Friday, 30 March 2018
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.
Sunday, 18 March 2018
Friday, 16 March 2018
Smith Month - Mini Review: The Pursuit of Happyness
I’ve decided
to save my sanity and limit the Will Smith Oscar baiting movies to this one and
Collateral Beauty. But I’ve chosen this one to introduce another member of the
Smith family we’ll be looking at a couple more time. May I introduce Mr Jaden
Smith… You know the guy who tweets this sh*t
No Jaden, Baby Geniuses is cr*ppy movie series, not a representation of Real Life
At a mere 8
years old (probably younger during production) and with only a cameo in Men in
Black II under his belt, young Jaden would have a starring role in this, the
Pursuit of Happyness
Released in
2006, the movie had a decent reception with 67% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and
an average 8/10 on IMDb. The movie was profitable, earning over $300m on its
$55m budget. But does it hold up? Here are my thoughts.
Tuesday, 13 March 2018
#57 - Smith Month - Shark Tale
I’ve not
done a single Guilty Pleasure review in ages, and that’s not about to change
now, we continue Smith Month with an animated future, infamous as one of the
worst of the Dreamworks Catalogue, Shark Tale.
Released in
2004 and making a sizeable profit of $367m on it’s $75m budget, the movie had a
mixed critical reception at the time and it’s only got worse as time went on. I
normally wouldn’t cover a movie Mr Enter had already torn to shreds, but this
is a Will Smith movie and hey? When was the last time I reviewed an awful kids
thing? What's that? I did in my last 2 rage reviews… why break up a trilogy? This
is Shark Tale
Sunday, 11 March 2018
Smith Month - Mini Review: Men in Black 3
It was only
about 8 years late, but we finally got a second Men in Black sequel, does it
improve on areas that were lacking in the last movie? Well, with a 68% rating
on Rotten Tomatoes and making enough money to surpass the previous film, it
certainly seems things are back on track, but are they? Let’s take a look.
Friday, 9 March 2018
Star Wars Rebels Season 4 Finale Review - A Fool's Hope/Family Reunion and Farewell
And so we
come to the end of a journey. Back in August 2014 I started Star Wars Month, a
month dedicated to Star Wars Material: movies, tv shows and cr*ppy lego shorts.
Just as I did, Star Wars was preparing for its big return with the Force
Awakens. But before then, a little kids’ show in Disney XD cropped up. I
decided to review it, episode by episode, and whilst other shows failed to meet
the standard I require to be invested, this show never dropped that far, at least not consistently. Sure
the quality varied from episode to episode, I’d argue this season gave us some
of the most consistent quality I’ve seen, not a single episode scoring below a
7, and I’ll tell you right now, that’s not changing with these final ones. This
show had 2 purposes, the first was to the show the foundations of the Rebel Alliance, an arc that basically concluded in the last series and secondly to
see a rag-tag group of rebels fighting the good fight with the end goal of
liberating Lothal, and here we are, let’s take a look at the final episodes of
the show. Spoilers will be covered, so here we go
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
Smith Month - Mini Review: Men in Black II
Let’s
continue with the Men in Black series as we continue Smith Month
Men in Black
II came out in 2002 and was met with a decent Box Office performance but a poor
critical reception, which likely factored into the 3rd movie not
coming out until 10 years later. Why was the critical reception so poor, well
here’s my take on it.
Sunday, 4 March 2018
Friday, 2 March 2018
Smith Month: Mini Review - Men in Black
It’s March,
you know what that means, time for an obligatory theme month!
Ah, Will
Smith, a guy who somehow ends up in some dire awful movies, but maintains a certain
charm that keeps him employable, even moving over to the first Netflix
blockbuster, Bright (which is not a great movie but I won't be covering here) but like I said, he’s been in
a lot of bad movies, and I have a select few I plan to cover. Let’s start with
one that isn’t sh*t, Men in Black.
Released in
1997 to financial and critical success, including 3 Academy Award Nominations, this movie would go on to the first of
a 3-movie franchise, the rest of which we’ll cover next week.