Change Your Image
Paradroid78
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Prey (2022)
Surprisingly good!
Feels more like an actual "Predator 3" than any of the other movies in the franchise that followed the original two.
Some of the creature CGI is a bit too noticeable for my liking, but it's used fairly sparingly, with a lot of practical effects that add "punch" to the action.
Worth watching.
Encanto (2021)
Wait, that was it?
Imagine Frozen, if 95% of the movie was Anna wondering what to do about the eternal winter, without ever leaving Arendelle, and then it jumps straight to her reconciling with Elsa at the end without any of the adventure that makes up the bulk of the movie, and without Hans to offer any threat.
In a nutshell, that's Encanto. It looks gorgeous, but the movie is basically all set up and then a very rushed ending without any actual quest being embarked on. There is no conflict or peril.
If you have Disney Plus already and want "safe" movie for young children, then maybe give it a go, but don't go out of your way to pay for this. Moana it ain't.
Luca (2021)
Pixar does Ponyo
This movie is basically Pixar's (very good) take on the movie Ponyo. And it doesn't try to hide it - the seaside town where the action takes place is even called "Porto Rosso"!
Now to be fair that movie was itself inspired by The Little Mermaid, so things sort of come full circle here. And outside of the basic framework of the story and some nods and winks for those in the know (note the scene where the two fish in human form eat human food for the first time at the human child's house), the story very much does its own thing and does a very good job of it.
It's definitely one of the better recent Pixar movies and worth watching, if you're into animation, or have kids. It also has a great message about accepting the "other" (unlike the aforementioned Ghibli inspiration, the townspeople here are a real threat towards the sea creatures).
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Don't pay for this!
6/10 because of amazing visuals, a great main character, and a good final act.
The bad news is the rest of the movie tries to cram way too much in, and as a result moves along at such breakneck speed, that it sacrifices most character development and never lets the viewer get properly immersed in the various parts of its world.
I honestly wonder if it was actually meant to be a mini-series. It jumps between adventures in lots of really elaborately detailed locations, just as it would if it were split into episodes. Because it's a movie though, it only ever spends about 5 minutes in each before travelling off to the next part of the world.
The first act setting up the plot and characters is preposterously fast. Imagine if in Frozen the build up to Anna and Elsa's parents dying and Elsa being coronated queen happened in the space of 5 minutes.
As the movie progresses, the titular main character (who is actually very good), assembles a rag tag little gang of people, but again because things are moving so quickly all the time, we spend so little time with any of them and they end up feeling like they were assembled from some archive of stock Disney sidekick characters.
The movie is so rushed, that at one point towards the end, the plot jumped forward so quickly from planning a heist to meeting with an important character I was convinced it must be a dream sequence.
And just when you think the middle act is getting properly going and an antagonist announces that she is hatching an evil plan to force Raya to give her something important, that is literally the last thing we ever hear her say. After that she is completely forgotten about while the movie jumps straight into its (admittedly very good) finale. It's like half an hour of movie is simply missing.
I really wish this was twice the length that it is, as it would be totally awesome with more time spent just not rushing through the plot so quickly. Sadly unless there's a directors cut laying around somewhere with a ton of cut content, this is just too all over the place.
To be fair, the ending is actually quite good and it's probably fair to say that the animation is Disney's best so far. It's really not a bad family movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's just a crying shame that the whole thing feels so rushed.
I would say it's not worth paying the premium to see early on Disney Plus. Wait until it gets included in the normal subscription.
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
It's definitely not bogus
Even though it was made nearly 30 years after the last entry in the series, the movie is entertaining and feels like a natural follow on from the last two.
Only issue really is they try to cram too much into it and because the plot switches between the Dads (who apart from being a bit older have thankfully not changed one bit) and their daughters it feels a bit rushed at times. This is a movie that will hopefully one day benefit from a directors cut that gives us a longer runtime and a slightly slower pace.
Still it's fun and comes together in the end (mostly).
Tenet (2020)
One point for good acting, another for looking pretty
As someone who really enjoyed other Nolan movies like The Dark Knight, and Interstellar, this movie is just categorically bad.
It's basically a bland James Bond knock-off with a secret agent taking on a villain on a yacht, except there's a confusing time travel gimmick meaning the characters sometimes move backwards in time instead of forwards. The way the movie presents this is complete and utter nonsense, but fine let's suspend our disbelief.
