After a world championship win in the previous film, the third installment of the Pitch Perfect franchise finds the Bellas lost in the pangs of post-graduation depression. They work various unappealing jobs, from food truck to Veterinarian’s office, while Beca (Anna Kendrick) and Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) stay the closest to singing. The former soon quits her job as a junior producer a record label and the latter struggles with her one woman street show "Fat Amy Winehouse". So when Aubrey (Anna Camp) tells the girls about an opportunity to play on a USO tour around the Mediterranean, they seize the occasion to reunite one last time... 

Warning 1: Anyone who’s seen 'Sex and the City 2' might get a tingling sensation of déjà-vu here, seeing familiar characters in an exotic location meet attractive men and do a bunch of outlandish things for no apparent reason. 
Warning 2: Anyone who’s seen any instalment of 'The Hangover' franchise may also suffer from déjà-vu as the opening sequence showcases the Bellas singing Britney to a bunch of thugs on a yacht off the French Riviera, until Fat Amy attacks said thugs and burns down the yacht. We then skip to 3 weeks earlier… 

On the plus side, in spite of having completely forgotten 'Pitch Perfect' and not having seen its sequel at all, I was able to catch up and follow 'Pitch Perfect 3' from the get go. Another plus was seeing the 12 year old girls who had been watching it as well step out of the movie theatre with delighted grins and joyful energy. Their parents were grinning too, by the way. ​

Added to this daddy issues duet, we also have a trio of underdeveloped romance stories: Chloe (Brittany Snow) getting together with Chicago their US military guide (Matt Lanter) after a series of mildly embarrassing exchanges, Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) falling into an offbeat bond with an equally eccentric musician, and Theo (Guy Burnet), DJ Khaled’s right hand man, falling for Beca though it’s never fully delved into but given his longing gazes, one can only assume it’s not all just for her talent. Between the contest, the romances, the daddies and the girls respective futures also a theme, there seems to be too much going on already. And then it all turns action thriller with a group kidnapping that definitely snatched my suspension of disbelief away for good. Explosions and side romances can be fun, but do not a strong comedy make. 

Instead of packing the script with so many things and all much to superficially, the film might have benefitted with more focus and depth (yes, it’s a light comedy, but light comedies need depth too). For example, Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) aka Bella’s latest addition, is a songwriter. Yet except for a few platitudes, nothing is made of this. If DJ Khaled is to sign Beca as a rising star and if the Bellas are to clearly surpass their opponents, didn’t the finale scream for a Golden Globe worthy original song instead of a George Michael cover? And wasn’t there more to show about Aubrey’s hidden fear or singing and the place it had with each and everyone of them? And how on earth can they do all those numbers with absolutely no notice and no rehearsals to show for it? Maybe a rehearsal would have been a better moment to break the news of Chloe getting into Vet school, instead of wrapping up everyone’s story rushedly at the very end.

The kids antics aren’t quite cute enough to endear us to them and as characters they’re pretty flat largely because the clunky script doesn’t give them anything believable to do. There’s a gentle “kids should get out more” message that doesn’t hold up considering these kids can barely go ten minutes without nearly getting killed in some irresponsible way. Kids outsmarting adults because they have a more simplistic view of the world is a fine plot device but this film fails to pull it off, these kids are just reckless and kind of stupid.

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All that aside, the premise was genius, and watching a pregnant serial killer made for a few deliciously unusual and disturbing scenes. It also made me very curious how men would react to the film, as the tradition of the helpless and highly sexualised female victim is now cleverly replaced by two sexually predatory men (one of them still living with his mother), in addition to a tough spinstress type and a young woman (Gemma Whelan) who will refuse to be a victim. I also imagine that one specific scene might be specifically painful to male audiences.

The choice of locations was also great: starting with a strange animal shop full of snakes and spiders, we move to a 70s disco night at a pub, with crucial moments later taking place at a climbing club and at a Halloween party. All greatly enhanced by Ryan Eddleston’s cinematography, which hits the perfect balance of beautiful, disturbing, realistic and almost grotesque.

