Based on the real life story of Eddie Edwards efforts to qualify for and compete at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary this underdog tale has a feel good factor even if a lot of liberties are taken with the actual story of the real life Edwards. Eddie (Taron Egerton) has spent his whole life dreaming of one day becoming an Olympian despite all and sundry telling him he is not good enough and he’ll never make it. But Eddie is made of sterner stuff than that and isn’t going to allow a few naysayers put him off so despite one failed attempt after another he eventually finds a calling in the world of ski jumping and heads off to Germany to train. It is here that he bumps into Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman) a washed up alcoholic but a one-time top level jumper who left it all behind due to his rock and roll attitude to the sport. Of course Edwards wears him down through a mixture of tenacity and pity and it’s not long before he reluctantly agrees to give tips but only in order to ensure Edwards does not kill himself. But even finding an ally is not enough for Edwards as he has to battle against his fellow ski jumpers who see him as a joke as do the British Olympic council who do their best to ensure he does not make the team.

Egerton does a good job in portraying the plucky, never say die attitude to the screen with a mixture of determination and childlike innocence which makes it hard not to want him to succeed but it’s Jackman who steals the show as he looks like he is having great fun acting like Wolverine, without the claws of course, through the literal ups and downs of Edwards journey and it wouldn’t be an underdog tale unless Jackmans character also learned from the experience and finds both a friend and confident in Edwards.

Director Dexter Fletcher does a good job in keeping you interested even if you know nothing about the sport. Although sometimes the sentimentality gets a bit thick and some of the CGI is a little suspect because everyone seems to be having a good time on screen it doesn’t matter. Credit goes to some of the camera work during the actual ski jumping moments which does a good job in showing just how dangerous the sport actually is.

With echoes of the similar fairy-tale story of Cool Running, which incidentally occurred at the same event there is nothing new here but there is still enough to make the movie worth a watch even if it doesn’t reach the heights the protagonist himself needed to scale.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

When Jess (Margot Robbie) uses a honey pot routine to pull a con on her mark in a bar one night she gets more than she bargains for as the mark is Nicky (Will Smith) who is a master conman himself. But from somewhere within her botched con a spark is lit and Smith decides to take her under his wing and teach her how to be a better con artist, so he brings her to New Orleans as a trial to work with his team in pulling various cons where she more than holds her own and fits straight in with Nicky’s team. Unfortunately it’s here, quite early in the movie, that the film reaches it’s peak when the best scene occurs as Nicky goes head to head in a high stakes of macho one upmanship against a high roller in a VIP box which watching a game of American football.

The film plods along okay without ever excelling but it loses itself in the final third which is set in Buenos Aires where Smith is going to pull a scam on Garriga a wealthy owner of a racing team but inadvertently runs into Robbie who has gone legit and is enjoying the high life as a Garrigas girlfriend and the film transcends into a, do they, don’t they still really love each other side plot which slows the pace of the movie down too much but needless to say that in a movie about con artists all is not as it seems and the final fifteen minutes goes someway towards rescuing the movie from the mire.

Some of the locations and the sets look great and ooze opulence while the two main characters dance their charade of double and triple crossing in the name of the con but the characters are given no depth, possibly because you’re not meant to know them given that they live a lie anyway, but this then distracts from the believability of the developing relationship of the main characters, we don’t know them, they don’t seem to know each other so why should we care?

Smith is okay as the sauve confident trickster and changes it up or down as needed but the real breakout from this movie is Robbie who shows that she is not just about sex appeal, shows great comedic timing when called for and good sentimentality when necessary.

