Animal Farm (2025)

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

George Orwell adapted for family audiences. Except I would feel bad for any little kid who was dragged to see this. Not because it's bad, but because it's bleak and depressing as hell. Barnyard animals run away and form their own society founded on freedom and equality for all, which lasts for about a day before the pigs become corrupt with power while the rest of the animals are used as slave labor. It's an ambitious take on the authoritarian allegory of the novel, transposed to the modern era with overt political ties to corporate consumerism. I give it major props for what it attempts to do, at any rate.

I can't wait until they do a children's version of Nineteen Eighty-Four next.

2½ laughter houses out of 5

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)

Nostalgia can be dangerous. An overreliance on the past can be a handicap. There's no reason for some things to be revived except for purely sentimental reasons. This wasn't one of them.

This film features many callbacks accompanied by old clips cribbed from the first movie to make you remember how much you enjoyed that one and desperately try to recreate those old feelings. Most of the time, it falls flat.

My other complaint is that comedies are too long nowadays. It's completely self-indulgent for this to be two hours. Clip it at 90 minutes and leave out all the fluff. It ages better that way. 

I sound like an old fuddy-duddy now. I didn't hate everything about it, I just wish it tried to do something different. For some people, same-old will be perfectly acceptable. It just feels sadder when these people are in their 50s.

1½ gratuitous cameos out of 5

Billy Madison (1995)

A completely spoiled, obnoxious, simple-minded moron is told he will have to go back and finish grade school in order to prove he is capable enough to take over the family business and save it from the evil asshole who would inherit it.

This was Adam Sandler's first major leading role, coming hot off his success from SNL, in which he pretty much played the same gibberish-speaking cretin. This stuff was funny back before it wore out its welcome and, in some ways, this is one of the best comedies Sandler ever made because it was still pure.

There are two ways to review a movie like this: One is with a critical eye and the other is based on how much I personally enjoyed it. How funny you find this is directly proportional to your willingness to laugh at utter stupidity. I find it fucking hilarious. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

3 flaming bags of poop out of 5

Airheads (1994)

Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler play three dopey members of a struggling rock band who hijack a local radio station in an attempt to get their demo tape played on the air. The situation escalates quickly from there as hostages and cops add to the chaos. It's a decent enough set-up, but my main issue is that not much happens in the 90 minute runtime and the stakes feel low. Despite strong performances from all involved, it's neither clever nor memorable beyond the premise, while the overall execution is lacking.

2½ Beavis & Butt-Head cameos out of 5

Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer (2024)

An author struggling with the subject for his next book meets a retired serial killer, who he agrees to write about under the guise of him pretending to be a marriage counselor between he and his wife. Meanwhile, the wife discovers the writer's notes and believes he's trying to murder her. A dark comedy of errors that becomes increasingly more unhinged, but not in a good way.

2 red lights out of 5

Transformers One (2024)

Admittedly, I'm not the target audience for this film, but I'm not entirely sure who it was made for. Kids who have no prior exposure to Transformers? Certainly not the adults who grew up on the '80s cartoon or Megan Fox's ass. This lighter PG animated fare is bright and full of color, but the CG character designs look dull and ugly. The anthropomorphized robots act goofy and incessantly argue with each other, interspersed with some inane and frantically edited action sequences that get tiresome quickly. The tone becomes slightly darker by the end, but I was already checked out by then. As a prequel to the franchise, the whole thing is just a flimsy excuse to show how Optimus Prime and Megatron came to power. There are no surprises here.

One of those movies where you contemplate your life in the margins while you're waiting for it to mercifully end. This one is strictly for the kiddies.

½ a solid REM cycle out of 5

The Island (2005)

Even though it steals almost all of its ideas from some classic, well-known and much-loved sci-fi movies of yesteryear, the early part of Michael Bay's movie feels like it could've did something worthwhile with the pickings. But the potential is destroyed by his woefully inappropriate direction, cack-handed editing, a leading duo with zero chemistry, and a music score that aspires to little more than blandness. When the director lets loose with his trademark action scenes, including helicopters (naturally), cars tipping on busy highways, flashing lights, etc, it becomes Bay-by-numbers, indistinguishable from every other movie of his that I've managed to sit through. His talent for making excitement be terminally dull is almost unsurpassed.

