Film Brain

That guy who does Bad Movie Beatdown and Projector rambles about things that are too long for Twitter.

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New Projector Short! Olivia Wilde throws one hell of a party in The Invite, the US version of a popular (and frequently remade) Spanish film, where she, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton are brought together for a night of saucy secrets and very big laughs.

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Hello Matthew, I have a very important question to ask: On my Dailymotion playlist, it used to play your reviews of Quartet or Le Weekend, but now it doesn’t, did they get taken down? And can you re-upload them here on your Tumblr? I really loved your reviews of them, and I want to see them again!

Yeah, so in case you don't know, Dailymotion appears to having some sort of massive purge, and I don't think it is going to be worth fighting dozens upon dozens of copyright takedowns. It isn't just my channel on there, seems to be pretty much everyone on the platform, and I don't know what's happening over there that this is all suddenly happening now.

I suspect my channel on there will get deleted, which is a bummer and a bit demoralising personally, because these are just reviews and a lot of my old videos will go with it (I have personal backups, don't worry). But the fact is that site gets very little traffic, and I was mostly posting as a backup anyway. It sucks, especially after Dailymotion courted me a decade ago, but whatever's happening now, it is clear they don't want my content there. Or apparently anyone's.

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New Projector Review! 30 years after the original, Toy Story returns for its fifth entry, and there is a question over whether this is playing more for tech-concerned parents than their kids? Have we gone past a natural ending? But I still have a lot of nostalgic affection...

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New Projector Review! I give my best Spielberg Face as the legendary director returns to watch the skies once again in Disclosure Day, following in the footsteps of some of his biggest and most iconic hits. But, as usual, it's less alien and more something distinctly human.

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New Projector Review! Masters of the Universe finally returns to the big screen after decades of development hell, but is it too late to revive a property that is so tied to the 80s, no matter how good it is? And can a He-Man movie, in fact, make too much fun of itself?

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I edited @allisonpregler and @phelous looking at another batch of Mary-Kate and Ashley antics, including a surprise sequel! Also, possibly their worst party video ever, some unexpected mime-related horror, and a mystery disappearing dance number!

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New Projector Review! Leo Woodall is a piano tuner with hyperacusis who discovers that his hearing enables him to crack safes in the crime flick Tuner, which understandably features probably one of the year's most inventive and dynamic sound mixes. Keep an ear out for it.

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New Projector Short! George MacKay and Callum Turner are two fishermen who set sail on the mysterious Rose of Nevada and are sent back in time, in a slightly more mainstream film from Mark Jenkin, who famously shoots on clockwork Bolex, but is still uniquely his own.

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New Projector Short! In Ciao UFO, a group of friends see aliens on a rooftop in the 80s, but are separated by fate in a bittersweet tale against late 90s Hong Kong; it has an interesting story off-screen too, becoming a hit award winner after spending years in limbo.

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New Projector Short! A mouse tries to escape a monopolistic dystopia in Spanish animated film Decorado (the word for "stage"), where capitalism is tearing apart reality at the seams. Yeah, pretty timely, but also repetitive and frankly just exhaustingly bleak.

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New Projector Review! Hugh Jackman's been bumped off, and it is up to a star-studded cast of sheep to find the culprit in The Sheep Detectives, a movie which I had very much under-estimated - I certainly didn't expect to find it surprisingly moving as well as cute.

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New Projector Short! The usually-forthright Brian Cox makes a very mild directorial debut as the brother of Alan Cumming in Glenrothan, a dramedy about the line of succession with the family distillery. The Scottish answer to the Hallmark movie, apparently.

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I edited (and make a cameo in) @allisonpregler and @phelous discussing Lenny the Wonder Dog, Michael Winslow's ill-conceived attempt at a wholesome family movie. Boasting a star-studded cast: Andy Richter as the dog, Craig Ferguson is the baddie, and Oscar Isaac *is* Fartman!

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New Projector Short! I'm reviewing out of my comfort zone as James Cameron makes an unlikely team up with Billie Eilish to document her Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour in 3D, which you're likely to enjoy if a) you're a fan of Eilish, and b) you're not an epileptic.

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New Projector Short! Adam Scott's grumpy author checks into the haunted Irish hotel his parents visited, and gets himself involved in a horror story of his own, in Damian McCarthy's Hokum, whose mystery elements means it might appeal to non-horror fans too.

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New Projector Review! After a year's delay from legally-mandated reshoots, the Michael Jackson biopic arrives on the screen to give the tarnished musical icon a full-blown hagiography - and moonwalks away from controversy so hard that it's completely conflict-averse.

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New Projector Short! The debut novel of Kazou Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go) gets totally bungled in the deeply dull A Pale View of Hills. A UK/Japanese co-production set in two timelines and haunted by the bombing of Nagasaki, is more clumsy than delicate.