Dragged Across Concrete (2018 movie)

Category: Crime drama/thriller

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They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I'm sure Hollywood big names like Harvey Weinstein and Mel Gibson would disagree. And so we come to one of the biggest conundrums I felt when I hit play on this movie: despite all the horrible things Mel Gibson has been recorded as saying and has been sued for as well as any number of other things, can we still appreciate his work as an actor?

Well, you better, because you're going to miss out on a LOT if you let your personal feelings about Mel Gibson get in the way of what is an outstanding performance in the 2018 crime drama, Dragged Across Concrete.

This movie is actually three stories that eventually weave in to one:

South Park: Joining The Panderverse (2023 Animated Film)

Category: Animated comedy/social commentary

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South Park are an acquired taste, even for people of my generation. I remember when South Park first hit the screens in the late 90s and while all the uni kids loved the low-brow humour, the older generation made sure that South Park made the news for its ability to offend. And the church I was in at the time may or may not have had a thing or three to say about it as well.

But you have to give Trey Parker and Matt Stone credit. Where The Simpsons have gone on to die a slow, painful death after bowing down to the deity of political correctness, Parker and Stone have been able to keep the creative juices flowing BECAUSE they don't tow any line and let EVERYONE cop a serve.

So if you like offensive comedy as much as I do, this will be right up your alley.

There are two plots running side by side in this movie that eventually tie up. The minor plot is that Randy, Stan's father, needs his oven door fixed. However, because very few people know how to actually fix things anymore due to the proliferation of electronic entertainment devices, the only two handymen in South Park are able to charge what they want and become very rich. Randy attempts to buck the duopoly created by the handyment by going to a hardware store to find an illegal immigrant who will do the job for cheaper, but all he ends up finding are more professional men like himself who also need things fixed.

The Hate U Give (2018 movie)

Category: Race-relations/social commentary drama

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It takes balls to create a movie revolving around black-on-black crime and still think that it's white people that need to take notes. Maybe the people behind this movie went to the same school of logic as the people who made Candyman.

And it takes even more balls to be half-Dutch half-American actress from Los Angeles, consistently get work as you grow up, become a trained violinist but somehow still say your people are opressed and that "white people crying was the goal!". Seriously - get over yourself!

My children had to watch this movie as part of a school project, which they liked it enough to make me watch it. And look, as a movie, The Hate U Give (based on the book of the same name) is not bad - the story is easy to follow, pulls at the heartstrings in all the right spots, all that stuff.

But there's a reason why fictionalised drama is just that - fictionalised.

Longlegs (2023 film)

Category: Supernatural crime drama/horror

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I'm glad to see Nicolas Cage get some good press for the first time in a long time. He seemed to have gone through a period where he became known for taking part in low-budget/low-quality productions, for giving performances that reflected said production values, and also for issues in his personal life that drove him to become a caricature of himself. As someone who thought Con Air was the coolest movie for an extended period of time in the 1990s, it's good to see Cage be recognised for a role that generates some positive press about his name once again.

And who would have thought that a satanic panic horror film would be the thing that gets his career back on track? 

Let me run through the plot before I go into my thoughts on the matter:

Longlegs revolves around Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a junior FBI agent who displays precocious clairvoyancy and a knack for cryptology, who is brought in to help solve a series of murders in which numerous families have been found dead after the father of the family violently kills the rest of the family, then himself, and the only clue is a cryptic letter signed by Longlegs found at each scene.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991 film)

Category: sci-fi action

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I think categorising Terminator 2: Judgement Day merely as "the best sequel ever" doesn't do this movie justice - I personally think it's in contention for "the best film ever". Far from suffering from sequel-itis (the condition when a smash-hit original movie has a completely lousy sequel) it's not hard to conclude that Terminator 2 is better than the original Terminator movie.

Having come out in the 1990s, Terminator 2 was the talk at my high school for months on end - cool lines from the movie would get quoted, various scenes would get re-enacted, inopportune screams of "YOU COULD BE MINE!!!!" from the try-hard rock kids, and chuckles about what mischief we would get up to if we had the shape-shifting capabilities as this movie's antagonist. In short, Terminator 2 wasn't a movie - it was a social phenomenon!

In fact, when Channel 9 (the TV station with the local broadcast rights to T2) wanted to spoil ratings for a rival TV station - for example, if the rival station were broadcasting a sporting final or a season finale - Channel 9 would screen this movie as a way of denting the other station's ratings - a testament to this movie's pulling power.

And the result of that policy was that it gave me ample opportunity to record the movie on to my VHS for both myself and my friends. I watched this movie NUMEROUS times on the old CRT TV off of my VHS tape recording, and even then, the visuals were groundbreaking. The only hiccup is that on modern high-res screens and with the advance of CGI since the 1990s, some of the magic is lost in viewing in 2025.

But what made T2 so good? Let's get in to that after a run-down of the plot:

Godzilla: Minus One (2023 film)

Category: Science-fiction creature drama

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This is how you make a movie! 

It's so refreshing to see a movie that has high production values, great effects, good pacing, a plot you can follow, but also doesn't try to shove "the message" down your throat. After all the big-budget Hollywood releases over the last few years that seemed to have been made with a minority audience in mind and turned out to be lousy - be it Madame Web, Star Wars: The Acolyte, The Marvels, or numerous others - it was seriously refreshing to see a movie that shows us it's not that hard to just tell a good story.

And the reason I start my review off with on this line of thought is because it was one of the things that came to mind about 15-20 minutes in - "I'm not being preached to!" - to the point that one can't help but wonder if Hollywood, the birthplace of modern cinema, is now complicit in its death. The COVID pandemic shut productions and audiences to a halt, and we also had the writer's strike, but even with all that in mind, I personally can't help but feel that most big-budget modern Hollywood productions made nowadays are written primarily to avoid allegations of being some type of -ist (racist, sexist, misogynist, white supremacist, et al), and storytelling comes a distant second.

This is NOT how things should be. Audiences should be embraced, particularly when there are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. The reason that movies are big business is because we love good stories being told - be it in movie form, book form, comic form, or even sitting around the campfire. We want to feel the highs and the lows and the thrills, and the best stories are ones that are told with passion and authenticity and intelligence.

So congratulations to director Takashi Yamasaki - Godzilla: Minus One has relatable characters in a relatable scenario (monsters and nuclear blasts aside).

Don't Move (2024 film)

Category: Chase/hunt thriller

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Not to be confused with "Don't Breathe" (a decent movie in its own right), "Don't Move" really should have been titled "Can't Move", as the premise of this film is that Iris (Kelsey Asbille) is captured by serial killer creep Richard (Finn Whitrock) who takes her to a secluded forest area and injects her with a slow-acting paralytic agent in order to play a very lopsided cat-and-mouse game before Iris succumbs to her supposed fate.

The movie starts with Iris going to the top of a mountain to mourn her deceased son where she just happens to meet Richard, a kindly man who talks her down from the ledge. When they meet back at the car park, Richard tases Iris and puts her in the back seat of his car whereupon after she wakes up, he reveals she has been injected with a paralytic drug that slowly inhibits fine, and then gross motor skills. Richard then gives Iris a twenty minute head-start to escape through a forest, with Iris using her wits in place of her diminishing physical abilities.