Jumanji (2017)

#StokerScore 5/10

I was in my late twenties when the original Jumanji was released in 1995. It certainly wasn't the kind of movie I'd have gone to see at the cinema as I was much more interested in Seven, Goldeneye and, of course, Batman Forever. Robin Williams was certainly a hero of mine from his days on Mork and Mindy and his mindblowingly layered turn as Adrien Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam. But Jumanji seemed to be just more of the man-child kind of role so it skipped me until I was bored enough to check it out of the local Blockbuster Video store. I remember it being exactly what I expected but with a shade, just enough of a shadow of darkness running through it to make you think that an eternity in the game was a distinct possibility for the new players of the board game. That came as a nice surprise.

I also admire Dwayne Johnson. He's hard to ignore and speaks passionately when it comes to being a role model for self confidence and dignity. But he's not Robin Williams funny so in this sequel/reboot they drafted in two other man-child comedians in the form of Kevin Hart and Jack Black. The movie moves at a reasonable pace, I liked the upgrade from board game to computer game and how it was done, but that was it. 

The movie is just a generic action blockbuster with some angles on male/female roles and the need for everyone to take each other on what lies beneath the superficiality of skin, gender and clique. I didn't dislike it, I just wasn't ever really engaged enough to care about the characters, especially after the computer game longevity angle was revealed. 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

#StokerScore: 9/10

I really like Frances McDormand. She has been in so many great movies and they were made greater in part because of her acting ability. I remember her mainly for Fargo, an example of one of many roles she's played in Coen Brothers movies, but also for the deputy's put-upon wife in Mississippi Burning who shows us Gene Hackman's softer side. In this film from the writer and director of In Bruges, she's a divorced mother of two who's teenage daughter was raped and murdered a year before the events of the movie. She lives with her son, works in a local gift shop, and has a blunt, familiar relationship with the towns inhabitants that suggest she was born in Ebbing and has never left.

The three billboards of the title are used by Mildred to try to shame the town's police chief into solving the death of her daughter and, as things get more heated and assumptions are made, the town and its inhabitants are faced with their own personal reasons for how they view the impact of the billboards.

The supporting cast is excellent with Woody Harrelson as the police chief and Sam Rockwell standing out as a bigoted deputy. The only character who I felt was miscast was Caleb Landry Jones' town estate agent, who just seemed too young and immature for the job he was doing.

Suffice to say that this, like In Briuges, is a comedy with dramatic overtones to the point that you will be laughing at some of the actions only to then be shocked at the brutality of responses. 

Easily one of my favourite films of the year.

Nightworld

#StokerScore: 0.5/10

Too much time on my hands and a dearth of movies to watch meant I wasted ninety minutes on this complete load of codswallop.

The movies only redeeming features come from some interesting artwork that led me to believe this was going to be a Cthulhu-esque horror story that in reality turned out to be such a low-budget joke that I regret the time I gave over to it.

The acting was terrible with the singular exception of Robert Englund who was only mostly terrible and apart from a few exploding squibs there were no other special effects. 

The shame is that there was potential in the story and considering that most Lovecraft horror is imagined I think they could still have gone that way and kept the budget low.

Who is this movie aimed at? Why and how did it get made? Your guess is as good as mine. Totally forgettable

StokerScore: Gogglebox - Marvel's The Punisher

StokerScoreTV: Not the best, not the worst

Marvel and Netflix have brought some interesting shows to the our small screens, with all of the ambition that the MCU is showing on the big screen. The Netflix shows are much more gritty, using the production company's position to show hightened levels of violence, and are quite unlike the shows that air on Fox and the CW which due to their target audience are coerced into the teen-angsty dramas that crowd out shows like The Gifted and the mess that is Marvel's Inhumans.

The Punisher offers the chance to show a character who initially wasn't planned to get his own show. Yet such was the response to the character's appearance in Season Two of Daredevil, that the

companies bowed to the pressure and gave the vigilante his own 13-episode arc.

Jon Berenthal is pretty good as the title character, all physicality and punch first, ask questions later...well, he'd ask the questions if he could articulate them. Frank Castle, the Punisher's alter ego, is not supposed to be a philosopher, rather he is a force of nature who will not stop until he has righted perceived wrongs. 

But this is where 13 episodes maybe isn't the best format for the character. There's only so much bone-breaking and gun play that audiences will watch before getting bored, so the show surrounds Frank with people who can help us to understand the demons he has inside. This, then, requires Frank to start philosophising but the nasal grunt that he calls a voice, coupled with the violent acts that he has carried out in the name of CIA black ops missions, stopped me from really liking and empathisng

with him over the deaths of his wife and children. I understand the issues behind PTSD but we're left with a show about an at-times monosylabic revenge machine who responds to conversations with glowering stares, if not complete silence but who can also eloquently discuss the events that he's witnessed when called upon to do so by the script.

The character has no super powers in the way that Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones do, however his powers of recovery are on an unbelievable level. One character who is beaten within an inch of his life with his own prosthetic leg, is shown with a puffed up face and a closed eye, yet a similar beating given to Frank shows him being able to still summon enough energy to hand out a beating of his own, sure losing a couple of teeth is shown, but which teeth as his smile later suggests a full compliment of pearly whites.

#whereisMoonKnight?

