Another RuView: All Stars 4, Episode 5

Let’s get this roast a-cookin’. Every few years it has become a tradition on this show for the girls to get up and perform a roast, a time-honoured tradition that goes back decades and made popular by the Friars Club. It’s a strange kind of event where the entire point is to insult everyone in the room and make them laugh while you do it. It’s a very difficult form of comedy to master. If it’s handled correctly it can be a hilarious night for everyone involved. Handled poorly and it can convince an unstable human being to run for political office… so, will this be a hilarious night for everyone or are we going to have to deal with President Lady Bunny in about 140 years (I’m kidding, the planet will be dead by then)

So, let’s go full Fatal Attraction and boil this bunny.

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Clyde Cooper (2018) – Oh Noir He Betta Don’t

Released: 22nd November 2018
Seen: 11th January 2019

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I’ve now been writing reviews for a little over the year and in that time I’ve had some interesting experiences when it comes to picking what to cover, like when I was just starting out and did a run at a film festival or covering a film I supported on Kickstarter, but I think my favorites have been when someone has messaged me asking me to do a review of a movie for them. This has only happened a few times, most notably when a friend of mine asked me to take part in a 70’s 80’s & 90’s review set and I reviewed the horror classic Friday the 13th. Well today we have another case of this happening. I received a message on my Facebook page asking me to review the movie Clyde Cooper, a film that I’d never heard of before but the trailer alone made my eyebrow go up out of curiosity. This is something I’m always happy to do, especially with films that are more on the indie side. If you know of any you think I might enjoy or that I might hate and want to enjoy my suffering, feel free to send me the name and a legal way to view it in Australia (Because, as I’ve mentioned on some of my end of year lists, Australia is dumb and bad when it comes to release schedules) and I’m happy to do it when I have a break from the mainstream release schedule and Netflix.

SO, is this film going to be one I enjoy or one that ends with me suffering?

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Instant Family (2019) – Just Add Water

Released: 10th Janurary
Seen: 10th January

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The phrase “based on a true story” is little more than a marketing gimmick nowadays. Sometimes a film might actually be inspired by a real event that really happened but, a lot of the time, it’s either just an outright lie or it’s a meaningless way to try and add gravitas to a story that any writer of a lifetime movie could’ve thought up. Now that’s not to say this particular story didn’t happen, indeed all reports say that it’s based on the directors own experience going through the foster care system… but I swear I saw this exact same storyline in a movie I saw in the afternoon on the TV back in the 90s so it feels a little pointless to try and hang a “Based on a true story” banner over this good, albeit-generic, family film

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Lionheart (2019) – Full Of Heart

Released: 4th Janurary
Seen: 9th January

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Say what you will about how Netflix operates with its originals but it has always been a good place to go for films that are not likely to get a mainstream release. Sometimes that means high quality films that just don’t fit what a distributor normally would consider mainstream, sometimes it means they pick up the things everyone else forgets, occasionally it’ll mean they’ll make everyone suffer through an Open House or two, and sometimes it means that they’ll find a voice that would normally be restricted to a smaller market or the indie circuit and give it a global audience right at their fingertips. When that last one happens, it tends to find something interesting and this time Netflix found a Nigerian comedy with a female director and decided to put it in front of the globe and thank goodness they did.

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How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2018) – We Had Dragons!

Released: 3rd Janurary
Seen: 8th January

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How to Train Your Dragon is one of the best animated films of the decade. I know, starting on a subtle statement is a great way to open one of these things but it’s accurate. Even with so many years between the original How to Train Your Dragon and the sequel we’ll be talking about today it’s impossible to understate how amazing the original film is. Not only is the original film a visual marvel but it has one of the most touching stories put in a kid’s film, a story about a kid trying to get the respect of his father who believes in killing every dragon while the kid wants to be kind to the creatures. It’s a touching tale even without the part that is just the adventures of a young boy and his dragon (a night fury named Toothless). The film was an instant hit that was absolutely beloved by everyone who saw it, and then the sequel came out and was even better. The story got darker, the animation was some of the most glorious to be put on the screens and it didn’t seem like it was possible to top it. Now, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World has come out and… OK it’s not better than the second movie, but its close.

