Dan Says its Alright

  Anybody who has seen the trailer for Immaculate may think they know exactly what they are in for. They would only be half right because while it is the film the trailer shows its also a little bit more and a whole lot louder. Sydney Sweeney stars as Sister Cecilia, a nun who relocates to an old Italian convent that tends to dying nuns. Turns out the place is full of oddballs and when she becomes pregnant via miraculous conception she discovers that while she is treated with awe as the new Virgin Mary she is also a prisoner, not even allowed to leave to visit hospital. Sweeney also produces the movie having auditioned (and been passed over) for a role in a version of the story ten years ago. That iteration ended up falling by the wayside and at first glance it seems strange the Anyone but You star would have held on to the idea for so long. After all, its not as if Nuns and spooky pregnancies are exactly box breaking territory for a horror film. Immaculate has some tricks up its s...

Dune : Part Two picks up more or less straight after the events of part one and follows Paul Atreides as he and his mother Lady Jessica take refuge with the Fremen. They then set about befriending\radicalising the desert natives to aid in their revenge against the forces that wiped out their family. Considering the monolithic task of adapting a book as thematically dense as Dune the story plays out with remarkable clarity and the visual effects set a new high bar in grand sci fi realism. Still, its not a film that everybody with get on with. First thing is first, it would be a waste of time to try and watch this without seeking out 2021's part one first as a brief opening catch up is unlikely to get any Arrakis virgins up to speed and the relentless pace of events here doesn't leave time for filling in the gaps.  For all the spectacle he delivers, director Denis Villenueve's greatest strength is his storytelling laser focus and the skill that stopped the time wrangling phi...

Three films this week. First up is new Amazon Prime comedy Ricky Stanicky . A group of friends blame all their miss adventures on a fictional friend but when their partners become suspicious they hire a boozed up John Cena to play the part of the infamous "Ricky Stanicky". Its stupid and there's no denying the lying bro's deserve more comeuppance than they get but there are some good laughs and an unexpectedly uplifting ending.    Next up Jason Statham kicks all kind of ass as The Beekeeper , a retired uber-badass who rampages from call centres to Washington after his elderly neighbour is scammed to suicide. The Stath spouts some insane dialogue, sometimes in something approximated an American accent while a couple of feds on his tale layer on the bee metaphors. Hits all the punching, kicking, shooting and gruffness you want in a Statham movie.  Last up is The House of the Devil , an early entry in the fascinating horror filmography of Ti West. An homage to the devil ...

  Wicked Little Letters opens by telling the viewer that the film they are about see is a lot closer to real life events than they would think. While there are plenty of similarities between the film and the real life case of abusive letters in a 1920s sea side town the nastier edges have been sanded off to make a crowd pleasing comedy.  The story centres around neighbours Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman) and Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) after Edith begins to receive foul-mouthed letters from an anonymous ne'er-do-well. They are complete opposites, with hard drinking and foul-mouthed single mum Rose putting the frighteners up the street while the prim and proper Edith still lives at home with her overbearing parents. Despite their differences the two had struck up a friendship but a falling out prior to the start of the letters arriving means Rose is suspect number one. The story, while slight, is interesting and the period setting is well realised but the film's two main strength...

  Bottoms (2023) is a teen comedy about girls only fight club started by two high school losers in the hope they can get their freak on with their lesbian crushes.The setting is a regular American high school but in a slightly off reality where dumb jocks are beyond dumb (and the dumbest of them all is worshiped like a god) and nobody thinks twice about the fact the local football rivalry involves players being murdered. Unique and very funny. Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation (2015) is the fifth instalment in the franchise and the first to be directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Makes an attempt to tie the previous movies together by referencing events as far back as the first film but also sets the tone for the films to come. A slick, globetrotting adventure with emphasis back on espionage even if attempts to portray Sean Harris's villain as an anti-Ethan Hunt grandmaster don't really stick. 2023's The Mill stars Lil Rey Howery as a middle manager who finds himself locked...

  Is Madame Webb good? No. Is Madame Webb, as some of the reaction would have you believe, an ungodly affront to cinema that plums new depths in the comic book genre? No. Is it a bland and completely forgettable film that seems to have no purpose in existing aside from rights retention? Yes. After a brief prologue in the Amazon the plot focuses on Cassandra Webb, a paramedic who develops the power to see into the future. The ability seems to be the result of a near death experience but are also related to a ritualistic spider bite received by her pregnant mother. I guess when you're Madam Webb a spider has to be involved somewhere. There's even an attempt spin her powers as spider related but its tenuous to say the least (she sees "the web that connects us all"??). Whatever the cause she powers up just in time as there are a trio of teenage girls about to be killed by an evil Spiderman because he too can see the future and knows they will one day off him after gettin...