You, Me & Tuscany (2026)

This may not be your first choice when it comes to a film to take up 105 minutes of your time, and it wasn't my first choice either, but You, Me & Tuscany aims to be a sunny and soppy bit of fun pairing up two leads that hopefully have enough charm to win over most viewers. How much fun you have with the film will depend on whether or not you DO consider the leads charming though.

Halle Bailey plays Anna, a young woman who tries to make a living from house-sitting. She's not great at it though, especially when caught in the act of wearing clothes that belong to someone she is working for. Down on her luck, majorly down in her finances, and considering some time away from it all, Anna enjoys an evening in the company of Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), who convinces her to take a long-overdue holiday to Italy. Once there, Anna takes a bit of a liberty, however, by staying at Matteo's empty villa. And a couple of Matteo's relatives pop in while Anna is trying on a ring that she found in the villa, leading to the obvious idea that Anna is due to marry Matteo. Soon enjoying time with the family, and unable to reveal the truth, things become more complicated when Anna falls for Matteo's cousin (actually more like a brother), Michael (Regé-Jean Page).

Written by Ryan Engle, fleshing out a story co-created with his wife, Kristin, You, Me & Tuscany is very silly and fanciful stuff from start to finish. I doubt anyone will start watching this without having an idea of where it will all end, but it's a shame that there are absolutely no surprises placed anywhere throughout the story, and too few laughs, despite the opportunity for them to be more liberally scattered around. It's a Christmas TV movie in a summer dress. You get the deceased parent, and the weight of their memory. You get the woman travelling somewhere out of her comfort zone, destine for a meet-cute with an unbelievably charming and good-hearted man. There's the sassy and fun best friend (played by Aziza Scott, sadly relegated to being present only via text message form for most of the runtime).And there's heavy-handed messaging about following your heart, being true to yourself, and becoming part of a new family unit.

It may not be the best feature helmed by director Kat Coiro, but she at least makes good use of some beautiful and sunny locations, although a couple of main interiors may have helped to keep the budget lower than it could have been. It's not at all cinematic, but it's generally cute and mildly enjoyable.

Bailey is decent in her role, as is Page, and the two leads certainly have some chemistry. It's not always there, anything too passionate dampened by the safe and sanitised approach to the material, but it appears just enough to make their will they/won't they journey something that viewers can feel invested in. Lorenzo de Moor has fun as he gets to appear both good and bad to people, and Marco Calvani is a highlight, portraying a friendly and useful Italian cab driver. Isabella Ferrari, Paolo Sassanelli, and Stefania Casini all feel believable enough as, respectively, the mother, father, and grandmother of Matteo, and Stella Pecollo is a lot of fun as Francesca, someone with an odd view on just what makes a happy marriage.

Some will find this pleasant enough. I can't imagine anyone being a huge fan of it though. It's decidedly average in every way, the kind of film that will probably only be remembered by people when it's picked up by a streaming service and given some promotion in one of their prime spots.

5/10

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Beast (2022)

A film is always in a bit of trouble if you end up thinking of other films you want to rewatch as soon as the end credits roll. Films that you think are better, or films that are just more comforting after you have endured something quite disappointing. I stayed focused on Beast for the full runtime, but a little voice in my head kept whispering “it’s been many years since you saw The Ghost & The Darkness”. So I think you can guess that I didn’t love this.

Idris Elba plays Dr. Nate Samuels, a man who has decided to take his two daughters on a trip to South Africa. The family will be shown around some of the local area by a good friend/expert guide named Martin (Sharlto Copley). Everything quickly takes a turn for the worse when the family end up being stalked by a rogue lion with a vendetta against humans. Having separated from a pride wiped out by poachers, this animal isn’t hunting for food. It’s out for revenge.

Writer Ryan Engle, fleshing out a story idea by Jaime Primak Sullivan, really drops the ball here, but is allowed to do so by a director, Baltasar Kormákur, who should know that more needs presented onscreen to cover up the weaknesses in the script. Most of us haven’t encountered a lion, for example, but I am sure we can all imagine how easily limbs would be torn and lost if we met one that was in a bad mood.