Performances were also strong overall, with a few great scenes, though my favorite was Jo Hartley as Ruth’s midwife, as her utter sensitivity and truthfulness anchored in the tragic reality of the story, yet (and therefore) become the only character to give me the chuckles during the film.

The saving grace of 'Bitter Harvest', aside from its vitally important premise, is its cinematography. Milsome beautifully captures the lush tranquillity of the village the film opens with as well as the desolate hopelessness later on. His cinematography was the absolute highlight of the film for me.
Overall 'Bitter Harvest' filled me with regret and sadness. Not, as intended, due to witnessing millions of people starving to death, but the waste of opportunity at giving this important story the attention it deserves. I want this film to be great, to be a must see showcase of what happened, but I feel it does a disservice to this rather important event in history. The overly melodramatic script is its undoing, eliciting laughter where gravitas should reign. 'Bitter Harvest' doesn’t come close to the epic it wants to be, and wanting to be that epic ultimately sets it up to fail. Kudos to Mendeluk for bringing this story and its events to the big screen. I just can’t help but wish for better execution in bringing this story to life.

Out now!

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Clay (T.J. Miller) runs a branch of his late fathers company but his sister (Jennifer Aniston) is the ruthless CEO with a grudge to bare and sets him an ultimatum to increase profits or close in the new year. With best friend and employee Josh in tow (Jason Bateman) Clay embarks on a mission to save the jobs of his beloved workforce.
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Unfortunately Clay is something of an emotionally stunted man child and somehow the plan becomes to hold an epic booze filled Christmas party (something his sister is strongly against) to try and seduce a wealthy potential client to save the company. But somewhere between an overly enthusiastic DJ and an unpredictable drug dealer things get out of hand, and the safety of the company seems to be more and more unpredictable with every passing second.

This movie is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. The characters are a nice mix but the story is much too tame and the set up is squandered on a plot that inches up to the line several times but doesn’t have the guts to cross it. On the positive side there’s some good laughs and the main storyline basically concluding about halfway through the movie was a nice twist that actually left me wondering where this whole thing was going, but did little more than waste time as the plot resets making a huge chunk of the movie kind of pointless.
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Whilst this sounds like a classic comedy set up of our heroes battling increasing disaster our characters are never really allowed to fail so the stakes don’t feel real. Problems are solved almost as soon as they appear, characters change their personalities to fit whatever it is they need to do to move the plot forward from scene to scene, and without giving away any spoilers the ending just seems like super convenient nonsense.

An extended segment of the office party turning into some sort of post apocalyptic war zone has a lot of potential but is over before it has a chance to develop. A surreal segue into this kind of thing could have really saved the movie and added some much needed drama, comical though it would have been. Ultimately that’s the problem, the cast are a gaggle of very funny people and the jokes largely land but there isn’t a drop of dramatic narrative to be found and it’s impossible to get invested in anyone or anything.
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This goes double for Bateman and Olivia Munn’s burgeoning romance that plays like the emotional core of the movie but is actually really boring and has absolutely no reason to not work out so what’s the point. On top of that almost all the side plots of the various employees fall completely flat.

​All in all this is more like the Christmas special of a fairly average sitcom without the bonus of you already being invested in the lives of the characters. I’d skip this one as I expect it’ll disappoint.

Three “friends” (it actually isn’t entirely clear how they became a gang) have been making a career for themselves as thieves. Alex (Dylan Minnette) utilises his father security business to rob its customers, bypassing their security measures and meticulously planning the cover up including always keeping their ill-gotten gains on the small scale so they don’t draw too much attention to themselves. He’s the brains, Money (Daniel Zovatto) is the muscle and most believable criminal, and Alex (Jane Levy) is the female member of the group who we’re supposed to sympathise with because she’s the only one who gets a suitably tragic backstory.

