Category Archives: Films

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets review

23 Saturday Sep 2017

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The Sixth Element?

by Thom Yee

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets images courtesy of STX Entertainment

So.  Summer 2017.  It’s over.  And it really wasn’t a very good summer now, was it?  Adam West died.  North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile.  Some of the strongest hurricanes on record destroyed (or are still destroying) significant parts of the world.  Interest rates went up for the first time in seven years.  It seemed like the eclipse was the only thing people were talking about on that one day.  Spencer Foo and Travis Hamonic signed with the Calgary Flames.  Anthony Scaramucci.  “Despacito”.

And those movies!

This past summer (generally considered May through September’s Labour Day weekend in the movie biz) saw the worst performance at the domestic box office since 2006.  Continue reading →

IT (2017) review

16 Saturday Sep 2017

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When the hell did kid actors get this good?

by Thom Yee

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IT images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I was terrified.  And I was terrified most of the time too.  I was terrified of looking stupid, I was terrified of not knowing the answer, I was terrified of letting people down, I was terrified of never having control of the situations I was in, but most of all I was terrified of the future.  I was terrified of growing up.  When I was a kid, growing up seemed less to me about gaining new knowledge and abilities and taking fate into my own hands and more a series of tests, crucibles almost, whether it was finding new friends in transitioning from elementary to junior high/junior high to high school, getting through puberty without any deep scarring, passing my driver’s license exams (with the notable hindrance of being a Chinese driver), or getting into the right university and then picking the right career path.  It felt like my passing or failing of each of those tests would become the building blocks that would make up who I was, cemented and irreversible whether I wanted to be that person or not.  And I just never felt ready for any of it Continue reading →

Dunkirk review

29 Saturday Jul 2017

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You should probably just go

by Thom Yee

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Dunkirk images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

I’m not sure war is something I feel comfortable talking about, not even here, in written form, through the lens of reviewing a movie about war.  Not completely comfortable with anyways.  We haven’t reviewed many war movies in the 5 years we’ve been doing GOO Reviews, and up until now I’m not even sure I’ve ever really watched a war movie all the way through.  At least not ones that didn’t also have the words ‘Star’, ‘Inglourious’, or ‘The First Avenger’ in their titles.  I have a feeling those ones don’t really count.

As a millennial, war isn’t one of those things I’ve ever had to seriously consider as a component of life, not in the enlistment or conscription sense at any rate, and my most vivid memories of the topic of war are reviewing the numbers of dead due to wars in textbooks for the purposes of passing tests.  Continue reading →

Spider-Man: Homecoming review

15 Saturday Jul 2017

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Tom Holland > Andrew Garfield > Tobey Maguire

by Thom Yee

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Spider-Man: Homecoming images courtesy of Sony Pictures

How do you feel about Spider-Man?  And I don’t mean “Spider-Man”, the series of movies that’s already gone through three reboots in less than 15 years because Sony, who bought the movie rights to the character from Marvel in 1999, has to rush a Spider-Man movie into production every few years or else the movie rights revert back to Marvel Studios, I mean the character — Spider-Man.  If you listened to J. Jonah Jameson, publisher/editor of New York’s most infamous newspaper, The Daily Bugle, you might think he’s a public menace.  If you were familiar with the comicbook lore, you’d most likely find him to be a misunderstood but friendly, neighbourhood hero, driven by guilt over the death of his uncle to responsibly use his powers for good.  But whenever I hear anyone talk about Spider-Man in real life?  They usually say they don’t like him.  I’ve never really liked him that much either.  And I think it’s all Tobey Maguire’s fault. Continue reading →

Baby Driver review

08 Saturday Jul 2017

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And it’s a half past four and I’m shiftin’ gear

by Thom Yee

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Baby Driver images courtesy of TriStar Pictures

So I drive stick.  I know it’s not a big deal and that it doesn’t really prove anything about me as a person, I know that paddle shifters are actually faster at shifting, and I know that, year over year, there are only going to be fewer cars with manual transmissions as an option, but still, there’s something about driving a stick that separates people like me from… well, from most of you.  Something important.  Call it a greater connection between man (or woman) and machine, call it the need for precision driving, call it a weird, overblown fixation that only the kinds of people you’d rather avoid in conversations would have, but there is a difference between driving a car and choosing when to shift and driving a car that automatically shifts for you (often at questionable times that never let you feel your car’s real power).  It’s not quite the difference between men and boys that motor (or “petrol”) heads would have you believe, but it is a point of distinction.  And if we’re being totally honest?  I’m usually just a little bit more attracted to a girl who drives stick. Continue reading →

The Mummy (2017) review

17 Saturday Jun 2017

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Shouldn’t somebody be saying “There’s a storm coming”?

by Thom Yee

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The Mummy (2017) images courtesy of Universal Pictures

The odds are you’re never going to talk to Tom Cruise.  I mean, that’s pretty obvious from the perspective of logic and reason and cosmological significance — the odds are you’re never going to talk to a lot of people, important or otherwise.  Even you and I are probably never going to meet or have a conversation (and you come here to read our reviews all the time, don’t you?). What I mean when I say you’re never going to talk to Tom Cruise is that you’re never going to get to know Tom Cruise.  You’re never really going to meet him.  Maybe you’ll be allowed to ask him a question if you’re lucky and get chosen out of a crowd at a press junket, maybe you’ll hear what seems like a personal anecdote about him from someone you know who works in Hollywood, but Tom Cruise, a world-famous actor, a franchise unto himself and an icon who’s likely to spend the rest of his life in the public eye and leave a body of movie work behind that will be watched, loved, and even studied for generations after?  That’s not someone you’ll ever have a personal conversation with or learn a lot about even if you do somehow find yourself in a position to say something to him. Continue reading →

Wonder Woman review

10 Saturday Jun 2017

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Everybody quiet down!  Women are talking!

by Thom Yee

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Wonder Woman images courtesy of Warners Bros. Pictures

“I respect women incredibly.  I have just amazing admiration and respect for women.  I have more respect for women than anybody would understand. I cherish women.  And I treat women with respect.  I have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy.  I respect women more than I respect men.  We know they believe in certain things that we don’t want to believe in.  I want to help women.  Nobody has more respect for women than I do — that I can tell you.  Nobody.  I have tremendous respect for women.  And women have respect for me.” ~ Donald J. Trump, current POTUS Continue reading →

The Great Wall review

27 Saturday May 2017

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Who did you think was going to headline the movie?  Andy Lau?

by Thom Yee

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The Great Wall images courtesy of Universal Pictures and China Film Group

I never planned to write a review of The Great Wall.

Actually, that’s not quite true, it looked interesting enough to pencil into our schedule after its first trailer dropped, at a time still months away from its eventual release and at a point that I didn’t have to pay it much attention, but as we drew closer and closer to its opening, outrage around the circumstances of the movie only seemed to grow.  Instead of just being a movie, The Great Wall became a lightning rod of appropriation among cultural critics and mediocrity among movie critics.  It’s especially on that latter point that it seemed unlikely we would ever be discussing it at any great length here at GOO Reviews.

But this May… Continue reading →