This documentary honours the musician’s legacy as a founding father of jazz. The film shows how Armstrong’s life spans the shift from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, and how he became a lightning rod figure in that turbulent era.
When you go into a documentary about Louis Armstrong one of the founding fathers of Jazz you exactly know what you are going to get and that definitely applies here, the documentary tells the story of Armstrong and his impact on many people and some of deep insight into him as a person. The diary entries which are narrated end up being some of the most powerful parts of the documentary, such as him using his influence and support for the civil rights movement, sharing political views he didn’t share to the public and about his music. There’s a deep discussion about race and how Armstrong’s career was a huge achievement in several different ways, such as being the first black musician to write an autobiography. The documentary itself might not be anything mind blowing filmmaking wise but it really doesn’t have to be, it’s laying out the facts about Louis Armstrong and how influential he was, this is the perfect documentary to start with if you really want to get a start with knowing about Armstrong’s career.
Louie Armstrong’s Black & Blues is available on Apple TV+
A new school year, his brother Rodrick teases him over and over and over and over again. Will Greg manage to get along with him? Or will a secret ruin everything?
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules is the second of the animated Diary Of A Wimpy Kid movies and much like last years animated installment it lacks the charm of the live action trilogy (once again we don’t talk about The Long Haul). In fact somehow Rodrick Rules ends up being worse than the last one that came out last year, the only positive is Ed Asner this is one of his final performances and he did manage to get a chuckle out of me. But good lord they cut so much out of the book and the live action adaption, I get they wanted to focus on the bond between Greg and Rodrick but the live action movie managed to do that just fine with other very entertaining scenes as well. The animation is very ugly combined with very phoned in voice acting (outside of Ed Asner) the movie completely falls flat almost immediately after starting, Rodrick Rules is actually longer than the first movie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid being 58 minutes and Rodrick Rules being 1 hour and 14 minutes. However the longer time does not help the movie, in fact it makes a lot of the flaws much more noticeable particularly the animation that is just very lifeless. There’s no charm here and really fails to capture the entertainment value of the books, overall Rodrick Rules is basically a retread of the live action movie except with a lot of scenes cut and lacking both in charm and entertainment.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules is available on Disney+
Follows Darby Harper, who is granted the ability to see ghosts after suffering a near death experience in her childhood. Then, she runs a side business counseling local spirits in her spare time.
Honestly there isn’t a whole lot to say here, Darby and the Dead just sort of exists as a high school movie that has Mean Girls and a ghost movie DNA in it. So it definitely doesn’t win when it comes to originality despite that however the movie is a decently fun movie, Riele Downs who plays Darby is very charming and genuinely pretty funny plus it does seem like she’s having a blast with her role, Auli’i Cravalho is also pretty solid here as well, in fact Cravalho and Downs actually work pretty well together and do a pretty decent job of entertaining the viewer. There’s a lot of the usual high school movie elements but at the very least the writing isn’t obnoxious and manages to keep things a bit interesting, the movie actually does give a bit of development for Darby which can’t be said for other movies of the genre. There’s a certain level of maturity here that makes the movie standout nicely and works it into the story. Overall Darby and the Dead is a quick and easy watch that’s genuinely a lot of fun, it won’t break any new ground but it’s definitely one of the better high school movies.
On Christmas Eve miserly businessman Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future in the hope that he will learn the error of his ways.
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol is exactly what you expect it to be, it’s basically yet another take on the classic story by Charles Dickens. And it pretty much plays out all of the events of the story you expect to, only this one is a musical. The songs are surprisingly very charming and are by far some of the best parts of the movie, there’s a ton of energy to them and the singing voices are quite great as well, unfortunately what does bog the movie down is the character designs. Which really looks like those mobile game ads you commonly see, the three ghosts are exempt from this which they actually have some pretty neat designs and are voice very well! Olivia Colman voices Ghost of Christmas Past while Trevor Dion Nicholas voices Ghost of Christmas Present, both do a really solid job and bring so much charm to their roles, plus the two are actually pretty funny. Luke Evans as Scrooge is fine enough, he gets the job done but it’s nothing really to write home about. As I said before the story plays out exactly how you expect it to and if you can past the character designs you will find a genuinely fun movie here. It’s probably not something that you will ever revisit but for what it is it’s not half bad.