1 identifier out of 5

Youth in Revolt (2009)

The title refers to the actions that a sixteen-year-old boy (Michael Cera) feels he must must undertake in order to keep his attachment (and himself relevant) to the girl (Portia Doubleday) with whom he wants to lose his virginity.
Even though it had some big name producers behind it, it has the feel and the heart of an indie movie, which is perhaps its greatest strength, in my opinion.
By externalising the youth's inner conflict it both uses and plays around with the awkward, inexperienced deer in the headlights role that Cera has in many of his films. It likely won't be enough to win over anyone who dislikes his particular shtick, but those that enjoy it will probably still feel right at home.

3 ill-tempered sailors out of 5

Ghost World (2001)

Based on Daniel Clowes' 1997 comic of the same name, GW explores how best friends Enid and Rebecca cope with their first summer after high-school graduation. Enid, wonderfully characterised by Thora Birch, is the more cynical of the two but also the most interesting. Feeling slightly lost and alienated from her generation, and even her best friend, who seems to be turning into the thing that they both hate, the floundering Enid finds a peculiar kind of solace in time spent with Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a 40+ year-old record collector whose life revolves around rare 78 RPM vinyls.
The pace is like that of a lazy summer, but it works in the film's favour, giving it the feeling of an indie movie that knows how best to express itself.

4 specific skins out of 5

Romance & Cigarettes (2005)

Written and directed by John Turturro, it's the story of husband and wife Nick and Kitty (James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon), a couple having what polite society calls 'marital problems', but what makes the film more than the sum of its parts is the wonderfully written characters and dialogue. With just one exception, i.e. an oddly subdued Eddie Izzard, even those with a small amount of screen time (e.g. Steve Buscemi) are decidedly memorable.
It's classed as a musical, but songs are less frequent than the label usually implies. I'd describe it more as a left field comedy drama with moments of song that successfully convey feelings of love in many of its guises.

3½ butts in the snow out of 5

Con Air (1997)

I’m not exaggerating my opinion when I say that Con Air is a revelation. I dug it when I saw it in theatres, and I LOVE it now. The inmates are a wonderfully strong and quirky crew of personalities, which is good because they have to shoulder the majority of the screen-time. Cage is incredibly subdued, but he makes it work with the slightest little hints of Cage-yness bubbling up around the seams. There’s some great visual symbolism on display and Buscemi steals the show as a breathing piece of philosophical social commentary. Like NEVER’s Kyosui, the flamboyantly gay character isn’t degraded for who he is and is relied upon the same as the others. I can’t say that it’s enjoyable cheese, because I genuinely believe it’s a well-made action movie with something to say. 

It’s quality.

4 Bruised, yet Bona Fide, Birthday Bunnies out of 5

Nutted by NEG.

FARGO [1996]

The Coen Brothers cleverly collect elements of everything they're known for and make, what I think is, their best film to date with Fargo.
A nervous weasel of a car salesman has his wife kidnapped in order to collect the ransom but things spiral out of control as each piece hopelessly falls into the wrong place.
Fargo is as familiar as it is foreign with it's oddball dialect, spurts of gruesome violence and beautifully photographed shots of next to nothing.  It explores human interest with a keen sense of comfort and disgust but never once repels the viewer with it's brightly lit noirish tale of lies, deceit, murder and absurdly dizzying politeness.  It's the furthest thing from a hip film but that's what makes it what it is.
If anything, it's the nerdier cousin of No Country For Old Men.

5 son-of-a-Gundersons out of 5

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2 [2015]

Director Genndy Tartakovsky returns to direct the poorly rushed and inevitable sequel to the 2012 hit Hotel Transylvania.
This time around, Drac is afraid his grandson might not be the monster he wants him to be and crazy animated hijinks ensue as he and his creepy crawly buddies try to remedy this.
With it's lack of wit and focus on more silly childish gags, it seems the film isn't even trying to equal it's predecessor and is comfortable focusing only on keeping the attention of the younger crowd.  There's a few clever gags but it's mostly just fast-paced zaniness leading nowhere resulting in even lesser of a bite than the first film barely mustered up.

