Red Sparrow – Often Off Topic

It’s that time of the year already, just before the awards season really kicks in when bloggers everywhere are posting their Top 10s for the year. I’ve always gone by UK release dates for my lists as we often have to wait weeks for a lot of releases, but honestly, it’s so hard to keep track of so this year I’ll be using the general release date. What I’d like to do then is revisit my list later in the year when I’ve caught up on more movies.

Let’s save the best for last and kick off with this year’s stinkers. I think I’ve done quite well to avoid a lot of the bad movies this year but I still managed to put a list of 10 together without any troubles.

Some of these are simply terrible, others are disappointments, and a couple just weren’t for me.

#10 The House with a Clock in Its Walls

Cate Blanchett was the only real saving grace of this movie. I’m also still plagued by nightmares of Jack Black’s head on a baby’s body.

#9 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

I had decent expectations for this sequel, but the second half was so ridiculous I found myself laughing for all the wrong reasons.

#8 Red Sparrow

You know – I can’t even remember anything about this movie. It was slutty and it had spies…and that’s the best I can do.

#7 The Commuter

I love all of Liam Neeson’s action movies, even if they are all kind of the same. This one, however, was just boring!

#6 The Old Man & the Gun

I’m sorry – I know lots of people loved this movie. It’s just…for a heist movie it was quiet, slow and dull.

#5 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

JK Rowling needs to step up her game. I hope the backlash this movie got makes her look really hard about how this series moves forward. Perhaps she could start by reading her own books again.

#4 Life of the Party

Another year, another Melissa McCarthy comedy that I’m either going to love or hate. You can all guess where this one fell.

#3 Fifty Shades Freed

Confession – the Fifty Shades series is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. However, I didn’t really love the third book and the movie was even worse.

#2 How It Ends

Hey Netflix, if you’re going to make a post-apocalyptic movie without a real ending, how about you don’t call it How It Ends?!

#1 The Happytime Murders

Melissa McCarthy, you messed up twice in one year. I’m so, so mad about The Happytime Murders because it could have been brilliant, and witty. Instead, it was just vulgar and unfunny.

I’ll be back early next week with my Top 10 Best Movies of 2018!

Aww, I just realised I should have watched another movie with a colour in the title to make this a perfect Mini Reviews post! Anyway, I’ve been able to watch a few movies over the past few evenings but haven’t had much time to properly blog about them, so I thought it was about time I did another one of these posts to keep the flow going.

Red Sparrow (2018)

I’ve found Jennifer Lawrence’s movies to be a bit hit and miss lately, and I’m not sure where I would place Red Sparrow. Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika, a prima-ballerina forced to work for the Russian Government as a Sparrow after suffering an injury. It’s a dark and grim movie in more ways than one – including a knife fight scene which was fascinating to me from a technical point of view.

It didn’t help that I watched this in 3 chunks because the plot moves at a crazy pace. Does anyone remember that episode of Friends where they find out Monica and Chandler are together? The moment with Joey, Rachel and Phoebe, “They don’t know we know they know we know!” This is the spy movie equivalent of that to me.

Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther I think is the first Marvel movie I didn’t catch at the cinema – a crime, I know! Especially as it seems I’m the only person in the world who didn’t see it. It follows T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) as he fights his claim to the throne as King of Wakanda. It’s an amazing introduction to how the people of Wakanda live, with their impressive technology.

At first I think the hype oversold the movie to me and I was a little disappointed, and it also wasn’t as funny as most of the other Marvel movies, but when you take it as a standalone movie it’s brilliant, and it has claim to one of the best bad guys I’ve seen.

Annihilation (2018)

I remember seeing the trailer for Annihilation last year and being really impressed. There seemed to be a real buzz around it but then when I took a bit of a blogging break I arrived back to see it had been and gone and it wasn’t really being talked about. Then I realised it was actually a Netflix movie which explained a lot! In this movie, a team of biologists enter ‘The Shimmer’ to investigate a phenomenon that only 1 other people has ever survived.

It’s a good movie and well worth a watch but I didn’t love it. The scene with the bear (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen it) was terrifying in all sorts of ways and will stick with me for a long time, but the ending left me scratching my head a bit.

Tag: Red Sparrow

Top 10 Worst Movies of 2018

Mini Reviews: Red Sparrow (2018), Black Panther (2018) & Annihilation (2018)