Prime Time: Deep Cover (2025)

Tom Kingsley has a fair bit of directorial experience in the world of TV, but this is the first feature that he has helmed solo. He's done himself a favour, however, by getting a good group of writers together and a central cast all eager to have a lot of fun. The end result is a very entertaining comedy that works due to everyone leaning into the silliness of it all.

Bryce Dallas Howard is Kat, a young woman spending her time teaching improv. Some of her students are moving on to successful careers. Kat isn't. She's stuck with people like Marlon (Orlando Bloom), an actor who always needs to find a darkness in every character he plays, and Hugh (Nick Mohammed), a nervous young man just hoping to develop some confidence that will help him avoid being ignored and/or used at his workplace. When Kat is asked to do some absolutely safe, and not due to escalate at all, undercover work by a cop named Billings (Sean Bean), she ends up heading along with Marlon and Hugh to an encounter with Fly (Paddy Considine). Fly is a criminal, but he's not at the top of the chain. That would be Metcalfe (Ian McShane), and our trio end up becoming entangled with him in an increasingly messy situation that they may struggle to escape alive.

It's a testament to the performances of the leads here that you wouldn't think it took four people to write this. While I can't help feeling that the nature of some scenes may have allowed some of the performers to improv in line with their characters, credit goes to Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow for the story, and Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen for the screenplay. The premise is great for comic potential, and everyone works hard to make the most of it.

Kingsley may not show any great ambition or creativity in his direction, but he does enough to keep everything rolling along nicely. It's not all that cinematic, but there are moments when it throws in some gags or stunts that are impressive enough to remind you that it's a movie with some money behind it. Even if a lot of that money may have been used to secure the stars.

As for the stars, Howard does well acting as if trying to control the two problematic men alongside her, but it's both Mohammed and Bloom getting to deliver more of the laughs. I expected Mohammed to do well as someone slightly shy and awkward, but Bloom shows a real talent for comedy with his hilarious arrogance and thick-headed attempts to add unnecessary backstory to every character he portrays. Considine is a convincing crook, as he's shown us in other films, Bean does very well with what he needs to do, and McShane is so good as a powerful heavy that even his ill-advised attempt at a Scottish accent doesn't make him any less intimidating. There's a good selection of supporting cast members, all in line with the tone, but they're all elevated by sharing scenes with the leads.

It's very predictable, very much in line with a number of straight-to-streaming movies that have that, sometimes indefinable, straight-to-streaming movies feel, but saved by the fact that it's also occasionally very funny. Most of the biggest laughs come from Bloom, but everyone gets a chance to shine, and the 100-minute runtime is perfect for the material.

7/10

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Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

I had heard a variety of opinions on Jurassic World Dominion before I finally got around to seeing it, which meant I was perhaps better prepared for it than I otherwise might have been. I heard that Chris Pratt tries to defuse every dinosaur encounter by doing that hand gesture he does (true). I heard that some of the connective tissue to the first film was very tenuous (also true). I heard that there was a disappointing lack of actual dinosaurs, with them being pushed aside in favour of a plot about dangerous bugs (tosh and piffle).

Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) live in a cabin in the woods, being parental figures to Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). They try to stress to Isabella how important it is that she stays hidden away, due to the value of her DNA, but that doesn’t work. In a double-whammy of villainy, both Maisie and a new baby raptor (Blue’s baby, no less) are kidnapped and taken away to the main villain of the piece. I won’t name them, but it is obvious from the very start. Meanwhile, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is investigating the source of some dangerous new species of locust, which leads to her dragging Alan Grant (Sam Neill) along to the HQ of a company called Biosyn, headed up by Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott). Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) works at Biosyn, but he would like someone to get proof of what he suspects are misdeeds. 

With director Colin Trevorrow returning to direct this instalment of the franchise, continuing the story he worked out with Derek Connolly, shaped into a finalised screenplay by himself and Emily Carmichael, this feels like exactly what it is, a film that is part standard blockbuster spectacle and part celebration of an enduring modern franchise. I wasn’t too impressed by the first Jurassic World movie, and I initially felt the same about Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (a film I have subsequently viewed in a more favourable light), but maybe I have been too harsh, perhaps because I have always been hoping to experience the thrill of that Spielberg original all over again.

