Balls Up (2026)

A couple of marketers develop the Balls Up, a condom designed to cover up the balls as well, and pitch it as the official condom of Brazil in the World Cup, before inciting an international incident that has them on the run. I'm sad that this came from one half of the Farrelly Brothers because it's a poor attempt at recreating the raunchy R-rated comedies of its heyday and it lacks any heart.

Buddy comedies usually build on the chemistry of its actors, but Paul Walter Hauser does most of the heavy lifting here. There's so much talent involved in front of and behind the camera, it's appalling how disastrous this turned out.

1½ minnows swimming upstream out of 5

Flight Risk (2025)

A mob informant and possible flight risk is transported via a small private aircraft by a U.S. Marshal and a pilot when things quickly go sideways. It sounds a bit like Con Air, but it's a much smaller story where all the action takes place entirely on the plane. Director Mel Gibson's thriller is occasionally exhilarating and satisfying, if not predictable and by the numbers. If you have no prior expectations going into it, you might find enough to enjoy in it. 

2½ Indian tech support guys out of 5

The Lovely Bones (2009)

I've no knowledge of the book that TLB is based on, but the resultant film is not good. Told from the perspective of a murdered fourteen-year-old girl (Saoirse Ronan), with a v/o from the same, it follows the lives of the people left behind, observed by the dead girl from a place beyond the living world.
Colourful and detailed, but tonally a complete mess, Dir. Peter Jackson used some of his $65 million budget on FX shots that add little of anything other than spectacle to the work. The feeling of acute boredom that settled upon me lifted only when Stanley Tucci was onscreen, and at one other time (for the intruder in his house near the end). And why Mark Wahlberg is ever considered for a role that requires emotion is something I don't understand.

2 skeevies out of 5

PATRIOTS DAY [2016]

Director Peter Berg's second 2016 film based on real-life tragic events is the surprisingly good Patriots Day.
Centering the events around the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings might be a little too fresh in everyone's mind but Berg & co. never fully exploit the facts for the sake of popcorn action.
Rather than focus too much on the terrorist plot details the film is more interested in honoring the heroes involved and how they went about their time during the 100-hour manhunt.  There's some amazingly acted & written scenes worthy of great praise, however they find themselves in the middle of some lesser scenes that feel more boringly standard to the terrorist thriller genre.  It sits on a very fragile line of exploitation and honorable tribute and that's what deter most folks from seeing the film.

3½ bad knees out of 5

DEEPWATER HORIZON [2016]

Director Peter Berg's first true story disaster film of 2016 is the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Deepwater Horizon.
It tells of the 2010 events that led to one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history, when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded killing 11 men.
The heart-stopping action sequences is the star here with it's snappy editing, incredible sound design and applause-worthy visual effects.  The characters are wafer-thin, leaving only Wahlberg and Kurt Russell with enough to chew on that so there's actual reason to become emotionally invested.  Fortunately Berg doesn't exploit the event for wide-eyed popcorn thrills and instead makes the action realistically frightening, but ultimately fails to explore the drastic environmental destruction in the aftermath.

3 crimson ties out of 5

MAX PAYNE [2008]

Director John Moore brings a lot of visual style to his cinematic adaptation of the third-person shooter video game series Max Payne.
Thinly based upon the first game, Max, a fallen New York City detective obsessed over finding the murderer of his wife and child, while stumbling into a much larger case involving a new strain of powerful narcotics.
This mess of a film is riddled with bad dialogue, illogical plot advancements & actions and terrible acting from just about everyone involved.  If it's goal was to make Frank Miller's work look mature, then it succeeded on every level with the cheeseball violence and overly stylized gruffness.

1½ watches out of 5

TED 2 [2015]

Let's face it, when it comes to Seth MacFarlane films it's important that the viewer's expectations are lowered in order to enjoy them.
The sequel to 2012's Ted does everything in it's power to prove this point.
Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your tolerance for unapologetically offensive humor but you will already know that if you've graduated from the first film and came back for seconds.  It's a thinly veiled knock on the controversy of gay marriage, as Ted, the talking teddy bear, can't marry his sweetheart when the law doesn't think he's part of their "warm-hearted Just as God Made Us" elite.  MacFarlane's love for the Golden Age of Cinema is cleverly proven in a song & dance main title sequence that had me grinning from ear-to-ear, while he manages to wiggle that love in the rest of the film beneath the loads of crude body fluid humor and haze of pot smoke.

3 black cocks out of 5

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION [2014]

By now you know Michael Bay's Transformers movies are loud, brainless, void of any logic, flashy and REALLY REALLY long.
Age Of Extinction, the fourth film in the series ditches Sam Witwicky for the inanely dull Yeagers (played by Mark Wahlberg and the horrendous Nicola Peltz).  While the first film was really bad but somewhat entertaining, by the time you get to the 4th anything remotely fun is lost in Bay's ambition to wear the viewer out with stupidity, horrible dialogue and shiny things that growl & fart.
Flashy special effects are great for 20 minutes but nearly 3 hours of it tests one's patience as they reach for more aspirin.
I have no one to blame but myself.

