Guilty Pleasures #44 - L: Change the World

You may remember I’m not huge fan of the Live Action Death Note Movies

Yes, that one too, but we’re focusing today on the Japanese ones. Whilst they’re mostly faithful adaptations, the pacing is far too fast, and it ends up pulling shortcuts that I ultimately didn’t end up liking. That said, I probably was a bit harsh, it could’ve been the Netflix one.

But what happens when the same crew don’t have a source material to adapt? What if they’re taking a popular Death Note character and doing something entirely new with him? Well, you get L: Change the world

Guilty Pleasures #43 - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

When Disney bought Star Wars, it was an expensive process, and whilst Merchandise will likely make them everything they paid and more, it’s good to have a few movies to provide new toys to sell, plus they generally make the big bucks. So began a series of spin-offs, a series that may well have ended with the second one. I’ll leave my thoughts on Solo for another time, but let’s resume our look at Star Wars with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Both these spin-off films are notorious for having trouble behind the scenes. Here the film was subject to extensive reshoots under a different director (which if I think of it, sounds identical to the problems Solo had). Disney wasn’t happy with the vision the original director had for it. Still the movie was successful both critically and commercially, making just over $1bn on a $220m budget, and scoring a respectable 85% on rotten Tomatoes. Does it still hold up? Let’s take a look

Mini Review - Ride Along

This was another movie franchise that was on my sequel baiting list… I regret nothing!

Ride Along featuring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart. I should’ve known what I was in for but I didn’t stop to think. Released in 2014, the movie was financially successful, earning $150m on a $25m budget but it was slammed by critics with only an 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So why don’t I just go the whole hog and make it a rage review. Answers to follow

Mini Review - Angels and Demons

It’s been a while since I talked about the Da Vinci Code. Number of reasons, my schedule being full with other movies, the fact that these films rely heavily on religion, a subject in which I’m not very well versed and I am not myself religious, and finally because I found the Da Vinci Code itself quite boring and had little desire to return to the trilogy in any hurry. But, the time has come and I’m ready for it.

Released in 2009 it made $486m on a $150m budget, which is respectable but it didn’t exactly set the world on fire critically, with only a 37% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, still a marked improvement over The Da Vinci’s Code’s 25%.

#65 - R.I.P.D.

Ryan Reynolds, he’s Deadpool but before that he was Green Lantern, he’s was in A Million Ways to die in the West (briefly) and he’s in this piece of sh*t too.

Based on a comic book by Peter Len Melkov, this movie was a dismal failure, making only $78m on it’s $130m budget. Critically it was disastrous too, it holds a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 3.6/10) and a 5.6/10 on IMDb, bear in mind, this is the same rating Green Lantern got. To find out why, let’s just dig right in.

Mini Review - Star Trek

Let me tell you about my experiences with Star Trek

Yeah, whilst it took me until I was in my 20s before I watched Star Wars for the firs time, I never watched Star Trek. I think I had an old VHS of it, but it never caught my attention. But in 2009 they decided to reboot the franchise in bring it in the New direction, brought to us by the guy who directed the Force Awakens and Mission Impossible 3, JJ Abrams.

The movie was modestly successful, earning $385m on a $150m budget, not that great, but enough to kickstart this franchise anew leading to a new TV series on Netflix. Look, my schedule’s pretty packed, I may get to discovery some-when down the line but not in the near future.

Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 2 episodes 7-9

We continue our look at Voltron: Legendary Defender