2½  road trips out of 5

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Revisiting RD was as entertaining as I'd hoped. It’s still an excellent film, proving that it wasn't just riding on a timed wave of counter-culture hype.
If you didn't already know, it’s a heist movie but whereas most films focus on the planning and preparation, only getting to the actual theft in the last half hour, Dogs focuses on what happens afterwards, when it all goes sour.
Outfitting bad guys in matching suits was a striking image before QT’s time and it still is today. And having the action take place primarily in locations that rarely change means the remainder of it hasn't visibly dated.
The importance of music is felt even though there’s no actual score; any music in the film is heard by one or more of the characters.

4½ Super Sounds of the Seventies out of 5

THE COBBLER [2014]

With strong leading performances from Peter Dinklage, Richard Jenkins and Paul Giamatti in his previous works, I found it odd that director Thomas McCarthy would pick Adam Sandler for his latest film, The Cobbler.
A depressed shoe repair man discover when he steps into someone else's shoes he actually physically becomes the footwear's owners.  With Sandler in the lead I was somewhat doubtful of this film, but McCarthy's previous movies all impressed me so that gave me some hope for this one.  That hope was diminished pretty quickly with this unbalanced disaster.  It can't decide if it's a McCarthy character piece or a juvenille Sandler flick and with that it never manages to join the two comfortably in the middle.  The former SNL funnyman is at his best when he's restrained, as he effectively proven before but there's far too many flashes of his manboy humor just threatening to boil over into this unfocused mess.

1 pickle out of 5

Escape from L.A. (1996)

Snake's back! He’s blackmailed into retrieving something from a lame criminal that resembles a boutique Che Guevara.
The political statements and satire are where you’d expect them to be, but something went very wrong with the rest of the film. It’s more comic book than before and the script is so bad that it comes off like a parody of the first film, which is something the last half hour seems to play up to. It'd be easy to pretend otherwise, but the truth is it's not a worthy sequel.

2 shitty modes of transport out of 5

RAMPART [2011]

Director Oren Moverman fictionalizes his film around the Rampart scandals of LAPD in the late '90's making for some pre-setup tension.
Woody Harrelson leads the ensemble cast and unfortunately is the only character we really get to know which makes it a challenging watch seeing as he's so despicable.  Had the film added in another leading character to contrast Harrelson's corrupt cop it might have been a more inviting and interesting watch, instead we're just sort of waiting for this douche to get what's coming to him.  To add to it all, the camerawork is distractingly shaky and sometimes feel like it's trying a bit too hard to be naturally raw.
Rampart had pretty big potential to be a great crime drama but instead is just pretty off-putting and pointless.

2 ex-wives out of 5

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY [2013]

Dan Scanlon, director of Tracy, brings a lot of color and flair to the prequel to the 2001 Pixar hit Monsters, Inc. with the equally as entertaining Monsters University.
Like the first film, it doesn't quite meet the imaginative high standards of other Pixar films like Up, Wall-E or the Toy Story series but it has a thoughtful charm and thoroughly wholesome energy that leaves you smiling.  I can easily say I quite enjoyed this one and would watch it again to feel the warm & fuzzies.

3½ fifty foot tall librarians out of 5

BIG FISH [2003]

Tim Burton's most mature work to date, an adaptation of Daniel Wallace's novel Big Fish is a fantasy flavored Southern Gothic tear-jerker that is sure to please fans of the director's work.
Like most of Burton's personal films, he ditches the idea of a standard narrative and tells it like a fairy tale vingette layered over a bigger picture as the heart of the picture, almost like a zanier version of Forrest Gump.  It's themes of father & sons, the curious mysteries of a bigger world and determination for what you believe all join each other seamlessly and will form a lump in your throat as you realize this.  It relishes itself in fantasy and larger than life storytelling but never loses touch with reality enough to insult your intelligence or lose your belief in it all.

4 soles in Spectre out of 5

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

The FF that FF fans don’t speak of isn't as bad as some say. Okay, it is, but perhaps not for the reasons I've seen many fanboys give. The story isn't the real problem; pad it out with 40+ hours of gameplay and it’d do just fine. Nor is the environmental message that many people disliked a new concept for the franchise. The real problem is the emptiness in the performances and the inability of CGI to effectively portray real human emotion. It looks pretty but the characters are just dead inside.
Interestingly, it lacks a spiky haired protagonist and there’s no sign of unwieldy phallic swords. It does have a Cid, though; or rather, a Sid.

2 opposing waves out of 5