movie did. Also, some of the jokes, really miss, ironically, much of the Joker’s humour! This thing seemed to also borrow from the Killing Joke movie, that I also reviewed, in a way that I really am starting to find weird, ie, Batman fancying Batgirl! Seriously!! I think they changed it for the Lego film, but there is a significant age gap between these two and are not meant to be like this. Writers, stop doing this immediately!! I did, however, appreciate quite a few of the cameos as well. While some of the cameos haven’t been put into the final film, in fact, several members of the Justice League, who were in the trailer, do not show up in the final film, we still get Superman, Green Lantern and The Flash, who are voiced by Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Adam Devine respectively, but I will get more into that in the actors section, because, believe me, we are going to be here all day if I go on about the cameos in this film. I like most of the cameos in this film and to be fair, they even manage to tap into the inner Lego movie and even get characters from various franchises, though I won’t spoil all of them. Especially considering that some of them, I suspect, are not given their names for licensing reasons. I can’t prove this exactly, without giving one of them away, so let’s just say that the Gremlins are in this film, although they are referred to as A T’s movie monsters. I will leave the rest for you to discover, but believe me, some of the cameos are really good and really funny. So, overall I think the plot is a bit clanky at times and certain jokes don’t work, but on the whole it’s a really funny and engaging plot. I think I really like this film’s plot.

Now for the acting. I think everyone is perfectly cast. Will Arnett is still perfect to play this funny Batman. Michal Cera really plays against type in his role as Robin, but his voice is suited to it. I actually didn’t know it was him until the end credits. Rosario Dawson, who seems to be taking a break from being in every single Marvel Netflix series, does a really good job as Batgirl and Ralph Fiennes does such a good job playing Alfred that I actually think he could play the character in a serious Batman production. Seriously Warner Bros, get him on side, he could do this role. Zach Galifianakis may not have been given the best writing to play the Joker in this film but he does a decent job, especially earlier on and I actually kind of like him overall. The rest, well, apart from probably Jenny Slate as Harley Quinn, they are not really in it a lot, no one has, what I call, a major role in this film, but my goodness, this is one of the most star studded casts I have seen in a long time. You’ve got Conan O’Brien as The Riddler, Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face, which is rather ironic, considering he played Harvey Dent in the 1989 Tim Burton Batman Film, Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman. I have already mentioned Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Adam Devine, but you have also got Hector Elizondo as Jim Gordon, Mariah Carey gets a cameo. There are also cameos from Seth Green, Jemaine Clement, Ellie Kemper and even Eddie Izzard, who ironically, is playing a character that was originally played by Ralph Fiennes, seems rather unnecessary in hindsight. The cameos range from really good like, the aforementioned Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Adam Devine to the, ‘yes they are good, but not great’, but to be honest, everyone kind of suits their role pretty fine. I actually think Hector Alonso would be pretty good as a genuine Commissioner Gordon it would be nice to actually know what it would have been like if Billy Dee Williams actually played Two-Face. Overall, I think it’s a pretty good cast. There’s not much more to say about the cast.

Now for the presentation. In short, if you liked the animation of the Lego movie, like I did, you will like the animation here. It’s the exact same deal. It’s real life Lego in the mix of CGI in a sort of a stop motion CGI crossover. Most of it is pretty good, there’s very few animation flops and it really worked to a cool degree.

The soundtrack. Well there might not be anything as bone idly catchy as ‘Everything is Awesome”, but when the soundtrack is good, it’s really good. Especially the opening song “I’m The Batman”, which I am probably still going to have in my head by the time this review comes out a week after seeing it. However, the soundtrack does dip occasionally and I felt a couple of the songs weren’t that great, although some of the song choices actually get made fun of down the line, so that worked out for me.

I saw the film in 3D, but I would recommend that you don’t see it in that format. The 3D really doesn’t add much. This is rather curious, considering the Lego Movie actually had very good 3D, so this was rather surprising. Apart from 1 or 2 scenes, the effect is really not noticeable, and you are probably paying extra for not much. Before anyone says anything, I saw it in IMAX 3D with a good seat, so I had the possibility of seeing it to the best of its effect, and I still didn’t get it. If you can, seek out the 2D version, but don’t pass up the 3D if it’s the only showing at your cinema, because I had a really good time watching this film.

Lego Batman is just the film I needed at just the right time. It’s good, funny and it’s just a plain delight to watch. It has a few issues, mainly to do with the jokes and the plot doesn’t entirely work as a whole and it’s not as creative as the Lego movie. But really, those are nit picks. I actually think this is a good time out and I think kids will enjoy it, their parents will enjoy it and I think comic fans will get something out of it as well. It’s well animated, for the most part well written and it’s very well acted. If you like Batman and you liked Lego Movie, this is one to add to your collection or to try and see when it is out in cinemas.

Thanks a lot for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it, and one more time, screw you Paul W S Anderson and screw the Resident Evil Film Series!!!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“SING”

Written and directed by Garth Jennings, director of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Sing, is the latest film from Illumination pictures, the same animation studio behind Despicable Me, Minions and the previously reviewed Secret Life of Pets films and much like Secret Life of Pets, this was advertised well in advance of its release. Sitting on the rise of the cusp of the Oscar nominations and despite the fact it had two attempts to get an Oscar nomination, it’s failed to receive any Oscar nominations, though, granted the Anime feature category this year is very strong and the 5 films nominated are all excellent (though I’m still annoyed that Your Name hasn’t received a nomination). Sing was advertised as basically being like Zootopia meets The Voice. In fact, when I first saw the trailer for it I thought it looked very much like Zootopia, though for the two films to be released at this time there couldn’t possibly have been plagiarism since both films would have to have been developed over a similar time period. The thing is though, the only reason I am reviewing this is that this is the only thing that really interested me this week. I couldn’t be bothered with Trainspotting 2, though I will try to give my brief thoughts on that in future reviews, since I will see it before the end of the year. I don’t feel that much attachment to the original Trainspotting so I’m not too bothered if Danny Boyle will get this one right or not, even if he gets it wrong I know he has got another great movie in him so I will just wait for that one. Everything else that came out this week I wasn’t too keen on reviewing plus I reviewed virtually every Anime film that came out in 2016 so I figured I should try to do the same in 2017. So, does Sing kick off the year of Animated film pretty well and keep up the standard from 2016, or, is it this just a case of another Juke Box musical that isn’t for me.

Sing’s plot revolves around theatre owner of The Koala, Buster Moon (played by Matthew McConaughey), whose theatre is going under after a series of poor shows, so as a last ditch attempt to keep it running he decides to hold a singing competition. After going through several auditions he is down to several finalists. Pig, and mother of 24 Rosita (played by Reese Witherspoon), the mouse busker Mike, (played by Seth MacFarlane), porcupine and rocker Ash (played by Scarlett Johansson), gorilla and son of gang leader Johnny (played by Taron Egerton) and shy elephant Meena, (played by Tori Kelly) as well as European pig Gunter, (played by Nick Kroll). Buster realises, that due to a clerical error by his secretary Miss Crawly (played by Garth Jennings) he now has a bit of an issue that the contestants think the prize is 100,000 dollars, so he must quickly raise the money to give out as a prize, whilst also holding the competition to save the theatre. You know that basic plot synopsis can sum up this film and it does sum it up pretty well. It doesn’t sound like this film is going to be very surprising or nuanced and it really isn’t, however, that’s not to say there aren’t any positives to this film.

For a film with such a large cast of characters I am actually amazed how the film balances all their individual story arcs and manages to give each character enough time to shine. I was expecting a couple of them to be left off the cusp, but in a lot of senses, they aren’t. I suppose you could make a claim that Seth MacFarlane’s character is kind of being pushed a bit to the side lines, but even then he is given a prominent part. Despite the fact that the trailer’s over emphasise certain characters, no one feels like they hog the spotlight too much. I also don’t think the trailers, especially the early trailers, acknowledged enough that Matthew McConaughey’s character is the main character of this film. Buster has had an ambition of owning and running a theatre since he was a small child and his story arc is largely the main focus of the film and he is also the character who everyone seems to interact with. What I am trying to say is that the film does know who its main character is and get the right balance. I am also fortunate enough to say that each arc is resolved by the end of it. Granted, most of them in quite a rushed fashion, but it’s still pretty dam good in that sense. It does, however, suffer from some real problems around the 2nd half of the film, mainly due to the fact that this film doesn’t have that much in the originality stakes. I’m not just talking about the fact that given the back stories of the reasons some of these characters have entered the competition could half be sob stories in the X Factor this year. A lot of people have said that this film borrows quite heavily from other plots in other films. I have seen this film rather frequently compared to the various Muppet’s films, for which various of them have had the plot of ‘save the theatre’ story line. However, this reminded me of a rather forgotten animated film called ‘Cats Don’t Dance’, which had a very similar premise although that film attempted to do a similar plot with a homage to classic Hollywood cinema and musicals of the Busby Berkley, Gene Kelly era, whereas I have already stated that this one is homaging singing contests of the current era, hence, Buster acting as a more tolerable Simon Cowell.

The characters for the most part are likeable, which moves the plot forward, with the exception of, Mike, but, for one, he is played by Seth McFarlane and two, he is deliberately written not to be likeable, so that’s hardly an issue on the film’s part, he actually does his job. I did, however, have a real issue with the fact that the film seemed to borrow from Cats Don’t Dance, which had the opposite issue of characters being all over the place, especially in a scene where the theatre got flooded which will be very familiar to anyone who saw the previously mentioned film. Now, again, I don’t expect the general public to make that comparison, since Cats Don’t Dance, I believe, was a flop and is one of those animated movies that will turn up on someone’s YouTube channel with “I bet you don’t remember this film existed’, the only reason I remember it is that I had the video of it as a kid. I think that despite the fact that it was a flop, I think you should give it a go because it is a half decent film, all things considered, especially as the film has a brilliant villain. Speaking of villains, that is another weak point for this film. This film has to forcibly add in antagonists by having some Russian bears, who are meant to represent the Mafia, go after Mike for money he stole in a rigged game of cards. Family friendly fun all around! These antagonists are added into the plot so uneventfully and so forcefully that they almost feel like they have been thrown in there to add a sense of conflict. You could make an argument that the animals that represent the bank are antagonists, but they are not in the film long enough to create an impact and there is very little to show they are actually, deliberately trying to sabotage the show. Also, this film relies on the ‘liar reveals’ story line, I think it does it about 3 times in the entire film, 4 if you count one or the other sub-plots, and here’s the thing, I don’t like this kind of storyline, it’s an awful storyline because it’s done to death and we all know what is going to happen! The characters will mope around for most of the 2nd half until one of them comes to an epiphany and rallies everyone together for the triumphant climax. I am sick to death of this, there are better ways to do this kind of storyline, it’s not necessary!!! In this film it all feels particularly forced, in fact I don’t even think one of them actually gets revealed to be a liar, they just go lying throughout the entire film.

That’s enough of the negatives. Let’s get back to a couple of the positives I had with this film’s plot. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. For one thing, some of the jokes are quite funny, even if a couple have been ruined by the trailer, especially most of the really funny auditions, although some of the funny ones have been omitted from the trailer. Not all the jokes were funny, after we get past the audition stage it feels like they are getting desperate to get a laugh. I also felt this film had a surprising ending which I wasn’t expecting it to go down, though, it further helped my comparisons with the various Muppet films and Cats Don’t Dance. However, it does kind of blow the plot at the same time, since one of the major driving forces of the film is almost taken out of the mix altogether, I won’t go any further than that for avoiding spoilers, I will just leave it at that. The plot is passable, that’s the best way I can describe it. I will give it credit, the characters each get enough time and are likeable enough to want to be around them. All the sub-plots are rather decent, although not too many of them have that much consequence since Buster Moon is the one with the most to lose. (I only saw it a couple of hours ago and I have only just gotten that joke, oh god, I am not good with word play). It’s an averagely written plot. It will do a lot for kids, but not as much for the adults, though, unlike Trolls there is at least something there for the adults, just not quite as much as a film like Zootopia.

The cast is very much as usual. Get as many celebrity voices as you can, there is a real all star cast here. The problem is, rather like a celebrity all star cast, you can tell who they are. Matthew McConaughey does put on a voice, but he seems to go in and out and almost retracts back to his typical McConaughey tone. I at least appreciate him trying considering that he has one of the most distinct voices in Hollywood, but he doesn’t entirely succeed. Reese Witherspoon does a good job, but again you can tell it’s her. Seth MacFarlane is basically doing a high pitched version of Brian from Family Guy and his voice should be recognisable to anyone who regularly watches that show, but him being in a kids film feels really bizarre, it’s almost like Robin Williams said, the reason he did a Jack Nicholson impression in Aladdin was because if was so unlikely Jack Nicholson being in a kids cartoon. Scarlett Johannson does a decent job as Ash, though I don’t think she sells the ‘rock star’ side to her that well, which is not too bad, is it? Tori Kelly is pretty decent in her role and I liked her. Taron Egerton, I stated a couple of years ago is probably one of my favourite actors working in Hollywood today and I am so glad he is getting parts, he does one of the best performances in the film and considering, this is, as far as I am aware, his first animated film, is saying a lot. I am seriously getting to the stage where I will go and see anything if Taron Egerton is in it. As a supporting cast, we have John C Reilly in the role of Buster’s best friend Eddie, who does a decent job, but despite him trying his best, rather like when he was in When Marnie Was There, it’s fairly obvious that it is him, but at least in When Marnie Was There, he wasn’t trying to cover up his voice since that performance called for his dramatic side. Jennifer Saunders also has a cameo as Eddie’s nanna, who is a potential investor and fans will recognise her instantly, since she is on the exact same accent she had when she was playing the Queen in the Minions movie, it’s almost like she is under contract with Illumination Pictures right now. There are a couple of voices where you won’t quite recognise who they are on first hearing them though. I wasn’t even aware that Big Daddy was being played by Peter Serafinowicz until very late on, he does a very good at disguising his voice. Nick Kroll is great as Gunter, whose is another one of the best performances in the film. Also, there is a very brief moment, at the beginning where Jennifer Hudson appears, which I didn’t realise until after I had checked the IMDB page. Overall, it’s a pretty decent cast, the only problem is they kind of succumb to the whole ‘make sure you don’t actually put on a voice so that everyone can tell what celebrities are in this film’, which is affecting a lot of modern family films.

Now for the animation. It’s fairly passable, it will be very recognisable to anyone who has seen the Despicable Me film’s and The Secret Life of Pets. Illumination Pictures seems to have a very distinctive style that they want to stick to and are not changing from it. I have stated in the past that I think it’s passable, but doesn’t quite live up to what Disney Pixar and even Dreamworks are putting out, but it’s decent.

That, however, is not where my big issue lies with the production of this film. My big issue is the soundtrack. The soundtrack is easily the worst part of this film. Now, it’s a Juke Box film, I knew that going into it, however, it has a very similar problem to Trolls in that, the majority of them are songs that you wouldn’t even want to hear by the original artists, so why would you want to hear rank amateur’s sing it!! Again, most of the characters have specific musical styles to pick. There are a couple of one off characters, like the Tuniki bears that reflect Japanese Idol music, which is a gag that is repeated way too much, seriously, it was funny the first one or two times, by the 5th time, it got really grating. Mike is obviously into big band and swing music because he is played Seth MacFarlane and that’s all he ever wants to sing for some reason. Scarlett Johansson is given more rock oriented songs since her character plays Electric Guitar. Tori Kelly is a typical teenager and is given those sort of, soft teenage ballads that girls that age couldn’t possibly have any context to know about the meaning of that song having not had enough experience in life to get the meaning. Reese Witherspoon is partnered with Gunter so they are given songs that are more dance heavy, which I have always found cringe worthy on talent shows and Taron Egerton is given songs that rely heavily on Piano, particularly ballads, hence why two of the songs his character sings in the film are by John Legend and Elton John. The problem is that the majority of the songs are from the last 5-6 years top 40, which is going to instantly date the film horribly, especially considering that I am fairly certain that several years down the line, these songs are going to be rather forgettable. Yes, we all remember Call Me Maybe right about now, but I guarantee you, in about 10 years time, no one is going to remember that song! In fact, I think there are a few where you think, I know that song, but can’t remember its name because I never wanted to listen to it!! A few of the songs are decent. I can count on one hand the song I would have on my I Pad and off the top of my head, or I have purchased in some fashion and even then, the only 2 I can think of was, Jump by Van Halen, which was very briefly in the film and at a stretch Elton John’s I’m still standing, and even then I only got that because it was part of a package I bought for my game of Rock Band. Granted there are some songs that the parents will be aware off and at least they didn’t take any really good songs and butcher them like in the previously reviewed Trolls, since some of the re-mixes are fairly decent. Scarlett Johansson and Taron Egerton are probably the best of the bunch in terms of pure technical ability, unless they have had someone swap out for them, in the sync department, so if that is the case, praise goes directly to them. However, the latter is given some of the worst songs to work with in the film, with the exception of the aforementioned Elton John song. I don’t care what anyone says, I am sick of hearing that John Legend song everywhere! This is my personal taste and I think most people will like the soundtrack, however, I will say on a pure technical point, this soundtrack is going to be dated and I am afraid that even the people who like this film and this kind of music cannot deny that.

Sing is an average movie. I can’t say it’s a good movie, I don’t want to call it an ok movie, it’s just feels like a movie that is just there. At the same time, I don’t think it was that bad, on a technical level it does quite a few things right, it just doesn’t entertain me as a whole. I wasn’t upset when I got out of the cinema and didn’t feel like I had wasted my day. It a film that makes me feel conflicted. I would watch it again over watching anything of this year’s X Factor or The Voice or listen to any of the “tripe” records that come out of shows like that. It’s a film that is reflective of its time and I suspect it will age poorly, particularly with the era of most of the songs on the soundtrack. I have no reservations in giving it a recommendation for families to go and see it, you could do a lot worse than going to see this film. However, I would also urge people, if you are reading this around the time of this film’s review being reviewed, that if you have a choice, maybe skip it and go and see Lego Batman and I suspect that film is going to be better. I am putting my neck out there since at the time of writing this review, I haven’t actually seen it. Don’t think I will revisit this film, but it is alright.

So, what did you think of Sing? Please leave me a comment down below about it and remember, if you want to submit your own content to our site, visit our ‘how to submit’ section, which goes through the various rules. We are already intrigued by what we are getting and it’s really boosting our interaction with you guys, which is everything this was intended to be.

