Reviews

Predictable Hallmark Christmas movie script, dreadful dialogue, awful acting. Absolutely the worst movie I've sat through this year, and quite a lot of that was on fast forward.

Lindsay Lohan was cute in the Parent Trap and OK in the Herbie movies and Mean Girls. Apart from those few, the rest of her career has been 'mixed'. The truth is that while she showed promise as a child actor, she never developed into an even halfway decent actress, and boy does it show in this movie. Honestly one of the unknown Hallmark holiday actresses would have done a much better job.

And talking of child actors, the little girl in this one is suitably cute, but she was clearly being directed to smile BIG in every scene and deliver every line in the bounciest upbeat style possible.

The two good things in the movie were the lead actor Chord Overstreet who did a good job with the material he had to work with and certainly deserves another chance in something better than this. The set design was the second thing that was lovely. Very Christmassy. But if the struggling ski lodge had half the number of Christmas trees and decorations, they probably wouldn't have been in financial difficulties in the first place. Just saying.

In the J Lo documentary, Halftime, she makes it very clear that she was hoping for an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for Hustlers, and was bitterly disappointed when didn't get one. We decided to watch the movie to see whether it was actually any good and was she really hard done by in being ignored by the Academy.

The answer is no. This is the female version of Magic Mike, and unless someone is looking to give Channing Tatum an Oscar for his role in that, then J Lo's expectations were way too high.

The movie is definitely a change from the Romantic Comedies J Lo is famous for and the second half tries to shoehorn in a more serious storyline to try to prove to everyone that it's not just a T&A flick. The first half is all T&A. Guys may love the eye candy. Women will probably be bored to tears.

The one real pole dancing sequence is well done, and apparently J Lo did it all herself, without a body or dance double. But it doesn't compare to the multiple dance sequences and great soundtrack in Magic Mike.

The second half of the movie is the 'serious' storyline. Basically everything that the strippers do to their Wall Street clients is because Wall Street had brought many regular Americans to their knees financially during the Global Financial Crisis, and none of them were punished. This is supposed to be pay back time. The actresses all did a good job in their roles, but honestly there was nothing there that jumps out and says 'Oscar Nomination'. The second half of the movie feels quite rushed too.

J Lo looked terrific in this movie and her pole dancing sequence was impressive. Our feeling is that she is a lovely actress and definitely better than she herself or Hollywood gives her credit for, but she needs a movie role that really pushes her before she will be in serious contention for an Oscar. And it probably needs to be a movie that isn't focused primarily on her looks, her hair and on tight, skimpy clothes. Whether Hollywood is prepared to give her a chance in a genuinely serious movie, and whether she is prepared to take on a non-glamorous role is the big question.

Sorry J Lo.

Just re-watched this on TV after initially seeing it 4 years ago at the movies. I did fast forward through a lot of the last 1/3 of the movie as there were fewer songs and the joy of the first part was missing as the plot turns dark and is somewhat dragged out.

I wasn't a Lady Gaga fan before seeing this movie, but I am now. Her singing was stunning, but her acting was surprisingly excellent. On the other hand, Bradley Cooper delivers a great acting performance as expected, but his singing and musical performances are brilliant too.

I don't think the movie was overrated at the time of its initial release. I think it deserved all the accolades it got for the music and the performances.

I'd watch anything with Allison Janney in it, but this was a mess. Two dimensional characters, other than the brother in law and his wife. Silly plot. Such a waste of talent.

The only mildly interesting scene was the main character picking up the birthday cake and having the stand off with the saleswoman over the incorrectly spelt name.

Allison Janney's character's "affirmations" are almost identical to the "You is smart, you is kind, you is important" message Aibileen gives to the little girl in The Help, which Allison Janney also starred in. Didn't surprise me to find out it was the same Director. He found great material to work with for The Help but really missed the mark this time.

We stumbled across this series and decided to give it a go as a change from all the crime and thriller series on TV. What a fantastic find.

It follows the difficulties faced by the fictional first female soccer coach of a men's premier league team in Norwegian football. Challenges that would face any new 'outsider' coach being brought in to a tight knit community, to a team facing relegation. The feminist angle adds a much deeper level of complexity to it all and it makes you question whether a woman could ever be accepted as a coach in your own country's men's premier football league, whatever the code (gridiron, rugby, Australian football etc.)

