David Wright – Google

The plot of this film is so convoluted it makes Christopher Nolan's back catalogue seem simplistic and unambitious. In the end credits I saw the name Russo a couple of times which might explain the slick visuals, but the near-constant stream of dizzying special effects makes for a bamboozling experience. I have to assume that at least some of the Oscars this movie received were awarded for sheer effort?

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is big and dumb but kinda fun (and certainly better than the last one). Why it has its share of flaws and the opening scenes are pretty goofy, the sheer over-the-top style of the film keeps things moving in a way that is reminiscent of the original. The film is more effects-heavy than you might expect (at times it feels like a pop video) but once it gets going, the action is non-stop and there are some quite funny moments along the way. If you like big budget shoot 'em up movies and you like the whole Will Smith/Martin Lawrence back and forth, you might just surprise yourself.

Visually impressive but lacking depth. There is some character development but none are developed well enough to become invested in any of them: Alita carries out brutal acts of violence suddenly and without much provocation and Hugo attacks cyborgs and strips them for parts without much conscience. This could be a comment on the brutal nature of the society they live in or it is just in the Manga tradition but it doesn't make them especially relatable. In the end the movie didn't really absorb me enough to hold my attention.

A film with a potentially interesting premise let down by clumsy visuals and a poorly executed story. Ironically the DVD extras include a documentary about the making of the film which talk about photo-realistic visual effects but while they spent a lot of money on the computer generated characters, some of the obviously artificial backdrops stick out like a sore thumb. While l watching this I almost wished that it was another movie in which it all turns out to be virtual reality. That probably would have made for a more rewarding story.

The DVD featurette suggests that this film was inspired by a single event in the writer/director's life. In my experience, that tends to be a problem because it can produce somewhat unsatisfying movies which attempt (usually unsuccessfully) to build a full story around that event. In this case, what you get is a horror movie with a good cast playing characters who each have a single, predetermined contribution to make to the story (I.e. a grisly death). This is a good illustration of the fundamental problem: unless you've never seen a horror movie before, there aren't any real surprises (and the shocks are gruesome but not surprising - what else did we think would happen to Peripheral Character X?). Most infuriatingly, this movie uses creepy music and gently pulsating graphical effects to tell you when to be unsettled. This is an example of an increasingly common movie device: perhaps the filmmakers assumed that the audience was not smart enough to understand which parts of the movie to be scared by without signposting them?

It's interesting to find out what happens to Jesse immediately after the end of Breaking Bad but this story feels like more of a continuation of the series than a distinct story that you can become invested in. The flashback sequences are the most interesting part of this outing and there is some satisfaction in knowing how Jessie's story is resolved but it's not quite the earth-shattering experience it was billed as.

What a let down. You spend the first half of the movie asking "who is that?" and "why is that happening?" and the second half of the movie thinking "I don't care who that is or why that is happening". The plot makes so little sense that you never become truly invested in it or any of the characters, which also takes the edge off the jump scares (the score tries very hard to tell you when to be scared but the isn't enough tension to keep you gripped, in spite of the occasional gruesome killing). I think the premise of the story is explained at the very end of the film but it is delivered in a "blink and you'll miss it" kind of way (I'm pretty sure I missed that vital piece of information but I'm definitely not watching the thing again to find out what it was). Oh and I think the ending is supposed to reveal a sinister twist, but that relies on you having understood what the premise of the film actually was. Another example of a film that the critics love (lots of obscure symbolism, apparently) but which does quite a good job of leaving the general audience behind.

An interesting story about a plucky underdog racing driver and his collaboration with a renowned automotive engineer. The movie is quite well shot but it which suffers from slow pacing. By chance I recently saw the Steve McQueen Le Mans film and noticed how much more gripping the racing sequences were. In a way these two films are opposites, one with an interesting story and one with exciting racing. I suspect Le Mans '66 made use of CGI during the more dramatic sequences and this may have made the racing feel less visceral than the McQueen effort.