This is a really solid slice of dino-filled action. It may have a lengthy runtime, but it doesn’t feel overlong. Set-pieces and exciting moments are sprinkled throughout, with the sequence set in Malts being one of the most entertaining blockbuster moments I have seen in some time, the locust sub-plot adds some more tension (and, more importantly, provides a good reason for everyone ending up together in the same place), and there’s a feeling of plausibility in this world that now has dinosaurs free to roam certain areas of our planet. 

Dern, Neill, and Goldblum are very welcome in their reprised roles, all three settling into a comfortable rapport with one another, and also working well when they eventually encounter the new characters. Pratt and Howard are just fine, although they have never been as good in the lead roles as other options we could have had, and Scott has fun as the typical rich guy who wants to play god in ways that might have unforeseen consequences. There are also enjoyable performances from DeWanda Wise (playing Kayla, a pilot who ends up helping our main characters) and Mamoudou Athie (as Ramsay, the nervous young man tasked with showing Sattler and Grant around Biosyn). The one sour note is, unfortunately, Sermon. As decent as she was in the last film, she feels completely out of place and unconvincing here. Perhaps the writing also works against her, or maybe her performance just feels more full of affectation now she is a bit older and a bit more self-conscious.

The other main performances come from the dinosaurs, of course, and they are as good as ever. You get another enjoyable variety of creatures, with some of them being VERY cute (baby triceratops WILL make you go “awwwwww”), and the blending of animatronics and CGI is pretty flawless throughout.

What more could you want? The score brings in the obvious cues when expected, there are some fun lines of dialogue that work on a meta level without stopping everything to wink at the audience, and it once again allows our old pal, the t-rex, to steal a couple of scenes and remind everyone of how much we all love to gape at a t-rex. 

8/10

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Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019)

The extent of my Pokémon knowledge is very limited. I know that people have "gotta catch 'em all". I know the best way to get Pikachu on a bus . . . poke 'im on. And I know that the mobile game was massively successful, and seemed to be the latest thing that everyone was obsessed with when it was released, for all of a month. I was also vaguely aware of the Detective Pikachu videogame. That's it. So I am not sure if it is a good or bad thing that I enjoyed this movie so much.

Justice Smith plays Tim Goodman, a young man who travels to tidy up some affairs after the death of his father, Harry. He ends up finding a Pikachu that seemed to belong to his father. He can even understand what it is saying, while others only hear sounds like "pika pika". The pair team up to find out what happened to Harry, which leads them to big battles, interrogating a creature that communicates via the medium of mime, and crossing paths with Mewtwo.

I've looked into this (these reviews aren't just slapped together without any care or effort, you know . . . not all the time anyway) and it seems that Pokémon Detective Pikachu is an entertaining movie that manages to satisfy both fans and newcomers alike. There are numerous nods and references scattered throughout every scenes, and the main storyline makes good use of some familiar characters. If you're going to make a movie from this particular brand, this isn't a bad way to go about it.

Smith is a good young lead, and he quickly builds a nice chemistry with his Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds). The two are a classic mis-matched duo, and Pikachu is nicely realised with some perfect CGI. Having said that, I cannot think of any mis-steps here, on a visual level. Every character is rendered in a way that aligns with their traits (some are a bit more cartoonish, some more realistic) and the production design is often gorgeous. As for the other humans, Bill Nighy and Ken Watanabe lend their not-inconsiderable talents to the proceedings, and it's amusing to watch them have some fun, Kathryn Newton is a plucky investigative journalist, Lucy Stevens, and has great onscreen presence, and you have some fun support from Chris Geere, Suki Waterhouse, Rita Ora, and Karan Soni (the latter two having much less screentime than the others).

Director Rob Letterman also helped to write the screenplay with Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Derek Connolly, from a story also co-created with Nicole Perlman, and this may be his best work yet. His animated movies always felt like second-tier efforts (especially Shark Tale), but his live-action work has been on a steady upward trajectory, from Gulliver's Travels to Goosebumps and now this. 

What could have been a painful cash-in is instead an impressive and amusing detective flick that benefits from the care taken with it, from the writing to the many details tucked away in every scene. Although not a traditional Pokémon story, it manages to treat all of the characters, and the whole universe, with respect. Fans of the series should have a lot of fun with this, and movie fans who don't know much about the games can also have a lot of fun. I THINK it's a very good Pokémon movie, but I KNOW it's a very good movie.

8/10

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You can watch the full movie, for free, here.