Month: June 2024

IF (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A young girl discovers she can see everybody’s imaginary friends.

John Krasinski has had a weird film career, especially as a director. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was a comedy-drama based on a series of short stories by David Foster Wallace. The Hollars was standard film student drama fare. Then came A Quiet Place. If you thought that was a weird transition, nothing will prepare you for this.

It kind of makes sense though. There are many similarities in visual/narrative storytelling between horror and kids’ fantasy. Both of them depend heavily on effective world-building, creating something unbelievable but making it believable, and both depend on a “WOW!” shot, where the audience is made aware of the scale of what’s happening. He does a good job though; there are not that many moments where the visuals feel cheap or distracting in a way that takes you out of what you’re watching. On the other hand, there are not that many visuals that will stick with you. There’s nothing that makes you think “f*ck damn that is cinema”. I can’t imagine a child watching this and having a scene stick with them that they’ll remember forever.

The story will though. It’s incredibly sweet. Yes, people who have seen a lot of films and are familiar with story structure etc will guess the ending relatively early on, mainly because it’s the only way that plot holes aren’t created. But if you’re one of those fortunate people who can just sit and watch something without overanalyzing everything, you’re in for a treat. It has a sense of genuine heart and warmth to it. It does look like it’s heading in one direction, and I’m pleased it went in another way. The new way ended up being able to display much more heart. Spoilers, I watched this the same day as I saw Inside Out 2: Inside Harder. I didn’t expect THIS to be the film that slightly broke me. The moments where we see some of the characters “reunite” with their childhood IFs are genuinely delightful and emotionally powerful. They’re helped by the performances, Reynolds does exactly what you expect (For better and worse), the vocal performances are all good but most are too brief to matter that much (the fact that Brad Pitt is credited as an invisible and silent character is hilarious though), Cailey Fleming is incredible considering her young age, especially considering she’s playing a character at that awkward age where they want to be seen as an adult, but they are still kids. Alan Kim is fun whenever he’s on-screen, and Fiona Shaw provides a touch of “theatre, darling” prestige.

The biggest criticism is that it feels kind of dated. There is a distinct lack of technology and mobile phones present. If this was firmly set in the 90s, that criticism would disappear so it is kind of weird that they didn’t just do that. It also takes FAR too long to get to the point. I know it has quite a bit to set up, but it spends forever getting to the main premise that you’ve paid to see.

Those are minor criticisms though. Overall I enjoyed it. It’s not going to change your worldview forever, but there is a chance it might remind you about the joys of innocence and inner strength. It handles topics such as bereavement (and fear of it in regards to others) and childhood anxiety with sensitivity and class. It very rarely puts a step wrong, but it also rarely puts one forward in amazement. It’s a difficult film to really LOVE, but it’s an incredibly easy film to like.

The Watched a.k.a The Watchers (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: A guilt-ridden American is trapped in an Irish forest when she is shepherded into a mysterious dwelling with three strangers, all being watched by strange creatures in the night.

I hadn’t planned on watching this, I only decided to see it because it started 10 minutes after another film I saw at the cinema ended. As I watched The Watched unfold I was slightly disappointed with many of the script choices. I didn’t want to be too harsh on it though, this was obviously a story told by a first-time Irish storyteller and as such I felt I needed to be more encouraging than dismissive. Then the end credits started (about 10-20 minutes after they should have) and I saw the words “directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan” and that need for encouraging and forgiving of mistakes disappeared like a shot of piss in a swimming pool. Yes, she is still a first-time director, but she’s a first-time director with access that no other first-timer would get. She’s in a position most people would kill for, and needs to justify it. This needed to be incredible to wash away any claims of nepotism.

It’s not incredible. Nothing in the script or the directing justifies the chance she has been given. It’s 102 minutes long, which is about 90 minutes longer than it deserves. At times it felt like most of that 90 minutes was spent on expositional dialogue. There’s no attempt to make these moments interesting visually. That’s a shame as there are parts which look pretty damn good, the moment where the creatures first stand up and stretch is haunting and wonderful. There are a lot of moments when it’s too dark to see anything, especially with the exterior shots.

