Independence Day: Resurgence

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Set twenty years after the original alien attack where earth has been using technology recovered for salvaged equipment to build defences and update equipment to match the original alien weaponry in order to ensure there can be no re-occurrence of the original invasion however while earth has had twenty years to develop so have the aliens and when David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) who is now head of the Earth Space Defence based in Area 51, is shown a ship which has been newly discovered in Africa he realises that this ship sent a distress signal during the original invasion and believes that a second invasion is imminent and when the aliens do arrive the ships size is beyond imaginable and causes wide spread destruction with earth seemingly defenceless once again. It is then up to Levinson with a little help from another survivor from the original invasion Dr.Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) and ace pilots Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) and Captain Dylan Dubrow-Hiller (Jessie Usher) to plot an attack on the queen alien and destroy the fleet.

While the original was, and still is to some extent, a classic action movie full of witty one liners, massive explosions and the memorable speech from Bill Pullman, the sequel feels lacking. There is still plenty of action and a few humerous moments there is something lacking in the entertainment value. Perhaps it is down to the fact that I didn’t warm to the characters in the same way that I did with the original so I didn’t really care who survived or didn’t and I didn’t understand why every main character is seemingly linked to each other by past events most of which are just brushed upon. Also, the aliens have apparently become so advanced that even our future technology is archaic against it but yet they are, once again, still weak against a seemingly very basic attack plan. Thirdly, with the exception of Levinson and Okun, there was no need for any of the returning characters in terms of the story other than to ensure that the movie could keep enough links with the original to ensure it could be an actual sequel.

It is still worth a watch, has some good special effects and few decent action sequences but at time it felt a bit like a remake rather than a sequel as the movie follows almost the exact same format as the original and given the twenty years between the movies it would have been nice if any of the five writers had been able to come up with something a little different.

DJ Speaks Rating:  5 Out Of 10

Mothers Day

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It has been a while since we have heard from director Garry Marshall but after his last helpings of Valentine’s Day and New Years Eve he once again brings to the screen a movie based around a calendar Holiday in Mother’s Day and once again we get an ensemble cast of characters with multi plot lines which start to click in together as the movie progresses.

This time we see Kristin (Britt Robertson) who is planning to get married to Zack (Jack Whitehall) but the fact that she was given up for adoption at birth is holding her back. She is encouraged by her friend Jesse (Kate Hudson) to track down her mother. However, Kristen has already done so but is scared to take the next step as her mother is successful TV personality Miranda Collins (Julia Roberts). Miranda is all business but in her search for a new assistant she is drawn towards divorced mother of two Sandy (Jennifer Hudson) as she feels her own guilt over giving her child up. Sandy is struggling since her ex-husband Henry (Timothy Olyphant) is re-marrying a much younger woman. The aforementioned Jessie is also trying to build bridges with her own mother who she rarely sees but this is proving difficult as her mother is unaware that she has married a man of Indian heritage Russell (Aasif Mandyi) and her sister, Gabi (Sarah Chalke) is gay and has married her partner without telling her mother, plus there are two grandchildren to throw into the mix. Bradley Barton (Jason Sudekis) a widow who is successful from a business point of view but is struggling as a lone parent, whom Sandy is taking an interest in.

So, you have a cauldron of people and personalities who all vie for screen time but because there is so much going on you never get a chance to really take a liking to any of the characters unlike some of Marshalls earlier movies such as Pretty Woman, Beaches or Frankie And Johnny.

Somehow all these people seem to be intertwined yet it’s never really explained why. How is Jesse seemingly friends with both Kristin and Sandy despite them being three different generations in age? How does Zack win a stand up comedy competition despite not telling single joke in the final? Why is Sandy such a nice person even though she is essentially being replaced as a mother by a younger woman? I know its Hollywood but give us some credit for having a certain level of intelligence and having at least one foot set in the real world. I can switch my brain off to a degree when I need to but to accept or enjoy this script it felt like I’d have needed a lobotomy. There is just too much crammed into the two hour run time for any real moments of drama, compassion or even joy and if there had have been a focus on one of two of the characters instead there might have been something decent on screen.

So how exactly would I describe this movie in simple terms? Like a two hour bus journey where the best course of action you can take is to zone out and switch off until you reach the end, yes it is that bad.

DJ Speaks Rating: 3.5 Out Of 10

The Conjuring 2

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Following on from one of the best horror movies of recent years The Conjuring 2 revisits paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga & Patrick Wilson) as they are investigating the Amityville house where Ronald DeFeo murdered his family, to establish if it was a genuine case of possession or not. During the course of this investigation Lorraine has a vision where she encounters demonic nun figure (Bonnie Aarons) and sees a vision of Ed being murdered before the connection is broken. Soon after Ed is working on a new painting and puts the image of the nun on canvas and this leads to Lorraine wanting to retire from their work but Ed believes they are doing Gods work and cannot give up.

