Archive for Release Year: 2016

56 posts from 16 July 2024 to 28 December 2017.

  • Gods of Egypt

    Gods of Egypt is stunning. Visually, it’s pretty much flawless.

  • Deadpool

    Can’t hold a candle to R.I.P.D., that’s my verdict. If that’s not a black mark, I don’t know what is.

  • Operation Chromite

    Melodramatic and over the top. Even being a war film, it has more in common with John Woo heroic bloodshed.

  • Animal Político

    Dadaist CGI cow roams an urban setting, like the subway, restaurants, offices. Cow-a-bunda!

  • Suicide Squad

    A childish comic book adaptation. This one suffers from a lack of plot and too much Will Smith.

  • Zoolander 2

    Completely crazy catwalk of cognate cameos. Creates a cognitive confusion concerning celebrities communications containing cant ciphers, commonly called slang. Neil deGrasse Tyson in da house, bitches!

  • Money Monster

    Not a bad directorial stint for Jodie Foster. The ending is strong on this one…

  • Always Shine

    Just another Mulholland Drive with extra twists and less budget. Mackenzie Davis can’t make omelettes without eggs.

  • Daughter of God

    Stars off as a simple “Ana de Armas in many costumes” drama, but starts progressively weirder until it clicks, and from there you can see the ending, which is fucked up.

  • Jackie

    A slow motion descent into a personal hell, courtesy of Jacqueline Kennedy. This is painful to watch, the slow pacing helps to imagine how terrible those first hours post JFK assassination must have been.

  • Snowden

    A pointless film since Citizenfour exists. Boils down to a study on Snowden’s sex life.

  • Hail, Caesar!

    SQUINT! SQUINT AT THE GRANDEUR!

  • The Legend of Tarzan

    Lawrence of Congo, but with animals! And America as the anti-colonial force, oh the irony.

  • Paterson

    Über-hipster slice of life
    of a bus driver who is nice,
    writes poems about his wife
    and their bulldog has no lice.

  • The Neon Demon

    Refn does Mullholland Drive, replacing the noir references by body horror, and with a discernible plot. Random cameos by Keanu Reeves too, for some reason. Special thanks to Alejandro Jodorowski…

  • Refrigerantes e Canções de Amor

    Meh, overplays its hand for such formulaic script.

  • Denial

    I will deny in a court of law this timid and formulaic BBC biopic is a masterpiece. I’m not libelling Rachel Weisz plus supporting characters for this easy paycheck.

  • Jason Bourne

    A high budget remix of all other Bourne films, for the money. It gets better on the second viewing. A great cast, not so silly plot (with parental bullcrap, but eh) and high octane action sequences.

  • The Shallows

    127 Hours of Jaws.

  • Arrival

    Confucian aliens arrive to koan us into nirvana. Timeless Knowledge is Bliss.

  • Ben-Hur

    Sometimes you do a film for the greatest hits, with a central conflict of pride, competition, and revenge. Then you nail in Rodrigo Santoro with a message of peace, forgiveness, and selflessness.

  • The 5th Wave

    Twilight of the Hillbillies. Goddamn preppers with their Gun worship and Government mistrust, and then the main theme is love. And out freaking nowhere, comes a Edward Cullen to tempt the protagonist and spread the seed into possible sequels that never materialise.

  • Dog Eat Dog

    The classic tale of moronic criminal pals going down on account of their lack of smarts. Pure 100% dumb American fuckers.

  • Manhattan Nocturne

    Rorschach’s Journal: I’m a depressed and paranoid voiceover, giving up the correct film noir vibes, and setting up the transitions between scenes, while the main character taxies around. Maybe I should not blame the plot for such an escalation in cruelty that numbs me, but it’s stronger than me.

  • The Brothers Grimsby

    Starts silly, crosses the line into absolute bonkers, crosses the line twice into batshit insane. Better the The Dictator, but still not that good.

  • Warcraft

    Misunderstandings the lead to Total War: The Film. Surprisingly nice Tolkienesque prequel to World of Warcraft.

  • Moonlight

    This is really a retread of older films, adapted to differing realities. Sadly this is something so taboo, most American actors ran away from this like the plague, it seems.

  • Ghostbusters

    This is the quintessential “modern” reboot of an older IP which was radioactive as fuck. Who’s you gonna bore? Ghostbusters. I ain’t afraid of no repetition.

