Cats: Eye Bleach

Cats is a musical drama film directed by Tom Hopper. The film is a big screen adaption of the famous theatrical musical of the same name.

So, yes I watched this to see if it was as bad as everyone said and yes, I can confirm for you all it is trash. Copies of this film should be burnt and we as a species would be better if we could erase it from our collective memory. Here’s how I got there.

Right from the off, the design and look of the Cats themselves is off putting, they’re too humanoid and also weirdly sexual. I don’t know if Furriers where the secret target demographic for this film, but it is weird, the casts are often shaking what would be their human sexual organs and yeah, its uncomfortable.

Secondly there is no real plot, from the opening moments of the film we are bombarded with songs telling us about what cats are and what their world is, but they don’t really explain anything, and you have no idea what is going on. There is also a song very early on in the film that takes place in a graveyard and I personally found something very disconcerting about this one, like it made me panicky and troubled and I can’t really tell you why.

I understand that it is a musical, but the constant songs get to be a bit much, there are other musicals that have actual lines of dialogue in-between their songs, but this is not one of those films. The acting is blatantly not there, most of the actors seem to either be there for an easy pay day or because they were forced into it (at least that is how they appear when they are on-screen as they clearly don’t want to be there).

Overall, this is as bad if not worse than you have heard.

Pros.

It is bizarre.

Cons.

The furriness of it

The design of the Cats themselves

The lack of a basic plot

The repetitive non-sensical songs

The terrible performances.

0/5

Reviewed by Luke

Greyhound: Yet Another Tom Hanks WW2 Movie

Greyhound is a war film directed by Aaron Schneider. The plot follows an inexperienced Naval Captain, Captain Krause (Tom Hanks), as he attempts to lead an Allied convey across the North Atlantic while being hunted by a pack of German U-Boats.

I will admit, this film has its moments and I can see what it was trying to do, but it falls short of being a good movie for me because of the incredibly, shockingly so for a big budget movie, bad CGI. The film is admirable for trying the way it does, but it just can’t escape the poor effects.

So, this film is set at sea, yet clearly not shot at sea. So therefore the water is CGI, this could be done in such a way as to be believable, other films have done it well enough before. In stark contrast to that the water effects in this film look like something out of a video game from about 15 years ago. They are so unrelentingly bad that they take you out of the film and become all you can see.

That said, the film outside of these poor effects is quite good. The tense hunting sequence where it looks for quite a while like Krause and his fellow seamen are going to die is well executed and captures your interest without having to try. My particular favourite scenes of the film are when the U-Boat commander calls Krause to taunt him, it reminds me of something from Silence Of The Lambs.

Hanks as Krause is fine, he is serviceable, but his character does not have much of a personality, the same can be said of the rest of the cast who are basically just set dressing. This is a shame as the film wastes the talents of the phenomenally talented Stephen Graham.

Pros.

Tense

It has you on the edge of your seat.

Hanks is serviceable

Cons.

It wastes most of the cast including Stephen Graham

The utterly horrific CGI

2.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Relic: The Devil You Know

Relic is an Australian horror film directed by Natalie Erika James. The plot sees a mother and daughter go and stay with their elderly relative after she goes missing for a few days, things quickly start to take a turn for the sinister and things are shown to be much more than they first appeared.

The first hour and twenty minutes of this film are great, they are tense, scary and ominous. The film brings you into this world and much like The Taking Of Deborah Logan you’re questioning whether what you see is the result of mental illness or something more. Then in the last few minutes the characters make a decision, said decision feels out of place, incredibly so.

Basically, the characters decide to stay, which in the circumstance would be the last thing they would do. The explanation we are given as to why they do this is some vague throw away reference from the start of the film. This one line in the beginning does not set this up, it feels forgotten about by this time in the film, if it was so important they could have at least said it again later on.

That said the first hour and twenty minutes do feel scary and if they alone were what I was judging I would give it a perfect score; however they are not, and the ending does ruin the film overall.

Ultimately, this could have been a great horror film if it was not for the ending that doesn’t work.

Pros.

The performances

The scares

You don’t know what is real

The tension

Cons.

The awful ending

3.5/5

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: One Of The Family

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a comedy romance film directed by Joel Zwick. The plot sees a young Greek woman fall in love with a non-Greek man, will her family ever accept him? Will the star-crossed lovers get to be together?

So, this is another childhood favourite of mine, I watched it a lot when I was younger and recently decided to watch it again and see if it still held up: it does.