My biggest issue is the script. It’s a mess. There are plot holes so big you could drive a truck through them. I also get the feeling that the Night Shyamalan family assume audiences are idiots and must be directly told every piece of information because just seeing it unfold in front of us isn’t enough. I haven’t been spoonfed so forcefully since I was in a high chair.

The third act is one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. At one point I genuinely picked my bag up because the cinematic and narrative language was telling me “okay the film is ending in a few minutes”, there’s then another entire 10-20 minute section that kills the minimal momentum it had. I get why she went with the ending she did, it fleshes out one of the characters, and layers over a few of the smaller plot holes. But it could have been done a lot sooner. Spoilers btw.

Okay so three of the characters escape the forest, they fall asleep on a boat and drift away until they wake up near the main city. They then all split up and go about their day, one of whom (the main character, played by a Dakota Fanning who’s underacting to the extent it barely registers more than if she didn’t turn up at all) has made it clear she plans to go to the university and destroy the research into fairies/the watchers that another character (The Professor) has written. Now, one of the other survivors (played by the brilliant Olwen Fouere) turns out to be The Professor’s dead wife so is actually a Watcher who now plans to kill more humans in revenge for fairies being forced underground. So she was on a boat with two humans she’s spent a lot of time with, and didn’t think to quietly sink the boat and escape onto land? She’s spent enough time with both of them so that she can change to look like them, and thus gain access to more people. Plus it would stop Dakota’s character from finding out the truth about her.

There is sooooo much wasted potential. So The Watchers want to watch humans so they can best imitate them, and they watch them through a mirrored window, with numerous shots of the humans standing next to the mirrors and looking at their own reflections. You know what shot DOESN’T happen in this film? A split shot of someone in the building looking at their Watcher double with the two of them being similar but different (as was done a few times in Us). WHY would you not have that shot? Surely the only reason to make this film is so you can wow people with that shot? It reminds me of the end of Glass where the whole thing was building up to a fight scene that then didn’t happen just because the writer wanted to trick the audience and subvert expectations. Sometimes expectations are there for a reason, and you can only subvert expectations if you replace it with something good. You can’t just cut it and then be like “We didn’t do what you thought! Surprise”. Its why food places that offer surprise menus still offer plates of actual food as the surprises, as opposed to if a Shyamalan did it, in which case you’d be served a plate of burnt pornography with rat droppings sprinkled over it. Just give me f*cking food.

I should probably add that due to personal reasons, I don’t think I’m ready to watch a horror film where a young male called Daniel dies. But even without that personal bias, this is still shit. At most, that bias knocked it down a 0.1 mark. Which considering I don’t give marks out of 10, doesn’t really matter.

Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A story about isolation, boredom, and lacking purpose. No it’s not my biography and it’s rude of you to say that.

A few years ago I travelled to New York at the end of winter. In preparation, I purchased some winter clothing. Among them was a new pair of boots. Not just warm and sturdy, but they also came with a neat little extra; spikes on the soles that you could flip down in harsh icey conditions. I still have those boots (we don’t really have “winter” here, we just have rain) and I consider the flippable cleats a genius design. It’s so simple too, you see them and think “why don’t more companies do this?”. That’s how I felt about the opening credits of Sometimes I Think About Dying (Otherwise known as SITAD, pronounced sit-add). The fact that they use a different font is embarrassingly mindblowing. It takes the same amount of effort as doing them the same way as everyone else, but it does SO much in establishing style. I’ve mostly seen it in horror movies to be like “Oh look, we’re spooky”, or to establish the time period in which the film is set. Here it’s to establish a theme. It’s such a simple thing but it works beautifully and it means that no matter what happened for the rest of the runtime, I was going to take something positive from this.

Thankfully, even without that, I’d be able to be positive about SITAD, it’s delightful. But not in a “everything is fantastic and wonderful if you just believe” fake BS way that Hollywood provides. In a way, you can say it’s twee, kind of. But it’s a sense of twee with all the colour and joy drained away from it. Mostly it’s a film that says “I don’t understand people”. Those three previous sentences may seem disjointed (and some would say inherently contradictory) but that’s the wonder of SITAD. It’s depressive elegance, with some stark cinematography that’s beautiful in its simplicity. It’s shot not to sell a story, but to sell a character and a mood.

