Parenthood (1989)

 

Steve Martin stars and is perfectly uptight as Gil Buckman, a family man trying not to freak out on the rollercoaster of parenthood, but there's a veritable Love Actually-sized ensemble here too: a single mother (Dianne Wiest) struggles to raise a teenage boy (a young Joaquin Phoenix) while trying to steer an older daughter (Martha Plimpton) away from no-hopers like Tod (Keanu Reeves playing Ted again), and more (Rick Moranis, Tom Hulce, Mary Steenburgen, and Jason Robards) all in Ron Howard's comedy smash hit about the trials and tribulations of the privileged white raising kids in traditional family units.

★★★☆☆

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John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

With a plot about as sophisticated as a Spy Kids movie, film-sets that resemble the painted polystyrene walls of a laser tag night-out, and role-playing action of the sort you might see offered up by overzealous bachelor party paintballers or DnDers running around in capes or three-piece suits and elocuting words like "Parabellum" (say it as you swirl wine in a chalice), this tiresome third in the John Wick series dares to be even worse than the previous two cartoons: a Fanta-grade (thanks, Laurence Fishburne, for that punctuation) string of gun- and knife-fantasists' wet dreams with lethargic fight-scene choreography (we all love Keanu Reeves but think of the flat-footedness of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull..) and compound this lethargy with the nerdy flamboyance of cape-twirling and gunplay to classical music, plus insistent we-want-this-series-to-go-forever universe-building and a troubling unerring nonchalance from everyone in the face of, well, endless face-knivings, plus - the worse thing - a dismaying promise of even more prepostrousness to come.

★★☆☆☆

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Point Break (1991)

In Kathryn Bigelow's cult action classic, Keanu Reeves' special agent, Johnny Utah (just Ted with his hair slicked back, partnered with an older, gnarlier Ted (Gary Busey)) is tasked with infiltrating a gang of surfie bank robbers, thrill-seekers of wildly various acting abilities, and before long, California, the waves, the babes, the bonfires, not to mention the shaggy blonde tresses of Patrick Swayze's Bodhi, the charismatic gang leader, prove so intoxicating, Johnny's wooden FBI facade starts to drop, revealing his, well, just as wooden inner adrenalin junkie.

★★★★☆

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The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

It is hard to know where the homage to pulpy science fiction of the paranoid cold war era ends and where this starts simply being an over- or badly acted and largely logic-free Hollywood bastardisation of a 1951 sci-fi classic, but somehow this is enjoyable, albeit in an immediately forgettable way, perhaps because Keanu Reeves dons his suit and is supposed to be wooden as he plays a visitor from outerspace whose appearance on Earth heralds the arrival of enormous robot machines and nano-sized (robot?) insects that seem to be hellbent on taking over or destroying the planet.

★★☆☆☆

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John Wick (2014)

John Wick's two-hour gun and knife killing spree, including a brief scene featuring a yellow bus and an extended scene in a hotel called "The Continental", is justified because someone killed his dog and stole his car, but if the bus had "Columbine High School" written on it and if scenes in The Continental occurred on, say, the twelfth floor of a hotel in Las Vegas instead, the terrible indictment on America's gun culture that is not the intention of directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch's ice-cold, low affect neo noir thriller, might dampen the dumb awe of fanboys who have driven demand for not just a number two but coming soon, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Even More Bullets To The Head.

★☆☆☆☆

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Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Francis Ford Coppola's ludicrous, outrageous Dracula story is buoyed by Gary Oldman's gleefully grotesque portrayal of the 400 year old count who floats around with a disembodied shadow and an ability to transform into green mist or a writhing mass of rats, and the movie's Giallo horror stylings help present a world so reminiscent of the book that this really does feel like it is Bram Stoker's Dracula and not just another camp monster cliche.

★★★★☆

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Constantine (2005)

Keanu Reeves need only don a black suit and tie and a movie starts earning rating stars, but unless you're a DC/Vertigo Hellblazer fanboy, this mix of dour Catholic exorcism horror, toony villains, and Matrix-style rock'n'roll action doesn't warrant any more.

★★☆☆☆

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Something's Gotta Give (2003)

In this movie-length laundry detergeant commercial, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Amanda Peet and Keanu Reeves, clad in brilliant whites, float around what looks like Martha Stewart's house or an IKEA showroom and engage in romantic dalliances, come to terms with old age, get over their age biases and conquer their body hang-ups.

★★☆☆☆

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The Devil's Advocate (1997)

You would be forgiven for giving up on this movie after its dire opening scenes of wooden acting and leaden courtroom drama but the movie starring Keanu Reeves as a hotshot small-town lawyer who finds himself in New York living the high life under the tutelage of Al Pacino's nefarious law firm boss develops into a satisfying mystery thriller that draws parallels between courtroom right and wrong, and heaven and hell, and is at times reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby.

★★★★☆

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River's Edge (1986)

Grubby American high school friends react to the fact one of their group has committed murder but not in the way you'd imagine, in this difficult to watch drama inspired by a true story (!) featuring such a great deal of adolescent ugliness that in the end, like the apathetic teenagers in it, you'll find the story so depressing, so grim, you'll just want to dismiss it all out of hand.

★★☆☆☆

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47 Ronin (2013)

47 Ronin mostly disappoints viewers who watch it expecting i) a remake of an historical feudal Japan classic, ii) a big budget Gladiator-style war epic, or iii) a Lord of the Rings-style adventure fantasy full of witches and magic, which is a pity because if you watch it expecting a fairly routine Boys Own adventure, it doesn't seem so bad.

★★☆☆☆

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