Category: Movie Reviews

Movie Review: SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE – fantastic animation and art design + a smart script + well defined characters = best Spider Man movie yet

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If you’ve been following my reviews, you know I trend toward genre movies, and as someone who has written for Marvel Comics, I’m predisposed to seek out superhero movies, even if I don’t think they’ll be that great.  Hey, I’m a nerd, what can I say?  I don’t remember hearing about Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse until about a month before it dropped – the fourth quarter of 2018 was a busy one for me – and at that time I hadn’t seen Venom, so I missed out on the post-credits preview too, but I finally saw it just after Christmas, and I have to say it’s my favourite Spider-Man movie to date.

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Movie Review: BIRD BOX – this Sandra Bullock movie is so bad I wished I’d brought my own blindfold.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews4 Comments

So yeah, you know how this review is going to go down based on the title.  No major reveal here, so it’s kind of like the movie itself!  I actually hadn’t heard of this movie until a few weeks ago, and the trailer and accompanying article didn’t exactly set me on fire.  It seemed too much like A Quiet Place for my liking, and that was a movie I mostly disliked.  Now most places you will read about it are indeed referring to it as “A Quiet Place … for eyes!”.  Not only didn’t I like Birdbox, I hated it!

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Movie Review: HOLMES AND WATSON – an unfunny debacle that outstays its welcome within minutes.

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I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Sherlock Holmes, but I’ve enjoyed a few adaptations of the character over the years.  I won’t regurgitate these musings, but they can be found in my review of the Ian McKellen movie Mr. Holmes, a movie which is as untraditional in its approach to the world’s most famous literary detective as this latest version, a buddy comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly – only better.

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Move Review: INCREDIBLES 2 – the Parrs are back after 14 years, but the overabundance of superhero movies makes it seem all-too familiar.

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14 years is a long time to wait for a sequel, especially for such a beloved movie as The Incredibles, but when you think about it, the pressure to deliver a worthy sequel isn’t of the same variety as the normal two-year gap between franchise installments where everything is still pretty fresh in the old Gulliver.  Only a few 18 year-olds would remember seeing this in the cinema if they ever saw it at all, and for those that did, the passing of time likely watered down the enthusiasm.  I speak mostly of the feelings I had when I first heard of the sequel: about time, and it better be good.  I enjoyed the first movie a lot, but it didn’t achieve greatness for me – this one didn’t either.

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Movie Review: READY PLAYER ONE – slick visuals and pop culture references don’t make up for a trite storyline peopled by flat characters and peformances

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

I readily admit I had little interest in seeing Ready Player One.  The trailers left me as cold as last night’s leftovers, and didn’t contain anything that I found remotely interesting, and visually it looked like a mess.  I thought to myself: this is a Spielberg movie? The trailers reminded me of another movie I hated, Tron: Legacy, a bloated, shallow CGI-fest, except that here the visuals were so muddled, the action so kitchen-sink, I feel like I could be forgiven for thinking RP1 was a Peter Jackson movie, so ridiculous has that filmmaker become.  But it was Spielberg! 

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