Month: July 2024

My Spy: The Eternal City (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: JJ (A “very noticeable for a spy” Batista) reunites with Sophie (Chloe Coleman), accompanying her on her school trip where they find themselves at the centre of a terrorist plot.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a normal reviewer; I don’t put definitive star ratings at the end of reviews for one thing. I will always admit that personal bias counts for a lot, sometimes negatively (I am predisposed to dislike anything with certain actors in), sometimes positively. My review of Hereditary was (I assume) the only review of that movie to include the phrase “cocking shit fuck” (unlike reviews of Morbius, which were fucking littered with that phrase, especially the one in the Holy Jesus Mary Church Weekly newsletter). On the plus side, that does mean there are lower expectations of me to maintain professional standards. As such, the following sentence won’t harm my reputation among readers as much as if it was said by someone like Peter Bradshaw (who only uses professional review lines, like in Twisters where he said “Certainly, the twister here is an obvious symbol for orgasm”). Here goes, the sentence which would doom me if I was a professional:

I stopped paying attention before this movie ended.

I watched this at home, but there weren’t any active distractions (local building work etc). I just…I just found myself watching but taking nothing in. When I speak of Come True, I often find myself talking about how despite watching it on a small screen, in my memory, it’s on a big one. With this? I will remember I watched it on my TV, not the cinema. It never felt big enough to be worthy of anything except “straight to streaming”. That’s a shame as I enjoyed the first one, and My Spy: The Eternal City (or MS: TEC, pronounced Ms. Tech) actually soured my memory of it. It assumes I can remember much more from the first one than I can. Characters turn up and the film is like “OMG it’s you guys”, whereas the audience’s reaction is “Who the fuck are these guys?”. I don’t want films overrun with flashbacks, but a few of them might have been helpful. It would be easy to do too; just frame it as Sophie giving a presentation in class or something. It would definitely be better than the current opening; a dream sequence. Never open an action movie with a dream sequence, it sets up action setpieces that can’t be recreated in reality.

Other scenes are similarly misjudged. The biggest misstep is when JJ is being tortured and threatened with death. I don’t know if it’s the way it’s shot, the way it’s written, or even just where it is in the script, but it’s devoid of any tension. I doubt a single person who watches this believed for a second that that scene would be where the character dies, even the stupid people watching it would realise that was never going to happen.

Another issue is how it wastes the location’ Venice is cinematic, but you would not know that from watching this. It could take place in any European city and it wouldn’t require that many changes. It’s a shame as I really enjoyed the first movie, and this feels like a massive step down.

MS. TECH isn’t all negative though. The cast has good chemistry, and Anna Farris is clearly having a lot of fun. There are some genuinely funny moments, especially when someone is getting stone dicks thrown at their face. Taeho K doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page but shows fantastic promise in the small moments he’s given.

Finally, and much more importantly; it’s great to hear an Ashnikko song in a film. Love that shit.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: Do you care about the plot or are you just glad to see Foley back? Exactly.

I will admit I was nervous about this. I will go on record as being one of the few people who actually thoroughly enjoyed Beverly Hills Cop 3, probably because I had it on VHS back in the day so I got to watch it a lot. That being said; that film was released thirty years ago, and there hasn’t been anything major since then. A video game was released in 2006 but was so poorly received that it was referred to in one publication as “the 9/11 of video games”, which feels a little harsh. In 2013, a pilot for a television show was produced, but it was never shown. Let’s not be too harsh; but let’s face it, Eddie Murphy isn’t the name he used to be, and this is a francwhise that, whilst loved, isn’t missed (mainly because the last one was so poorly received). So what’s the purpose of this being made? Those concerns were raised with the release of the trailer; which made it seem tonally inconsistent with the rest of the franchise. Gone was the lightheartedness and fun, to be replaced by family drama and large stunts.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that the final product is a lot of fun. There are a few new characters, but they slot into the universe effortlessly to the point you could assume they’d been there all along. The only character that stands out is Kevin Bacon’s Captain Cade Grant. The reveal that he is the villain comes too early to count as a twist, but also arrives too late to be the basis of the plot. It’s also far too obvious, to the point where you have to wonder why they even bothered pretending he wasn’t the villain from the opening. Just show him as the bad guy at the start, then have the late reveal be that he belongs to the police, then have THAT lead to the third act shootout.

