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This story of the value of life begins in an idealised New York City where Joe ( Jamie Foxx ) is tutoring music to school kids. Even the Disney “When you wish upon a star” theme is rendered on badly-played instruments. Joe is about to be made a permanent member of the school staff, much to the pleasure of his mother. Then the secret dream that he’s always harboured—to play with one of the greats—presents itself and whilst bursting with happiness and not looking where he’s going, Joe falls down an open manhole and dies. The worlds beyond are visually weird, almost like experimental animation. And set against this are jokes about rebranding and training (including “You Seminars”)—as if the route to heaven or “h, e, double-hockey-sticks” is a modern business. Beforehand, the depiction of New York, the apartments, schools, jazz clubs (“Nice…”) and streets are all beautiful. Finding himself in the Great Beyond and unwilling to accept it, Joe escapes and ends up in the Great Before, which...

  The two Bill & Ted movies are classics of their age in a way that other films aren’t. The California slackers with their carefully crafted wit and their unlikely destinies represent some of the most fun to be had back in the day. And a remake didn’t ever seem like a good idea because the films have a chaotic nature that seems fine back then, and okay it worked twice—but it’s been a long time now and if people don’t keep quiet they’ll make good on their Ferris Bueller’s Day Off sequel talk. That’s an idea that would be more of a travesty even than another Wayne’s World movie. It just wouldn’t work. This works though. It doesn’t do anything that the other films haven’t already done but it kind of works and is charming and fun. Bill ( Alex Winter ) and Ted ( Keanu Reeves ) are adults now with their Princess wives and their teenage daughters, and when we first see them they’re a wedding band… And they play their song—which is called "That Which Binds Us Through Time - The Chem...

This Netflix film is going for Four Weddings status. What were things like before Four Weddings & A Funeral ? The costume and situations around a big posh wedding, and posh people swearing, a man in a kilt, and revelations from the lives of the people in the wedding… all are present plus a slightly sweary voice-over at the beginning. There’s an introduction scene with Jack ( Sam Claflin ) concluding a fantastic holiday where he has had good times with Dina ( Olivia Munn ), but their farewell is interrupted when Jack is waylaid by an old friend. Several years later Dina is at the wedding of Jack’s sister Hayley ( Eleanor Tomlinson ). The film takes a turn from classy wedding comedy to a Judd Apatow type film or maybe The Hangover films, when there’s an ex-boyfriend of the bride on the scene, and he has to be silenced. The method of doing this is to slip a sleeping drug into a champagne glass, but the table names get swapped around by a gang of out of control kids, and so ...