Anaconda (2025)

If the world was crying out for a comedic reboot of the Anaconda movie series then nobody decided to mention that to me. There's a chance that the world wasn't crying out for such a thing, but then . . . why would this exist otherwise?

Jack Black plays Doug McCallister, a man stuck making wedding videos when he really wants to be directing movies. His long-time friend, Ronald Griffin Jr. (Paul Rudd), is an actor unable to really gain any momentum in his career. Ronald doesn't have much going for him, but he does have the rights to Anaconda, apparently, which leads to him convincing Doug, Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) to travel to the Amazon and rework a movie they all have a strangely strong connection with. They meet Ana (Daniela Melchior) once over there, a capable woman who ends up being added to the small cast of their movie, and eventually also meet a very real, and very large, anaconda.

Written by Kevin Etten and directed by Tom Gormican, who both entertained me with their last collaboration, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, this is one of the strangest and least satisfying mainstream movies I have watched in some time. Okay, I wasn't exactly hyped for this when I first heard about the tonal change in the series, but I still assumed that my appreciation of the main cast members would allow me to get some enjoyment from it. I was VERY wrong.

Jack Black can be very funny, Paul Rudd is someone I consider a bit of a treasure, Steve Zahn has been delivering delightful turns for decades now, and Thandiwe Newton has done enough good work by now to make me forgive her stilted performance in the second Mission: Impossible movie. I want to be clear about how much I like all of these people in the right movies. This is not the right movie. It's a tonal mess that doesn't do well enough with the jokes about film-making, doesn't deliver any proper snakey thrills, and doesn't have anything else going for it, with the exception of a couple of fun cameos. Zahn is a highlight, but Dan Silveira upstages everyone as a snake-handler named Timo who has the advantage of possessing a snake that he claims is friendly and obedient, despite the size of the thing. Melchior, and the entire sub-plot that she's involved with, feels completely unnecessary, and I would have much preferred the movie to concentrate on the other added conflict that is brought up at just around the halfway mark before being fumbled and discarded within the space of a few scenes.

Undemanding viewers should still find one or two chuckles here, but they're too few and far between throughout the 99-minute runtime. Other than those fleeting bright spots, nothing else works. At all. And it's saying something when you watch a 2025 Anaconda movie and start thinking fondly of the uneven special effects in the 1997 film.

Maybe not the worst mainstream movie I've seen this decade, but I am currently struggling to think of one I would rank below it. 

3/10

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Eenie Meanie (2025)

Written and directed by Shawn Simmons, Eenie Meanie has the air of something given to someone finally allowed a shot at feature film-making after years spent helping to create entertainment for the small screen. A quick glance through the filmography of Simmons confirms that, yes, that's exactly what has happened. Simmons has his name on about 30 or 40 various TV show episodes, but this is his first major film credit. He helps himself immensely by getting Samara Weaving for the main role. Sadly, he spends a lot of the movie then working against himself.

Weaving plays Edie (nicknamed Eenie Meanie by some). Edie used to be the best getaway driver in the business, but she got out of that life. Unfortunately, her on/off boyfriend, John (Karl Glusman), didn't. He now owes Nico (Andy Garcia) a large debt, and Nico has a plan for John to repay that debt with a major score. It will need an excellent getaway driver though.

There's nothing new here. The super-skilled getaway driver has been done in a number of movies. The ex-criminal unable to go straight because they've been manipulated into one last job has been done in almost every other crime flick from the past hundred years. And daring heists that have people using skill and a bit of luck to defy impossible odds? Well, I'm sure you can name a few films with that main plot point. So the only real novelty here is having Weaving as the central figure, and it's her charisma and talent that make this more watchable than it otherwise would be.

Simmons makes the mistake of not really nailing down the tone, which doesn't help. Some moments are fun, some moments are thrilling, and some moments take viewers on a hard turn into a road called downbeat street. If these different strands flowed and blended well then Eenie Meanie could have been a pleasant surprise, but they do not. None of the fun moments reach their full potential as viewers are reminded of the high stakes, the same goes for the thrills (a couple of expected driving stunts aside), and the most downbeat moments feel as if they've been spliced in from another film entirely.

