Zoe came out to stay with us in Enfield this weekend; it has been almost four weeks since she stayed over and I have missed her tremendously. Four weeks is the longest that I have gone without seeing her in a very long time, and I do not want to do that again in a hurry. It was so wonderful to have all of my family together for a weekend, I just love having my children around and always enjoy their company. After four weeks apart, many uni assignments for Zoe and a trip to Singapore for me, there was certainly no shortage of material to chat about and the weekend whizzed by at lightening speed.
On Saturday afternoon we went to the cinema to see Suicide Squad, just for shits and giggles really. I was not expecting to be wowed, and I wasn't really, but it was okay. Margot Robbie does make an exceptional Harley Quinn and Will Smith wins the prize for having the most interesting character, but overall, it was only 2.5 Chili Peppers for me, and really not something that you need to rush out and see.
If you are anything like me, then sometimes you will just want to watch something brainless at the cinema, and I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I do generally like to be challenged by my movie choices, but at least once a month I really like to see a total no-brainer. A no-brainer movie is a film that you willingly attend with full awareness (before you even purchase your ticket) that it is not going to improve who you are or expand your intelligence any way, shape or form. If the no-brainer movie scores above 2 Chili Peppers you're always pleasantly surprised. A no-brainer film requires a simple, one layered narrative that has more effects than it needs and a blown out budget to match; Suicide Squad meets that brief in every way.
Once and a while though, a no-brainer movie can give you a big surprise and turn out to be much more than you had expected it to be, for me that means making it to a 3 Chili peppers rating and getting onto my genre lists.
The last movie that did that, was American Ultra.
On Saturday afternoon we went to the cinema to see Suicide Squad, just for shits and giggles really. I was not expecting to be wowed, and I wasn't really, but it was okay. Margot Robbie does make an exceptional Harley Quinn and Will Smith wins the prize for having the most interesting character, but overall, it was only 2.5 Chili Peppers for me, and really not something that you need to rush out and see.
If you are anything like me, then sometimes you will just want to watch something brainless at the cinema, and I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I do generally like to be challenged by my movie choices, but at least once a month I really like to see a total no-brainer. A no-brainer movie is a film that you willingly attend with full awareness (before you even purchase your ticket) that it is not going to improve who you are or expand your intelligence any way, shape or form. If the no-brainer movie scores above 2 Chili Peppers you're always pleasantly surprised. A no-brainer film requires a simple, one layered narrative that has more effects than it needs and a blown out budget to match; Suicide Squad meets that brief in every way.
Once and a while though, a no-brainer movie can give you a big surprise and turn out to be much more than you had expected it to be, for me that means making it to a 3 Chili peppers rating and getting onto my genre lists.
The last movie that did that, was American Ultra.
AMERICAN ULTRA
Release Date: 2015
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 96 mins
An action-comedy written by Max Landis and directed by Nima Nourizadeh, American Ultra is a bit of a wacky ride from start to end. So much of a wacky ride that I was tempted to place into the art house section. The thing that stopped me from doing that was its completely linear plot, which travels from A to B directly; oh and also, it has tonnes of guns and action in it - so yeah, action won out.
A small town pothead named Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) and his long term girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) have their lives turned upside down when they discover that Mike is actually a lethal killing machine that has been dormant for years until recently being re-activated by a CIA agent.
The idea of Jesse Eisenberg as a lethal killing machine was certainly a stretch for me, but I think that was purposefully done to add humour to the storyline here, I'm just not sure that it worked that well. The rest of the cast was actually pretty good, Kristen Stewart is always reliably good, and the support cast boasts the likes of John Leguizamo, Connie Britton, Topher Grace and Bill Pullman.
Even though this is hardly high quality viewing, it is undeniably different and oddly entertaining, so overall I think that it is more than worthy of the 96 minutes of time that it takes to watch it.
FINAL SAY: Something very weird is happening to me, I keep killing people!
3 Chili peppers
Release Date: 2015
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 96 mins
An action-comedy written by Max Landis and directed by Nima Nourizadeh, American Ultra is a bit of a wacky ride from start to end. So much of a wacky ride that I was tempted to place into the art house section. The thing that stopped me from doing that was its completely linear plot, which travels from A to B directly; oh and also, it has tonnes of guns and action in it - so yeah, action won out.
A small town pothead named Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) and his long term girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) have their lives turned upside down when they discover that Mike is actually a lethal killing machine that has been dormant for years until recently being re-activated by a CIA agent.
The idea of Jesse Eisenberg as a lethal killing machine was certainly a stretch for me, but I think that was purposefully done to add humour to the storyline here, I'm just not sure that it worked that well. The rest of the cast was actually pretty good, Kristen Stewart is always reliably good, and the support cast boasts the likes of John Leguizamo, Connie Britton, Topher Grace and Bill Pullman.
Even though this is hardly high quality viewing, it is undeniably different and oddly entertaining, so overall I think that it is more than worthy of the 96 minutes of time that it takes to watch it.
FINAL SAY: Something very weird is happening to me, I keep killing people!
3 Chili peppers
RSS Feed