In the realm of stoner action comedies, American Ultra isn’t too bad. But what a weird genre to begin with, right? It seems sort of counter intuitive to have an action movie for stoners. Usually when you’re stoned, the last thing you want is action. You just want to laugh while you’re eating your pizza.…
A drama with a couple of laughs rather than a comedy, and more a philosophical discussion than a drama, Irrational Man is a very contained, very minor particle of Woody Allen’s huge cinematic universe, and it could’ve been a disaster were it not for the extremely committed performances of its three leads: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and…
The plot’s pretty standard, but Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. remake / reboot / whatever has a lot of charm. It’s incredibly stylish, at times breathtakingly beautiful, and features an absolute star-making turn by Henry Cavill as Napoleon Dynamite – whoops, Solo – played long ago on the small screen by Robert Vaughn. I didn’t see…
Trainwreck opens with one of the funniest scenes of the year thus far. It closes with a scene that is corny, clichéd and sentimental. The whole film, when broken down, pretty much works in the same way: the first act is a brilliant sex comedy, the second act is an above average sex comedy/RomCom, and the…
Christopher McQuarrie’s directorial debut in the Mission Impossible franchise, having already written for and directed Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher (and written for him with Edge of Tomorrow and Valkyrie) is a lot of fun. It’s got great action set-pieces and a nice dose of humour, but best of all, it’s got a female lead who is so good, she brings Cruise up…
If you’re getting tired of all the big summer blockbuster superhero remake sequel madness, and I can assure you that Mr. Holmes is some excellent counter programming. And frankly, I’ll watch Sir Ian McKellen do just about anything, and most definitely watch him play the great sleuth Sherlock Holmes. I need to see him in…
There haven’t been too many surprises this summer. Mad Max: Fury Road is still the best movie of the season so far, Terminator Genisys was a general disappointment; however, the next biggest movie may have the smallest hero in it, but some of the biggest fun. Yes, Ant-Man is actually quite entertaining. Marvel manages to…
As the best thing about the Despicable Me films, you’d think the Minions would make for a great movie. Unfortunately, instead of creating some kind of fun origin story, which Minions starts to do, they just tell another story of how the minions worked for another uber villain. It’s much the same luke warm fun.…
Any film that spends a sixth of its running time watching its lead characters take ecstasy and following the come-on, the high and the come-down is not playing by the rules. Magic Mike XXL plays by nobody’s rules. Practically plot-free (and, with the exception of a couple of moments in the beginning, totally conflict-free, thereby violating…
Terminator Genisys might win an award for most green screened fight scenes and stunt guys pulled by cables. Or maybe for the highest number of convenient explanations pulled from a characters ass. I think Evel Knievel was in this because, holy shit there were quite a lot of leaps in logic here. I think disbelief…