Over on Soda & Telepaths I took a look at the only superhero movie we’re getting for a while, that being Project Power on Netflix. Go there and read it to make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
7500 (2020) – Just Plane Awesome
Released: 18th June
Seen: 10th August
You know what’s hard? Starting reviews on movies about difficult subjects, like 7500, because I have to try and give a brief catchy way to clue you into the movie. This opening paragraph is designed, in part, to catch your eye while you’re scrolling through my site and maybe make you curious about the content of the review and normally can involve backstory or a comparison or even an anecdote that relates to the media at hand… well, 7500 is about a bunch of people hijacking a plane so how exactly do I ease into that? Guess what I just did might be the best I’ll be able to do.
Continue reading “7500 (2020) – Just Plane Awesome”
Underwater (2020) – Watered Down Alien
Released: 23rd January
Seen: 8th August
Alien knockoffs seem to be making a huge comeback as of late and I gotta admit, I’m weirdly enjoying seeing just what people do as part of their homage to the classic space horror. Just since starting this blog I’ve run into Life, which was Alien without the female protagonist and an ending that might be one of my favourite surprise endings in recent years.
Then there was Cloverfield Paradox which is Alien if it was the ship trying to kill them all instead of an Alien creature (and I was certainly a little too nice to it back then, I was early in my reviewing life). Well, the new entry into “Alien, except…” is Underwater, which is Alien except it takes place at the bottom of the ocean.
Continue reading “Underwater (2020) – Watered Down Alien”
Unhinged (2020) – Delightful and Devilish
Released: 30th July
Seen: 30th July
Everyone who has ever driven a car has, at some point, felt a twinge of road rage. Admit it, you’ve been behind the wheel of a car and seen someone make a turn they weren’t supposed to make or beep their horn for no real reason and you’ve felt a swell of anger growing deep inside. It’s a familiar feeling that we’ve all had and so, taking that familiar real world scenario and turning it up to 11 could make for a pretty unnerving thriller. Enter Unhinged which comes along, does exactly that and throws in one of Russell Crowe’s best performances just for good measure.
Continue reading “Unhinged (2020) – Delightful and Devilish”
Fatal Affair (2020) – Dead Boring
Released: 16th July
Seen: 27th July
From the writer director who brought us Secret Obsession and no less than 19 movies with the title The Wrong (Noun) comes the newest Netflix movie to make me worry about that company’s idea of quality control. Every time there’s some weird looking Netflix original that was clearly rejected by everyone else, I just wonder why Netflix is doing this. It’s not like they don’t know what good movies look like, they funded The Irishman when no one else would and took chances on great films like Roma, Klaus and The Two Popes. They have the ability to be picky and only buy the good projects, instead of buying another dud like Fatal Affair.
Continue reading “Fatal Affair (2020) – Dead Boring”
Follow Me (2020) – Very Good
Released: 16th July
Seen: 20th July
In the early part of 2019, I reviewed a little film called Escape Room. While it was something of a hit financially it was less so critically. I particularly didn’t like it for three main reasons. The first was that it wasn’t as smart as it liked to think it was, the second being how tame everything felt and the third was the strobe lights. I didn’t exactly give that film a high mark, but if a film came around with a similar concept that didn’t pretend it was smarter than it was and actually made things feel dangerous, maybe I’d like it more. This was my thought pattern when walking into Follow Me which I definitely enjoyed more, but I still don’t think this concept has worked out all the kinks yet.
Continue reading “Follow Me (2020) – Very Good”
The Last Days of American Crime (2020) – Absolutely Criminal
Released: 5th June
Seen: 11th June
When it comes to single sentence movie concepts, it’s hard to deny that “The government is about to implement a device that makes it impossible to do crime, so what would the last crime ever committed look like?” is a fantastic concept. The idea alone promises a fascinating film, maybe something like Minority Report or even the later Purge movies that had some elaborate plot device around how crime is handled and used that to discuss serious real-world issues. It promises a fun movie, possibly futuristic and certainly a little bombastic. I mean, this is a film about the last crime that can physically be committed in the United States, surely that crime has to be something elaborate right? Well, turns out… no, no it doesn’t mean that. In fact, somehow a film that’s been gifted an idea so good that it should be impossible to mess it up managed to mess up in every way possible.
Continue reading “The Last Days of American Crime (2020) – Absolutely Criminal”
The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) – No One Wanted This
Released: 27th January
Seen: 5th May
So, while I’m still learning how to effectively write these reviews, I have slowly developed a system that works for me. After I do the first paragraph (usually designed to be just eye-catching enough that if you were to scroll through my main page that it might make you want to know more) I will then stop and think about how to describe the plot. I might have IMDB open to remind me of character and actor names but I can usually come up with a decent enough plot synopsis that doesn’t give away more than I need to in order to get you to know just what kind of movie I’m talking about. The plot synopsis is always a quick thing for me, I try to keep it short and sweet because if you want a proper plot synopsis then Wikipedia is in the next tab over. I add it for context and little more than that… this time? I’m tempted to skip it because the plot is so poorly constructed that even just adding it for context feels pointless but it’s my structure now so I feel obligated to try.
Continue reading “The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) – No One Wanted This”
Dangerous Lies (2020) – LIEEEEEEEES
Released: 30th April
Seen: 2nd May
About a year ago I did a review for a film called Secret Obsession which was basically Netflix picking up the scraps left over from a Lifetime all-you-can-eat-buffet and turning it into something meant to resemble a film. It wasn’t exactly good and you could kind of tell what network it was made for originally but I figured “Oh well, if Netflix does a Lifetime movie every now and then that could be entertaining. Sometimes those are campy enough for a laugh” and Netflix apparently heard me and decided to make an even blander wannabe lifetime movie… I’m so ready for 2020 to be over.
Continue reading “Dangerous Lies (2020) – LIEEEEEEEES”
The Fanatic (2020) – I’m Not A Fan
Released: 30th March
Seen: 27th April
Sometimes a movie is so instantly deemed “God awful excrement” that I’m almost eager to see it, just to know if everyone is overreacting. At the end of August last year, The Fanatic came out in America and when I heard about it, I patiently waited for it to come down to Australia when I’d have the chance to see it, but it never came. Possibly because it made $3000 in 52 cinemas, which is aggressively bad, but I knew eventually I would have to see it somehow. Sure enough, the movie got a DVD release on the 30th of March, meaning it’s a 2020 movie for me and I would finally have the chance to see it (and it’d be eligible for an end of the year list for me, so that’s nice). Then it popped up on Google Play and was about 6 bucks to rent which… yeah, more than I should’ve spent. I should’ve just not bothered, I don’t deserve this kind of shabby treatment.
Continue reading “The Fanatic (2020) – I’m Not A Fan”
