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Out of Death is total bollocks. Some actors are, basically, themselves on film. Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L Jackson, Chris Pratt, are guys who play the same character in practically every role.

Bruce Willis is in this category. The only difference is, he does not even try anymore. Never has it been more evident of a man collecting a wage for the bare minimum. It is just a pension for him.

These days, most films that Willis appears in are guaranteed to be poor. Out of Death takes his films to a new depth. He does not even try. The other actors, except for Lala Kent that worked with him in the God-awful Hard Kill, probably looked forward to being in a film with him.

Pity for them. Written by Bill Lawrence and directed by Mike Burns, the same combinations that brought us the aforementioned, Hard Kill, manage to make an even poorer film this time around.

The acting stinks. Kent, however, is head and shoulder below everyone else. Tyler Jon Olson does deserve a special mention for being unable to hold his breath whilst playing dead.

At ninety-six minutes long, the film still manages to include many extraneous scenes. The film feels longer than it is because of the poor pacing. There is nothing to recommend about this film. It is an hour and a half of your life you will never see again. Avoid.

Hall's love for the source material is evident in the film. That is the problem. The script has little to no exposition, requiring Thompson and Negga to tell the story through their emotions and acting.

As excellent as both actors are - and they are both very good - the film's script gives them too little to work with. The ninety-eight-minute film is filled mostly, with Thompson's not unattractive face, struggling to tell some type of story.

It is difficult to know how faithful to the source material the film is. A book tends to lend itself more to an emotive experience. Passing is very emotive, tackling the prickly subjects of race, identity, class and belonging.

Though Hall's film is not long, it is interminably slow. The story meanders, the tensions that Negga's character must have suffered are not evident at all.

Thompson's Irene, in contrast, has her own demons. Sadly, the script and minimal interactions with other characters do not allow them to show. Passing has gained some critical acclaim, which one can only believe is due to the subject matter it tackles.

From a technical standpoint, the film is not great. It is in focus, yes, but some of the shot selections seem more indulgent than necessary. Shooting the entire film in black and white, whilst artsy, is a bit of a copout, the light coloured skin of both actors leaning towards white for the viewer.

The jazz club scene works well in the film, the energy leaping off the screen. Similarly, the concluding party scene has a buzz about it that, rather than contrasting with the rest of the film, shows up the slow pacing.

That Hall is an actor herself is evident in the performances from the cast. All of the actors bring strong performances. Ultimately, Passing disappoints because it had so much scope and promise. Not a terrible film but an unsatisfying one that is difficult to recommend.

Red Notice is a lazy star vehicle, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber entirely around Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds popularity.

Gal Gadot has enough star power and beauty not to be overshadowed by the two men, neither of whom are required to get out of second gear in their respective personas.

Thurber's script has a few gems, allowing Reynolds, especially, to bring his acerbic wit to proceedings. It is not as clever as he would like it to be and there are too many unnecessary scenes in the film.

The constant changing of locations served no purpose except for increasing the use of studio green screen and editorial title cards. The film is competently directed and bumps along at a good pace. Unfortunately, the story is convoluted and takes too much inspiration from better films without bringing anything new.

Rita Arya, outstanding in The Umbrella Academy, has little to do but scowl and collect her paycheque as the tenacious Das. Chris Diamantopoulos as Soto is such a waste of screen time, one can almost forget he was in the film and I've watched it twice!

With a screenplay by Jeymes Samuel and Boaz Yakin, with Samuel also on directing duties, The Harder They Fall is a Western made notable by an almost exclusively black cast.

Using the Western staples of revenge and the overthrowing of a small town, The Harder They Fall is a big-screen film forced, by present circumstances, onto the small screen.

A host of well-known stars and actors appear in this well-made film. Idris Elba leads the charge as the antagonist, Rufus Buck. He is ably supported by Regina King, as Trudy Smith, and Lakieth Stanfield as Cherokee Bill.

The protagonist, Nat Love, is played by Johnathan Majors. Zazie Beetz as Stagecoach Mary, Edi Gathegi as Bill Pickett, Danielle Deadwyler as Cuffee and RJ Cyler as Jim Beckworth make up the rest of Love's crew. Delroy Lindo's Bass Reeves brings the two factions together.

The story begins with a god-fearing man (Michael Beach) sitting down to eat with his young wife, Eleanor (Dewanda Wise) and son, Nat (Chase Dillon).

There is a knock at the door. Two men come into the house, Rufus and Jesus Cortez (Julio Cesar Cedillo). The man recognises Rufus. He is not glad to see him, knowing that it is not a good omen.

Rufus kills the man and his wife. He carves a cross into young Nat's forehead. Many years later, a grownup Nat, a well-known outlaw himself, exacts revenge on Cortez.

All of this happens before the credits roll on Samuels' beautifully crafted and nostalgic homage to Westerns, the Old West and figures from history.

From the outset, the writers state that the film is a work of fiction. Even though all the names are real people from the Western era, the story is fictitious.

The beauty of Samuel and Yakin's story is that the cast being predominantly black is not important. There are elements of the film, that work better, because of it, but it is not the driving force of the film.

From a technical standpoint, The Harder They Fall is a wonderful piece of work. From the stylised opening title sequence, dusty, yet colourful, palette and shot selection to pacing and fabulous soundtrack, The Harder They Fall is an enjoyable treat.

All the actors on show bring their A-game, with standout performances from Regina King and Lakieth Stanfield. Idris Elba is the biggest name on the call sheet.

However, it is Majors' Love that drives the film, his chilled demeanour carrying proceedings easily. Majors', who recently appeared in Loki, as the time-travelling villain, Kang, star is in the ascendancy.

Veteran actor, Delroy Lindo, is such a natural fit as the lawman, Bass Reeves, a role made for him to play. There are so many great scenes in the film, from Deon Cole's Wiley Escoe, as the sheriff of Redwood, bravado monologue before being persuaded to leave town, to Elba's Rufus final revelation, the film is full of gems.

The music of the film deserves a special mention. There is hip hop, reggae, soul, traditional Western-style music and accents.

Besides the nods to the classic spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone, there is a quiet homage to The Magnificent Seven, with the bond amongst Love's motley crew of protagonists, going beyond greed or need.

There is a wobble, the story of Love's revenge momentarily overshadowed. Redwood needs saving from the tyranny of Rufus and his gang. This particular storyline peters out, none of the townsfolk figuring in the story later on.

At two-hour-and-nineteen minutes, The Harder They Fall is a long film. It does not feel long. The action is well-spaced out, the peak and troughs of the film, keeping one's interest throughout.

Jeymes Samuel has fashioned a highly enjoyable film, that is well worth the two hour viewing time.

Father Christmas is Back is wretched. It is not entirely down to the script. Maybe ninety-eight percent of it. Directed by Mick Davis and Phillippe Martinez, with a story by Martinez. The god-awful script is by Hannah Davis, David Conolly and Dylanne Corcoran.

What makes the film even more painful, is that far better comedy writers - Caroline Quentin, John Cleese and Kathy Brand - are in the film. The acting is teak-like in the extreme, the assembled cast struggling to make the material work.

Hurley, not blessed with natural acting ability, is poor. The woman is trying but she is out of her depth. Rolls Royce gets a good showing, one of their beautiful Wraith's given much screen time. The best thing in the film.

The film is over-saturated, so colourful that even a rainbow would pale in comparison. A British film, there is a smattering of farce that does not work. There are far too many jokes that do not work in this film.

The unfunny scenes are too numerous to list. That two comedy greats in Grammer and Cleese should find themselves in one such scene, - the 'old blokes squaring up for a fight' a classic! - is criminal.

Father Christmas is Back - his surname is Christmas! Ho ho no. - is terrible. Truthfully, the trailer does not promise much. I expected the film to be bad. It under delivers spectacularly.

At one-hundred-and-five minutes, it is not a long film. However, it is still too long for any right-minded, sober person to sit through. You have been warned.

Sequels have always been seen as an easy way to make money in Hollywood. Even before the seventies penchant for adding a number to the end of a title to denote it being a sequel, Hollywood and the wider film industry were producing sequels, rehashing and reusing the same characters of a successful story in another film.