The script matches that, doing so much with so little. Normally characters establish themselves by saying things, SITAD establishes itself by having the main character not say anything while everybody else talks around her. In a lesser film, this would be met with scenes of her trying to say something but getting cut off whenever she tries to speak. Here, she doesn’t even attempt to say anything, she just stands in the background until she can safely leave without anybody noticing. She doesn’t have isolation thrust upon her, she actively prefers it. It’s great because when she speaks out loud, it actually means something. It’s at least 20 minutes before Fran (Daisy Ridley’s character) utters her first words. Side note, one of these days I’ll remember what Daisy Ridley looks like when I’m not looking at her, my brain keeps picturing Charlotte Ritchie. Daisy Ridley gets a lot of praise (and she should, she’s PHENOMENAL), but I feel that Marcia DeBonis needs praise too. Her speech near the end where she’s talking about her husband suffering health issues is heartbreaking and delivered perfectly. Crucially, it’s not delivered as “a performance”, with perfect diction and line delivery. She stumbles over her words, is slightly unclear on a few syllables, and pauses mid-sentence. In essence; she feels REAL.

That’s partly why I loved this film so much, nothing about it felt fake. It doesn’t feel like we’re there watching them, it’s better than that. Even though we see her from an audience’s perspective, it somehow feels like we ARE Fran. It’s helped by a powerful score (brought to you by Dabney Morris), and a powerful performance. But it is mostly anchored by how good the writing is.

It’s not perfect though. Fran is a little bit too cruel at times which can make her hard to root for. But when she does say something heartless such as “You’re exhausting, no wonder you can’t stay married”, the VERY next scene shows her obviously regretting it.

As you can probably tell. I LOVED this movie. It’s not up for my favourite of the year, but it is possibly the one I’ve connected with the most. Good films entertain, and great ones inspire. This will inspire you as a writer, as a director, as a musician, as a performer, fuck it, with the way this tackles themes of isolation and self-sabotage, this will inspire you as a person. A lot of people won’t like it, and even those who do like it might not like certain parts of it. For example, I saw some reviews say the party scene was cringe and went on too long. Personally, that was the highlight of the movie. It felt like the first time Fran felt accepted, she was letting the mask of insecurity slip, and the sheer joy she showcases is infectious. I’m not saying this is the best film of the year, but it is probably the one I would recommend most at the moment if you want to feel things and be touched (not in a Kevin Spacey way). One of the most genuine movies I’ve seen all year, and I’m a better person for having watched it.

Lisa Frankenstein (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A misunderstood teenager and a reanimated Victorian corpse embark on a murderous journey together to find love, happiness, and a few missing body parts.

I was looking forward to this. I’m not gonna lie, that was mainly because of Kathryn Newton. I absolutely LOVED her in Freaky, and I thought she was one of the best things about Quantumania. I’m unsure as to whether I like Diablo Cody or not. I loved Juno and Jennifer’s Body, but even then in those I was aware of how overly written and stylized the dialogue was.

