The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026)

It's weird to think how 20 years has passed by in a blink. Feels like the first movie barely came out, now suddenly it's cemented as a 'classic.' Everyone returning from the original has aged two decades but still looks great. Then you realize you've aged the same and you look like shit. It's a sobering fact.

Lots of things have changed in the past 20 years. Print media is obsolete, other roles have been made redundant. You get a few good character moments strewn here and there, but for the most part it's wearisome and lacks bite.

2 HR complaints out of 5

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

A journalist applies to be a personal assistant to the domineering editor at a fashion magazine, where she's confronted with impossible standards and forced to change herself to fit the ideal and try to beat her at her own game.

What annoys about this movie is that it hinges on Anne Hathaway playing a "fat" girl with no style who is treated like shit until she decides to wear the right clothes and then suddenly she's "beautiful." It's fucking stupid. I've never understood fashion and I've never cared about it. A bunch of pretentious gits. But Meryl Streep is so good in the role, you can't help but enjoy it for what it is.

2½ clackers out of 5

The Electric State (2025)

In an alternate timeline, Walt Disney's animatronics have given birth to the robot uprising, which leads to an all-out war between robots and humans, until Mr. Peanut (played by Woody Harrelson) signs a coalition with Bill Clinton. It sounds like I'm kidding, but I'm not. No wonder it cost $320 million for a direct-to-Netflix film. Most of that must have gone to keeping the lawsuits at bay.

While the above sounds like a wild premise, all that information is condensed within the first 7 minutes of the movie. The rest of the film involves a teenage girl and an affable cartoon robot on a mission to find her long-presumed-dead brother, alongside a scoundrel and his wisecracking sidekick. On paper, this all sounds awesome, but for some reason it doesn't really work. The execution is painfully average and somehow manages to feel slow and uneventful despite everything going on in it. There's just no reason some movies need to be over two hours long. Cut 30 minutes out and maybe it wouldn't feel so superfluous.

The graphic novel this was based on appears to be highly acclaimed however, so perhaps interested parties should seek that out instead.

2 Neural Bifurcation™s out of 5

Monkey Shines (1988)

AKA: Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear

After being stricken down in an accident that renders him quadriplegic, a young man is gifted a service animal in the form of a sweet and lovable lab monkey being treated with an intelligence serum, who he quickly develops a close bond with. The first half of this film is genuinely engaging, although it loses some steam as it falls into the more predictable pitfalls of the genre. 

Despite the prevalence of the monkey with cymbals on all the advertisements (reminiscent of Stephen King's short story The Monkey), there were in fact real capuchin monkeys used in the film and the toy never once appears on screen. This has always driven me fucking nuts.

3 monkey mind melds out of 5

Conclave (2024)

The Pope has died and it's time to choose a successor. Ralph Fiennes heads this papal mystery-thriller which I would call "beautiful but boring." The votes are split between more traditionalist and liberal minded values, while each of the top candidates appears to harbor a secret that calls their legitimacy into question. The cardinals are unable to come to the majority vote required for successful election, so they are forced to reconvene and argue their case before each new balloting. Were it not for an intriguing final act, I would suggest passing this up entirely.

3 turtles on the papal floor 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

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST [2017]

Twilight: Breaking Dawn director Bill Condon faithfully adapts Disney's animated classic Beauty and the Beast into a live-action musical.
The story of a young woman who falls in love with a monstrous fella that lives within a magical castle keeps Alan Menken & Howard Ashman's iconic songs firmly intact much to the pleasure of fans of the original film.  However heavily auto-tuned Emma Watson's flat-lining performance is far too dull to equal the strength of her character's beliefs.  Dan Stevens does his best as the Beast underneath a heavy layer of poorly rendered CGI fur but it's simply never enough to ignore it's artificial look.  Thankfully Luke Evans & Josh Gad are entertaining bad-boy scene-stealers, while Ewan McGregor & Emma Thompson's voice-work an absolute delight.  For an extravagant musical the camerawork is an absolute bore that never quite elevates the film to majesty it should have been.  Close but no cigar.