Thanks for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and for crying out loud, if you haven’t already, don’t go and see Resident Evil, The Final Chapter, show Paul Anderson that were are not all sheep that will go and see anything that has our favourite game on it!!!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“xXx: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE”

Yes, who saw this one coming in the distance. For those of you who are unaware or didn’t grow up in the late 90’s, there was a rivalry going on in the cinema’s when James Bond film, Die Another Day was announced, it was placed in direct competition with another spy thriller that was attempting to prove how outdated and past it James Bond really was, this film was called xXx. It starred Vin Diesel and would be a film that would bring James Bond into the 21st century, this was going to be the new cool guy. It would have everything that made James Bond cool, but it would merge it with the extreme sports craze that was going on at the time, thanks to the popularity of Tony Hawk, MTV and WWE, or at least, how WWE was at the time. The thing is, though, while it was a financial success it wasn’t exactly a critical success. The critics successfully noted that it was more a marketing campaign than a film, highlighted by the fact that there were posters advertising the film before the script was even completed. Nevertheless, looking back now, all things considered, it’s not that bad a film, it’s just horribly dated. The original xXx is really a relic of the 90’s, even the cameos of extreme sports stars feel rather weird and out of place since Tony Hawk is the only one that is still well known today and of course Rammstein are still well known, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s not technically a good film. I would admit that I don’t hate it altogether, I kind of consider it a bit of a guilty pleasure, especially for the opening sequence at the Rammstein concert. The film’s franchise failed to continue with the original director and Vin Diesel leaving the project when the sequel came around, so they may an even more inferior film, starring Ice Cube, which failed to take off and everyone just assumed that the franchise was dead.

Cut to 2017 and we now have a new film, that I don’t think anyone asked for. I took my friend Simon along to see the film and he wasn’t even aware the film was coming out or had been in development. This suggests the studio have meant to keep the film quiet, though not in the same way that the Blair Witch marketing was used. While original stars Vin Diesel and Samuel L Jackson are returning to the film, there is a new director in place, D J Caruso who has not directed anything of real note, with the exception of the horrificly bland film, I Am Number 4, which, if you asked me tomorrow, I couldn’t tell you what happened in that film because I barely remember anything about it. Needless to say, I wasn’t going into the 3rd xXx movie with high expectations. But, everything is worth a shot, so how does a really late return of Xander Cage turn out?

xXx’s plot revolves around the rogue xXx agent, named Xiang, (played by Donnie Yen) leading a team of other former xXx agents to capture a device called Pandora’s Box, which can take over any satellite and force any of them out of orbit, to cause massive devastation. Agent Jane Marke, (played by Toni Collette) tracks down Xander Cage, (played by Vin Diesel) in order to rejoin the programme and take down the organisation with his own team of former xXx agents. There’s really not much to the plot, other than than and if you are wondering why I have left Samuel L Jackson out of the plot, he’s basically a cameo. He is barely in the movie despite his advertisement of being largely in the film. That’s not xXx’s biggest problem though. The thing that makes the original xXx a guilty pleasure, is the fact that it is a time capsule of everything that was popular in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This will be a time capsule of everything that is wrong with action films of this decade.

The original film was borrowing quite heavily from the James Bond films, but adding an extreme sports twist to it, but the Bond films have clearly not been too much of an influence on this film. Probably, largely, due to the fact that the Bond films have changed so much. Since the original film came out, the Bond films have changed direction so drastically. As a result, the film borrows influences from other films like, the Resident Evil movies and particularly the Fast and Furious films. In fact the whole thing feels like another Fast and Furious sequel, not helped by the fact that Vin Diesel is once again in the lead role and it has everything that I didn’t like about the Fast and Furious films. The plot is asinine as hell. There is no care taken with it whatsoever and the script is horrendous. It’s like dialogue that a 12 year old would write. The characters are abysmal. Xander Cage has no personality this time around and he is interchangeable with Vin Diesel’s character in Fast and Furious, you easily mistake the two. There is also the matter of the rampant sexism. Seriously, with the exception of Toni Collette, every single woman in this film is basically reduced to being ‘walking sex’ and it really bothers me. The cinematography around the women means that it’s incredibly juvenile. The side characters also don’t have much personality, they try and put a ton of them in here and try to give them, “distinct personalities” in the hopes that they can build sequels and spin-offs with these characters. The problem is, we don’t know enough about them to care if we see any more future films, and it only gets worse from here. The plot is incredibly atrocious in the fact that it never sticks with a villain. We start off with Donnie Yen’s character, then we have about 2 plot twists in quick succession that completely shift the focus away from him and his group, and as a result, we never have a grip on what’s going on.

xXx also has some of the worst pacing of any film I have seen in recent memory. It’s shockingly bad in parts, not to mention the film sets us a massive scene, that in any other film would have been the climax of the movie, but in this, it immediately then moves on to a second one, with very little break between them, as a result, there is no chance for you to catch your breath and take anything in, which further compounds the pacing issues I mentioned before. It only gets worse from there. By the end of the film, it feels like very little to nothing has been accomplished. The film sets up future instalments, but I think, rather like the last two films, this will bomb at the Box Office and will likely not make enough back for the sequels. The early portions of the film seem to recycle plot elements from the first film rather well. Xander Cage’s introduction is almost identical to his introduction in the first film, despite the ‘bullshit’ physics, and I will get into that later on down the line. We also get a re-creation of whole fake set up to see if he is worthy of being in the xXx programme again, with the whole “how did you figure out they were all actors”. Everything about the film’s plot really, annoyed me and if you insist on seeing it don’t check the IMDB page, they actually give away a surprise appearance in the film, which rather like many of the characters, made no sense. His placement in the film was so poor because the actor gave a terrible performance, that gave off the impression that he did not give a sh..

The performances are just all terrible. Vin Diesel is doing a decent job, but he is just basically playing himself and it seems like he is just doing this to wear off the time until he gets to be in the Fast and Furious films again, we’ll see how that pans out in a few month’s time. I have already mentioned about Samuel L Jackson, so I won’t give further detail on him since he is not in the film long enough to give an impression of his performance. Toni Collette, isn’t doing an amazing job this time around either. I will say, though, at least it’s a very diverse cast with actors like Donnie Yen, Kris Wu and Tony Jaa being put in their roles and they do their job fine, along with Ruby Rose and Deepika Padukone and of course the team is filled out with Nina Dobrev and Michael Bisping, they are alright, but their script is terrible, so they only have to play these stereotyped characters, it’s not that difficult to do, overall, I just did not care for the cast.

Now let’s talk about the action scenes. How do I put this, they are HORRENDOUS. Not only, like the first film, do they have the whole F U physics policy of how it works, but they are all shot horrendously with so many quick cuts. I really, can’t tell what is happening half the time and the CGI that has been added in is just atrocious. This is some of the worst CGI I have seen in a long time, bar none. It meant that the whole film was unappealing to watch. Not to mention that they do that whole Resident Evil slow down effect, which I absolutely can’t stand, which was once used, to amazing effect in the Matrix films has now been reduced to this, a crutch for action directors, so they don’t have to admit that they have no idea how to shoot an action scene with good clear cuts! I saw the film in 2D, frankly I don’t see the point of seeing this film in 3D since, with a few exceptions, it didn’t seem like the film was made to be seen in that format and I don’t think it would improve any of the action sequences, so stick to the 2D version.

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, was everything I expected it to be, it’s a terrible waste of time with characters that I didn’t like, a plot that was all over the place and unfocused, terrible dialogue, terrible performances and some terrible action scenes that were shot appallingly. It’s an absolutely terrible film and it shows just how poisonous an effect Michael Bay’s movies and the Fast and Furious films have had on Hollywood as a whole. There is a reason it has come out in January, if it had come out any later it would have been outcompeted by Marvel, every step of the way. Thy could have done an interesting challenge to the current gritty nature of the Bond Films and the original xXx was a challenge to the Bond films. The problem is, Kingsman already did that 2 years ago and it did it so well, so as a result, it had no choice but to make another Fast and Furious film and I didn’t even really like those films to begin with.

Skip The Return of Xander Cage. It’s not that good a film.

La La Land: La La Land is the new film from Damien Chazelle, who previously directed Whiplash, and this film is much better than I was expecting it to be. It’s a modern take on a classic musical, like Singing in the Rain, and on that sense, I was expecting it to be pretentious. But, you know what, it’s a pretty well written and well acted film. The songs are half decent, the choreography is pretty dam good and my god, the cinematography and the production design are fantastic. If this film is not up for Best Cinematography, it will be a real disservice. Even in its weaker moments, and this film does have a couple of weaker moments, it does feel like a real love and passion has been put into the project and it really shines through. I would give La La Land a chance, even if you’re not a bit fan of musicals. I actually saw this with a friend of mine who is not into musicals but he came out having actually enjoyed it and I think it will have a lot more universal appeal than people would expect.

Lion: Lion is a film that I have wanted to talk about since seeing it at the London Film Festival back in October. The best way to describe it is that it’s an extraordinary true story of a lost child in India, who, after being adopted by Australian parents, yearns to learn where he came from. He remembers that he fell asleep on a train after being separated from his brother, however, the place where he came from doesn’t exist, according to everyone who he talks to and he searches heavily to find his way home. My description hasn’t really done the story justice, but I didn’t want to go into too much detail since I think it’s best to go in an experience it yourself. The film has an extraordinary first half which feels really organic and really gives the story what it deserves. The second half doesn’t quite match up to that and becomes very ‘Oscar baity’ for a lack of a better term. It does feel like Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman are aiming for those Oscar nominations. They are very good performances and I wouldn’t object to them getting an Oscar nomination, but you know those performances, where you can feel it’s the award season. It’s a very good story and if you don’t want to see the film or the trailer doesn’t appeal to you I would recommend picking up the book, written by the actual person who the film is based on which tells of his story, however, I will not give away the title for this book, since just looking up the title, actually gives away the films ending. I liked Lion, but I think it could have been better. I would say give it a chance, I suspect I am being just a bit too critical of it.

Well, that’s it for me this week and even for next week as well, since I am doing my traditional trip to America, this time of year, however, I will be back with another review in 2 weeks. So, come back on 10 February where I will be giving my thoughts on Illumination Pictures latest Animated feature film Sing.

Thanks a lot for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and thank god there is a new Kingsman film this year.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“MANCHESTER BY THE SEA”

Manchester By The Sea is one of several films that comes out at this time in the UK, which is typically reserved for un-polished rubbish, like last week’s review of Assassins Creed or typical films that are typical awards contenders. Manchester By The Sea is no exception to the rule, there has been a lot of buzz about this film as it played in the film festival circuit last year and it opened in America to almost overwhelmingly good reviews across the board. It pulled off further success by receiving several Golden Globe nominations, 1 of which it won and last week it was nominated for several BAFTA’s, including Best Film and it looks set to also receive an Oscar nomination in that category in a couple of days. That being said, I wasn’t actually looking forward to seeing it, it’s nothing against writer and director Kenneth Lonergan, he has done some good stuff in the past including the screenplay for Gangs of New York as he also co-wrote and directed Margaret and You Can Count on Me. Though, his IMDB page is very sparse, he doesn’t tend to write and direct many features, in fact he hasn’t done any major studio work, with the exception of the screenplay for The Adventures of Rocky and the Bullwinkle, which we all know how that turned out! Now the real reason I wasn’t looking forward to this one is, it looked like it was an Oscar pandering film, something I will be going in to more detail about when I release my picks for the Oscar’s this year, which will be coming out a lot later in 2016 due to the late release of Moonlight which will also more than likely receive a nomination for Best Picture. Bear in mind, I don’t mind Oscar baiting films to be fair, some of them have been excellent and I have really enjoyed them, even if they have been clearly aiming for Oscar’s, but it is getting so tiring, when I see a ton of films I really enjoyed that will likely get nothing around this time. If you quickly look back on my Top Ten Best of the Year, you will see that I put a film called Eye in The Sky, in fact it was a number 5, and while I wasn’t expecting it to get any Oscar nominations, I at least expected it to get some BAFTA nominations, but because it didn’t fit the mould in that sort of market, it didn’t receive any nominations, it should have received at least a potential Screenplay nomination and I thought it would get one for Outstanding British Film, nevertheless, it’s the main reason why I have decided that for my next Oscar Pick’s list I am also going to be placing which films I think missed out in each category. That’s enough of me bitching about the Oscars. Is Manchester By The Sea a decent film or has this just been made to get Casey Affleck an Oscar?

Manchester By The Sea is the story of Lee Chandler (played by Casey Affleck). One day he gets a call at work and is told that his brother has died. He leaves Boston to return to his hometown of Manchester, Massachusetts to sort out his estate and his Nephew’s living expenses, only to discover that unbeknownst to him, his brother named him as his son’s legal guardian. His nephew, Patrick (played by Lucas Hedges) seems to take it in various strides, but it is very clear that the two of them are suffering and grieving in their own way and Lee does not like being back in his hometown, as it brings back some demons from his past.

Manchester By The Sea is a very interesting film because on the one hand, it’s very much a film that you can feel will be an awards contender, yet, unlike many films like this, it starts out feeling incredibly organic. I’m not joking when I say that I think that Manchester By The Sea handles this first half excellently. The film feels like it is an engaging look into grief and almost feels like a procedural drama for a recent and unexpected death. The writing is extremely superb in these moments and as a result, the characters feel real, the whole thing feels like it’s an exercise in acting and it is all completely to the film’s benefit. The film also gives some excellent character development in this time, Lee starts out with a cold exterior, but he is actually given a well rounded reason for why he is that way and an excellent back story, I felt they handled his back story incredibly well and as a result, the whole thing feels like some real effort is put in here. I wish I could leave it all here and just say that Manchester By The Sea is really excellent and all the good points stay throughout the film, the great back and forth between Patrick and Lee, the return of Patrick’s mother on the scene, Lee seeing his ex-wife again, and all sorts of other great moments, however, I can’t, because I felt the film was too long.

The biggest issue I have with Manchester By The Sea is its run time, the whole thing runs in at just over 2hr and 15mins and really, it has no reason to run that long. While I felt this was a really good ‘slice of life’ story and I think my enjoyment of this film kind of goes back to my enjoyment of ‘slice of life’ Anime, something that I felt was really echoed within this film. There were several moments that could have been cut. Some of these moments feel like they go on too long and I think some of them are a serious detriment to the film as, without going into spoilers, I feel it affects their character development in a way that is not entirely coherent and I think kind of messes with the films message overall. Granted, I do understand why the characters development went down this way and there’s nothing really wrong with it and in some sense it is kind of commendable that they went down a lot of these routes, but I also felt that there were a few things that weren’t quite working by the end of the film that it doesn’t quite fix. These are minor nit picks however, and I am not saying the second half is bad, it’s just not as strong as the first half and it needed a stronger second half to complement it. The only other major thing is that Kenneth Lonergan seems to have tapped into Christopher Nolan’s art of storytelling, where the time shifts back and forth, again, I don’t tend to have a problem with this, Christopher Nolan can actually make it work in films like Momento and Batman Begins and in fact Kenneth Lonergan using this method kind of makes it work in the first half of the film. When it turns up in the second half, however, it’s again to the film’s detriment because it feels like the film is dragging its heels along. The film is an excellent character piece, that’s where I think its greatest strength lies and it knows this and takes advantage of it which makes me question why the film is called Manchester By The Sea, considering the town itself doesn’t exactly play a part in the film as a whole. But in all honesty, if these are my only complaints, then frankly you have done pretty well. It does feel like a lot of effort has been put into it and a lot of money has been put behind the project, unsurprising, considering it’s an Amazon Studio’s production, who are known for putting a lot of their budget behind projects they believe in and it shows because the film actually looks and feels like a really great story, it just can’t quite maintain it to the finish line, it still crosses the finish line and has a good time, but it’s also developed a minor injury in the process and I think that analogy got a bit out of hand.

Manchester By The Sea’s cast is very big and very talented and the whole thing does feel like a really cool acting piece. You have excellent performances across the board. Lucas Hedges gives an excellent performance and I wouldn’t object to him receiving a nomination for Best Supporting Actor on the back of it. Other performances are excellent, including Tom Kemp in an excellent role. Michelle Williams has already received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, which she lost and I suspect she will receive the same nomination at the Oscars, however, I would not object to her receiving a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, she actually does fine, even though I think there are several other performances that would warrant it more, like Helen Mirren in Eye In The Sky for example. However, I would seriously object to her being nominated for Best Actress in a leading role, she simply doesn’t contribute enough to the film despite what the advertising campaign has made out and I’m sorry, she doesn’t do as good a job as the rest of the cast. She is giving a great performance, for the most part, but it also feels slightly forced and out of all the cast members she feels like the one who is most gunning for the award. The standout performance, by far, is Casey Affleck. He has already received nominations in the Best Leading Actor category, and it is well deserved, he does a fantastic performance in this film, portraying a wide range of emotions and going through each and every one of them brilliantly, his chemistry with Lucas Hedges is fantastic and the back and forth is also excellent. The film is worth it for his performance alone. I haven’t gone into great detail about the cast but really, there are some excellent performances and none of the cast really took me out of the film, with the exception of the brief performance of Matthew Broderick, in the role of Patrick’s mothers new husband and frankly I think he only took this role to prove to people that he is still alive.

There’s not really much to talk about with the presentation of this film, the only thing I can really talk about it its cinematography, which I actually felt was pretty dam good all things considered and I really, really, really liked the aesthetic of the film as a whole. This is not surprising because, as I previously mentioned, it’s an Amazon Studios production and most of their productions tend to have excellent cinematography as proved by anyone who has seen Mr Robot or The Man In The High Castle and even in factual programmes like The Grand Tour. In fact the cinematography is so good I wouldn’t be surprised if it received a nomination for Best Cinematography at the Oscars.

There’s not much more to say about Manchester By The Sea, it’s a very good film for the most part. It suffers from a little too long running time and as a result suffers towards the end with the whole thing not quite working as a whole. I will say, though, it is an excellent ‘slice of life’ story and an excellent character story about grief and accepting responsibility. It’s not a perfect film by any means, in fact it’s actually flawed in parts, but nothing that will distract or take you out of this film. I actually thought this film was pretty dam good and I suspect it will do well in a few days time when the Oscar nominations are announced, and I will not object to it as I did enjoy this film. At the minute it it’s to go down the route of the BAFTA nominations it won’t be my pick for Best Picture, that would still be Arrival, but any other year I could possibly see myself picking this one and that is mainly down to the excellent performances especially the central performance from Casey Affleck.

I recommend you see this. It is one of the few films made like this that doesn’t feel like a bit emotional gut punch. It knocks you down but it does kind of pick you back up.

Well that’s it for me this week. I was entering this week with trepidation, I am going into next week feeling, why does this film exist.

