These are films I did like, but there were a few things that just put me off needing to see them again anytime soon.

Blue Beetle

Ups: Good performances

Almost every character is a highlight

Unashamedly Latino

Some great body horror moments

Downs: Formulaic story

Some people may be put off by the random non-English parts which aren’t subtitled.

The superhero sections are the weakest parts.

Some strange sound mixing.

Best Moment: The backstory for Carapax.

Worst Moment: The parts involving Rudy on the island at the end. He’s great and played brilliantly. But his parts feel rewritten as it’s difficult to get a good grasp on where he is at certain times.

Best Performer: Adriana Baraza as Nana. Although I’m quite fond of Belissa Escobedo

Opening: Victoria Kord finds the Scarab. A relatively weak opening tbh, “Look, we found a thing” doesn’t launch into “high octane opening credits” as much as the film seems to think it does.

Closing: The neighbours help the family rebuild. Very sweet and wonderful, but it doesn’t really feel earned. We haven’t seen any of the neighbours before so their coming around at the end feels a bit odd. If we met them before or had a sense that the family members helped them it might work better.

Best Line: “Batman’s a fascist!”

Original Review here

Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget

Ups: Some genuinely unsettling scenes.

Downs: Still bitter about recasting.

Best Moment: The eye scanner joke is ridiculously silly and I love it.

Worst Moment: The chase towards the end is sometimes too convenient.

Best Performer: Josie Sedgwick-Davies

Opening: Rocky sums up the first movie. Smart move as it’s been a while. Then we find out where the characters are. Effective way of catching people up, and good character work. Could do with more jokes though

Closing: Everything is fine, the chickens now continue their liberation techniques across the land. Would have been nice to see more of those raids in the credits. Could have had some funny moments.

Best Line: “You can’t right all the world’s wrongs”. Perfectly sums up her character.

Original Review here

Killers Of The Flower Moon

Ups: Incredible performances.

The best ending I’ve seen in a long time.

Beautiful to see.

A story that needs telling.

Downs: Sooooo long.

Some characters are underutilized

Too white-centric

Best Moment: The ending.

Worst Moment: All the “look at this random thing” insertions.

Best Performer: Lily Gladstone

Opening: A quick history of the tribe and how they made their money.

Closing: A standard “what happened to them?” epilogue, created like a radio show. It’s incredibly creative and one of my favourite moments of the year.

Best Line: “” Mrs. Mollie Cobb, 50 years of age, passed away at eleven o’clock Wednesday night in her home. She was a full-blood Osage. She was buried in the old cemetery in Gray Horse beside her father, her mother, her sisters, and her daughter.” There was no mention of the murders””

Original Review here

Next Goal Wins

Ups: Funny

Has genuine heart

Unique story

Downs: Needs more football.

Too many pivotal moments were in the trailer.

Risks coming off as slightly condescending

Best Moment: The daughter reveal. It’s obvious, yes, but it’s done sooooo well.

Worst Moment: “We didn’t send you there to help them, we sent you there to help you” It feels a little weird

Best Performer: Kaimana

Opening: A priest (played by the director) welcomes us to the film, telling us what we saw is (mostly) true. Funny, and a good way of setting the strange tone.

Closing: Standard “what happened next”, along with footage of the actual people it’s based on. Very sweet.

Best Line: “We’ve worked too long and hard” “You’ve only just got here”

Original Review here

Oppenheimer

Ups: Great practical effects

Good ensemble cast.

The idea that someone’s career can still be ruined by accusations of communist affiliations is depressingly relevant today.

Downs: Might be too much to unpack for some.

The sex scene is a bit pointless, and cost the film a lot of money in some markets due to the use of religious text.

It’s so long.

Best Moment: The explosion itself.

Worst Moment: The sex scene. Just feels a bit out of place.

Best Performer: Murphy, obviously.

Opening: Oppenheimer poisons his teacher

Closing: The realisation of the effects the building of the bomb will have.

Best Line: You drop a bomb, and it falls on the just and the unjust. I don’t wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.

