There’s some genuinely funny moments that’s part Napoleon Dynamite and part The Breakfast Club, but there’s a lack of an overarching arc to tie it altogether. I guess ETBDAHSBG’s supposed to be a slice of life and represent an awkward yet normal day of high school, but perhaps that’s why it’s not very engaging. It feels like a bunch of forgettable SNL skits cobbled together, and there are times where it just drags.
Read MoreA Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad’s an Alcoholic is a funny and touching look at what happens when self-destruction pulls everyone down. Based on a semi-autobiographical web comic by Mariko Kikuchi, director Kenji Katagiri’s sensitive touch and ability to mix humour with the dark depths of human emotion elevates this film above your usual melodramatic fare.
Read MoreWe’re treated (or perhaps subjected) to 60 minutes of non-stop social tension; think of the most intense moments of cringe comedy from a season or two of The Office, lined up into one wince-inducing package. No matter where Danielle goes at the gathering, she struggles to stay a step ahead of every fib she needs to tell - about her whereabouts that morning, her fake job as a babysitter, her program at school. The deeper the hole Danielle digs for herself, the more embarrassed we feel for her.
Read MoreGarrett’s troubles increase with the arrival of two enemies: the Japanese air force, and a thoroughly supernatural addition, a gremlin. Yes, perhaps I forgot to mention: Shadow in the Cloud is also a creature feature. In an homage to the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, starring William Shatner, Garrett is plagued by a bat/monkey-like creature that’s trying to tear the plane apart in mid-air.
Read MoreMany of the people in the nomad community couldn’t be happier. They are free to travel as they please, without the responsibilities that come with keeping up a piece of real estate. It’s a lot grittier than the manicured illusion of #vanlife on Instagram - a quick scene lays out the benefits of different sizes of toilet buckets - but it’s the most free you can be without becoming a totally off-the-grid hermit.
Read MoreLike either of the two previous movies, the more you think about the details of the time travel, the less sense it makes. This is, after all, the series where characters randomly exclaim “Station!” as a catchphrase, an incredibly dense in-joke from a deleted chunk of the second movie’s screenplay. Somehow, the movie doesn’t need a trim, rules-bound universe - it gets by on sight gags and performances alone.
Read MoreEnvisioned as a haunted house psychological thriller-horror — and those elements are certainly quite good, there just isn’t enough of it — no character embodies the main antagonist. The idea that mutants are a danger to themselves and society is interpreted literally in this film. X-Men is supposed to be a reflection of what it’s to be like an outsider, but when the film traps all five mutants in one location without outside contact, they aren’t given a chance to show why they’re ostracized.
Read MoreWith Tenet, Nolan presents his most brain-liquifying examination of time yet, “inversion”. In his earlier movies, Nolan’s playing around with time was wild but still largely comprehensible on first viewing. In the nested dream worlds of Inception, it’s easy to grasp how time slows down the deeper in the dream you travel. But in Tenet, the physics are so surreal we might as well be sipping coffee in the Black Lodge on Twin Peaks.
Read MoreGiven the huge range of results, it gets harder to believe that anyone would actually take the stuff. The extent of the movie’s commentary about drug epidemics is “they exist.”
Read MoreIn the library of action films, The Old Guard doesn’t really excite and it’s definitely not memorable, but consider it a good-enough entry into Netflix’s ever-expanding library of films you can simply put on the background, or skip to the parts that interest you.
Read MoreShot in Ontario and Newfoundland, Canada, the precise setting is left vague, though we intuit it could be on either side of the American/Canadian border. Other details about the premise are just as sparse: Chris Davis (Mark O’Brien) is smuggling bags of cash across the border.
Read MoreDespite a starry cast and a ripped-from-the-headlines story - which is only now receiving its first big-budget adaptation - the movie never coheres into anything beyond a string of loose sequences. Some of these beats work on their own, but Wasp Network never escapes the feeling that it’s missing huge chunks of material, or choking its main performances.
Read MoreBut it’s not the presence of middle-aged actors in the period combat scenes that smothers the tension in Da 5 Bloods. It’s a list of smaller choices, subtle details that might be chalked up to style but took me out of the experience. Several characters’ deaths seem to share Tropic Thunder’s taste for comedic violence, applied to moments that are pitched as drama. The soundtrack alternates between patriotic orchestral anthems and R&B, though the tracks often don’t match the expected tone of the scene.
Read MoreWhat keeps Trank coming back, however, is his ability to craft some really great scenes. Dark, moody and – at times – self-destructive, it feels like Capone’s material speaks to Trank’s personality and career in a personal way, but much like his other projects, it never quite comes together with an overarching big idea.
Read MoreWe’ve seen both Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon - or rather, the amplified versions of themselves that they play in this series - struggle with satisfaction in their careers, happiness in their romantic relationships, and bonds with their children. Now The Trip to Greece pits Coogan against one the toughest challenges a man of his age could face: the illness of an elderly parent.
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