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Another RuView: All Stars 4, Episode 4

Order in the court because the time has come to strut back into the pink workroom with the walls made out of fabric and it’s time to sit down and talk about what goes on in the wild and wonderful world of drag. Specifically in the world of Drag Race, a world where even when the show is over and everything is filmed, we still get so much drama from the cast that it’s honestly amazing. Hell, isn’t the season 3 cast due to create some drama now? Anyway, let’s get into it and go through the major elements of the show in this new structure of recap (Let’s see how long I keep this structure up)

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Mary Poppins Returns (2019) – Practically Perfect In Almost Every Way

Released: 1st Janurary
Seen: 3rd January

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In 1964, the world was enchanted when a nanny flew in from high upon her cloud to the door of 17 Cherry Tree Lane and graced us all with her charm and wit. Mary Poppins remains one of the few movies that you can justifiably say “Everyone loves this one”. If you meet someone who doesn’t love Mary Poppins, I suggest running as fast as you can away from them because there is no time to be dealing with such nonsense. Mary Poppins is a movie that the main character herself might describe as “Practically perfect in every way”, which would possibly be the most accurate statement ever made… so, naturally, 54 years later is the perfect time to release a sequel to this beloved classic.

Right?

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Top 10 Worst Films of 2018

Now for the list that everybody’s been waiting for (Ha, I kid, no one waits for my lists), and is also the most controversial because there are some people who don’t like the idea of a list that’s purely dedicated to discussing films that are deemed bad. I understand that point of view even if I don’t agree with it. I consider this list to be a cleansing, a look back at the films of the year that were the low points so that we can reflect upon them and get that anger out of the system in order to start off the new year properly… that and there are some films that need condemning either because they represent a major issue in the industry or were so poorly made that it still boggles my mind that they were able to find a release. If you want to go back and see my rules or just remind yourself of what I consider to be a good list, yesterday I had my best films list up so now onto the worst. Let’s start with the dishonorable mention!

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The Top 10 Best Films of 2018

Another year has come and gone, the first time I’ve been doing this for a full year (Albiet in bursts) and this has been really nice. Final year of University was good, this year I had 10K views on this blog and while that’s not a lot to some, it means a ton to me. Even when I was sitting through films I hated, I was loving that I got to do this and try and explain why you should or shouldn’t see them even if there were times that my explanations were not well worded (Working on that is my new years resolution). But, as is tradition with reviewers there are now lists to make and this list is the ‘Best’ list (AKA just the ones I liked the most but no one ever admits to that openly because ‘best’ is the term people serarch for, even though calling something ‘best’ is a very bad term for a subjective artform like film). Before we get to that, here’s the parameters for the lists we’ll be doing.

  • I did not see every film. I saw a fair few of them and was seeing them since the start of the year but thanks to final year of Uni stuff, I missed some because doing assignments came over going to movies so if something from isn’t on the list that probably should be, there’s your first potential reason.
  • Only films released in Australia in 2018 are going to be on this list. Specifically films need to have a wide release, wide enough that I can get to see them at a massive chain cinema like Event. Festival screenings are nice and all but they do not help me in this situation becuase, at the moment, I’m not paid for this. So this means films like If Beale Street Could Talk, Mary Poppins Returns, Green Book and The Hate U Give and are not eligible because, while they may have had screenings before the end of the year that I just couldn’t get too, they didn’t have a proper wide release. They’ll be eligible for the 2019 list and hopefully by then maybe Hollywood will stop being idiots and just release a movie worldwide on the same day instead of making some countries wait 3 months and then wonder why there’s piracy. Basically, if there isn’t a review on this blog about it, I didn’t see it.
  • Netflix films are totally eligible for both lists. Indeed any video on demand movie is available for scrutiny, no matter how they had to release it. If they sent it out to be viewed by an audience, then they should be ready for critique.
  • These are merely my opinions and you are absolutely entitled to disagree with me for any reason, go nuts, make your own list in the comments or question my order. That’s fine. What’s not fine is just saying “Your list sucks” with no reason behind it, critique is fine but blind attacks with no reason isn’t. Again, just my opinion.

With that said, before we get to the list, I have several honorable mentions, because this year was so good that I couldn’t be restrained to just one

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Vice (2018) – Pictures Of Your Dick (Cheney)

Released: 26th December
Seen: 31st December

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It’s a turbulent time to talk about politics, the chances of offending someone by stating an opinion is on the rise so clearly now is the perfect time to release a very politically charged biopic made by a bunch of left wing Hollywood people about a right wing political figure and the effects that his actions still have on the planet today. I can’t see a single person having an issue with this at all… so, for full disclosure I’m more on the left side of politics and that might color my opinion on some things in this movie and it might also mean you may not want to hear my opinion on the most politically charged movie of the year, I am totally aware of that and I need you to be aware before we go on because I don’t plan on holding back my opinion or sugar coating it so with that out of the way, let’s do this.

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