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol is available on Netflix.
6/10 C+
A successful Christmas movie director begins living her own Christmas movie when a handsome network exec shows up threatening to halt production on her latest film.
A Hollywood Christmas is HBO Max Christmas movie number four (not even halfway through December yet). This is not as bad as expected but good lord is this the definition of bland, it’s essentially about a movie director who wants to make a Christmas movie and wants to keep the Christmas formula until some network executive threatens to halt production. The premise itself actually leads to a couple moments that got a laugh out of me and I’ll give the movie credit it actually tried to use it’s premise in a interesting way. Well at least at first…it slowly but surely starts to evolve into the bad Christmas type of movie we all know and it does very little to recover. The writing is very forgettable, the characters aren’t anything to write home about and the rest of the movie is sort of a mess. A Hollywood Christmas isn’t offensive or anything, it’s just another very forgettable Christmas movie that after the credits roll you won’t ever come back to.
When an ancient troll is awakened in a Norwegian mountain, a ragtag group of heroes must come together to try and stop it from wreaking deadly havoc.
I’m actually a bit surprised Troll is from Roar Uthaug director of Tomb Raider, The Wave and Cold Prey all movies which I actually really like (Tomb Raider being a genuinely fantastic video game adaption movie). Troll is basically if someone looked at Godzilla and said “hey you know what this movie is missing? A giant troll instead of Godzilla.” The Troll’s design is actually pretty neat and there are some great shots of the scenery here, but unfortunately a lot of the movie is very basic monster stuff that really doesn’t do anything new for the genre. I’m well aware that a lot of these monster movies tend to be the same thing, but at least with some of the other ones they have a high entertainment value to them, Troll unfortunately doesn’t have that, there’s a bit too much focus on the human characters who are just not that interesting. Which is mainly due to the writing being way too dull, the characters just don’t have a whole lot of personality to them despite the movie trying as hard as it can to make them interesting. There really isn’t much else to say about Troll, it’s a below average monster movie that fails to standout among a crowded subgenre.
Two sisters try to win over their terminally ill, difficult-to-please aunt in hopes of becoming the beneficiaries of her wealthy estate, only to find the rest of their greedy family has the same idea.
The Estate is not as bad as I thought it was going to be and there’s actually some decent performances here particularly from Toni Collette and Anna Farris who actually work quite well together, some of the jokes are actually okay and the second half of the movie is incredibly wild. However the rest of the movie really tries so hard to be offensive and just results in being painfully unfunny, there’s a lot of comedy beats that are a bit too familiar and go about the way you expect. There was definitely some potential here to be a hilarious hidden gem of a movie but the movie focusing on being as offensive as possible really ruins it unfortunately.
Historians and film experts honours the legendary Sidney Poitier and his legacy as an iconic actor, filmmaker and activist at the centre of Hollywood and the Civil Rights Movement.
At the beginning of 2022 (January 6th to be exact) Sidney Poitier a huge star from the Golden Age of Hollywood, the first black man to win an academy award and major activist for representation for black people in film sadly passed away. For the most part Sidney does a fantastic job of telling the legacy of Sidney Poitier and his impact on the film industry, there’s tons of insightful interviews, really strong narration from Sidney Poitier himself and his thoughts of his career, his life and his actions during his career. It’s such a beautifully put together tribute to a iconic actor that really left an inspirational mark on the industry and audiences, the main criticism mostly stems from being a bit too generic at times, there’s some interviews that aren’t as good as others. Having that said it’s very easy to look past when you have such a nicely done tribute. Sidney is a very strong way to start if you want to get a nice introduction to Sidney Poitier!
Josh and Blue travel to New York City to attend an audition, hoping to star in a major Broadway musical while being a part of the cast.