It is a rare thing, the sequel that is as good or better than the original, especially if the original film is regarded as a good film. The better sequels tend to be made shortly after the original. The Godfather two, one of cinemas most lauded sequels, was released two years after its predecessor.

Rocky two came three years after its parent film and The Empire Strikes Back, named in the old style of sequels where the title did not just gain a numbered appendage, also came three years after a genre-defining Star Wars.

Some sequels have worked with a larger gap between films. Terminator 2: Judgement Day was released seven years after its epic originator. However, the intervening years saw such technological advances in film that the sequel proved to be an impressive spectacle. Unfortunately, subsequent efforts in the series have seen not only diminishing returns but also a definite lessening in quality.

In terms of genre, dramatic action films tend to be easier to make sequels or series of. The characters are set and the story tends to be good versus evil, a relatively easy premise to work with. The comedy genre is not, generally, a good genre for sequels, especially if the film is a hit or classic.

Scary Movie was amusing but was followed by increasingly wretched sequels. Similarly, the Police Academy films stretched a silly idea to the point of punishment for the eyes and mind. Great comedies are even harder to make sequels of. The likes of Airplane, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures and Ghostbusters have all spawned underwhelming sequels.

That is not to say they were bad sequels or not funny, it is just that trying to recreate funny is a difficult skill. Thirty-three years on from its classic originator, Coming to America, stars Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, plus many of the original cast, reprised their roles to make a sequel, Coming 2 America.

Like many fans of the original film, I was not thrilled to hear about a sequel to one of the most quotable comedies of my life. Coming to America is, rightly, thought of as a comedy classic and probably Eddie Murphy's best film. Playing multiple roles, as does Hall, Murphy was at the height of his powers, having made his name on 48 hrs, Trading Places and two films in the Beverly Hills Cop series.

Directed by John Landis, who was mostly known for directing Michael's Jackson's Thriller, even though he had directed many films before that including Animal House, Blues Brothers, Trading Places, starring Murphy, and An American Werewolf in London, the film that would get him the Thriller gig, Coming to America is gold.

With a story by Murphy, Coming to America had an almost entirely black cast and was a comedy that contained very little of the comedy staples laid down in the previous decade's blaxploitation era comedies. There was no hoes, no drugs, no thugs, no shucking and jiving, none of the expected staples of 'black' comedy.

Set in the fictional land of Zamunda - think Wakanda without the technological advancements - Coming to America was a very different black comedy. Whereas before, Eddie had been the funny, wisecracking, black guy in a white world, in Coming to America he was still a funny black guy but he was displaced in a black world.

Coming to America was a hit both domestically and worldwide, with the humour in the film still bearing up more than three decades on. So, what about the sequel? Unsurprisingly, it is not as good as the original. Many have quickly come out to deride it as being a poor, money-grabbing, unfunny effort. That is not true.

Coming 2 America, whilst not been as funny as the original, is better than one could have hoped for with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Wesley Snipes' General Izzi is a great addition and Leslie Jones as Mary Junson, mother of Murphy's Akeem's illegitimate son, Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler), plays to her stereotype but it works well within the context of the film.

The film keeps the laughs coming but still manages to fashion a pleasant story, romcom, in amongst the silliness. Fowler's role as the would-be heir to Zamunda is a difficult role for any actor to undertake, especially as he was always going to be in Murphy's shadow. Fowler bears the burden well, with the story split between him and Murphy's Akeem.

There are some clever nods to the original film with one particularly funny reprise coming from Vanessa Bell Calloway. The barbershop is back, even though all of the patrons of the shop were old men in the first film! And, for me, the return of Sexual Chocolate is a real boon.

Like many sequels, Coming 2 America will always suffer when compared to its predecessor, the original being such an unknown quantity at the time but becoming a classic over time. If one can watch the film in isolation, something made easier by the fact that one does not need to have seen the first film to understand this one, it is an amusing comedy in its own right.

With a one-hundred-and-eight minutes runtime, Coming 2 America is slightly over the rom-com standard ninety minutes but is about ten minutes shorter than its predecessor. The film moves at a good pace with the only dips being when the story strays into rom-com territory, though the dips are slight and do not detract from the comedy too much.

It was always going to be a herculean task to match the magic of the first film or to even make a film that does not offend or alienate the rose-tinted vision of the original's many fans. Coming 2 America just about manages it.

The Silence of the Marsh is quite underwhelming. Starring Pedro Alonso - best known for his captivating performance in Netflix's runaway success series Casa de Papel (Money Heist- not a literal translation)- as Q, The Silence of the Marsh, a title aping the more famous Thomas Harris book, Jonathan Demme film of 1991, The Silence of the Lambs, is not a patch on that classic.

Mostly it is atmosphere over story with a lot of oblique references to possible goings-on but no clear story or premise. The central story of him being a writer is lost once the police and drugs angle is introduced. As well as the nod to Lambs, there is also a bit of American Psycho with one not entirely sure whether Q is actually killing people or if it is his fertile imagination.

The actors are very strong throughout the film and the characters are well defined. Directed by Marc Vigil, the film looks good and is nicely directed, the flow, visually, very good. The screenplay by Carlos de Pando and Sara Antuña, from a book by Juanjo Braulio, is good in parts but leaves out too much information.

Truth be told, Alonso's Q does not really drive the film at all and that is the problem. He kidnaps Carretero but seems to have done so without reason. He finds the ledger that informs him of the money laundering but, once again, takes it without reason. We know he is a celebrated writer but as his only proper interaction is with his brother, we do not find out anything else about him.

I suspect that the film is supposed to be a little ambiguous but there is simply too little exposition - something I rarely complain about - for the story to work. At ninety-minutes long, The Silence of the Marsh is not a long film but it takes an inordinate amount of time to get going and even fifteen minutes from its conclusion is still a film that is less than the sum of its parts.

The Silence of the Marsh is not unwatchable but it is definitely disappointing, something reflected in its lowly five point three score on IMDB. I cannot, in good faith, recommend taking an hour out of your day - lockdown or not - to watch this film. Pass.

Rising High is just okay. It suffers from being far too similar, despite what some might say, to Wolf of Wall Street. Viktor is a dreamer and a salesman by any means necessary. He falls into the life of easy money and dodgy dealings in an effort not to be poor, something that he feels contributed to his parents' divorce.

Written and directed by Cüneyt Kaya, Rising High is a good looking film and well-directed even as it flits from interview to the story being told. The acting is good from all on show. Unfortunately, IMDB does not list the names of all the actors in the film. The central three are listed but the actor who plays his father is not. Strange.

That aside, the acting from all is really good and you believe all of the performances. The party scenes are brilliantly shot and look like the sort of parties you only hear about or read about. The same as the brothel, which given it seemed to be filmed in the tiniest of spaces, was quite impressive.

Kaya is a good visual director. The story is just so so. It is not bad or even poorly told but it does not, in the way of the aforementioned Wolf of Wall Street, have you rooting for the protagonist. The most niggly thing about the film is the weakness of the story. The casting is good, every person looking the part they are playing and the music and sound are good.

It is just the pedestrian story that lets it down. Rising High at ninety-four minutes long, is not a long film but unless you are a huge fan of German cinema, it is not a must-see.

Girl on the Third Floor is awful on a level that is hard to explain. It is badly written, woefully acted - except for Dunn as Liz - and makes no sense whatsoever. The directing, especially when it came to verbal exchanges was amateur in the extreme, with each character just saying their line whilst in the shot. No reaction shots, no movement, no change of depth or distance to affect a particular vibe.

The film takes an inordinate amount of time to get going and the victims - Milo; undeserving plus black man always dying first, Cooper; undeserving though a smarter dog might have barked and Don; deserved but you're beyond caring by that time.

Four people - FOUR - wrote this nonsense - Trent Haaga, Paul Johnstone, Ben Parker and Travis Stevens. Stevens also directs. How four people could read this and think it not only made sense but would make an entertaining film is beyond me. It is difficult to see what sort of story they were trying to tell.

There are - unfunny - elements of humour in the script but in no way could they have been aiming for a horror-comedy. The scene they show in preview on Netflix is one of the best bits of the film and nothing happens in that clip.