They are contacted by the Catholic church with regard to a potential possession taking place in the UK where Janet Hodgson (Madison Wolfe) seems to be controlled by the spirit of an old man Bill Wilkins (Bob Adrian). When they travel to see the scene for themselves they, and some other investigators Maurice Grosse (Simon McBurney) and Anita Gregory (Franka Potente) try and contact the spirit of Bill before he destroys Janet and her family but all is not as it seems and the demonic nun also has a part to play as both Ed and Lorraine battle for their lives along with the Hodgsons.

I really liked the first movie as it gave us less of the jump scares which populate most horror movies these days and places focus more on the psychological side of horror which is always a good thing. Thankfully this movie goes the same way, there are no spectacular death scenes, theres very little blood and yet the terror feels more magnified. Although there are a few more jump scares than the original, most of which are shown in the trailer, there is more than enough here to scare particularly since it is all based around a true story and there are some great scenes which are reminiscent of the classic horror movies of the 70’s and early 80’s. When you have a horror film where what is happening in the background or even off screen can be key you are onto a winner as it builds the tension superbly.

Once again both Farmiga and Wilson do an excellent job as the investigators and in yet another great performance by a young actress Wolfe is wholly believable as the tormented and possessed girl who shows a huge range of emotions as she swings from terrified girl to evil spirit and back again and the demonic nun is something straight out of your nightmares, there is a brilliant scene based around the above mentioned painting which I guarantee will have you on the edge of your seat.

It’s not a perfect movie but any means, the kids are a little too clean cut for a working class family in 1970 UK and the lack of character building for the rest of the family means that your are less invested in the family unit than you were in the first movie also, the lack of interest by the police considering the potential danger to the family is a bit of a stretch but these are minor quibbles and director James Wan once again really creates an eerie atmosphere through his use of foreboding settings coupled with some terrific camera work and he has solidified himself at the top levels of the horror genre with another hit after his recent work on Insidious and Saw before that. In conjunction with a great script from the Hayes brothers Chad & Carey, who have worked very closely with the Warrens and apparently have their approval to continue to bring their stories to the big screen, they have created a classic horror movie for the modern era. I’ve seen many horrors over the years and I don’t scare easily, but this was one of the few that I’ve seen in the past few years which has stuck in my mind long after the movie ended.

DJ Speaks Rating: 7.5 Out Of 10

How To Plan An Orgy In A Small Town

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After an embarrassing incident in her teenage years which made her the laughing stock of the town, writer and professional sex expert Cassie Cranston (Jewel Staite) arrives home following the death of her mother hoping to collect some inheritance money to pay off a publishing house who gave her an advance and are pressing her for a novel based on her experiences. When she arrives back some of the towns repressed thirty-something members feel she is the catalyst that they need to spice up their lives so it seems like a match made in heaven when they decide the best way to do this is to hold an orgy which she can use as subject matter for her book so it’s looks like it’s a win-win situation.

Of course there wouldn’t be much of a movie if all went to plan so we get to watch one disaster after another as the characters who’s small town mentalities and years of living in each other’s pockets put up so many boundaries that it makes it impossible for them to lose their shackles.

The mix of characters are diverse enough to feel genuine, their relationships feel weathered and each of their motivations are believable and there’s no standout character so it feels like a good blend and in that sense director Jeremy Lalonde deserves credit, but the movie suffers from not pushing the boundaries far enough to be fully raunchy yet pushing them too far at times which masks the actual humour so it felt like watching an extended Benny Hill show (The town is called Beaver’s Ridge….see what I mean?) as the content and dialogue is adult but the nudity is partial and obscured so it’s stuck in limbo. It felt more like a small screen drama which was given a raunchy title and twist to try and gain some attention as beneath the content there’s is a good story of relationships in a small town, the narrow mindedness of people and the inability to both let go of the past and embrace change.

The film is better than most for a crowdfunded indie movie with a very small budget but it’s gets lost in not knowing what it actually wants to be so it ends up caught between a rock and a hard place, no pun intended!

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

Inside Out

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Inside Out is a more mature Pixar effort telling the story of Riley Anderson (Kaitlyn Dias) through the medium of her core emotions Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) & Fear (Bill Hader) who we see based in Rileys mind. It is their job to manage Rileys well being through her thought processes and core memories. In general it is relatively easy for Joy to keep things in check and manage Rileys mind from day to day however when Riley has to relocate to San Fransisco because her father needs a job which is on offer she begins to struggle emotionally and thus Joy begins to struggle to remain in control. When Sadness begins to change some of Rileys long term memories Joy steps in to regain control and inadvertently sets the wheels in motion where she ends up being transported along with Sadness to the deepest parts of Riley mind leaving the other, less organised, emotions to hold the fort with disastrous consequences. It is then a race against time for Joy to get back to the fore front of Riley’s mind before it is irreparably damaged.

