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It’s been such a long time since Tom Cruise actually played an interesting character! Let’s see if this can change with just one good movie.

Cruise is US pilot Barry Seal in the true story of Seal’s 1980s exploits working with everyone from commercial airlines to drug cartels to the White House.

For years, Mr Cruise has avoided acting in anything where he has to stretch himself. I think the last really good role for him came in Tropic Thunder back in 2007. Since then he’s been really good as an action hero for the most part, but hasn’t really put himself forward in terms of acting.

Here as Barry Seal, drug-smuggler, pilot, CIA informant, he is wonderful. He’s so ridiculously charming and funny without ever getting on your nerves or feeling like he doesn’t take matters seriously when he needs to.

As a story American Made is a Goodfellas structured tale. By that I mean there’s a long POV build up and rise to the top with little reminders of impending doom, followed by a catastrophic fall as our criminal lead gets his comeuppance.

While it’s been done before, as a structure, it really does work. The audience is never lost when we see all these big things like the government and the cartel explained to us through the eyes of a man whose way in over his head.

The film is also, genuinely funny. Doug Liman is directing here and he’s proven once again that he’s a force to be reckoned with when it comes to comedy mixed with action or drama.

American Made is an extremely enjoyable crime film and the best thing Cruise has been involved in this decade.

Recommended Scenario: If you’re in the mood for a great little true caper film.

I saw this movie in a cinema on a holiday Thursday at half two in the afternoon. Needless to say the theatre was packed with children. Thankfully the movie distracted people from the embarrassing reality that I, a supposedly grown man, spends his day off watching Disney movies in the middle of the day.

Zootropolis is a Disney film about an urban community in which mammals, both predators and prey, get on together. A recently graduated cop, Officer Hops, the first bunny police officer of the ZPD is tasked with finding a missing otter. A furry neo-noir commences.

The lead in this film is very, very Disney. By that I mean, she’s a bright-eyed optimist who must battle prejudices affecting her in order to find her place in society. She plays that role very well. As a bunny she’s seen as too weak to be a police officer, but she keeps trying, gaining much empathy from the audience.

What makes this film different from many with this style of lead, particularly for a family film, is that prejudice is all around her. It affects not only her and other rabbits, but animals of various types. The rabbits, including our supposedly good lead, even have their own prejudices against predators, particularly foxes.

Enter Wilde, a fox who makes his living as a conman, who, through various circumstances, Hops is forced to work with on this mystery. Through him, we see that the case of prejudice in this fable is something more complicated than most kids’ stories which deal with it.

This mystery/social commentary takes place in a very cool utopia for animals (hence the alternate title for this film Zootopia). As this is a social commentary, it’s very appropriate that the setting is a city with similarities to our 21^st Century cities and they do manage to fit in some creative little touches showing how the animals of different shapes, sizes and species interact with it.

For all the serious talk I’ve been giving about prejudice etc in the review thus far, this is in every way a comedy. Unlike with something like Inside Out where I felt my emotions sway to and fro as Pete Doctor and his team played with me like an instrument, this film firmly kept me in comedy mode for the runtime. While there were serious moments, like the majority of other good comedies, one could tell while watching it that they would get back to the jokes eventually.

The jokes themselves are pretty good as well. I feel that I won’t be remembering any of them as much as the average The Simpsons episode, but I got a few good little chuckles. What’s irritating though is that the funniest scene in the movie is the one included in almost its entirety in one of the trailers. You know the one. The one that got you a pretty good laugh the first time, but became a little irritating upon the tenth time you saw it. That kind of sullied my appreciation of the funny lack of speed in some mammals that appear part way through this movie.

The comedy feels similar to a Dreamworks film at times. In fact, the film itself could easily have been made by the same guys who gave us The Bee Movie, with lots of pop culture references and a very early 21^st century vibe that I’m pretty sure will feel more like a time capsule in a few years than a timeless Disney film.

Thankfully, there is a definite focus on the timeless elements of this film, most importantly its underlying and mature statement on prejudice. Oh, and Idris Elba as the Police Chief. He should play all animals and all cops.

Recommended Scenario: When you want a film with a bit of heart and a pretty good message. Plus some Dreamworks style comedy for good measure.

9 nominees and the one movie that I had not seen wins Best Picture?! Oh Academy Awards, how you find new ways to annoy me I have no idea!

Spotlight follows the investigative branch of the Boston Globe newspaper in 2001 as they investigated the scandal of paedophilia in the Catholic Church and the institutional cover-up which kept it out of the eyes of readers for so many years.

The ultimate goal of criticism in the modern era is “objectivism”. It’s a goal which is demonstrably unobtainable like inner peace or a perfect film, though both can be experienced, in my purely subjective opinion, by watching “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Baring this in mind, there should be no doubt that one cannot go into a movie with a “blank slate” i.e a lack of opinion before stepping into a movie as soon as you see its title.

The title of Spotlight is not what gave me preconceptions, more the fact that it won Best Picture at the White old male actor’s choice awards a.k.a the Oscars. I knew for a near certainty, based on this and the marketing that this would be a good movie. A movie which spoke about some controversial but important topics.

And what do you know? I was right. A good movie. Perfectly good. Well acted, pretty decently directed and written and a good focus on what mattered in its story.

Well that was a short review, Craig. So for the third year running your favourite movie of the year coincidentally happens to be the favourite of one of your least favourite institutions?

No. This is not my favourite movie of the year. It’s not even in the top five that were nominated. Im also still of the opinion that the only film that truly deserved to win was Inside Out.

Let me be clear, my reasons for this downgrade in my zeal over this movie are not because of the Oscars. I genuinely think that this is a very good movie and it says something important, but I find it difficult to praise it beyond “good”.