The show, for me, was too long and would have been netter covering an eight-episode arc similar to the Defenders. Other than Karen Page, no other super-friends are around (possibly because this is also post Defenders and Matt Murdoch is recuperating in the convent) but it doesn't even try to introduce any new characters which I find a bit of a shame, especially as there was a lot of buzz around the character Moon Knight making his debut.

I binge-watched the whole thirteen episodes in a day, as I really did want to see how it ended. Having got to the predicatble finale I think that Frank is better as a guest appearance in other shows rather than the star of his own.

Justice League

#StokerScore 6/10

Have you ever booked yourself a holiday, you know, done all of the research and then booked it all yourself, rather than let a travel agent do it all for you? You have that feeling of pride that you've navigated all of the hurdles yourself and that you'll enjoy the holiday that much more because of it? And then have you read a review site shortly before going on said holiday, a review that tarnishes your expectations so that on your ultimate arrival at your destination of choice you can't help thinking about the two or three things that the negative review pointed out?

I've been telling myself for the last few weeks that I want to like this film, that while I know it's going to be a mess, especially considering its journey to the screen, that somehow there will be redeeming features, that it's a bloody Justice League movie, for Pete's sake, and made on a superhero-sized budget rather than a Roger Corman shoestring. Well I have good and bad non-spoiler news for you, dear readers.

Is it better than I expected? Well, no...not really. Instead it is exactly what I expected. The story doesn't stick exactly to the formula I had in mind as the helping hand that defeats the villain doesn't come from an entirely unexpected source. This is a superhero movie dressed as a classic Spaghetti Western. It has all of the familiar ups and downs and takes absolutely zero risks. 

I will say that Warners are trying to be less dark in the tone of their movie, but ultimately, without the background of the new guys, it just didn't really matter. The Flash steals the movie in a childish way. Aquaman gave the audience a physique to ooh and aah about that more than made up for the scantily clad Amazons, and Cyborg, well he was just the exposition explainer. Batman and Wonder Woman were my favourite characters, probably because I know them better, and who's fault is that, Warner Brothers? 

The movie was short, just under 2 hours for the one that I saw, yet it could have done without certain scenes and would have benefitted from the inclusion of others. 

I was left feeling that there's nothing these guys couldn't really handle and that the over-riding message was "always give the ball to the best player in your team", even if you have to drag him out of retirement to do it.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

#StokerScore: 7/10

I am more than willing to admit that I loved the first one and, while the second isn't quite as fresh (in terms of story), I enjoyed this as much for the right reasons. 

For most of the movie I was, as a kid who grew up in the Roger Moore era of Bond, loving the preposterous special effects, and weapons, and evil criminal genius, and villain's lair, and sidekicks and the list goes on. 

Picking up quite nicely from the events of the first one we find familiar faces abound. Some weren't around as long as I expected, but when you look at the trailer and the departure for America, that's no real surprise. Plus, the trailer would also suggest that death is no longer a problem. 

No spoilers if this is your first foray into the realm of spies-fronted-as-Saville-Row-tailors, you can soon catch up. The movie is certainly not high-brow, not asking you to invest your little grey cells in working out what's going on, the exposition from the characters easily solves that. Yet where other movies find this to be a failing, I hardly noticed, such was the pace of events.

Actually, if you have seen the first movie, you may not want to think too long and hard about the hows and whys. Instead, strap yourself in for more 70's/80's Bond spoofery with a charismatic bunch of people intent on saving the world.

One small point. I saw this in an Indonesian cinema which was 17+ and where said rating means nothing at all, as attested by the 10-year old sat in front of me. There is a seduction scene in this movie that leaves 1% up to the imagination and which had me gobsmacked thinking it would never go as far as it did...and then it did. If you are with someone who might not be thrilled at how you would get a tracking device into someone's mucus membrane without putting it up their nose, maybe see it with someone else.

#StokerScore: Gogglebox - The Mist (Season 1)

#StokerScoreTV: Definitely not worth your time or trouble

I have to admit to having had an initial lack of interest in this show. When I heard it was being made, I thought that it wasn't the best of ideas, but then I thought about how good the movie version of Stephen King's book was I changed my mind and thought "no, this isn't a bad idea...it's a really, really, really bad idea".

Having another job that takes up most of my time and having to cherry pick my tv consumption, I have been watching it due to a lack of current shows that I find interesting. I was waiting for Marvel's Defenders and The Punisher, I've been watching season two of Preacher, and obviously there was Game of Thrones, so, as well as finding season one of Sense8, which I haven't binge-watched, I've been watching this on a weekly basis and, having finally come to the end of episode ten, I can promise you that I hate myself for having put up with it for this long (please tell me there's not more to come?)

What makes it so bad? Well, the first episode isn't really that much od a disappointment. The set up, that an amnesiac wakes and finds himself near to the Arrowhead Military base and who immediately loses his (pet?)dog to a strange mist, isn't a bad start. Tie that to the camera panning to a nearby town and the premise is set up. We are introduced to a range of main characters and supporting cast who all appear to have their own range of problems that will be difficult to contend with along with the menacing mist.

The main problem with this show is the sloppy writing, which frustrates to the point that you want to slap the tv to get it to see sense. Characters are continually adding in dialogue that could have/should have been brought up at a similar time, so much so that it feels the script is being written on the fly. Sure, we can throw in the occasional curve ball as far as plot points go but this is so over-the-top it's laughable. Generally the actors are of a good calibre, they just wouldn't behave as the writers would have you believe. 