Girl on the Third Floor - one really has no idea how many floors the house has and it is a title with no meaning - is a wretched, uninspired, pointless and dreadful piece of cinema. Give the widest of berths.

Code 8 is an entertaining thriller with good performances from all on show. With the popular superpowers genre in full swing and social commentary also very popular, combining the two - a staple of comics through the decades - is a recipe for a strong basis to make a film on. Stephen Amell does not stray far from his Oliver Queen/Arrow persona and it works perfectly well in the framework of this film.

Robbie who, unlike his cousin, is not so defined by one role, continues to show that he is a capable screen presence. He is totally believable as the struggling to find his place Connor. The social commentary is that most popular parable of oppression for something that is beyond one's control and is only touched upon in the film.

Truth be told, Code 8 is not a film trying to change the world, leaving the preaching of such messages to more cerebral fare. Code 8 is a superhero film in reverse. With Connor as the central protagonist whose only drive is to save his mother, it does not really take in the treatment of other super-powered people beyond the intermittent newscast and Abrams' Davis obvious dislike of super-powered persons.

The film flows nicely through its ninety-eight-minute runtime, keeping you engaged up until the conclusion. Code 8 is by no means a perfect or great film but it is entertaining. With a screenplay by Chris Pare and story and direction from Jeff Chan, Code 8 is a perfectly serviceable actioner with a nod to social justice. It takes ideas from many other films but they are executed well enough not to be obtrusive. Code 8 is an enjoyable actioner to waste the best part of two hours on.

Dark Light is utter garbage. Written and directed by Padraig Reynolds, it is a film that gets worse over its runtime with a haphazard story, undefined antagonist and the least subtle script this reviewer has ever suffered through, with every utterance exposition. Reynolds can certainly direct the visuals and the film flows relatively nicely but he should get someone else to write. The script is first-year scriptwriting student bad.

I am going to kindly believe that it was the script that contributed to the wholly wooden performances by the entire cast. Admittedly, they did not have much to work with, every character speaking in the same manner, pace and cadence. The central character had no compelling reason to stay in the freaky house but did anyway.

If she did, Reynolds did not put it in the script. Annie suffered from depression. How do I know this? Because Paul comes right out and says it. He does not allude to it or talk around it. He just says it. Her mum had depression and committed suicide. Guess how I know? Bloody Paul and his helpful exposition!

Sims talks some bollocks about ancient, advanced aliens and then decides to go and meet them, even though he knows that they basically eat children and have done for years. As soon as he finds himself in bother he runs like Usain Bolt. He was also supposedly worried about being found via the internet, even though he had, in the video he had produced talking about the aliens, asked people to contact him!

Reynolds also could not decide how he wanted the aliens to kill people with them slashing, frying and, quite randomly, biting the unfortunate Paul in the neck. The aliens snatch children but the sheriff had never before been told of disappearing children even though Sims, the kook, had hundreds of pictures of missing children on his wall. Annie, who had already been spooked by the old house, decides to take her daughter into a field, at night, to play hide n' seek. It was as if she wanted to lose the damn child.

Dark Light - a title that makes very little sense - is a mishmash of ideas all poorly executed. Scoring a, I can only say, generous four point two on IMDB, Dark Light is a film to give a wide berth. Wretched.

Como Caído del Cielo is a lovely film inspired by the life and music of Pedro Infante. Utilising some wonderful music and with a charming central performance by Chapparo, Como Caído del Cielo is a highly enjoyable romcom and homage rolled into one. Written and directed by Jose Pepe Bojorquez, with an additional writing credit for Alfredo Felix-Diaz, the film takes a well-known figure in Pedro Infante and uses elements of his life - he was both a singer and a boxer - and creates a fantasy film that both warms the heart and amuses.

Along with Chapparo, Talancón is perfect as the long-suffering wife of Pedro Guadalupe Ramos who benefits from Infante inhabiting his body. Santana is also very could as the granddaughter of Infante. The character of Jenny is fictitious, though Infante does have a granddaughter, Lupita, who has an executive credit on the film. She is also a singer.

Nearing the two-hour mark, the film is a little long. I still it enjoyed on a second viewing but that is really because I like a good romcom and the performances are very good. The central story is very good and you root for Infante as he races to raise money to help Raquel and win her heart.

Him dying towards the end is truly sad and brave on the filmmakers part as they could have gone down the route of another excellent spirit-possession romcom of old, the brilliant Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie from 1978. At the end of that film, which very much goes along the same lines as Como Caído del Cielo, Beatty's character lives on with his love.

Como Caído del Cielo only scores six point four on IMDB but that is from less than one thousand votes and as a non-English speaking film is not likely to get as many eyeballs as your Hollywood romcom. That being said, Como Caído del Cielo is definitely worth a watch. Delightful.

The Platform is a gripping psychological horror up until the last five minutes where it leaves you a little unsatisfied with the conclusion. There are a lot of unanswered questions: What is the hole? Why was the girl in there? What was the purpose? Was it a prison or an experiment? Did anyone ever get out? So many questions!

The performances are excellent from all involved and the set design is wonderfully stark and oppressive. Sound is good as well, with the music adding to the already tense atmosphere of the story. Especially at this time - writing during a worldwide pandemic - this story of base human instincts seems particularly relevant.

Written by David Desola and directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, the film does not answer any of the moral questions either, instead leaving it to the viewer to decide who they would relate to or align with.

Visually, the film is stark. Rich in the kitchen scenes and scary in the hole scenes. Truthfully though, I could not see the point of the kitchen scenes. They only showed that the food began as haute cuisine. As the film demonstrated that even those who found themselves in a privileged position did not appreciate it, there was little to give weight to these scenes.

That being said, The Platform is an engaging watch and it was only really on second viewing and given time to think about it, that I could find these frustrating niggles in the plot. At ninety-four minutes long it is perhaps too short and could have given the viewer a bit more story context with an extra fifteen minutes. The Platform is, nonetheless, a good and highly watchable film.

Coffee and Kareem is a hit and miss comedy that it is hard to know who it is aimed at. With Henson the biggest name but still not finding the same sort of vehicle for her talents that Empire has been and Helm best remembered for his turns in The Hangover series, both are stars of vehicles that have been adult in their content and approach.

That the youngest member of the cast, Gardenhigh, should be the one to spout the most profanity is kind of half the fun but the title lends itself to something that one might think more child friendly. It is not. Shane Mack's script is heavy on profanity with any sort of subtlety completely absent.

The story exists simply so as Gardenhigh's Kareem can deliver insults. The story really is not up to much and truthfully it does not matter. The acting is good from all and played straight with the comedy elements working well when it comes to the verbal exchanges.

The comedy works less well when it comes to the visual comedy except for Henson's Vanessa beating down Stewarts' Dee and Batchelor's Rodney. Directed by Michael Dowse, the film whizzes comfortably through its eighty-eight-minute runtime and is a brain in neutral experience.

Scoring a lowly five on IMDB, Coffee and Kareem is not going to go down in the pantheons of comedic classics but - unless you are bothered by excessive profanity from a child - is an easy watch and has a good few chuckles.

Bloodshot is an okay, perfectly watchable action, sci-fi. With Vin Diesel going full Vin - sleeveless tee, swagger and a scowl. Bloodshot was never going to be one to tax the brain. The twist of him being controlled by scenario implants was a nice one and elevated the story above similar fare even if it is not the most original.

Written by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer, from a comic by Kevin VanHook, Bob Layton and Don Perlin, the story is supposed to be a backdrop for the action but some of the action sequences are so laborious and over-the-top it is difficult to appreciate them. Directed by David S. F. Wilson, there is a lot of slo-mo employed for effect and too many of the action scenes are over-long.

The visual effects are quite good, very reminiscent of the latest Terminator films. Morris - best known for his turn in New Girl - is the light relief in the film and puts on a good English accent as the computer-genius Wiggins. González's KT could have been any number of Latina actresses gracing our screens. Not that she is bad. It is just that the performance is not noteworthy.

Similarly, Heughan was always working uphill to make Dalton seem like anything other than a bully. Hernandez's Tibbs leave even less of an impression than González's KT, such is the pointlessness of the character. Pearce, an actor who has turned in some incredible performances over his career, phones in another villain with a showing that any B movie actor could probably have brought.

