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THE POLKA KING - REVIEW

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Based on the true story of polka band leader Jan Lewan, The Polka King is a new comedy released by Netflix starring Jack Black, Jenny Slate and Jason Schwartzman. The film follows the rise and fall of Lewan, who was convicted for running a Ponzi scheme in the early 2000's. Jack Black is in familiar territory here playing a likeable, well-meaning yet off-beat and troubled character based on a real person like he did in the underrated 2011 film Bernie . This story, however, isn't so much dark as it is fascinatingly ridiculous: the idea that a little-known Polish polka singer in Pennsylvania somehow convinced a lot of people to invest in him for years is so surreal that it's ripe for parody. Black could have easily turned this role into a Nacho Libre -style cartoon but, even though he puts on an impossible accent here, he still captures what made this guy so appealing to others and shows different sides to his personality. Most of the time, Lewan is friendly and generous

WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GO SEE JUMANJI 2?

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Some thoughts on the upcoming sequel to Jumanji .

BERNIE - VIDEO REVIEW

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Here's the video version of my Bernie review.

GOOSEBUMPS - REVIEW

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Based on R.L. Stine's popular kid-friendly horror books (and the TV series), Goosebumps was a theatrical feature adaptation released in 2015 starring Jack Black. It did well at the box-office despite a surprisingly healthy budget. I say "surprisingly" because you wouldn't really think that a studio would go all-in for a Goosebumps movie but this is a project that was in development for a long time so I would suspect that a good portion of the dough went into various scripts, casts and crews. In fact, as expensive as it may be, this movie still feels like a TV movie update on the old series. Sure the monsters are huge, detailed CGI creations but they are nowhere near as polished and impressive as you'd expect from a modern day blockbuster. This is a colourful, action-packed adaptation that playfully mixes together several memorable characters from the books including evil garden gnomes, creepy ventriloquist dummies, blobs and abominable snowmen as they are al

KUNG FU PANDA 3 - REVIEW

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After the success of the last two Kung Fu Panda movies, a third instalment was inevitable and the first two being as good as they were, the pressure was on for Dreamworks to not mess things up with a soulless cash-in. The good news is that Kung Fu Panda 3 is definitely not that and is actually a very decent, worthy second sequel. This time, Po (Jack Black) is tasked by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to teach his team mates Kung Fu but, of course, that soon backfires. Meanwhile, evil yak Kai (J.K. Simmons) comes back from the spirit world with the goal of taking the "Chi" from every Kung Fu master in the land. He goes on a rampage just as Po's long lost father  Li Shan (Bryan Cranston) shows up to take Po back to the panda village and show him the ways of the pandas. Both plots eventually meet and, once again, Po will have to learn a bunch of valuable lessons to defeat the villain and become the master he was destined to become. It's a busy sequel and, in lesse

BERNIE - REVIEW

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Based on a surprising true story, Bernie is a dark comedy starring Jack Black, directed by Richard Linklater, which kinda passed by nearly unnoticed despite the talent involved and the intriguing premise at its heart. Though he was nominated for a Golden Globe, that Jack Black was ignored for an Oscar nomination just goes to show the Academy Awards' reluctance to acknowledge comedy as a legitimate genre worthy of recompense. The actor goes completely against-type as the mild-mannered, multi-talented Bernie Tiede who one day, out of nowhere, shot an 81 year-old millionairess after a lifetime of not doing anything remotely violent or suspicious. The film makes full use of Black's versatility and he rises up to the challenge like a pro, delivering one memorable, quietly hilarious performance. Linklater tells this tale through a variety of talking heads which build up every scene and although this technique rarely works when it's not used in a documentary, here it helps g

THE CABLE GUY - REVIEW

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Directed by Ben Stiller, The Cable Guy is a dark comedy starring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick that proved maybe too weird for audiences back in 1996. It went from being treated as a joke to gaining a cult following over time but how does it fare today? The film sees Broderick's loser Steven move into a new apartment after awkwardly separating from his girlfriend (played by Leslie Mann) and meeting his "cable guy", a strange dude calling himself Chip Douglas (Jim Carrey) who speaks with a lisp, has a rather unpleasant sense of humour and who molests Steven's wall the very first time he meets him. Chip desperately wants to be friends with Steven and basically pushes this friendship onto him but when Chip finally crosses the line and Steven wants out, he soon becomes the latter's worst enemy. I could certainly see how going from The Mask or Dumb & Dumber to this would be a bit of a jump but seeing as, by this point, Jim Carrey had already played a dem