Phil’s Quick Capsule Review & Friends ESSENTIAL LIST For 2017 Part 1: Manchester By The Sea, Wind River, Baby Driver, Paddington 2 , Elle, The Triangle

Phil’s Quick Capsule Review & Friends ESSENTIAL LIST For 2017 Part 1: Manchester By The Sea, Wind River, Baby Driver, Paddington 2 , Elle, The Triangle

by Phil Hobden Other Cr*p Quick Review Year In Review

The votes are in.  The Long List been reduced to just 11… and here they are, the Phil’s Quick Capsule Review & Guests list of the FILMS TO WATCH for 2017.  In no particular order:

 

#1: Manchester By The Sea
A depressed uncle is asked to take care of his teenage nephew after the boy’s father dies.

 

 

 

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#2: Wind River
A veteran tracker with the Fish and Wildlife Service helps to investigate the murder of a young Native American woman, and uses the case as a means of seeking redemption for an earlier act of irresponsibility which ended in tragedy.

 

 

 

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#3: Baby Driver
After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail.

 

 

 

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#4: Paddington 2
Paddington, now happily settled with the Brown family and a popular member of the local community, picks up a series of odd jobs to buy the perfect present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday, only for the gift to be stolen.

 

 

 

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#5: Elle
A successful businesswoman gets caught up in a game of cat and mouse as she tracks down the unknown man who raped her.

 

 

 

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#5: The Triangle
Four filmmakers take their cameras into the Montana wilderness to document the mysterious inner workings of a young community with a giant secret.

 

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Next Time: The final 5 Films To Watch for 2017. 

Phil’s Quick Capsule Review & Friends: The 25 Must See Films Of 2017

Phil’s Quick Capsule Review & Friends: The 25 Must See Films Of 2017

by Phil's Quick Review Other Cr*p Year In Review

So this is it… Phil’s Quick Capsule Review & Guests (including podcasters Mike Parkin & Josh Morris, Filmmaker Ross Boyask and Phil’s Quick Capsule Review writers Will Strong & Matt Duddy) LONG list of the xx must see films of 2017

This list will also form the basis of our vote for the Essential Films of 2017.

So how many have YOU seen?

Wind River
Paddington 2
Beauty and the Beast
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
La-La Land
T2 Trainspotting
Baby Driver
Raw
Happy Death Day
Elle
The Triangle
Spiderman: Homecoming
Operation: Mekong
Let Her Out
Despicable Me 3
Dunkirk
A Monster Calls
Star Wars The Last Jedi
Thor Ragnorok
Get Out
Lady Macbeth
Brawl in Cell Block 99
The Fate of the Furious
Hacksaw Ridge
Shot Caller

Check back in the next few days for our final list or take the QUIZ HERE To see how many you have seen!

Grosse Pointe Geek’s Round Up of 2017

Grosse Pointe Geek’s Round Up of 2017

by Will Strong A Blog Grosse Point Geek
Another year goes by and like very much like 2016 its been a mighty disappointing one for us film geeks.

The blockbuster season (which started in about April) was without doubt the worst i have ever known – littered with remakes, sequels and reboots that proved there is a total lack of any new ideas flowing through Hollywood at the moment. Time and again it seemed that millions of dollars had been simply thrown away on the likes of utter rubbish such The Dark Tower, Valerian, King Arthur and that awful Transformers sequel, with nary a single  passing thought to investing in creating proper stories, decent scripts or even a hint at actual risk taking.  Instead, for the most part  we got nothing more than good looking dross aimed at the 12A moron crowd who wouldn’t know a proper film if it came up and bit them on the arse.

What  is painfully obvious is that the film industry as a whole needs to completely take stock, cease trying to create the next expanded universe or indulging talentless idiots like Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay and (whisper it) Luc Besson and start delivering edgy, daring material that at least has a go at being original, thought provoking and dare i say it  – not solely aimed at the average 12 year old boy, then maybe we would have a chance of far more satisfying years at the cinema than this one turned out to be.