Weaving is great. When is she not? That's rhetorical. Don't answer, especially as I anxiously try to remember the many film appearances she has racked up that aren't deserving of her good work. Glusman is fine, although he has to struggle at portraying a character who feels quite irredeemable. He's a greedy and selfish idiot, and doesn't get any big moment to turn things around. Garcia delivers the goods in a few scenes that are real highlights, and the rest of the supporting cast members - including Steve Zahn, Jermaine Fowler, Marshawn Lynch, Randall Park, Mike O'Malley, and Chris Bauer - are almost all wasted. Nobody is given enough time or character development, which is more annoying when it means more time spent in the company of Glusman's character.

There's a nice muscle car being put through its paces in the third act, the score is decent, and Weaving gets to carry the film. It's just a shame that there's nothing more to it, and it's a shame that I was thinking about twenty better movies I could have rewatched instead of giving this one 106 minutes of my time. 

5/10

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8-Bit Christmas (2021)

If there's anything that really embodies the spirit of Christmas, it's a small child becoming increasingly desperate as they start to realise that "Santa" probably isn't going to deliver the amazing new videogame system that they've had their heart set on for so long. That's the heart of 8-Bit Christmas, a film that is as much an ode to the joy of the Nintendo Entertainment System as it is to those childhood years spent pleading and scheming with parents for assistance in ensuring that the perfect present ends up under the tree by Christmas morning.

Starting in the here and now, Jake Doyle (Neil Patrick Harris) is being constantly pestered by a daughter (Annie, played by Sophia Reid-Gantzert) who wants a mobile phone for Christmas. Once they get back to Jake's childhood home, Jake shows his daughter his prized Nintendo Entertainment System, something he spent time wanting as badly as Annie wants a phone. This is the cue to move back through time, where we join young Jake (Winslow Fegley), his sister, Lizzie (Bellaluna Resnick), herself desperate for a Cabbage Patch Kids doll, and the parents (played by June Diane Raphael and Steve Zahn) trying to please their kids without necessarily giving in to their every whim. We see Jake developing his love/obsession for the videogame system, and the numerous setbacks he experiences as he tries to ensure the one thing that he thinks will guarantee him one of the best Christmases ever.

Director Michael Dowse has a filmography full of comedy features, with one or two notable exceptions, but this nostalgia-tinged romp (not his first film making use of that rose-tinted filter) is one of his best. He seems to work well with writer Kevin Jakubowski, someone I wasn't familiar with at all before this film, and makes excellent use of a near-perfect cast. It also helps that Christmas looms large in every scene, it's a deadline that may make or break the happiness of our lead characters, or so they think, and it's easy to remember that feeling of wanting something so badly that not getting it would signify the end of the world, because that's how huge and catastrophic it can feel when you're a child with that sharp focus.

Harris and Reid-Gantzert frame everything nicely, and the story structure maintains a nice connection between the past and the present as it shows the material side of Christmas counter-balanced by adults who know that there can be much more value in quality time and love shared between family members. Fegley is great fun as young Jake, whether he's coming up with a new plan to get his hands on a Nintendo or helping his parents make his sister happy. Resnick is cute enough, and her sibling relationship with Fegley's character feels natural and real. Both Raphael and Zahn are superb, even if the former is slightly overshadowed by the eventual front and centre positioning of the latter. Other children onscreen feel well-suited to their roles, Cyrus Arnold once again portrays a bully with aplomb (not sure how many he has played in his career so far, but I think he's three for three in the last films I have seen him star in), and there's a fun cameo role for David Cross.

An easy film to recommend to those who enjoyed the style and tone of The Wonder Years (and who didn't enjoy the style and tone of The Wonder Years?), 8-Bit Christmas is a funny and heart-warming Christmas story that should somehow connect with every viewer, whether it's a child hoping for their first mobile phone or an adult remembering the time when they wanted nothing more than a videogame console, Cabbage Patch Kid doll, or any big seller that seemed to disappear from shelves quicker than you could add it as a P.S. on your letter to Santa.

8/10

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Mubi Monday: Rescue Dawn (2006)

Written and directed by the always-interesting Werner Herzog, who turned the subject of his documentary "Little Dieter Needs To Fly" into a narrative feature, Rescue Dawn feels like one of the stranger Herzog movies, which is saying something when you consider his whole filmography.

