The smallest daughter seems to be going through a bit of a Pokemon phase right now.  So she picked another full length movie we found over on Netflix.

This one is from 2018 and at least has Ash and Pikachu in it, more so than the last one we watched.  They’re in a city which is hosting a wind festival, there’s mysterious Pokemon as well, lots going on in this.  It gets a bit hard to explain really.  But, she seemed to enjoy it.  To be fair I didn’t mind it, was watchable.

She’s also spotted a couple of other ones on Netflix, so I imagine she’ll be cracking on with them soon, I may end up having to watch them too, we’ll see.

Another random pick over on Netflix.  This one is about a high street fashion billionaire (played by Steve Coogan), who is throwing a lavish party for his 60^th birthday.  The film jumps between the present day and events in the past to show how he got to where he is with his fortune and how he accrued it.  The dodgy deals, the ruthless nature and more.  The people he pushed aside to achieve what he wanted and more.

It’s a strange one, it keeps you watching but overall it isn’t very good.  David Mitchell also stars as a writer working for him, writing his biography but is still just Mark from Peep Show all the way through.  Isla Fisher also has a main role as his ex-wife.  There’s a bundle of cameos as well but overall this is actually a pretty poor movie which was a shame.  But at least they ended it with an important message about exploitation in the fashion industry.

Back in the 80’s there was quite a thing around getting to see the Arnie movies.  We were at school, maybe 12ish and Arnie films were normally 18’s due to the violence, language and what not.  My folks were not up for renting them to let me watch them, so they ended up being those movies that you wanted to see even more.  Looking back I’m not really sure why as they’re not the best at times.

Anyways, there was one kid who seemed to have access to them, Anthony Wood.  Now Woody (yep genius of all inventive nicknames right there) lived just up the road from me so we used to be able to pop up his gaff and get a VHS on before his Dad got back.  Now I am not sure whether he managed to raid the videos from his Dad’s stash or did his older sister supply the goods, anyways a few of us used to pile up there to check out the Arnie back catalogue.  Woody was incidentally the kid at school who was one of about three who liked Iron Maiden, I was not one of them.  No need for me to share that info, but thought I would.  In fact seeing as how I’m sharing right now, Woody was also the only other kid than me around 13 who had a guitar.  We were both terrible at it, but still used to set up our little amps and pretend to rock the fuck out.  Wonder if he’s still playing these days… anyways, back to the point of this, Arnie.

I am sure we watched all the movies from back then, Commando, Predator (which to be fair, still holds up), The Terminator, Conan and my favourite Arnie action movie, The Running Man.  I mean sure in later years I will happily admit to loving Jingle All The Way and Twins, two stone cold comedy classics right there.  I had very vague memories of Commando, other than Arnie goes on a shooting rampage.  Upon spotting it on Disney Plus, I thought I might as well give it a go again after all these years.

Arnie is a former special forces agent and living away from it all with his daughter.  But when his old team are getting taken out, they come for him, kidnapping his daughter.  To save her he is expected to go and assassinate someone.  But Arnie decides his best chance is to kill as many people as he can and try to save her himself, she has like eleven hours, which is the time the plane journey he is supposed to be on takes.  That is pretty much the movie, Arnie running around to save his daughter.  There’s a shitload of action, all standard gun battles and stuff though.  I was surprised to read that this film was up for a special effects award in 1985, which is lost out on to Back To The Future.  Back To The Future has awesome effects, this has shite ones.  I mean come on… the end where he’s blowing up buildings, the tiny little models are not only crud, they even have little plastic soldiers (or maybe cardboard) next to them, models that just tamely fall over when the building goes boom… it’s ruddy terrible.

Overall this is a pretty sub standard action flick.  Maybe in 1985 it was something pretty special, but these days it’s not great.  I’m looking back now and wondering why we were all so desperate to see the Arnie films back in the 80’s, was it just the fact they were 18’s and it felt like a rite of passage or something along those lines?  Anyways, a pretty poor film, stunts, script and acting wise.  Not a classic.

A new movie from the Marvel world and one we went into knowing absolutely nothing about in advance.