Thank you for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and judging by this film, maybe the Oscars this year won’t suck as much as I thought they were going to.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“ASSASSINS CREED”

Let’s face it, video game movies have hardly been successful, I already made a bit of a comment on that when I reviewed Warcraft. That’s still not stopped a load of video game companies licensing out the film rights to various studios. Sony is reportedly working on Sonic the Hedgehog film as well an animated version of Super Mario Brothers, good luck with both of those (he says sarcastictly). Halo has supposedly been in the works for years and even sort got a live action straight to DVD film, which no one really saw and there’s a few more that are supposedly on the horizon, though very few have actually been confirmed. I have heard plans for a Fallout film, but frankly I don’t think that is going to happen.

These have clearly all been made with the intention that they hope to capitalise off the success that the comic films have been receiving in recent memory, the problem is though, video game films have the stigma and as a result, they are difficult to get green lit and it means that the video game companies are almost insistent on taking the studio credit. That’s no different with the movie I am reviewing today! With the Assassins Creed movie announcement, this seemed like one of those films that actually would be a good idea. You have got a good set of characters, a great mythology, the whole thing has a great story line and feels cinematic, this could easily be transferred to the screen, just get some really good free runners in the cast and you have got a set hit. With the film being made, however, we also had to get the right director. Enter Swiss director Justin Kurzel, whose name is not very familiar, but I specifically went to see his last film, just to see how well he would do as a director, his last film being the 2015 adaptation of Macbeth, which coincidentally also starred the 2 main leads of this film, Michael Fassbender and Marian Cotillard. That being said however, Assassins Creed may be a late 2016 release, but it’s a New Year’s Day release in the UK and I suspect that by the time this review comes out it will be evident that it will have done poorly at the Box Office considering it opened to systematically poor reviews. Now, I am going in with a completely open mind and I am going in with the opinion that the majority of film critics are not video game players like myself so they won’t have had experience with the Assassin’s Creed Universe, mythology and the general concept. But to be fair, I took along my mum, who has some knowledge of Assassins Creed but hasn’t actually played it a lot and my friend Alex who has no knowledge of the games or the concepts altogether, so we have a complete spectrum on who this film can and can’t appeal to. To be honest, when I saw the trailers and heard about the production of the film, the fact that there were going to be a lot more practical stunts as opposed to CGI, I thought this one might be the video game film to finally break the mould. The question is, was I right?

The plot of Assassins Creed revolves around Cal Lynch (played by Michael Fassbender) who, after being sentenced to death is picked up by the organisation of Abstirgo lead by CEO Rikkin (played by Jeremy Irons) and he puts his daughter Sofia (played by Marian Cotillard) in charge of him. The goal: place him in a machine called the animus which can connect a person with their ancestor. Lynch is descended from the group they are warring with the Templars, known as the Assassins and his descendent was an Assassin during the Spanish Inquisition named Aguilar (also played by Michael Fassbender). Now he and Abstirgo are on the front lines of the ongoing war between the Assassins and Templars. Assassins Creed boasts a plot similar to the games and admittedly it will have some appeal. My mum and Alex actually thought the film was ok, I really didn’t. I like Assassins Creed but this really is not the standard of film we deserved. The film at times is ok but most of it is just horrendous. The biggest issue is the plot. The plot is really sparse. It feels like 20th Century Fox has taken the bare minimum of everything and just put it in place. Despite the fact that the trailers boast that most of the story is going to take place in the Spanish Inquisition, it’s very rarely actually used, I think they only cut back to it 3 or 4 times and even then, most of the time it’s just an action sequence, there’s no real plot in the past, which is a shame considering most of the games, the past segments are the best parts of the story. As a result the sections set in the past have no real characters you can’t get attached to anyone despite the fact that it’s the main hooking points to the film. The present sections aren’t that much better either, there are tons of characters that are just introduced but never really characterised all that much and everyone apart from Lynch feels like an after thought. It’s a shame because there are actually a lot of good ideas here. I think the problem is that they are trying so hard to build a franchise they have forgotten to really build a consistent plot. Granted this film could exist without a sequel, it’s not entirely necessary, but it would definitely benefit from it because in its current state the plot feels rather sparse and incomplete. The problem is, however, the conclusion of the film leaves it rather difficult for a sequel to be in place without casting a new lead, I won’t go into further detail for fear of spoilers but let’s just say the film rather has its cake and eats it. As I mentioned, the characters all feel rather under characterised and they never get fully established. There are some characters, like Moussa played by Michael Kenneth Williams, that’s to the films benefit, but with a character like Cal Lynch it’s to its detriment, for example, we never completely dive into why he was convicted of a murder that warranted the death penalty, we get some explanation, but it feels rather underwhelming and missing a few parts. As a result, you really don’t feel much for the character since scenes that are meant to be really powerful end up feeling like damp squibs. For example, there is a good back and forth between Cal and his father Joseph who is played by Brendan Gleeson which in any other film would be an amazing moment but because of the way the film is paced and the script, the moment feels rather underwhelming again and that’s this film in a nutshell, it’s rather underwhelming. The plot is sparse and all over the place and it doesn’t feel it connects very well. Don’t get me wrong, the games have this problem as well with not knowing how to pace their plots as well and as a result they often resort to time skips to get around a lot of it, but at least the games actually improve their plots over time and realise what fans were and were not enjoying. For example Assassins Creed 4 almost completely removed the present day sections and was to the game’s benefit. The plot is a mess, pure and simple, there is no other way of putting it. It’s not as unintelligible and all over the place as some critics have made it out to be but it’s biggest problem is not an incoherent plot, but that it’s sparse and almost empty it feels.

Now, as for the cast, I actually think this is one of the areas where it shines in some sense. Michael Fassbender, Marian Cotillard and Jeremy Irons are all given the most to do and they are all trying their hardest, the problem is that the script kind of fails them. I often get a sense that despite the fact that Justin Kurzel has worked with both Fassbender and Cotillard before he hasn’t given amazing direction. Jeremy Irons, for all his worth is trying very hard and he brings a certain sinister edge to it that he is very good at doing, however, I don’t feel he gives as much of a presence as he did as say Alfred in Batman V Superman. The best performance in the film for me was in fact Michael Kenneth Williams who delivers one hell of a decent performance that actually deserved a much better movie, other than that most of the rest of the characters are cameos, which is a shame because there are some very good actors in here like Brendon Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling who both feel rather wasted in the film and feel like they have been added purely to add some names to the credits. There are also other great method actors like Khalid Abdalla and Essie Davis, not to mention that Callum Turner, an actor I actually have enjoyed in previous works, like Green Room feels incredibly wasted. Especially considering, after I saw Green Room (a film I just realised should have got an honrable mention on my best 2016 list), I thought he was a real talent that should be picked up by casting agents. Don’t get me wrong, this cast are great, but they just needed a better film to work together on.

Now as for the presentation, when you think of Assassins Creed, you think of those amazing Parkour scenes, and this was the one thing the film had to get right, it doesn’t. The big problem with the Parkour scenes is the way they are shot. Kurzel really hasn’t directed that many action films and it really shows because he has clearly copied Paul Greengrasses’s style that he’s used for the Jason Bourne films which is a style of editing I am really getting tired of. There are so many quick cuts that we are never allowed to take in a scene and that’s a shame because there is some genuinely great stunt work that is put in here, but the editing is atrocious. Not to mention, they put a lot of head cams and weapon perspective cams in the film which really take you out of a scene because it makes it even harder to see. The martial arts actually is pretty good, despite the fact that it still suffers from the same editing problem, the martial arts is one of the things that really shines in the film and there clearly has been some great choreography. Despite the fact that they have boasted that there would be a lot of practical effects, there is a ton of CGI to try and cover up a lot of the issues and create a lot of shortcuts and because some of the practical effects and the stunts are actually very authentic, these scenes stick out even more. Also, the film really cuts away way too soon in several of the action scenes, it’s like they don’t know how to end these scenes and just cut back to them in the present. Trust me, you will know what I mean when you actually see it.

I saw the film in 2D, so I can’t comment on the film’s 3D presentation, but judging by the editing, I suspect it’s pretty bad, though I could be very wrong since Assassins Creed revolves around a lot of hight in places and 3D works very well to give an extra sense of height, as I say though, my cinema were not offering 3D screenings, so I can’t comment on it. If I sound like a fan boy who is going off on one because he’s not entirely satisfied with the adaptation, it’s because I am. Assassins Creed is really the film I expected to be much better than it was, but it really just joins the list of poor video game adaptations that boast the possibility of sequels but which will likely sit in developmental hell for the next few years before being outright cancelled. It’s a real shame because the cast are actually doing a pretty good job but they can’t fix the inane plot which feels underwhelming and incomplete plus some brilliant stunt work has been ruined by incredibly awful editing which never allows you to fully appreciate the effort that has gone into it. There is one thing I will say in its favour, a lot of care and effort has been put in to the costume design and the set design. This really looks like Assassins Creed, the problem is, it doesn’t have the feel of it and it’s not just down to the fact that we have got a new stupid design for the animus which feels completely unnecessary just there to add extra effects. It’s a mess, pure and simple and I am sad to say that because I really wanted to love this film. I think some fans of the game might get something out of it, but I think for most people, this is one they should avoid, trust me, there are a lot better films coming out. I don’t think the 3D will add much so if you do go and see it, check out the 2D version.

No mini reviews this week because this was my first review of 2017 but I may have some for next week.

Speaking of which, it’s time to move on. Join me on 20 January where I will be giving my thoughts on the film that is almost certainly going to receive some Oscar nominations by the time my review of it goes out. It’s Manchester By The Sea, the latest film from writer and director Kenneth Lonegan.

Thanks for reading my review, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Just stay in with a copy of Assassins Creed 2, you will get way more out of it than seeing this film!!!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“BEST FILMS OF 2016”

Well, another year has been and gone but before we head into 2017 let’s look back on 2016 and review the year as a whole. It’s fair to say that 2016 will go down as the year when I had the best perspective to make a ‘Best and Worst List’. I may have not reviewed as much as I would have expected, but I did manage to get a lot more than before.

If you are new to the site and you haven’t looked at my 2014 and 2015 lists, I will go over the rules again. It must be a film that released in cinema’s or straight to DVD for a general release in 2016, therefore, films that were played at film festivals last year but didn’t receive a general release until this year will count. If they received a film festival release this year but did not receive a full theatrical release, it doesn’t count. This year, however, I also decided to include films that premiered on Netflix and Amazon Prime as well, though I might as well have not bothered entering that rule since none of the ones I saw were either good or bad enough to make the lists. I will say though, out of all the ones I saw, The Little Prince was the best and if you have a Netflix account I can recommend it. This rule also applies to what films qualify for me to review, hence, why out of all the films I saw at the London Film Festival this year, I only reviewed ‘Your Name’, which already had a confirmed theatrical release.

Taking all that into account, I may have reviewed a total of 46 years this year, but as of the half way point of 2016 I started adding mini-reviews at the end or my reviews, which I will be continuing into 2017, this meant, that because of my rules, I saw another 97 films on top of that, leading to a total of 143 films I saw this year. This is a staggering amount, however, I’m not sure I will beat that record in 2017 given that there is still no cinema in my home town of Chester and the train line between Chester and Liverpool is being worked on quite heavily so I may be going to Manchester more in the future to see films. Nevertheless, I don’t think I can give a better perspective that I can at this point in time, so, therefore, I am going to start by going over my list of what I thought were the best of these films.

The best films of 2016 have been amazing things to see. Whilst the majority of the year was taken up with rather mediocre or even downright awful films, the best films of the year were often the films that came out of nowhere but left a real lasting impact and some of these will probably be film that I will be talking about for years to come. Hell, I started filling my wall with tons of posters and many of them are films that have made this list or even made the honourable mentions. This, unfortunately, was the first year where my rule was rather annoying since many of the best films I saw this year were all at film festivals, including The Red Turtle which at least has been confirmed for a 2017 cinematic release and The Boy and the Beast, which Studio Canal seems to have in limbo, which I did manage to see at the showcase film festival in Birmingham and was meant to come out on Blu Ray and DVD in September, but at the last minute it has been cancelled without Studio Canal giving any press release and has still not received a release date, which is a shame because it easily would have made the top 10 list and it is highly recommended if you can find a way of watching it.

Despite the fact that there were a ton of big releases like Batman V Superman, Rogue One A Star Wars Story, Suicide Squad and Dr Strange and many other Blockbusters, it was mostly the Indie scene where the films really shone and many foreign language films presented some really interesting viewing this year. In fact, the best time to be going to the cinema this year was between April and May when some amazing films came out, though, that being said, the Summer still had a few decent hold outs and the end of the year at least gave us some films that were pretty dam good. Many genres did very well this year, horror films seemed to get their mojo back but this year’s stand out was animation. In fact, animation was so good in 2016 I could have done a top ten based on animated films alone, and believe me many of them nearly made the list.

Now, once again, here are the honourable mentions, these are the films that were very, very close to making the list, but didn’t quite work, but I think you should track them down because I think they are all very good. Once again, they are all in alphabetical order:

• 10 Cloverfield Lane:

I am not the biggest fan of Cloverfield but this latest entry was really damm good and a really creepy film. Check it out, it’s worth a watch. It didn’t make the list just because I felt there was one film that was creepier.

• April and the Extraordinary World:

A film that could best be described as Tintin meets Studio Ghibli. This was a prime example of how both animated films and foreign language films that came out in 2016 were really worth a watch and this one is no exception. Pick it up if you are a fan of Studio Ghibli or Steam Punk stories, it will appeal to you on both levels and it is currently available on DVD. It didn’t make the list, however, because the standard for animated films was so high this year.

• Florence Foster Jenkins:

Just missing off the list was the biopic of the woman that has been called the World’s worst singer but is an excellent biopic that stars Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep in the title role. It was barely just off the list, but it didn’t quite make the top grade that the top 10 best did, but I would seriously recommend tracking it down.

• I Daniel Blake:

A truly harrowing film, directed by Ken Loach, about the struggles and the cruel and idiotic bureaucracy of the benefit system. It will tug at your heart strings and it is a very relevant film. I couldn’t put it on the list, however, for the simple reason that I would never want to see the film again, but that’s only because it is so dam depressing. Special mention goes to the food bank scene which is already being talked about.

• Kubo and the Two Strings:

Kubo and the Two Strings, would have, in any other year, made my top 10 list, but there was only room for so many animated films on my actual list and I decided that Kubo was probably not going to do it. But this anime inspired stop motion film from America is really worth a watch. Check it out, your kids will love it.

• Sing Street:

If you love music, you owe it to yourself to see this one. It’s a very heart-warming film. It didn’t quite make the list, however, because I didn’t think it pushed the boundaries quite enough.

• The Danish Girl:

Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander give very good performances in the story of one of the first transgender people to receive gender confirmation surgery and his wife. It’s a very good film, but I decided it didn’t make the list because there were a couple of films that came out around the time that were just a bit better.

• The Jungle Book:

Jon Favreau does a really good remake of The Jungle Book and it’s a damn good Disney film who had a really good run this year. It didn’t make the list, however, because there were a couple of family films that I felt were slightly better than it, so I had to leave it off.

Finally, we now come to the actual list, I actually debated the top 3 for quite a while, there was no question in my mind about what was going to be number 1, numbers 2 and 3 I went back and forth on quite a bit, however, I think I have my definitive top 3 here. I fully went over it all and decided I have my definitive Top 10.

Number 10 – Arrival

Arrival came out towards the end of the year, but it was one of the best films I saw all year. This is astoundingly good science fiction with an excellent central performance by Amy Adams and I am very pleased that the director of this film will be directing the Blade Runner Sequel that will be out later this year. It shows how you can take a short story and really expand it to make one hell of an interesting piece. Even if you don’t like science fiction, you really might get something out of this because it’s more of a story about humanity and politics. It has an excellent screen play which is based on a short story and does it amazing justice. I go in to further detail in my review, although, that being said, I can’t go in to too much detail without giving away some of the films best plot twists which easily takes the prize of the best plot twists of the year.

Number 9 – Room

I saw this within 2 weeks of January and I already decided it was going to make the Best of the Year list, and the fact that it is only at number 9 shows how good the rest of the films are going to be. Room was nominated at the 2016 Oscars for Best Picture as well as Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actress for Brie Larson, which she rightfully got and her frankly brilliant performance in this adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s book who wrote the screenplay herself, which is phenomenal. The film uses a lot of its cinematography and its sound editing to really help tell the story and despite the fact that it comes off as a being a harrowing story of a mother and son locked in a room by a maniac, it’s actually not quite the film you were expecting, but in a really good way and I think people will judge it by first impressions and not see it on that basis, please do, it’s an excellent film. Special mentions should definitely go to Jacob Tremblay who gives on of the best child performances I have ever seen in a film and easily could have been up for Best Actor at the Oscars.

Number 8 – Mustang

Speaking of Oscars, this is a French film that was nominated for Best Film in a Foreign Language at the Oscars, but lost to the film Son of Saul, which I also reviewed. Mustang, however, was a much better film in my opinion, and easily should have won that Oscar. Mustang is a story that balances pessimism and optimism brilliantly and tells a really compelling story that still feels relevant in today’s climate. The story is about 5 sisters being taken care of by their grandmother and uncle who after being spotted by the neighbours, playing with boys in the Sea, are then trapped in their own home, which is turned into, and quoting a line from the film a “wife factory”. We see their bond get them through this harrowing time and their various stories of love, betrayal, dominance, hierarchies and even to a certain extent, enslavement. It may sound like this film is just going to be a harrowing gut punch from start to finish, but you would be surprised how well the screenplay manages to balance it out with some genuinely uplifting moments and I think many people will be surprised by the film’s ending, though in a pleasant way. You may not have seen this and you may not want to see a film with sub titles, but I would recommend trying to do so if you don’t normally, because this is very much a film that is worth it. It is available on DVD, check it out.

Number 7 – Zootopia

Zootopia, or Zootropolis which it was called in the UK for some reason. Zootopia is frankly a brilliant film and easily was Disney’s best output from this year. It’s an interesting take on modern day politics, prejudices and even kind of society in general and it’s all done through anthropomorphic animals, but in a very, very clever way. I absolutely adored the film. It tells one hell of a story that I thought was fantastic. Hats off to the directors and the screenplay writers for bringing the vision to life, but that’s not to dismiss the excellent voice acting performances that were given in the film and it’s almost guaranteed the Best Animated Picture Oscar, though I think there is one film that deserves it slightly more, I would not be disappointed if Zootopia took it home this year, I liked it that much. It would have been higher on this list any other year, but there were a couple of other animated films that were a bit better than it. I’m not sure that I enjoyed it more than Wreck It Ralph, but that’s probably because I am the video game guy. It’s currently available on DVD and Blu Ray, please add this one to your collection or if you see it on Net Flix, give it a go.