Excellent side stories relating to the coach's daughter; a troubled young soccer star and his father; and the ageing star who is facing his own battles towards the end of his career.

2 seasons available and 10 episodes in season one. We binge watched it because we couldn't wait to see what unfolded in the next episode.

Everything comes together in this extremely powerful episode. Will the board sack Helena? What is going on with the prime sponsor and why does he hate Helena so much? So well scripted and well acted by the whole cast, including the younger cast members. This is really 10/10.

This is the weakest of Liane Moriarty's novels. Very disappointed that this is the one green lit for production when several of the others would have made much more interesting TV. Try "What Alice Forgot" next time.

The series follows the same boring characters in the book, in a highly unlikely retreat set up and in the first three episodes, it's plot development is just as tedious as the book.

I'm just hoping the screenplay writers tear up the rest of the book and come up with something halfway believable.

Ok, so first of all I just thought this was a Black Mirror episode that I'd previously missed. It took me half the movie to realise my remote control could select either the left or right options and until then, the default was always the left option.

I didn't make it to one of the five purported endings for the movie because I just got bored with it all. The plotlines weren't engaging enough to hold my interest and if you make the 'wrong' choices along the way (that the writer doesn't want you to make), you just keep looping back to scenes you've basically seen before.

All very tedious really.

I expected terrific acting from Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell, but Jennifer Aniston was amazing in this series too. Truly the best performance of her career so far.

This is a really thought provoking series, especially Steve Carrell's character's self justification scenes and his complete lack of self awareness.

The biggest problem with The Morning Show is that it's not widely available to view. It deserves a much bigger audience than it's going to get on one very limited platform.

Loved the first 3 seasons of The Crown. It was clearly understood that the private conversations were all fiction by the scriptwriters, and they seemed fairly sensitive to those involved. Script and acting was understated.

Season 4 seems to be hunting season on Charles and Camilla, largely based on Diana's side of the story, taken from the secret taped interviews she gave for the Andrew Morton biography. If you were to accept Prince Charles' side of the story that the affair with Camilla stopped for the first 5 years of his marriage to Diana, then it puts a completely different complexion on Season 4. And that's the problem. There are only 2 people alive who know the truth of what went on in that relationship. It seems cruel for the writers and producers of The Crown to be representing one side of the story, and throwing the weight of blame in the other direction, when they have no idea of what really happened behind closed doors. In previous seasons, the speculation of what went on behind closed doors was treated sensitively. Gloves are off for this season and it seems a one sided fight when you realise that the other side is never going to be able to publicly fight back.

It's not just the histrionic scenes between Charles and Diana that really grate in this whole season. Many times I found myself viewing scenes between other characters (especially the Queen and her 4 adult children, particularly the picnic scene with Princess Anne) and thinking "this doesn't seem very plausible". It all seemed very soap opera-ish.

Over wrought. Over written. Over acted.

But the Diana costumes were great.

This is a saccharine sweet movie that goes off on distractingly silly fantasy trips for really no apparent reason. Tom Hanks delivers a lovely performance as Mr. Rogers, but it's a secondary role in the movie, which is really about an angry and bitter journalist's (predictable) journey to salvation in his own relationships.

This is the first bad Tom Hanks movie we've been to. He normally picks much better scripts than this.

If you're looking for a sitcom in the style of 'Keeping Up Appearances' or 'Some Mothers Do Ave Em', you will end up disappointed and completely perplexed at this example of modern British comedy. Yet 'Mum' has some very similar characters, just taken to an extreme and put in a modern setting.

Once you get used to the characters and over the shock of the truly appalling things that most of them say to one another, you can start to appreciate the subtlety of the acting by Lesley Manville as 'Mum' and Peter Mullan as 'Michael' - the only two 'normal' characters. The other 'comic' characters are painful to watch and to listen to. But there are some laugh out loud moments and while they are extreme examples, most of us know people who do sometimes say similar appalling things. The careless indifference of young people and the way they take so much for granted is very familiar.

The use of silence also takes a lot of getting used to. I've never felt to uncomfortable watching a pause taken to such extremes.

Ultimately it probably does make you ponder your own relationships - and perhaps makes you give a second thought before saying something hurtful to someone else.