And the cop out is the writers can use The Mist as their excuse for stupidity/callousness/deviousness because the mist this time isn't home to Cthulhu and his minions as evidenced in the movie version, no this mist is more of a sentient toxic gas which gives hallucinations to some of the people in it. I say some of the people because not everyone seems to be immediately affected. A woman who believes herself to be a Wiccan priestess and who is demonstrably unaffected by the mist, is later seen to be its latest victim. Then there are times where no cars work, preventing people from completing whatever task the writers have set, only for the time a main character needs to go from A to B quickly, they find a working car.

I am trying to remain calm while writing this but it is truly a disgrace and a thinly veiled attempt to cash in on the current truckload of remakes, reboots and re-whatever-else. Instead of this, go back and watch the Thomas Jane movie version.

#StokerScore: Gogglebox - Sense8 (Season1)

#StokerScoreTV: Weird, but well worth a watch

Enigma (n): Someone or something that is strange or difficult to understand. There are so many shows that this moniker could apply to. Even with flashbacks, Lost seemed to revel in baffling the brains of the most ardent fans. The X-Files never truly realised Mulder's goal of finding the truth out there, which also became more of a joke in it's most recent comeback season, and then there's the enduring popularity of Angela Lansbury's serial killer detective in Murder She Wrote (it's the only answer that makes any sense with that many murders happening around one person).

Having referenced so many dated shows, I'm pretty late with this review as not only has there been a second season of Sense8 but the show has also been cancelled by Netflix, not counting a possible one-off movie to tie it all together or an offer for it to be hosted by an online adult entertainment network. I'm late to it because it must have flown under my radar. We're always on the lookout for shows for my wife to watch and this kind of thing is right up her street, yet still we didn't find it until I was looking for some character bios and chance prevailed.

Am I happy that I found the show? Most decidedly yes, but it is because of the characters and the global setting rather than it is my understanding of the plot. And here's the thing, I have a vague idea of what's going on. I can tell you who each character is and what ties them together, but apart from that I'm completely in the dark. I get the idea that the psychic talents are nascent and the characters are learning along with the audience. I get that they've brought in Naveen Andrews to significantly up the confusion factor that made Lost the show it was. I get that it's the Wachowskis who have previously done the 'I don't know what the hell is going on' thing so well in The Matrix sequels and, more impressively, in the completely bonkers Jupiter Ascending.

Yet here's the thing, I haven't cared to know. I know there is another season and possibly a concluding entry to come but I have enjoyed this first season. It's nice not to have exposition shoved down my throat and instead be trusted with working some stuff out for myself. Admittedly I do seem to be doing a tad more than I should need to and maybe that's the reason for the cancellation. I see this show going the way of other cult shows, like The Prisoner which ran for 17 episodes in te 1960's. 

I don't know if Season Two will help or hinder my understanding but I am looking forward to it...

#StokerScore: Death Note

#StokerScore 2/10

My knowledge of Anime is limited at best. I am very fond of the Vampire Hunter D animation and I'm aware of other titles but it's just not something I spend a great deal of time on. So I came to Netflix's latest movie, Death Note, knowing zilch about the subject matter but loving the visuals of the Demon/Death God voiced by Willem Dafoe.

The story is pretty simple once you get past the convenience of how the imaginatively named Light Turner gets the Death Note book (I know how that sounds) in the first place. But this is complicated by, at times, incoherent speaking by Light and his girlfriend Mia. Fortunately the diction of Lakeith Steinfield's character, who is known by the singular initial L, and Dafoe's Ryuk help to navigate some more of the plot.

Even with these two performances and the able support of Shea Whigham, it's badly explained to the point that even now I couldn't truly explain it without repeat viewings and a search of the source material.

What I did feel while viewing is imagine if you could hear fate talking about the gruesome deaths in the Final Destination movies and you get an idea of what's taking place....but without knowing the motivations for any character.

Could have been really good, such a shame.

#StokerScore Rewound: The Outsiders (1983)

#StokerScore 6/10 

The problem with adapting books into films would appear to be disappointment. Disappointment in that you always seem to disappoint someone. This then becomes a matter of who you don't want to disappoint the most and who the least.

But why disappoint anyone at all?.... it comes down to impressions. Here are a couple of personal examples.

When I was a kid I would read the Garfileld comic strip in the daily newspaper we had delivered to our house. For years I thought that Garfiled spoke with a Yorkshire accent because I didn't realise the strip was American. My mind filled in the missing pieces.

"eh up, Odie"

In 1977, the BBC tried for the most faithful adaptation of Dracula. A novel that because it is written in the form of diary extracts is really difficult to film. It was amazingly atmospheric and Louis Jordan was a great casting choice. But this was the BBC not a movie studio, and 1977 and whilst still my favourite filmed version of the story they took some huge liberties with it. Combining characters, changing relationships, even hair colour. As a reader your imagination runs riot, creating the images from the authors words. Does a movie or tv version of a book ever live up to expectations? I guess that's for you to decide.