  • The Lost City of Z

    Apocalypse No. The lust for knowledge is enough to send fine man to their deaths. No need for gold or political considerations.

  • Free Fire

    Creepy crawlers. Lowlifes dragging themselves through the mud for a bunch of cash. A low-key picture.

  • Lady Macbeth

    Evil begets evil, or victims become perpetrators.

  • The Handmaiden

    Rashomon is the warmest colour. Surprisingly, this is based on a British novel which had already been adapted by the BBC starring Sally Hawkins and Imelda Staunton.

  • The Girl on the Train

    Come Back Girl, she’s not gone in the end.

  • Uma Vida à Espera

    Slow moving drama that flares up in the last minutes. Bait-and-switch until the very last second.

  • Manchester by the Sea

    Patrick O’Malley, drunken Irishman, is so Irish, Catholic, and homophobic because he is a blue-collar working class fisherman. Not a Boston yuppie like Ben Affleck, a real human.

  • Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

    More like bore of yuck-tease. It’s a complete trainwreck.

  • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

    Baited with a Jarhead type, and all I got was another Pentagon propaganda flick. Kristen was right, he’s no hero.

  • Cartas da Guerra

    Epistolary look into the commissioned officer experience in the Portuguese Colonial War. A more mainstream affair, compared to Hotel Império.

  • Mechanic: Ressurrection

    Yet another PG-13 assassin murdering people, while boobs remain firmly in bras. It’s sort like Hitman (the game), making it look like an accident. Came for Michelle Yeoh, but it’s a cameo, no martial arts involving her. Jessica Alba is the love interest that does nothing but getting captured.

  • Independence Day: Ressurgence

    Shit, for different reasons. This is a bog-standard modern sci-fi middle of the road affair. Instead of US Navy propaganda, it has product placement and Chinese money bankrolling the whole thing.

  • Anthropoid

    A nice name. The -oid suffix means in the shape of. Someone who sends millions to their death us not a full human.

  • Lady Bloodfight

    I thought this was a Dead or Alive adaptation, all the fighters have dangerously large breasts. It’s scary. The fight scenes are not bad, with the right amount of slo-mo. A Z-list film, but very much watchable, a lady-only remake of Bloodsport.

  • Guernica

    Good grief, one of the worst films brought about from one of the best settings. And a great cast to boot, doing mindless love triangles.

  • Cell

    This is an alleged adaptation of a Stephen King novel, but it was butchered beyond any recognition. Not even the main cast can salvage it.

  • Split

    This film is torn between a competent horror thriller about an abused girl turning inward, escaping into her own inner world; and some over-the-top mind-over-matter transhuman, toying with mere mortals like a cat playing with its food.

  • Jack Reacher: Never Look Back

    Well well, Bourne with a family. But Reacher is still the noir anti-hero, a complete asshole who respects no one, we are supposed to root for him.

  • The Nice Guys

    What a great film, I love how everything fits together. It’s really funny, the dialogue is full of zingers.

  • Collide

    The original Gone in 60 Seconds, but with plot. Baby Driver without rapists. Not even worthy of Saturday afternoon viewing.

  • Inferno

    The one with Felicity Jones as less platonic love interest, but still far enough from first base.

  • Delírio em Las Vedras

    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with less drugs and more cheap beer.

  • Bad Santa 2

    At first you think this can’t work again, lightning doesn’t strike twice. Then you have the opening shot, of Wille riding a sports car on The Strip, drooling over a breastfeeding mother, crashing into the valet service he is working with, being fired on the spot. Brilliant, even though I think I got the censored TV version.

  • The Autopsy of Jane Doe

    More like The Crucible in a morgue. Salem dudes tortured a innocent girl in the 17th century, so her body gets bounced around modern times, until someone takes a peek and gets brutally murdered by other corpses.

  • Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

    This is not the final chapter, feels like yet another chapter told badly for devilish reasons. It retroactively makes the last film worse, the whole President Wesker subplot is abandoned offscreen.

  • Shut In

    Some kind of crappy horror film. It’s not just technically bad, the rest is so bad, you start noticing the technical fails.

  • Allied

    What the hell is this, why is Robert Zemeckis directing a soap opera for the Chinese? Sure, they laundered their money through Paramount, but there’s the Huahua company logo at the start, probably some Chinese billionaire front.

  • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

    Tim Burton’s Back to the Future version, with his trademark horror themes. A solid children’s film, where the hero hooks up with his own grandfather’s ex.