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8/10
"I'll do the fingering."
15 May 2017
Warning: Spoilers
This film attempts to tackle the great 'is kissing your clone incest or masturbation?' debate and does so very badly. Other things happen too, but it was certainly an interesting scene that I didn't quite expect in my 'sexual-predator-metaphor aliens kill people' movie.

Alien Covenant is the newest installment in the Alien franchise. Ridley Scott might be milking it, but I did buy a ticket, so who knows? The plot is thus: some colonists are heading to a planet to colonise, they follow a rogue signal off-course to another planet that's closer, younger and better looking, and then they all get killed by aliens.

It's a tale as old as time, if this tale includes Michael Fassbender playing flute to himself for a good three minutes. It's been twelve hours and I still can't believe that Fassy said the line, "I'll do the fingering," with a straight face in a serious sci-fi film. Not going to lie, it's a little hard to pay attention when a man has such good sexual tension with himself. Kudos, Michael, kudos.

This movie was a gloriously stupid mess and I loved it. I've not had this much gory fun at a movie for a while and it's definitely worth seeing for that alone.

Is the ensemble cast a tad distracting? Yes. Is the 'twist ending' lamp-shaded viciously? Yes. Is every character in this film completely moronic? Yes.

That being said though, it's a hell of a lot of fun. (At points.)

There are time where the film is trying(???) to be deep and falls apart at the seams.

Do I care about one of the characters' crisis of faith? Not really. Do I care about the evil android's villainous monologue about how all humans should die? Not really.

There's a little bit too much blood and screaming for that to come through properly in the dialogue.

The action is about as mindless and hard-to-follow as one would expect, and the animation of the xenomorphs is a bit bad, but who cares? There's two types of people coming to see this film, and if you're a couch 'space movies are cool i guess' fan, you're probably not going to have much of a problem with it.

Actual fans of the Alien franchise, though? Might be another story.

It takes a certain type of film creator to tear their own work apart and trample on its still bleeding corpse. I don't actually know if that's what Ridley Scott has done with Covenant but a lot of people on the internet seem to think so. Decide for yourself! Go and see the movie.

In the words of the friend that I saw this film with, "0/10 – historically inaccurate," but I suspect he might have been joking.
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4/10
it might be a kiwi masterpiece but it doesn't live up to the hype
27 January 2017
Look, I'm a fan of this film, truly, I am. It's just very dated. The anachronisms, the language, the sensibilities, the pacing. It might be a road movie, but it's SLOW. There's no sense of urgency and you really don't 'get' that there's actually something they're running from.

However, I love how much this film covers the country. The Wellington scenes are good fun.

Perhaps I would have liked it more if I was alive when it was released/set but it just doesn't appeal to me. I don't deny that it's a stalwart of Kiwi cinema, but times have changed and this film certainly doesn't endure.
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The 5th Wave (2016)
1/10
I wouldn't.
27 December 2016
Warning: Spoilers
This film is like Twilight but with less furries. It's a love triangle-laden mess and I have no empathy for the characters because they're so poorly written.

I wouldn't say that I'm Hungering for Twilight or feeling a little bit Divergent or anything, but this story has been done before. It's been done so many times before.

It's also extra uncomfortable because there's sex scenes and they're teenagers. I don't want to watch that sorta thing. The characters in the 'love triangle' have minimal chemistry and it's just very uncomfortable.
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5/10
A blundering, slow-paced mess
20 July 2016
It's a disappointing addition to what has been a very solid franchise so far.

The crew of the Enterprise blunders into trouble because apparently none of them have any common sense. The trouble is resolved in a way that is more comical than legitimate, and it really doesn't work.

I take a bit of an issue with plots like this because we know that there's no stakes. A Star Trek film needs a specific cast to appease people, thus, we cannot truly feel scared for these characters. I know we need conflict to create drama, but I just feel like it could have been done a different way.

This film opens with a five-minute long voice-over by Kirk. I know that we need to learn about what has happened to the crew of the Enterprise since the last film, but we could have done it in a way that isn't such a massive chunk of exposition. This glacial pace and exposition- heavy dialogue doesn't let up until the second act turning point, but by then, it's too late to drag this film back from the breach. Although the third act is a semblance of a saving grace, it's just not enough to help this film maintain audience interest.

There's some neat spaceship stuff that would be worth seeing on the big screen, but in all, this film is a disappointment.
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The Herd (2014)
5/10
while visually engaging, the message is lost
13 July 2016
This film mightn't have been made for me. I'm a meat-eater, and I cannot become a vegetarian because of health reasons.

That being said, the performances are excellent. The cinematography is as well. It's a harrowing take on an issue that is very important.