Jennifer Aniston is ok in this and Adam Sandler manages to keep up. Cringey set up before the first murder, but gets slightly more entertaining after that. Sad to see what they did to the Ferrari.

Game of Thrones spent multiple seasons with various characters spending weeks on end wandering from one place to the next. Each episode had a little bit of character development and some gradual development of multiple storylines every week. Fans had to wait a long time for the final season, and justifiably felt aggrieved at the rushed tying up of all the major plotlines.

I didn't mind who finally ended up on the throne, but there were way too many character inconsistencies, too many red herrings and too many unexplained plot points to make sense of the final season.

It promised much but delivered 'just ok'.

We were really looking forward to this movie, especially at it's supposed to be Robert Redford's final onscreen performance. We usually love Redford, and Sissy Spacek is always good to watch. Unfortunately not this time. Even though it's loosely based on true events, and it was certainly well acted, the plot was surprisingly unengaging.

Incidentally, Redford looks every day of his 82 years. Despite playing a character who is supposed to be in his 60s in this movie. I don't know why they didn't just make his character in his 80s and be done with it - other than the fact that he clearly looks way older than his geriatric partners in crime, who are supposed to be a similar sort of age. It was unnecessarily distracting every time Redford's craggy (yet still handsome) face was in closeup on screen.

Not sure how much of this J.K. Rowling actually wrote, even though she has the writer's credit on the movie, but if she did write it, then she's really lost the plot. Literally. There isn't one. Whatever storyline is there is rambling and disjointed.

From the CGI special effects almost at the very beginning of the movie, you can tell that Warner Bros. had given the director an unlimited CGI budget and told him to go for it. Younger viewers who like lots of CGI will probably like the movie, but anyone who actually wants a story should avoid it like the plague.

After 7 HP movies and the first Fantastic Beasts movie, I'm done with the Wizarding World of J.K. Rowling on screen now. Won't be bothering to go see any more.

Husband and I are in the target demographic for this movie. He went home after 45 minutes. The basic premise of the movie is bad from the get-go: 4 intelligent lifelong friends meet every month for book club, read 50 Shades of Grey, are enthralled and titillated, and it changes their attitudes to love. Since no intelligent woman was ever enthralled by 50 Shades of Grey, which is badly written soft porn at best, you've got to suspend a lot of disbelief right there.

Then we've got Diane Keaton. She can't act. She REALLY can't act. I'm not sure she could ever really act, but she definitely hasn't put in a decent performance since Something's Gotta Give, when the plot allowed her to do the same schtick she always does, and get away with it. And then there's her clothes. When an actor's clothes become a distraction from the movie, you know that things are going downhill rapidly. Diane Keaton has been wearing the same pants, jacket, shirt and scarf wrapped around her neck for half a century now. In every movie and in her everyday life. If she's that self conscious about a saggy neck, she needs to go see a plastic surgeon and then send all those scarves to clothe a small developing nation somewhere. Possibly a large one. And why on earth would someone be wearing a felt hat when floating on an inflatable swan in a swimming pool at NIGHT? She even gets to wear that wretched beret of hers in one scene.

Jane Fonda is awful in this too. She can still act when she's got good material and a good director and not too big a part (e.g. The Newsroom), but when the material and the direction is pretty rubbish, so too is her exaggerated performance (Grace and Frankie).

Mary Steenbergen plays the same sweet ditzy character she's always played (Back to the Future III anyone?) Never been a very good actress and she's getting too long in the tooth now to pull it off. She puts in another mediocre performance here, again not helped by appalling dialogue.

I was looking forward to seeing Candice Bergen on the screen again, as she's been gone a long time. She puts in an ok performance, but the dialogue is woeful and she's not good enough to lift it.

I thought maybe this movie would be something a little bit like the Jane Austen Book Club, which had a tight script, good storylines about interesting female characters and was well acted. I was very, very wrong.

I'll give it 2 stars - one for the stellar cast and one for the dresses, which were truly fabulous. Especially Sandra Bullock's dress for the Met Gala. Absolutely stunning.

The only thing mildly interesting about this movie was playing 'spot the celebrity' in the Met Gala scenes.

But as a movie, this one really was pretty awful. Message to Hollywood: by all means do a female re-boot of movies. But you need to start with a decent plot, or the audience is just going to feel ripped off. Lazy writing. Lazy acting. Lazy direction' And plot holes big enough to sail the Titanic through. Starting with the special magnetic clasp on the necklace. Anne Hathaway's acting was particularly awful.