The CGI stays consistently good though, which is a big plus, and many scenes in the first half of the film work really well in a simplistic “it’s Jaws, but with a lion” way, so there’s enough to enjoy while the cracks start to appear. I also really enjoyed the score by Steven Price (I am listening to it right now while writing this review), a selection of music that evokes the right sense of geography and tension throughout without filing the soundtrack with every obvious and easiest choice. Although it is something I sometimes forget to mention, or speak of in the abstract rather than the specific, major kudos must go to those crafting the cinematography, especially for making the night scenes so dark and thrilling while also still keeping everything clear and visible enough.

The cast do what they can to help make this as watchable as possible. Elba has been a bona fire star for a good few years now, and if anyone can face off against an angry lion then I believe he can. Iyana Halley and Leah Jeffries are good as his daughters, respectively, Meredith and Norah, with the latter being the older sister who tries to be more pro-active in some of the dangerous encounters. And Copley is as good as ever, despite the fact that he is saddled with delivering a lot of the exposition and then being voted “most likely to die” in any scene that features all four of the main characters together. Despite some other supporting turns, the film generally stays focused on the quartet vs the lion (which is the strongest aspect of the script).

Although not a terrible film, Beast ends up folding under the weight of one implausibility atop another, which leads to an ending that is hard to care for. In fact, it’s sadly laughable. If you think big cats don’t have decent eyesight, don’t have great hearing, and wouldn’t sniff out potential prey hiding just beside them then maybe you will enjoy this more than I did. You will also have to accept that people can be mauled by a lion, while punching back at it, and somehow not watch their arms and legs being moved meters away from their body.

If you don’t like Elba or Copley then this will have even less appeal. If you do like them though, well, this isn’t the worst way you could spend 90 minutes. It just ends up being dragged down to something average when the bad outweighs the good.

5/10

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The Commuter (2018)

One of a number of generic action vehicles that director Jaume Collet-Sera made with star Liam Neeson, The Commuter has very little to recommend it. And yet, surprisingly, there are treats hidden away within it.

Neeson plays Michael, an ex-cop who now works for a life insurance company. Well . . . worked for them. He is let go, which means his train ride home may well be his last commute for a while. He ends up engaged in conversation with a woman (Vera Farmiga) who makes him a hypothetical offer of thousands of dollars to identify an individual on the train. The offer is less hypothetical than it first appears, however, and Michael ends up trying to find this person while also trying to save the lives of everyone on the train.

As preposterous and predictable as you think it’s going to be, The Commuter is also, like a number of other Neeson-led action vehicles, easy entertainment when you want something pretty brisk and silly. A lot of that is thanks to Neeson himself, of course, and many people will know in advance whether they want to see another action thriller barely indistinguishable from the many other action thrillers he has made over the past decade.

The script is nonsense. It’s hard to believe that three people - Ryan Engle, Philip de Blasi, and Byron Willinger - came together to complete this. Engle is the one with a few other decent titles to his name, including another Neeson vehicle, but this is very much “paint by numbers” around the star, and Collet-Sera directs it as one. There’s one genuinely tense moment, involving Neeson being stuck under the train at one point, but everything else plays out in a way that people will find completely unsurprising. Which may make it a comfortable viewing choice, as it was for me. 

The supporting cast is where you get some treats to make this worth your time. As well as Farmiga, there’s a supporting role for her long-time onscreen hubby (Ed Warren), Patrick Wilson. Sam Neill has a very small role, and he is always welcome. Jonathan Banks is as good as ever, as are both Andy Nyman and Florence Pugh. Clara Lago, Ella-Rae Smith, Roland Møller, Colin McFarlane, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, and Adam Nagaitis all do well enough, playing a variety of characters put in peril by the wild scheme that has Neeson at the heart of it.

Absolutely inessential, absolutely forgettable, and absolutely ridiculous, this is also a film that is absolutely easy to choose to watch when you are searching for something that won’t challenge you or cause you to overthink anything. You could even watch it during your own commute, if you have the time. 

