The Brown Note Movie Review

The Beach author, Alex Garland's second feature as director (after moving through some prominent screen-writing with Danny Boyle) Annihilation, was everything this empty and wildly overrated first film was claimed to be. Only Oscar Isaac and elements of the production design shine.

Like with Jason Statham movies, I'm the connoisseur when it comes to that titanic body of work, Liam Neeson movies. This is a very high entry, bolstered by great acting and characterizations from Neeson and the always brilliant Ed Harris.

Memorable, timely, atmospheric and thought provoking entry into the modern horror cannon directed by David Robert Mitchell.

There's no doubt South African director Neill Blomkamp fell away a bit with his follow up to District 9 but I still had a lot of time for Elysium, this, his next project was an unmitigated disaster. Fair play to him for actually making money with such a terrible and inexplicable film but it's far too close to the awfulness of the latter Transformer movies.

This Finnish action-adventure disaster is a true oddity from director by Jalmari Helander , for instance, what the living hell is Samuel L. Jackson doing here as the President of the United States. Awful and in a weird way.

The undoubted runt of the otherwise excellent four main Avengers films is purposeless and a near stand alone mess that almost interrupts the arc of the other three. Given all involved it is a surprisingly low-tier entry in to the Marvel movie universe. New franchise offshoots are set up to little effect and a potentially interesting artificial intelligence villain story-line is very muddied, plus...

Directed by Tony Mahony and Angus Sampson  (who is also the lead actor) this Aussie drug smuggling comedy punches miles above its tiny expectations and is an absolute blast. Hysterical and with a hugely distressing toilet situation.

Brian Knappenberger presents a near perfect doco about the hugely inspiring Aaron Swartz, who traded in a life of wealth for one of political and internet activism. He showed the just like with Julian Assange, if you really trouble the people in power, the hammer of the gods will come down on you. Facing terribly excessive and punitive legal problems, he took his own life at 2 years old.

Alex Gibney is undoubtedly one of the most important documentary makers of this century but I felt like I'd seen it all before with his take on Scientology, something I feel is over-represented anyway.

Much like the franchise itself, I clicked into gear around the excellent Fast 5 and am quite the connoisseur of this guilty pleasure. Furious 7 will always be remembered as the last to feature star Paul Walker, Killed during a break in filming resulting in a box office supanova when it was finally released. Near maintains the high standard set by 5 and deals with the death of franchise lead in a s...

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns in near fabulous directoral debut with a hugely relevant adult comedy about, well, modern relationships through the male prism of pornography. Scarlett Johansson is spectacular.

For Jason Statham fans this is a stop tier Statham film that flopped massively. A little narrative unevenness for sure but a great character (consumed by gambling addiction) and lead performance, in a fascinating setting, telling a compelling story, backed up by a great cast.

The yearly roundup. For some reason.

For me above Blue Velvet as the finest stand-alone movie David Lynch has ever made. A beguiling and, for its last act, heartbreakingly sad masterpiece on the destruction of optimism, hope and dreams. It asks a lot from the viewer and repays. Naomi Watts is unforgettable.

Maybe they made it just to do it but they pulled it off with some style. Tom Hardy natural and human in a movie set entirely in a car, with no one else on screen.

Paul Thomas Anderson ranks first amongst his likely peers, the Finchers and Nolans of the directing world but this detective yarn written by the legendary Thomas Pynchon (author of the only book I quit on) really threw me on first viewing. Without a satisfying plot, a story like this should be sunk but it's actually closer to the existentially gumshoe classic, The Long Goodbye. On second viewing I...

Highly impressive, brilliantly acted and even well directed but obtuse and unlikable true-life wrestling drama.

Kinda weird to see Ridley Scott turn in such an incompetent mess or being able to spend such a large sum of other peoples money making such an odd film, so badly, about a subject no one was asking for.

Laura Poitras' essential, Oscar winning documentary about Edward Snowden's whistle-blow is incredible in what happened but sadly not that great of a film.

Director Kevin MacDonald is one of the only modern directors of his stature to push on with both documentaries and films simultaneously, often to superb effect. Jude Law is excellent against type as a Scottish submarine stealer in this imaginative and criminally ignored heist drama.

Both director, J.C. Chandor, and star, Oscar Isaac, have quietly amassed excellent and rather underappreciated filmography and this near-superb talky about city corruption during a particularly violent year in New York, fits that mold exactly.

Great idea but overrated debut from director Yann Damange, who puts the excellent Jack O'Connell as a soldier in Belfast, during a riot in 1971. Good but not great.

This superb French entry into the perhaps non-existent, rich-man-gets-kidnapped genre from director Lucas Belvaux is a winner. The brilliant Yvan Attal finds his kidnappers are just the start of his problems as EVERYONE turns on him, as a deeply sympathetic character, who can't find solace anywhere, not from even from his own children or the police. A minor classic.

I'm being generous here not paying out on this travesty more, as only the first film was even watchable. Bearing all the hallmarks of many Stallone written or produced movies, mainly and atrocious script. Leaden and obvious in every way.

Everything its unasked for predecessor wasn't. Continually laugh-out-loud funny, very self aware, witty, far less anemic and one of the best straight comedies of the decade. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum shine far brighter the second time around and Ice Cube is the perfect angry foil.