Number 6 – Deadpool

You can all lift your jaws up that this isn’t higher up on the list. If any film made this Top Ten list, I absolutely loved it and that’s no exception with Deadpool. This is easily the funniest film of the year. I haven’t laughed so hard at a film for a long time. This film is a fan boy’s dream and it makes me kind of sad that Tim Miller has announced that he won’t be directing the follow-up. Ryan Reynolds gives a perfect blend of actor and character in his performance as Wade Wilson/Deadpool, which has already earnt him a Golden Globe nomination and should get him a nomination for Best Actor at the Oscars in what is definitely his best performance to date. The screenplay is a loving nod to the comic and its fan base and everything about this film is a fan boy’s dream and the fact that this isn’t even the best Superhero film of the year shows how good the best of these were this year. Any other year and this would have been higher, but it is absolutely brilliant and congratulations for the Golden Globe nomination, I am absolutely rooting for you on that one. For the love of god, if you haven’t seen Deadpool, go and check it out now, just be aware though, if you are prudish you might have a bit of an issue with this film.

Number 5 – Eye in the Sky

This isn’t going in just because it’s the final performance of Alan Rickman in this film, it’s going in because it’s one of the best thrillers I have ever seen. This film should be put in a time capsule because it perfectly reflects modern day politics and modern warfare in a way that is both balanced and relevant. This is a very, very tense film, showing a drone warfare operation almost in real time. Director Gavin Hood does an amazing job building tension and gets excellent performances out of the cast, which includes Helen Mirren, Breaking Bads Aaron Paul and Captain Phillips Barkhad Abdi, but a special mention should definitely go to Alan Rickman who goes out on a brilliant film and it is well deserved for such a legendary name and by the end of it you will be really surprised that this came from the director of X Mens Origins Wolverine and the woeful Enders Game adaptation. It’s available on Blu Ray and DVD and just became available on Netflix. Seriously, see this one if you love good thrillers and good films. Gavin Hood should easily be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars on the basis of this film, but he will not get it and that’s really annoying.

Number 4 – The Witch

While this year was a pretty good year for horror films, anyone who saw my last 2 lists knows that there is always at least one horror film that I can point to, to say, well yes at least the genre has got something going for it with that film. Last year it was It Follows which I thought was an excellent film, but that has nothing on The Witch, which is, no joke, the best horror film I have seen in the decade so far. This is a truly frightening movie. This is the debut of the writer/director Robert Eggers and I will be very keen to see his next film on that basis because this film earnt him a prize at the Sundance Film Festival, it’s a phenomenal piece of work. The screenplay is also a period piece, and Eggers does his best work to make the film feel periodically accurate which shows a lot of time and research has gone into it. He lovingly creates this time-period and enjoys scaring you in a way that will make you feel incredibly uneasy. There are virtually no jump scares in the entire film, everything is built through the tension and atmosphere and it will constantly make you question everything. Their performances are all just fantastic as well. If you love good horror movies, you owe it to yourself to see this one. It did receive a bit of backlash when it came out, but I think that’s because people are so used to jump scare horror films that they are not aware that horror films like this can be made. Seriously, go into this one with an open mind, you will be all the better for it.

Number 3 – Captain America Civil War

Captain America Civil War is by far the best Superhero film of the year and it is easily one of Marvel’s best to date. This is everything that the Marvel Cinematic Universe aspired to be from the beginning and it has been fully realised here. It has tons of character, tons of plot, tons of extra’s to fit into its time period and yet the Russo brothers manage to pull this off perfectly. The film is phenomenally good. It’s an interesting character piece, it makes the Universe feel big and actually does a better job of it than the last Avengers film did. The fight scenes are phenomenal including the best action scene of the year in the Airport and in just 20 minutes it gives us the best on screen Spiderman we have had to date and I am looking forward to Tom Holland’s performance as Spiderman in the upcoming Spiderman Homecoming. If you love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and you haven’t seen Captain America Civil War then for the love of god get it now. This film does everything brilliantly and any other year it would have been my number 1 film. If you want more details about why I love this so much, go and read my review of it.

Number 2 – Your Name

Your Name was one of the films that I saw at the 2016 London Film Festival and it was the highlight of the festival for me. I absolutely adored this film. Director Makoto Shinkai gives us an excellent movie, that you can probably nit-pick, but I felt the raw power and emotion in this film and you can tell that Shinkai has done a loving job crafting this film. Many people have put a lot of emphasis on the body swapping element of the film, which is very well done, but I think it also has the effect of cheapening the rest of the film which is also done brilliantly, It’s a story of love, regret, and overcoming disaster and adversity and finding the solution when it seems impossible. It’s one brilliant film and if it doesn’t get a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, I will be extremely annoyed. I’m really looking forward to whatever Makoto Shinkai brings out next since this beautiful animated film is easily his best work to date. Oh and the soundtrack released by the band The Radwimps is fantastic. It’s not currently available, but it will be soon. Please, please try to see this film, even if you’re not into anime, because I think it will surprise you, and if you want to know more about what I really like about this film, go and read my review of it.

Number 1 – When Marnie Was There

Well that’s it for 2016. I have given out props to what I believe are the 10 best films of the year and if you haven’t seen them, please go and watch them. They are all fantastic films.

Thanks a lot for reading my lists. I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them and go and buy some of these in the January sales, also, keep an eye out for my Oscar picks list, where I will be giving out my opinion of what films should get the Oscars and what films have been overlooked.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“WORST FILMS OF 2016”

Well, another year has been and gone but before we head into 2017 let’s look back on 2016 and review the year as a whole. It’s fair to say that 2016 will go down as the year when I had the best perspective to make a ‘Best and Worst List’. I may have not reviewed as much as I would have expected, but I did manage to get a lot more than before.

If you are new to the site and you haven’t looked at my 2014 and 2015 lists, I will go over the rules again. It must be a film that released in cinemas or straight to DVD for a general release in 2016, therefore, films that were played at film festivals last year but didn’t receive a general release until this year will count. If they received a film festival release this year but did not receive a full theatrical release, it doesn’t count. This year, however, I also decided to include films that premiered on Netflix and Amazon Prime as well, though I might as well have not bothered entering that rule since none of the ones I saw were either good or bad enough to make the lists. I will say though, out of all the ones I saw, The Little Prince was the best and if you have a Netflix account I can recommend it. This rule also applies to what films qualify for me to review, hence, why out of all the films I saw at the London Film Festival this year, I only reviewed ‘Your Name’, which already had a confirmed theatrical release.

Taking all that into account, I may have reviewed a total of 46 years this year, but as of the half way point of 2016 I started adding mini-reviews at the end or my reviews, which I will be continuing into 2017, this meant, that because of my rules, I saw another 97 films on top of that, leading to a total of 143 films I saw this year. This is a staggering amount, however, I’m not sure I will beat that record in 2017 given that there is still no cinema in my home town of Chester and the train line between Chester and Liverpool is being worked on quite heavily so I may be going to Manchester more in the future to see films. Nevertheless, I don’t think I can give a better perspective that I can at this point in time, therefore, I am going to start by going over my list of what I thought were the worst of these films.

Now this year was definitely a bad year for films. Anybody who regularly reads my reviews knows that most films that I saw had a lot of both good and bad qualities to them and it lead to year of rather mediocre films. This was particularly telling at the beginning of the year where I think we had the worst opening 3 months that we have had in a long time, in fact, by the end of March, I could have made a top 10 worst of list already. That being said though, that list did considerably change as the year went on and the worst films of the year have had to be really dreadful, therefore, I left off a few rather mediocre ones. If you read my reviews regularly you will probably be aware of a few that I have been commenting on in particular and a couple that I actually reviewed, but to give you an idea of how bad they were, it was not that difficult to narrow it down to 10. It was more difficult to decide what would get the number 10 slot than what would get number 1.

Before we get into those 10, here’s a few dishonourable mentions, that just missed out on making the list, but they were still very bad. I am going to list these in alphabetical order so this is not confused as an extra order.

Keep in mind, these are my personal Top Ten worst, if you like any of these films, that’s fine, though I will question a lot if you like the bottom 3, but enough on that, here are the dishonourable mentions:

Alice Through the Looking Glass:

An unnecessary and unwarranted sequel to the 2010 Alice in Wonderland, this one happens to be kind of worse by proxy because it felt like it had less ambition and even less interest than the original Tim Burton film did. I described it as Junk Food and I stand by it. It doesn’t make the list however, because there just happened to be worse films that came out in the year and even more commercialised films.

Bridget Jones Baby:

Despite what Elspeth Bromiley will tell you, this is a really lazy chick flick that feels incredibly, crassly commercial and insulting to its target demographic. I decided it wouldn’t make the list, however, because I really want to keep my job!

The Divergent Series Allegiant:

The third entry in the series may be slightly better than the woeful 2 films that preceded it, but the film is frankly creating plot holes faster than it can count and is running so low on ideas it is having to rip off the Maze Runner films and there’s a 4th one due out in 2017, no thanks, I am done. It didn’t make the list just because I thought I wasn’t enough of the target demograph for it to really bother me

Independence Day Resurgence:

A terrible sequel to Independence Day, I already commented on it enough in my review, so go and read that. I decided it didn’t make the list, however, because I suspect it might be on other ‘Worst of the Year’ lists so it will probably get enough of a beating, plus I didn’t really like the original film all that much so this one didn’t p… me off to too much.

London has fallen:

A truly dumb sequel to Olympus Has Fallen, this was so going to be on the list for the longest time, it only escaped by the skin of its teeth because there was one action film this year that was much dumber.

The Other Side of the Door:

Definitely the worst horror film of the year. I suppose Friend Request, on a lot of levels was probably worse, but no one really saw that film because it was barely advertised, so it gets a free pass for that reason alone. It’s a terrible attempt to do a Hindu exorcism film, it doesn’t make the list however, because unlike many years, horror films came out good this year and I felt it would be a disservice to the genre to put one on the list as a result.

Swallows and Amazons:

The final dishonourable mention was basically put on there because I found the film so incredibly dull and patronising. I go into further details in my actual review, but needless to say I didn’t like Swallows and Amazons. It barely escaped the list, I was actually considering at one point to put it in the number 10 spot, but I decided not to put it in because it was more my personal taste than an actual technical Bad film and I can see why some people might like it, however, I am not in that group.

Now for the actual list, you might want to have YouTube on standby to look up these trailers because by the end of this you will have forgotten that half of these films existed. Here we go, the Top Ten Worst Films of 2016 are, in my opinion:

Number 10 – Jem and the Holograms

This serves to emphasise a point, this year is the very first year where I had to use the rule about film’s premiering in the UK but then having premiered in other countries first for my worst of list, but 2 of them made the actual list. I’m not surprised if you don’t remember Jem and the Holograms coming out this year, it was very, very quietly released in UK cinemas in February after having a dismal run in America, having been pulled out of cinemas after only 2 weeks of running. To give that perspective, most films have at least a month minimum for a major release. Jem and Hologram’s slow run in the cinema is hardly surprising, it’s utterly terrible. The film pays no regards to its source material, the songs are terrible, the acting’s terrible, the plot makes absolutely no sense and it’s a rather lazily edited filming, using YouTube footage to pad out its running time and as a result was easily the worst thing The Rock was in in 2016. Thank god he ended the year with Moana. The final nail in the coffin was its disregard for the fan base, particularly in the one final insulting moment at the end of the film. I am not part of the Jem and the Holograms fan base, but I feel your pain for that one and that’s why this film made the list.

Number 9 – Ice Age Collision Course

This year was a fantastic year for animated films, but as I mentioned in one of my previous reviews, 3 of the animated films that came out this year were complete garbage and all 3 made the list. Ice Age Collision Course, though, happened to be the one that stunk the least. That doesn’t change the fact, it stinks! I have never really been a fan of the Ice Age films, but I will admit that the first one had something going for it, but the sequels are becoming less and less necessary and the humour is getting more tired and it is further emphasised by this incredibly awful sequel. By this point, the films feel so unnecessary because there is literally nowhere for the plot to go. The film resorts to its lowest points by trimming out whatever ideas they had left by sending Scrat into space and giving Syd a love interest, who by the way is played by Jesse J, who can’t act to save her life. The whole thing is just a bore, there are several characters in it who don’t have any point to be there and are just there by the necessity of the plot, Diego, one of the 3 main characters from the first film almost completely gets the shaft this time around. It’s an absolute mess, pure and simple and it’s a real reflection of how bad Blue Sky Studios have been by constantly making sequels for this one. Please tell me there isn’t a number 6, these films have to die, or at least I would be saying that if they hadn’t died 2 films ago!

Number 8 – Gods of Egypt

This was the film that saved London Has Fallen from making the list. Gods of Egypt is truly an abysmal action film. It was meant to come out in the UK at the end of February, but critical reception was so poor, it was pushed back to a mid June release, which was its big downfall because by that point there had been so many better action films for us to compare it to and it made Gods of Egypt stick out even more. The director, whose previous works include I Robot, had a go at the critics for slamming the film and feels that they won’t give it a good review because it’s a consensus that they are not meant to like it, well I am sorry, that’s not the case, you made a bad film, you have to admit it and move on. The effects are terrible, the acting is terrible, the fight scenes are laughable and the script is horrendous. These are some of the most unlikeable characters I have seen in a long time and the film is a massive time waste, easily one of the worst films of the year, and you will be wondering what people have put in Ben Kingsley’s coffee for him to have accepted this script. For the love of god man, get some dignity!

Number 7 – Mother’s Day

I nearly didn’t put this one on the list, because this is now going to be the final film of the late Gary Marshall and I was worried that I would be accused of trolling, however, I’m going to set that aside, because as much as Gary Marshall’s loss is sad, it doesn’t change the fact that his final film was a train wreck. Mother’s Day is by far the worst chick flick of the year. The screenplay is horrendously bad, which means that the actors, who have all been decent in films in recent memory, with the exception of Jennifer Aniston who seems to be getting worse as her career goes on, there is just nothing here. The way the character treat Mother’s Day in this film is so horrendously out or reality, you will be convinced you are in an episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s just full of a ton of sycophantic rubbish, that will involve characters talking like no one has ever talked before. It’s only saving grace is the fact that New Year’s Eve, Gary Marshall’s film prior to this, was worse. If anyone ever wonders why I always say I will never watch Love Actually over Christmas ever again, it’s because, despite the fact that Love Actually is not a bad film and has some commendable points to it, it did give a licence for American film makers to take that formula and use it to an absurd degree and this is one of the worst example of it. Mother’s Day is a horrendous example of the terrible effect Love Actually has had on cinema.

Number 6 – Trolls

Yes, anyone who read my review of that will have seen this one coming. Whilst it’s not the worst animated film of the year, it’s a close 2nd. The point in my review about it being overly crass and commercial is confirmed that over the Christmas period, in HMV, the soundtrack was still charting. That’s what this film is, it’s a soundtrack and the film acts as an advert for it. There is no care for the plot, the acting is terrible, the songs are horrendous kid bop adaptations of songs that you mostly wouldn’t want to hear sung by the original artists, or at worst, are songs that Justin Timberlake has written himself, which were clearly on a day when he ate way too many sweets and sugar sticks, as a result. I have hated having to listen to ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’ all year. Everything is too bright and colourful, the characters are extremely annoying, it’s never allowed to be funny at any second and it plays way too fast for the kids at the expense of their parents. It’s a thoroughly awful film, and what makes it worse, is the fact that it got incredibly good review from critics and an incredibly high score on Rotten Tomatoes, this should have been bashed by the critics, but I get a sense that they were so eager not to offend families or even worse, I get a sense that they gave it a pass because it’s for kids. No, it’s still bad and the message at the end, I believe, is actually really awful. Avoid this one, there are better family films.

Number 5 – Alvin and the Chipmunks The Road Chip

Another film that played over the Christmas period in America but didn’t see a release date until February of this year. Alvin and the Chipmunks is a tired formula and I am sick to death of the films. They couldn’t even get David Cross back to humiliate himself, because by this point, he has got some dignity. The film’s plot is horrendous because rather like Ice Age there is absolutely nowhere for the plot and the characters to go and the film is made even worse by the fact that the song choices are just as horrendous as usual and performed in an horrendous way, the plot makes absolutely no sense and produces no likeable characters and it makes the same problem that the 2nd film did of having Jason Lee largely on the side lines again, so as a result we haven’t got the straight man presence to balance out the Chipmunks. I have no idea why these films keep getting made, I am sick to death of them. Please let the Road Chip be the final one. The only reason it’s not higher on this list is because there are a couple of family films that were worse, and it was just slightly less annoying that the Squeakquel and just having that word in this document makes me feel worse inside.

Number 4 – Nine Lives

Kevin Spacey can kiss my a… for making this movie. You would never believe that House of Cards star Kevin Spacey and the director of the Men In Black movies would come together to make this horrendous film that would have been out of date in the 1990’s let alone in 2016. If you haven’t seen it, Kevin Spacey is turned into a cat by Christopher Walkin (no I am not making this up) in a plot that is so horrendously out of date that, many people like myself, thought that the trailer was a joke. No, it’s a real movie and it is horrendous. I have no idea why they bothered to hire a cat trainer since the cat is CGI most of the time, which, along with the green screen effect, are so out of date you will assume they have come from the Play Station dimension and it gives us some of the worst performances and the worst jokes I have seen this year. It’s a real damming sign of the medium that most of the films that made my ‘worst of’ list were comedies, but what made this film worse is that everyone around me was laughing and it wasn’t just kids, it was adults as well. I felt like yelling the entire time ‘grow up, it’s not funny’. Even Kevin Spacey, I think, realises how poor this film is, since his voice over is tinged with the hint of contractual obligation. For the love of god it made more sense when Abe Vigoda was in Good Burger, that’s right, I complimented Good Burger, that’s how horrendous Nine Lives is.

Number 3 – Grimsby

This film made the list for one scene alone, it’s a scene that is so bad I can’t even describe it for decency purposes. I’m no prude, but this joke was so horrendous that I practically had to look away from the screen the entire time and I will never be able to look at an Elephant the same way again. Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest project is easily one of his worst to date. He hasn’t really created a character, it’s just Sacha Baron Cohen with a Noel Gallagher wig and an accent that sounds like he has never been north of Chiswick. It’s a phenomenally terrible film, all the jokes miss, Mark Strong, Ian McShane and Penelope Cruz lower their dignity to absurd levels to be in this thing and the whole thing is such a mean spirited comedy that once again, it made me annoyed that people were laughing at this. Is it just me?? It’s one horrendous film, the only reason it’s not higher is because some of the action scenes were shot ok and there was at least one funny joke I can remember in it, but very few films this year annoyed me more than Grimsby, or the Brother’s Grimsby as it’s called in America, Jesus, that pun dies before it even gets going.