As I have said, Bloodshot is watchable and quite good for the most part. The most eye-rolling thing is the CGI heavy, long to the point of boring, battle between Ray, Dalton and Tibbs. At one hundred and ten minutes long, Bloodshot does not feel as long as it is and moves swiftly through its runtime.

Bloodshot is a passable actioner and worth a look if you like a brain-in-neutral action film.

Child's Play is rubbish and an absolute waste of time. The original version is not even very good but was at least novel for its time and spawned several sequels. This 're-boot' - a lazy excuse for a film - adds nothing and does not improve on the original even slightly. Unlike the remake of Carrie, which was up against a horror classic, Child's Play actually had scope for improvement.

Instead, written by Tyler Burton Smith from a story by Don Mancini, the writer of the original film, Smith makes very little effort to stamp his own personality on proceedings. The script is pedestrian at best, with many of the story elements making very little sense.

Some of the killings are shoved in just to make up the numbers - Gabe, Doreen - the Korean opening was nonsensical, taking the safety elements off of a toy as though it were a nuclear missile.

If the film had gone for parody it might have worked. Directed by Lars Klevberg - who also directed the far better Polaroid - walks us through this horror by numbers, with barely any of the scares working and easily predictable. The acting is fine given the material and nobody on show is noticeably awful but I suspect that, unless they were big fans of the original, most of the adults at least only turned up for the pay cheque.

Child's Play is a lazy, uninspired, pointless remake of an okay horror that did not need to be remade. Definitely, one to give a miss.

Love. Wedding. Repeat is a collection of sketches taken too far. The overall story of the wedding is just a backdrop for some cliched and farcical humour that, admittedly, is initially funny but quickly becomes tiresome to the point of embarrassing. The humour is not even knowingly embarrassing in the way of the humour of Sacha Baron Cohen.

The acting is perfectly serviceable and everybody tries gamely to make the film work. It is shot in a beautiful location and is well-edited, bumping along at a good pace through its one hundred minute runtime. Written and directed by Dean Craig, based on the French film Plan de Table (2012), the film mostly suffers from not knowing when to let a joke end.

Mustafa's Chaz spends the majority of the film speaking to absolute strangers about the size of his penis. Haha. That is not the only penis-related 'humour', with Key's Sidney, telling anyone who will listen, how uncomfortable his kilt is.

Claflin's Jack is required to channel his best Hugh Grant impression, bumbling when straight talk would have made more sense and Fry's Bryan is more of a caricature than a person. The Italians have little to do in the film - it is a Richard Curtis rip- off, after all, English only, thank you - and just make up the scenery.

Munn, who I have not seen in anything worthy of her talents since Newsroom, is just in the film for her undoubted beauty. Any number of attractive actresses could have filled her role and had the same impact.

With a VoiceOver from Penny Ryder, who sets the scene for the fateful day and speaks of destiny, chance and options, the film has all the elements of a promising comedy badly executed. There is, ever since Four Weddings, an expectation from a wedding comedy, especially a British wedding comedy, that Love. Wedding. Repeat - a stupid title - just does not meet.

It is only mildly amusing, the characters are not engaging enough and a lot of the humour is not only overdone but, at times, misplaced. Love. Wedding. Repeat is not an unwatchable mess but it is not as good as it should or could have been. Not one to repeat.

Brief Synopsis: Richard Evans, an ex-soldier and part-time chauffeur, is accused of kidnapping a client's, Mr. Smith's daughter. As well as having to look after his sister, Sarah, he must prove his innocence by retrieving Mr Smith's daughter.

He also wants to take down a local drug ring. A detective, Moro, is determined to pin the kidnapping on Evans. It becomes personal when his sister gets snatched.

Is it any good?: Good god, no! Expo is worst than Alien Warfare. It is badly written, badly directed, badly edited, the acting is atrocious and the action scenes-ha!-are laughable. There is nothing good about this film. I am writing the review as I watch it otherwise I could not finish it. Onto the review proper.

Spoiler Territory: Ex-soldier Richard Evans (Derek Davenport) makes ends meet as a chauffeur, picking up rich clients and their charges. He is given a job to pick up Mr. Smith (Tim Davis).

Evans looks after his younger sister, Sarah (Amelia Haberman), their parents died some years prior. Sarah wakes up late and asks her brother to take her to school. He tells her he does not have the time. She leaves the flat.

Caden (Shepsut Wilson), Evans' girlfriend and neighbour, meets him as he is leaving. She tells him she took Sarah to school. Evans goes to see his friend, Majeed (Titus Covington), a local drug dealer.

Titus tells him he can make more money working with him. Evans declines the invitation. He gets a call from his employers, Mr. Smith wants him to pick up his daughter, Lyla (Hayley Vrana) from violin practice.

He gets a call from his sister. She wants him to pick her up. At first he refuses, but after she pleads with him for a bit, he agrees to pick her up. Whilst Evans picks up his sister, Lyla gets kidnapped. Evans arrives late to pick Lyla up and finds her violin. She is gone.

Majeed goes to see a friend. The friend tells him he can make more money selling women and it is less dangerous. Majeed declines. Evans goes to the police but the detective, Moro (Michael Alavarez) believes that he is the most likely suspect. Evans leaves.

Caden comes over to see Evans, the two planning to have a pleasant evening in. They argue because Evans wants to go looking for Lyla himself. Caden thinks it is a bad idea. After they have gone to bed, there is a knock on the door. Evans is arrested. Moro is convinced he kidnapped the girl.

Evans' lawyer, David Peele (Eric Lettman) comes to the station and get him released. Evans returns home. Sarah goes to stay at Caden's. Evans remembers being taken in by Majeed when he and Sarah were on the streets. He remembers clashing with Majeed over Majeed's dubious earning choices.

Evans goes to see Majeed. Majeed tells him he is thinking of expanding his business and shows Evans a webcam, telling him that he going to start kidnapping girls. Evans freaks out, hitting him. He leaves Majeed's place.

Chris (Richard Lippert) is auctioning girls over the web. Evans shows Caden what he is accused of being involved in by showing her the webcam. He goes to see a drug dealer, Javier Diaz (Alfonzo Lopez) and gets beat up when he asks about the dealer's suppler.

Caden gets a friend to patch Evans up. Evans calls an old friend. A doctor, Dr Ekon (Richard Ryan). He asks for a clandestine drug. He is told he cannot it get unless he is returning to service.

Evans tells the doctor that he needs it to save a girl. He remembers how taking too much of the drug almost killed him. The next day, the doctor brings him the pills. The pills make him stronger and given to violent impulses.

Evans goes to a local store and is buying some milk. As he goes to get the milk, Javier comes in to rob the store. Evans beats him up and gets the name of the drug dealer, Carlos Ricardo (Humbetto Roman). He breaks Javier arm. Chris, who has Lyla captive, is torturing her psychologically.

Detective Moro sees Evans loading a bullet proof vest into his car. He still believes that Evans is the man he should be pursuing even after seeing the same dark web video that Evans showed Caden. Moro warns Evans.

Evans leaves Caden and Sarah alone as he goes to try and find Lyla. He goes to find Carlos Ricardo. He confronts Carlos in his house, telling him he just wants to talk. Carlos is not interested and has his henchmen beat him up.

Evans, who had taken a pill, goes into a rage and batters the henchmen. He asks Carlos about the girls. Carlos tells him he is not talking. Evans stabs him in the leg with a pencil. Carlos tells him about Chris and gives him an address.

Two masked men break into Evans' house and snatch Sarah, knocking Caden unconscious. A battered Evans returns home and is patched up again. He wakes up and asks about Sarah. Caden says that one of the men who took her had a broken arm.

Realising it is Javier, Evans goes and beats on him to find out where Sarah is. Javier tells Evans that she is going to get raped repeatedly. He beats him to death. He returns home. Caden comes over, not wanting to be on her own.

Caden rages at him for refusing to get help from the police. He kicks her out. Evans goes to see Majeed. He wants him to help him get the girl back. Chris streams another video. He tells his audience that he is not selling one girl but two, Sarah being the second girl.

