Movie & TV Show HD

2018 might be the year that Hollywood finally figured out that representation is a great way to get overlooked audiences into the cinema, but they're not putting the big money into risky projects just yet. Much like this year's earlier big breakthrough Black Panther , this is about as solidly traditional an example of its chosen genre - in this case, the romantic-comedy - as you could ask for. But where Black Panther 's superhero audience had another four or five films to choose from this year alone, if you're a fan of big lavish rom-coms featuring grown-ups this is pretty much it for 2018. And 2017. And 2016. And as far back as it takes until the last one of those Judd Apatow comedies that pretty much trashed the genre. So this is really aimed at two under-served markets, but only one gets anything original: this is the first Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club , and the total sidelining of any kind of white western experience is easily the mo...

There is maybe one laugh to be had from the idea of children's puppets doing adult things and The Happytime Murders can't even get that right. It's not that a movie that features a puppet octopus "milking" a puppet cow somehow isn't depraved enough - it's that this movie acts like everyone watching it is totally invested in the idea of puppets as symbols of child-like innocence and wonder, and so putting puppets in adult situations is automatically hilarious.  It's not. It's amazing how much is it not. Most of the previous movies about children's characters doing adult things - Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Team America , and so on - got at least some mileage out of putting their children's characters in then-current mainstream adult movie genres. Unfortunately in 2018 there are no mainstream adult movie genres: making a puppet movie about superheroes would just be a regular superhero movie. So the story is fresh out of 1987: ex-cop turned...

It takes a lot of skill to make a firmly forgettable film about a giant killer prehistoric shark running amok at a public beach. Blame Jason Statham: without him this wouldn't even be watchable, let alone something you might possible recall a week from now when looking at a picture of the ocean. "Didn't I see a shark movie recently?" you might think. You might even be right. The story isn't exactly a pressing requirement but here goes: years ago professional underwater rescue guy Jonas Taylor (Statham) had a deep sea rescue interrupted by what he - and nobody else - believed was a giant shark. Now he's a washed up drunk, as shown by the way the next time we see him he's got a beer bottle in his hand and lives above a bar. But that doesn't matter (literally - as soon as he puts down the beer it's never mentioned again), because a bunch of hi-tech science guys have gone deeper than anyone though possible and now a shark is chewing on their sub. Get m...

A film like Superfly has to walk a very fine line. Play it too straight and what's the point; go too far over the top and it just gets silly. So while it's easy to dismiss it for not working - and most of the time it doesn't really work - films like this almost never click. Good pulp crime dramas are few and far between, and even the good ones usually get dismissed as trash. Having this one make it to cinemas at all is some kind of victory. It's a tale as old as time: the biggest drug dealer in town (Atlanta) decides to get out of the game, and the only way he can do that is by pulling off one last big score. Problem is, this film never actually gets around to explaining what that one last big score is: Youngblood Priest (Trevor Jackson) pulls off a whole bunch of smooth moves with hustler skill (his superpower is that he has information on everyone), but his big plan seems to be "sell even more drugs than usual" while his partner Eddie (Jason Mitchell) urges...

It's safe to say that back around the turn of the century if you'd asked anyone what two franchises were going to dominate action movies in the 21st century they wouldn't have said Mission: Impossible and The Fast & The Furious. And not just because The Fast & the Furious didn't hit cinemas until 2001. It's not exactly a weird direction for action movies to take: building franchises around crazy stunts has never been a bad idea. But actors used to be important too; it's a sign of how diminished the idea of performance and charisma has become that the big selling point of Tom Cruise now is that hey, maybe he's going to die making this one. Then again, for a movie touted as a non-stop action thrill ride, opening with a scene where Cruise watches a "previously on"-style informational movie for around two minutes is a brave choice – especially as pretty much everything he’s told we can safely and instantly forget. But that’s how these kind o...

New Zealand cinema has been serving up a steady stream of comedy gold over the last few years.  Australia, on the other hand, has been serving up Shane Jacobson. The Kiwi secret? Putting funny people into stories that let them actually be funny - and this bubbly film about a dynamic duo making their living helping people escape (or destroy) their relationships is no exception.  Mel (Madeleine Sami) and Jen (Jackie van Beek) – the duo also wrote the script and direct – break up relationships any way they can; fake deaths, bad songs, bogus romances, fake forest searches for not-so-missing people, you name it. Their only rule is to not get attached to their clients, which usually isn't a problem: they're either grief-stricken, losers, or creeps. But then charming yet dim 18 year-old rugby player Jordan (James Rolleston) turns up wanting to shake off his, uh, "strong-willed" missus Sepa (Ana Scotney) and it's on for young (him) and old (Mel). Meanwhile Jen is “enjoyi...

Jukebox musicals – you know, where they string together a bunch of popular songs then wrap a paper-thin story around them – make sense on stage: they’re basically a live concert with talking bits. As a movie though, they need a little extra to get them over the line. The first Mamma Mia had star power in the form of Meryl Streep and a bunch of name brand handsome guys; with Streep out the door and all the good ABBA songs used in the first film, why exactly are we coming to the cinemas for this one? It’s been ten years since Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) first asked her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) about her three dads (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) and got a whole bunch of ABBA songs as a reply. Now her mother is dead – presumably from cancer of the StreepDidntWantToReturn – and in tribute Sophie is about to open a hotel on the Greek island she called home. Then there’s a storm and nobody can make the launch. Then everybody shows up anyway in what looks like that extreme...