Original Review here

Piggy

Ups: A good look at the effect that bullying can have.

Doesn’t shy away from what it needs to say.

Unique

A very pink colour scheme. Like an anti-Barbie.

Downs: Seems to run out of momentum

Best Moment: When the bullies try to drown Sara. It’s at that point they go from “standard bullies” to slightly sociopathic.

Worst Moment: There’s one shot (when she goes in the water the first time) which is weirdly lit, to the point where it kind of looks cloudy

Best Performer: Laura Galan

Opening: The credits are intercut with food being prepared; pigs being hung on hooks, knives being sharpened, and animal bodies being hacked. It’s hauntingly quiet. We then get our first look at Sara; chewing on her own hair as very pop-punk music plays. Kind of weird that the first look at her face was covered up by the title card. Does a good job of showing her position in her social circles.

Closing: A blood-soaked Sara walks home before getting picked up by Pedro on his bike. I think it might have worked better without Pedro, the visual of her walking covered in blood could be iconic, so might have been a smart idea to end the film with that as opposed to a shot of two characters on a bike and then a shot of the local area. Would have been a better transition into the credits too.

Original Review here

Shazam: Fury Of The Gods

Ups: Funny

Levi is still perfect in this role.

The family relationship is much better defined than it was in the first one.

Downs: Helen Mirren is the wrong choice

Not as playful as the first one.

Bit creepy at times.

Predictable

Best Moment: A teacher being forced to walk off a building. Terrifying.

Worst Moment: The Wonder Woman cameo feels like an ass-pull to the extent I haven’t seen, outside of surgery videos.

Best Performer: Levi, obviously.

Opening: The daughters break into a museum and kill everybody there. A really good start actually, suitably creepy, and sets the villains up.

Closing: Wonder Woman cameo, the sacrifice means nothing.

Best Line: The message to the gods that was dictated by Steve.

Original Review here

The Night Of The 12th

Ups: Honest

Does a great job of putting you in the shoes of the characters

Good performances.

Downs: The lack of a conclusion could annoy people.

Jarring time skip.

Best Moment: The murder itself. It’s shocking and brutal without being exploitative or creepily sexualised.

Worst Moment: The cycling scenes are too long

Best Performer: Bastien Bouillon

Opening: A piece of text saying how “a lot of murders are not solved, this is one of them” so not as though you can claim to be surprised when the case doesn’t get solved

Closing: The crime is unsolved.

Original Review here

The Super Mario Bros Movie

Ups: Goes by quickly enough.

Jack Black.

The suicidal star.

A lot of great visual references to the series.

Downs: The jokes and script seem very “by committee”. With the exception of the aforementioned visual references, a lot of the dialogue and jokes in this could be used in any animated movie.

Some of the references feel a bit forced.

Best Moment: The Peaches song.

Worst Moment: The Mario Kart section, only because it feels unnatural in how they got to it. If Mario Kart wasn’t a thing, that entire section would not exist. It’s only there to make references.

Best Performer: Jack Black

Opening: Mario and Luigi have started a plumbing business, but it’s not going well. Simple start, and has some good references to the video game franchise.

Closing: The brothers now live in the Mushroom Kingdom, but work in New York, so commuting is gonna be a bitch.

Best Line: Peaches peaches peaches peaches

Original Review here

The Whale

Ups: Haunting.

Great performances

Sadie Sink looks a lot like Samantha Morton, which helps sell the relationship.

Downs: Hard to shake the feeling that the main character is supposed to be a figure of disgust.

It’s a little hard to give a shit at times.

Feels like it hates the main character.

Ellie’s characterisation feels inconsistent at times.

Best Moment: The reveal of why he likes the essay that much.

Worst Moment: The Thomas sup-plot feels like it doesn’t achieve much.

Best Performer: Sadie Sink

Opening: We see the main character and his condition is explained. Effective enough.

Closing: He (probably) dies, because that’s all this film thinks that character deserves.

Best Line: I need to know that I have done one right thing with my life!

Original Review here