Brooklyn (2015) 8/10

Starring : Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters
Director : John Crowley
Running Time : 111 mins

Eilis Lacey (Ronan) emigrates from Ireland to the United States in the hope of finding a job as she can’t find full time work in her home town of Enniscorthy, County Wexford. She moves to a Brooklyn boarding house and finds a job, and secretly marries her new man Tony Fiorello (Cohen) but when her sister dies back in Ireland Eilis is forced to return and finds everyone trying to convince her to stay and trying to fix her up with men, not knowing she has a husband back in the states.

This was such a nice old fashioned romantic drama, with Ronan doing a great job in the lead. Her character’s decisions might be questionable as the movie progresses, but she makes it work and makes it feel like a plausible approach, in spite of how ridiculous it might sound from the outset. The drama is at times high, but it’s the romance that makes this movie such a winner, and don’t worry – there’s a happy ending, I promise.

You’ll like this if you liked : Angela’s Ashes

How To Be Single (2016) 6/10

Starring : Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Leslie Mann
Director : Christian Ditter
Running Time : 110 mins

Alice (Johnson) takes a new job at a law firm following the breakup of her relationship and meets Robin (Wilson), a free spirited woman who loves being single, so Robin takes Alive under her wing to teach her the ins and outs of the current dating scene. Meanwhile Alice’s sister Meg (Mann) doesn’t want a relationship because she’s too wrapped up in work, and Lucy (Brie) goes on a series of bad dates, not realising that her ideal man is right under her nose.

This comedy feels incredibly forced for the majority of the time, with very little natural humour, and most of it feeling like it was tagged on at the last minute for laughs. The acting feels a little stagnant, especially from Johnson and Wilson, with Mann doing a better than average job in her role and Brie just being okay. Comedy fans would do better to find something else to watch, as this isn’t particularly funny and tries too hard to be something that it isn’t. It might have even worked better as a light hearted drama than a gross out comedy movie.

You’ll like this if you liked : Drinking Buddies

Skin Trade (2014) 5/10

Starring : Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, Celina Jade, Peter Weller, Ron Perlman
Director : Ekachai Uekrongtham
Running Time : 97 mins

Following the murder of his wife and the kidnapping of his daughter, New York detective Nick Cassidy (Lundgren) heads to South East Asia to track down the gang responsible for the atrocities and to bring an end to their network of human trafficking.

This is such a cheesy movie, filled with all the clichés that action movies of the 80s and 90s made so popular. Imagine if Taken had been made with Steven Segal and you’ve pretty much got his movie sussed. The soundtrack sounds like it came from a poor man’s version of The Terminator, the main heroes meet in a comic book style misunderstanding fight scene that goes on for far too long, and the nudity, though necessary for a movie with a plot revolving around the sex trade, feels tacked on for nudities sake, especially when the majority of these poor young girls who have been kidnapped from their homes and sold into slavery have very obvious breast implants. One for the hardcore action movie fan who doesn’t mind trading in good plots for over the top action.

You’ll like this if you liked : Taken 2

Our Brand Is Crisis (2015) 7/10

Starring : Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy, Zoe Kazan
Director : David Gordon Green
Running Time : 108 mins

Pedro Castillo (de Almeida) is a Bolivian politician running for the presidential election in his home country. He hires an American consulting firm to help him improve his image and win, and in turn the company hires semi-retired ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine (Bullock) to manage the campaign. When she realises that one of the opposition campaigns is being run by long-time rival Pat Candy (Thornton) she decides to run a smear campaign in order to win.

Based on actual events, this movie is actually very well executed. In spite of adding comedy to the character of Jane Bodine, this is quite the downhearted drama, with information about the characters coming out as the movie progresses which makes them feel so much darker than they were at the start. People who start out as caricatures soon turn into far more complex characters which makes for an intriguing watch.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Ides Of March

X-Men : Apocalypse (2016) 8/10

Starring : James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till, Evan Peters, Kodi Smitt-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, Ben Hardy, Lana Condor, Josh Helman
Director : Bryan Singer
Running Time : 144 mins

An ancient mutant named En Sabah Nur (Isaac) awakens from an ancient slumber and recruits his four horsemen in an attempt to take over the planet by kidnapping Professor Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and taking over his body, thus giving him the psychic ability to control the world’s population.