The story is of a group of Eternals, from another planet who are here on Earth to in theory protect us from a race of creatures called Deviants.  There’s a lot of them, without counting maybe ten and they all have a bit of a backstory that they try and fit in.  There’s the obvious shitloads of action, special effects galore as you’d expect from a Marvel movie.  There are some positives in this one, but overall there’s too much going on, too many characters and too much jumping between timelines to really be any good.  And some of the characters are a bit irrelevant and no need for them.  I have to say I felt lost at times with this one and overall didn’t think much of it.

This is a bit of a classic tale, the tale of The Borrowers, a family of small people who live within the houses of the “human beans”, borrowing things along the way.  But when a nasty lawyer (played by John Goodman) plans to have the house demolished as the family there cannot find a will to prove it is theirs, the humans and the borrowers need to move.  The Borrowers do not reveal their existence until now when the daughter, Arrietty ends up befriending a boy.  But as they plan to move together, the borrower children are cast aside and stay in the house where they learn of the devious plan.

The film then almost splits into two as part 1 is the family getting back to find the kids and part 2 the kids battling to get the will for proof.  There’s a decent amount of well known faces in this movie, but it’s nothing more than OK.  I would definitely much rather watch the Studio Ghibli version, Arrietty every single time.

A second watch for Ron’s Gone Wrong.  An animated movie from 2021.  All about a new robot device that’s been created which is meant to help kids make friends.  It’s basically a mobile phone that doesn’t fit in your pocket.

One kid is a bit of a loner and is the only kid without a B-bot.  When his birthday comes he doesn’t get one and feels excluded from everyone else at school.  His Dad and Gran manage to get him a damaged one off the back of a van and the problem with the new B-Bot is that he doesn’t function like all of the others.  The film then follows the kid and the robot build a friendship until others find out and things go wrong.

It’s a decent watch this one, enjoyed it, not sure how many times I’d be able to watch it as the first time wasn’t all that long ago.  But, I did enjoy it for the second time.

So what with a fifth Scream movie due out any time now, it seemed a good time to watch the fourth part seeing as how it was now on Netflix.  I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen this movie before, turns out that I was wrong.

From 2011, the gang are all back.  It’s been fifteen years since the Woodsboro murders by Ghostface.  Sidney Prescott is back on a book tour and when a couple of high school teens get murdered everything starts happening again.  Her and her family are stalked as they try to find out who the killer is this time.

It’s a pretty uninventive watch this one, basically paying homage to the other movies in the series, especially the first one.  A huge cast of well known faces though, but overall this is a shocker and not in a good way.

I do like a sports movie, I know I’d said it before and I’ll probably say it again.

Hardball appeared on Netflix.  I’ll be honest, I wasn’t 100% sure if I’d seen it before or not.  Keanu Reeves stars as a man with a gambling addiction who is paid to coach a kids baseball team (yep this sounds very much like the storyline of Bad News Bears doesn’t it!).  The team has it’s problems of course, the kids are all from the projects and the film focusses on a few issues other than the whole rags to riches baseball storyline.  The issues with gambling addiction, the issues kids face in the inner cities with guns, gangs and relationships.

This is a decent movie, worthy of a watch, though to be honest Bad News Bears is a better film, much more easy going and fun.

One of those films I’ve never seen before.  We spotted it was on Disney and decided to give it a go as we were lacking inspiration.

From 1994, this is a western movie about a group of four women who are on the run.  Former prostitutes, after a murder they are chased, end up being caught up in a bank robbery and then have to find a way to get their money back from the thieves.

A lot of standard action here, chases, the wild west, horses, guns – yep pretty much what you’d expect.  Stars Drew Barrymore, Andie MacDowell, Madeline Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Robert Loggia, Dermot Mulroney and more.  One of those movies that was nothing more than OK and not one you’d find yourself watching again.

We spotted this one on Disney Plus and decided we’d give it a go, I mean come on this is an 80’s comedy with Tom Hanks in it, it can’t be very serious that’s for sure.

The storyline is one that follows a huge CIA issue with drug smuggling and a fabricated rumour is leaked about a man who can clear the head of the operation, they randomly pick Tom Hanks’ character, a violinist and sat about having two sides of the operation following him, trying to solve the case.

A very silly movie this one, was worth checking out as we’d never seen it before.  Also stars the likes of Carrie Fisher, Lori Singer and Jim Belushi.