Taking the above paragraph it hardly sounds like Pixar material but it is done so cleverly by the animators that kids will not even realise the dark subject matter around the effects of depression which is on screen and will love the comedy adventure film which it actually is. The voice acting is brilliant, the tale itself is excellent and although it’s a children’s film it doesn’t feel like one. Riley struggles in her new school, when her parents give out she storms to her room, her mind is filled with moments and objects you recognise from real life and there’s a hilarious take on Riley’s Bieber-esque imaginary boyfriend which ties it all together nicely into a plausible situation which makes the movie. The reactions of the emotions and how they are shown impacting Riley is genius, we’ve all been in those situations and have wondered afterwards why we reacted the way we did and for such a supposedly simple movie it is very complex behind the brightly coloured animations.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6.5 Out Of 10

The Boy

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Greta (Lauren Cohen) arrives in the UK to take a job as a nanny to the Heelshires son Brahms however Brahms is not a child but is a doll with a realistic porcelain face. At first she believes this to be a joke however it is soon apparent that it is all too real and before the Heelshires leave for their holiday they supply Great a list of rules which must be followed without failure.

Not long after the Heelshires have left and Greta has ignored the supplied rules strange things begin to occur around the creepy old house and when Great confides in the grocery delivery man Malcolm (Rupert Evans) who tells her the back story about the human Brahms and his subsequent death so Great believes that the doll is possessed by the spirit of Brahms and begins to treat the doll as initially instructed but where her ex-boyfriend Cole (Ben Robson) shows up and starts to react angrily towards the door going so far as to smashing it the real secret behind Brahms and the house reveals itself.

This is yet another of the creepy doll movies which have become more popular as movie themes but unfortunately this is just as bad, there’s no reasoning behind how the Heelshires bring a woman from the USA to the UK since they don’t seem to have any Internet, there’s no explanation as to who Rupert is any why the Heelshires seem to trust him, there’s the usual moments of jump scares which occur inside a dream which has been done to death at this point. The real star of the movie is the house which always gives a sense of foreboding towards something bad happening, which say a lot for the script and while the twist is at least a little different by that point I didn’t care and of course the ambiguous ending leaves it open for a sequel which I can only hope never sees the light of day.

TMNT: Out Of The Shadows

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Set one year after they allowed Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) as The Falcon take credit for their last victory the turtles still live in their secret underground lair using reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) as their link to the world and she tips off The Turtles to the fact that the Foot Clan under the guidance of a scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) are going to spring their foe in their previous outing The Shredder (Brian Tee) as he is being transported to a more secure facility along with two other prisoners Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) & Rocksteady (Stephen Farrelly) by corrections officer Casey Jones (Stephen Amell)

Once the Foot Clan attacks the convoy The Turtles intervene but Shredder escapes and meets up with alien warlord Krang (Brad Garrett) who gives Shredder a mutagen compound in exchange for some items he needs located. So it’s up to The Turtles with a little help from April & Casey to stop The Shredder who has now recruited Bebop & Rocksteady, and his Foot Clan from their plans to give Krang the items for his plan to take over the world.

I haven’t seen the 2014 Turtles movie so I don’t have a comparison to that film but what I did find with this movie is that the first fifteen minutes was full of unnecessary voice over exposition, the human characters were annoying and Splinter appears then disappears just as quickly so I was disappointed not to see the Yoda like figure I remember his being. The Turtles had some good action sequences, some good interaction with each other and the four brothers felt like they were all bringing something to the table to form a team but the rest of the cast were terrible with only Williams and Farrelly producing anything like the characters I remember.

Although there is a new director on board in Dave Green, with Michael Bay on board as a producer we still get a spattering of USA flags and fast car sequences as one would expect. Yes, some of the CGI laden action sequences are very good, there are a few funny moments and there’s a very thin thread about brotherhood, staying true to who you are and working together to achieve your goals but in all there’s not a lot here for adults so I’m sure it does exactly what it is designed to do, keep the kids entertained, highlight more merchandise and if that’s the goal then it’s onto a winner.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

Before I Wake

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Jessie Hobson (Kate Bosworth) and her husband Mark (Thomas Jane) adopt a new foster child, Cody (Jacob Tremblay) as part of their attempts to get their life back on track after their own son has died.

However, Cody is a child with a troubled past who was abandoned by his previously family and they soon realise that Cody’s reluctance to sleep is linked to an issue he has where whatever he dreams manifests itself in reality, but on the flip side his nightmares also appear and one repeat appearance is by a creature he calls ‘The Canker Man’. These nightmares are far more are deadly so Jessie and Mark begin to understand why Cody was abandoned and must figure out what to do to stop this process before they are killed.