Number 2 – Dirty Grandpa

I was convinced that this was going to be number 1 for the first few months of the year, I really was. This came out in January and further confirmed my stereotypes that films released in January are god awful, no surprise here, this one was terrible and easily the worst comedy I saw this year. It is so mean spirited that you can’t like any of the characters, the jokes are so overly coarse and scatological that you wonder what Robert De Niro is doing to his career and why he wanted to spend a summer hanging around with Zach Effron. The jokes are all terrible and they are made worse by the fact that some of them keep getting repeating over and over again, it wasn’t funny the first time! Not to mention that the cast seem to have absolutely no shame in doing half of the rubbish they are given to do in this film. This film was torture and I was so glad to be out of the cinema by the time it was done. Avoid at all costs, especially if you like Robert De Niro, because this is his lowest point to date and I hate to repeat myself, but ‘get some dignity man’.

Number 1 – Norm of the North

I have seldom hated a film more than this one, but Norm of the North has one thing missing that all the others seem to have at least the tiniest bit of, effort. There is no effort in Norm of the North. The animation, horrendous, the acting, horrendous, the plot, the script, horrendous and the fact that this is aimed at children. If you believe everyone is getting dumber, then I would urge you to point to films like this for a reason. Stop giving kids dumb films, they are smarter than you think. Norm of the North is about a twerking Polar Bear, played by Rob Schneider that goes to New York to stop a person called Mr Green from building Condo’s in the Arctic. Yes, it’s another terrible environmental message film that will make you want to gouge your eyes out by how awful the characters and the animation are. I have seen direct to DVD films with better animation than this. Hell, I have seen Play Station 1 games with better animation that this! The script is phenomenally terrible, they have put no care or attention in whatsoever. This is, without a doubt, and I say this completely sincerely, the worst animated film I have ever seen in a cinema. I hated every single audience insulting second I was watching it. The whole thing is a pointless waste of time and lack of effort. In fact, I was so annoyed after I saw this film, I had to put on my Facebook profile, don’t talk to me for the next hour because I have seen a terrible film and I will likely shout at you! Luckily I then sent a later message to say I had calmed down. But that’s how horrendous the film is, the whole thing makes your brain hurt. Avoid at all costs and if you see it in a shop, kindly ask the shopkeepers to remove it for the good of humanity! It’s that horrendous, and the fact that this came out in a year of such amazing animated films baffles me.

Well, that’s the worst of the year done and now we can safely say “they are all behind us”, avoid all these films if you can, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you want some actual recommendations though, I have a whole load of them and they are all in my ‘Best of the Year’ list, where I will also give a reminder of what the first review of 2017 will be.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“THE EMPIRE OF CORPSES”

The Empire of Corpses, or Shisha no Teikoku as it’s known in its native Japan is a project that has been on the radar for quite some time. The film itself being based on the book by the late Project Itoh who wrote a trilogy of acclaimed books and was heavily endorsed by his friend Hideo Kojima the creator of the Metal Gear Solid series. His death sadly meant that he never got a chance to see any of his films receive anime adaptations, but I think the man’s work speaks for itself. The strange factor though, is, why was Empire of Corpses picked, it seems a strange choice just because it was the last of the three books he wrote, not that the books were connected with one another, they were all separate stories. From what I recall, Itoh did not complete Empire of Corpses, it had to be finished by ghost writers. It would have made more sense to do one of his other novels first (That being said, however, it’s not as if the guy added potential great style and flair to this film). It’s directed by Ryotaro Makihara who directed an anime film called Hal but most notably worked in the animation department of The Full Metal Alchemist movie and was also a key animator on the film Colourful.

Empire of Corpses is interesting and it makes a great last review because this was a review a year in the making. I saw this film originally at MCM Comicon in London as part of an event called MCM Loves Anime and when I saw it, it was the first screening outside of Japan having only been out in cinemas for a couple of weeks in its native homeland. However, it was a film festival so I didn’t count it amongst my overall count of the year, but did say that I would try and review the film when it received a Blu Ray and DVD release. Well, a couple of months ago that actually happened, so this will be a first for the Axia film society. Normally, when I review a film I am reviewing it upon my very first viewing. This time I’m going to be re-watching the film, a year after seeing it and I will be commenting on whether my thoughts have changed with regards to the film on a second viewing. Also, for the first time ever I will be commenting on the Japanese cast and the English dub cast, since the first time I saw it in Japanese and for this review I watched the dub. So, is the highly anticipated Empire of Corpses as good as people were expecting it to be.

The Empire of Corpses takes place in the late 19th century in an alternative time line that mixes fictional characters with real people. After Viktor Frankenstein’s research has successfully caused a corpse to be re-animated, the world attempts to replicate his research. However, the copses are unable to have free thought and will, aka a soul. John Watson (played by Joshimasa Hosoya and Jason Liebrecht) successfully manages to get close after re-animating his friend Friday (played by Ayumu Murase and Tod Hackaborn), however, his experiments are illegal and he is picked up by British Intelligence officer M (played by Akio Otsuka and Sean Henegan), in order to work for the British Government, with the express purpose of traveling to Afghanistan to track down Russian scientist Alexi Karamazov (played by Shin’ichiro Miki and Mike McFarland) along with the help of Frederick Barnaby (played by Taiten Kusunoki and Jane Michael Tatum). When they track down Alexi, they must discover whether he has Viktor’s notes and what they reveal for the future of corpse re-animation research, however, there are some other dark forces at work.

Empire of Corpses was a really interesting set up. The title is very apt since the sheer amount of re-animated corpses that are roaming the streets in a mindless state are being used for military and remedial jobs, perhaps an allegory to the prevalent slave trade that was going on during this historical period. It is also something that is rarely explored in anime, ‘steam punk’. You’d think this film would be amazing. Well, it’s good, yes that’s all I can really say about the film. I think it’s rather good. The biggest problem is that the plot is far too long, which is rather weird. The film runs at 2hrs which actually would be a good time to adapt the book, however, because of the way the book is structured and I suspect this is a rather loyal adaptation, it’s not paced properly like a film. It feels more like this should be a 12 or 24-25 episode series, which Toho easily could have done on the budget they had. I think the whole thing would have been paced a lot better and they even could have put more in that was cut out. The story as a concept, as I mentioned, is rather compelling, especially considering this isn’t like a Zombie movie, while they may be re-animated corpses they are not Zombies in the traditional sense and Friday’s demostrating intelligence leads you to believe there could be more to this entire thing, it’s not quite capitalised on however and when a lot of reveals are made they feel rather sporadic and it seems like even the characters don’t really know what is going on.

The whole thing is a massive search for Viktor’s notes it’s the big end goal for everyone, but there are a lot of other sub plots going on and a couple of them go absolutely nowhere, in fact there are a couple that feel almost entirely pointless. There is a big reveal around Alexi when he is found and it’s a good moment leading to a really haunting image, but the whole part of the sub plot never really comes back into play and by the end it feels like Alexi’s only real purpose in the plot really is to get them to their next destination, making his character feel rather pointless. I also felt the use of actual historical figures mixing with the fictional characters like Viktor Frankenstein and John Watson from Sherlock Holmes was rather bizarre and causes the film to lose some credibility. It’s not really like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where in the comic at least, the 2 were merged together quite well, they feel kind of jarring. Former President Ulyseus Grant is brought into the mix, and believe me, having him in the role was entirely unnecessary and could easily have been filled by a fictional character. He is also joined by Charles Babbage, who at least gets a point to be in the film, however it does kind of undermine the credibility and just feels like it has been put in there to remind us that this film takes place towards the turn of the century.

I’m probably making it sound like I am bashing this film, but it’s only because it does feel like a bit of a slog fest constantly shifting from perspective to perspective, giving you very little time to get a grip of what is going on, other than that, I actually think this is a well told story. If this film had been paced better it would have been amazing, there is actually some really great elements here, like the nature of the soul, what it means to be human and asking the question when science goes too far. Ok, it never quite dives too deeply into any of these subjects, but I appreciate the effort that’s been put in. Also the characters are rather likeable for the most part, ok they do a couple of stupid things every so often and a couple feel like they are just put in to fill a role rather than to be a character, but for the most part, I actually think the film is rather interesting, though John Watson appears to be the only one who gets much of a character arc. There is a slight arc for the only female character in the entire film, Hadary Lilith (played by Kana Hanazawa in the Japanese version and Morgan Garrett in the dub), but her character arc comes a bit too late in the plot, she is rather sporadically in the first half of the film and then feels like the writers decide to put her in the final act at the last minute, she is virtually absent for the middle act of the film.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is the first time I am ever going to compare a sub with the dub since I have now seen the film in both.

So to sum up, I think the dub cast is well cast and are probably better cast than the Japanese cast, however, I think the sub cast turns in a better performance overall and this is coming from someone who will try and watch a dub before he ever watches a sub, some exceptions notwithstanding. My attitude would be, if you enjoy watching Anime in a dub the cast is perfectly passable and you will get a perfectly decent performances, however, when you realise who all these actors have played in past Anime that Funimation has licensed, you may be a bit disappointed that they are turning in average performances compared to those roles.

Now, as for the animation, well I actually think this is one of Witt Stuido’s best work in a long time. Witt is a really good studio, so that is saying a lot. I may really like a lot of the animation in their previous shows like, Attack On Titan and Seraph Of The End, but this was dam good. Ok I’m not talking Studio Ghibli or animation quality like the previously reviewed Your Name, but this is still nothing to be scoffed at. My only complaint when it comes to the animation is that it is drastically different from how it appears on the heavily stylised poster and DVD box. I suspect people that judge the film based on the poster and DVD box alone may be slightly disappointed in that sense, but they really shouldn’t be because the animation here is top notch and it really suits the brilliantly choreographed action scenes.

“ And that is 2016 ! ”

We are going to kick of 2017 the same way we kicked off 2015 and 2016 by finishing off my unfinished business of the year. Join me on 6 January where I will be giving my thought on the Best and Worst movies of 2016 aka what DVD’s do you need to be buying or pre-ordering and what movies need to be avoided more than Katie Hopkins at a Cocktail party.

Come back again on 13 January where I will be giving my review of Assassins Creed.

“ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY”

I remember this time last year, everyone breathed a quick sigh of relief that just said, everything is ok, Star Wars is good again. That’s not to undermine The Force Awakens as a movie, I really loved this, as anyone who read my review last year or read my Top Ten Best films of 2015 list will attest to. It really is a great time to be a Star Wars fan, ok granted the fact that Disney has completely changed the continuity, ditching every expanded Universe novel and expanded Universe material to start a brand new continuity was a bit of a let down since some of those stories were really good but maybe Star Wars needed a bit of a fresh start and some of the stuff has been really good. The Marvel comic series have been creating a new continuity and have been interesting even if a couple of them feel kind of unnecessary, but I have certainly been enjoying the Darth Vader series. Even on Television, Star Wars Rebel is a fantastic show, now with 3 excellent seasons. I think season 3 has some pacing issues though that season 1 and 2 never had, but it has made up for it in other departments. The main thing was, all of this would have meant nothing if The Force Awakens hadn’t been as good as it was and I don’t think the hype would have been there for the movie I am reviewing today. The reason I mentioned the new continuity means that to bridge the gap in the time between movies, there will be several spin offs that would come out to expand the lore of Star Wars, and the first of these would be a film that would take place just before the events of episode 4 of New Hope, dealing with a team of rebels aiming to get the Death Star plans. The film is directed by Gareth Edwards who doesn’t have too many credits to his name but he has come into memory recently, having directed the recent Godzilla movie, which was flawed but I would hardly call it unenjoyable, I certainly got something out of it, though I will admit that there were problems. The fact that the guy has worked as a visual effects guy definitely boosts my confidence in it and the cast of this film looked absolutely fantastic. If they were to get this right, this could work incredibly well, which beggars the question, is Rogue One another excellent piece of the Star Wars canon, or will this be joining many fans views of the prequels in the ‘can we forget that ever happened’ department, which, come to think of it, there is quite a lot of that in the Star Wars mythos.

Rogue One is the story of Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones). After her father Galen (played by Mads Mikkelsen) is taken by the Empire to help develop the Death Star, she is taken is by rebel Saw Gerrera (played by Forest Whitaker), however, years later, when she grows up he leaks plans of a powerful planet destroying weapon called the Death Star to the rebels and Jyn follows a team of rebels mainly consisting of Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna), K02SO (played by Alan Tudyk), Chirrut Imwe (played by Donnie Yen), Baze Malbus (played by Wen Jiang) and pilot Bodhi Rook (played by Riz Ahmed) with a mission to secure the plans and deliver them to the Rebel Alliance.

The first thing to say about Rogue One is that it is well and truly a side story. Star Wars fans are very much aware that the whole thing is going to end in a particular way, since essentially this is a lead in to a new hope. In that sense, it kind of reminded me of the game Halo Reach, which did a similar thing for the Halo franchise and it’s very similar to that game since both play out rather like a documentary of a historical event, though nothing of Rogue One’s structure is very documentary like. Rogue One, however, is really good on a lot of levels, mainly in its characters which actually feel rather fleshed out and in some cases, morally ambiguous. There is a very diverse cast here and as a result they play off each other very well. You have a ton of very likeable personalities and unlike many Star Wars good guys, they are given some moral ambiguity which suggests they may not necessarily be entirely good guys, especially in the case of Cassian. There is also the fact that the film is wonderfully retro. The whole thing feels like it has a real loving care to the original Star Wars and its mythos, there’s a real feel of nostalgia watching the film. Granted they’re not everything in Star Wars, for example, there are not real Jedis in this one, which at this point in time is to be expected, but there are a few Easter Eggs in there, for example, there’s references to several plants that people may recognise, especially some that have been referenced in the Star Wars Rebels series.

Rogue One is a perfectly passable film, and in some senses it’s a very good film, there’s nothing that wrong with it. The plot is very well structured, the characters are very likeable, the dialogue is pretty good, and it has a decent running narrative. I can’t think of much wrong with it apart from the fact that certain factors feel rather under-utilised, however, there’s one thing I really can’t ignore, it doesn’t really add anything to the Star Wars Universe. Anyone who has seen this should ask themselves ‘what does this really add’. It’s essentially a plot based on one line of dialogue in the opening text crawl of a New Hope. It’s interesting to see how the rebels got those plans considering that in the original film Leia just happened to have it, but it doesn’t feel like this adds all that much, especially the particular way of ending the film, again, not going into spoilers. I do think that there should have been a bit more insight than what we had going on, because this summed up Suicide Story it feels like it’s a plot that would more suit a comic than a full length feature film. This isn’t necessarily a problem, it means that this is just a good film and stops it from being a great film. Also, I know it’s rather childish of me, but I really don’t like seeing anything Star Wars related without some form of Jedi being in it. They really are the coolest people in science fiction. There are also several characters in this that are really under-utilised. Many of the characters that appeared in the trailer get very minimally expanded upon when appearing in the final product. Saw Gerrera, played by Forest Whitaker for example, really doesn’t have than many extra appearances outside of what we saw in the trailer and unfortunately, as feared, this also extends to Darth Vader’s appearance, who once again has had his role reprised by James Earl Jones.

That’s the other factor with this film, the villains. Ok, it’s the Empire, the Empire are great villains and they always have a presence and that part works, the downside is there is no real central villain. Darth Vader is not in the film long enough to fill the role. There’s also Governor Tarkin but he isn’t in the film all that much so, as a result, he doesn’t seem to have much of a presence. So, we are left with Orson Krennic who is played by Ben Mendelsohn who actually does a good role and is a decent villain, however, he could have been better, I think a little more time needed to be devoted to him so he feels slightly under-developed. I only make these complaints to seem like I am fair, that’s mainly because I think the film needed a bit more weight and gravitas to it. The whole thing has an ending of ‘and the rest is history’, it doesn’t feel like much has been accomplished by the end of the film. However, the ride to get there was very entertaining and that’s what makes Rogue One as good as it is. It just doesn’t offer too much insight to the Star Wars Universe, however, I want to end this on a positive, so let’s just say, the Rogue One team is really good. Jyrn Erso is following on from Rave in the Force Awakens in another strong female lead for the Star Wars Universe. Cassian is very good as well, plus Donnie Yen’s Chirrut is one bad ass character, but I think the stand out for me was Alan Tudyk’s voice over of the reprogrammed imperial droid K-2SO who seemed to steal the scene in everything he was in and became one of the most likeable characters. If you are going in to this film expecting a lot of the classic characters back, I wouldn’t get out your Star Wars character bingo cards like you are watching an episode of rebels, that’s not to say there aren’t a few, but they at least feel like they’re well placed and don’t interrupt the plot too much, with the exception of one of the cameos which feels really out of place. I would also say there is one last positive with the plot, when scenes need to build tension, they really build tension well and that’s one of the thing that makes it such an entertaining ride to be on.

The performances were pretty good. I have already mentioned that Alan Tudyk is one of the show stealers, but I also want to highlight the brilliant performances of Felicity Jones and Diego Luna. Donnie Yen is also amazingly entertaining and I also enjoyed Wen Jiang’s performances. Riz Ahmed is also really dam good in one of his best roles to date. I will say that Mads Mikkelsen has a bit of trouble trying to play the nice guy considering he is normally an actor that plays villains, see my Dr Strange review for more on that, but he put a lot of effort in to it and I am surprised he did as well as he did in that role. Forest Whitaker, once again does a good job, but then again he seems like an actor who puts his all in to a role when it is given to him, even some of the bad films he has been in. Ben Mendelsohn does a really good job as the film’s main villain, even when sometimes the script fails him. While we are on the subject of villains, I think many people will be surprised how well James Earl Jones comes back into his own as Darth Vader, it’s almost as if he never left the role, he may be in for a short time, but he makes the most of it, mind you he has been contracted to play the role in Star Wars Rebels a couple of times whenever that show needs a finale to a season. The rest of the cast also do brilliant jobs and I don’t have any complaints with their performances, it’s a very good cast.

