Film Reviews by AER

If you like Sunday evening TV comforts like Where The Heart Is or Heartbeat then you will like this undemanding sequel to the hit film Fisherman's Friends. If you took out the montage sequences set to the FF's many songs then the running time and story meat would amount to 30 minutes (haha). The director's brief was to just hand the script around and say make believe you are on Coronation Street or Brookside. It's about as innocuous and vapid as you can get. It's a rush job sequel which will please any fans of the first one. It's not really cinema -it's a singing cash cow and a bit of a sawdust sausage...

Charlie Day is an acquired taste and Ice Cube does what he always does, growl and look like like Teddy Ruxpin. This had very few laughs in it but still it had some invention and it cheered me up... So as a film it's a bit lacklustre but if you have a film about 2 teachers that have a fist fight then this is exactly that. Undemanding like its viewers (me included).

Flat, uninvolving, cliched bore full of lazy plot beats, manipulative incessant soundtrack, clumsy editing, and uninterested actors. The book had a corny story to begin with but good films can be made out of melodramas... but this was just a quick cash-in. It was un-involving and quite a slog to get through to its very unconvincing conclusion.

This lightweight musical about Aboriginal Australians was a massive stage hit down under. This the starrier film version with Geoffrey Rush in. Reprising his role as Uncle Tadpole is Aussie National Treasure Ernie Dingo who is the type of larrikin that is a staple of movies from the land down under. It zips along at a fair crack with lots of musical numbers but despite having a unique subject matter it's still a bit slapdash and as corny as most other musicals. It attempts to address racism whilst making you laugh and that makes it a very uneven movie which never seems to settle down before throwing us another lame joke. The lead, Rocky McKenzie is a bit wooden too, so thank goodness for the brilliant Ernie Dingo who on saves this ropey musical from being wholly lame.

This Australian rave-culture take on Le Ronde is as authentic as a 3 dollar bill... A Pulp Fiction wannabe without an ace of originality, it makes Human Traffic look like The Godfather. It features a bag of Australian character actors playing nightlife types (none are at all convincing) - pity poor Kylie Minogue, Ben Mendlesohn, Joel Edgerton, and David Field. Everybody sucks in this.... An embarrassing career low that the cast probably want buried.... Very stinky.

Percy Adlon's films are usually interesting and funny. This was just too surreal and odd to pull me in. I liked the yodelling though.

Sadly a gigantic plot hole and some narrative inconsistencies sink Kenneth Branagh's lavish adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on The Nile. I wonder if the same plot holes exist in the source novel. I won't share what they are because I don't want to put spoilers in.

Kenneth Branagh's other recent film as director, Belfast, is vastly superior and a lot more honest than this corny follow up to his Murder on the Orient Express (which was also more enjoyable)....

I wish some of the other 'reviewers' would stop piggybacking their right-wing racist/homophobic views about 'wokeness' into their reviews of this fairly innocuous movie....

3.5 out of 10

Monkey's Mask is the worst film out of Australia that I've seen in some time. The script is terrible, full of atrocious poetry and even worse dialogue. It has an interesting cast but they are mostly wasted - look out for a young Abbie Cornish, Brendan Cowell, and Bojana Nokovic.

Dead in the water

Wrecked in the edit, director Walter Hill had his name taken off this sci-fi and credited to the name Thomas Lee. It's hard to know what the original looked like, but Supernova in it's completed state is a standard actioner in space which is let down by a very bad and crap villain. All characterisation has been jettisoned too, which makes this a complete missed opportunity. James Spader, Angela Bassett and the principal cast show promise but it's easy to see why the villain Peter Facinelli didn't scale the heights of Hollywood. A curio but not worth the hours.

Jane Campion's second film was also serialised in three-parts as a TV series in some countries. It's a spirited and very moving tale of a tragic soul who found her voice through literature. One of the very best films to come out of New Zealand. Certainly top 5! On the technical side - this DVD doesn't have subtitles for those that are hard-of-hearing.

Masterpiece.

This belated sequel to Coming To America was unexpectedly funny. I'd read reviews in the nationals and heard friends slamming it, so I was a bit worried that I would hate it. I saw the trailer a long time ago and it made the film look terrible, but I was wrong. I laughed all the way through and it had enough jokes for the new characters to make it fresh. The lion's share of the good material is given to Arsenio Hall and Wesley Snipes... It's a good for one watch and relies on the first film too much, but if you have a lot of affection for the first film, Eddie Murphy and co. haven't ruined my memories with a crappy sequel. This was way better than I was expecting - old jokes / new jokes. It was all great. It was good for one watch!

I'm a fan of Park Chan Wook's Vengeance trilogy and I've seen and enjoyed Stoker - however Thirst was an utter miss for me. I couldn't get a fix on the story or the characters. I found it neither funny, scary or intriguing after the first few scenes. I held on for 90 mins then saw I had another hour to go and gave up. It's so rare that I don't see film through to the end but this was a mess. It lacked bite. Fangs a lot Wookie.

Neill Blomkamp's first horror film is a small-scale outing that will probably fall down the cracks in future years as he resumes his career with District 9 sequels and other big-budget crow-pleasers. Always interesting District 9, Elysium, and Chappie had ideas, inventive SFX and looks to burn, so this tiny low-budget horror is a real curio. It's a shame as it is nowhere near as good as his famous films (and I love small films). It falls down because it's uneven pace, unsure performances and a very straight-forward conclusion. I did like the idea of the Vatican buying private medical companies to pioneer VR tech to track down demons. The SFX and visuals were unique and eye-catching too; so whilst it's great to see Blomkamp plodding on (in Canada) without Hollywood's support, next time I'd like to see a better script and better actors.

Fans of Wong-Kar Wai will find his debut interesting as it is packed with action and a ton of plot. It's a very predictable plot about family committments vs love. How far will you put yourself at risk for a loose cannon who doesn't value your safety let alone his own? Another criminal puts everything on the line and loses just like the anti-heroes of Heat, or Thief. You can still see an inkline of Wong-Kar Wai's style - mainly through his use of blurry slow motion camera work, a proliferation of rain-soaked neon streets, and his repetitious use of music (nobody applies music to a scene better than this guy)... This time it's a Cantonese version of TAKE MY BREATH AWAY by Berlin for the Top Gun OST....

Interesting and better (and much worse) was yet to come. Superb entertainment.

8 out of 10

Giving The Rocky Horror Picture Show a run for its money, the late socio commentator Alan Clarke took a break from the types of film he'd make his name with like Scum, The Firm, and Made in Britain. This bonkers musical imagines a snooker tournament between Billy The Kid and Count Dracula in a weird concrete complex set in the 'future' or an alternative present. It's at times very funny, very creative, but mostly it's very boring and was probably very out of touch with what the young people of 1987 were actually turned on by at the cinema, the clubs and at night. Mad and forgotten, I am happy to have finally found this true one-off.... It features the great Phil Daniels (Quadrophenia / Meantime / Outlaws (TV)), Alun Armstrong (Funny Cow / Get Carter), and Bruce Payne (Passenger 57) all singing their lungs out.

Not bad but lacks the bite to be a classic. 4 out of 10.