2½ really annoying singing wardrobes out of 5

Gambit (2012)

A straight-to-DVD remake of a 1966 Ronald Neame film of the same name.
It stars Colin Firth as a pained art curator who plans to fleece a rich and bastardly Alan Rickman of a very large sum of money. He can't do it alone, however, so enlists the help of a Texan chicken-plucker named PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz), who makes an already average film even worse.
The big draw for a lot of people will be that its final screenplay was penned by the Coen brothers; and while a sizeable portion of it has their wit it lacks the timing and finesse that they themselves usually bring to a production.
Firth is the obvious comedy highlight, but a special mention for the two Savoy Hotel desk clerks is definitely in order.

2½ unforeseen wrinkles out of 5

Road to Perdition (2002)

RtP is adapted from a graphic novel of the same name by Max Allan Collins, itself inspired by Kazuo Koike's Lone Wolf and Cub manga. The importance of the father and son relationship in both books is maintained throughout.
It's set in 1931, Illinois. The father is Michael Sullivan Sr. (Hanks), a man who goes to great lengths to keep his sons from becoming aware that his boss, John Rooney (Newman), is the head of the mob and that their father is his best enforcer. But Sullivan's methods create a gulf between him and the boys.
With that established early on, the remainder of the film addresses it, but not in the way you might think. Through moments of tragedy, circumstance and sincerity, carefully distilled with shadows and light, we're drawn into their story, into the era and, if you're sympathetically equipped, into the understanding of why the swallowing of emotions that's sometimes necessary to get the job done isn't always the best course of action for either party.

4½ accounts settled out of 5

SPOTLIGHT [2015]

Tom McCarthy was well on his way to becoming one of my favorite film directors but then The Cobbler dropped out of his ass and all that blew to hell.
Fortunately he redeems himself with the biographical drama Spotlight.
Based on the 2001 true story of a group of Boston Globe investigative reporters who struggle to expose a massively buried series of child sex abuse scandals, spanning across decades, within the local Catholic priest community.
It's impressive ensemble cast are fully committed to allowing the story speak for itself making it all the more engrossing with unglamorous believability.  Quite often films like this seem to bury themselves in holier-than-thou self-gratification but Spotlight is just as interested in honest journalism as it is solid story-telling.  It's an engrossing testament to why we can't forget about the blood, sweat & tears put into disappearing newsprint journalism in the digital age of social media.

3½ missing documents 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

MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN [2014]

I didn't think I'd want to see a CGI animated update of an old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon.
Mr. Peabody & Sherman proved me wrong with it's high energy, non-stop humor and all around time-travelling romp of a good time.
Directed by The Lion King's Rob Minkoff, the film is surprisingly fast-paced, jammed with witty historical jokes and enough heart to keep you smiling when the credits begin rolling.  It's nothing like it's source material but that really doesn't matter because, let's face it, the original cartoon was about as much fun as watching paint dry in a funeral home.
By no means will this become a classic but it's got enough flash and enthusiasm to enjoy multiple viewings and then some.  

3½ creepy boys out of 5

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER [2013]

Director Bryan Singer's Jack The Giant Slayer is an uneven fairy tale adventure film that borrows elements from Jack & The Beanstalk and Jack The Giant Killer then glazes it over with hokey CGI effects.
The performances are enthusiastically overacted with great effect and the special effects are artificial in such a way that benefits the fairy tale aspects of the story but it's all dragged down by a terribly boring yawn-worthy script that seemed to have no idea what it wanted to focus on.  It lacks personality, wit or charm and hurts everything in the worst of ways.  With a good script doctor, Jack could have been a silly wild ride with no regrets, instead it sputters and grasps for fresh air.

2 pigs-in-a-blanket out of 5

EASY A [2010]

The silly and predictable cinematic ode to John Hughes, Easy A is carried by Emma Stone's dryly comedic performance along with a host of great supporting characters to back her up. In fact the whole time I was thinking "this reminds me of Friends With Benefits with it's awesome supporting characters and really trivial plot".  Turns out it was the same director, Will Gluck.
It's not a complete waste of time due to some great laughs but in the end it never adds up to much and makes you wish you'd revisited the John Hughes classics instead.

2½ Homosexual comparisons to Huck Finn out of 5