Christian Bale plays Dieter Dengler, a German-born American citizen who is shot down in his aircraft during the Vietnam War. He ends up in a jungle prison, doing time alongside other individuals who have given up all hope of freedom until the war is won. Dieter is quick to start plans for an escape, despite the protestations of his fellow prisoners. The prison itself may not be that challenging to escape from, it's the jungle environment surrounding them that makes it a life-threatening challenge.

Things start off a bit wobbly here, to put it bluntly. Herzog depicts the downing of Dieter's plane in a way that shows him to be far less confident with a special effect sequence than he is with actors and ordinary people. But it's not long before things settle down after that, with the main character confused and pained by his captors.

Although I have said that this feels like one of the stranger Herzog movies, the reason for that is because it feels like his most mainstream film. It's a prisoner of war drama, and the moments that feel most like a prisoner of war drama are the moments that feel less . . . Herzogian, but there are also a lot of great little moments showing people handling their very extreme amounts of stress in different ways, and forging different connections with one another.

Bale is fantastic in the main role, giving the kind of performance that allows him to once again also change his physicality as he gets put through the wringer, and there are two superb supporting performances from Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn. Both are very different in the way they handle their prison life, but both are equally good and fitting in their roles. And everyone else onscreen does decent work, whether they're portraying American military personnel or Vietnamese soldiers.

Despite the documentary already being out there (and I still need to see it for myself), it's easy to see why Herzog was drawn to the material for a second feature. Especially with this cast and the way it very much feels like a well-plotted Hollywood drama. I'm not sure how many liberties were taken with the original tale, but it turns into yet another standout film from a director who has given us more than his fair share.

8/10

Noir November: Out Of Sight (1998)

George Clooney has a lot to thank Steven Soderbergh for. The two have had a successful working relationship for some years now, but Out Of Sight seems to be where it all began. Adapting the novel by Elmore Leonard, it really feels like this film had the benefit of great timing. Any closer to the releases of Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty and this could have been lost among the tidal wave of imitators that came along. Any later and it might have all felt irrelevant. At the very least, the full cast might not have been available, and this is a movie that gets some major brownie points thanks to the casting.

Clooney is Jack Foley, a bank robber who can do more with his brains and charm than many others could do with guns and violence. But it's not so easy being a career criminal when you're currently behind bars. When he finds out about a potential big score, one that won't wait around forever, he engineers a prison break. The bad news is that he breaks out of the prison just as U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) pulls up in her car. Jack then has to take her hostage, the two of them stuck in the boot of a car while his main accomplice (Buddy, played by Ving Rhames) drives them to a safe spot. The good news is that the two seem to immediately feel something between them. But will it be enough to make Sisco forget her duty as a Marshall?

Scott Frank takes the source material and transfers it all to the screen in a way that nicely balances out the humour and violence, while never once losing a single drop of cool. Soderbergh helps, obviously, with his filming style, shot choices (kudos to editor Anne V. Coates), and the brilliant decision to let David Holmes create an appropriate score, mixed with some classic choices (Dean Martin, The Isley Brothers, and Herbie Hancock all make an appearance - well, not an "appearance" but you know what I mean).

Clooney and Lopez are both fantastic, generating the kind of heat between them that seems to emanate off the screen in waves. Okay, so the former can make that happen with many a co-star, but let's not take anything away from a real highlight in the career of Lopez. She's sexy, strong (apart from her bad choice in men), and feels very much like an equal to her male co-star. Rhames is a constant delight as Buddy, a criminal who always has to confess his misdeeds to his sister, Don Cheadle is suitably menacing as the kind of criminal Foley and Buddy would never want to work with, and Steve Zahn is very funny as a hapless crook who thinks he can run with the big boys. There's also some great support from Dennis Farina (playing Sisco's father), Albert Brooks (the mark), Michael Keaton (revisiting the character he played in Jackie Brown), Luis Guzman, Isaiah Washington, Catherine Keener, Nancy Allen, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Funky, funny, and pretty damn sexy too, Out Of Sight occupies a space nicely in between the two other Leonard adaptations mentioned here. It's neither as funny as Get Short, nor as rich in characterisation as Tarantino's film, but it mixes those two main ingredients together to create an end result that easily ranks alongside those movies.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Sight-Collectors-George-Clooney/dp/0783229402/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1416847022&sr=1-2&keywords=out+of+sight

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April Fools: Knights Of Badassdom (2013)

When I first saw the trailer for Knights Of Badassdom I knew that I was going to love it. Well, I felt very strongly that I was going to love it. It had a great cast and a premise that I thought couldn't fail. Unfortunately, the film was held back for a long, long time before finally being released, after a great deal of studio interference, apparently. It would be nice to see the original movie that director Joe Lynch intended people to see, but it's hard to think of any improvements that would turn this into something truly great. As it stands, it's massively disappointing, mainly because of how it fails to fully exploit the brilliant central idea.