Evans and Majeed sneak up on the address Evans got from Javier. Majeed knocks Evans unconscious. When he wakes up he finds himself tied to a chair. Mated tells him he did it for money and is in the trafficking business. Majeed is about to shoot him but Evans breaks his bonds and beats Majeed to death. He passes out again.

He wakes up at home, having been arrested and taken there by Moro. Moro tells him to stay home whilst he and his team go and try to get the girls back. Moro leaves. Caden persuades a despondent Evans to go and save Sarah.

Moro sees Evans as he goes to find Chris and tells him to stay back. Moro and his team sneak into the house. Chris' henchmen see them coming and tell Chris. He tells them to distract the police as he takes the girls. Moro fights with one of the henchmen and is soundly beaten. As the henchman is about to kill him, Evans rescues him, beating the henchman.

Moro and Evans go looking for the girls. Chris shoots Evans and takes the girls to a van. Evans, who had been wearing a vest, goes after him. Lyla jumps out of the van, forcing Chris to stop and try to get her back.

A disorientated Evans points a gun at Chris. Chris slaps the gun out of his hand and knocks him to the ground. Sarah gets out of the van and beats Chris up. Evans shoots him in the head.

Mr. Smith turns up. He has the same face as Chris. Chris was a clone. The whole, elaborate story had been set up to get Evans back into military service, him getting a full pardon in exchange for his return to duty. The end.

Expo is awful. It is an absolute abomination of a film. Written and directed by Joseph Mbah, one can only hope someone tells him to stop. Stop making films. Jesus Christ! This film is terrible.

No part of the film is good. The acting is, without exception, terrible. The script is so bad that if they had improvised every scene it could not possibly have been worse.

Basics, such as framing, story, visual flow, discernible sound, are all missing. Shot selection is bad, the story makes no sense, the music is horrible, it is badly lit, badly edited and just an all around mess. It is is not even bad enough to be entertaining.

The actors in this film are so uniformly woeful that I cannot actually single out an individual as particularly terrible. The real star or villain however, is Mbah. He is listed as a writer, director and cinematographer. Charlatan should be added to that list.

Expo is a travesty of a film and Netflix needs take a long hard look at themselves if they are going to keep asking people to pay for this sort of tripe. With the impending arrival of Disney plus and Apple TV, Netflix, with a head start on those two services, need to up their quality control.

Do not watch Expo. You're welcome.

I want to be objective. Hatred for a person you've never met or even seen in interview is probably unwarranted. Can you really dislike a person that you're not even sure what they look like? Human emotion is a strange thing and, as I ask myself these questions, I am trying to be rational. Let me explain.

I am a comic book movie fan. In my youth, I collected comics for many years but, even before that I loved Spider-Man on television and the Christopher Reeves Superman films. When Tim Burton's Batman came out, I was all in, even as the quality of that initial Batman franchise diminished.

Truthfully though, I was always more of a Marvel fanboy, specifically, the X-men. I collected the entire Chris Claremont run. All of it. The same run that gave the world the Phoenix Saga. Even before that, before the New X-men, which the Phoenix Saga was part of, I was an X-man fan.

So obviously, when the first X-men film came out, I was there. Bryan Singer's first two films were brilliant. They were not comic canon, with definitely some artistic licence taken, but they were better than expected and, under Fox, had no challenge from the future juggernaut that would be the MCU.

I have watched every one of the X-men films under Fox, even the god-awful, The Last Stand. The Last Stand was written by Simon Kinberg, the same man who helms and wrote the final instalment in the X-men series under Fox, Dark Phoenix. Predominantly a producer, Kinberg has been involved with the franchise since the risible The Last Stand.

So, with that in mind, and my unreasonable disdain for him, how was Dark Phoenix? Not terrible. With all the rumours that surrounded production and the less than secret news that the X-men was going to be under the umbrella of the MCU and Kevin Feige's Midas touch post-film, Dark Phoenix had a lot to battle against.

Unfortunately, most of the issues created in Dark Phoenix are due to previous decisions in the series and poor casting choices and a weak script. The film needed the audience to be invested in the characters, but due to poor decisions, the dominance of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine over the franchise and the underwritten roles of every other character since the second X-men film, you just do not care about any of the protagonists.

Tye Sheridan's Cyclops is woeful. Horribly served in the previous films, Sheridan struggles valiantly to create a history between him and Sophie Turner's statuesque Jean Grey, a history that previous films barely hinted at. That is just the begin of the problems with this story.

Rightly, the film does not follow the comics. Instead, like over at the MCU, it tries to take some elements and blend them into a new and, hopefully, engaging story. What Fox and Kinberg have got wholly wrong is trying to truncate the story and elicit emotion for characters nobody knows.

Logan, the best superhero movie ever made (it's my blog, so my opinion. Fight me), works because we know the character of Logan/Wolverine. Obviously, the consistency of having the same actor portray the character has helped, but Logan would have worked even after the second X-men film because we knew the character. We do not know the X-men.

Sophie Turner is beautiful, absolutely stunning. A statuesque, imposing visual presence. She is completely wrong for the film. Her performance is completely committed and would have been brilliant had she been even partially well served in the previous films. She was not.

When an actor is portraying a well-known character, unless they have been allowed to make that character their own, in say the way various actors have made James Bond their own, a viewer will always compare the character to the original source material.

Jean Grey in the comics is not an imposing presence, not physically. She is intelligent and powerful, even more so when she gains the Phoenix power, but not an Amazonian presence. Turner is Amazonian. She makes Sheridan look like a young boy, and she towers over Jessica Chastain's power seeking, body stealing alien, Vuk, even though she is wearing heels. Like Famke Jansen before her, Turner is simply too much of a presence as Jean Grey.

Alexandra Shipp, like Halle Berry before her, is completely wasted in the film. With no real character interactions, she is basically in the film for her undoubtedly stunning looks, to make up the numbers and as someone to utilise special effects through. If she had not been in the film, she would not have been missed.

Evan Peters' Quicksilver is quickly - haha! - dispatched in the film, his leg broken in the first fight and Jennifer Lawerence's Mystique, who is a villain in the comics - a villain! - gets killed by Jean early on, giving Michael Fassbender's Magneto a reason to get involved in proceedings.

The acting is, as one would expect with the talent on show, top draw, with everyone trying desperately to breathe life into a script that is almost Man of Steel Goyer-esque in its blandness. With the decision to dismiss the character most likely to bring levity - Quicksilver - early in the film, Dark Phoenix pushes miserably through its hour and fifty-four minute runtime, fraught faces and tense music aplenty.

There is a strand early in the film, which matches up with the comics, where Jean, shortly after gaining the Phoenix power is extremely thirsty, almost as a nod to her furnace like appetite, created by having to harness so much power. It does not go anywhere.

In the comics, the power is such that she consumes a planet. In the film, the Phoenix power consumes Vuk's planet and she follows the power through space and witnesses Jean absorbing it. Following her back to Earth, Vuk and other survivor's of her world decide to manipulate Jean to take over the Earth. Yes, that is their plan.

Like I said earlier in the article, the biggest negative in the film is you just do not care. Outside of the super beings and aliens, nobody seems in imminent danger. It is like watching a disaster happening on the other side of the world. You care on a humane level, but once you turn the television you forget about it.

Fox made the mistake of chasing money and competing, instead of trying to create the best product they could. With the final X-men film in Dark Phoenix, they bow out of the superhero game with a whimper. Such a pity.

