Picoreview: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: startlingly enjoyable!

Look, I won’t kid you. When P&P&Z came out as a book I thought, “*God* I wish I’d thought of that.” It didn’t matter if it was going to be a one-hit wonder (and it apparently was; SENSE & SENSIBILITY & SEAMONSTERS apparently didn’t do nearly as well), it was just such a great idea that ( Read more... )

When we moved into this house we bought a new Samsung stereo, one which we could theoretically dock our Samsung phones right into and play music on them from. It has backup CD/DVD/USB/JPG/whatthefuckall options as well, but in theory one could download an app and stick the phone on and voila.

Apparently it works really well if you have an iPhone or ( Read more... )

Picoreview: Jessica Jones: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

I had a concerned rant about Jessica Jones after the first trailer was released, and I am very very glad to say that my concerns were unfounded. The story was not, as it seemed from that trailer, “the girl is a victim but now she’s Fighting Back.” It was considerably more “the girl’s ( Read more... )

A week ago I went into Dublin and had a Movie Day. I went to see The Martian, Everest and The Intern, and decided not to go to Macbeth because I wouldn’t have gotten home until the heat death of the universe, or something a lot like it, like, eleven-thirty at night. :)

The Martian was, somewhat astonishingly, as good as everybody’s been saying it ( Read more... )

I’ve watched the Jessica Jones trailer, which is not particularly usual for me, and I’m profoundly torn on it.

On one hand, FINALLY we get a female-led superhero story. Jessica Jones is a good character, long varied comic book history, popular following, etc: all of that is good. Like every character who’s had a showcase of (up until now, his) own ( Read more... )

Picoreview: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut: very disappointing.

There were enough longer scenes and stuff that it was clear we weren’t watching the theatre release, but we were expecting something called The Rogue Cut to, y’know, I don’t know, heavily feature Rogue, or something.

And it did, sure, more than the original, but ultimately Rogue ( Read more... )

Picoreview: San Andreas: exciting!

I saw a review that said “this is a movie about earthquakes having a vendetta against the Rock,” which mostly made me think “Didn’t they see 2012, in which earthquakes were literally chasing John Cusack?”

San Andreas was much better than 2012, which is not meant to damn with faint praise, given how utterly awful ( Read more... )

Picoreview: Spy: very very funny. Very vulgar. Very kick-ass. Very funny.

Two weeks ago I’d had no intention at all of seeing Spy, because the trailer made it look like it was probably all about making mockery of the fat lady. I then read a review from a reviewer whose politics I like (Scott Mendelson; he reviews movies for Forbes and is a left- ( Read more... )

Picoreview: Tomorrowland: boring.

I really wanted to like it, as it had a message I certainly support, and there were a lot of good *pieces*, but overall it failed to click.

It did not help that the opening seven or eight hours twenty minutes felt like somebody higher up at Disney had said “The audience is never going to understand this if you don’ ( Read more... )

Picoreview: Woman in Gold: well worth watching.

Woman in Gold is based on the true story of an Austrian Jew whose family artwork was stolen by the Nazi occupation, and her international legal battle, sixty years later, to get it back. Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann and Ryan Reynolds plays her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, who comes from a long line ( Read more... )