Solo: A Star Wars Story – Let’s get one thing clear. I’m going to be a bit harsh towards the second spin-off film in the Star Wars universe, not because it’s a terrible movie because it’s not. The reason it lands at the top of my dumpster before I light this fire is that it’s so damn mediocre. I feel this is directly due to the very safe direction of replacement director Ron Howard, who hasn’t made a visually interesting film, arguably, since Rush in 2013. The end product makes me wonder what the original filmmakers, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, wanted for this movie. Obviously a more comedic angle, which leads me to the lead, Alden Ehrenreich. I really enjoy the guy in other films but his Solo is missing something in execution, which leads me to believe he worked really well with Lord and Miller but Howard was saddled with an actor that needed to have acting teachers brought in. All my issues aside, Donald Glover made a perfect Lando Calrissian, even sounding spot on to Billy Dee Williams, but it wasn’t enough to save the movie as a whole.
Super Mario Bros. – Do I have any fellow Mario fans who were completely duped by the excitement the trailers for this film gave us? I have to admit, I was totally insane about checking out this movie, even though the ads were, well, confusing at best. The casting checked out. Bob Hoskins as Mario? Okay. John Leguizamo as Luigi? I’m cool with that too. Dennis Hopper as King Koopa? Now it’s a party. The reality is this movie is a big old pile of shit and everyone making it knew that. Hoskins was even quoted as saying this is the worst film he ever made, which led to his and Leguizamo getting plastered constantly on set to cope with the stinker they were making. Would anything have improved this film? Should Tom Hanks have played Mario like he wanted? Should they have gone forward with the plan of Bruce Willis cameoing by tunneling through the air ducts of King Koopa’s castle in a spoof of his role in Die Hard? Or adding that missing half hour of deleted footage to the runtime? Yeah, it’s probably better left alone.
Sex And The City – Ten years ago and ten years after the show debuted we got the big screen version of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte in the big movie follow up to a massive television phenomenon. The result? Two and a half hours of aimless vamping from a cast of characters way past their expiry date. It sounds like I’m a bitter dude standing outside of the target market lobbing rocks but, believe it or not, I was actually a fan of the series and this movie cheapens the end it was given. Not only that, they beat the dead horse for even more cash with a second movie that I don’t want to waste any more than this sentence on. The only good thing to come out of this theatrical accompaniment to an HBO series is the paving of the way for my guilty pleasure Entourage film and the possibility of a Deadwood one. Let’s just pretend that this one doesn’t exist though. I know Kim Cattrall would…
Steve Stebbing 