Things have been going well until Money hears of a potential big score that could be easy money even if it does break Alex’s small scale rule. Said job involves a lonely old blind man who supposedly has several hundred thousand dollars hidden away in his dilapidated house in the middle of an abandoned neighbourhood. Sounds simple, but once inside the house things go wrong as The Blind Man (Stephen Lang) turns out to be an ex-soldier who has presumably “seen some s**t” in addition to being traumatised over the recent death of his daughter, and is just crazy and highly skilled enough to try and kill them all despite his impediment.

So the kids, who aren’t really bad guys they’re just desperate, enter a complex game of cat and mouse when they become locked in the house with The Blind Man hunting them down. Thing is he’s just as much a victim as they are, he’s sympathetic and not a villain as such, he’s just scared and detached from reality, that is until … sigh … suddenly he isn’t. If my initial description, a thought provoking character piece on trauma and criminality hidden inside an extremely well crafted horror setting, seems intriguing to you then prepare to be disappointed. Yep, there’s a twist or two here and it turns out The Blind Man isn’t what he appears to be and our trio of thieves are in serious trouble as he devolves into just another psychotic slasher movie villain and the film moves from one shock to the next with such predictable pace that all I could think about was all the others things I could have been doing with my time instead of being sat in the theatre.

I find myself reminded of why I don’t watch horror films for fun. That’s not to say there aren’t good horror films out there but being a good movie and being a good horror movie don’t seem to be the same thing. Horror has a tendency to go purely for shock value and it really feels like this film has a unique and interesting premise that it chickens out of almost immediately. I honestly think the filmmakers looked at this script and were worried it was too nuanced and interesting so decided to gradually make it get stupider to compensate.
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The set pieces of our heroes trying to silently negotiate their way around the house whilst The Blind Man hunts them work brilliantly, they’re gripping and exciting and the movie could easily have survived on that alone, but no, they felt the completely pointless need to ramp up the shock value for no reason and it’s just ridiculous. Once the final truth about The Blind Man comes out no matter how grotesque it is, and it is, it can’t help but be almost comical, except the film has a crushingly dark tone so the audience isn’t even allowed in on the joke. Thus we end up laughing at
the movie rather than with it, and believe me people in my screening were laughing, it just didn’t seem appropriate.

And like I’ve said there’s no reason the original premise wouldn’t have worked, distraught highly skilled ex-soldier struggling with a myriad of personal issues ends up in a stand off with a group of reluctant teen thieves who are in over their heads. Great, some elements would have even made more sense and Scott Lang brings some real gravity to the character even in this dopey story so he clearly could have pulled this off. Watching him break down in tears should have been moving, made you question whose side you were supposed to be on, except it isn’t and it doesn’t because he’s clearly pure evil.

Plus the kids don’t want to kill him, even after it’s really clear he deserves it, and that would have made more sense if we were able to view him as just as much a victim of circumstance as they are, but no, instead it’s just the tired horror cliche of the heroes not killing the villain when they had the chance and we all know that’s bound to be a decision they don’t grow to regret. And no spoilers but the ending leaves everyone in a questionable moral position of supposing that getting away with theft is better than getting away with murder and not to nitpick but aren’t those both bad things?
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It’s all so much potential wasted and whilst it’s a perfectly good movie I kind of want to hate it for that reason alone.

Hands up if you've ever been to see a film without having read the book.  Yep, that's a lot of us.  Hands up if you've ever been to see a comic book film and have never read a comic.  Yep, lots of us again.  Well, sorry, but if you go and see 'Batman vs Superman' you're screwed.  In fact, considering that I was watching this film with a self-confessed Super Geek and at times he still had no clue what was going on, you're possibly screwed regardless.  It's one of the most disjointed, indecipherable blockbusters in a long time that is played out with arrogant, adrenaline heavy bravado.  Working out what on earth is going on is a lot like having a conversation with a very attractive, but very drunk high school meathead.  

