Black Bag (2025)

An espionage thriller about a British intelligence officer and his wife who investigate an internal leak among four other spies. It's a premise that starts out intriguing and shrouded in mystery, but quickly proves to be dry and dull as ditchwater. It's the kind of film that thinks it's cleverer than the audience, but joke's on them: I didn't give a single shit about any of it in the first place.

The good thing about Steven Soderbergh is if you don't like one of his movies, just wait 6 months, and he'll come out with another one.

2 polygraphs out of 5

MOONLIGHT [2016]

Writer/director Barry Jenkins makes his feature length debut with the understated but emotionally heavy coming-of-age drama Moonlight.
It tells the story through three different ages of a young gay black male who grows up facing many obstacles in a rough Miami neighborhood.
Each segment is graced some marvelous performances, all of which shine with loneliness, confusion and a professionalism that gives it all a heartbreaking authenticity.  With plenty of over-the-shoulder photography we're drawn closer into the world in such an intimate manner each moment matters.  Composer Nicholas Britell's music is most unlike anything a film of this style would usually calls for and it helps elevate it to something even more powerful.  Raw, lyrical and solemn, this is cinematic storytelling at some of it's elegantly mature.

4½ crowns on the dashboard out of 5

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM [2013]

Justin Chadwick adapts former South African president Nelson Mandela's auto-biography Long Walk To Freedom with mixed results.
On the plus side, Idris Elba & Naomie Harris turn in some towering performances that are both honorably emotional and demand respect.  With some prior knowledge of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Mandela's 27 year imprisonment the film is quite interesting and moving.
On the minus, it tries to pack in way too much in the it's 2½ hour running time making for some questionable inclusions that do nothing to drive the narrative forward.  Without any prior knowledge of the history, audiences will be lost as the film-makers offer no explanation and expect you to be educated on the subject so it will easily ostracize many viewers.

3 long trousers out of 5

SKYFALL [2012]

Daniel Craig returns as James Bond in director Sam Mendes' first journey into the world of 007 for Skyfall.

Craig takes the role of Bond and makes it his own, adding layers of varied emotion and vulnerability to the character that's been mostly absent in past incarnations.  While Javier Bardem is able to ham it up a bit, seeming more like a Nolan Batman villain rather than a Bond baddy, with his motives and cunning ideals.  Thankfully, Mendes is concerned with building up character arcs just as much as he is with throwing some extravagantly entertaining action pieces at us as well.  Skyfall does threaten to fall apart under it's own weight near the end but wraps up nicely as it looks back at it's roots.

3½ wastes of good Scotch out of 5

28 Days Later (2002)

It's John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids without the Triffids. It's shot in Britain so the lighting is shitty; plus it's on early DV, so it's grainy as hell. The extras show what it could have looked like if it was on celluloid. I’d have preferred that. Somehow director Danny Boyle makes it good. The music makes it great.

4 here's blood in your eye out of 5