It must seem like I try to find awful films to review. Honestly, I really do not. Unfortunately, I decided to watch The Trap. Where to start, where to start. I am writing this as I watch the film because there is no other way I could finish watching it otherwise. The film is only twenty minutes in. I may finish writing the review before the film ends. So far the film is, to this point, an abomination. Starring Tip 'T.I' Harris and Mike Epps as brothers, Sonny and Dutch. I should have known this would not be a good film as soon as I heard the voiceover. Voiceover is rarely a good sign. Sonny, the younger brother, moved away from the family home and has worked his way up in the restaurant business and is a respected chef. He returns home to see his mother, Mama Jay (Loretta Devine) and finds out she is sick. Whilst back in town he sees that the family chicken shop, Blazin' Jay's, has fallen into disrepair under the stewardship of his brother, Dutch - or Mike Epps being Mike Epps. Whilst arguing with his brother, the mother collapses and is rushed to hospital. In the hospital they are told by Dr. Obayuwana (Queen Latifah) that their mother needs an operation and is dying. They must raise one hundred thousand dollars. T. I. better known as a rapper, has taken the well worn path to the screen boy many a 90's and 00's rapper. LL Cool J, P Diddy, Eminen, Common and even, if you can call it acting, 50 cent. To varying degrees, all have been successful. LL Cool J is not even thought of as a rapper anymore. T. I. will not be following LL. On this evidence there is no hope. He is not an actor and this film proves it. He is terrible. Wooden and not at all convincing as a chef, brother or even a lover. He is next level awful. The man wrecks every scene he is in and he is, as the star of the film, in almost every scene. I have not seen a rapper this bad in a film since RZA made the diabolically awful The Man With The Iron Fist. As for Mike Epps, he is Mike Epps. I pretty sure that was all the direction he was given - Be Mike Epps. The story, such that is, sees Dutch get involved with the local drug lord, K. P. (Stephen Bishop) and agree to move a couple pounds of weed every week. When the police unexpectedly burst into the chicken shop to stop a fight, Dutch accidentally stumbles upon a new way to help the family business, when the weed falls into the fryer, creating the 'secret' ingredient in the chicken, that proves spectacularly popular. With their mothers's health issues, the brothers decide to carry on using the weed in the chicken, even though Sonny is reluctant to. When K.P. finds out that they have been putting weed in the chicken, he decides that the chicken shop would make a great front for his business and also be good for laundering the money. Sonny, who is involved with a local policewoman he has known since his youth, Sasha (Meagan Tandy), wants to get out of the deal Dutch has gotten them in to. K. P. does not care what Sonny wants and threatens to harm their sick mother. Sasha happens upon them all when passing the chicken shop and sees K. P. and his henchmen pointing guns at the brothers. There is a shootout and then the police sweep in and arrest K. P. Their mother gets her operation and is fine, the business flourishes and everyone lives happily ever after. The end. Everyone that is except me. What an unholy amount of tripe this film is. To say it was awful is an insult to the word 'awful'! There needs to be more adjectives to describe just how bad this film is. With T. I. and Epps taking the lead, it falls to the supporting cast to display anything resembling credible acting. Uphill does not even begin to describe how herculean a task bringing any sort of life to the script is. The film is credited as having four writers. There is no way all four found this dross funny. Directed - ha! - by Erik White, I can only think he turned on the cameras, made sure they were in focus and then went off to his real job. No one is directed in this film, except maybe to their marks. I do not expect a masterwork when watching a comedy. All I ask is that it makes me laugh. That is the minimum requirement. Not everyone finds the same things funny, I get that, but this film would not be amusing even if one was drunk or high. If you are going to sell your film as a comedy, put some funny in it. The Trap is not funny. With the exception of the two leads, the acting is not too bad. Stephen Bishop K. P. is a scary villain and Joel Rush as Sasha's jealous and duplicitous partner, Powers, is good. Even Teyana Taylor as Sherri, Dutch's uncouth, street rough girlfriend is good. That is about it though. This is ninety minutes of your life you do not want to devote to this particular piece on Netflix. Avoid. You are welcome.

As a marketing ploy, releasing Captain Marvel on International Women's Day must have felt like a stroke of genius. As the MCU's first female lead superhero feature film, it is a film that has garnered much attention, especially off the back of the frankly epic Avengers Infinity War and its brilliantly teasing post-credits scenes.

A few things had alarm bells ringing for me personally. Sometime back, I reviewed another female-led film, the Alicia Vikander reboot of Tomb Raider, suffice to say, it is awful. The relevance of that is one of the writers for that film, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, also managed to wrangle her way onto Captain Marvel and, unfortunately, it shows.

The story and script are poor. A first-year scriptwriting graduate would have gotten so many red lines through this effort, they might have considered a different career. What is even more worrying is I cannot even say there is a better story buried in the film. There isn't.

There were signs that the MCU was not overly confident with this film. Whenever the stars do excessive press - even more than the norm - it is not a good sign. Brie Larson has been everywhere. Morning shows, radio shows, daytime, blogs, podcast, the poor woman has been pushing hard!

The film is not unwatchable, after all, it has two excellent leads in Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson, but the basic precepts of drama are wholly absent from the film. At no point in the film's entire two hour and four minutes runtime does our hero seem in mortal danger.

Captain Marvel or Carol Danvers or Vers, as she is called through most of the film, is capable on a level that one could only dream of. She is supposed to have scant recall of her life as a human or, as we find out later, a possible Kree.

Even with no real idea who she is or supposed to be, she takes to every task she encounters with consummate ease. The antagonist, the Skrulls, are not utilised at all well. I am not one to scream about not following the comics, but with regards to the Skrulls, they should really have made an exception.

I understand that the Kree have been set up as the 'big bad' of the MCU, but that should not have created this character disservice to the Skrulls. In a better film, the misdirection could have really worked, unfortunately, the set up is so poorly executed that one is left barely caring about the outcome.

As with Ben Affleck over at the DCEU, some in the webverse feel that their wholly unwanted - not to mention inexperienced - take on who should play the as yet introduced Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel role, should not have been Brie Larson.

That fact that, with Kevin Feige at the helm, the MCU has hardly made a misstep casting wise, it seems to be the ultimate in egotistical hubris for those comic page-turning, keyboard critics, to be announcing their displeasure at the casting.

In my opinion - it's my blog, so my opinion - Larson works well with the somewhat poor material she has to work with. Her chemistry with Jackson is evident and she carries off the fight scenes with aplomb.

No doubt, off of the hype of the upcoming sequel to Infinity War, Captain Marvel will do well at the box office and probably spawn a sequel.

In conclusion, I would say Captain Marvel was somewhat underwhelming. The acting performances across the board are good, as is the talent on show - the CGI deserves a special mention - what fails is the story and a patchy script. Captain Marvel is, regrettably, not a marvel.

Let me begin this review with my final statement: The Favourite is magnificent, go and see it. You can stop reading now. Still here? Okay, let the gushing begin! It has been quite some time since I've seen a film where the performances match - exceeded even - the hype.

Yorgos Lanthimos' film is an exceptional piece of work. Admittedly I am a little biased, having loved one of his previous works, The Lobster. The Favourite is a very different beast. Resembling another classic piece of cinema, All About Eve, in its story, The Favourite explores more pertinently the personal impact of each individual's actions.

In this past awards season, Olivia Coleman has, rightfully, received widespread praise and recognition for her performance as sickly, petulant and willfully manipulated ruler, Queen Anne in eighteenth-century England.

Though Coleman's performance is glorious, it works so well because of Rachel Weisz 's absorbing dark and powerful portrayal as Lady Sarah Churchill, along with Emma Stone's slyly cruel showing as Sarah's seemingly sweet but duplicitous cousin, Abigail Masham.

Weisz's Sarah is the Queen's lady-in-waiting and her secret lover. She uses her position and close proximity to the Queen to exercise influence over matters of state and the war with France. When her down-on-her-luck cousin Abigail arrives at the Queen's court, asking for work, she allows her to stay.

Confident of her status and given no reason to fear her young cousin's arrival, Sarah focuses her attention on influencing the Queen's decisions with regards to the war. Abigail, a lowly maid, is treated poorly by the other maids, who mistrust her and dislike her due to her relationship with Sarah.

When the Queen's gout acts up and causes her great suffering, Abigail sees an opportunity and finds a root in the forest that helps to ease her pain. Initially, offended by her forwardness, Sarah has her beaten.

But when she finds that the treatment helped her Queen, she takes Abigail under her wing. Abigail is now where she wants to be and make it her mission to better herself and her station in life, regardless of the consequences or impact on others.

As I alluded to earlier, The Favourite is almost a parallel in story to the classic All About Eve. Rachel Weisz's Lady Sarah is like Bette Davis' Margo Channing, a star at the peak of her powers, not seeing her possible downfall until it is too late.