When I say confusing, the reason is not that it's a particularly hard concept to grasp (it's not), but because the film goes out of its way to make it difficult to understand. First of all, all the dialog is muffled so if you want to understand more than the occasional word you have to watch it with subtitles. Then when you watch it with subtitles, you realize why they muffled the dialog - it's because it mostly consists of incomprehensible gibberish.
After a lot of meandering and the occasional set piece, this all this culminates in a badly choreographed big battle scene where the movie fails to actually show you who the good guys are fighting against, making the whole thing look like a live fire exercise instead of an actual battle.
By this point though it's hard to care anyway. Even though the acting is as good as you'd expect, there's little character development and once you strip the time travel gimmick away, the plot boils down to a straight forward hunt for a McGuffin.
Wished I'd followed my instincts and stopped watching before I got to the end.
Secret Society of Second-Born Royals (2020)
Europe has never looked so North American
The movie is ostensible set in a small kingdom between Germany and Denmark. This will no doubt surprise anybody from either of these countries, as will the fact that said small kingdom looks suspiciously like Vancouver, or perhaps Toronto, and everybody looks and speaks like they just fell out of an American high school movie.
Note to Disney: No place in Europe looks like this.
Leaving the setting aside, it asks us to root for a bunch of second rate royals who discover they have super powers. Like they don't already have enough privilege in life. This takes a lot of imagination to stomach.
Luckily the movie is squarely aimed at 9 year old girls, and it largely succeeds in providing entertainment to that audience. But steer well clear if you're after anything you might enjoy as an adult.
Mulan (2020)
Looks beautiful, but the cartoon's better
The live-action remake of Mulan is watchable, but pretty forgettable.
Leaving out Eddie Murphie's dragon was a bad decision, as the movie takes itself way too seriously for its own good and badly needs comic relief. Mulan herself doesn't have much in the way of character growth - at some point half way through we're told by a narrator that she's found herself and basically that's it.
The final act fell apart for me. The emperor worship felt awkward, and Mulan suddenly turned into a superhero impervious to harm, which broke my suspension of disbelief.
Still, she did get a good ending and it sure did look pretty.
Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe (2020)
Pretty good if you liked the original series
If you liked the original series and the first movie you'll like this, as it's basically more of the same.
It does miss a few beats though:
1. The songs are hit and miss.
2. There are three awkward scenes that drag a gag out for way too long:
- Hearing an ominous noise whenever the gang look a certain direction
- A servant escaping
- A remote control going haywire.
It's like they got told in post production they needed to pad the running length out but couldn't think of a good way to do it. It's really noticable.
3. The ending reminded me a bit too much of the first movie to be a coincidence, like they ran out of ideas and just went for what they knew worked before.
On the whole though, it's just what fans of the original would want - more Phineas and Ferb, with plenty of references back to the original show.
Fraggle Rock: Rock On! (2020)
Too many humans
It's great to see the Fraggles back in action after so many years, but the last few episodes of the series are too centred around celebrity guest stars.
In the original the only "silly creature" (human) the Fraggles ever spoke to was Doc, and only for a few minutes in the final episode.
The Mallorca Files (2019)
It's fun!
Surprised by some of the negative commentary on here. No, it's not realistic in the slightest (why would a British and German cop partner up to solve Spanish crimes on Mallorca?!), but good fun and feel good TV.
Sometimes that's exactly what's needed!
Horrible Histories: The Movie - Rotten Romans (2019)
It's a kids film - people need to relax!
People giving this bad reviews seem to have completely missed the point that it's a film for kids, it's not going to have Life of Brian style humour or a nuanced story-line.
It's ideal for school age children and just about entertaining enough for adults (some of the songs are pushing it though), so watch it with the expectation of being a fine family film and you'll be happy with it.
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)
Shaun the Sheep does ET ... and it's brilliant fun
This is basically a Shun the Sheep version of ET. Fun for all the family, and plenty of movie references for sci-fi fans.
It knows it's silly, and goes out of its way to enjoy itself.
Easily one of the best animated movies of 2019.
Ad Astra (2019)
Space Baboons!
Trust the other reviews on here, this movie isn't very good.
Here's a small list of things that that wouldn't be out of place in an Ed Wood movie if someone had given him the budget to make something like this (I've tried to keep it spoiler-free):
- Gravity (or lack therefore) changes on a scene by scene basis depending on the needs of the plot. This goes so far that on one occasion towards the end one character is floating around a space station while another is walking like they're on Earth IN THE SAME SCENE!
