An entertaining biopic, with a fair portion of the film like a behind the scenes look into how 'Dolemite' was made. It's fairly inspiring as Rudy Ray Moore/Dolemite never gave up despite a number of setbacks. Eddie doesn't look much like Dolemite and is naturally more comedic and charming. He does a good job but it's not the closest likeness you'll find in a biopic. I was asking myself as I was watching this if Dolemite was really the great guy that he was being painted as? Maybe he was but it seemed too good to be true at times. He did steal jokes and basically his persona from a homeless guy. I expected that to come back on him at one stage but never does. While it is entertaining, the main problem I had with it, and what stops it receiving a higher rating from me is the comedy. I rarely found Dolemite's act or jokes humorous and the laughing from the audience was over the top.

Given the title is a musical genre, I expected some more intricate details about the invention and production process of g-funk. It begins promising but I don't feel like this is the most focused documentary. At times it kind of develops into a general documentary about West Coast hip hop, with the obligatory Suge bashing, Pac talk, and East Vs West details. Daz's influence seems to be left out of this and similar documentaries as well. He is featured briefly where he answers one question, but maybe that's all we got because he seems high. I don't know. This did remind me that I need to check out more of the original funk that is sampled so heavily in so many g-funk classics though.

This is about a sister, who after putting her life on hold to help her junkie brother get help, is getting tired of it. He is suffocating her and ruining her life. A predominant feature of a good movie is that it can make the viewer emotionally involved in it and this definitely ticked that box for me. It does a great job of making you feel for Katie, and Seth's child, who is a constant figure of the picture. Some will also feel for the drug-addicted Seth, but he is a long way behind in the empathy race as far as I'm concerned. A good drama.

This doesn't waste any time getting going, with the first 20 minutes just being an impressive action-packed car chase around Florence, albeit with cheesy dialogue that doesn't get much better the deeper we get into the movie. As the chase progresses, we are introduced to the characters. It feels a bit like an ensemble Superhero flick. Ryan Reynolds is Batman, and the rest are members of the Justice League, each with their own skills, however, for most of them, these get less distinguishable after the opening. The Driver dies at the start, which is probably a good thing because he wouldn't have had much to do for the rest of the movie. The opening aside, the other major action sequences are located across Hong Kong skyscrapers and on a cruise ship, with magnets being a feature making for some nice set-pieces. Between the action, we are largely informed of some details about the characters and their relationships with one another. You never spend enough time with, or learn a helluva lot about each main character either, to really make you care about them. Like most Bay movies, it's action-packed and some of the action is great, but it overstays its welcome by 20-odd minutes and isn't a film you'll be thinking about the next day. 2.5-3.

This is much better than I thought it would be. I remember seeing the trailer and thinking that it looked horrendous. While like most superhero films the plot is fairly generic - supervillain needs to kill the good guy to obtain his power - there are some slight differences thanks to the superhero being a teenager and the life we're thrown into. The family of foster kids, that Billy/Shazam gets sent to, offers some laughs and cuteness. Mark Strong, (yes, that's not his real name), born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia, also works well as the villain, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, and is a highlight. For what is tagged as a family film, it has some fairly strong elements of horror and violence at times, particularly that boardroom scene! One of the main problems I had with this was that Billy/Shazam do not seem like the same person. The actor who plays Billy, Asher Angel, is already 17 years of age, so there is the looks thing, he isn't going to change that much, but more so it's how he acts. They needed to do more groundwork to get them to be closer to each other's behaviour. It almost always just seems like two different personalities. There is also a story bubbling under the surface for most of the film about Billy trying to find his mother. It has holes and the fact that she didn't want him isn't a surprise, because what else could it have been? As I have mentioned in other reviews of superhero movies, there is also the issue of the hero/villain being seemingly invincible. While the hero almost never dies in any form of this genre, as a viewer I need to know their weaknesses, that there is that possibility. I didn't get that. Even with the villain, it's not until the end that you learn about the eye. 3-2.5.