Wednesday, 28 March 2018

Smith Month - Mini Review - Collateral Beauty


In cinema history there have been many horrors, killer clowns, serial killers with clown masks, reliving the same day over and over again, sociopaths, ghosts, zombies, things that go bump in the night and literally anything by Adam Sandler these days but none are more scary than Will Smith trying to win an Oscar


We conclude Smith Month with the most recent of Will Smith’s Oscarbaiting flicks, Collateral Beauty. Can’t we do Bright instead? No? Oh joy. Despite a star-studded cast, this movie was panned by critics with only a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and whilst moderately successful thanks to it’s low budget, it made less than $100m and marks one of the lowest openings of Will Smith’s career. That Oscar just seems further and further away.

Sunday, 25 March 2018

Netflix Retrospective - Luke Cage Season 1 Episodes 1-2 - Moment of Truth/Code of the Streets



Well, let’s continue these retrospectives with Luke Cage. Last seen in Jessica Jones getting a shotgun to the head and getting himself repaired by Claire Temple (and yup, she has a sizeable role in this one) my initial reaction to Luke Cage is that whilst it doesn’t reach the lows DD s2 reached, it didn’t reach the highs, in particular with the action, but a re-watch may do this show credit (or possibly not) so let’s do it.


Friday, 23 March 2018

#58 - Smith Month - After Earth

In this instalment of Smith Month


I’m revisiting an old friend of the show, M Night Shyamalan

It’s been a while since I reviewed the last one and it’s still most anger-inducing product I’ve ever watched. But this one is slightly different. Will Smith wrote the plot of this movie, which M Night and Garry Whitta adapted into a screenplay. Jaden may have been successful in the Karate Kid but it certainly didn’t seem like he was getting a lot of other acting roles, this came out 3 years after the Karate Kid, and something had happened, Jaden had gone through puberty so his voice and performance is significantly changed from Karate Kid

It’s fairly obvious this movie was Will Smith’s attempt to bolster his son into stardom, and if that was the case then EPIC FAIL! This movie was panned on release, 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was also a box office failure, earning $250m on a $150m budget + $100m marketing. So, what went wrong? Was it Shyamalan’s direction, the writing or a mixture of the two? Let’s take a look at After Earth.]


Tuesday, 20 March 2018

Smith Month: Mini Review - Karate Kid

How about a Smith Month review without any Will Smith in it? Here’s Karate Kid, the remake.


Yup, Jaden’s on his own in this one as stars in a remake of an 80’s movie that, I haven’t seen, I’ll be honest. But this isn’t a comparison piece, I want to judge this movie on its own merits. Released in 2010, the movie got a mixed reception, 65% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 6.7/10. But financially it was successful, getting $365m on a $40m budget.