The Brown Note Movie Review

A cynically timed and utterly pathetic accusation against director star, James Franco, was all it took to derail Oscar contention for his perfect recreation of the weird world of Tommy Wiseau and his infamous bad movie, The Room.

Ric Roman Waugh directs and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars in this very underseen, brutal and gritty prison drama, that follows a DUI stockbrokers decent into hell.

The uncommonly intelligent, thoughful, superb sci-fi trilogy ends in fitting style, making it four awards worthy performances (including King Kong) for CGI king, Andy Serkis as an ape.

The fireman entry into the new-patriot genre of film, that I just made up, to go alongside the likes of Deepwater Horizon, is surprising for NOT starring Mark Walhberg. We get an excellent Josh Brolin instead. Most of these films are far better than they should be and this shocking true wildfire tragedy is top-tier.

Jessica Chastain has never been better (or hotter!) than her criminally ignored role as a high stakes poker madam in the nearly great but overly wordy Aaron Sorkin, true-crime drama.

If I thought it was bad here, a rewatch convinced me it's one of the worst sequels of all time. Absolutely everything that made the original such a blast is thrown out.

It's remarkable how the DC movie universe has managed to get it so badly wrong in so many different ways. This light and airy comedic superhero jaunt is somehow even worse than the dark and turgid BvS.

Stephen King's 1980's colossus was a land mark of horror fiction and world creation, here they get the people right but the clown oh so wrong as it works as a human film and not a horror.

Ironically, for me director Kathryn Bigelow became better AFTER winning Oscars for the frankly quite naff, The Hurt Locker. This timely true-crime/race drama is however not a pleasant watch.

It was great and timely to have back the somehow uncancelled stand-up god, Dave Chappelle - here a review of the four specials he recorded for Netflix.