4/10

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Breaking In (2018)

Do you remember Panic Room? It's an oft-overlooked entry in the filmography of David Fincher, although not as forgotten as The Game. Those two films have one thing in common. They are both superb thrillers, unjustly dismissed alongside a few other films that just happen to be modern classics. When I heard about Breaking In I immediately thought of Panic Room. The core idea is similar. That's the only comparison point between the two.

Gabrielle Union plays Shaun Russell, a woman who heads to the home of her late father in order to put things in order. She is there with her two children (played by Ajiona Alexus and Seth Carr). It's not too long until they're joined by some unwanted guests, a quartet of crooks who want inside the house to find $4M they believe is hidden in a safe on the premises. Things quickly go from bad to worse as Shaun finds herself locked out of the house while her children are held hostage inside. She's determined to get back in and save her family (hence the title).

It's not that this is a terrible movie, let me make that clear right now. When I watched Breaking In I felt that it passed the time easily enough. I was generally entertained, some of the cast stood out ahead of others, and it clocked in at a near-perfect runtime for this kind of thing (just under 90 minutes). It's not bad.

Unfortunately, it's not that good either. Considering the simple appeal of the premise, this should have been much better than it is. There's a feeling that everything has been clumsily slapped together, as opposed to being put together with real care. There's not enough moments allowing viewers to become accustomed to the geography of the house, for example, so one location just somehow links to another, and so on and so forth. The script, by Ryan Engle (from an idea by Jaime Primak Sullivan), is fairly weak, with Union absolutely defined by her maternal instinct, fair enough, while the criminals run through what seems to be a lengthy checklist of "standard criminal chatter 101". It's very telling indeed that this script from Engle is even weaker than another he worked on from the same year, Rampage.

Director James McTeigue fails to put any stamp on the proceedings, which is how he usually works (so many people still seem to think that V For Vendetta was directed by the Wachowskis), which is another thing that works against the end result. This is a film in need of something to lift it above the mass of clichés, and neither writer nor director offer up a thing.

Union is okay in the lead role. There are many other contenders who could have done the job better, but I find her to be a likeable presence in movies, and she's someone I can root for while she tries to outsmart villains and keep her cool. As for those villains, there may be four of them, but only two make a strong impression; Richard Cabral and Billy Burke. Cabral is the kind of guy who will do whatever it takes, making him a more threatening presence, while Burke seems to want everything to go as smoothly as possible, in a way that doesn't have to mean more bloodshed. Alexus and Carr are just fine as the imperilled children, even if they act a lot calmer than I would have in that situation (whether I was their age or the age I am now).

I like to think of myself as fairly easy to please, and those who know me can testify to that, and this will work for you if you're anything like me. I just don't think many people will love it, although it could certainly play better to women who can enjoy watching a badass mother who is actually . . . a badass MOTHER.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

Rampage (2018)

Say what you like about Dwayne Johnson, the man can do silly action spectacle with an admirably straight face (well, an arched eyebrow or pec twitch notwithstanding). He knows that he's not going to be called upon to do anything too serious, not yet anyway, and he most often stays comfortably in his wheelhouse. That might sound like I'm being a bit condescending and snooty but I'm really not. I enjoy seeing Johnson in most movies, he even tries to do his best in dross like Baywatch, but he excels at action fare, and he can sell some of the most ridiculous cinematic moments in recent years without viewers throwing their hands up in disgust and giving up on the movie. Who else could believably grab a speeding missile and turn it back towards enemies that were trying to kill him?

Rampage, loosely based on the videogame that I even managed to enjoy on my old, rubber-keyed, Spectrum 48K, is silly action spectacle. There's the main plot itself, a large albino gorilla is turned into a HUGE albino gorilla, with some anger issues, and there are also another couple of big creatures heading towards Chicago to cause massive amounts of destruction as they go on their . . . rampage. There are also the plot details, silliness wrapped in tech-speak to try and make it all sound plausible. You may think the conversations about genetic manipulation and pathogens are laughable, because they are, but they do the minimum required to kickstart the plot and explain events, as long as you don't think about what has been said as you move on to the next scene of entertaining destruction. And, if you need even more silliness, there's a moment that sees Johnson trying to use a damaged helicopter to surf/hover his way down a collapsing tower.

