DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES ... so, it was worth sitting through the bore that is RISE it seems. Apes reboot kicks up a gear or two in this sequel, set ten years after the events of the first film, and it's a perfect, grim bonanza. Chief chimp Caesar has now organized his kind in a tribe, and hi...

THE BABYSITTER ... see, I really dislike slashers. Especially teen slashers. And I don't like the phony Stranger Things 80s forced nostalgia either. And McG is a total hack. So it took me some time to get in the mood to watch this because, this is essentially a retro teen slasher, or so they market...

MAYHEM ... MAYHEM is the kind of movie we used to like back in the day. It's part DEMONI, part CRANK, with the added fact it's funnier and better scripted by CRANK. Where CRANK ultimately gets buried in its sheer incompetence despite the interesting premise, MAYHEM simply does not - the leads are l...

THE FOREIGNER ... this inauspicious title hides one of the best films I've seen recently. When an elderly proprietor of a London-based Chinese restaurant (Jackie Chan in a fantastic role) loses his daughter in a terrorist bombing, he goes all out to find out the perps and punish the vigilante style...

STAR WARS : ROGUE ONE ... after the unmitigated disaster which was the episode VII I had nothing but low...well, even sub-zero hopes for this spinoff. As it happens, I was treated to possibly the best Star Wars film since ROTJ. To be honest with you - it's Star Wars in name only. Gareth Edwards ess...

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS ... Valerian is this season's JOHN CARTER - a very, very, very entertaining SF actioner which, for the reasons unbeknownst to me, completely bombed on the BO (sans China where it pulled break even overall) and buried a potentially promising franchise. Val...

BRIGHT ... I will take the liberty to suspect that the most of negative reviews on BRIGHT are the result of an advance smear campaign against Max Landis (who was revealed as one of those Hollywood touchers in the days that followed) - because, Bright really ain't that bad. Hell, it ain't bad after ...

BABY DRIVER ... so imagine the horror on my face when this film, after a dynamite start, began unraveling. I really liked the first 20 minutes (Bellbotoms & Harlem Shuffle). Then I wanted to like Neat Neat Neat but then it started being...a bit too jazzy-funky for me. And then I figured it out ...

THE FOREIGNER ... this inauspicious title hides one of the best films I've seen recently. When an elderly proprietor of a London-based Chinese restaurant (Jackie Chan in a fantastic role) loses his daughter in a terrorist bombing, he goes all out to find out the perps and punish the vigilante style...

HITMAN'S BODYGUARD ... Samuel L. Jackson plays a notorious hitman who has to be escorted from England to The Hague to serve as a key witness to the prosecution in a war crimes trial against a ruthless Belarussian tyrant (Gary Oldman, icy as always). After conventional ways fail, it's up to the self...

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES ... so the word goes that the sequels of this second APES reboot, those being DAWN and WAR are superb films. Shame, then, this first part is a boring two hours of almost nothing until apes take charge and start fucking shit up. Sure, the CGI is great, but really hardl...

MESSAGE FROM THE KING ... Netflix original about a South African taxi driver who goes to LA to find out what happened to his sister starts fairly interesting, but as it moves along it gradually sinks into your standard "standup guy cleanses a den of depravity" kind of story. Still, there'...

SHOT CALLER ... a gripping story of one white collar Joe Average's downfall, who is reborn as an Aryan brotherhood thug inside a maximum security prison. Great performance by Danish (!) Nikolaj Coster-Waldau aka Jaime Lannister in the lead role - lots to love her for people who are into prison film...

UNKNOWN ... Liam Neeson plays a top American scientist who shows up for a Berlin lecture, then it all goes very strange following his car crash en route back to the airport to pick up a forgotten suitcase. What starts as a Twilight Zone episode carefully unravels into a network of intrigue and dece...

SAFE HOUSE ... before diddly dicking with Alien clones such as LIFE, Swedish helmer Daniel Espinosa directed this CIA thriller set in South Africa where a bored rookie agent (Ryan Reynolds) suddenly gets to deal with a legitimate crisis once a sought-after traitor (Denzel Washington) resurfaces and...