Francis Ford Coppola, legendary American film maker and director of classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now had made both of those movies by the time he got to The Outsiders in 1983. Having read the book, he decided not only to write the screenplay, but to direct it as well. The outcome? Well, it left me, unsurprisingly, disappointed.

The film is fairly close to the story in that it captures most of the key events of gang life, boy/girl interactions and social attitudes, but that isn't necessarily what the reader of the book wants in the movie. They want, unrealistically in truth, to see every scene played out the way it was written. The second issue is that the actors are not really that good...or maybe it's the dialogue they were given. When Coppola made his own version of Dracula a decade later, he insisted that the three friends fighting the vampire spent time together, taking part in bonding activities like hot-air ballooning. The result was that Quincy P. Morris, Arthur Holmwood and Doctor Seward genuinely seemed to know each other...the chemistry came across even if Keanu's accent, a Californian Jonathan Harker, was laughable .

In contrast this doesn't appear to be true of The Outsiders. In a film that relies heavily on the audiences belief that they will dies for each other, maybe instead of choosing up-and-coming movie stars the film would have been better served by employing people who could act. Then again, maybe viewing the movie in 2017 shows these famous faces in a different light. Swayze was always quite wooden, Cruise has become better, Emilio Estevez was much better in The Breakfast Club. But the main leads, Ralph Macchio as Johnny, C. Thomas Howell as Ponyboy, and Matt Dillon as Dally, struggle. Dillon is the best by far and the problem with Howell and Macchio is that they may have been better swapping parts as Johnny comes across as much younger than Ponyboy. Still, Macchio does capture some of the nervousness in his character and Howell does capture the yearning for something different from his lot in life as Ponyboy.

The relationships in the book are the central part of the story. The need for family and a sense of belonging, yet these are amazingly disregarded. The Curtis brothers love for each other in the absence of their parents is an essential part to the story. That Rob Lowe's Sodapop is hardly even seen is telling. There is also no real understanding of Johnny's home life which forms his need for bonding with Dally and Ponyboy. The Greasers and the Socs are easily identified but the sense of camararderie is missing. You would get a better example of what Coppola and author S. E. Hinton could do together by reading and watching Rumble Fish, an adaptation of another of Hinton's novels filmed back-to-back with The Outsiders and using many of the same cast and crew. Maybe the two of them learned something from the Outsiders experience...

Independantly, I love the book of The Outsiders for it's realistic portrayal of life at the time and the need for support, and I can enjoy the movie for showing some of the same things, but it is very difficult to reconcile the two.

#Stokerscore: 47 Metres Down

#StokerScore: 2/10

This is going to be a very short review. 

You have a 1 in 63 chance of dying of the flu and a 1 on 218 chance of dying from a fall. You have a 1 in 3,700,000 chance of being bitten by a shark. Obviously these odds are influenced the more you put yourself in harms way, and these sisters go out of their way to find harm...even when harm appears to be trying to get away from them.

The 2 points I have given this boring movie are brought about from my irrational fear of Great White sharks thanks to Steven Spielberg. I have scuba dived with reef sharks but Great Whites are a differtent bag altogether.

This movie could have been a 15 minute segment of an anthology movie but it has been unnecessarily dragged out to 89 minutes where the characters and their actions, motivations and dialogue are z-grade to the point I would rather see a Sharknado movie. 

I get the whole "what-would-you-do-if" thing but this is so silly it hurts. Oh, and the ending is just unfair. The director should have had the balls to make this a Brothers Grimm-style cautionary tale.

#StokerScore Rewound: Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon

#StokerScore (Head 5/10, Heart 10/10)

Due to current work commitments being low I find myself with time on my hands and, considering we are still three days away from me not going to see the latest Bay-splosion, I thought I would continue to re-watch some of my favourite movies and try to give them a realistic review....turns out that that is harder than I imagined.

In The Last Dragon, (I always drop the Berry Gordy tag) we have a movie that I love to its core. I remember watching this on rented videotape shortly after its release and have watched it repeatedly since. To me, this is as quotable as The Princess Bride, has music that brings a smile to your face and makes you cringe at the same time, and references classic Bruce Lee films throughout.

But back to Berry Gordy. The founder of the Motown music label is the man responsible for this

seeing the light of day, with the names that it has attached. In essence it's a feature length MTV spot with a plot that ties the musical performances together but to stop there would be to miss the fact that as far as movies that reflect the time, this is just about top of the pile. The problem is that it is so politically incorrect, only the fact that it is Berry Gordy's property stops it from being sent to the sacrificial PC altar and when you watch it you'll see what I mean.

Everyone is stereo-typed, and I do mean everyone. Or maybe its just that after fifty years I've lived long enough to be that cynical. Perhaps people watching this for the first time might see something that I'm missing. But this movie is so damned enjoyable, you tell me at the end you're not rooting for the good guy in the final fight, that you don't laugh at the training montage, that you don't get your feet tapping to the disco/R&B soundtrack that includes the likes of Stevie Wonder, Rockwell and Smokey Robinson!

