Ghostbusters
One gripe, why not make Patty a history Prof. whose cred keeps the crappy College afloat, and whose walkout to join the team screws the jerk Dean?
But damn good fun that echoes the original in the right places and the right ways without being a copy.
Agree that McKinnon steals the show, but saying that does the others a disservice, everyone's great in it.
More Bill Murray than expected. And yes, you must stay for the credits, some top drawer stuff saved till last.
Star Trek Beyond
Strengths: The cast (As good as anyone else is, Chris Pine is absolutely stellar as Kirk, really first rate. Karl Urban a close second as Bones, to be fair.), the dialogue.
Weaknesses: the plot (the villain has a good origin but really muddy back story) & blurry action at times.
Particularly strong on character & themes for the crew & light years better than Into Darkness.
Has me looking forward to the next one, so job done, I guess.
Not revolutionary but a great rebalancing of the movie series.
The BFG
It's close enough to the book to feel like it's reasonably faithful, but it does plenty different so Dahl purists are likely to be a bit disappointed.
Overall it has the recognisable Spielberg hallmarks so it's fun and affecting and has a great cast (Mark Rylance does a good job in the title role but I still prefer David Jason in the Cosgrove Hall cartoon!), and John Williams lends the usual touch of class, but not one I'll be in a hurry to rewatch.
Finding Dory
It may just be that I'm not that enamoured of Dory herself (so decent size roles for Marlon & Nemo are welcome) or that it obviously can't quite have the impact of the original.
The new characters compensate, though, with Ed O'Neill's Hank the "Septapus" the standout.
Definitely worth a watch, would see again, and the Pixar short at the beginning, Piper, is absolutely adorable.
Jason Bourne
You do start to worry that as tense and thrilling as it is right from the get go, the plot doesn't actually begin until about a third of the way through.
Strong performances from Damon, Alicia Vikander & Tommy Lee Jones carry it, though Julia Stiles is pretty wasted.
Definitely edge of your seat stuff, and worth it from that point of view, but some of the carnage towards the end does start to require increasingly high suspension of disbelief.
And for all Damon's haste to do down the Bond series to big up his own, there's nothing in this film you couldn't easily see Daniel Craig's Bond doing with more wit and class.
There's sequels to be had if they want, thanks to a decently tantalising final scene.
MAAAAT DAAAAMON.
Suicide Squad
Whilst a couple of the characters are no marks, and the attention certainly is on Will Smith (genuinely outstanding, and the funniest he's been in a good long while) as Deadshot, Margot Robbie's scene stealing Harley Quinn and Jared Leto's (intimidating but barely ever funny, and actually barely in it) Joker, Jai Courtney's Boomerang is great light relief (his best performance in anything ever, to be honest, but that's a low bar) and Jay Hernandez makes Diablo one of the most sympathetic of the bunch whilst Viola Davis' gives a thundering powerful turn as Amanda Waller.
Some of the much-repeated criticisms *are* fair; it does start to lose a bit of traction once the mission starts because the villains and their plan is so indistinct but actually it's not the tonal mess I expected - it's just darker than the trailer pitched it, and that's actually quite right for DC.
The thin plot doesn't really seem to matter when what you're really interested in is the characters, to be fair.
But yes, there's too much CGI & slo mo in some battle scenes. Both Cara Delevingne as Enchantress and Karen Fukuhara as Katana don't get a lot to do, the former practically playing some scenes as if she's on a catwalk (I'm assuming the director's choice) and the latter is just there to be cool in fight scenes and really not a lot else.
Batfleck's cameos are decent but really not much more than you've already seen in the trailer, but the Flash's brief scene is fun and helps us to warm to him ahead of Justice League.
Decent soundtrack, characters you do root for, and for the most part decent entertainment.
It doesn't, and never could, singlehandedly reverse the fortunes of the DCEU after the (largely deserved) drubbing given to BvS, but it's a definite step in the right direction.
There's a mid-credits scene worth staying for that foreshadows Justice League, which I won't spoil here, but you can highlight to see: Waller: "I know you're Batman." Batfleck: "Screw your Suicide Squad, gonna get me a Justice League!"