- People able to climb up rockets during take-off.
- People able to float around in rockets during take-off.
- Idiot highly trained astronaut thinks it's a good idea to discharge a gun inside a rocket in space.
- Vacuum breathing space baboons.
- Moon pirates.
- Flying through a meteorite shower in a space suit with a piece of sheet metal to deflect them.
- Surfing on a nuclear explosion to get between planets.
- Jumping hundreds of miles between one space craft to another without any sort of propellant.
- Randomly changing direction and stopping while en route between between planets.
- We're told that the main character is a solid-as-a-rock, BPM never goes above 80 even in life-or-death situations, Neil Armstrong type, but he randomly turns into an emotional wreck when the plot needs him to.
- Main character needs to board a Virgin Atlantic (seriously) commercial flight between Earth and the moon, instead of using any sort of military transport, because of product placement taken to a whole new level.
- Need to travel to Mars in order to send radio signal to Neptune.
Giving it a 5 as it looks pretty and the acting is as good as you'd expect given the actors involved.
It Chapter Two (2019)
Not scary, but overlong and overly reliant on CGI.
The movie starts out well, but quickly bogs down in disjointed scenes following the individual characters having an encounter with the monster and getting scared, in between unnecessary flashbacks to them getting scared by the monster in their childhoods.
After around two hours of this, where you're left pondering the meaning of life and wondering if the plot will ever go anywhere, the story finally picks up for the CGI heavy third act monster hunt, that really wouldn't feel out of place in an episode of Doctor Who.
If this movie were actually scary or unpredictable it would be one thing, but the plot beats are hugely predictable and because of the overuse of CGI nothing fells particularly scary. The film has a lot on jump scares, but they're telegraphed a mile away and you can literally count the seconds on your fingers when things go quiet before something scary happens. To compensate for the lack of real psychological horror, the film instead goes for shock value by amping up the gore.
On the plus side, the actors do well with what they're given, you do invest in the characters, and the movie is technically well made. But at nearly 3 hours it's just too long, and a lot of unnecessary scenes could have been cut without detriment. If an hour were trimmed, nothing would have been lost and it would immediately be transformed into a tighter, better movie.
At the end of the movie we're shown a street with a cinema advertising Nightmare on Elm Street 5, which shows that someone making this had a sense of humour because, while admittedly never as bad as the worst, this movie feels a lot like a modern incarnation of a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
Great for families that remember Dora
This movie is surprisingly good, which you wouldn't expect from a movie based on a pre-school cartoon. It's basically a kids version of Indiana Jones.
The people that did it clearly have a lot of love and respect for the source material, and it really shows.
What I would say is that if you're not familiar with the show you may not get that much out of it, as there is ton lot of nostalgia throughout the whole movie. But for tweens (and their parents) that watched (and remember) Dora and Diego when they were younger and are now approaching or their tweens, it's great!
John Wick (2014)
Giving it a 2 only because I managed to watch it to the end
Wow, this was bad. Like others have said, it was like watching someone play a video game shooter.
The film feels like it was written and directed by a 12 year old boy trying to just cram as much graphic violence in as possible to see how much he could get away with.
There is no tension whatsoever (Keanu is bullet proof). We are asked to consider him the hero even though he murders nearly everybody he comes into contact with, usually by shooting them in the head (sometimes multiple times, just for good measure). The plot is virtually non-existent (Keanu's car is stolen and his dog killed, so he goes on a killing spree, the end).
If you want to see a good "pure" action movie, go and watch an Arnie film from the 80's.
If you want to see ultra violent movies done right watch Kill Bill Part 1.
But avoid this. It's terrible.
Us (2019)
All over the place
This is a movie of two halves. The first half is a pretty decent suspense thriller, in a confined environment, where you don't really know what's going on and then, just when you think it's ending, there's a whole other half in a different setting that's significantly less good where they make the fatal mistake of trying to actually explain the highly unlikely goings on.
As a result it feels like the film has about 6 acts instead of the usual 3, and by the time it ends you don't really care anymore as instead of being a tightly plotted thrill ride, the writers continue to throw all sorts of ideas at you in the hope that some of them will work, each less well thought out than the last.
If they stuck to just the initial setting and maintained some mystery it could have been awesome, but as it is it just goes on too long and loses focus at around the half way point.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Amazing movie
For some reason critics are giving this harsh reviews, when best I can tell everybody else in the world loves it. I'm glad I didn't read any of their reviews before seeing it as otherwise I might have missed this masterpiece.