As with most of these movies we always know there’s more than meets the eye and part of the fun is trying to stay a step ahead of the inevitable twists and turns but when they inevitably do arrive you feel a bit let down given the high standards set earlier in the movie so it lacks either the cleverness or the feel good factor of others movies from the same genre.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

I have mentioned before that we have yet to get a really good Superman movie and this is no different, although his character is slightly more fleshed out he is still left with the weakest plot thread so I can’t fault Henry Cavill as he done well with what he was given but there seems to be an issue with writers bringing a good story forward for the character. The first thirty minutes of this movie were very promising and I thought we were going to get a classic. The whole area of Superman being set up as a God like alien being through some good use of iconography. His whole motives being questioned and his appearance in front of a Congressional hearing and also the whole set up by Lex Luther to poison his name was good and I found myself intrigued to see what they were taking me but then it seemed that they wanted to up the action and the path leading to the clash between the two heroes fighting became very weak in comparison.

Despite what some others thought I liked Jessie Eisenberg as Lex Luther but he wasn’t really given a huge amount of screen time to develop into the master criminal in the same way Lex Luther had been in previous movies. That’s a theme all the way through with both Amy Adams as Lois Lane and Jeremy Irons as Alfred, who both should have been central characters given their relationships with the heroes, were side bars who dropped in from time to time. Adams spend most of the movie being rescued and it undone the good work of the Man of Steel movie in building her into a strong female character and Alfred seemed to be demoted to Batmans tech support.

The best part of this whole movie was, surprisingly, Ben Affleck as Batman and the linking into the plot of Batmans motivation as he see hundreds of his employees killed when the Wayne Industries’ building in Metropolis is destroyed during the Superman Vs Zod fight at the end of the man Of Steel movie, was both very clever and very well done. I hadn’t held much hope for Afflecks version but he really hit the stop and it gave a darker, moodier Batman (complete with a great new Batsuit) purpose and meaning as a man who will kill, or brand, anything that gets in his way. The introduction of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was done well enough but the role made her more like a Bond girl than a hero at least until the finale however the actual link to the rest of the characters in Justice League via an e-mail was horrible and just felt tacked on because it had to be.

Now, the main reason we all looked forward to this movie so much, the battle between Batman and Superman was very well done. The motivation behind it for both characters was believable however the way the fight ends and thus the teaming up of the heroes was very weak in comparison and didn’t really make sense for it to occur at that time. I’m still sitting on the fence about the appearance of Doomsday, the introduction was solid, looked good on screen and did feel like it was huge threat but, again, I expected a bit more screen time.

Once again Zach Snyder has given us a comic book movie which looks great but is lacking a little something in the plot and the script, if you don’t go in with high expectations and can look past some of the issues then it’s a well acted and enjoyable action film which has taken up the plot line from Man Of Steel, put a little twist on it and brought us from there into the new era of the Justice League and it was done well, it just that the expectation has much higher so it leaves you feeling a bit empty afterwards.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

 

From Luc Besson, the director who gave us classics like Nikita, Taken and the outstanding Léon:The Professional, is a tale of a woman who is accidentally exposed to a new form of drug which allows her to use all of her brain functionality instead of the normal 10% that we mere pond life will do in our lifetime.

The problem with the film is that it strays from being a clever sci-fi thriller to an all out action movie to a moralistic tale and swings from serious to tongue in cheek and back again leaving you unsure how to take the dialogue at times. The one section of the movie which is memorable is a terrific car chase through the streets of Paris, it’s a bit Blues Brother like in parts, but there are some great near miss moments.

Scarlett Johansson does a good job in the lead role but, with the exception of the opening scenes where she is left like a lamb to the slaughter and the very early stage of her transformation where there’s an emotional phone call to her mother, her talent is not called upon to any real level. The 2011 movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper was a cleverer version of a similar tale without the need for the revenge tale and the psychedelic last ten minutes filled with flashback visions and wormholes however the ambiguous ending will either have you scratching your head wondering what is going on or will have you complimenting Bessons cleverness for leaving you with an ending with so many debatable possibilities. Not a bad movie but it’s just lacking the structure which may have made it a classic.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 out of 10

They’ve finally managed to take a almost guaranteed entertaining movie franchise and turn it into a another routine, generic action film. From the ridiculous opening sequence (a building explodes and helicopter is diving towards the ground yet the area is still packed with people?) straight the way through to the anti-climatic ending it never really felt like a Bond movie and always felt like it was trying to reach the plot of a Mission Impossible or Bourne film.