I will concede that it wasn’t all bad as there were a few shining lights. Logan proved to be the best X-Men film since X2, Dunkirk solidified Christopher Nolan as one of the greatest directors working in Hollywood today, Thor Ragnarok was utterly insane and turned out to be the funniest and most enjoyable standalone film of the MCU universe, Fast 8 was great fun and Star Wars The Last Jedi was fantastic, in addition some smaller more independent films also managed to impress  – the likes of Wind River, Manchester By The Sea, Molly’s Game, Lion and A Monster Calls were all top notch. Plus there were some great performances  –  Chris Evans, Andy Serkis, Adam Driver, Jessica Chastain, Mark Rylance  and many others all did very well in challenging and memorable roles that impressed critics and audiences alike.

However, despite this i still have to say that over all this year was sadly a massive let down and one can only hope that 2018 is a significant improvement……we live in hope.

So without further ado please see below my personal list of the good, bad and in many cases very ugly films of 2017.

Top Ten Best

  1. Dunkirk
  2. Thor Ragnarok
  3. Star Wars The Last Jedi
  4. A Monster Calls
  5. Manchester By The Sea
  6. Lion
  7. Spiderman Homecoming
  8. Blade Runner 2049
  9. Logan
  10. War For The Planet of The Apes

Top Ten Honorary Mentions  

  1. Wind River
  2. Molly’s Game
  3. Gifted
  4. Wheelman (catch it on Netflix  – its great)
  5. Fast 8
  6. Hacksaw Ridge
  7. John Wick Chapter 2
  8. Wonder Woman
  9. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2
  10. The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Top Fifteen Worst:

  1. Transformers:The Last Knight (the cinematic equivalent of being disemboweled with a blunt spoon then slowly and choked to death with ones own entrails – I HATED this film)
  2. Underworld 5 (god-awful rubbish)
  3. XXX3: The Return of Xander Cage (at least 15 years out of date, bereft of entertainment value and utterly juvenile to boot)
  4. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (horribly crass, overlong and an insult to the brilliant original)
  5. The Discovery (torpor inducing nonsense)
  6. The Snowman (considering the talent in front and behind the camera it beggared belief as to how rotten this film was)
  7. Ghost In The Shell (boring and bland in the extreme)
  8. Free Fire (crap)
  9. Unlocked (mega crap)
  10. King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (a misfire and a complete mess of gargantuan proportions)
  11. Silence (Scorsese’s $40 million dollar vanity project that was, without a shadow of a doubt THE most boring cinematic experience I have ever had in my entire life)
  12. The Bye Bye Man (just bad bad bad)
  13. The Dark Tower (a catastrophic waste of time and money  – how this version of Stephen King’s classic novels managed to get the green light from the studio I will never know)
  14. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (Johnny was good value as always but this moribund franchise needs to end with immediate effect)
  15. Assassins Creed (good looking film but could have been so much better)

Top Fifteen Favorite Performances:

  1. Chris Evans  – Gifted
  2. Mckenna Grace  – Gifted
  3. Hugh Jackman  – Logan
  4. Mark Rylance  – Dunkirk
  5. Ryan Reynolds  – The Hitman’s Bodyguard
  6. Frank Grillo – Wheelman
  7. Jessica Chastain  –  Molly’s Game
  8. Adam Driver  – Star Wars The Last Jedi
  9. Mark Hamill – Star Wars The Last Jedi
  10. Chris Hemsworth – Thor Ragnarok
  11. Jeff Goldblum – Thor Ragnarok
  12. Dwayne Johnson  – Fast 8
  13. Chris Pine – Wonder Woman
  14. Andy Serkis – War For The Planet Of The Apes
  15. Tom Holland – Spiderman Homecoming

Top Ten Best Action Scenes:

1.Star Wars The Last Jedi: The final battle – Chewie and Rey arrive in the Falcon in the nick of time

2.Thor Ragnarok – That god almighty scrap on the Bifrost Bridge – all brilliantly played out to Led Zepellin’s classic Immigrant Song

3.Star Wars The Last Jedi – The Throne Room Lightsabre duel

4.Dunkirk: Tom Hardy’s RAF spitfire pilot desperately tries to bring down a German Bomber before it kills scores of soldiers who are stranded the water plus pleasure boat captain Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his son Peter -total edge of the seat, nail biting stuff –  all together now “Come on Farrier!”

