Phil Jeng Kane

Phil has written for magazines, corporate videos, online ads, and even an app. He writes with one eye on the future, one eye on the past and a third eye on the Lotto numbers. His social bits are here.  

8

Critic

The Merger Review

Troy Carrington, a former professional football player lives in his home town of Bodgy Creek. He once played footy at the top level. His days as an athlete came to an abrupt end after a severe injury, but it was his political activism that made him one of the town’s least popular citizens. He has never been forgiven for the part he played in getting the local timber mill shut down a few years ago....

7

Critic

Book Club Review

Four older women have a monthly book club. They have known each other since their youth and now they live successful, upscale lives in Los Angeles. One month, Fifty Shades of Grey is the club’s chosen book and despite not all of the women being keen to read it, once they do, the book’s content becomes something that leads them to consider making changes to their lives. Vivian (Jane Fon...

8

Critic

BlacKkKlansman Review

BLACKKKLANSMAN is the real-life story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), a black detective working in the very white police department of Colorado Springs in the early 1970s. He is a man who wants to get ahead in his job, but is viewed with suspicion by his fellow employees and endures a range of mistreatment from some of the white officers. The fact that the area has its first African-Ame...

7

Critic

The Spy Who Dumped Me Review

THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME is a starring vehicle for Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon. Kunis plays Audrey, a young woman with a somewhat dead-end job who is still suffering from the break-up with her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux) from a year ago. Her emotional support is her co-worker and best friend Morgan (McKinnon). During a disastrous birthday celebration, Audrey discovers that Drew was a CIA agent. ...

8

Critic

Mission: Impossible – Fallout Review

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT is the sixth film in the Mission Impossible franchise. All the films are the adventures of Tom Cruise’s super-spy Ethan Hunt, but the events of Fallout connect back to the nuclear threat of a criminal organisation known as The Syndicate from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION (2015). Now the Syndicate has morphed into a terrorist group called The Apostles. They’re loo...

7

Critic

Sicario 2: Soldado Review

In the original SICARIO, FBI agents Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) were part of a Critical Response Unit that raided an Arizona safehouse owned by a Mexican drug cartel. Inside they found numerous decaying corpses. This led Macer on an investigation that involved a trip to Juarez, Mexico and ended with a lethal operation in a tunnel that crossed the U.S./Mexico border. ...

7

Critic

Ocean’s 8 Review

OCEAN’S 8 is the gender-flipped spin-off from Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” movie franchise. The all-female heist flick was counter-programmed against DEADPOOL 2 and SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY. It beat the opposition to number one position in its opening week. Variety reports that the audience figures broke-down as older than average (68%) and more female than average (69%). Older in movie box-office...

9

Critic

Upgrade Review

Grey and Asha Trace are a young, married couple, so far without children, who live in an unnamed American city in the very near future. This future is fully interconnected and digital. People travel in driverless cars and everything has a computer chip in it. Asha (Melanie Vallejo) is part of this world because she works for a tech company. Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) wants as little to do with th...

8

Critic

Midnight Oil: 1984 Review

Australian band Midnight Oil were formed in the mid-1970s. Their fans called them The Oils. They had a reputation as a hard-rocking crew. That came through their constant gigging in pubs where loud, aggressive performances got you noticed and paid. They were considered different from the run-of-the-mill music act of the day, because they made Australia the subject of their lyrics and they put our ...

8

Critic

Breath Review

Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence) are the nicknames of a couple of fourteen-year-old-school boys living in a small, coastal town in Western Australia, some time in the 1970s. They aren’t the most popular kids, nor are they the least. They spend their days hanging out on their push-bikes, swimming in the river, getting up to the low-key stunts that bored boys tend to, when they’re un...

9

Critic

Avengers: Infinity War Review

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is the third film of Marvel’s Avengers series following on from AVENGERS (2012) and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON(2015). Titan Warlord Thanos is on a quest to find the six immensely powerful Infinity Stones and use them to bring balance to the Universe. For Thanos, balance will be achieved when half the number of all living beings are removed from existence. The only credible oppo...

6

Critic

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Review

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY or the potato film—as someone called it at the preview I attended—is the movie adaptation of the 2008 novel of the same name by ‎Mary Ann Shaffer‎ and ‎Annie Barrows. The story concerns a London author called Juliet Ashton (Lily James). The Second World War is recently ended and she has had some success writing a humorous column under a pseudonym, ...