As far as standard rom coms go this is quite generic, there have been many other films with the same plot. Two people from different backgrounds getting together and their families having to adapt to the change; it is as old as time.

However, what makes this one stand out and be so beloved by me and others is the heart. This film has one of the biggest, purest hearts of any films I have seen for a long time. It is good comfort viewing to be sure, in these bleak times something like this can have even more of an impact.

All of the characters in this film are great and incredibly loveable, the film makes you feel like part of the family. You become immersed in this world and want to see this couple get together. Crucially what this film does that many other rom coms fail to do is make you care, making the emotional and romantic journey be something that affects us the audience.

Overall, this film is good for the heart, it will make you smile and has some of the best lines that are guaranteed to make you laugh.

Pros.

The family

The romance

Hilarious

Heartfelt

Cons.

A little generic at times

4.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Rise Of The Guardians: Forgotten Dreamworks

Rise Of The Guardians is an animated film directed by Peter Ramsey. The film sees the immortal guardians of children, Santa Clause (Alec Baldwin), The Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), The Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), and Jack Frost (Chris Pine), team up to defeat the evil entity know as Pitch (Jude Law).

So for the most part this was very generic family fantasy fare, the plot went the way you would think it would with an unlikely outcast hero rising to the occasion to save his friends and the world from evil. Same old same old. In many ways I don’t need to tell you what happens in this film because without seeing it you will be able to predict it.

The characters are likeable enough and the voice actors are giving it a valiant try to inject some personality into otherwise quite vacant character husks. However, the script certainly does the film no favours and often feels like it is caught between two different ideas; mainly in regard to tone.

The one positive I will say for this film, is the animation itself is great. It is very distinct and has it owns style that separates it from the rest of the DreamWorks line-up. I especially enjoyed how they showed the nightmare powers of Pitch on-screen, I thought it was very visually interesting to look at and that it also had an impressive scale.

Overall, very standard fare, you will have seen many other animated films just like this. The cool animation and strong voice acting won’t be able to change that fact. Very much a meh.

Pros.

The voice acting

The animation style

Cons.

Incredibly predictable

The characters feel very one dimensional

The tone cannot stay consistent

2/5

Reviewed by Luke

Triple Frontier: Money As A Motivator

Triple Frontier is an action film directed by J.C Chandor. The plot sees a group of former soldiers who are hard up for cash, head down to Brazil where they plan to rob and kill a local drug lord that one of their member has spent years tracking.

Netflix’s action films are a mixed bag, with more bad than good, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this. The thing I liked most was the classic rock soundtrack, right from the off when I heard it I knew what I was in for and I think it was a great accompaniment.

The performances are all faultless, Oscar Issac, Ben Affleck and Charlie Hunnam all do a great job and are convincing soldiers. Affleck is probably the weakest of the main trio, as there are moments where he looks like he is just there to get paid, however when it gets to the more emotional moments he shines. There is a scene when they’re trying to escape by helicopter, but the cash is going to weigh down the chopper, so they need to ditch and Ben Affleck’s character won’t give up even a single dollar, the emotion in this scene made me stand up and take notice.

The action was all fairly standard there was nothing that blew me away or really impressed me hugely.

Overall, a surprisingly strong action film with great performances from its trio of leads.

Pros.

The soundtrack

The leads

Ben Affleck’s helicopter scene

The tension

Cons.

The action itself was very by the numbers

4/5

Reviewed by Luke

Palm Springs: Your New Favourite Rom-Com

Palm Springs is a comedy romance film directed by Max Barbakow. The plot sees Sarah (Cristin Milioti), become trapped in a time loop at her sister’s wedding, luckily she is not alone. Nyles (Andy Samberg), has been in the same time loop for so long he can no longer remember when it started, and the two of them must figure out what they need to do to move on and escape the loop.

This is a film that you should watch blind, it’s very good, but really don’t read this review until you have seen it because I don’t want to spoil anything for you, beyond the base premise. Okay.

The reason why this film is so great is because of the spot-on chemistry between Samberg and Milioti, very few other rom coms have on screen chemistry quite like this; it is in a word electric. Both give great performances, but probably my favourite of the entire cast is J.K Simmons as Roy a man who always ends up killing Nyles at the end of the day. Simmons was the scene stealer of the film for sure.