As for the visual effects, they are very much in line with the effects from The Force Awakens so most of my opinions from that film carry over to this one, but to put is in short, the nostalgia goggles are on with the designs of everything but the effects feel like they are updated to the modern day. It’s a perfect balance and I still think it works. The sound effects are still brilliant and have that distinctive Star Wars sounds that you can only identify with this franchise, plus, once again, the sound track is dam good, while it does rely quite heavily on a lot of John Williams’ classics it does bring some new ones to the table that work well. Honestly, I didn’t have much of a problem with the presentation, it’s a Star Wars film that is very well presented and it doesn’t feel like much has changed between presentation effects of this film.

Rogue One A Star Wars Story is very much a side story in every sense of the word and feels very inconsequential to the Star Wars mythos, but it’s a least a good movie and I did enjoy myself, however, it feels more like a holdover to Episode 8. It’s a good holdover, but a holdover nonetheless, as a result, I don’t have as much enthusiasm as I did with The Force Awakens , despite the fact that this probably has more original ideas than The Force Awakens did. It works on a lot of levels, the characters are good, the cast is good and story is pretty good, plus the dialogue really works. I wouldn’t call it a bad movie, it just, to me, didn’t feel like an amazing film. There are some brilliant effects though that bring the characters back to life.

I saw the film in 3D but I would recommend that you don’t see it in that format. The 3D is competent but it’s rather un-noticeable save for a few scenes, so I don’t think it’s worth the extra price on the ticket.

“Well that’s my thoughts on those films. If you have any thoughts of your own, put them down in our comments section, we would love to hear what you have to say.”

We have one more review to go before the end of the year. Please come back on 30 December where I will be giving my review of the anime movie The Empire of Corpses based on the book by the late Project Ito.

Thank you for reading my review, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and with whatever you celebrate this time of year, I hope you have a good one and May the Force Be With You.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM”

Along with many people who were approaching their teen years in the early 2000’s, I was very aware of Harry Potter and how popular it was getting. Just to clarify, I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, all my knowledge comes from, once again, The Dom’s series, Lost in Adaptation, as for the last few months he has been comparing all the Harry Potter books with the films. Now, Harry Potter was always going to be a major ‘cash cow’, the thing is though, the cash cow has been well and truly milked, the books are done, the story has been told, there is nowhere for it to go, hence why there was a ton of young adult novels that were trying to take its place, with film adaptations coming out one after the other. The Hunger Games kind of managed it but I don’t think it’s to the same extent that Harry Potter ever really did and never had that rich world mythology and characters that Harry Potter managed to achieve and the one that probably could have succeeded in that regard might have been the Percy Jackson films, you remember them, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters. You forgot about them? Well, yes, I did for a while, but again, after I saw Lost in Adaptation episodes of them, you actually realise these were really interesting books and they could easily have been the next Harry Potter films, too bad they made the film’s generic rubbish that meant no one invested in it and they messed around with the source material so much that it was virtually impossible to keep the story going. So it’s no surprise that Warner Bros noticed that all these franchises were failing and the Hunger Games is well and truly over at this point and of course Star Wars is getting a ton of success with its proposed expanded Universe, they realised they still have the licence to Harry Potter and what better time to start a series of spin offs with several films that would connect to the main story. Rather similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Personally, I was never a huge fan of Harry Potter, I really liked it at first but I felt like I was losing interest to see the films around the time the 5th movie came out an it’s telling that I have only seen 3 of the 8 movies in the cinema’s and only 1 of those without a parent or family member. But I at least appreciate what the Harry Potter films did and I did get enjoyment out of them, I’m not saying they are bad films by no stretch of the imagination, in fact some of them are pretty dam good, in my older age I would say the film’s got better in some regards as time went on if you look at them as just films and don’t look at the source material. The problem was, though, where do you go? Because there were several changes made to the source material, it has also developed an issue, this is the first screenplay written by J K Rowling, who I am certain was brought in during the script writing process for the original films, but several changes have been made from the book to the film, which you may not be entirely aware of the continuity at this point, however, that feels quickly resolved, where this would be a prequel that takes place well before all the Harry Potter films and would be for the first time, set in America with a completely new cast. Fantastic Beasts not only sees the return of J K Rowling, but also sees the return of director David Yates who directed the most of the Harry Potter films in the latter half of the series and personally I have always thought he is a pretty good director, barring his rather clunky, Legend of Tarzan film that came out earlier this year. The big question is, does Fantastic Beasts live up to the legacy set by the Harry Potter films, or will this kill off the proposed series of spin off films?

The plot of Fantastic Beasts takes place in the 1920’s. A former Hogwarts student Newt Scamander (played by Eddie Redmayne) has taken a briefcase full of magical creatures to New York. It is all going well up until a muggle named Jacob Kowalski (played by Dan Fogler) accidently picks up his bag and unleashes a few of the creatures into New York. Newt needs help to get the beasts back and recruits Jacob and also teams up with Porpentina Goldstein (played by Katherine Waterston) who works for the American equivalent of the Ministry of Magic (M.A.G.U.S.A), however this organisation wants nothing more than to make sure this is all kept under wraps because any sort of exposure could result in a war between the humans and the magic world. That’s really the basic plot of Fantastic Beast, it doesn’t really go beyond that at any point.

Don’t go into this film expecting it to be a big deal, this is not going to be another major chapter in the Harry Potter saga, in fact there’s very little connecting it to the overall Harry Potter mythos. There is a brief reference to Hogwarts, Dumbledore and the Le Strange family, that’s all you’re really going to get. It also separates stuff out from the other worlds very well having the film set in America rather than England, now the cynical side of me would say this is a lame attempt to sell the film to an American market, however I think J K Rowling is right to make this change in location because it means we get to explore a side of the Harry Potter Universe than hasn’t been touched on at this point, which is, it’s the wizarding world, not all the wizards are confined to Great Britain. I’m hoping that in some of the other planned spin offs we might get to see how the wizarding world works in other countries because the film does highlight a bit of a cultural difference between the two countries even within the wizarding community, for example, muggles are referred to as no-mag’s and wizards are forbidden to marry into non-wizarding families, I always wondered where Voldemort got that idea from!

It’s made a bigger deal than it really should be because I think the film has a much more tighter focus on building this new world. In fact, to a certain extent it doesn’t feel too much like it is a part of the Harry Potter universe since there is a lot more focus on the creatures than there is on the magic. There are a few spells thrown about here and there and a few familiars than fans will recognise, however, it’s a very good thing it’s connected to the Harry Potter universe because this has been its own separate thing and I think we would have called it a Harry Potter rip off.

I’m not going to lie, I thought this film brought a lot to the table that hadn’t been in the Harry Potter franchise up to this point, for example, Jacob being the first muggle character to really be heavily involved in the plot. It’s a really interesting idea to see how a muggle would react to discovering this world and how it works, plus, because he is so tied to Newt all the time it again serves as a really good way to get exposition out without it seeming forced. That being said, however, he does potentially have the tendency to slip in to being generic comic relief, luckily he never falls in to that category he is actually kind of useful to the plot. Newt also makes a really good main character, he is very likeable and endearing. Especially with him writing a book for the wizarding world so they understand magical creatures better. The trailers and posters made him out to be like a monster hunter, but in actuality he is much more of an animal conservationist, he more wants to understand and preserve the beasts than hunt them down and it’s really interesting to see how his mind works. It’s almost like looking at the wizarding world Jane Goodall. There are a few characters though that I don’t think work quite as well, mainly the Goldstein sisters, I don’t know, they just seem a bit too generic for my taste, I did like Seraphina played by Carmen Ejogo, but I felt Porpentina was a bit generic in places, I have seen this character in a lot of films and I don’t really think she brings anything new to the table, she is just kind of there! My other big problem is in the villain department. The villains in this film are really weak, in fact there is a plot twist that you can see coming part way down the line in regards to the villains, which I won’t dare spoil, but all I can say is don’t look on IMDB it probably gives it away. There is one villain who is introduced early on and is then discarded for the rest of the film and we then move over to Percival Graves who is played by Colin Farrell who is such a moustache twirling villain I’m surprised he gets away with so much without anyone suspecting anything at all it really is a massive suspention of disbelief and he is just not that interesting a villain. The Harry Potter villains may have been absolutely insane but they were more memorable for that reason. Don’t get me wrong, Colin Farrell does a fine enough job in the role, he does what he needs to but he is certainly nowhere near as interesting as Voldemort or the Death Eaters, mind you it’s very difficult to follow-on from the wizarding Nazis. There is one other plot twist which is thrown in there, which I admit is actually quite good and works for the most part and I actually liked the cult of orphans than want to stamp out the wizarding world before they invade the humans but they don’t feel like they hold much significance until later on in the film and it feels like a missed opportunity, honestly I think you could get rid of Graves and just have these guys be the villains and it would be much more interesting.

The star of the show, however, are the beasts themselves which is where the most imagination has been put in place. Incidentally I would also like to say that the cynical side of me does think that they were designed in order to sell toys again, however, knowing Rowling, I think she has put a lot of effort in to the concepts of these characters, though a couple of them are “so adorable and we can sell them at Christmas”, highlighted by the ending of the film which I won’t spoil, but put it this way, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the products from this film are in some shops by the end of the year. The only other thing that doesn’t really work about the film is M.A.C.U.S.A. which are the American equivalent to the Ministry of Magic that are introduced in the film who are made up of really bland cameos that don’t add much to the film and in fact these guys are even worse than the Ministry of Magic and the Hogwarts staff, and those guys were freakin idiots, these guys never seem to pick the right thing to do, highlighted by a bone idle stupid move in the middle portion of the film.

I’m probably making it sound like I didn’t really enjoy the film’s plot, but the plot is actually quite good, it’s nice, simple, stable and with a bit of intrigue, virtually everything that was good about the early Harry Potter films and doesn’t have too much of the darker edge as the later ones did so I think it will appeal to a more mass audience than some of the later Harry Potter films did and overall I actually appreciated the more simplified plot. Is it anything amazing? Not really, but it does its job and it does its job pretty well and some scenes are fantastic, especially the scenes involving the capturing of the beasts.

As for the cast, they are pretty good overall. I actually think the cast as a whole is pretty good. I have already mentioned that I think Colin Farrell does a good job despite the fact that he is given poor material to work with. I think most of the female performances including Katherine Waterston, Fine Frenzy, Samantha Morton and Carmen Ejogo all deliver their parts pretty well but I always think that J K Rowling has the opposite effect of James Cameron, whereas James Cameron writes women better than he writes men, I think Rowling has a tendency to write men better than she does women. Feel free to challenge me on that point, and I know that Hermione is a good character in the books anyway and yes I know I said I hadn’t read the books, I have been getting my information from the Lost in Adaptation episodes! But I really got a sense of that in this film mainly because my favourite characters and performances were Ezra Miller who does a really amazing creepy performance and further cements to me that he is an actor who we should be looking out for especially now he has got the part of Flash in the DC movies, Dan Fogler, who is a really likeable character and especially Eddie Redmayne, who for me is probably alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, the best British actor working today. Eddie manages to deliver a brilliantly physical performance in this film which is especially outstanding considering he is having to often work with computer effects that are going to be added in later which he can’t see, and I know a lot of actors are doing that these days, but Eddie really makes it seem like he is actually physically interacting with these effects and it adds more credence to the effects overall, it also helps that he is playing a very likeable character so his likeable personality is allowed to shine through. There is one thing I can say about him though, and that is, he does seem to be getting rather typecast and I think he needs to make sure that he does keep his roles as expanded as some of his best performances like The Theory of Everything and The Danish Girl. There’s not really much more to say about the cast, they all do pretty good jobs, though there are a few I having mentioned, including a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ Gemma Chan cameo who, members in the cinema I was in were saying “oh, it’s her from humans” and especially the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ John Voight cameo, who was only in there for about 3 scenes. How the hell do you get John Voight and only use him 3 times!! Of course, I wanted way more Ron Perlman than I got, though he does deliver a very good motion capture performance.

Speaking of which, the effects are actually really quite good in this film. The spell effects are very familiar to anyone who has seen the Harry Potter films, particularly the Deathly Hallows films since a lot of the spells from that film seem to have been carried over to this one. The beast effects can look a bit fake at times, but as I mentioned, Redmayne’s performance adds a bit of credibility to them and the CG backgrounds are at least pretty to look at times, plus I really appreciated the period accuracy with 1920’s New York which is really good, I wouldn’t be surprised if this film gets a nomination at the Oscars in the costume design department since the costumes are all very good. The film’s score is also rather a surprise, and fits in with the setting really well, while we do a traditional music score with some renditions of John Williams original compositions, we also get a few Jazz songs to reflect the 1920’s New York setting.

It’s actually a brilliantly presented film and it also still fits in with the aesthetic of the Harry Potter movies just with a bit of an American facelift. There is one thing I will say, however, I don’t think there is as much of Rowling’s imagination this time round. There are still some very imaginative ideas there, but I felt like there was a little more effort to make the wizarding world seem completely different from the muggle world. This one seems like it’s trying to blend the 2 in a bit of a hybrid and that to me seems more like an episode of American Dragon than it does Harry Potter. To sum up then, unlike most of the critics, I don’t love Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but I do really like it. It’s not a brilliant movie by any stretch of the imagination, it’s very passable and does its job, and it’s good to watch. I won’t be rushing out to see it again though and I’m pretty glad I didn’t go to see the film in 3D since I think there are very few moments where the 3D would have actually paid off. It’s a very nice, charming film that will entertain the family, the plot is pretty decent, despite the fact that it needed better villains, and it’s really propped up by some good effects and a fantastic performance from Eddie Redmayne. If you like the Harry Potter films you will get something out of this, though newcomers, stay away, you need to have seen the other Harry Potter films for it to make sense and it’s clearly made with those fans in mind. It’s a very good film and I am kind of glad that the sequel has already been confirmed, which I will go and see.

Mini review time. I have only got 1 this week because I only got chance to see 1 more film before I went on Holiday. It’s Asperger action film, The Accountant.

Well, that’s my thoughts on these films. If you have an opinion on them please feel free to comment, I try to reply to as many as possible though I can’t make any promises. I do enjoy a healthy debate though.

Thanks a lot for reading my review, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and now I am off to King’s Cross to watch some idiot try to run at the pillar between platform 9 and 10.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“POKEMON THE MOVIE: HOOPA AND THE CLASH OF AGES”

This year marks a lot of anniversaries and one of the big ones celebrated back in February was the 20th anniversary of Pokémon. Now I haven’t made this clear in the past, but I love Pokémon. As a child in the 1990’s, I was surrounded by the stuff, I had the games, watched the Anime, I brought the trading cards and I went to see all the movies in the cinemas, bar number 3, and all the ones that went beyond that never got a UK cinema release. For something that was a big part of my life, I felt I could net let something like this go past without commemorating it and even considered doing a retrospective where I reviewed all the Pokémon movies, however, other reviewers have done that anyway and I don’t think I would be able to add anything new to it, since my opinions on the films seem to echo everyone elses; or at least everyone who is in the fandom. Also, the other problem is that I don’t have much to say about the other Pokémon movies. The big problem is that once you get past number 4, the others are actually kind of just there, nothing about them really feels big or cinematic in fact, if anything, they often feel like extended episodes and none of them feel that memorable, with the exception of Movie 8, Luccario and the Mystery of Mew, which I thought was a pretty good film, aside from the twist ending which I thought was a bit forced and didn’t close the story in the best way possible. The first 4 are the ones that stick in the minds of most fans since we have queued up for ages to see them in the cinemas, sometimes going on opening weekends just to get that rare trading card, so as such, I will give my brief thoughts on the first 4 movies:

• First movie, is really memorable, had some great animation, the film score is fantastic and it feels more than just an extended episode, giving us some real high stakes. What’s wrong with it? The villain can be quite hypocritical, the plot is actually kind of stupid when you stop and think about it and full of tons of plot holes and the anti-fighting message was just down right stupid and flew in the face of what Pokémon is.
   
• Second movie, arguably is even better. It fixes a lot of the problems, though it still does that ‘the chosen one plot’ that even by that time was getting tiresome and old and something that really needs to die, but again, what is with the anti-collecting message. The slogan of the show is ‘gotta catch em all’, oh and a zero villain that has absolutely no presence whatsoever.
   
• Third movie, easily the best of the bunch, it’s one of the few times I would say it’s a genuinely good movie, and I still think, to this day, it’s a really good movie to watch as it gives us an interesting idea of how Pokémon can affect a little girl with PTSD, and Entei is probably one of the best antagonists in Pokémon history simply by the fact that he is not that much of a villain. I just love it.
   
• Fourth movie, sucks, it’s basically just a rip-off of Princes Mononoke with a terrible villain, and the CG animation is awful.

All that aside, with this latest Pokémon available to buy on Blu Ray and it being technically a new release for this year, I can review it and I want to know if this one is good.

Hoopa and the Clash of Ages takes place during the X and Y story arc, but don’t worry, if you have not been up to date with them, Pokémon is so episodic that you won’t need to have watched the series to know what is going on, in fact you will only need it for basic knowledge of the individual characters. I haven’t watched that much of X and Y, simply because, after we got to about the 4th of 5th season, it was very clear that Ash was never going to win a tournament again and that the show was never going to evolve. If you want proper story telling in a Pokémon setting, get the Pokémon Adventures Manga, they are actually pretty good. Hoopa and the Clash of Ages deals with the legendary Pokémon Hoopa, who one day, takes Ash, Pikachu, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie, to a city in the dessert where they meet up with Hoopa’s caretakers Baraz and Mire. Hoopa was a legendary Pokémon who had his power confined to a bottle, after he became egotistical and started challenging legendary Pokémon to battles and their family has been guarding it and trying to raise it to be a more sensible and well-adjusted Pokémon, however, its darker side has started to take on a form of its own and its now heading for an all-out clash with both sides summoning legendary Pokémon from almost every era of Pokémon. With a promise like that, this sounds like a fan boys dream, it really isn’t. Yes, I am of the opinion that this is one of the weaker Pokémon movies and it’s a shame because I really wanted something much better. With the Anime being nearly 20 years old you would think the show would have evolved by now, but these movies have really gotten to a stage where they completely feel like studio mandates and there has to be at least one movie every season.