I really wanted to enjoy this movie and went along expecting it to be a typical, gentle, rather slow English nostalgia film. Which it was. But unfortunately the storyline just wasn't enough to overcome the ponderously slow dialogue and fairly weak acting.

The most entertaining part of the film was when a lady in the back row of the cinema started snoring. Loudly.

Surprisingly engaging movie. An interesting concept, set a little way into the future. Lots of pop culture references which gamers would identify immediately, even if their parents won't. This is an action adventure movie where the main character has to enter a game as an avatar and complete each level in order to win the game and save the world. Battling other players and an evil corporation along the way. It does offer some interesting observations about the way the world is heading (people living in 'stacks' of containers due to land shortages and overcrowding.) And virtual reality being used as a distraction for the masses to forget the misery of their own reality. So there are some potentially deep themes there. Not as depressingly dark as the themes in the Netflix series Black Mirror. Some similar themes, but delivered more gently than Black Mirror and still worth thinking about.

So Amy Schumer is making a solid living out of being one of Hollywood's 3 chubby actresses (along with Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy). The problem is that all three of them seem to end up in movies where all the jokes are about their weight, and trying to be as gross and crude as they possibly can be. Which is disappointing. Melissa McCarty can definitely act and has great comic timing (remember 'Gilmore Girls'?), but Amy Schumer and Rebel Wilson are both still to prove whether they can be anything more than 'the crude fat girl'.

I Feel Pretty isn't a bad movie. It has quite a good message, especially for young women (and some not so young ones), and the storyline takes a few detours that are a little unexpected. The main character's new found confidence is all positive, until she becomes quite obnoxious around her two girlfriends. A nice little reminder that success and confidence need to be balanced by sensitivity. And not just when it comes to physical beauty.

My 25 year old daughter and her friend really enjoyed this movie. My friend and I both found it reasonably entertaining with a few good laughs.

Rooney Mara is mesmersing in the title role. This movie gives a completely different perspective to the Passion of Christ, and it was fascinating to see the type of family life Mary Magdalene came from before leaving her family to follow Jesus. The movie is extremely slow, so be warned. The betrayal by Judas is given a completely different interpretation (no pieces of silver) but it was interesting. The only real criticism was that the arrest and crucifiction are dealt with very quickly at the end. After taking so long to get there, the end seemed rushed. And the conflict between Mary Magdalene and Peter (along with the other male apostles) afterwards is very briefly touched on, but looked like it could have been a really interesting story. But it was kind of brushed over very quickly. Overall, a fascinating story, beautifully acted by Rooney Mara.

Funny. Well scripted. Well acted. Good storyline. Great animation seamlessly mixed with live action. Lots of adults in the theatre with kids, but quite a few adults there without kids and everyone seemed to enjoy the movie. Plenty of jokes and references that only the grownups will get ("That'll do, pig, that'll do"). The movie follows on from the original Peter Rabbit stories, and gives Peter a new adversary after Mr. MacGregor. Not what you expect. Well done to all involved in this movie. Couldn't have been better.

Starring Downton Abbey's Lily James (who seems to be in every second movie these days), this is a very sweet movie. Set after WW2 with flashbacks a couple of years earlier, to the German occupation of Guernsey (a British island in the English Channel, located closer to the French coastline than the English). It has a little mystery woven in to the story line, three potential love interests for the aforementioned Ms. James and a quirky British premise. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

We went along to see this movie mostly because we wanted to see Alison Janney's performance. She doesn't disappoint and her Supporting Actress nominations are well deserved. Margot Robbie also delivers an excellent performance and appears to do most of her own skating in the movie.

The problem with the movie for this viewer was that by the end, I still wasn't any the wiser about Tonya's level of prior knowledge or involvement in the planning of the attack on fellow skater, Nancy Kerrigan, but actually I just didn't care. The attack on Kerrigan was a shocking thing, but she went on to win Olympic silver. At the end of the movie, I didn't care about who knew what and who was involved or about Tonya's upbringing and abusive husband. The whole thing left me indifferent.

I do think it's a shame that Tonya Harding is getting renewed attention and publicity with the release of the movie. There are thousands of people with more interesting stories out there waiting to be told on the big screen.