The acting is superb, and the music is brilliant (make sure to see it in the cinema!). You can physically feel the energy during Live Aid at the end and I left the theatre feeling I'd just seen one of the best films of the year.
Rami Malek should get an Oscar for his performance.
Predator 2 (1990)
It's really good!
Don't get why this is only a 6.3 on here, it's really good!
Different to the original sure, but it complements it nicely, with some stand out performances by Danny Glover and Gary Busey, plus it's the only other film where Kevin Peter Hall plays the Predator.
Some of the set pieces - like the metro and the meat packing facility - rival anything from in Predator 1, and this is a on the whole a very worthy follow up.
The original is undoubtedly the perfect action movie, but Part 2 is very very good and certainly better than the tripe that followed it.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
Overly sentimental and predictable romance
I watched this mistakenly thinking it was going to be a historical drama, and boy was I wrong.
Rich city girl that has it all, including a sophisticated fianée and a gay best friend goes away to spend a few days with simpler folk in the country side where she meets the true love of her life.
Does that story sound familiar? Sure it does, it's the plot of a dime a dozen romance movies and this one's not really any difference. Any historical drama is served up purely in the interest of furthering the romance plot and not a single thing comes as a surprise in this overly sentimental movie that is 100% predictable from start to finish.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Relentless and unforgiving
This is a very novel, and very good take on the "I am legend" style movie.
The characters have to be silent as the creatures preying on them are ultra-sensitive to hearing, so most of the movie plays out in silence with them using sign language to communicate (fortunately sub-titled for all of us who don't know sign language!).
It's a nice touch, and really makes you feel the tension. There are in fact frequent moments in the movie that will have you at the edge of the seat, if not jumping out of it whenever something happens to startle you (which is often).
The pace never lets up and the movie never lets you feel like any of the characters are in a "safe" place, as the moment you think a "problem" is over, where other movies would show the characters rebuilding and relaxing, in this one the next thing goes wrong nearly straight away.
After the end of the movie quite a few people in the theatre nervously laughed as a way of releasing the tension that had built up throughout the movie, it was that relentless.
Also without spoilers, right at the start the movie does something harrowing that let's you know that certain "conventions" of these types of movies won't apply, so you can't predict how the story will unfold, which makes the whole thing all the more suspenseful.
Emily Blunt is of course as good as ever, and all the other actors, including the children, pull their weight well.
Not for the faint of heart, but a Grade A horror movie/ thriller.
The Orville (2017)
I can't believe it's not Star Trek...
This is basically Seth Macfarlane's attempt at doing a spin-off of Star Trek The Next Generation (obviously changing everything just enough to avoid a copyright infringement issues) and, for the most part, it works pretty well. The added humor (for example the captain and first officer havine one too many to drunk after work and having a hangover on the bridge the next day, or the regular wise cracks from different crew members) is mostly welcome and gives you the sense that these people behave at least somewhat like real people would.
Most of the episode's are actually pretty good science fiction stories (especially the series finale), it explores moral issues, and I can only think one episode of the first season that I wasn't too keen on (the one were they retread the tired old plot-line of the crew being infected with a virus that makes them lose their inhibitions, already seen in both original trek and the next generation).
I'd say it's a must watch for any fans of Star Trek, space operas in general, or science fiction.
Tadeo Jones 2: El secreto del Rey Midas (2017)
Surprisingly entertaining
Reading the reviews in this in national newspapers, you'd think it was one of the worst films you could possibly see, but I saw it with my 6 year old today and all I can say is those reviews have either not actually watched the film or are biased against European cartoons for some reason. We liked enough to look up the other "Tad The Lost Explorer" on our streaming service when we got back from the cinema.
It's a breath of fresh air from the usual Disney and Dreamworks output and is entertaining for all the family (I laughed at a few parts, which is something I really appreciate in a cartoon) basically being "Indiana Jones for a younger audience", which is perfect if you want to introduce your children to that kind of genre before they're old enough to watch those live action movies.
Early Man (2018)
It's ok
Not one of Aardman's best, but watchable and has some funny jokes. It starts out really promising, but by the end is hugely predictable and simply turns into a by the numbers "underdog wins the day" type sports comedy (albeit with Claymation). Previous ones of their films have remained fresh until the end, but this starts to drag a bit once it becomes obvious how the plot's going to play out