The Quite Nerdy Blog

Pre-review plead, please go see Booksmart this week. I reviewed it a couple of weeks ago (review here  https://thequitenerdyblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/review-booksmart.html ) and it is just the most wonderful film. Funny, fresh feeling and very, very honest, it's far and away the best thing I've seen so far this year and being a tiny indie film, it needs its supporters. So please, don't go Aladdin or The Secret Life of Pets 2 (Rocketman is a fine alternative, as you will read) this week, go see Booksmart. Now onto the review. Rocketman is a weird synthesis between musical and biopic about the life of one of the biggest rockstars of all time, Elton John. It's the story of the highest of highs that he accomplished (financially, culturally and pharmaceutically) until about the eighties (my knowledge of John's career isn't amazing but that seems to be about right), where he is reflecting on his life through a group rehab session. What this framing device allows ...

John Wick Chapter Three is (surprisingly) the third film in the surprise franchise that is John Wick. Picking up from the events at the end of the second film, our man John Wick has an hour before a $14 million bounty is set on him and every hitman and assassin in the world comes after him. Clearly, this is a tantalising enough pitch, one that has had me salivating since that cliffhanger in 2017, but the film doesn't just leave it there. Once again, we get more insights into Wick's world, the people he has met along the way and the countries that also house underground assassin rings. It is all very silly and honestly, that probably makes the plot the worst thing going here. Don't get me wrong, the silliness feels fairly knowing, this is a step up from Detective Pikachu last week. It's just that the silliness is never fully cashed in on, refusing to either have some slightly more sensible plot points or to go properly mental with itself. Not a complete loss, it just...

Detective Pikachu is this year's most unbelievable blockbuster. It's based on the video game Detective Pikachu, which of itself was a spin-off from the video game series Pokemon (which was originally a card game). You've probably heard of it. Anyway, that takes us here, to this feature length movie. A kid (I think called Tim) has to go to Ryme City because his dad has gone missing. While looking through his dad's apartment, he meets a Pikachu wearing a little detective hat who can also talk to him. Together, they must go solve the mystery of Tim's dad and perhaps uncover some greater conspiracy about Pokemon or something. I'll level with you, the plot is easily the worst bit of this film. Don't get me wrong, I've spent the week revising hugely seminal noir films like Chinatown and Fargo and I was not expecting anything that level from a Detective Pikachu movie. But still, the twists and turns are ludicrously stupid. I wish I'd seen this film with...

Booksmart is the directorial debut of Olivia Wilde, an actress who I loved in Tron: Legacy, even if not many people did. The plot will probably sound fairly familiar, as it follows two girls about to graduate from high school. They've worked hard all year to get into the colleges they want (like, really hard, "fun is the enemy" kind of hard), only as they're about to graduate, they realise that everyone else who put in way less work and partied way more has also gotten into places like Yale and Stamford. As you might expect, this shakes them quite a bit and they decide to say "Fuck it" and spend the night before their graduation trying to go to the party all the cool kids are at, to prove that they're really fun as well as really smart. It's clearly a well trodden path and the film is essentially just the girls going from event to event (where the transport also serves as events in their own right) but everything is so perfectly done that it feel...