Tag: Movies

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Entertainment Reviews

The Academy Awards Reviews and Predictions for 2024

Ah, it’s my favourite time of the year again, the Oscars season! With my new local cinema membership, I hope to catch up on the films nominated for the prestigious Best Picture award. I will admit, being located in the UK, the British equivalent of the BAFTAs is also on my radar, but my heart will always go to the Dolby Theatre in sunny Hollywood, California. Without further ado, here are my reviews, upcoming screenings and predictions for the 2024 Academy Awards!

American Fiction

I haven’t seen this yet, so expect a review to be coming very soon! I did however catch a trailer before watching Maestro at the cinema, and I was very interested in what the story has to tell in the film. The film focuses on a struggling novelist who is frustrated at the Black entertainment industry that profits from tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, he writes an equally outlandish book under a penname which soon becomes a breakout hit, pushing him into the madness that he tries to critique. Provoking, yes, with probably an equal amount of comedy in the situation that this educated writer has found himself settled in.

Quick review: fantastic … Read More

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Entertainment Reviews

A Bittersweet Profile with Tasty Notes: “Wonka” Review

When it comes to Willy Wonka, no one was asking for a prequel, especially after the madness that was Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Who could blame them? Considering that Gene Wilder’s original performance of Rohl Dahl’s candyman and Chocolatier Willy Wonka cannot be topped, this film wasn’t too high on anyone’s list. Still, here we are with Warner Bros. new film, Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet as the starring character in his youth, about to open his first sweets shop. Once you get through the hard shell, you do see the sweet, gooey centre of something really special.

Wonka is simply described as the story of Willy Wonka’s beginnings, wanting to break into the Gallerie Gourmet with nothing but a handful of sovereigns and a hatful of dreams. Wonka prides himself in the appearance of both a magician and a chocolatier, fusing them to create marvellous scenes and spectacles like chocolates that can make you fly or even bring back memories or feelings of happy times in one’s life. With the assistance of a young girl named Noodle and a rag-tag band of misfits that were tricked into servitude like Wonka, relying on the generosity of others, … Read More

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Entertainment Reviews

I Just Saw You In My Dream, Is That Weird?: “Dream Scenario” Review

Dreams are funny little things that our minds play with when the rest of our body is resting or asleep. For some, they might be working over the things that are on their mind during the day. Others, it might be a struggle to face your fears in a place where you aren’t physically in danger. But what if there was someone watching you in your dreams? A24’s Dream Scenario tackles this exact thought with Nicholas Cage being the “man of your dreams” in this dark comedy of limitless possibilities.

Paul Matthews, Cage’s character and the protagonist of this film, is an unremarkable professor who desperately wants his work to be appreciated. For some inexplicable reason, people start seeing Paul’s likeness in their dreams while they are asleep. The news reaches Paul in the waking world and he instantly becomes a viral, Internet-famous celebrity which for Paul is a dream come true to have his own talents recognised in his field of study. Soon, the likeness of Paul in the dreams becomes less of a passive observer and more of a nightmare to his audience of millions, which starts to create obstacles for the real Paul and his family.

Generally, … Read More

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Entertainment

Getting Back In Sync: “Trolls: Band Together” Review

The U.S. Poster for "Trolls: Band Together" with Poppy and Viva.
The U.S. Poster for "Trolls: Band Together" with Poppy and Viva.

I’ll start by saying that I’ve only seen one Trolls movie before this screening of the third movie in the series. With Trolls, it seemed like a fairly inoffensive, kid-friendly jukebox musical, even if they did butcher Gorillaz’ “Clint Eastwood” for one scene. Of course, who didn’t hear “Can’t Stop the Feeling” on the radio when the movie was first released in cinemas?

With the second movie, Trolls: World Tour, the release around 2020 says all that it needs to about why I couldn’t get to the cinema to see it and with home releases, my time was split away from watching another sequel in a kids’ franchise. So, why Band Together? Well, with this movie being the catalyst of *NYSNC getting back together to record new music this year, I figured I’d see how it is for a fun, family-friendly cinema experience. Boy bands bring back a certain nostalgia from my childhood that isn’t easy to ignore.

Trolls: Band Together takes place after the events of the first two movies with a Bergen wedding between Gristle and Bridget, demonstrating the peace between the Bergens and the Trolls. However, the movie focuses more on Branch, the down-to-earth Troll, and … Read More

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Pop Culture

Shell-uloid! A ranking of TMNT movies and tv projects

Greetings! It is I, Josh “Thunder” Shaver, making my return to the printed page. Recently, I watched the new TMNT Mutant Mayhem film and actually loved it. I know a lot of purists out there are mad that things were changed, but when the multiverse is cannon, anything is possible. In fact, there is no actual TMNT cannon, as it changes with every iteration. Sometimes Splinter was previously a man, sometimes he was that man’s pet. In the original comics, April was a living drawing. For this ranking, I’m just looking at the movies, live action and animated, and the TV series too. Here they are in order from my least favorite to my most preferred version of the brothers. Let’s kick it off with the one movie I hate the most and a reminder that these are my own personal opinions.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)– I have so much disdain for this movie, I don’t think I will ever have anything nice to say about it. The boys don’t just look bad, they’re fugly. The story is slow paced and retcons everything to be aliens. I know my whole soapbox is there is no real canon but … Read More

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Podcasts

The Next Level Episode 34: Video Game Adaptations

In this episode, Brian & Josh discuss the various video game adaptations when it comes to movies and television along with some of their favorites as well as their least favorites.