This is not helped by the film’s time length, the film is only 75 minutes long, including credits and it’s really not enough time to give us a decent story line. In fact, it’s got a lot of problems that the shows had over the years, but it feels like in this confined space, they are being exacerbated. The dialogue is very exposition heavy, most of the characters don’t have much of a personality, even the new film only characters and unlike many of the other films, it really doesn’t feel like there is much pay off to the big battle. That’s mainly because the other films at least gave us a decent arc for at least one character, this one doesn’t even have that really. I suppose Hoopa gets a bit of a character arc but he is not that interesting. He is meant to be a Genie-like Pokémon since this is meant to be a part of the world of Pokémon similar to Egypt and Arabia, ignoring the fact that there has already been a wish granting Genie Pokémon introduced before this! It also feels a bit of a plot hole considering that the Unova region, which is where this season of Pokémon is taking place, was meant to be modelled on France, which means the setting feels incredibly out of place. It’s just a really boring plot! The problem is that is has not real sense of urgency, it has an idea for a big climatic battle between several legendary Pokémon on different sides, but it doesn’t really have a way to get us there. One comment I heard a lot about Batman V Superman which I reviewed earlier this year was that the actual fight between Batman and Superman was really good, but they hadn’t created a decent plot to get us up to that point and there wasn’t really a good reason for them to be fighting, now while I kind of disputed that as I said in my review, that is pretty much how I felt about the big climatic fight in this film. The actual clash between the legendary Pokémon is amazing, and it’s a treat for Pokémon fans, even if it does feel like that one friend of yours that caught all the legendary Pokémon and then would only ever use them in battle which meant you could beat him easily because you bothered to train your Pokémon, but it’s all still really good, it’s a shame then that it’s also a very passive experience, which is not something I really want to say about a Pokémon movie.

It really doesn’t feel like there is much heart and passion put into it. The film has been directed by Kunihiko Yuyama who has been a long time executive director of the Pokémon franchise, and I don’t think a lot of the current problems with the Pokémon anime can be laid down to its localisation. The plot is clearly kind of flawed and I don’t believe this will satisfy Pokémon fans, especially considering this is the most recent DVD and Blu Ray release. I think the biggest problem with the plot is the main characters. Ash feels like he really has little to no reason to be in this film and it also seems rather weird that he can just get legendary Pokémon on his side and that they are completely willing to work with him. Also the way they get the legendary Pokémon to appear is really a sense of  ‘the plot demands it, so they are there’ type scenario. It’s just all really dull and I don’t like saying that about a Pokémon film because there has been a lot of really good Pokémon stuff in recent memory and this feels like a massive step backwards.

As expected, I saw the film in the English dub, I have not experienced seeing the film in its sub-title version, nor do I have much experience watching Pokémon in sub-titles, so I was going to watch the dub anyway, however sub purists may be disappointed to find out that the Blu Ray version that I watched does not have to option to swap to the Japanese language, you have to watch the dub and if you don’t like the Pokémon’s dub, well you are out of luck. The original Pokémon dub may have been a bit ropey at times and made a few censorship changes that I can’t fully agree with, but I think there was a charm to it that is really missing with this current dub cast. That is especially in the casting of Team Rocket who are played by Michelle Knotz and James Carter Cathcart who dual roles both James and Meowth. There is nothing too wrong with their performances, but they don’t sound too right for the roles, especially to my ear, someone who watched the Anime, way back in the day. I don’t have much of a complaint with the dub cast in the roles other that those, although I will say that Lori Phillips laugh in the role of Hoopa got annoying real fast. Sara Natochene is trying really hard to be Ash but Veronica Taylor, she aint!!

If there is one thing I can praise this new Pokémon movie for, it’s the animation. The animation is very good and it’s actually one of the few anime I have seen in recent memory that has a good mix of 3D and 2D animation. There is no real downside to the animation, plus the film has to do a lot of Pokémon and it does it really well and it feels like an upgrade from the shows animation, helping to give more of a movie vibe. That’s really all I can say about that.

The soundtrack is awful. We get terrible songs during the opening and closing credits, and the iconic Pokémon theme, which has been re-done for the show at the point this film was premiering at is nowhere to be found. What a shame, I was looking forward to that. The closing credit song is alright, but it is not brilliant, although closing credit songs on Pokémon films do feel usually out of place, unless they are specifically written for the film, like Tomorrow Will Come, from the 3rd movie or the Power of One by Donna Summer for the 2nd film.

Hoopa and the Clash of Ages is a film that has a really good fight scene and that’s about it. It’s not a brilliant Pokémon film and in the words of Linkara I love Pokémon, I am willing to allow a lot with these movies, but this film really needed to give me a reason to care for why this battle of several legendary Pokémon was going on, and it didn’t really give me that. The whole film’s like a passive experience to an already waning anime and it’s not helped by the fact that there are other options for Pokémon fans that are doing a better job. I’d say that Pokémon fans should check it out just for the battle scene and it’s the one reason that I can’t bring myself to hate this film, or say it’s going to be on my worst of the year list, but it’s not one of my favourite Pokémon movies, in fact I actually think this is one of the weaker films in the catalogue.

If you love Pokémon, but feel the Anime is going downhill, just go on YouTube and watch Pokémon Generations, they are several episodes in at this point and they are really good, the episodes are only 5 minutes long, but they get a lot done in that short space of time and they feel like a big celebration of 20 years of the franchise and if you feel a need to really have something on your shelf to celebrate the 20 year anniversary, well then get the original movie trilogy box set that’s just been released on DVD and Blu Ray because those films may have their issues but at least they’re memorable

No mini reviews this week since I wrote this prior to going on Holiday but do come back on December 16th when I’ll be giving my rather late review of Harry Potter spin off Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

Thanks for reading this review and if you’ll excuse me I just got Pokémon Sun and Moon and an afternoon free.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“ARRIVAL”

Arrival has been one interesting film for a long period of time if you have been a film critic as it has been on everyone’s lips since it started its film festival circuit. The film is the latest film from director Dennis Villeneuve who is a director that has been on th’e radar in recent memory, having directed the excellent film Prisoners and last years critically acclaimed cartel drama Sicario which I wasn’t as huge a fan of as everyone else, but I know that’s my personal taste and this won’t be his last dalliance into Sci Fi since he is set to direct the upcoming Blade Runner sequel which will be out next year. So I would really like him to do well at this since he is having to direct an unnecessary sequel to one of the greatest Sci Fi movies ever made, because there are no original ideas in Hollywood anymore!! The film is based on the book ‘Story of Your Life’ written by Ted Chang, but he hasn’t got Gillian Flynn’s syndrome and has written the screenplay for his own adaptation. No, the screenplay for this film has been written by Eric Haisserer who, up until this year, I would have said was a terrible choice, having written disastrous scripts for horror remakes including the dreadful remake of ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’, the abysmal sequel ‘Final Destination 5’ and seriously, until I saw it on an Amazon Prime list earlier this year, I had no idea there was a Final Destination 5 film!! Talk about flogging a dead horse, and of course his Magnum Opus are crap the terrible 2011 prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, which nearly ruined one of my favourite horror films of all time. He has pulled things back, however, because he was one of the screenwriters on ‘Lights Out’ which, if you recall from my mini review from a few weeks back, I thought was a very good horror film. So he definitely has a good screenplay in him and based on that alone, I had some optimism for this film and his upcoming Van Helsing script. The thing is though, you want to give an opinion of what it is like going in to see this film, but it’s very difficult because the trailers give away very little, in fact we don’t get a glimpse of the Aliens, we don’t really know much of what is going to happen in the plot, so the only people who really have an idea of what is going on, is people who have read the book, which or course, since I’m incredibly Dyslexic, I haven’t. However, I like this, with so many trailers giving away so much of the plot now, it’s great to finally go into a film knowing virtually nothing, but this film had a lot of hype, and I have been told by people that have seen the film that it’s going to blow my mind, let’s find out if they were right.

Arrival takes place in the not too distant future where 12 ships have arrived at 12 locations on the planet to make first contact with humanity. Unclear of their purpose, Colonel Weber (played by Forest Whitaker) hires linguist Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) along with Ian Donnnelly (played by Jeremy Renner) to decipher the language, establish communication and discover these Alien’s purpose in contacting humanity, are they friend or foe. That’s really all I can go into with the plot summary. This is one of the hardest films for me to review because to talk about this film in any great detail, is to spoil the best moments. In fact, in short, I would actually recommend that you go and see the film and I would like to enforce a rule that the comments section be free of any spoilers.

Now I can recommend you see the film for several reasons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like it, for example, I could believe that I think it’s something worth experiencing, or that I believe it will have an appeal to a certain audience, but I’m not necessarily that audience. However, on this occasion I’m going to say that I really did like the movie and I am recommending it.

Arrival has a really tough job to do because science fiction now has such a long and rich history that it’s very difficult to be both original or innovative. Arrival manages to achieve both and it does it very well. The reason critics are really loving this film is that it really doesn’t feel that there is much like it out there, especially, when in the past couple of years, there have been so many sequels, remakes and franchise starters coming out, which feels kind of ironic considering the film is technically an adaptation. Now granted, book adaptations are nothing new, especially when it comes to science fiction, just take a look at the truckload of adaptations of films based on Philip K Dick novels, but somehow this film, still felt to me, like it had been made for the cinema. I know I haven’t read the book that the film is based on so I can’t judge it as an adaptation, however, despite the fact that this film has a very long running time, at the time I went to see it IMDB lists it as being 2 hours long, however, I personally believe the film is at 2hr 30mins long judging by the time I left my screening. It doesn’t, however, change the fact that the film manages to cram a lot into its time, yet the story feels fluid and to the point and really can hook you in. The beginning though, has a rather slow pace and really tries to dazzle you with its imagery, which we will get into later, along with the special effects, however, it knows it can’t rely on that and in the second half of the film it really hooks you in with the story. It unfolds at a brisk pace, giving reveal after reveal. In fact, there is a massive plot twist later on in the film that completely changes the movie and makes you rethink scenes that you have seen previously, like good plot twists are meant to do and I think if you haven’t read the book, the twist will really warrant re-watches of this film. The film builds and builds and it builds to a really good conclusion that wraps up the film rather nicely.

There are a couple of unanswered questions, but I think for the most part the story is self-contained enough that it will leave audiences satisfied. It also helps that the characters in the film react to events in a rather genuine and believable way. None of the characters are perfect and none of them are really incredibly flawed which made the believability of the scenario all the more real. Plus, it meant that I had something to root for and the film feels like a very realistic look at how first contact with Aliens might go. If there is one thing I can say about the plot without going into spoilers, is I feel that that despite the fact there is that Alien presence there, it feels more like a film about humanity itself. It also casts aside the idea of doing a movie like Independence Day and District 9 for something closer to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Anyone who has seen the film will know what I am on about with that one. I think that’s one of the things that separates itself out from its sci fi contemporaries Other than that, I am not going to go into too much detail, all I will say is I think it’s best to go into this film blind, having known nothing about it. Hell you could even watch the trailers for this film and you will be fine, since many of the scenes in the trailers and the clips which have been seen on talk shows have been heavily edited to change the way the scene goes and the scene appears differently in the final film, for example, we don’t really see what the Aliens look like in the trailer, however, the Aliens are quickly revealed towards the beginning of the film, but the build up to that reveal is done very well. Overall I think it’s a very well written film with some incredibly well written moments and I would be very surprised if this film is not nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at next year’s Oscars.

As for the actors, I will say that this film isn’t going to earn any Oscar nominations in the acting categories but I don’t think that’s down to their acting ability, I think it’s down to how the Academy tends to decide what makes a good performance and I think the performances in this film are actually dam good, especially Amy Adams who seems like she is carrying the film most of the time. Special mentions should also go to Jeremy Renner who is on top form once again and is proving that he is more than just Hawkeye in the Marvel movies. Forest Whitaker gives one of his better performances in a long time and I really hope he is going to be carrying this over to Rogue One next month. Michael Stuhlbarg delivers a really good performance in the film as well and I had forgotten how good an actor he really is having been first exposed to him in Law and Order where I also felt he gave fantastic performances. I’m also going to be giving special mention to Tzi Ma playing Chinese general Shang in a small role, who does deliver a really great performance. The rest of the cast do a decent job with their performances and I think overall it’s a very good cast list.

As for the effects, they are really good. The effects aren’t anything too amazing since I think there are several films who have effects just as good as this one, but I would be doing them a disservice if I didn’t say the effects really work. I will say, however, that what really sells it is the really good set design and the absolutely fantastic cinematography. This film has some really good cinematography and I think it will be up for an award or two on that part, which is highlighted especially by an early tracking shot, which is fantastic, and when we first see the interior of the ship. It’s really an excellent film to see for that reason alone and the film has a really visual flair and style all of its own, plus the music score was also really very good.

Are there any issues with Arrival? Without going into spoilers I think the pacing can be off at times and there are a couple of plot conveniences but I think they were explained well enough and they didn’t distract too much from the final product. I really, really enjoyed this film, Arrival is a very innovative and smart science fiction film. This had some great writing, fantastic cinematography, some really good performances and plot twists that will really warrant repeat viewings. It has been so difficult to talk about this without going into spoilers, but I think this film is coming out at the right time for the right audience and it tells a very interesting story that will resonate with a lot of people. I would say, for the visual flair alone, this is one film to try and see on a cinema screen since I don’t think it will play as well on a Television screen. It’s really cool, really interesting and I don’t think there will be another film like it for the rest of the year. Check this one out.

“Well, no mini review this week, since I had to pack in a lot of work before I go on holiday.”

Thanks for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and I am on VACATION, WOO HOO.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“A STREET CAT NAMED BOB”

This was a film I was genuinely looking forward to, the main reason being that I really loved the true story the film is based on, which is almost hard to avoid considering the amount of appearances James Bowen and Bob have made on daytime shows like This Morning, BBC Breakfast and all sorts of others. The film, based on the book has been in development for some time. It is directed by Roger Spottiswoode who hasn’t directed too many films you may have heard of, but he is certainly a long time director, his only major credit as a director being the Bond film ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’, which, if I am honest is only an average Bond film. He also directed the Arnold Schwarzenegger film ‘The 6th Day’ which was basically Schwarzenegger trying to recapture the magic of Total Recall. The screenplay itself has been written by the team of Tim John and Maria Nation, both of whom have mostly worked on TV scripts, though the latter has written a lot of TV movies. With the film having rather an interesting creative team behind it, to say the least, it is also aided by the fact that Bob himself actually was the cat used for the final product, something that was never planned from the start, but ended up proving so well during the brief filming that was done, that they decided to stick with it. It is also coming out at time where British Films, I think, are on a bit of a decline. Let’s face it, there’s normally a few good British films every year, but this year has been a bit barren. I’m trying to think of great British films I have seen this year, and the only one that is coming to mind is “I Daniel Blake”, which I did a mini review on in my review of Dr Strange. I was really, really hoping that this would be the one that would break that cycle, because I think the British Film Industry is really good when it is at its best. They can be really nice charming films with good staying power and before anyone mentions half of the films that could be considered, remember, I reviewed Swallow and Amazons and didn’t like it, I also mini reviewed The Girl with all the Gifts which I felt was ruined by its ending. So let’s move one and ask if “A Street Cat Named Bob” lives up to its extraordinary true story.

A Street Cat Named Bob is the true story of James Bowen (played by Luke Treadaway), a homeless drug addict who is put on emergency housing programme to help him get clean. His life is turned around, however, when a stray cat named Bob, (playing himself) breaks into his house, hungry. After he gets injured James gives his last £20 getting his anti-biotics and decides to take care of him. However, one day, he follows him on the bus and decides to take him with him busking, which ends up proving his ability to make money and they become a hit sensation on the streets of the West End of London. The rest of the film is James’s trials of trying to reconnect with his father’s side of the family (his father played by Anthony Head) as well as get clean. I think the trailers did a good job of selling this film, being a bit too heavy with elements towards the end of the film, but that was hardly avoidable considering how much of a broadcasted story this is, especially on British Television. However, I don’t believe the posters and the TV advertising have sold the film that well. I was in the very first screening on the opening day at the Liverpool Odeon and I was rather puzzled to find there were a lot more younger children in the audience than I was expecting and I will go into a bit more detail on my thoughts on that a bit later on in the review. The big question I have to ask myself though is what are my thoughts on A Street Cat Named Bob? My biggest thought is, this film is going to struggle to find an audience. It tries to be both cheesy and a heart-warming true story, but it also tries to be a bit of a hard hitting drama, so any one going in for the fun ride will be rather taken aback and people looking for the latter won’t appreciate a lot of the cheesier moments. It’s weird though, that’s precisely the reason I liked it. I thought it hit the perfect balance between the two. OK, this film was never going to show the explicit side to drug addiction, you would never be able to show that and get a 12a rating, but I was surprised by how far it went with it , which I fear parents may have a problem with their kids seeing this film for that reason. Parents may also be shocked because the posters and the afore-mentioned TV advertising does not really show a lot of this side of the film. It’s kind of obvious to anyone who is half aware of the story, but it still doesn’t change that factor. That being said, however, I thought they did an excellent job portraying drug addiction and what it takes to get yourself out of that environment and the support necessary in order to get clean. James, really does manage a massive turnaround of his life because of Bob and the film makers go to great lengths to tell the story well, and not without pulling their punches.

There are some rather dark scenes towards the beginning and the end of the film, again, people expecting a cheesy film might be rather taken aback by this. However, I think it’s really good, for that reason and I think it will be a good anti-drug message to kids. I’ve certainly seen worse drug public service announcements (or PSA’s when abbreviated) out there. I’m certainly more comfortable with kids watching this than I am with them watching Trolls! Don’t expect too many more digs about that movie for the rest of year, I only have about 4 or 5 more reviews before my best and worst of lists. Anyone going for a cheesy drama, you are going to love it, it’s rather clichéd, but let’s face it, it was always going to be like that this is a very heavily over dramatized version of this guy’s life. That was always going to be the case. I may not have read the actual book that the film is based on, however, I am rather aware of some of the changes made and I don’t believe they affect the story in too negative a way. I think a lot of people forget that a true story doesn’t have to be 100% accurate, it just has to tell the story and tell it well and be respectful to the actual true life events. That’s the only reason I get mad, when a film like Patch Adams tells a heavily fictionalised version of the story, making a lot of changes to the actual events that happened because in that instance the film was being very disrespectful to the man it was based on and the true story. This, however, is very respectful to James and Bob’s story. I really liked a lot of the moments in this film, it has some good writing, some good pacing and it feels like it earns a lot of its best moments. I ironically thought there was really good chemistry between Bob and Luke Treadaway in this film, which is what really sold it and I take my hats off to the crew because it must have taken a lot of training to get Bob that trusting of Luke and that is coming from someone who has got a Degree in Animal Behaviour and Welfare.