If you’re on the fence about Cody, this won’t push you towards being a supporter of her. The dialogue is still overly painful to listen to at times, and she feels like she’s holding back a bit. The violence feels incredibly sanitized, which makes me think the studio wanted to lower the rating at the last minute, or they’re planning to release an unrated version later. It’s not just the violence, the dialogue also suffers from a general sense of “edited for television”. And that’s before you listen to the words being said and realise how overly hipster and fake the characters sound. This would be easier to deal with if the characters were likeable. As you can guess by that previous sentence, they’re not. What made Juno work was how relatable and real the characters felt, even when the dialogue was a bit naff. You don’t get that here. There’s also a stunning lack of consistency in characterisation, Lisa in particular seems to change personalities more than me when I’m creating a Sim in that video game where Sims do things in their Sim house, speaking Simlish and living with other Sims (I think it’s called The House That Keeps Burning Down). There’s a way to make it so characters can kill people and still make them likeable. Lisa Frankenstein doesn’t bother with that. As such, there’s a feeling that somewhere there’s another 10 minutes of LF which helps bridge the gap and makes their actions feel more real. As it is, it’s essentially “You killed my stepmother? Well let’s bury her and I’ll sew her ear to your face”. Yes, the stepmother was a bitch, but it still seems like they missed a few steps in making her death feel deserved. Especially since the creature was hiding in a cupboard, and was established as not being able to hear that well, so do we know for certain that he actually heard what she said? Doug was a sex pest so his death would have been much more cathartic. Doug does die, but not for much longer into the film than he should. I feel he should have been explored more, not explained or justified, he’s a date rapist. But he only appears in like two scenes, flesh out that character as a supposed “nice guy” then his rapey tendencies (and taking advantage of a drugged woman IS rape, and it’s weird how that is a controversial statement) would come off as more shocking and would allow an instant death.

Now on the bright side; it looks fucking fantastic. Kathryn Newton’s wardrobe is like someone sitting on a thumbtack; it’s on point. Hard to believe this is Zelda Williams’ feature-length directorial debut. I see in her what everybody else sees in Tim Burton. There’s a beautiful gothic elegance to a lot of the scenes, especially the opening which reminded me a Lotte of the work of Reiniger (possibly the most dated reference I will ever make). That gothic style meshes well with the 80s setting, everything feels oversaturated to the point where it seems to drain all sense of fun out of the colours. It’s stunning, showing great potential for her as a director, but it is a shame she will never get a chance to mesh her visual style with her dad’s acting style.

And now I’m sad.

Oh, and the music is good too. So overall, I’m not angry at this film, I’m disappointed. It’s too difficult to truly like and enjoy this film. Visually it has an identity, but in terms of story etc it just comes off as a parody that’s taking itself far too seriously.

Mean Girls (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: A cinematic adaptation of the musical you haven’t seen, which is itself an adaptation of the film you’ve definitely seen, which is an adaptation of a book you probably haven’t read.

I get what they were going for, I really do. The original film is iconic, and the musical was very well regarded. With all that considered, there still didn’t seem to be that many people excited about this. It certainly didn’t feel like it warranted a cinema release, it felt more like something a streaming service would use in their early days to persuade people to subscribe. The trailer didn’t seem to do much to get people excited either. On the bright side; it didn’t hide the fact that it was a musical. I’ve seen people claim it did, but the trailer I saw featured the characters performing a professionally choreographed dance number in the middle of a canteen, so if you saw that and DIDN’T know it was a musical, that’s on you. My issue with the trailer was the song choice. Musicals have songs in them (shocking revelation, I know), so you’d think when it came to “songs we should have in the trailer” then you’d, you know, pick one of the ones you already have the rights to and which people who know the source material would recognise but which those who don’t can use to ascertain the type of musical stylings the film will contain. They picked an Olivia Rodrigo song. Now I love her music, but none of her songs are in the film, so why (again, for a musical) would you choose her?

So how are the songs? They’re okay. The best way you can describe them is “serviceable”. Very few of them can be described as memorable though. There are apparently 17 musical numbers in the film, without the list in front of me I can recall three. Even with the list in front of me, I can only recall small details about 8 of them (as in, where they were in the film, or who sang them, or any lines). That’s an INCREDIBLY low hit rate. It doesn’t feel like a musical, instead feels more like a film that’s occasionally interrupted by music videos. The opening two songs feel a bit too small and individual. Imagine if La La Land started with City Of Lights instead of Another Day Of Sun. The second song feels like a Sara Bareilles song, which is nice as she’s cool. The others feel interchangeable in terms of style. With the exception of some of Janice Imi’ike’s songs, none of them feel unique to the characters.