You can listen to this episode right now below or you can head to linktr.ee/TheNextLevelPod to not only listen to this episode but also listen to all of our previous episodes by choosing from various podcast platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more.

Please let us know what you thought of this episode below in the comments!… Read More

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Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: Terminator

It started as a R-rated horror movie and wound up as a PG-13 joke for several films, only to try to redeem itself as an R rated throwback to better days. What am I talking about? Terminator! In part three of my ever-continuing series about how too much of a good thing can get progressively worse, I will give my brutally honest rating of each Terminator movie. Not appearing here is the tv series as that fits into a different article series, also I never finished it and just now remembered it existed. In case you missed the other two articles (Friday the 13th and Leprechaun) I give two rankings based on a great analogy that I won’t repeat because I wrote it in an article about a much better franchise. Pepper mills are negative rankings and cheese graters are positive rankings, both scores out of a possible one to five with five cheese graters being the best and five pepper mills being the worst. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times and now that everyone knows the rules, we begin our journey into the wild ride that is the Terminator Franchise.

The first two films … Read More

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Entertainment

Something Old, Something New… Part 2

Welcome back to a little series I like to call Something Old, Something new. I honestly didn’t know where to go next with this series, because it requires a lot of research. I originally wanted to cover Roseanne/The Conners, Full House/Fuller House, and Twin Peaks, but I’ve only seen one of those comebacks in its entirety and I need to do more research on the matter. I’ll get to those next time, but for now, I needed something I’ve seen and as the resident Horror Fanatic it just kind of came to me. Welcome to Something Old, Something New Part 2: the Slasher Edition. Here is my patented non-spoiler review of  Ash vs Evil Dead, Chucky, and Scream: The Series.

In the first installment of this series of articles,  I referenced how great ‘Chucky’ is. To be honest, I was kind of worried about how this series would do as a television series, but I’ll be upfront, it’s better than Bride and Seed of Chucky.  I’d say it’s better than the reboot Child’s Play movie but the best part of that movie was when it finally ended. Actually, I kind of liked the last act of that monstrosity… the first … Read More

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Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: Leprechaun

Welcome back to part 2 in this exciting series where I talk about the phenomenon that I shall dub “sequel-itis”. To recap the rating system, I take a comprehensive look at an entire film franchise and give two separate ratings pepper mills and cheese graters. If you missed the last article about Friday the 13th, I’ll clarify, cheese graters are to represent the highs and pepper mills are the lows. The analogy I used was going to a restaurant and yeah, fresh cracked pepper is nice but too much is a bad thing. However, I think we all make the person grating the cheese fear for their fingers. Apologies to those lactose intolerant readers, my heart goes out to each and every one of you. Currently I am only covering horror franchises but could look at others in the future. for now though, Leprechaun!

This series really isn’t your conventional horror franchise, as in the killer isn’t fueled by vengeance, some flesh eating creature, or criminally insane. In fact, most of the time hes just a dick. Okay, some times its about his gold, but that only seems to be the cause when the writers remember that. Actually, that’s how … Read More

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Entertainment Reviews

Fantastic Beasts 3: The Secrets of Dumbledore – A Brief No-Spoilers Review

Can you keep a secret?

Well, it’s obviously not a secret that Dumbledore’s been keeping secrets from people – the name of this chapter Fantastic Beasts storyline and an old Harry Potter clip worked into the trailers make it a little hard to ignore.

Mystery, misdirection, secrets… where were we anyways? Oh! Right!

PREVIOUSLY ON DRAGON BA-

er… no. That’s not quite right. Let’s try that again, shall we?

 

PREVIOUSLY ON FANTASTIC BEASTS:

We started out in 1920’s America with Newt Scamander, the world’s first and only ‘magizoologist’, doing some international smuggling and then playing some tag with his magical-animal-rescue-ranch-in-a-trunk …right in the middle of the bustling city of otherwise non-magical people who are mostly unaware of the existence of magic or the wizarding world.

Our socially awkward protagonist faces international bureaucratic turmoil, has some brushes with death, narrowly escapes romance, and sometimes even does both at once. All the while, he and his party of rag-tag witches and wizards try to foil the charismatic magic terrorist and his minions and save as many critters as they can in the process. The social and political landscape are cracking inside and out in the overwhelming state of fear, sparking not … Read More