5. Fast 8  – Jason Statham (plus very cute baby) vs an entire plane load of baddies

6. Fast 8 – Dwayne Johnson vs speeding torpedo

7. Wonder Woman – The No Man’s Land dash

8. Spiderman Homecoming  – The Washington Monument rescue sequence

9. Justice League – The League’s first proper battle with Steppenwolf and the Para Demons

10. Thor Ragnarok  – Thor vs The Hulk


Best One liners:

  1. “Im gonna shove your teeth so far down your throat that your gonna have to shove a toothbrush up your ass to clean ’em!”  – Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) – Fast 8
  2. “Im gonna beat you like a Cherokee drum!” Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson – again) – Fast 8
  3. “By the beard of Odin you will not cut my hair!”  Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – Thor Ragnarok
  4. “Please kind sir do not cut my hair!”  – Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – Thor Ragnarok
  5. “I have legendarily huge turds”  – Drax (Dave Bautista) – Guardians of The Galaxy Vol 2
  6. “What the F….!!!!!” Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) Spiderman: Homecoming

Right, there we have it – my work here is done for another year  – as ever i would like to thank my dear friend Phil Hobden for letting me contribute to this fantastic website  (despite the fact that he is still remains to be utterly wrong about Paul WS Anderson and The Hobbit Trilogy!) and finally my heartfelt thanks go out to all our loyal readers  (whoever the hell you are)

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.

My name is Will Strong and i’ve been Grosse Pointe Geek.

Grosse Point Geek – 2016 In Review (And a look to 2017)

Grosse Point Geek – 2016 In Review (And a look to 2017)

by Will Strong A Blog Grosse Point Geek Year In Review

2016 – in short, a terrible year for big movies – in fact i struggle to remember another time where the Hollywood studios produced so many blockbuster films as badly made, boring, and lacking in imagination as what we were subjected to over the last 12 months.

To begin with were subjected endless numbers of superhero films  – one of which (Captain America: Civil War) was so contrived it was painful, then there were the dull and at times terrible sequels to long dead franchises (ID4:2 Jason Bourne, The Huntsman, Blair Witch), crap comedies (Bad Moms) iffy fantasies (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) shoddy remakes (Point Break) and yet another godawful game to film adaptation (Warcraft).

Mercifully there were some shining lights among the inky darkness – mostly for which we have to thank the many smaller budgeted productions, such as Room, The Nice Guys, Hell or High Water, Spotlight etc. These were the films that probably struggled to get made for years because the likes of Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich and the other sell outs were hoovering up all the money that the studios could throw at them, just so they could vomit their shoddy, franchise prolonging, zero imagination celluloid turds on Joe Public – bastards.

To be fair though not all the biggies were rubbish  – Star Trek Beyond was pretty good, so was The Revenant, Deadpool was awesome,  Creed rocked, London Has Fallen and Doctor Strange were great fun  and Rogue One completely blew us all away to become one of the best entries in the Star Wars franchise since Return Of The Jedi.

So here it is then – my rundown of the best and worst of 2016 and a look at what I think will be worth seeing next year.

 

Top 10 best films of 2016

  1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
  2. Room
  3. Deadpool
  4. Creed
  5. Spotlight
  6. Eddie The Eagle
  7. Arrival
  8. Eye In The Sky
  9. The Magnificent Seven
  10. London Has Fallen (i’m gonna burn in hell for that one)

Top 15 Honorary mentions of 2016

 

  1. Doctor Strange
  2. Hell or High Water
  3. The Nice Guys
  4. A Street Cat Named Bob
  5. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice
  6. Ghostbusters
  7. Conjuring 2
  8. Purge: Election Year
  9. Ben Hur
  10. The Revenant
  11. Jungle Book
  12. Star Trek Beyond
  13. The Siege Of Jadotville
  14. Bridget Jones Baby
  15. Midnight Special
The Top Ten Performances of 2016
  1. Brie Larson (Room)
  2. Jacob Tremblay (Room)
  3. Felicity Jones (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story)
  4. Benedict Cumberbach (Doctor Strange)
  5. Ben Affleck (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice)
  6. Luke Treadaway (A Streetcat Named Bob)
  7. Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool)
  8. Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight)
  9. Sylvester Stallone (Creed)
  10. Alan Rickman (Eye In The Sky)
The Top ten Best Action Scenes/on screen fights of 2016
  1. That utterly incredible, pant wettingly brilliant last 20 minutes of Rogue One – ive seen it twice now and i still cant believe it.
  2. The monumental, bullet riddled arse kicking that Gerard Butler and The SAS throw the terrorists in the climax to London has Fallen.
  3. Will Smith (guns and all) vs the Meta-Human mutants – Suicide Squad (i hasten to add it was that films one saving grace)
  4. Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman’s big face off against Doomsday in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.
  5. The edge of the seat finale to Eye In The Sky
  6. Little Jack’s escape from the room – Room
  7. The one take, no edit boxing match – Creed
  8. Leonardo DiCaprio vs The Bear  – The Revenant
  9. The Chariot Race  – Ben Hur
  10. The big finale – Magnificent Seven
Grosse Pointe Geek’s 2016 Hero of The Year
Gareth Edwards –  for finally giving us the Star Wars film we’ve all been waiting for with Rogue One – well done my son.