None of the issues are due to performance, everybody does a great job of portraying their characters, Some of them are vastly different from the original film but this actually helps as it means that the characters don’t feel like imitations of what we’ve seen before, they all feel like their own person unique to this adaptation. Some of them are overly sexualised, which is weird due to the ages of the characters. The performers aren’t helped though by how the teachers are played by Ashley Park, Jon Hamm, and Tina Fey. Having them (mainly Hamm and Park) as extended cameos does slightly overshadow the core cast. Oddly enough, I feel if they were in it more then it would be less of an issue as it would normalise them.

It being a musical means we don’t get that much time with the characters. If one character spends a three-minute song singing about themselves then it means there’s less cinematic space for other characters to be explored. The reason Mean Girls (the first film) is so revered is partly because of the side characters that people enjoy. That’s not present here. The main characters are the ONLY ones you’ll get to know stuff about, the only ones who are allowed quirks and personalities. I can’t help but feel that “only pay attention to the cool popular kids as none of the others matter” is the message this film wants to teach. That sums up my issues; the original film was aimed at the Janice Ians, at the Damiens, and at the Cady’s of the world. The 2024 iteration? It’s aimed at the Regina Georges.

Tarot (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: It’s essentially Final Destination if the set-up was tarot cards. If the writers aren’t going to put the effort in, I’m not either.

I do love a good horror movie. I need to say that because (spoilers) this review is going to be mostly negative. With some horror films, my issues have been difficult to explain, I just haven’t vibed with it. So I suppose I should at least thank Tarot for making my issues with it easy to explain: it’s shit.

On the plus side; the performances aren’t completely terrible, and I will commend the scriptwriter for showing a believable scene of grief and how it affects you. You know that these characters are haunted by the first death, and it hangs over everything that happens. There’s also a scene at a magic show that’s pretty damn interesting and chilling to watch unfold. Plus the flashbacks are pretty well made and provide an interesting story. That is all the nice things I can say about Tarot. The rest of this review will basically be me chopping this film down with my axe of criticism.

None of the characters show much of a personality, usually with this it’s because the characters are archetypes so the writers don’t have to put too much effort into writing the characters because the audience already knows who the characters are; this person wears their football jersey away from the field? They’re a jerkass jock with a heart of gold. The guy with glasses? He’s a nerd. The woman in the cheerleader outfit? She’s a cheerleader. Tarot avoided making the characters cliches but didn’t bother to give them anything else. Watch something like the first Scream movie, you can tell by the way those characters interact that they have been friends for a long time and are comfortable in each other’s presence. You don’t get that in this. There’s no sense that these characters have much of a history with each other. There’s no closeness, they might as well be strangers.

I should say, they are sometimes on the same page, but in a weird way. They play a game where they have to say who they think a certain subject applies to (first to get pregnant etc), over three rounds the group agree fully on every choice. There’s no “two people say this, three of them say this”, they’re all in total agreement. That’s weird, and feels very fake. The lack of believable friendships isn’t helped by how inconsistent the characters are. That’s partly why it’s so hard to figure out who they are, just when you think you’ve got their personality down they say something to contradict that because that’s what the plot requires and the scriptwriter has realised that character hasn’t said anything that page yet.

Nobody seems to have any convictions or realism. The main character points out that she shouldn’t use tarot cards which don’t belong to her, she’s later shown to take tarot and horoscopes very seriously. So how do her friends convince her to break that rule? Basically just by saying “come on” and she does it. There’s no inner turmoil or conflict, she just decides to do it.

Their actions when they realise the tarot cards are killing them aren’t much better. Mainly because they come to that realisation twice. So the second time it feels a bit like “Yeah, you already know that, why are you shocked?”.

It looks bad. Traditional film language regarding horror movies boils down to shadows and lighting, here it’s just dark with no sense of “why” other than “other horror movies do it”. It’s rare for the phrase “too bleak, stopped caring” to apply to visuals, but it does so here. The audio isn’t much better, with random volume jumps replacing actual tense audio. The music choices are baffling. No teen horror movie set in 2024 should have Things Can Only Get Better by Howard Jones on the soundtrack.

Just, nothing about this movie works. It’s uncertain as to whether to be serious or funny and isn’t good enough at either to be an effective horror comedy. All I can say this; Tarot should be VERY thankful that Madame Web and Nightswim were released this year.