Category Archives: The Worst

Venom review — A brutal misfire that wastes its great cast

October 8, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Ruben Fleischer | Written by Jeff Pinker, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel, based on the Marvel Comics character created by David Micheline and Todd McFarlane | 112 min | Netflix I bailed out of reading Marvel comics just as Venom became a thing. I recall his arrival as Spider-Man's alien super-suit from Secret…Read More

The Meg review — Big, bad shark has no bite

August 27, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Jon Turteltaub | Written by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber, based on the book by Steve Alten | 113 min | Netflix A giant, prehistoric shark movie arriving in late summer? You give it a lot of rope. It's fair to expect a likely ridiculous but a fun time-waster, especially given…Read More

Book Club review — 50 Shades of Awful

June 3, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Bill Holderman | Written by Holderman and Erin Simms | 104 min Candice Bergen's been nominated for an Oscar and won two Golden Globes, a plateful of Primetime Emmys, and made a powerful impact on American culture with her Murphy Brown TV series—soon to return. Jane Fonda has two Oscars and seven nominations,…Read More

The Party (2017) review — Send your regrets

March 1, 2018 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Sally Potter, with Walter Donohue, story editor | 71 minutes It's not often I actually regret sitting through a movie, given my passion for the medium, but the greatest mercy Sally Potter's The Party bestows on audiences is its brevity, which, in this case, barely approaches the soul of wit. Patricia Clarkson…Read More

Kingsman: The Golden Circle review — The same, but less

September 25, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Matthew Vaughn | Written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, based on The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons | 141 min Kingsman: The Secret Service is an odd, postmodern action movie, one that revels in all its James Bond 007-aping tropes, but serving them up in a class-conscious, R-rated, vaguely satirical dish. I…Read More

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets review — Looks good, but isn’t

July 22, 2017 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Luc Besson, based on the comic by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézieres | 137 min Luc Besson's opulent, Métal Hurlant magazine-loving style made his big-budget science-fiction party The Fifth Element a cult favourite in the two decades since its release. As Valerian is his first genuine space opera since then, stuffed full of…Read More

The Circle review — Black Mirror for Dummies

May 3, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by James Ponsoldt | Written by Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers, from Eggers' novel | 110 min Mae (Emma Watson) is an American Girl living somewhere in America... probably California. She drives a crappy car, has a crappy job, but a cute boy, Mercer (Ellar Coltrane, of Boyhood), who builds deer antler chandeliers in his…Read More

The Lego Batman Movie review — An annoying feature-length commercial

March 6, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Chris McKay | Written by Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern, and John Whittington | 104 min I saw The Lego Movie for the first time back in 2014 at a 3D screening, and I didn't much enjoy it. I recognized its cleverness, but couldn't see past the hyper-caffeinated pace and editing, compounded…Read More

Reviews: London Town, Alice Through The Looking Glass, Calvary, London Has Fallen

February 4, 2017 flawintheiris

London Town Directed by Derrick Borte | Written by Matt Brown, based on the screenplay Untitled Joe Strummer Project by Sonya Gildea and Kirsten Sheridan | 92 min | iTunes and VOD Shay Baker (Daniel Huttlestone) is a 14-year-old living in '70s Wanstead, an East London suburb. Dad Nick (Dougray Scott) moves pianos for a…Read More

Allied review — Wartime spy drama a clunky bomb

November 24, 2016 flawintheiris

Directed by Robert Zemeckis | Written by Steven Knight | 124 min Zemeckis is a disciple of Spielberg, the creator of high-end Hollywood entertainment like Back To The Future, Forrest Gump, and Contact. More recently he's been as interested in computer generated imagery as in story and character, with films like last year's The Walk. It was a picture…Read More