The Shallows
Blake Lively gives a performance that's both mentally and physically strong, equal to the gruelling ordeal, and far more personable than the (admittedly by necessity) hasty and heavy sketching of her character may really earn.
As such, when she's frantic, desperate, improvising, taking risks, and not necessarily making sensible decisions because she's between a rock and a hard place, you can forgive the bits that stretch medical plausibility or depend on luck.
The scenery of the Mexican beach and sea is stunning (and stunningly shot), and it's a great strength of the film that every sinister dip under the water level builds dread and foreboding until the inevitable attack. In the early wide aerial shots of the sea, you'll never marvel at the deep rich colours for more than a few seconds without your eyes darting around the screen to look for a hint of fin.
Shark films are difficult territory, I feel, either too closely aping Spielberg's masterful Jaws (or its' steeply diminishing sequels), half-hearted CGI fests of the last 10-20 years, or straying into the schlocky Sharknado zone. So again, it's very pleasing (and no small relief) that this restores the Great White as a powerful movie monster to live long in the nightmares of cinema-goers.
For the majority of the film it does well to avoid being a Jaws knock off, but the finale clearly riffs of the denouements of both Jaws and Jaws II. The buoy very much stands in for the sinking Orca, and Chief Brody's "Smile, you son of a..." is given an inevitable and predictable update.
The shark itself is terrifyingly real until the very last battle when more CGI is required. I wouldn't say it actually looks ropey as such, but again, you may have a pang of fond remembrance for "Bruce", if you know your Jaws, in one or two shots.
Does the "One year later" end go past the point of believability? Maybe a bit, but by then you'll probably be willing to let it slide. You'll definitely think of at least five or six points of logic that niggle in the analysis, but it's a thrilling and jump-inducing slice of terror that's well worth a watch thanks to great visuals, a strong central performance, and unrelenting fear from a great monster.
FIN. (sorry!)
Swallows and Amazons
Much like that film, it's probably really one that, although worth seeing, is best saved for TV. Whether or not you take to it probably really depends on how far you're able to stomach this sort of "larks with posh white kids" stuff, and there's more than a whiff of Enid Blyton about it.
It ultimately proves winsome despite itself, by beefing up the secret agent subplot (ably carried by the always excellent Rafe Spall and Andrew Scott repeating his performance from SPECTRE) and being part tourist board advert for summer holidays Lake District.
The young cast are mostly fine. Bobby McCulloch as Roger is cutesy enough when required to be but you can't half see the cogs turning when he's called on to do "thinking acting".
I suspect the makers were forced to cast a lad so young once they found the actress to play "Tatty" (spot the necessary update), the implausibly named Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen and then had to cast Roger younger than her.
T-R M-A is easily the best of the Walker kids, with a performance that evokes Drew Barrymore in E.T. so you can imagine the rest of the casting being anchored around her.
The older Walker kids, John (Dane Hughes) & Susan (Orla Hill), suffer from being a bit too stiff upper lip, and though they always acquit themselves well enough there's a much needed injection of humour when the Amazons, Nancy (Seren Hawkes) & Peggy (Hannah Jayne Thorp) turn up.
It's this buttoned-down Britishness that sees both John and Roger suffer Batman vs. Superman syndrome, each responsible at various points for withholding info that would have advanced the plot in half the time.
This probably wouldn't be half the film without the adult cast members, though. The aforementioned Spall & Scott are the backbone of the film when perhaps they shouldn't be.
Kelly MacDonald seems to be slipping into being typecast as these mumsy types but to be fair it's a rounded performance that projects both warmth and steel from under a nervous exterior.
Jessica Hynes & Harry Enfield excel as gruff but twinkly light relief as the Jacksons, whilst the likes of Fenella Woolgar and John Henshaw make up the numbers of "Oh, I've seen them in something on the telly" bit parts.
It's got all the right ingredients, is well written and directed, the cast are all good, and the boating scenes and use of the scenery are all lovely stuff that sets it apart from other films of its ilk. Bonus points for not being overlong, too.
You'd have to be a proper Grinch not to come away with a smile on your face, but you still might have a small voice at the back of your head telling you that it somehow still manages to be less than the sum of its' parts.
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Mind of Evil
