Month: December 2016

Movie Review: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN – Mostly satisfying mystery/drama, with a nice performance by Emily Blunt

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girlontrainposter

The Girl on the Train was a “maybe I’ll see it in the cinema” for me.  The previews were decent enough, but never really set me alight.  I didn’t read the book, and while I like Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow), she too has never really made me sit up and notice.  There was that plus the feeling that the vibe just seemed to skew a little too closely to Gone Girl for comfort.  Being a David Fincher fan, and feeling Gone Girl was a solid evolution in Fincher’s career, going to see a rip off, in the end, put paid to whether or not I went to see it in the cinema.

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Movie Review: THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE – supernatural horror movie falters in places, but still delivers

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the_autopsy_of_jane_doe

There are worse movie titles than The Autopsy of Jane Doe, I suppose, but it’s up there.  Having said that, it made me notice it enough to find out it was a horror movie starring Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch, which I found a little surprising.  Sure, it isn’t unheard of for name actors to be in horror movies (even B listers like Cox and Hirsch), but it’s rare – especially when the movie has no name talent attached behind the camera, something that generally signifies low budget and low smarts.  By this, I’m referring to the fodder you can see in Netflix’s horror lists – mostly a stream of shit that heads swiftly down the drain.

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Movie Review: ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY – decent first side-story, but lacks depth and characters are weak.

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rogueone_onesheeta

This is the second year in a row where Star Wars has been the family Christmas Day movie, but I found last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens to be the better movie.  Yes, I know it was a highlight reel of past movies for the most part, but I’m not a fan of the franchise and I really liked it.  Rogue One: A Star Wars story fits into the series as Episode 3.5, where we finally see the mission that saw the plans for the Death Star stolen, and why exactly it was, in the end, pretty easy to destroy.  Continue reading “Movie Review: ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY – decent first side-story, but lacks depth and characters are weak.” →

Movie Review: PASSENGERS – limp romantic drama/sci fi mashup not even Lawrence and Pratt can save.

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passengers

Chances are, if you went to see Passengers based on the previews alone, you’d have gone in expecting a sci-fi thriller with a solvable mystery at its core.  The movie, which stars fan favourites Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games trilogy) and Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World) certainly looks that way from the minute or so of carefully edited clips that you get.  The giant, somewhat dark looking spaceship in deep space, the two leads running around while things go to hell – and why are they the only two to wake up?!  So, yeah, if that was what you were expecting, I bet like me, you came out of the theater disappointed.

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Movie Review: SWISS ARMY MAN – movie’s heartfelt core almost cancelled out by quirk overdose

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swiss-army-man

I don’t typically dismiss a movie based on a trailer, and I wouldn’t say I’m particularly prescient about a movie based on a trailer either, but when I caught the trailer for Swiss Army Man, I balked.  I remember coming away from it thinking, whaaaaat? and probably wasn’t alone.  But I generally like Paul Dano’s characters, and while I can take or leave Daniel Radcliffe, I’m impressed with his continuing efforts to escape the career event horizon known as Harry Potter, so I figured I would see it at one point.  Last night was that point.

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