The story involves Bruce Leeroy (yes), a coolie hat-wearing martial art devotee training with his Asian coach to reach the mystical Final Level, at which point practitioners will be enveloped by a 'glow'. On his journey, Leeroy meets a Fortune Cookie company staffed by Asians who wished they were Black, a Video Jockey-cum-presenter in the form of the gorgeous Vanity, a mobster and his moll as well as the rest of Leeroy's family. Into the mix walks the ominious Sho-Nuff, the self-styled Shogun of Harlem. Complete with extravagant costume, Sho Nuff wants to be the only Master in the neighbourhood so finds opportunities to challenge Leeroy. There is an awesome scene where the mobster refers to Harlem's Shogun as Mister Nuff and the look on actor Julius Clary III's face is perfect.

This movie has a lot of faults; the plot, the acting, the dialogue...and yet I DON'T CARE, all of these are completely irrelevant (I know!). Please, take some time, gather some friends, get a bit drunk if

you choose, but sit down and receive the Power of the Glow from The Last Dragon.

I dedicate this review to my Brother-From-Another-Mother, Mr. Sammy Cox for reminding me that there is one place that you have not looked and it is there, only there that you shall find the master.

Oh I nearly forgot....William H. Macey is in it, too

#StokerScore Rewound: Streets of Fire

#StokerScore 7/10

The year is 1984. It was a time of Madonna and Band Aid, legwarmers and shoulder pads. It was a bleak time for coal miners who were embroiled in a strike that grew to be more about Margaret

FAME, I'm gonna live forever

Thatcher's desire to crush the concept of unions. while at the cinema James Cameron's Terminator arrived, Ghostbusters made wearing overalls cool and a boy caught a fly with chopsticks

he's holding them all wrong

Movies in 1984 were pretty huge. As well as Arnie promising to be back,
we also saw A Nightmare on Elm Street and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom plus, just to prove that musical cinema still had power, Footloose. Whilst I understand that Footloose isn't technically a musical as no one sings, the amount of dancing has always put it into that genre for me. I know that's weird, like saying Flashdance or Saturday Night Fever are musicals, to me they are as the soundtrack is, in effect, another character....and no, I don't think Guardians of The Galaxy or its sequel are musicals, I guess its just a personal classification.

As a genre, musicals are associated with a more sedate time. You think musicals and you might think West Side Story, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory or Camelot. More recently they're having a

renaissance with the likes of La La Land and Into The Woods but in 1973 came The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the concept was rejuvenated. Rock Music was epic; Led Zeppelin were singing about Vikings, Meat Loaf was singing about a Bat Out of Hell and cinema was playing along with the likes of Brian De Palma's truly excellent Phantom of The Paradise showcasing the talents of Paul Williams as the Faustian producer Swan.

Then came Grease, a musical because people sing in it, Fame, too is a musical because people sing in it, but 1984's Streets of Fire is the reason that I blur movies with great soundtracks into sometimes being musicals. In this Walter Hill movie, subtitled A Rock and Roll Fable, two singing acts are a significant part of the plot. There is the beautiful Ellen Aim played by Diane Lane and the doo-wop group The Sorels, but both of these acts are dubbed by

no one believes I'm only 18

other performers so is it still a musical? I think that it is. And the songs? well a couple of them were written by Meat Loaf's songwriter, Jim Steinman and one of them, Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young, is awesome. Then there is the Sorels doing Dan Hartman's I Can Dream About You which reached number 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Other songs in the film are Rockabilly stomps that I defy you not to tap your foot along to.

good practice for Spider-Man

So yeah, it's a musical, but it's also an action movie too. The story involves Michael Par's character returning to his home town after receiving a telegram from his sister. His ex girlfriend, who is now shacked up with the slimy Billy Fish played here by Rick Moranis, has been kidnapped by a local gang and he has to set about rescuing her. Along the way he picks up another ex soldier played by Amy Madigan, a part that
was originally written for a male actor. The movie even has the great Bill Paxton as a barman. But the standout actor in the movie is Willem Dafoe. He is just head and shoulders above the rest of the cast, partly because of his acting ability and partly because his lines aren't as dumb as everyone else's.

The biggest letdown to this movie is the dialogue and script. The visuals seem to have gone for a 1980's feel in 1950's settings and the whole thing has the overall feel of a western to it with Pare's Pare's is now. Yep, the acting from all of the leads except Dafoe and Deborah Van Valkenberg as Cody's sister is woeful. But it's the delivery of the poor dialogue that somehow also adds to the charm of this mess.

style over substance?

Tom Cody filling in for Clint Eastwood. Interestingly, his role was supposed to have gone to Tom Cruise and I think if Cruise had taken it his career might be where


click here to listen to the closing song and watch the trailer  tonight is what it means to be young


Despite some huge flaws this movie is a personal favourite of mine. It has a score by Ry Cooder, Hill has directed some great movies like 48 Hours, Sothern Comfort and Last Man Standing and the music is really excellent. Ignore the acting by many who would go on to much better things and just enjoy the ride.

The Mummy (2017)

#StokerScore 7/10

Let me start by saying that I have a problem with the concept of PG-13 horror movies. I think it is a contradiction in terms because how can an adult audience be horrified by something that struggles to scare a thirteen year old? And there it is, the core issue with these movies. But not for the reason you may think.

Just stop for a minute and consider what horrifies you....I guess we all have our own ideas but in cinematic terms it's the scares, the jumps, the feeling of impending doom, the make-up, the characters behaving against expectations, not knowing what's coming next, and yet it's possible to find those in PG-13 movies.