This is a pretty decent comic book movie which mainly suffers from making the supporting villains so one-dimensional. When you have complex villains like Magneto, it really shows when the rest of the villains (at times including Apocalypse) are so lacking in personality. I don’t know if they were meant to come across as mindless drones, but they certainly did for the most part. The best moment in the entire movie revolves around Evan Peters as Quicksilver rescuing the entire school from an explosion, which is very cleverly thought through, and there are even some comedy digs at the movie itself as some of the Xavier students go to see Return Of The Jedi and discuss it on their way home, plus you get to see Nightcrawler dress like Michael Jackson. X-Men fans will enjoy this, though the Wolverine moments felt forced.

You’ll like this if you liked : X-Men : Days Of Future Past

The Fountain (2006) 6/10

Starring : Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Mark Margolis, Donna Murphy, Sean Patrick Thomas
Director : Darren Aronofsky
Running Time : 97 mins

Three stories, each telling of a man (Jackman) who is trying to obtain the eternal love of a woman (Weisz); in the past the woman is a queen, and the man a Conquistador searching for the tree of life in order to free her from pativity; in the present he is a doctor trying to find a cure for his cancer stricken wife; and in the future the man is a space traveller trying to seek out a dying star.

This is an odd little film, which tells three parallel stories of the past, present, and future. There are some amazing practical effects, and it’s worth watching just for them, but the story is a little disjointed in a cultish way, a bit like The Nines. The overall present story is a decent story of love and loss, but sometimes the past and future stories actually got in the way rather than enhanced it.

You’ll like this if you liked : Cloud Atlas

The Hateful Eight (2015) 8/10

Starring : Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen
Director : Quentin Tarantino
Running Time : 168 mins

In late 19th Century America, a pair of bounty hunters, John Ruth (Russell) and Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), are heading to Red Rock with their bounties when they are forced to take shelter from a storm at Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they are faced by a group of suspiciously unfamiliar faces and find themselves having to figure out if their lives are in danger.

Although far too long, this was a fun whodunit of sorts, with Russell and Jackson having to guess who might be trying to take their lives. The dialogue helps to make the viewer forget just how long this movie is, which is a good thing, and the pacing is generally quite fast which makes the time pass quicker. Fans of Tarantino will enjoy this movie, which has all of his hallmarks, so expect a violent murder filled joy ride filled with bad language.

You’ll like this if you liked : Django Unchained

Dirty Grandpa (2016) 7/10

Starring : Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Zoey Deutch, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Mantzoukas, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Hough, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman
Director : Dan Mazer
Running Time : 102 mins

Jason Kelly (Efron) is an uptight lawyer who is looking forward to his upcoming wedding, but when his recently widowed grandpa Dick (De Niro) tricks him into driving him to Florida for Spring Break so he can have sex for the first time in fifteen years, he finds his life turned upside down, most drastically when he starts falling for Shadia (Deutch), a girl he knew in school.

This movie is so over the top and ridiculous that it manages to go from being really bad all the way into being entertaining. The plot has been done to death in previous movies, is pretty stupid, and extremely minimal to say the least, but De Niro and Efron manage to keep it fun throughout. The underlying romantic storyline between Efron and Deutch works well, even amongst all the swearing and sex jokes, and overall it’s an enjoyable easy watch.

You’ll like this if you liked : Daddy’s Home

A Walk Among The Tombstones (2014) 8/10

Starring : Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, David Harbour, Boyd Holbrook, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Brian ‘Astro’ Bradley
Director : Scott Frank
Running Time : 114 mins

After accidentally killing a child, police detective Matthew Scudder (Neeson) quits the force and decides to try to give up on drinking as he was drunk at the time of the accident. Many years later he is hired by a drug trafficker, Kenny Kristo (Stevens), to help find his missing wife but when she is killed Scudder investigates further and discovers a connection between the kidnappers and the DEA.

