It's rare to find a sci-fi / rom-com crossover - and it's even rarer to find one that's good. TiMER is excellent. Like all good speculative fiction, it changes just one aspect of the modern world - what would it be like if you knew exactly when you would meet your one-true-love? It doesn't bother much with the science part of sci-fi, it goes straight for the paradox. If you knew - really knew - something was predestined, how would that affect your life? Would you sit around waiting for life…
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There's nothing wrong with this movie. It's just so... ordinary. Partly, that's a failure of the superhero genre. They're all identical movies. I am strong enough to defeat common thieves! Here is a baddie who is somehow stronger than you! I will defeat you due to really believing in myself! Fan service post-credits scene. WW1984 hits all the tropes in all the right places. Superhero fans aren't interested in seeing anything new. They want to see the exact same story played out again and…
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An utterly superfluous movie. Have you seen Cube? Or perhaps Saw? Maybe My Little Eye? All identical. But this has put last year's zeitgeist as its title as a selling point. The major problem with this outing of the plot is that it invites us to participate in a puzzle but provides none of the clues. A good story lets the audience guess the answer just a second before the cast. Or, at least, make the answer obvious in retrospect. But, in Escape Room, we just get people shouting at each…
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A group of college kids staying at a riverside cabin are menaced by a swarm of deadly zombie beavers. The moment that the zombie beavers deliberately chewed through the phone lines in order to strand our hapless heroes, I knew I was in for a treat. This is an unapologetic B-Movie. It knows exactly how much sex and violence it can cram into a 15 certificate. The female cast members mostly consist of legs, whereas the male cast members are an indistinguishable bunch of frat-boy stereotypes. …
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I hate superhero movies - let's get that out of the way first. They're a bag of clichés, where flashing lights are considered an adequate replacement for new ideas. 2017's "Logan" is the only one I've found interesting. What happens to a Superhero after they're too old for this shit? What does it mean to keep a promise to someone who doesn't remember that you made it? How do we stop our children making the same mistakes we did? The New Mutants is different to most Marvel movies. That has made …
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A group of high school students form a coven of witches. A sequel to the 1996 film, "The Craft". This bills itself as a sequel to the mid-90's classic, but it's a completely independent movie. Although it is not as dark or scary as its predecessor, it's a fun and challenging film. What starts out as shrieky-teen glee gets pretty grim pretty quickly. OK, at times, it veers into "Toxic Masculinity: The Movie!" But that is probably perfectly calibrated towards its intended audience. Aside…
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Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentI'm trying to build up my tolerance of scary movies. The Shining was pretty good - but not too scary. Now @summerbeth is making me watch An American Werewolf in London.❤️ 18💬 23♻️ 019:50 - Fri 30 October 2020 I have a theory about certain movies. Take, for example, "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace". It is not - so I theorise - a movie designed for audiences. It is a movie designed as an advert for Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects house behind the …
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In the late 1960s/early 1970s, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree. This is a rather plodding police procedural. There are a few directorial flourishes, but lacklustre compared to David Fincher's previous work. After the first hour and a quarter - which is halfway through the movie - it's clear that there's no interest in create a taut…
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I've never seen "The Shining". Or, at least, that's what I thought. It turns out that every single shot in that movie has been recycled, homage'd, and parodied in the last 40 years. It gives the whole movie a weird sense of déjà vu as your brain struggles to identify which scenes you think you've seen before. It is a beautiful and kinaesthetic film. The camera chases the action in such a way as to leave you exhausted. The fact that the characters never blink adds to the sense of intensity. T…
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Legendary performer Judy Garland arrives in London in the winter of 1968 to perform a series of sold-out concerts. It can't be stressed enough how magical a transformation Renée Zellweger goes through. Almost impossible to believe. Zellweger is nowhere to be seen or heard; it is 100% Judy. As a biopic, it straddles the fine line between reality and what we think we remember about Judy. This isn't quite a hagiography, so no one comes out of it unscathed. The plot plays out exactly as you …
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There are two contradictory ways to view this movie. It's a dumb screwball comedy, sure, but it also tries to expose the depressing underbelly of the modern world. Part of the problem is that it rarely challenges the views that it exposes. It is content to let people make fools of themselves, but never asks them to reflect on their foolishness. Nor does it give us the tools to tackle hate except through exposure and mockery. If you're a small business owner, and the shop is struggling, are…
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A group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves entangled in a real-life mystery when the shady brother of one of them is seemingly kidnapped by dangerous gangsters. This is "Smug Marrieds - The Movie". But it is so funny. Like most modern comedy movies, it is little more than a series of sketches tied together by a paper-thin plot. Weirdly, it is shot much more beautifully than you would expect. In retrospect, the plot makes zero sense. But the world is fucked up…
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