The fact is that Universal are not using the term 'horror', instead it is a Dark Universe and this allows them to approach their characters with the hope of appealing to a wider audience and therefore potentially more money taken. This is why Warner Bros. are looking at the supernatural side of comics with Justice League Dark, although it doesn't get much darker than Batman vs Superman. Still, recent discoveries that audiences do like to watch R-rated films have been discarded in favour of selling zombie mummy and God of Death plushies. Seemingly, where the monster movies of the thirties and forties, or the Hammer revivals in the sixties and seventies aimed to scare their adult audiences, Universal is now happy to try to scare/wow everyone.

It's fair to say, then, that I approached this movie with low expectations for horror and high expectations for a Tom Cruise movie whose recent choices have seen some excellent results; The Jack Reacher films, Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow and the last two Mission Impossibles have been good movies and so it was that in these respects I was respectively surprised and contented. 

There are more horror elements than I expected, inspired in no small way by American Werewolf in

London and for those of you who know the John Landis classic you'll spot them immediately. Sofia Boutella is very good as Princess Ahmanet, convincingly devious, and Cruise is in Edge of Tomorrow mode with his level of disbelief at what is going on around him as he slowly figures out what is patently obvious to the audience, even without the signposting from the trailer. Then again, better to enjoy the theme park ride and not wonder how it works.

The failures in the movie are in the character of Dr Henry Jekyll and Prodigium, the organisation for which he works? It's not explained anywhere near clearly enough what role the organisation plays, why it exists or why, given the levels of tech they seemingly have available to them, that Jekyll can't more effectively control his change into Edward Hyde who, by the way, may have arrived via dialect coaching from some of the 1930's Universal horror movie support cast. The only thing missing was a deep, East End fog that could have been referred to in his cock-er-ney accent as a "cor blimey, right old pea-souper and no mistake".

Visually the movie owes debts to Jeepers Creepers, Alien: Resurrection, Lifeforce, Brendan Fraser's Mummy, and the aforementioned American Werewolf in London, among others. The dialogue is decidedly dodgy at times, too and I couldn't help but grimace at Annabelle Wallace's shouting of "Get her, Nick!" which she immediately repeated.

Overall I enjoyed it. I didn't mind the references to future movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon's hand and vampire skull were two that I noticed, I liked skipping between Egypt, Iraq and London, but the key difference between these and the thirties movies were that they took themselves and their source material more seriously, it wasn't until the advent of Abbott and Costello that barrels could be heard being scraped. I'd prefer them to dial back the comedy and focus more on filling the audience with more unease but looking at some of the future movies lined up, which I hope they get the chance to make, I'm not convinced that will happen.

PS In case you're wondering, yes, Tom does a lot of running too.

Wonder Woman

#StokerScore: 9/10

Rivalries. Competition. Winners. Losers. For as long as man has existed, these things have been around. Over the millennia, mankind has found opportunity to cultivate the necessary skills to be able to be a part of the game. Naivete encourages us to believe that win/win situations are the best. Where everyone involved walks away with something. Why is this naive? Well, how often do we see win/win scenarios?

Take commerce and business. Coca Cola do not want to see Pepsi have a significant market share, I prefer to believe that they want to destroy their competition wherever possible and therefore provide more dividends to share holders. The same could be said of Apple and Samsung, Ford and General Motors, heck we could even try Nikolai Tesla's rivalry with Thomas Edison.

In sport, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frasier, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, the world loves to see these rivalries played out.

There is a darker side to rivalry too. Criminals evading capture, con artists and their 'marks', our conditioning in morals and ethics encourages us to decide which is right and which is wrong. Or maybe we follow the likes of philosopher Walter Benjamin who stated that "History is written by the victors" because Ad Victorem Spolias (To the victor, the spoils)

Wonder Woman has rivalry at its core; the continuing struggle of women to rightfully take their place alongside men, without fear from either gender; the arrogant paranoia displayed by certain Greek Gods; the need for one or two generals to win World War One by any means necessary. This is a superhero movie that needs to follow its roots and dispaly the classic rivalry between Good and Evil and, for the first time since the creation of the DC Extended Universe, Warner Brothers/DC have shown that they might be able to compete with Marvel.

Gal Gadot is about as perfect a casting choice as there is ever likely to be. Throwing off a brief cameo in Batman vs Superman, here she shows exactly what she can do and you can't help but feel what her Amazonian Princess is feeling as she confronts a world that shatters her naivete at every opportunity. She is that good.

In support, we have fine performances from Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Lucy Davis and Elena Anaya (who I haven't seen since Van Helsing). But my favourites were Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright, as Diana's Mother and Aunt respectively, for the growing-up/training montages.

Yet the time on Themiscyra, before Diana's journey to battle Ares, is also where the movie lets itself down. It's not the acting, no it's the writing that suggests that a voyage of self-discovery is a much better idea than being told a few facts of life. Facts that could determine her very own life or death and subsequently that of the entire human race. Superman's family were not so much dead as erased so he had to rely on holographic images and a huge library to find out what he was capable of, Batman's dead parents were no help either but he did have the trusty Alfred to help explain. Diana on the other hand could be given every opportunity to prepare but is seemingly, deliberately, not told the truth to protect her from the impending destiny that she tells her mother she is going to face anyway.

