This Week at Home

Fist Fight is a 2017 comedy where Charlie Day's mild minored teacher finds himself scheduled to fight his bad ass colleague Ice Cube. I'm always here for a gruff Ice Cube performance but Day's character is an annoying whiner and you wish Cube would just hurry up and spark him out. There's also a cringeworthy side plot involving a female teacher essentially grooming a high school student that makes the film feel way more than seven years old.

Mission Impossible III is the third instalment in the franchise and is another completely different film. JJ Abrams bounces into the director chair meaning the film is zippy and technically precise but lacking the stylistic flourish of its predecessor. Where as the first two films offer a snapshot of their time, this feels much more modern and is less interesting for it. The entry I have enjoyed least so far but still a solid actioner with a show stealing turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman.

A group of American tourists make the classic mistake of visiting a secret archeological dig down in Mexico in 2008 horror The Ruins. It might be a generic set up but the reveal of what is going on at the hidden pyramid is pretty original and the goofiness of it is in stark contrast to some of the gnarly injuries that crop up. Feels like a feature length Creepshow segment and while it might have been suited to that shorter length better its unique enough to warrant checking out.

Back to agent Ethan Hunt next with Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Its taken until film four but this is the first of the series to acknowledge itself as a sequel to the previous entry and although Christopher McQuarrie isn't on board yet (Brad Bird directs) things are starting to feel more like the recent films. Some great set pieces and more consistent tone put this above part 3 even if the villain is pretty weak. Also lacking in Ving Rhames screen time.

Last movie this week in 2017 Mexican horror Belzebuth. A local policeman teams up with an American agency that specialise in the occult to investigate demonic possessions that are leading to the mass murder of children. Pretty atmospheric and blends scares and investigation sequences to good effect although it might go for one twist too many. Not massively gory but the subject matter means viewer discretion is advised.

Film of the week : Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol. They are both enjoyable but neither of the horror quite has enough to get past the action daddy.

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2024 at the Cinema

Bye bye 2024, time to put your ducks in a row. If ducks are films I saw in the cinema. As ever, ranking is purely my opinion (although my opinion is obviously correct), a movie needs to have been released in the UK during calendar year 2024 and I have to have seen it on the big screen for it to be eligible. 60. The Strangers: Chapter 1 Unrelentingly tedious reboot of an already mediocre home invasion thriller that ramps up nothing but the banality. If your idea of entertainment is watching an insufferable couple hide while a man and a woman in stupid masks walk about slowly then this is the film for you. Otherwise the only scary thing here is the fact they have already filmed chapters two and three. 59. In a Violent Nature You don't need to make people drink curdled milk to know it would taste awful. Similarly, you shouldn't need to make people watch a slasher film that follows the killer for the whole runtime to know it's a terrible idea. Dialogue is replaced by endless...

Room With a Viewer

Few directors can release films with same consistency as Steven Soderbergh (he averages over one a year this century), never mind in so many different genres. With Presence, he steps into the world of the supernatural. Don't be fooled by the "presence" of a spirit however, this is not a horror film, more a family drama infused with a sense of doom. The film begins with a family, consisting of domineering mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu), unhappy father Chris (Chris Sullivan), swimming star son Tyler (Eddy Maday) and troubled daughter Chloe (Colina Laing) moving into a new home. Things are far from rosy in the Sullivan household, Rebecca is involved in some unspecified shady work business and dotes on her athlete son (the whole reason for the move is to get him into a premium school) while showing little interest in her daughter, who's best friend recently died. Chris is fed up with his detached wife's favouritism and considering divorce while both the offspring are in ...

Econ Air

Single location thriller Flight Risk is the latest film to suffer from an "over eager" trailer. That is to say, the trailer covers pretty much everything that happens in the movie, more or less in the exact order it occurs. On the plus side, it isn't a film that was ever going to keep any secrets so it doesn't suffer as much as some others have. FBI agent Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) takes a flight with informant Winston (Topher Grace) but a short way into their journey they discover the pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is actually a mob hitman there to end them both before Winston can squeal. There is a brief opening at an Alaskan cabin and the finale is on a runway, but for the most part it's just the three of them in the cabin of a small plain. Events unfold almost like a theatrical play as the three talk and argue with intermittent attempts at murder. The main thing to know about Flight Risk is that it is ridiculous. The decisions the characters make a...

My Girl 2025

Companion opens with Iris (Sophie Thatcher) reminiscing on her meet cute with Jack Quaid's Josh before accompanying him to a secluded house for a weekend of partying with his friends. Everything is normal on the surface but there are hints that something else is going on as Iris appears insanely dedicated to her boyfriend's happiness and at least one of his friends are a little off with her. Sure enough, a reveal around a third of the way in switches things up and the film becomes a bungled heist movie leading to a chase through the woods with freedom and lives on the line. If you have seen the final trailer for Companion you already know what the reveal is. I won't spoil it here for those who want to go in blind but it is fair to say this is, partially at least, a sci fi film. You may well spot the twist (especially with the Stepford Wives nod kicking things off) but something so morally abhorrent and potentially dangerous being completely commonplace and having so littl...

Eyes, Eyes Baby

You would be forgiven for thinking Heart Eyes is a simple holiday themed slasher movie riding the coattails of 2023's Thanksgiving. While it takes place on Valentine's Day and features a killer dispatching people with a cupid themed arsenal of weapons, that is only half the story. What Heart Eyes really is, is a full on rom com with a slasher slapped over the top of it. How does that work? Thanks to a heightened comic tone and some sharp writing, pretty bloody well. Olivia Holt plays Ally, a love cynic who stalks her ex online and whose bitterness has seeped into her work, endangering her job as a marketing agent for a jewellery company. She has a meet cute in a coffee shop with Mason Gooding's Jay, only to later find out he has been hired by her company to fix her campaign and may be a threat to her position. True love sceptic forced to work with a hot new guy (who happens to be a hopeless romantic) under tense circumstances is a classic rom com set up and there is even...

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