There are some very well acted scenes between Jane and Tremblay which feel full of emotion and their developing relationship is the heart of the movie while Bosworth is still more focused on Cody being the replacement for her dead son as opposed to building a new bond and, maybe it was just me, but I found myself disliking her character up until the latter stages when she begins to show some redeeming features. Tremblay in general is once again superb and is completely believable as the troubled child. Coming off his performance in Room he is without doubt a very talented young actor.

Director Mike Flanagan has also recently given us the underrated Hush and while this is not as good as that film you can see plenty of similarities in the camerawork and scene setting but some of the plot is a little strange, such as, why would an agency place a child with a family who are still struggling to deal with the death of their own child, why doesn’t either parent want to report the fact that Cody is doing his best to stay awake every night and after a certain incident that occurs in the school they are so oblivious to the cause of the issue it’s baffling.

While the acting was fine, the concept was good and the ending tried to do something a little different for which it must be given credit, it just failed to raise itself to any level of greatness and can be best described as a good film elevated by some very good acting but there were times that the film drifted back to the old tropes of the horror genre which felt a bit unnecessary. While I would recommend checking it out, especially if you are a fan of the genre, it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before so don’t expect anything outstanding.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

Goosebumps

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Zach Cooper (Dylan Minette) is forced to move from big city New York to small town Madison, Delaware with his mother Gale (Amy Ryan) who’s new job as vice principal necessitated the move against his wishes. He quickly makes friends with his next door neighbour Hannah (Odeya Rush) but he is warned away by her overprotective and strange father Mr.Shivers (Jack Black) but he’s a teenager and when have they ever listened to their parents, so Zach and Hannah begin meeting in secret. One night Zach hears screaming coming from next door and assumes Hannah is in trouble so he calls the police however Mr.Shivers manages to convince both the police and Zachs mother that he is merely watching TV and there is no problem. Zach is unconvinced and along with his other new friend Champ (Ryan Lee) he breaks into his neighbours home to rescue Hannah. During his break in he notices a shelf full of the Goosebumps series of books which are all locked while looking at one of the books is surprised by the appearance of Hannah and drops the book inadvertently releasing the monster, an abominable type snowman creature, within. Hannah explains the secrets behind the books so the three friends need to chase down the creature in order to trap it in the book. This leads to a showdown in the local ice rink where things look bad for the friends until Mr.Shivers turns up and traps the creature back in the book. It is revealed that he is the author R.L.Stine and that when he realised his creations actually came to life he was forced to lock all his books in order to keep the creatures trapped. When they return home however they find out that another of his invention Slappy, has also escaped, is not happy about being confined within a book and has released many other creatures from the books and the town is under attack so it is up to Stine, Zach and his new found friends to save the day.

Director Rob Letterman has brought all his experience of working on movies such as Monsters Vs Aliens and Shark’s Tale and put together some good CGI which mixes very well with the live action and Jack Black was a great choice in the role of Stine as his over the top acting and comedic timing brought a lot to this film.

Fully aimed at the young adult audience the movie is surprisingly entertaining, and has some cleverly hidden themes of coping with the loss of a parent and being a fish out of water having to find a way through which are captured within an adventure plot which reminded me a little of the classic Goonies movie with more than a leaning towards a comic caper movie at times and with many references to other classic movies within. I was pleasantly surprised as it’s a good movie to watch with your kids, not too scary, not too childish and although the plot does run itself into the ground a little towards the end it’s a fun filled 100 minutes that the whole family can enjoy.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

Race

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With a clever play on words Race is a sports biography based around the achievements of the African American athlete Jesse Owens (Stephan James) in winning four gold medals at the Nazi propaganda driven 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. Dealing with both the Aryan superiority stance from Germany and the racism of the time in America this film starts with his college years in Ohio State University where he meets coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudekis) who hones his talent and sets him on the road to eventual glory.

There are a number of subplots such as the filming of the games by German director Leni Riefenstahl and the battle between Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt) and Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) around the potential boycotting of the games by American athletes which, while having a valid place in the tale only succeed in diverting away from the central tale and could have seen a little less screen time. on the other side some of the best moments in the movie which come towards the end of the movie particularly when Owens meets his eventual friend Carl Long (David Kross), a German long jump athlete who broke several ‘rules’ by treating Owens like he would any fellow competitor and even went so far as to celebrate with Owens afterwards, and it would have been nice to have seen additional focus put on this theme.

Overall Race does a good job of showing use the remarkable achievements of Owens but with the odd exception it doesn’t give us a good look at who Owens really was and what the man behind the success was really like, I already knew about his achievements before I watched this film and afterwards I still don’t think it has taught me an awful lot new so while the story and the acting are good it just feels a little flat for a movie that should invoke emotions like a really good sports movie should especially in the wake of the achievements of a legend of the track.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10