Johnson is very much at ease amidst all of the preposterous set-pieces, emanating his usual charisma and souped-up muscle power. He spends a lot of the runtime alongside Naomie Harris, who does well to avoid being overshadowed while she delivers most of the exposition in between the thrills, and the two human stars are overshadowed, but not literally, by some impressive CGI beasties. Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets to be amusingly charming and ambiguous as the man who is hoping to clean up the debris and capture the creatures, and Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy are the humans who need to weigh up their self-interests alongside the carnage.

Director Brad Peyton previously delivered this kind of Johnson-led spectacle with San Andreas, so we know that he CAN give audiences what they want (well, he kept me happy enough), but there's something here that's a bit lacking. I still found enough to enjoy, I was entertained enough by the scale of the destruction, but maybe having to incorporate enough little nods to the original videogame was enough to detract from a more simplistic slice of fun. Yes, I realise that I just accused Rampage of not being simplistic enough. It took four writers to make this. Four. To write a script that turns that classic videogame into a mainstream blockbuster.

Still, it's better than Battleship.

6/10

The blu can be bought here.
Americans can buy it here.

Non-Stop (2014)

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Liam Neeson is a badass. He's a potential hero, but also very troubled. There's a plane full of people, with one of them being a nasty criminal type trying to grab a LOT of money. And he/she is not only trying to commit a major crime, he's also hoping to frame our hero for the job.

Yes, Non-Stop is a . . . . . non-stop selection of cliches and familiar action thriller movie moments. Which doesn't make it any less fun. A large part of the enjoyability is down to Neeson, who has been taking on this kind of role so often in recent years that he may well end up in The Expendables 10, whenever that comes along.

Things don't start off too well though. If you're not rolling your eyes when you watch Neeson use a toothbrush to stir his breakfast whiskey then you'll have a second chance to do so when he passes by a roster of usual suspects on his way to boarding his flight. There's also Julianne Moore, playing someone desperate to sit in a window seat. Everything is easily forgiven, however, as soon as Neeson gets some text messages telling him that he needs to get $150M in to a specific account or someone is going to die in 20 minutes. That starts a race against the clock, with Neeson growing increasingly desperate, and perhaps out of control, as he determines to catch his quarry.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (the man responsible for a couple of fun horror movies in the past decade or so - namely Orphan and House Of Wax), and written by Christopher Roach, John W. Richardson and Ryan Engle, Non-Stop is a film that probably shouldn't work. The fact that it does, and does so well, is testament to the zippy script and the fact that Collet-Serra directs with no small amount of style and inventiveness.

Neeson is as Neeson as ever. He's a brand by this point, but a bloody good one. If you're going to invest in a Nesson then treat yourself to the original and best. Acccept no substitute. Moore does well with a role that could have easily been completely thankless, and both Michelle Dockery and Lupita Nyong'o do well as two air stewardesses. The former has more to do, but it's nice to just see Nyong'o in a situation not half as harrowing as her most famous role to date. Scoot McNairy, Nate Parker, Corey Stoll, Omar Metwally and Quinn McColgan do a decent job with their roles, despite often being asked to act nervy, or aggressive, or whatever suits the mood of the crowd as they react to Neeson's actions.

This is not a film that will blow your mind, or change the face of cinema. It doesn't have to. Few films do. This simply takes some pleasing ingredients and throws them together to make something that stands up as a piece of superior blockbuster entertainment. Translation = it's not that hard to build a decent movie around Liam Neeson kicking ass.

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Stop-Blu-ray-DVD-DIGITAL-UltraViolet/dp/B00HLTD49C/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_twi_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1419274222&sr=1-1&keywords=non-stop