Emma Stone's Abigail is almost exactly like the eponymous Eve Harrington. She shows a deferential willingness initially, but ruthlessly exploits the weakness and opportunities that are presented to her.

So who is Olivia Coleman's Queen Anne in this parallel, you may ask? She is Hollywood. She is the one who makes or break someone. Without the Queen, the other two have no reason to exist or be.

Besides the exceptional central performances, the script of this film and cinematography are the stars of this film. The palace looks grandiose and claustrophobic at the same time, especially with clever use of some fisheye lenses on occasion. The evening scenes, when characters move about the vast building with only candlelight, are wonderfully atmospheric.

There are so many fantastic walking shots, where the camera just follows either Sarah or Abigail as they stride along or away from the Queen's quarters. Lanthimos takes the decision to use tracking, as opposed to steady-cam, when walking along the corridor, so there is none of the slightly rough, skewed movement you get in so many modern films.

The script, by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, is a delight. Intelligent without being unintelligible. Set against the backdrop of a war, with a fragile monarch and a caustic, straight talking, lady-in-waiting and sneaky youngster, all women, all compelling.

The men in the film are both important and unimportant. That is to say that when they are in the story, they serve their purpose, but never detract or are compelling enough to be explored. Also, they help to remind us how women were generally viewed in that time period, especially with the early treatment of Abigail.

The Favourite is one of the best films of 2019 and is, in my opinion, deserving of all the awards and praise it has received. At two hours long, there are no wasted scenes or lulls that have you looking at your watch. Yorgos Lanthimos has crafted a masterpiece of a film. The Favourite is a magnificent film, go and see it.

JESUS wept! Once again. I am reviewing a Netflix film. I watch them so that you do not have to. You're welcome. In the case of Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie, the only mystery is how the heck this 'movie' ever got made! Truth be told, it feels like bullying to review this film. It is that bad. I actually have begun reviewing this film before it has even ended, otherwise it would be totally unwatchable and I would not, in good faith, be able to review a film I have not seen. The film opens with, actor Talbert Bacorn (Steven Weber), exiting his pool and confessing to camera that he is the murderer. We then meet detective Gene Handsome (Jeff Garlin), who is teaching some rookie detectives the ropes. All the detectives are morons. One of the would-be detectives, Burt Jerpis (Brad Morris) spins a preposterous yarn as a possible theory for a murder. It is meant to be humorous. It is not. The other would-be detectives look on gormlessly. There is no good reason to make Handsome a retiring detective. It does not serve the plot or the comedy. It seems it was only added so Amy Sudaris' horny and seemingly menopausal lieutenant Tucker could come and bawl at him about filling out his retirement paperwork whilst making crass advances. It is as funny as it sounds Handsome - so funny, because he's not! - returns home. He has a big dog that he walks past his neighbour, Durante (Eddie Pepitone), who is an ex-detective and shouts out to him, accusing him of letting his dog foul his lawn. We, the viewer, are then subjected to another unfunny scene about detecting skills and introduced to his morose partner, Esta (Leah Rimini) who then sits on the porch and plays the accordion.. We never see Esta again. We also find out he has a new neighbour. Handsome takes it upon himself to go and meet the neighbour. She is not in when he gets there, but he does meet the babysister, Heather (Hailee Keanna Lautenbach) who is abrupt and refuses to let him in the house. The next day she turns up murdered on the lawn of Bacorn's home. Handsome is picked up by his perennially horny partner, Fleur Scozzari (Natasha Lyonne) and they precede to talk utter, unfunny nonsense on their drive to the crime scene. Scozzari turns out to be a bit of a nymphomaniac, getting sexual innuendo or references in whenever on screen. As Handsome investigates Heather's murder, he finds that she was not exactly well loved or even liked by anybody. He also finds out that his neighbour, Nora's (Christine Woods) ex-husband paid Heather to spy on her, as he is fighting for custody of his daughter, Carys (Ava Acres). Okay, so Handsome eventually catches the murderer and meets Kaley Cuoco playing herself in an utterly pointless scene - like the rest of the film. He returns home to find his neighbour moving out and labouring the point that she is never going to see him again. He encounters Durante for another unfunny scene and then the film, thankfully, ends. I do not even know where to start to express just how utterly dreadful this film is. Running at eighty-one minutes, this is a short film by any normal standards. Unless you are watching it. Then it becomes an excruciatingly long film. Written, directed by and starring Jeff Garlin, the only positive I can see is that he gave many friends employment. If I was Garlin I would change my friends. How any of them could allow a work this inept to get made is beyond me. I have a pretty low bar for comedy. I enjoyed Pixels and the Ghostbusters remake. I am not a comedy snob. This film is not, by any stretch, a comedy. It is an entirely laugh free zone. The real problem - besides the poor writing - is not deciding what sort of a comedy to be. It is like a lightweight saucy comedy, which is an oxymoron in itself, as saucy comedic properties are inherently lightweight. With the exception of the child actors, the dogs and Garlin, no actor really commits to their character. Not that they have much to work with, such is the paucity of a line worth uttering in the script. If a YouTuber produced a comedy this bad it would get ripped to shreds in the comments, much less a production backed by the predominant streaming platform on the planet. Nothing works in this film. The plot is nonsense, the humour non-existent, the scenes lack any punch, it is completely unoriginal and probably at least an hour too long. The best thing in the film is a woman who is seen hula hoop dancing in the distance by Handsome, whilst on her front lawn, in a couple of scenes. This film is basically a collection of sketches that would barely make it to the cutting room floor of an SNL show. It might seem that I am labouring the point of how unfunny this film is. I really am not. The stand out comedy-free scene is when Handsome and his team of inept detectives, eight of them standing in a semicircle at the murder scene, come up with ridiculous possible theories as to how the killing might have happened. Jerpis has another ridiculous scenario that is not funny. A bus full of Japanese tourist, doing a star's house tour, pull up in front of house and then we - the viewer - are forced to read unfunny exchanges as all the tourist speak in Japanese and Scozzari tries to tell them there is nothing to see. This film is so bad it makes anyone who has any ambition of making films - me - angry. This film has production value, a massive - mostly unnecessary - cast, extras, good, competent, camera and sound. Utterly lacklustre direction. In conclusion, this film has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Every joke misses the mark. I don't even think the jokes can see the mark! This is a bad, bad film.

In film and television, a lot of people are drawn to a series or film by the actor and/or star or the director. Generally, it would be because you have seen the actor in previous work that you enjoyed or the director's body of work appeals. There are, of course, other considerations when it comes to choosing whether to watch something or not - genre, duration - but a trusted name is one of the more common ways to choose.

For me, the writer or creator, when it comes to television especially, is a major consideration. I am the sort of person who the 'from the mind of..' Adverts are aimed at when a show or film is being promoted.

If I watch a particularly good show, I will always look to see wrote the show or who the showrunner is on a series. If I see Aaron Sorkin's name attached to a series, if Christopher Nolan has put out a film, Amy Sherman-Palladino name will always get my attention, as will Gillian Flynn, these are creators who names peak my interest in a project.

The one person that will get me watching anything his name is attached to is Joss Whedon. The creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, both the film and the television series, its spin-off, Angel, Agents Of Shield, Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog and The Avengers amongst other works, Whedon is my favourite writer/creator on the planet.

The reason I mention Whedon is, one of his lesser-known works, Dollhouse, came to mind when I thought about writing this review of another Netflix exclusive series, Tidelands.

Created and written by Stephen M. Irwin, Tidelands is an Australian production about a young woman, Calliope 'Cal' McTeer (Charlotte Best), who returns to her hometown after a decade in prison to discover a strange truth about her past.

Admittedly, I found Tidelands for the most part enjoyable. Like a lot of series on Netflix, it is bingeable, only being eight episodes in total. Unlike say, most of the Marvel series, it suffers from being too short.

This is what brought to mind Whedon's Dollhouse series. Dollhouse was a vehicle for Eliza Dushku, who had been brilliant as Faith in Buffy. In Dollhouse she played Echo, an unwitting operative in a "Dollhouse' where her mind is wiped and she has a different personality imprinted on it for various missions.