Apart from this relatively small gripe I enjoyed the movie. I liked the touches of comedy, the costumes, the fish-out-of-water, and Chris Pines opposite of whatever a damsel in distress is....and yet he wasn't. At no point did this movie make out that men were inferior. You could argue that next to a woman made of clay and imbued with life by Zeus that most people would appear tame by comparison but instead Pine is a constant reminder of teamwork between the sexes.

It is still a dark movie so is in keeping with Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman, but it appears to be a huge improvement on those two movies and provides hope that the Justice League, Aquaman and Flash movies have potential to impress rather than shake your head while looking forward to the next Marvel movie. And with that we must now wait to see who is the supreme heroine when Brie Larson's Captain Marvel reaches the screens in 2019...could it be win/win for Marvel and DC?

StokerScore: Gogglebox - Into The Badlands

#StokerScoreTV : Highly Recommended

Evidently this tv show from AMC is loosely based on the 15th century Chinese novel, Journey to the West but I'm not so sure. I've seen tv shows (Monkey) and movies (Journey to the West) that claim the same thing with more obvious links and although season two of Into the Badlands has a character called Bajie, whose name appears in the story, it would seem that this may be just a looser interpretation. Whichever way it goes, compared to the dull repetition of The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead from the same company, Badlands brings colour, style, charm, wit and drama to your one-hour episodic viewing.

In 2016's Season One we met Sunny, an enforcer/assassin for his boss, Quinn. Seemingly set in some future America where society has collapsed and been replaced by feudal Barons, these communities jealously protect the resources they have saved. They also need to trade them with the other Barons but sometimes this system fails and results in skirmishes for territory or all-out war and the need for trained people to do the fighting. It's not really explained why they prefer swords, knives, shuriken and staves instead of guns, especially when they have machinery and oil but the focus of this universe is hand-to-hand fighting.

The first season's six episodes concerned themselves with exploring this society through the eyes of Sunny and Quinn and amongst others; MK, a mysterious young man with supernatural, possibly demonic abilities; The Widow, another of the Barons; and Sunny's pregnant wife. There is political intrigue, a mystery surrounding a compass, the meaning of loyalty and honour, and some beautifully choreographed martial arts and wire-fu that along with a steampunk set of visuals in the design and colour palette left me desperately hoping it wouldn't be cut after one season.

I'm not sure how the American audience approval ratings work because I've seen amazing shows cancelled and mediocre ones renewed but I thank whoever it was for gifting us a Season Two of this show, which has just finished as I write this and has a third season already ordered. In Season two we start with the characters in their own private hells left over from the end of season one. Giving absolutely nothing away, each character has choices to make and those choices have bigger consequences than in season one. The world this time around seems much bigger than was hinted at previously. I also love the introduction of Nick Frost in the role of Bajie. He is the last person that I thought could have credibly carried off kung fu, yet he's really good to watch and absolutely not just around for comic buffoonery.

"I'm sorry I mentioned The Huntsman: Winter's War"

Season two has a different feel altogether when compared with the first series. Nowhere is this seen more than in the last episode which has the surviving characters seemingly further from their comfort zones. If you have only caught a couple of episodes, I wholeheartedly recommend you to go back to the beginning and stick with it. It's a great show with a spiritual vibe that other shows can only wish that they could have.

Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

#StokerScore 7.5/10

There have now been five POTC movies in the last 14 years and I must admit I thought they would have called it quits after On Stranger Tides but I guess when even the worst movie in the series brings in over a billion dollars at the box office then we may as well continue to run foul of the RSPCA and keep flogging that dead (mans chest) horse. Yes, one billion dollars and a 32% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes really does say something. Maybe people went to see it once and then left generally bad reviews? maybe a lot of people left bad reviews but audience members went to watch it twice? more? Whatever happened, hopes can't have been that high for this one, especially when you look at how much competition it would be up against.

Lest we forget, the concept for these movies didn't come from a book (update: Thanks go to Justin Crane for pointing out that the fourth movie was actually inspired by a 1987 book of the same name!), or a remake of a grittier foreign movie, nor did it come from a computer game, no this is the cinematic equivalent of the Disney theme park ride on which it's based. So how many movies based on computer games do you know that have brought in more than a billion? The theme for these movies is pretty similar for all five. Some mcguffin needs finding/destroying and it's a great excuse to have to enlist drunken Jack Sparrow and to use his charmed compass for said adventure. Along the way, Depp's boozy buccaneer will seemingly change allegiances thus endangering people considered close to him and yet who will finally redeem himself with something or other. Now I pride myself that these reviews are spoiler free but let me tell you that this movie follows the formula. Sure there are different characters (and some familiar ones) there are different settings too, all built on impressive special effects and it is actually much more fun than the last installment, but it follows that formula. 

Yes, I enjoyed the movie. Not as much as I enjoyed GotGVol2, but a lot more than I expected to and

at some points I did actually laugh out loud, too. But I can't help feeling I'd seen most of it before. In my recent Alien: Covenant review I bemoaned the lack of originality and I'd advise Disney to consider whether there is any benefit in trying to find another seafaring story that hasn't already been told. They took the opportunity to clear up some old story lines but at the same time introduced new, younger characters, too so who knows what the plan is.