There are a couple of issues I have with the story though, overall, there are no major faults that I can think of, but there are a couple of nit pics, for example, I liked the relationship between James and his support worker Val (played by Joanne Froggatt) but I wasn’t too engaged with the romance sub plot with Elsie (who is played by Ruth Sheen). I think it’s down to 2 factors, the first being, Elsie’s character is the sort of person I wouldn’t get along with if I actually met her in real life (that’s a personal gripe from my end) and I also felt that they could have added this character without them having romantic feelings for one another, it does feel quite intrusive, though at least she has a purpose in the plot which is why I didn’t find it too upsetting. The story also feels incredibly believable. Many of these moments feel like they could actually happen, aided by the location shots which I will go into later on down the line. What I like as well is it felt completely uncynical, this film could easily have been a major cash grab especially if it was made quite quickly after the book’s had been out. The 4 year gap between the books release and the film has aided the film greatly. I feel like, if audiences give it a go, they will have an enjoyable film, however, I feel that people will go in and not get the film they were expecting, but it is still a nice lovely story about a man and his cat and I think it will play very well at Christmas, so expect to see this one on your Television schedules in 2017. It’s just a nice story about a man and his friendship with a cat and I really enjoyed it.

As for the performances, they are all brilliant as well. Luke Treadaway plays an excellent drug addict and a man desperate to be clean, and as I mentioned earlier, he has great chemistry with the cat and his fellow cast members. Treadaway had a few bumps in the past, he was in the awful remake of Clash of The Titans but I did enjoy his performance in Attack The Block and this year has really made me a fan of him. In the space of a week, I saw 2 films that he appeared in and he delivered great performances in both, we will go into that 2nd film in my mini reviews. Treadaway is really an actor you should be looking out for though and I really would not object to him getting a BAFTA nomination on the back of this film because he gave a very good performance. Bob the cat is great as you would expect and having the actual Bob in the film helps the authenticity of it, let’s face it, it would have been very difficult to get a cat this well trained to do these tricks and it was clearly great at saving the production staff a lot of time and money because it would have not been too difficult to recondition Bob into doing half of his tricks with Luke Treadaway. Joanne Froggatt also gives an excellent performance and I really enjoyed her in this film and I may have a problem with Ruth Sheen’s character but at least she played it well and she got a decent character arc to work with. One of the surprise brilliant performances was Anthony Head who, since I haven’t seen him in a lot of films recently, I forgot just how good an actor he is and if you are not sure who I am on about, he played the principal in Buffy and he was the Prime Minister in Little Britain, but I think again between those and his rather regrettable brief appearance in Ghost Rider 2 I think we’ve forgotten how good a dramatic actor he can be.

Now for the cinematography. I think the cinematography is really, really good in this film and it would have been rather difficult considering the majority of the film is clearly not shot on sets and was done on location shoots in London, particularly in Covent Garden, though I am glad they decided to go with location shots because it really makes the whole thing feel like an authentic experience. I was finding myself recognising a lot of the places since whenever I am in London I tend to go to Covent Garden whenever possible since it’s really near the cinemas I visit for my reviews. There are also a lot of shots from the cat’s perspective and they vary in their quality. Some of the times they feel a bit unnecessary and they are nowhere near as good as say, the first hand perspective of the kid in Room, however, I do appreciate the attempt made. I would say, the issue is, however, the cat noises have clearly been dubbed in after the fact and they often can feel quite intrusive because it’s obvious the cat isn’t actually making a noise, but that’s only a minor nit pic. I was also amazed that for a film shot almost entirely on location in London there were very few product placements. The only major product placements in the film are the Big Issue Magazine and Waterstones and I appreciated the restraint, especially considering that it would have been easy to get a ton of product placements in the filming of London, but if they had done, it would have been incredibly distracting.

Are there any other negatives I can think of? Yes, there are a couple, there are a couple of scenes where I felt Bob was added for no good reason and his presence in one or two scenes felt a little intrusive, however, on the whole, this really didn’t bother me. I really liked A Street Cat Named Bob, it’s a good feel good film that I would like to put on every so often. It’s a good balance of cheese with hard hitting drama which means it will appeal to a large audience and it’s a very interesting portrayal of drug addiction and people trying to get clean and I think if you don’t go in aware that there are going to be some hard hitting scenes of drug addiction and homelessness you are going to be rather shocked by the film. However, I had a really good time seeing this film. It’s not breaking any new grounds and it’s not a master work of film making, but it’s just a really good story of one man and his cat, I recommend it.

“So that’s all the films I saw this week. What are your thoughts, please leave a comment if you have an opinion on any of the films I have mentioned, I would love to know what you think?”

As for the next review, this is a little earlier than I expected. Come back on 17th November which as you would expect if you regularly follow my reviews, I am going on Holiday so we are going to be having a little hiatus. I have been told this film is one to watch out for at the next Oscars. I am going Sci-Fi and will be reviewing “Arrival”

Thanks a lot for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and now I am going to try and train my cat to sit on my shoulder while I play the guitar!!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“DOCTOR STRANGE”

I have been reviewing films for 2 years now and that means that I have really been given the chance to see how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has evolved, but I have never really stated why I enjoy these films as much as I do. It’s not just because I am a big comic nerd and these are finally the films that do justice to the comics. When you get down to it, the Marvel films are just good fun, they’re flashy good natured films that a lot of people can enjoy and it’s not at the expense of the audience’s intelligence, something that all good blockbusters should be, but aren’t. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven so successful that it was decided for Phase 3, tons of new characters would be introduced and would even get their own films, which we are already beginning to see in the previously reviewed Captain America Civil War with the introduction to the MCU of Spiderman and Black Panther who will each receive their own films between them, over the next 2 years. Dr Strange, however was a film that fans were expecting to come along after Steven Strange’s name was mentioned as part of a hydra watch list in Captain America the Winter Soldier, so fans were naturally expecting him to get his own movie, or at least turn up at some point. Sure enough, when Phase 3 was announced it was decided that the first character to get their own movie would be Dr Strange and he was going to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, a casting decision that I thought was absolutely perfect. Cumberbatch not only looks the part, but I was certain he could act the part too.

Marvel, this time has had a team of writers and directors that are all working on the MCU, and for this film they have decided to go with the directing and writing team behind the Sinister movies, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on your opinion of the Sinister movies. This is something that was slightly concerning for me considering that horror directors don’t tend to make great action movie directors, see the efforts of M Night Shyamalan with the last Airbender and John Woo with Dragon Ball Evolution. Nevertheless, the MCU hasn’t really let me down yet and I am still of the opinion that there are no terrible movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s November placing is almost as if to prove you can make a blockbuster almost any time of the year and will start a trend of Marvel movies that will be released in the Autumn and Winter every year. The same slot next year is going to be taken up by the upcoming Thor Wagner Rock as part of a trio of Marvel movies that are going to be released. Now, I am not that big a Dr Strange fan, but I enjoy the character, and I concede that it is very difficult to bring the character to life any other time them now considering how special effects have come along, they have waited very hard to interpret comic creator Steven Ditko’s vision, hence why the TV pilot from the 70’s failed miserably but with everything on the table, how can Dr Strange measure up, especially considering that we had a fantastic Marvel movie earlier this year with the previously reviewed Captain America Civil War?

Dr Stephen Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is a cocky, arrogant, but brilliant Neuro surgeon, that is until he has a car accident that destroys his hands, causing them the uncontrollably shake so as a result he cannot perform surgery anymore. In a desperate attempt to fix himself he travels to Katmandu in Nepal and seeks out The Ancient One (played by Tilda Swinton). The Ancient One takes him under her tutorage to teach him sorcery as a way to cleanse his soul, however, there are bigger problems on the horizon with a forbidden ritual from one of the books being stolen by former master Kaecilius (played by Mads Mikkelsen). Now Strange and The Ancient One must work together to prevent Kaecilius from destroying the barriers that hold the multiverse together.

Dr Strange, like Captain America Civil War before has a really hard task on his hands, since not only does he have to establish Strange and his cast of characters but it also has to introduce the concept of the mystical side of the Marvel Universe to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something that up until this point had been entirely absent. Luckily I feel the film does that and does it successfully. The big strength in this is the fact that the film feels contained, unlike Civil War that seemed to merge all sorts of sides of the Marvel Universe this one has much more focus on this particular story, there are very little references to MCU as a whole, with a few exceptions, there are a couple outside of the post credit scenes which mainly revolve around some references to the end of Civil War, the Avengers Tower being in the background shots of New York and the Avengers being referenced themselves. The only other major tie into the MCU that appears here is the inclusion of one of the Infinity Stones, which is still building up to the 3rd Avengers movie which has been confirmed to no longer be called Infinity War.

Let’s go into some detail. What did I like about this movie? Quite a lot, for someone who is not really a Dr Strange fan, I really felt like they gave him a lot to work with and I really enjoyed this movie. You don’t need an amazing understanding of Dr Strange’s back story, they go through it pretty well and a lot faster than I expected. In fact, Dr Strange’s accident that destroys his hands is about less than 10 minutes into the movie, but the film actually does run at a pretty good pace which is what is to be expected of the MCU at this point. The film really takes its time to be a character piece for Dr Strange himself, the story is one of reflection and redemption and while we have seen the story done a few times, I think Cumberbatch really makes it his own. I don’t think his character learns his lesson in the same way that has been done a lot of times. I also, once again, really enjoyed some of the supporting cast, including Wong, played by Benedict Wong, who is an excellently written comic relief who has some great chemistry with Benedict Cumberbatch and I really enjoyed Mordo in this film, who is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who seems to finally be back on form. One of the things that I think fans might be surprised by is that Rachel McAdams is not really in the film all that much, this is rather surprising considering that her role was very played out when the cast was announced and in the advertising, Tilda Swinton gets way more screen time and she is relegated to the ‘and’ part of the poster. The film does sort of build and build to a climax but the problem is that the build-up is a bit too good, there are some brilliant scenes down the line and as a result, when we finally get to the finale of the film, it feels like an anti-climax. It does still have a pretty good pay off though and as usual the film is as entertaining as hell, Marvel is great at making these films so accessible that they just work to such a large scale audience. The film blends with tons of great action and character and it also never forgets to have a sense of humour. It’s one of those films where you can just sit back, relax and enjoy the movie. I do think some people may struggle to connect with Strange initially since I think they make him too much of an arse at the beginning of the film, but at least he gets a decent arc and they don’t make him a stereo typical cocky arsehole where he is cocky and has absolutely no reason to be in that state, we at least see him be a skilful Neuro Surgeon. Comic fans will get a kick out of the references and general audiences will just get a great story, oh, and of course, another brilliant Stan Lee cameo. Plus, once again, the greatest thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that they don’t take themselves too seriously, which ironically leads to the audience taking it more seriously, but then again, they do say if it isn’t broken, you shouldn’t fix it!!

Is there any major fault that I can think of with the film, not a major fault, but I do think this film falls into one trap that the MCU has had for quite a while, the villains! I am surprised that a film that has the main villain being played by Mads Mikkelsen has a villain that is this dull. Granted, he is not as bad or as forgettable as say, the Dark Elves from Thor of the Dark World or the Mandarin from Iron Man 3, or even the worst film, the Abomination from The Incredible Hulk, but I think he will be joining future lists, because I don’t really get that much off him, there’s not even that much motivation behind his actions, except he feels betrayed by the Ancient One and wants to merge the Multiverses together to create a world where everyone is immortal under the rule of Dormammu. Yes, Dormammu is in this movie and his prescence means Kaecilius is even more under-played as a result. You can’t put in one of the biggest, baddest villains in Marvel and have him be relegated to the side lines like this. It’s another case of Marvel putting so much emphasis on the hero that they forget to work on the villain. He’s not awful, in fact he gets some badass moments that work to his favour and Mads Middelsen really plays this part well, but I really felt that this film needed a better villain. Overall, that’s my only real complaint with the film, I actually really enjoyed the plot of this film which is what I can pretty much say about every MCU film, with possibly one exception.

Now let’s talk about the cast. I said Benedict Cumberbatch was the perfect casting choice and I think I was right, because he absolutely nails it. Fans of his work in Sherlock will probably be able to connect with it very quickly considering he is playing a very similar character to his version of Sherlock Holmes, but I think anyone saying he is playing Sherlock with a cape and magic powers is way off. Cumberbatch is one of my favourite actors right now just because of his versatility and every film he is in in elevated by his presence even if the script can sometimes be ropey and he really delivers to this film and a poorly acted Dr Strange would have thrown the entire film off, even if I think he does seem to dip in and out of his American accent. Chiwetel Ejiofor is really great as Mordo and I’m really glad for him because he is a really good actor and I feel his last few film roles have been rather beneath his talent, so it’s great to see him back in a film which really knows how to use his strengths. Rachel McAdams delivers a decent performance but it feels like her role has been bigged up a bit too much. Mads Mikkelsen is given a poor role but at least he attempts to put his all into the film and of course he is once again memorable, if you are looking at this and think you have seen him before somewhere, he played Laschifre in the Daniel Craig Bond film, Casino Royale, and he also gets some bad ass make-up. By far the best member of the supporting cast for me was Benedict Wong who is an actor I believe should be more well known, considering he has done some excellent supporting roles in several films and TV shows especially on British Television and keep an eye for him, he is going to be appearing in the new series of Black Mirror, which has sadly not been renewed by Channel 4 so has had to go to NetFlix. Let’s talk about the most controversial casting though, Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, many people were quick to accuse Marvel of whitewashing when they took a role that in the comics was a Tibetan Man and they changed the character to be a Celtic woman. Tilda’s biggest problem is that her character is given a back story that is not quite developed but is constantly alluded to, which means that I don’t believe she knows entirely what her motivation is, nevertheless, I think she plays the role very well and plays a good role as the mentor figure, the downside, however, is that I can’t really defend Marvel on this one, Marvel have even practically admitted that the role was changed so the film could be shown in China and while I do at least appreciate that the part was replaced by a good actress and she gave a good performance, it does feel rather difficult to defend Marvel on this one.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the action scenes and the effects. Dear god, this film has some amazing effects. Steve Ditko’s vision for Dr Strange really comes to life in this film, there’s tons of amazing reality bending effects and the action scenes use this completely to its advantage. They are doing a lot in this film that the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t done for at all and as a result we’re getting some amazing action scenes. This is choreographed brilliantly, the camera work is excellent, you can tell everything that is going on and the effects never look fake, which is great. You really have to tell yourself that there is a green screen effect going on, but it doesn’t feel too much like you can see the green screen in the background, even better that we get a ton of location shots that blended into the film, taking place in Nepal, London, Hong Kong and New York, because it is a Marvel production, everything in the Marvel Universe happens in New York. These effects are fantastic and I really hope the effects department are nominated for an Oscar for it.

I saw the film in 3D and I can say that if you enjoy that format, this is one you might want to check out, there are some decent 3D effects, however, I largely forgot the film was in that format by the half way point of the film and I even began to feel the effect less and less, and for that reason alone, I can also recommend the 2D version.

Is Dr Strange good? Yes I would even say that for the most part it is even dam great. It gets its main character down well, the effects are fantastic, the action scenes are really well shot, the cast is really good, the writing is very good, I enjoyed myself from start to finish and it felt like it told a complete, yet contained story, yet fitted in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe really well. The only thing that kind of holds it back is the villains, which I feel is another point where Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t quite got down outside of the NetFlix series, and Loki of course. The film is a really entertaining ride and I would really recommend you check it out, especially at the cinema since I fear some of it won’t play as well on DVD and Blu Ray. It’s a really great film and what really sells it is Cumberbatch in the lead role. Oh, and if you are going to see it, stick around for the credits, once again, there are 2 post credit scenes. The first one is in the middle and sets up one of the Marvel movies that is going to be coming out next year and the second one is at the very end which is a build up for a sequel which has not yet been confirmed, however, I wouldn’t worry because they are probably going to announce it’s going to be 2021 within a week of this film being out in America.

Right, let’s talk about the other films I have seen since coming back from the London Film Festival. Since I had a lot of time on my hands, I managed to get a few down, so I will be talking about 3 films this time. The Warner Animations latest film Storks, Dan Brown adaptation Inferno and of course Ken Loach’s latest film I, Daniel Blake.

Storks: This being the first animated film since seeing Trolls which I reviewed last week, my standards are probably very low, so as a result I was actually kind of into this movie for a large part of it. It’s not a very good movie by any stretch of the imagination, I daresay it’s more of a mediocre film than anything else, but I think that’s because I was expecting too much of it since it’s from the same studio that gave us the Lego movie. That being said, however, there’s genuine times that made me really, really laugh and if you have kids, I definitely recommend you take them to this one over Trolls any day of the week, seriously, this was alright, the only thing that is really vulnerable is that they don’t really do much role building and the story has a lot of narrative issues, but you get extra points for casting Kelsey Grammer, that man is hilarious.

Inferno: This should be familiar to anyone who has seen the previous Dan Brown adaptations that Ron Howard has directed, especially to anyone who saw the Da Vinci Code and rather like those films, I wasn’t really into this one. It’s a really bland thriller which has some plots that you can see coming a mile away. Anyone that is familiar with Dan Brown will know that his stories tend to have very good build up and promise, but then a poor pay off, and there is no difference here, in fact it almost feels like it’s been taken to the outer degree and once again, the big problem is that the screenplay writers are pretty much forced to make more adaptations than the novel, cutting very little out of it. Expect the characters to talk a lot of exposition in a way that is fine in a novel, but does not work in a screenplay. I would only recommend it if you enjoyed the Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, if you didn’t skip it, this isn’t going to change your mind.

I, Daniel Blake: Now this is one film I really want to talk about. This is the latest film from Ken Loach, who previously has directed films like Cathy Come Home and this is another stellar film from him. This feels like a real life scenario about a man in his 50s who has had a heart attack and has been ordered not to go back to work, however, his benefits are cut because a medical examiner believes that he is well enough to work, so he has to go on to Jobseekers Allowance, looking for jobs that he can’t possibly take up. Ken Loach does an excellent commentary on the state benefit system, driving people down and demeaning them, to such an extent that they won’t go seeking benefits that they are perfectly entitled to receive. It’s also delivered by some excellent writing and excellent performances, this has honestly been one of the really amazing films this year and it’s down to some brilliant direction by Ken Loach. The only thing I will say about it though, is that it probably won’t make my Best of the Year list because rather like Foxcatcher, it’s a film that I thought was really good, but it was so depressing that I never want to see it again.

So that’s my main and my mini reviews for this week. Please leave something in the comments section if you have any opinions on the films featured.

Let’s move further into November as on 11 November, I am going to be reviewing a British film for once, based on a true story, I will be reviewing A Street Cat Named Bob, but I will also be giving my opinion on a couple of other films too, since I have already booked to see the animated film Ethel and Ernest, and that will be one of the mini reviews that I will be giving.

Thanks a lot for reading my review, I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it and look forward to 2017 because the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be returning with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spiderman Homecoming and Thor Ragnarock, man 2017 is going to kick ass.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant