Tom's Reviews

I like Coherence. This film is a huge inspiration; its a wonderful, thrilling, mind-bending ride for its entire run time, it has snappy clever writing, some fantastic performances, an engaging plot, fast paced editing, and smooth camera work. There is little at fault here. And it cost $50'000 to make. Coherence (from director/writer James Ward Byrkit) is a sci-fi, mystery, thriller about a group of friends who meet one evening (coincidentally the same evening a comet is flying by) for dinner. Over the course of that night strange and extraordinarily mysterious things begin to occur. Coherence is hard to talk about because watching this film is like getting amazing gifts over and over again, and I just don't want to spoil what those gifts are. But rest assured the captivating script remains clever and compelling throughout making it a film you simply cannot turn away from. It is full of twists you won't see coming, but when they hit you, not only will that smile of sati

When I was a kid, we had this triple pack of Pokémon DVDs, which was great, because as a kid I loved  Pokémon . The catch was, and it was a pretty big catch, all three DVDs were in French, which would be no biggie if there were English subtitles - there weren't. The thing is, I distinctly remember enjoying the incomprehensible (as a kid I spoke and understood very little french) French  Pokémon movies, over the original version of  Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back . I can safety say, without a shadow of a doubt, that I still prefer those French movies (which, let's be honest, I still can't understand) over this, boring, elongated piece of utter rubbish. I think my biggest grievance with this film is its plot, or, to put it bluntly, lack thereof. Unlike the brilliant Dragon Quest: Your Story , this film isn't fast because it has a lot to say and very little time to say it, quite the opposite. This film's events often feel as if they come so quickly, one after the other

I don't usually review short films on here. I have once, I reviewed I'm Here (Spike Jonze, Her ), with not much enthusiasm I must add. Today's short is The Captain by directors Nash Edgerton ( Gringo ) and Spencer Susser ( ARO: Cocaine Style ), and writers Nash Edgerton, Spencer Susser and Taika Waititi ( Jojo Rabbit ). It also stars Taika as the leading man, playing here a captain of a crashed plane who awakes amidst the destruction. Like I'm Here , I'm reviewing this dull short with little enthusiasm, so buckle up buttercup for a bitter review. You may have noticed that, for a six minute short, there's an awful lot of writers and directors behind it. It's not uncommon, sure, but what makes that fact more striking is the complete and utter lack of dialogue during the whole run-time. Even stranger yet, Taika is the only actor in the movie, save for some famous cameos (including Nash's famous brother Joel Edgerton, The King ) as corpses. I'd imagin

Man was this film boring. A quarter of the way through I just went on my phone. I probably missed something important, but that's neither here nor there, because the final product is a meaningless movie that lacks the tension and thrills it so desires to aspire to. The Coldest Game (Lukasz Kosmicki, Ultraviolet ) stars Bill Pullman ( Dark Waters ) as the genius mathematician and chess player, Joshua Mansky, who gets embroiled in the very high stakes affair that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Except from watching this drivel you'd hardly be able to tell. There's one key feature of a thriller that is so integral to it's success;have a guess as to what it is. I'll give you a clue, it's in the name. If you said thrills, boy are you as smart as old Mansky-poo over here. This film has an abundance of nothing, and a whole nothing of thrills. It struggles to give me even one reason to care, at all, about anything that's going on. It's not shot well, it's

I wasn't too pleased with my Ni No Kuni   (Yoshiyuki Momose, Modest Heroes ) review. I had so much I wanted to say, and in an effort to condense my thoughts into a readable review, I ended up with a bog-standard one. I don't want to make the same mistakes with this review, because I genuinely loved Dragon Quest: Your Story (Takashi Yamazaki, Lupin III: The First ), and I really want to share with you why. When I first heard this was coming to Netflix, I have to be honest with you, I was giddy. I watched the first few seconds of the trailer, heard the Dragon Quest theme song, and switched it off. I would wait, I told myself. Not too long now. And boy was the wait worth it! This movie isn't perfect, and I'll explain why; throughout its 1hr 42 minute run-time I went between a 6/10 to a 7/10 and I think I finally ended on an 8. I think this film takes some getting used to, an appreciation of the source material, and most of all a love for all things JRPG. But I'll

Awww man. I really wanted to like this film. Like really wanted to like it. I'm not a huge fan of the games, and by that I mean I've never played them. The only thing I know about them is the brief period in which my sister played the second one, and the incessant use of the theme song. Boy did they play it over and over again. That tune is ingrained in my mind. It's so annoying, I'd probably lash out at anyone who played it. I'm not kidding. Play it. I dare you. Anywho... I started this movie with high hopes. It's directed by the key animator of Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises ) Yoshiyuki Momose, who also happened to work on Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom , the latest game in the Ni no Kuni franchise. It's styled like the Ghibli films of yonder, and its set in a lush high fantasy world akin to Sword Art Online's first arc. So, suffice to say it's jammed packed with things I love about anime. I was very excited to say the least.