The Top Five Biggest Disappointments of 2016

  1. X-Men: Apocalypse (someone needs to grab this franchise and give it a bloody good shake)
  2. Suicide Squad (one of the best trailers of the year – just a shame it couldn’t translate into a better film – God this one had SO much potential!)
  3. Bone Tomahawk (how in the hell a western featuring Kurt Russell as sheriff going up against a bunch of psychopathic cave men could end up so dull beggars belief)
  4. 10 Cloverfield Place (another brilliant trailer  -and a complete sell out of an ending)
  5. The Hateful Eight (undoubtedly well made but Tarantino disappeared up his own arse with this one)

The Top ten Worst Films of 2016

  1. Independence Day: Resurgence (a message to Roland Emmerich –  Dear Roland, i and every film geek on the planet sincerely hope that you and Dean Devlin rot in the pit of direct to dvd hell for the rest of your miserable careers – yours sincerely – The Film going public)
  2. Warcraft (a CGI monstrosity and a complete steaming dung pile of a film)
  3. Hardcore Henry (i hated this so much i thought i was going to need therapy)
  4. Bad Moms (i’ve had more fun cleaning cat puke off the kitchen floor than i did watching this)
  5. Allegiant (a franchise killer that deserved to be the gigantic flop that it was)
  6. Point Break (pointless remake and an insult to the original -all i can say is that Patrick Swayze must be turning in his grave)
  7. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (good idea, utterly crap film)
  8. Gods Of Egypt (so laughably bad i cant believe it got a cinema release)
  9. Bastille Day (probably the most unoriginal and most torturous to watch “action” film i’ve ever had the displeasure to sit through)
  10. Blair Witch (total pants  – scariest movie of the decade my distended arse)

 

and finally..Will’s 2017 most anticipated films:

  • Star War Episode 8
  • Guardians of The Galaxy Volume 2
  • Wonder Woman
  • Justice League
  • The Mummy
  • Kong: Skull Island
  • Manchester By The Sea
  • Geostorm
  • Ready Player One
  • Spiderman Homecoming
  • Thor Ragnarok
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Alien: Covenant
  • War For The Planet Of The Apes
  • Dunkirk
  • John Wick Chapter 2
  • Fate of The Furious (aka Fast 8)
  • Logan

 

So there we are  – my round up of 2016, overall a pretty poor year  – still never mind, Rogue One and the smaller films did alot to make up for it plus 2017 is looking very good indeed. As ever id like to thank anyone and  everyone who read my reviews (whoever you are!) and visited this fantastic website, plus a big thanks to the illustrious Mr Phillip Hobden for continuing to let me vent my spleen upon the movie going world.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous new year

 

My name is Will Strong and I’ve been Grosse Pointe Geek.

 

Author: Will Strong aka Grosse Point Geek

 

Moonlight – A Quick Capsule Review

Moonlight – A Quick Capsule Review

by Phil Hobden Quick Review

Phil’s Quick Capsule Review:
Moonlight is an interesting failure. Actually failure is a bit harsh. The film doesn’t fail – the direction is great and the central performances are top draw but overall it feels a little TV movie of the week.  Be it the bullying (which feels like Home & Away at times) or the boys self discovery, there’s nothing here that feels groundbreaking or fresh. That said the performances alone make this worth watching and whilst it falls short of the critical praise heaped on it, it’s worthy enough to spend a couple of hours film

Best Bit: The Performances

Buy, Stream, Avoid: Stream

If You Liked this Try: Boyhood, Manchester By The Sea, Brokeback Mountain

IMDB Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

 

Author: Phil Hobden