This was actually a pretty good thriller. When I realised that Liam Neeson was in it, I thought it might end up being similar to Taken or Run All Night, but this has its own individuality and its own quirks which make it very watchable and very interesting, though the little boy was a bit too much for my liking, as his sort of character has been done before and done better to boot.

You’ll like this if you liked : The November Man

Pixels (2015) 6/10

Starring : Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Brian Cox
Director : Chris Columbus
Running Time : 106 mins

In 1982, Sam Brenner (Sandler) was convinced by his best friend Will Cooper (James) to take part in the first ever Worldwide Video Arcade Championships due to his excellent gaming skills. Years later, aliens declare war on the planet based on the video of the championships that were sent into space and Brenner, along with now president Cooper, has to rise to the alien challenge or the planet will be destroyed.

This sounded like a fun concept, but with Sandler and his cohorts in the lead roles I didn’t expect too much in the way of intelligent humour from this. And I wasn’t disappointed. Too much of the material is wasted on Sandler’s once slapstick but now dry sense of humour, with Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad almost completely wasted, with most of their jokes being repetitive and unimaginative. And hardcore arcade gamers will be disappointed by the vast amount of inaccuracies concerning the release dates of the games used in the movie. Don’t get me wrong, this was entertaining enough, it’s just that a different cast might have done it better.

You’ll like this if you liked : Evolution

The Revenant (2015) 6/10

Starring : Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter
Director : Alejandro G Inarritu
Running Time : 157 mins

After being mauled by a bear while on a fur trading expedition, frontiersman Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is left for dead by his colleague John Fitzgerald (Hardy) and is forced to make his way through the wilderness while mortally wounded in the hope of getting back to civilization and gain the urgent medical attention he so desperately needs.

This is an okay movie, and the bear attack scene was fantastic, but it just seemed to drag on for no apparent reason. Some scenes could easily have been cut down or gotten rid of altogether, and if this was even half an hour shorter it could have been a much tighter story with a much more approachable runtime. Fans of Hardy and DiCaprio might be disappointed by the limited screen time they share together (percentagewise it’s probably less than ten percent), and Pulter is pretty much wasted in this role.

You’ll like this if you liked : 127 Hours

Happythankyoumoreplease (2010) 7/10

Starring : Josh Radnor, Malin Akerman, Kate Mara, Zoe Kazan, Pablo Schreiber, Tony Hale, Michael Algieri
Director : Josh Radnor
Running Time : 99 mins

Sam Wexler (Radnor) is a struggling writer who finds a boy named Rasheen (Algieri) who has been separated from his foster family on the subway and decides to take him in. His decision to try to adopt him couldn’t have come at a worse time as he meets and falls for a lounge singer named Mississippi (Mara).

This is one of those movies that feels slow paced when you’re watching it but once it’s over you suddenly realise that a lot actually happened. There are three key groups of people, and this movie gives us a small window into a period of time in their lives and shows us how their lives interconnect and how each person changes their friends. Malin Akerman is probably the stand out performer in this movie, managing to still look attractive even playing an alopecia sufferer, and her scenes with Tony Hale are probably the best.

You’ll like this if you liked : Liberal Arts

Far From The Madding Crowd (2015) 7/10

Starring : Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple, Jessica Barden
Director : Thomas Vinterberg
Running Time : 119 mins

Bathsheba Everdene (Mulligan) is an independent woman who inherits a large portion of farm land, making her a very powerful member of Victorian society. As a result she manages to attract the attention of three very different men, each of them vying for her hand in marriage – all for very different reasons.

This drama, based on the Thomas Hardy novel, was actually quite enjoyable. Carey Mulligan seems to be something of an expert at choosing roles in movies that turn out to be surprisingly good, thanks in no small part to being repeatedly cast in movies written by David Nicholls. The action is slow paced yet at times witty and dry, and the acting is never overplayed by the cast as they make each character their own.

You’ll like this if you liked : Pride And Prejudice