Blue’s Big City Adventure is basically the Blue’s Clues version of Spider-Man: No Way Home! Joking aside this was genuinely really charming, I grew up watching Blue’s Clues as a kid so this really brought back a ton of memories. All three of the hosts throughout the show’s life are here Joshua Dela Cruz who plays Josh, Donovan Patten who plays Joe and Steve Burns who plays Steve. All three of which do really solid job in their roles capturing each of the characters and what made the show so iconic in the first place, the movie itself is a musical a very entertaining too. The songs are very catchy and actually well choreographed from the dancers and filled to the brim with energy, there’s a huge level of charm here that is absolutely appealing to the viewer and makes it known the movie hasn’t forgotten the spirit of the show. The story being simple as Josh and Blue traveling to New York City in order to get to in audition to be in a musical is exactly the type of thing you would want in a Blue’s Clues movie, combining Blue’s Clues with the musical genre is like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They both blend together incredibly well and end with very entertaining results which is exactly what you get here.
Blue’s Big City Adventure is available on Paramount+
The cultural significance of the nearly 100-year-old cartoon mouse. As one of the world’s most beloved characters, Mickey Mouse is recognized as a symbol of joy and childhood innocence. An exclusive animated short film, “Mickey in a Minute.”
Mickey: A Story Of a Mouse for the most part is a lot of common knowledge, of course it goes through how the mouse came to be, what Walt Disney himself was thinking while creating Mickey, what his goals were with Disney as an animation studio and we even get the story of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and the whole battle over the character. Something that did surprise me is the documentary goes over Mickey Mouse doing blackface in the old cartoons and other issues as well, it’s a bit surprising due to Disney having the tendency to avoid talking about their past that even some fans of the cartoons want to address. There’s a very strong approach towards the topic that the documentary takes here especially with the interviewers, while the interviewers are fans of Disney they are very open to talking about the very rough history of the cartoons. Plus the documentary really hammers it in that the past should be open for discussion as well as being addressed, a lot of other Disney documentaries tend to avoid the topic of blackface being used in some of the old cartoons so I give credit where credit is due. There’s genuine heart out into the documentary and doesn’t feel manufactured which is again refreshing, there’s charming interviews and some engaging bits that have heart in them. Mickey: A Story Of a Mouse isn’t anything groundbreaking but it is refreshing when it comes to Disney documentaries.
Mickey: The Story of a Mouse is available on Disney+
A young girl discovers a secret map to the dreamworld of Slumberland, and with the help of an eccentric outlaw, she traverses dreams and flees nightmares, with the hope that she will be able to see her late father again.
I wish there was a lot to say about Slumberland a $150 million dollar budget Netflix original directed by Francis Lawrence, but to be quite honest there really isn’t. The movie at least looks a bit more appealing to the eye when compared to Red Notice and The Gray Man, but that’s mainly due to the fantasy elements here that actually do give the movie some sort of life. Jason Momoa puts on a very different type of performance here that is genuinely charming, Marlow Barkley also gives a charming performance as well, for a Netflix child actor performance this is definitely one of the better ones. The main issue comes in story wise where it plays out way too similarly to a lot of fantasy movies, the whole “person discovers a new land full of creatures” has been done far better before, what’s very unfortunate here is Francis Lawrence’s direction is just nonexistent here, maybe it’s because this is entirely different from what he usually does but a lot of what makes his direction interesting is just not here. The raw emotions in Catching Fire and Mockingjay Part 2, the strong chemistry in Water For Elephants, the sense of building a strong atmosphere in I Am Legend and so on. It often times looks like the movie is going to try and do something interesting but quickly goes back to playing it way too safe. Every now and then you get some charming moments with Momoa and Barkley but otherwise this is very forgettable and definitely overstays it’s welcome with a nearly 2 hour running time. Overall despite my many complaints Slumberland isn’t exactly terrible it’s rather forgettable and just sits there as another addition to the forgettable Netflix movie pile.
Jerome Reviews... 