It was disappointing to see Sam Mendez delivery something this poor given the excellent work he had done with Skyfall but perhaps this is down to the deplorable script which was filled with (I wont give any spoilers in case you still have to see the movie) so many plot holes it felt like the writers all wrote different parts to the movie but never compared notes and the final ‘twist’ was the worst of all.

While some may have had issue with the number of women the Bond character has bedded over the years in general, there was always some form chemistry between Bond and the ladies however if this spark was present between Daniel Craig and Léa Seydoux then I must have looked away for a second and missed it as they never left like a couple and their ‘romance’ was nowhere near believable. What was the hype over Monica Bellucci  being the oldest Bond woman ever, while I’m not doubting her beauty, she was on screen for all of two minutes. I was expecting her to play a central character but she disappears from the screen as quickly as she appears.

The acting talents of Christoph Waltz were vastly underused and I can only hope that as Blofeld he will be given some better material in future movies, although that is supposedly only going to happen if Daniel Craig stays on as Bond. On that point perhaps he has done as well as he could with what was an awful script and potentially poor casting but I think it’s best if Craig leaves it here before he undoes the great work he has done bringing Bond into the modern era with both Casino Royale and in particular Skyfall as he looked bored for most of the movie. (Idris Elba time perhaps?) From an acting point of view the only real bright spots in the movie were the further development of Ben Whishaw into a Q character for the modern age and Ralph Fiennes who is very believable as a more hands on M who gets out from behind his desk and is not afraid to get his hands dirty.

It will be interesting to see where this franchise goes from here as, while I have no doubt there will be another appearance by Bond, unless the quality is better it could be the start of a slippery slope given how much the bar was raised by Ghost Protocol.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 out of 10

I had this recommended to me and I was expecting a romantic comedy with the usual plot lines and happy ending but I was pleasantly surprised to find a multiple plot, interwoven tale with plenty of laugh out loud moments that hit more than it missed.

Steve Carrell is his usual funny self floating from the clueless single man, to player and back again while always wanting back what he had but doing it with such good comedic timing that, at times, it’s hilarious to watch.

Ryan Gosling is the real star of the show as the smooth, suave womaniser with the quick hitting one liners (The skin under your eyes is starting to look like Hugh Hefner’s ball sack….brilliant!) that just oozes confidence without looking like he is trying and has the most developed character in the movie.

The supporting cast all play their parts well but almost all of them go full circle with their characters to where you expect they’ll end up, to leave you with a romantic comedy with no malice or villain for you to hate but with a bit of an unusual twist on the usual premise and it’s worth checking out if you fancy a light hearted movie that has something for everybody.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 out of 10

So, part two of what was supposed to be a five part series of Spiderman movies tying into the Marvel cinematic universe but poor box office performance put an end to that, and it shows as throughout the movie as there are a lot of minimally developed threads such as Peters initial friendship with Harry Osborn and Electro developing into a member of the Sinister Six which gives the whole film a very rushed feel where so much is crammed in but with no substance. To give the movie some small credit it still felt more akin to the comic books than the original trilogy, particularly with the Peter/Gwen relationship tale. Andrew Garfield does give another good portrayal of the webslinger despite the manic script but wasting an actor like Jamie Foxx with the pitiful plot for Electro was hideous to watch. The relationship with Harry Osborn was non existent with the Green Goblin feeling more like a spoiled child rather than some supervillian and what was the point in introducing Rhino as he has almost no screen time so I can only assume these were parts of the story that the next movie was supposed to pick up on but we’ll never know. Wouldn’t recommend this at all unless you’re big into your super hero movies. Perhaps the next re-iteration, currently penciled in for next year, will fare better.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 out of 10