The sense of anticipation I had at the start of the film dwindled within minutes into confusion and then plummeted into downright indifference.  Arguably you shouldn't be thinking "meh" when the fight scene that has been billed as the punch up of the year is being duked out on the screen in front of you.  That's not to say that the 'Batman vs Superman' barney didn't contain pleasing CGI.  It was a short, reasonably perfunctory affair that was done no justice by the 90 minutes preceding it and still left you somewhat confused as to how you got there.  It wasn't a justifiable rumble in the jungle so much as a petulant grudge match.  What immediately followed the fight was also meant to be the emotional linchpin of the warring duo's reconciliation, but was utterly facile, saccharine and unbelievable.  I don't expect to have my bottom lip quivering when I watch a comic book film, but I do want to feel some empathy with the characters in the moments that count.

And that's the point.  Because most of the film was so desperately disjointed it was hard to grasp the characters' real motivations and gain any sense of connection.  When the crunch of the film came I wasn't that bothered, especially considering that this film is a butt-aching 150 minute trailer for all the other films in the franchise and you know that's not really the end.  But unlike your average 3 minute trailer 'Batman vs Superman' doesn't have a helpful Voiceover Man telling you who's who, who you should be rooting for and what's going on and why.  Instead you're left to puzzle through on your own because even your adjacent Super-Geek is getting stuck.  

"Hey Super-Geek, is Batman dreaming or hallucinating now? 

"I have no idea."

"Why are we in a Mad Max type desert and what are those things?"

"Still no idea."

I love comic book films.  Marvel's films are colourful, dynamic and full of witty conflict and camaraderie.  DC films are the perturbed and pessimistic counterpart.  The irasicble good guys fight with neurotic force more than finesse and only Wonder Woman provides any light relief. 

There's definitely themes you will get (all the mega wealthy are mega nuts or prone to going mega nuts mega quickly) and religious and terrorism tropes aplenty.  But that's about it. Because of the need to cram everything in the actors felt underused. Cavill is chiselled, Eisenburg isn't truly enabled and the women, well they look pretty and/or need rescuing and sympathising with until Wonder Woman weighs in.  She actually has one of the best moments of the film.  Super-Geek leant over the me and said "chills!" when she leapt up to the plate. And that's no mean feat when you are fighting a wannabe Orc that's just birthed itself from an amniotic sac. Overall it feels more like an outline for film that was meant to preview half a dozen other different films that unless you are an avid comic book reader you are not going to get.  If you are going to see this film and aren't very familiar with the DC comics either read up or take a geek.  Or wait for the GIF of Affleck thumping a tyre with a sledgehammer.  It'll be on the internet within a week and will tell you all you need to know.   

I, like most people, remember the first Maze Runner as a fairly decent addition to the teen angst 
sci-fi genre with a bizarre nonsensically stupid ending, so the hope here is that the sequel reconciles that dilemma. 

‘The Scorch Trials’ picks up almost immediately after the first movie with the survivors of the maze aboard the rescue chopper as it arrives at the mysterious base of their rescuers where they are taken in by the highly suspicious rebellion group. All is not what it seems, otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a story, and our plucky gang are forced to flee into The Scorch (the general term for, well, the planet I guess) in search of a better option. Or something, they don’t really have a plan.

In answer to my first question, no the nonsensical ending from the first movie doesn’t get any more logical. Spoilers for the first movie here (but this is a sequel so what do you expect), you might remember it ended with possibly the least logical explanation for the events of the maze there could be, the sun had scorched the Earth and people had turned into raving zombies and the maze was designed to help somehow... Except then an almost meaningless twist, that happened way too suddenly, meant that maybe this wasn’t true and we were left with a big ‘huh?’ to deal with. 

Tragically this raving gibberish turns out to be true, the world has turned into the ‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ and WCKD have taken up the most bizarre methodology they could think of to try and combat the problem, and I’m afraid I couldn’t get past this. Much like the first movie it largely works really well, the 'Mad Max' meets 'Fallout' landscape is stunningly realised and the pockets of “civilisation” the kids encounter are all varied and interesting. The problem is we are stuck with what is still ultimately a very stupid plot hanging over the proceedings like a tidal wave threatening to drown the movie under it’s nonsense. 