Furthermore, this film breaths new life into the played-out time loop sub-genre, using it for something new and exciting. Yes, Happy Death Day had a romance plot line and also a time loop set-up, but that was far more of a horror than anything else.

Overall, this is a lovely film and one I highly recommend you see!

Pros.

Samberg

Milioti

The romance

The new twist on time loops

J.K Simmons

5/5

Reviewed by Luke

The Old Guard: Missing Something

The Old Guard is an action fantasy film directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. The plot sees a group of immortal warriors get a new member. However, at the same time sinister forces gather to expose their existence to the world and use them for evil experiments.

I had such high hopes for this film, I had it on a few minutes after it dropped on Netflix and I have to say I have not been this disappointed for a film in a long time.

There were cool aspects to the film don’t get me wrong, but my issue with it is that it does not capitalise on these in any meaningful way and instead uses them for style over substance thrills. A good example of what I am talking about is the central mythology of these immortal beings, there are so many questions, so many implications and the explanation we get is incredibly lacklustre. This is most likely set up for a sequel.

Moreover, I enjoy seeing Charlize Theron in these very action heavy roles, she has a great physicality and is a very believable ass kicker, however I would have liked something more from her performance here. Much like a lot of other things in this film, it doesn’t matter if the character has motivation or is interesting as long as they’re constantly doing and saying cool things. It gets boring and repetitive fast.

Overall, this film let me down in a lot of different ways, it has its moments, but is severely missing something.

Pros.

Theron’s fighting prowess

It has interesting ideas

Cons.

It never builds on or does anything interesting with these ideas

Theron’s character lacks any kind of personality

It gets boring and samey quickly

1.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

The Beach House: Creatures From The Deep

The Beach House is a horror film directed by Jeffery A. Brown. The plot sees a young couple go to stay at a family member’s beach house, however, once they arrive they realise someone else is living there. Things only get weirder from there as strange creatures come from the sea, seemingly hell bent on taking over the coast.

This film comes so close to being good, but tragically falls short.

There are several good, unique and interesting ideas throughout, however the issue is that the film does not build on them at all, rather these good moments end and then you have to wade through monotony for about forty minutes before you get another good sequence.

In short the good aspects of this film represents about twenty minutes of the overall product, there simply isn’t enough interesting content to fill out the run time and it shows painfully at times. There are good tense sequences, but these are then let down by basically building to nothing.

The lead characters don’t help matters, they’re as bland as bland gets and honestly a few days after watching the film I can’t remember either of their names. They leave so little of an impression on you that saying you feel numb towards them is too much. They could live or die, and you just don’t care and crucially the film doesn’t make you.

Overall, this feels like cheap schlock, this film serves to remind us all just how overcrowded the horror genre is and also how many terribly average films there are within it.

Pros.

A few interesting ideas

An occasional tense sequence

Cons.

Building to nothing

Fails to capitalise on its ideas

Incredibly forgettable leads

A drag to get through

1/5

Reviewed by Luke

Midway: A Tribute To Those Lost

Midway is a historical epic directed by Roland Emmerich. The plot retells the monumental battle of Midway during WW2 and shows the sacrifice of all involved.

Normally I would stay away from this kind of film because it is usually a toned-down form of propaganda. It normally is very quick to say X country is great and X country is bad and leave out any nuance and grey area. An great example of what I am talking about can be seen when the Japanese commanders are having a meeting and one says something to the extent of what have we done we have awoken a sleeping giant and it is almost cringey in its pro American stance, I highly doubt the Japanese would have said such a thing. Though the film does slip several times into this cringey form of very forced feeling patriotism being projected on a world audience it for the most part the film doesn’t do it.

That said I enjoyed the epic feel of this film very much, I am not going to lie I had given up on Emmerich as a director after his last few efforts, but this gave me pause. I truly believe that this film manages to capture the sight and the scale of such an endeavour and treats the events with the hollowed reverence they deserve; in that vain I enjoyed the final shot of the film and the closing message.

The acting was all very strong, Ed Skein was a very believable leading man, I am genuinely surprised that he hasn’t had more leading roles as he has proven himself to be a very strong actor. However, the standout of the cast to me has to be Alexander Ludwig, though his on screen appearance is very short he gives a very strong emotional performance that will hit you like a sack of bricks.

Pro.

Treating the subject matter with respect

The performances

Especially Skein, Ludwig and Wilson

The grand scale of it all

Cons.

The raar raar cringey patriotism

4/5

Reviewed by Luke