It's been a while. A long long while. I haven't written a review in quite some time so, for me, this is a big deal. I started writing these way back when I was in my second year of university as a little project. A review a day (oh how naive I was). But I trailed off somewhere along the line; films just stopped interesting me and nothing new was grabbing my attention like it once had. Where I had once been able to spot a diamond in the rough, now I saw nothing, nothing special, unique or worthwhile. As I get older, I become more and more reflective; I think about the time I've spent, the time I will spend; I think about my past and future with more and more scrutiny and longing; I think about all the loss in my life, the failures, the struggles, and long for the day I finally succeed. So, with all this swimming in my mind, turning on a movie I may have enjoyed way back when is just not something I am as capable of doing. I'm not going to sit here and say that Tune

Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch Cost: £0.00/$0.00 The more I age, the more money is becoming a precious commodity. Products like a can of Coke now start to add up, and those chocolate bars at £1.50 are now £1.50 I can't spend on a video game. It's a sad existence, equating every purchase with the price of a video game, restricting myself on what I can and can't buy based solely on how it would impact the purchasing of a new game; woe pity me. But to make matters worse, in the upcoming months a slew of AA and AAA video games are releasing on my all time favourite console: the Nintendo Switch. A cool £50 for Fire Emblem: Three Houses , another for Astral Chain , another for DQ XI . Oh boy, it's all adding up. That £1.50 chocolate bar is looking cheap now. So when a demo is released for a video game I jump at the opportunity to play it, regardless of my already established interest level in that game. Oninaki was announced a while back and I honestly hadn't paid t

Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch I feel like reviewing Cave Story is like reviewing Citizen Kane: you're not allowed to hate it, and if you do, you hate any subsequent games inspired by it. That may be a little bit of an over-exaggeration, but in a world where opinion is becoming scarcer and scarcer in place of a unified "you're either with us or against us" mentality, I'm always weary of reviewing a popular product. Cave Story, as far as I'm aware, was one of the original Metroidvanias (outside of Castlevania and Metroid of course) and pioneered the absolute storm of unabashedly unoriginal Metroidvanias we see today littering the switch eshop (thanks Cave Story...). It's a game I've played about six times, and I want to go through those six times and explain my journey with Cave Story, in what will eventually (I hope) turn into a review. VIRGIN TO PRO-ISH My first time with Cave Story was way back when I was a little kid. My friend, who had a be

Phew, after reviewing one non-Korean movie ( Time Share , a not so good Spanish film) I think I need to renew my avid, perhaps slightly unhealthy obsession with strange Korean movies no one else DARES to review. That's right, I'm a bit of a daredevil when it comes to reviewing films, only three critics reviews on IMDB, let me at 'em. Today's flick is The Chase , not to be mistaken with the British game show of the same name (which is pretty awesome by the way), a Korean action/comedy/thriller/mystery hybrid that's pretty good and offers some fresh insights into an overdone genre. The Chase, written and directed by Hong-seon Kim ( The Con Artists ), is a film about a landlord who's tenants are being murdered and he's having none of it. He teams up with an ex detective, and together the two gramps go for a romp around their town to find the killer. Me and my sister watched this one together, and before watching it we had a quick peek at the trailer. Oh boy i

It may seem like I only watch Korean films, and you'd be almost correct if you assumed so. I actually watch more films than I review, and today's film was Time Share . I wasn't going to review Time Share , mainly because it's critic's review section on IMDB (which coincidentally seems to be where I get all my "clicks") is already pretty full. But, I figured my blog was too Korean orientated, so I thought I'd spice it up. Time Share it is. I am so mixed on Time Share it is honestly frustrating. The film, directed by  Sebastián Hofmann ( Halley ) and written by  Sebastián Hofmann  and  Julio Chavezmontes ( Halley ), has a really intriguing premise. The way it's described on IMDB is as follows: " Two haunted family men join forces in a destructive crusade to rescue their families from a tropical paradise, after becoming convinced that an American timeshare conglomerate has a sinister plan to take their loved ones away." Now you'd be

I forgot I owned an Amazon Prime account; I'm constantly on Netflix searching for obscure movies to review that I miss the Prime logo on my PS4 and never give it the time of day it deserves. So today, having really scoured the weird Korean titles Netflix has to offer, I went to Prime and got myself a weird Chinese title. The Laundryman , directed by Chung Lee and written by Chung Lee and Yu-Hsun Chen ( The Village of No Return) is not what I'd call a great film, not even what I'd call a good film. It's a film, it has all the components to make one, in fact it has all the components to make a great film, but it doesn't use them well, and to add insult to injury it feels like it's low budget. Let me explain. Here's the Amazon description of this film: "A hitman is quite literally haunted by the ghosts of his past in this unique blend of supernatural action-comedy set in the neon-lit world of cynical psychics, seductive mob bosses, and clever cops.&qu

Forgotten is one of those films that I could criticise to the end of time, but actually love deep down. It's a flawed film for sure, but it has a lot of redeeming qualities that make it shine above the rest, and I think that's mostly down to it being Korean. I know I know. Tom likes another Korean movie! What a surprise! But in all seriousness, there's something about the way they make films that means they could take a crap idea and make it watchable at least. Forgotten , directed and written by Hang-jun Jang ( Spring Breeze ), is a thriller about a twenty-one year old who suspects not all is right in his family after his brother Yu-seok (Mu-Yeol Kim, The Gangster, The Cop and The Devil ) is abducted and mysteriously returns nineteen days later. Now you see Forgotten's plot is okay, and I mean that in the most neutral way. It's not great, it's not bad, it's just okay. For starters it's almost entirely predictable from the beginning, or at least it w