Dan Says its Alright

The minute an Illumination Super Mario movie was announced you knew what was on the cards and this is is exactly that, a mostly by the numbers crowd pleaser with a focus on easy laughs and merchandising opportunities. The good news is it's about as good a version of that as we were ever going to get. The story begins with Mario and Luigi (Mario Mario and Luigi Mario to give them there full names) trying to boost their fledgling plumbing business by helping out with a massive flood in downtown Brooklyn. This leads to them being sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom, via a green pipe naturally. The film is full of trappings from the game, with power ups, karts and a Princess obsessed Bowser as the antagonist. It does flip things round with Luigi being the damsel (da man sel?) in distress while Peach is fearless leader, probably a necessary change for 2023 . Other Mario staples like Toad and Shy Guys make an appearance and there is a trip to visit "The King of the Kongs" (Ninten...

 John Wick Chapter 4 features another incredible physical performance from Keanu Reeves but not even he can defeat the twin villians of bloated runtime and extended universe nonsense. The first act introduces a bunch of new characters to varying degrees of success. The most important is Donnie Yen as a blind former colleague of Wick forced out of retirement to hunt the protagonist down and the most fun is Shamier Anderson's "Tracker" who has a dog sidekick and is a prime candidate for a spin off. At the other end of the scale is The Marquis, the main villian of the piece. It's entertaining to see him pop up in ridiculously ostentatious locations throughout the film but his accent is ridiculous and any attempt at projecting menace is undermined by laughable dialogue. His response to a botched attempt to off Wick in a hotel is to say "the goal was not to kill John Wick, it was to kill the idea of John Wick", despite the fact the plan had definitely been to kil...

 "The Marvel Formula" has become something of a derogatory term in recent years. However, there is a reason glib, self-aware, banter loving heroes embarking on straight forward quests that juggle grand stakes with humour has been the dominant box office flavour for over a decade. Done well it works, and Dungeons and Dragons : Honour Among Theives does it better than the mouse house has in years. The story is a simple one, a rag tag bunch of thinly drawn but likeable miss fits must pull of a heist to rescue the estranged daughter of their (by default) leader. Chris Pine shows he can do the humorous action lead as well as either of the Marvel Chris' and Michelle Rodriguez does stoic warrior as well as you would expect with the two having good chemistry as long time friends/partners in crime. They are joined by Justice Smith's mediocre magician and Sophiia Lillis as a human sceptic shape shifter, the two also making up the obligatory romance story. The main antagonist is...

 Infinity Pool is first and foremost a critique of the kind of people who go to gated luxury resorts, the ones that have armed guards to keep away the impoverished locals. Therefore everyone here is disgusting. Uber handsome Alexander Skarsgard is a loser writer who spends most of the film sweating and dishevelled, Mia Goth goes from alluring to screeching alcaholic state, Thomas Kretchmann's local detective hates the entitled holiday makers but is happy to enable their explotation of his countrymen for financial gain. Pretty much everyone is morally bankrupt. This does create the slight problem of having nobody to get behind but that isn't really the point and this isn't the place you would find heroes. The plot revolves around an outrageous piece of (maybe) technology unique to the unamed country the film is set in. How a seemingly underdeveloped land came to posses such a thing is never really explored and neither are the ramifications of its existence beyond how they pe...