WCKD are searching for a cure for the zombie apocalypse but don’t know how to do that without being incredibly evil, for unclear reasons. The best way to find said cure is to torment some children, trick them into submission and slowly ferry them to their doom, again for unclear reasons. The rest of the world are against WCKD’s search for the cure despite not having a better plan. It’s just … dumb.

Weirdly this film is also a total left turn from the first, they really have next to nothing in common besides apparently taking place in the same universe, and much like the first the premise, characters and beats of the story work great it’s just the story itself that let’s it down. But it means that I can’t honestly say that if you liked the first you’ll like this one because they’re very different creatures. 

I mean I know who the heroes and villains of this story are I’m just not sure why I’m supposed to care. WCKD are evil, sure, but what’s the point? A villain with essentially noble intentions is always interesting but there’s a limit to my suspension of disbelief and WCKD are at best idiots. 

I think it’s a damning indictment of the series that I’ve now seen two films and I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I missed the next one. I can recommend this film for it’s scenery and world building but I just wish we had a better story to explore this world with and ultimately I was bored. Not for me.

Fresh off the back of an appearance in the Academy Award–nominated 'Inherent Vice', as well as an equally lauded performance in 'Wild', Reese Witherspoon returns to more comedic stomping grounds for the first time since competent if somewhat generic 2012 rom-action-com, 'This Means War'. Unfortunately, the result does little to hit the same heights as her recent dramatic and much earlier comedic turns, as well as the standard elevated by other, similarly-spirited endeavours.

An uptight and by-the-book cop tries to protect the outgoing widow of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by crooked cops and murderous gunmen.

Kicking off with an original and actually quite inspired opening, which details the life and motivations of Officer Cooper (Witherspoon), it’s a shame to witness the film slip backwards and rely heavily on outdated clichés and tropes. Writers David Feeney and John Quaintance throw everything at the wall in the name of humour; missing only the kitchen sink, substituted instead for diamond-encrusted shoes. Sadly, very little successfully sticks, with only a running joke regarding Officer Cooper’s height and the age of Daniella Riva (Vergara), as well as Officer Cooper’s climactic choice of disguise, serving to provoke more than chuckles.

Reese Witherspoon gives it her all, throwing herself as unabashedly headlong into role as her character does her assignments, thus imbuing the technically intelligent but frustratingly inept officer with not only a pitch perfect accent but a degree of quirky, endearingly oblivious charm. However, even her considerable abilities are not enough to carry the weight of the writing she has been burdened with. A fact that is exponentially more evident in the scenes she shares with Sofia Vergara, who, is lumbered with a character so stereotypical and over-the-top, there is no room for her to do anything but play broadly into it. She also is extremely game, but the lack of subtlety serves mostly to grate rather than amuse. 

The obvious chemistry apparent in the traditional amid-credit outtakes fails to transfer to the preceding story, with the casual off-screen banter easily eclipsing the scripted humour. The  more dramatic elements and humanising back-story suffer a similar fate, shoe-horned into the reduced run-time in a vain attempt to generate pathos, empathy, and a sense of sisterhood. At no point amid the bickering, betrayals, and out-right cat-fights, does it ever feel believable that a genuine friendship would form, much less that they would rush head-first into danger for the other. Some late-in-the-game twists ably raise the stakes, but feel similarly incongruous and fail to connect with anything that came before, doing nothing to truly deepen the bond.

The mismatched pairing of opposites is nothing new to the world of cinema, and this has nothing new to offer, borrowing unashamedly from the likes of 'Speed' right through to Adam Sandler’s 'Bulletproof'. Director Anne Fletcher sets things in motion early and maintains a consistently rapid pace, navigating some impressive action sequences along the way, but following in the wake of such films as 'Spy', 'Hot Pursuit' not only fails to emulate but actually feels like more than a few step in the opposite direction.