But then what do I know; Universal are about to give us a new, PG-13 Mummy movie, the last Fast and Furious-er did amazingly good business, There's a new Transformers movie this year that will no doubt increase sales of related toys and possibly ear-drum replacement operations, and even Sony/Marvel are going to try again with Spider-Man. 

I fondly remember watching The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and The Eye of The Tiger as a kid and furiously searching for others in the series that I must have missed. It is this that reminds

me that there is an audience for much more of the same and that is why movie companies can't be blamed for trying. As long as the stories have some thought put into them and aren't just poor pastiches then I'm up for another go-round.

Alien: Covenant

#StokerScore 5/10

As far back as I can remember I have loved horror movies. even as a small child I was constantly nagging my parents to let me watch something or other that was extremely gory and decidedly

unsuitable for my age. As a 10 year old primary school student, I encouraged/coerced/dragged students to join a made up version of Dracula during break times. At an even earlier age I found a book of Northern England myths and legends and read about the Lambton Worm and The Croglin Grange Vampire. Most literature and mainstream tv had brushes with the horror genre: Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Sussex Vampire was a great yarn or even Starsky and Hutch fighting 70's crime against John Saxon's vampire. Yes vampires were my thing but in 1979 I was shown a whole new kind of terror. This was terror that lurked unseen, around dark corners, much like the vampire, but this terrror didn't feed on the throats of buxom bar wenches, no this one preferred patience in the limitless void of space, where no-one could hear you scream.

Ridley Scott and H.R Geiger created the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen and it has stayed with me. I like the sequel Aliens but in many ways I prefer the less-loved Alien 3 as I see the gung-ho marines of Cameron's sequel in much the same way as I see Verhoeven's grunts in Starship Troopers. But the menu was always being served to the Alien, the apparently unstoppable creation of......well, now I'm confused.

In the first Alien movie we were happy to believe that the creatures existed on the barren planet that was the source of the space jockey's distress call. I have never wanted to look further than the fact that they were just the nastiest things one was ever likely to meet outside of a Galaxy of Terror movie poster or Geiger's own nightmares. But we needed to see more so we got more. six more, and Covenant now takes us to number eight.

My problems with this movie are that we've seen it all before. We've seen alien settlements, we've seen good androids and bad androids, we've seen different versions of the xenomorph, depending on the host and we have seen people running from and dying at the hands of the alien. For pity's sake we've even seen the "hey look guys, it's a woman saving the day" trope that by now shouldn't be so excessively pushed at us rather than occur from the natural storyline.

Prometheus led us along a path, a path to the creators of humanity and the xenomorph. This movie stops that journey dead in its tracks and even seems to forget about it.

I don't want to say any more less I give away bits about the movie that would spoil it for viewers but I was generally disappointed. It's a well made movie but I wonder about the intentions of the people behind it...

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2

#StokerScore 10/10

I hope that you'll humour me and not think I've gone completely barking mad if I start this review with a recipe for vanilla ice cream?

First, stir sugar, cream, and milk into a saucepan over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Heat just until mix is hot and a small ring of foam appears around the edge. Next, transfer cream mixture to a pourable container such as a large measuring cup. Stir in vanilla extract and chill mix thoroughly, at least 2 hours. (Overnight is best.) Then, pour cold ice cream mix into an ice cream maker, turn on the machine, and churn according to manufacturer's directions, 20 to 25 minutes. Finally, when ice cream is softly frozen, serve immediately or place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the ice cream and place in freezer to ripen, 2 to 3 hours.

Thank you to Chef John at Food Wishes for the really great recipe....which might not be everyone's idea of how to make vanilla ice cream...or the exact ingredients either.

The second problem is that not everyone likes vanilla ice cream, as unlikely as that may sound to some of us. Some people even actually hate it on a personal level that, assuming they are not allergic, seems unfair to the point that if they would only just try it, they might like it. But no, stubbornness ensures this doesn't happen.

Going further, even those that like vanilla ice cream have specific favourites, be that the brand, the flavour, or even how it's served. 

For the rest of us, we're usually pretty happy to go with the flow and see which vanilla ice cream turns up after we've ordered it and make our decisions afterwards.

This extremely heavy-handed analogy is my way of explaining my reaction to GotG2 and my disbelief at some other reviews I've read.

Is GotG2 better than the first? In my opinion this isn't a fair question. Much better would be to ask if it's an enjoyable movie in its own right. This is because the difference in tone of the movie, the fact that the characters are no longer new to us, that the threat is more immediately galactic than the one posed by Ronan the Accuser, make the movie neither better or worse, just different. It's just the flavour the director chose to make this time.

I loved the first movie, I love this one equally. I found myself laughing more, I found myself considering some of the movie's themes more too. I think that where Groot and Rocket stole the first, no matter how arguably cute Baby Groot is, the star of this show is Drax and Dave Bautista was just born to play this part.

The movie has all of the Marvel points we've come to expect with the exception of any obvious tie-in to how they're going to meet up with the Avengers for Infinity War. We still have Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther's movie to come, but I just thought there may have been a nod to something. I need to watch it again to see if I missed it, hell, I want to see it again!

 I loved meeting new characters, I loved the music, I loved the whole damn thing from start to finish and I think most people who are able to put their expectations aside and just revel in revisiting these characters will do too. 

So remember, there are different flavours of ice cream. Enjoy them for their differences, try not to complain about why they're not exactly the same as the last one you ate.