The series was okay, not great but certainly not terrible. Whedon had written a quite brilliant series before, Firefly, - if you have never seen it, you must! - and it was canceled after the first season. He managed to finish the story, in a fashion, with the film, Serenity.

With Dollhouse, still smarting from not being able to see through his vision with Firefly, he got greenlit for a second season. Even though the response to the first season had been lukewarm, he got a truncated second season renewal.

The second season was written and felt as though it knew it was not going to last to a third season. This feeling, this anxiety, was apparent in the work and it made that second season somewhat unsatisfying.

With Tidelands, there is the same feeling. It has a feeling of being 'Tranked'. What I mean when I say Tranked is a reference to the director, Josh Trank's much-maligned Fantastic Four - check out the best (worse) review ever here! Trank obviously had a vision for the film, but after the highly publicised clashes with the studio and his subsequent firing, he ended up taking the heat for an, to put kindly, abrupt film.

Tidelands has exactly the same feel. For six of the eight-episode run, it builds nicely and somewhat cryptically to possible conclusions or stories. Then in the final two episodes, it accelerates to sudden explanations and a bloody conclusion. It just ends, hastily tying up plot lines and killing anything else that cannot be quickly explained.

There had been a lot of critical flack about the acting and looks over story depth aspects that some felt were on show. Admittedly, the early episodes were not so much cryptic as damn right confusing in deciding what sort of a story this was trying to be. The show also suffered a little from having no character with which the viewer could bond with.

Cal was, initially, far too abrasive. Her brother Augie, played by Aaron Jakubenko, was the local drug dealer whose entire gang turn on him by episode four and a couple of his crew were barely trustworthy to begin with.

The main antagonist, Adrielle (Elsa Pataky), is obsessed with collecting bits of pottery clay, which we do not find out the relevance of until the final episode! She rules her clan - she's the 'queen'- the Tidelanders, with an iron fist, having one young boy blinded - an eye gouged out - for lying to her. Lovely.

Cal's mother, Rosa (Caroline Brazier), hates her guts because, as we find out in episode five, Cal is a Tidelander, hence her barely suppressed prejudice makes her instantly unlikable. Adrielle's allure, which Patasky is perfectly cast for, has the men and women around her fawning over her, ready to her every bidding. One of her older lackey's, Lamar (Dalip Sondhi), is not so willing to follow her anymore. Not that this story goes anywhere.

There is a nod to homosexuality - it is 2018 after all - with Lamar having an affair with the local police chief. That does not really go anywhere either. Mad lesbian, right-hand woman to Adrielle, Leandra - play by Jet Tranter - gets to show off her great body, murder one of Augie's guys in the opening episode, gets a bit of beatdown in a later episode and not much else, except to walk around looking dyke-menacing, which I am not sure is a thing outside of prison.

Tidelands really feels horribly rushed, as though the writers were told halfway through the production that they had to wrap it up in the next four episodes. Hence we suffer a lopsided show where, in earlier episodes, there had been a gradual build-up and a smattering of intrigue and excitement, the odd gruesome act to keep the tension high The final episode is just a calamitous, hurried mess.

There is also the old seer, Genoveva (Cate Feldman), who is held by Adrielle in a dungeon and foresees Adrielle's death, apparently at the hands of Cal. That storyline is wrapped up, vision and all, in about two minutes in the final episode.

It is a shame that the show ends up being so forced, especially as the two leads in Best and Patasky are wonderfully watchable and given some time and scope, I feel the characters could have grown more organically and believably.

With the way the show ended - the less said..! - it seems unlikely the show will get a second season. Netflix is notoriously secretive about their viewing figures, so it is very difficult to know how well a show performs on the streaming service. It seems unlikely that it outperformed any of the more popular shows on the platform.

Tidelands is watchable, though not unmissable. If you are curious and have an urge to binge watch a show on a quiet weekend, you could do worse.

THE best thing I can say about the Netflix offering of The Little Mermaid is it makes one want to revisit the magical Disney animated version. In no way connected to, or even remotely similar to - except for the fact that it features a mermaid - the Disney classic, Netflix's The Little Mermaid disappoints on almost every level.

It opens with a grandmother - grandma Elle - played by Shirley MacLaine, reading the Hans Christian Andersen tale to her two cute granddaughter's. This is used, in pictorial fashion, as the opening credit sequence to the film. As she finishes telling them the story, she teases them by hinting that the story was not how it was depicted in the book and that mermaids are possibly real. The children are eager for her to tell her tale.

Oh, how I wish they had not been. MacLaine, a veteran of many a classic film - Terms Of Endearment, The Apartment, Steel Magnolias to name a few - appears at the begin of the film and at the end. Even though she is telling the story and the film utilises voiceovers in parts, she is not used. One can only reason that she read the script and thought 'sod it! The cheque will top up my pension!' Because there is no other reason to be in this film.

William Moseley plays Cam, a young, cynical, reporter who, by some mishap that is explained far too late in the film for me to have been caring anymore, ends up as the sole guardian of his niece, the sickly Elle, played ably by Loreto Peralta.

She suffers from an unknown ailment that causes her to cough and be generally poorly when she exerts herself too much. Like asthma then or any number of respiratory conditions.

Set in the thirties or forties, Cam is sent to investigate the claims of a circus vendor who is allegedly curing many ailments with sea water ointment. The circus, for some inexplicable reason, is in Mississippi. Cam takes himself and his sickly charge off to the deep south of America. Elle, being a child, believes in magic and helpfully, the existence of mermaids.

On arriving in Mississippi Cam and Elle head to the circus where the star attraction is Elizabeth - Poppy Drayton - a mermaid. Elle feels an instant connection to Elizabeth, even has her uncle tells her that it must be a trick. After the show, Cam and Elle go in search of the all-healing sea water ointment but are told in no uncertain terms that it is out of stock.

Until this point, the film had been quite engaging. Some of the script had been a little clunky, but the actors had managed to make it work. The colours also are magnificent, making the film look beautiful when working strictly with the in-camera image. Unfortunately, the post-production, with the exception of colour, and special effects, especially in the second half of the film, detract from the picture quality.

Once the central premise of the film had been introduced - free the mermaid - the film begins to fall apart. Not because of a bad, lazy premise, but because of the under written characters. The antagonist of the piece, Locke - yes, really - played by Armando Gutierrez, is the circus master and the person who holds Elizabeth captive.

Locke is portrayed as menacing, but Gutierrez is given so little to work with - a poor man's ringmaster costume and cheap make-up - and so little screen time, that it is impossible for his character to be seen as the big bad, or to even appreciate how he creates such fear amongst his peers. We are just expected to take it as so.

As the film progresses - in time, not quality - it only gets worse. Characters are introduced for convenience but not at all fleshed out. Our sceptical journalist, earlier captivated by Elizabeth, meets her on a boat and is not even slightly perturbed when he finds out she is actually a mermaid. Not to mention the frankly ludicrous scene of him chasing after her, diving into the sea and easily catching up to her. She's a mermaid. A MERMAID!

He is just as nonplussed when Thora - Shana Collins - one of the circus folk and one of the aforementioned characters introduced for convenience, freezes time! She stops time! She stops time so as they can escape the circus and he acts as if he has seen that sort of thing every day of his life. Just another time freeze.

The final half hour of the film is almost farcical, becoming a race against time to get Elizabeth back to the ocean after Thora - she is SUPER powerful you know - temporarily turns her mermaid tail into legs so as she can escape the circus. Meanwhile, Locke - remember him? I barely did - pursues them with all the urgency of an actor who knows he's getting paid regardless of the performance.

As the film peters out to an obvious and underwhelming conclusion, one is subjected to special effects so abject they look as though they were created on an Amstrad computer.

Grandma Elle finishes the story and her cherubic granddaughters ask what happened to Elle. Grandma Elle gives a knowing smile, turns away from the girls and we, the suffering viewers, get to watch the girls react as she does 'something' magical off-screen. Barf.

This film is so god awful it as though Netflix is trying to out do itself for bad films. Just to reiterate, this is not the Disney version. Far from it. Elizabeth - Poppy Drayton - does sing one song, so gets to show off her vocal prowess. That is as close as it gets to the Disney classic. It is really not close enough. Do not watch this film.