Dan Says its Alright

Pearl is a hard film to define and really benefits from the viewer knowing as little about it as possible heading in. That said, it is a prequel to 2022 's X  focusing on a crucial couple of days in the youth of murderous old lady Pearl so it isn't a family friendly caper. The vast majority of the film takes place in the same farm location as X but grindhouse grime is replaced with golden age Hollywood technicolor, giving everything a completely different look and feel. Pearl dreams of breaking into early Hollywood pictures and the opening scenes here could be straight out of The Wizard of Oz. The film looks stunning, in sharp contrast to the misery of young Pearl's life. She had thought her husband was a ticket off her family farm but now he is fighting in World War I, leaving Pearl to help her overbearing mother run the homestead and care for the disabled family patriarch. Complicating things further are a nasty global pandemic and the fact they are German immigrants. A ...

 Champions is simultaneously as by the numbers as a sports drama can be and one of the most progressive comedies of recent years. Woody Harrelson is the sports movie staple, a coach (in this case basketball) who knows everything about the game but nothing about relating to people. As a result his career has been marred by a series of bust ups and the movie begins with him losing his latest job. After drowning his sorrows in a bar he crashes his car and is forced to teach a special needs basketball team as community service. You know the drill from there. He teaches them the game, they teach him about life. They run into problems exactly when you expect them to and overcome them with teamwork. There is a romance running parallel to proceedings and eventually the coach must weigh everything he has gained against his previously all encompassing career goals. Where Champions sets itself apart is in its cast of disabled actors. Casting real people with disabilities as the team adds an i...

Scream 6 is a definite improvement over last years weak entry in the franchise. In fact Scream 2022 now feels like a modestly budgeted water tester, putting the stabers out to see if there was appetite for a proper sequel. Things start with a bang, the introduction being the most interesting flip on the  standard opening kill to date and from there its clear there is a cleqr sense of ambition about preceedings. Relocating to New York gives everything a fresh feel and a sense of scope that the last entry lacked with the film making good use of the opportunity to see a Ghostface acting differently. Rather than lurk in the shadows the killer can now hide in plain site and this iteration of the stabby Munch fan has some great dialogue and physicality. They also deliver some of the most graphic slayings a Scream outing has seen. Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega return as the Carpenter sisters and put in good performances even if the tension between them feels forced. There are issues...

 A coked up bear on the rampage sounds like a slam dunk but turning an over the top idea into a serviceable film is a tricky business. The Hollywood dumpster is choc full of great sounding elevator pitches that became lifeless, one joke husks when they made it to the screen. Fortunately Cocaine Bear is more Anaconda than Snakes on a Plane. Needless to say the film bares (ha ha) little resemblance to the "true story" it claims to be based on. After all the story of finding a dead bear next to a duffle bag of cocaine probably wouldn't pack theatres. Here, rather than die from eating copious amounts of drugs, the bear simply gets a bit of a habit and goes on the hunt for more. This is bad news for people trying to find the rest of the lost stash themselves or those simply trying to enjoy the woods.  Director Elizabeth Banks does a good job of leaning on the premise just the right amount. The bear on cocaine joke is only made once or twice, the bear is mainly just a feral ani...