Steve Zahn and Peter Dinklage play a couple of guys who enjoy a bit of LARP (Live Action Role Playing) now and again. They drag their buddy (Ryan Kwanten) along to a big event, in order to cheer him up after he was unceremoniously ditched by his girlfriend, and start to play. Unfortunately, one of the props being used for the game is a bit too real, and one of the main character unwittingly summons a demon that quickly starts preying on the helpless LARPers all around.

What do you think? Sounds fantastic, right? It really does, and it was that central concept that had me salivating for a long time, eager for the film to get any kind of release that would allow me to at least see the damn thing. Well, maybe Joe Lynch has some super-duper extended cut that rejigs everything and magically turns the movie into what many people hoped it would be, but I'm not holding my breath.

The main problem seems to lie with the screenplay by Matt Wall and Kevin Dreyfuss. It just doesn't pack in enough mirth, doesn't throw enough gore in to compensate, and spends far too little time with the best characters, played by Zahn and Dinklage (both on fine form). Kwanten is someone I like, but he's not treated well here. I spent many of his scenes just wishing that his character had been wiped from the movie, he was simply unnecessary and uninteresting. Summer Glau brightens things up slightly by being Summer Glau, and Jimmi Simpson is pretty hilarious for almost every moment that he's onscreen, but there's still not enough to raise this to the level of something even average.

The direction from Lynch seems to add to the mishandling of the material, but maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe all of my problems with the movie DO reflect on the studio interference more than the potential that the movie had to be something great, but we can always only ultimately critique whatever we have available to us, and this IS Knights Of Badassdom. For the time being, at least. And, in this incarnation of the movie, Lynch seems happy to go along with the undercooked helpings served up by Wall and Dreyfuss, before using the finale to turn off anyone who has watched all the way through and tried to convince themselves that it was worth the wait.

Not badass. Just bad.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Knights-Badassdom-Blu-ray-Peter-Dinklage/dp/B00HOGRJQG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392233506&sr=8-1&keywords=knights+of+badassdom

Chicken Little (2005)

Unjustly overlooked by fans of fun animation, Chicken Little remains a firm favourite of mine and provides a great mix of cute, wacky and outright crazy.

The basic story is all about our titular character (voiced by Zach Braff), an innocent chicken who finds himself the butt of many jokes when he mistakenly tries to warn people that the sky is falling after something hits him on the head. The crowd that gathers around him assumes that it was just an acorn. It wasn't, but just how will Chicken Little manage to convince everyone that he is the only one who knows the worrying truth. Perhaps his friends - Runt Of The Litter (Steve Zahn), Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack) and Fish Out Of Water (Dan Molina) - can be of some use. Perhaps.

Rattling along at a great pace, Chicken Little marries lovely visuals to a multitude of great gags, big and small, and also throws in the usual Disney life lesson. Thankfully, the life lesson part isn't overdone and plays perfectly for the intended audience while the laughs keep coming thick and fast.

The voice cast also includes people like Patrick Warburton, Harry Shearer, Wallace Shawn, Fred Willard, Patrick Stewart, Don Knotts, Amy Sedaris and even Adam West. Which means that it's brilliant.

Lots of people had a hand in forming the screenplay and adding dialogue, including director Mark Dindal, but this doesn't leave the movie feeling overcrowded. On the contrary, Dindal in his directorial role makes sure that everything feels perfectly paced and balanced.

A film that doesn't deserve to be so easily forgotten and/or dismissed - give Chicken Little a viewing and find out how enjoyable it is for yourself.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chicken-Little-Blu-ray-Mark-Dindal/dp/B000MR8SRI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388664621&sr=8-2&keywords=chicken+little