I also don’t think it’s because I’m not a fan of dramas consisting of a lot of exposition about serious stuff being talked about in a room, because I clearly am. My favourite Spielberg movie is Lincoln and I don’t know about you, but I really liked Inherent Vice.

There was simply nothing that properly grabbed me in this film. For some reason, the way this story is told and its adequate direction is presented makes me really think its home is not in the cinema, but on a TV screen. Don’t think that that’s an insult. I feel the same way about Argo and Gone Girl and I like both those films very much. This would actually be a pretty good TV miniseries. It’s a reasonably good investigation story and that makes up 97% of good TV.

This would also solve some of the other problems I have with this movie. The characters don’t feel particularly well developed in the 2 hour long runtime. I understand that they aren’t the focus of the story, for obvious reasons, but I feel that they are a little too much like blank pieces of paper.

We’d also be able to see a more full exploration into the pain of the scandal. There are effective scenes in which victims tell their stories, but I feel they would be more affecting if we had more time with them.

The pacing is also a little off. The ending feels like it was searching for a dramatic climax and just didn’t find one because it didn’t happen. I know this is a problem with adapting any true story, but I think that is particularly prominent here.

You should probably watch this movie. It’s a good investigation drama with pretty decent filmmaking. However, I don’t think it’s close to what can be described as this year’s best.

If there’s anything that the Academy Awards highlighted this year, it’s not the quality of the film that matters to them, it’s the subject that matters. This film deals with an enormously important subject, which was poignantly put across when survivors came on-stage with Lady Gaga that night. I’m glad this movie provided attention to this issue, even if the film was merely good.

Right, now, how do I wipe this smug smile off of my face?

Recommended Scenario: When you want to learn about an important story of widespread corruption in the Catholic Church in a reasonably good drama.

I’m of the opinion that a critic of any art-form should keep in touch with what is currently trending in their art-form. Without this rule, we would have critics whose soul function is to point out how great movies made by Stanley Kubrick were and how pathetic the current state of affairs with Superhero films, without even beginning to sympathise with what the public sees in these films. You’ll be surprised to hear then that I have been consistently breaking my own rule.

While I would like to get into the phase of superhero films that is over us, for one reason or another, I haven’t had an opportunity to marathon all the properties of Marvel Studios, Warner Bros’ DC, 20th Century Fox and until recently Sony. Maybe when Infinity War comes out in a few short years, I could go to one of those bumper screenings which show the entirety of the MCU in one day long go.

Until then, I’m going to be forced to review the odd disparate superhero film that connects little to some vast canon. So, as this movies titular protagonist would say, time to make the chimi-f***in’-changas!

Deadpool tells the required origin story of Deadpool, who else. He’s a superhero who constantly breaks the fourth wall and is fully aware that he is the main character of a movie. Constantly quipping, this “merc with a mouth” is on a mission to inflict some blood-soaked juicy revenge on a British citizen who has done him wrong.

 

From the trailers, I was both intrigued and a little worried about this movie. I found that the best jokes in those teases were references to other superhero movies and due to editing things down for time, the jokes did not have any sense of comic timing (a trait common with comedy trailers).

And for those who aren’t aware, one of the most common choices for worst creative choice of recent blockbuster history was the addition of a version of this superhero in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which I still can’t be bothered to see), in which his character was torn entirely apart.

Which brings us to here, with Ryan Reynolds on his third attempt at playing a superhero. Hopefully, this will be satisfying.

85% of the comedy from this movie comes from this character’s self-referential, fourth-wall breaking personality. This is the first time that a comic book movie, connected to a movie universe, has been done entirely for laughs. Which means that the entirety of this movie rides on Reynolds balancing cheeky likability with obnoxiousness.

Luckily, the man succeeded. This is an excellent performance, backed up by great writing. This is everything I wanted from this character from the descriptions my more comic proficient friends gave to me.

The other 15% of comedy in this film comes from the rest of the world in which Mr Pool resides. We occasionally get moments where another character points out a particular clichéd plot point or something. Like the screenwriter was struggling how to continue the story and decided to let the character just say, “let’s have this thing happen, cause otherwise nothing will in this movie”.

What’s also good news is that the big joke that this came out around Valentines to trick those who wanted to see a Ryan Reynolds rom-com into seeing an ultra-violent comedy, actually managed to pay off in a way I was not expecting. This does actually have a very believable and a little moving romance with a surprisingly funny love interest. (See Hollywood, not every woman has to be written like a cardboard box!)

Speaking of ultra-violent, yeah this is a 15. It should be a 15. Parents have been petitioning for there to be a cut of this film released for what in America is called a “PG-13” audience, what we call 12A. I’ve been re-editing this movie to censor it mentally and the result is garbage. Not that every joke is reliant on swearing, sex and homicide, but that acts as a keystone to the feel of the piece. Take it out and Deadpool collapses.

The action is not anything much more incredible than other films of this type. There are some funny kills and a couple of cool ideas behind Ryan’s kills. So in that regard, I can’t say this movie is utterly perfect.

Also, as much as I was laughing quite a lot through this movie, I’m finding it hard to believe that this movie will hold up upon repeat viewings. Plus, I would have liked the direction of this movie to include a couple more visual gags, though of course, not everyone can be Edgar Wright.

But, that’s the critic in me. The me in me is just thankful that I saw a funny awesome movie.

Recommended Scenario:  If you’re a fan of his, you’ll be thankful that his smart-ass ways have not been tainted. If you’re not a comic book film fan, this will be a welcome subversion of the genre. Or you could do it to prank your valentines date.