The thing is, when you add humans into an equation it becomes very hard to distinguish your original message. I get that the dairy industry is terrible, but portraying it as such via the use of humans adds a dimensionality that just isn't there when you take the dairy industry at face value. I worry for the women in this film, rather than the cows that this film represents. The message is lost underneath the horror.
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10/10
A refreshing action-comedy
13 July 2016
For starters, I just thought I'd clarify that I'm not sponsored by Sony. I spent $16.50 to see this film, and I'm not making any of that back by reviewing it positively.

Ghostbusters (2016) is an uplifting change to a franchise that has been mediocre at best for the last few years. The original is fine, yes, but this film was a blast.

It's wonderful. This isn't a gender thing. It's a movie thing. I maintain that most of these jokes would land fine with an all-male cast.

It's witty, charming, and just plain neat.

We're in New York. It's 2016. Erin (Kristen Wiig), a scientist, realises that her ghost-hunting book (written by herself and her friend Abby (Melissa Mccarthy)), has been released onto the internet by Abby herself. Afraid that this fantastical book will ruin her reputation, Erin hunts down Abby, and her colleague Jillian (Kate McKinnon) who are paranormal scientists. Instead of stopping the sales of the book, the three women end up hunting ghosts.

They are soon joined by Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), and Patty (Leslie Jones), as they work to stop the evil machinations of a guy who wants to bring about the end of the world.

I wasn't expecting much, re the terrible trailers, but the casting and characterisation is wonderful. The four female leads (Wiig, Mccarthy, McKinnon and Jones) have an irresistible chemistry that translates well on screen. I'd like to make a special mention for McKinnon's Jillian Holtzmann. She's an absolute scene-stealer, zany and delightful to watch, as well as openly flirting with literally everyone on screen.

I genuinely found parts of this film scary. There is a lot of camp and comedy, but there's a couple of bits that are somewhat harrowing. Some of the ghosts are creepy-looking, and although we as an audience know there's no risk to any of the main characters, it's still a bit scary. I like that. The balance of horror and comedy is very palatable. It doesn't stray into territory that is too dark or unforgiving, but horror does help the narrative. The pacing of this film is good, too. It's just under two hours long but the time flew by.

There are moments where the continuity seems a bit iffy, and the ghosts aren't uber-realistic looking. They're more resemblant of mid-2000s Scooby Doo-itis, but that's okay! Let's be frank, we're not looking for a Ghostbusters movie to be gritty. It's a comedy- horror, not any sort of Paranormal Activity nonsense.

To those of you who aren't going to see this movie because of blind attachment to the original, consider this. This remake isn't going to stop your original film existing. You can continue to own your copy of the original while supporting the new.

Ghostbusters is joyous, funny, and likable. I mean, if there was ever an invasion of ghosts I'd trust these women to save us.
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2/10
Aggressively average and not worth the hype
6 March 2016
I had a feeling I knew what this film would be like before I entered the theatre, and unfortunately my fears were realised.

Despite the incredible hype for this film as a 'terrifying film', I found it to be boring and aggressively average.

There is nothing new about the plot. Boy and girl are harassed by malevolent presence and one of them dies. The only new thing is the found footage element, which is done very badly. The cameraman is bad at controlling the camera, the footage is blurry in parts, and the sound is extra fuzzy. Cheap tricks are used to try and make people scared, but every jumpscare is cued by a sound effect which makes it awfully easy to realise when one's about to happen.

Paranormal Activity has remarkably little scares for a film that seems to invite horror from the opening titles. In the end it just felt like I was watching a guy being an asshole to his girlfriend for far too long, and said guy perhaps had a cat that could turn on lights in a malevolent manner or something to further torment said girlfriend.

It's really bad when you end up siding for the antagonist in films like this.

Not recommended.
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Flashdance (1983)
4/10
Whilst flashy and with some dances, this film lacks a significant plot.
8 January 2016
Warning: Spoilers
On a whole, I went into Flashdance as a fan of dance films. I love dance films, I really truly do, but there comes a time where a dance film becomes a music video, and Flashdance has just crossed that thresh hold.

Jennifer Beals, playing the lovable and very talented Alex, is one of the only highlights of this film. She is very good at what she does and quite endearing, but her appearance as the main character doesn't make up for the fact that this film is pretty bad in many other ways.

The prominent men in Alex's life are creepy, and she falls in love with the one who follows her home in his car, buys her way into an audition, and generally just uses his power as her boss over her.

The film itself lacks a majority of a plot, and the exposition needed to explain Alex's existence simply isn't there. Why does she want to dance? How are these people she spends time with related to her? How old is she in relation to her partner? Why should we care about her story? It's bad to come out of a film and realise that you haven't really been impacted by any of the characters' stories.

The continuity is messy. There are cuts where there shouldn't be and chronologically, everything is a bit of a disaster.

However, the dancing is very good, and the soundtrack is awesome. This film could be worse.
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