90/ PIXELS
With such a great ideat at its core, Pixels couldn’t fail to be at least a bit entertaining, and indeed some of the action scenes of video game characters attacking Earth provide some enjoyably ridiculous spectacle, but unfortunately they gave the film to the very-past-it Adam Sandler and his unfunny buddies, who did their very best to ruin the project. Maybe they’ll do this movie again one day and get it right [they could even involve the maker of the short film, you never know]. 4.5/10
89/ HITMAN: AGENT 47
I have a feeling that I’d have hated Hitman: Agent 47 if I had been familiar with the Hitman games, while I can’t compare it to the earlier film Hitman as I haven’t seen it, but I didn’t think this effort was too bad really. While it was crammed with needless CGI and had a very dull leading man, director Aleksandra Bach did manage to create a fairly stylish looking and pacy action movie which at least tried to have a plot and was refreshingly vicious. 4.5/10
88/ THE TRANSPORTER REFUELLED
No, this wasn’t very good. I’m not too annoyed that, due to its poor box office, there probably won’t be a new trilogy of Transporter films starring Ed Skrein, and as usual for modern action movies the editing was often headache inducing, but there were times when the mayhem became enjoyably crazy and satisfied the action lover in me, while Skrein, despite being not much of a replacement for the Stath overall, can certainly do this kind of stuff well. 4.5/10
87/ KNOCK KNOCK
This was pretty good for its first half, very well staged and helped immensely by a really good performance from Keanu Reeves [saying “Keanu Reeves” and “really good performance” in the same sentence is really wierd], but, as is often the case, Eli Roth just couldn’t sustain a good idea [I still have yet to see the film which this remakes] and just went for awkward laughs and silliness, while the carefully built up tension just evaporated and the thing made no sense. 5/10
86/ THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING 
Right, so you have this fascinating real life character, but, the film decided to skip most of his achievements, and make no attempt to try to understand the man, obviously thinking that his wife trying to decide if she wants to sleep with another man or not is more interesting. The film passed the time in its bland manner, and Eddie Redmayne is fantastic, but this was really a pretty dishonest and dumbed down whitewash of a movie that tries to make a big slushy romance out of messy and complicated situations. 5/10
85/ SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE 
I actually enjoyed this rather more than expected, even if it only partially delivered what its title promises [the idea of scouts facing monsters was done much better in a certain other film last year]. Just about good enough as a zombie movie [though aren’t we bored with zombies by now?] to justify its existence, though poor as a teen comedy, it did give us a few good comic horror moments and Christopher Landon showed that he can deliver a good looking film. 5/10
84/ FRANKENSTEIN VS THE MUMMY 
One can’t help but feel a great deal of disappointment about a film called Frankenstein Vs The Mummy where the two title characters only battle it out for a couple of minutes, though it’s worth remembering that when Frankenstein fought the Wolf Man in 1943 the climactic battle was just as short. Nonetheless, director [plus vitually everything else] Damien Lewis did make his meagre budget stretch quite far, while his overlong but still fitfully entertaining movie was surprisingly strong on plot. 5.5/10
83/ THE LAST WITCH HUNTER
Considering it came from the writer of Priest and Dracula Untold, this dumbed down melding of Highlander and Constantine was better than it should have been, and passed the time inoffensively enough, but was certainly proof, if it were really needed, that Vin Diesel really is a terrible actor, while some of the scenes seemed like they’d been put in the film in the wrong order with, of course, anything that may have made sense of it all ruthlessly jettisoned. 5.5/10
82/ SUITE F
RANCAISE
A perfect example of a film which should have been far better than it was, this disappointingly bland, if certainly not unpleasant effort, despite decent performances from the leads, was seriously hampered by inconsistent direction which gave the impression the film was the result of two different filmmakers, thin characterisation and a general feel of holding back in case the proceedings became too moving or too tense, causing it to feel somewhat stifled and to remain on one level. 5.5/10
81/ PAN
It’s always a shame when a director you like crashes and burns in spectacular style, though one wonders what Joe Wright ever saw in a script which made most of J. M. Barrie’s characters unrecogisable and tries to use its title character [who isn’t supposed to really be a hero at all] for another superhero origin story [yawn]. A few moments did provide the right magical feeling, and Hugh Jackman was as fun an example of sliced ham as you can get, but overall….meh. 5.5/10
Be the first to comment