1 Big Lebowski out of 5

LONE SURVIVOR [2013]

Hit & miss director Peter Berg succeeds with Lone Survivor, an Afghanistan War film about 4 Navy SEALs teammates on a mission that goes horribly wrong.
There hasn't been a war film this loud & aggressive since Black Hawk Down so it's a bit of an attack to the senses after all is said and done, however Berg manages to pump out some strong emotions to balance everything out.  The introduction of the men cheaply manipulates you into caring for them which is a little insulting to the viewer but the combat scenes are so impressive with it's editing, bat-shit crazy stunts, sound design and photography you can't help but be drawn in.
It's heavily flawed in the character development but the performances from the four leads and the direction keep you interested in the final outcome.

3½ goats out of 5

2 GUNS [2013]

Who would have thought that two actors with completely different acting styles, like Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg would have such awesome chemistry?
Apparently director Baltasar Kormákur knew when he cast them in his film adaptation of Steven Grant's graphic novel 2 Guns.
As a brainless buddy crime caper comedy it's a pretty solid effort but generally lacks in anything else original or praise-worthy.  It sticks to the formula to a tee, so if you're adverse to turning your brain off for mind-numbing violence and wise-cracks galore then seek out something else.  If not, then this is a guilt-free action film that is filled with some great laughs and action sequences for the Bad Boys fan in us all.

3 winks out of 5

PAIN & GAIN [2013]

The violent biographical crime comedy Pain & Gain is director Michael Bay's attempt at a thoughtful character study.
Oddly enough it is Bay's most pensive film to date but that's not saying much considering it's buried in hokey TV ad type framing, badly timed childish humour and pathetically over-played patriotism.  Bay never seems to understand his own subject material and his stupidity & ignorance become more transparent with each film he makes.  This one is no exception.  It's a shame he was given the chance to make this film because underneath all the tasteless shit is quite an interesting and outrageous true story.

2 human bbq's out of 5

CONTRABAND [2012]

Baltasar Kormákur directs Contraband, an adaptation of Reykjavík-Rotterdam the Icelandic film that he originally starred in.
It's a fairly paint by numbers heist thriller that is fast-paced enough to keep your attention from beginning to end.  Mark Wahlberg is put up to the challenge of playing the same he almost always does, the lower class white guy who used to be bad but struggles to stay good for the ones he loves.  While Ben Foster & Giovanni Ribisi steal any scenes they're in playing woefully underwritten characters.

3 $140 million dollar tarps out of 5

THE FIGHTER [2010]

David O. Russell directs Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in their absolute best performances and roles to date in the boxing bio-pic The Fighter.

Based on the lives of rising and fallen boxer brothers, Micky Ward & Dicky Eklund, the film seamlessly blends boxing and character arcs to appease fans of stories and sports.  The Fighter never really gets too emotionally heavy, as most dramas in this genres would, but plays everything more naturally in doing so makes it even better.  With the help by some definitive performances from Melissa Leo and Amy Adams, as well, the film excels above it's predictability.  

3½ Sugar Ray rejections out of 5

TED [2012]

From the brain of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane comes Ted, a charming yet outrageously offensive comedy about a man and his teddy bear.

Once the humorous novelty of a talking teddy bear with an attitude wears off, like Brian Griffin, you forget he's not just another human character.  It's got it's fair share of jokes that backfire but for the most part it's funny enough and never buries itself too deep into a schmaltzy ending like most films like this would do.

3 white trash girl names out of 5

THE HAPPENING [2008]

M. Night Shyamalan's crafted some well-made B-movies since The Sixth Sense but it wasn't until The Happening that the "joke" wore off.

The viewer is assaulted with bad acting, writing, direction and so many bad bumps and flaws in the pacing it's embarrassing.  It might have greatly benefited from not being so quick to reveal itself and an ensemble cast to give it more of a "bad disaster" flick but instead we're only left to give a rat's ass about Mark Wahlberg & Zooey Deschanel.   Fuck that.  They're about as fun as watching a tree grow and do scary tree stuff....whic really isn't that scary.

1 watch out for that plant! out of 5

THE DEPARTED [2006]

Iconic director Martin Scorsese seems to make a career defining film every 8 years or so. Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and now The Departed. Based upon Andrew Lau's 2002 Hong Kong crime drama, Infernal Affairs, Scorsese takes that story and makes it his own by changing the setting, a few of the characters and the ending and it's all for the greater effect of the cultural differences.
The cast is quite frankly amazing (Mark Wahlberg steals the show), Howard Shore's suitably tango flavored music is nothing short of excellent, the camera work is top notch and the pacing is perfect in every way.
This is American film making at it's best and Scorsese & crew deserve every single amount of acclaim they've received for this film. Hell, even Andrew Lau was thoroughly impressed and that has to count for something.

5 "X" marks the spots out of 5

Three Kings (1999)

This is going to make me unpopular, but that’s nothing new.
Clooney is the sole reason I attempted to watch Three Kings.
High contrast. Bad humour.
I wasted an hour of my shitty life before turning it off.

1 to stop the bleeding hearts from killing me out of 5

Planet of the Apes (2001)

I've read Pierre Boulle's original novel, watched all of the original films multiple times, and even the short-lived television series, so it's fair to say that I'm an Apes fan. I'm also a fan of some of Tim Burton's work prior to this, which makes reviewing his unnecessary remake all the more troublesome.
Pros: a great ensemble cast, Mr Elfman on score duties, Rick Baker's flawless make-up and the amazing costumes.
Cons: Everything else.
To date, it's Burton's worst film by far and a well-deserved winner of a Golden Razzie for worst remake. It's a travesty.

1½ spring-powered ape legs out of 5