It’s nice to see the returning cast, although some have been very rude and had the audacity to age in the last 30 years, which is very disappointing to see. I do get the feeling that Eddie Murphy has slightly aged out of playing these characters. At his age, that kind of behaviour just seems reckless and irresponsible rather than “wacky fun hijinks”, there are moments when you can’t help but think “you should know better”. There are moments where his behaviour works, where it is genuinely fun to see, and that is most of the time. But like I said, there are one or two moments where it just seems weird to see him act that way.

There are few occasions where it does seem like its resting on past glories, but they are rare. It mostly works. There are fun set pieces, creative action, and some incredibly funny dialogue and interplay between the characters. It’s ridiculous, but not “he just knocked a helicopter out of the sky using a car” level like other franchises reached. Even at its most ridiculous, it does feel grounded in the reality that this universe has created.

In an uncertain world full of gloom and doom (to the point where it’s effected champagne sales), it’s nice to have something as comforting and uncomplicated as a film like this. Watch, enjoy, then eat a pot noodle or something. It’s not going to change the world, and some of the satire feels misguided compared to the potential it has, but it would be a cruel vindictive heart that is not warmed by this.

Twisters (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: Haunted by a past encounter with extreme weather conditions, Kate is tempted back into tornado chasing in an attempt to prove her method of disintegrating dangerous tornados will work.

Let’s say you were on a date with someone. The two of you have been messaging for a while and there have been a few moments where their actions could be misconstrued as rude and/or abusive but you felt “I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt”. There’s an undeniable spark between the two so you decide to meet. You sit at the restaurant waiting for them, it’s exciting and you’re nervous. They suddenly appear out of nowhere spinning a circle whilst operating a chainsaw, nearly decapitating you and forcing you to jump away at the last second to avoid getting hurt. For whatever reason, you continue the date. On the journey home they stop the car to let some ducks cross the road, and then pull someone out of a burning car. The next day you get a text from your friend asking how it went. Are you going to respond “Oh it was great, they were so cute and saved someone’s life”, or are you going to respond “They nearly killed me with a chainsaw, fucking sociopath”? The odds are that it will be the second. Once someone nearly kills you with their arrogance and stupidity, it’s hard to overcome that initial “what the fuck is their problem?” feeling, and it will taint every action they do from that point on. I mention that because in Twisters, the kind-of sequel to the 1996 “Oh yeah that film existed, and made a lot of money” disaster Funtime flick Twister, very early on in their interactions we witness Glen Powell’s character Tyler Owens nearly run Kate (a fantastic Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos) off the road whilst they’re all chasing a tornado. It’s very easy to see how those actions could have killed those characters. After that, it’s hard to buy him as a romantic lead or someone to root for.

That’s a shame, if they cut out those 3-seconds of almost vehicular manslaughter then Twisters would work a lot better than it does. It’s a much better film than you’d assume it would be. The tornado scenes are incredible to look at, giving you a true sense of the damage they can cause. People who have never seen a tornado may think, “It’s just a bit of wind, just put some Blu-Tack on your shoes and you’ll be fine”. Twisters does a fantastic job of showing why that’s stupid (beyond how expensive Blu-Tack is now), they are destructive forces of nature that arrive, fuck shit up completely, and then leave. That is never more felt than in the opening scene, which introduces a group of dynamic and loveable (plus incredibly smart) teens who it looks like could anchor this film, and then kills almost all of them. It possibly could have done a slightly better job of showing the destruction that flying debris can cause, most of the danger does seem to come from being sucked off.

Some of the dialogue does come off a bit weird. There’s a lot of talk about how “weather has changed a lot and become more dangerous lately” but no discussion as to why. Like it’s so scared about upsetting certain (American) people that it dares not utter the words “Climate Change”. Other than that weird omission, the conversations feel real. That’s because the characters do too. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any characters from the original movie here at all, I didn’t even see any mention of them. I don’t mind that though as I don’t remember that much from the original, at one point a cow went wooosh. So I think it’s probably for the best that this doesn’t go full “Look kids, it’s the person from the original! Applaud!”, although it does feel like there is one character who was written with “let’s see if we can get Helen Hunt to come back” in mind.

I appreciate how they didn’t dumb the science down. The characters are all supposed to be intelligent and experienced in the field of tornados, so if they were talking to each other they wouldn’t dumb it down. Why would they? They wouldn’t explain the basics, they would talk as if everybody in the room already knows, because odds are they would. Most films wouldn’t do that, they’d write it to get the audience to understand it, which means the characters would be speaking like nobody with their expertise would talk to their peers.

To summarise; a surprisingly good experience, that’s completely tainted by a few seconds of character stupidity that makes it hard to truly love. That moment lingers over the film far too heavily to forget it. Which is a genuine shame, I haven’t witnessed a more damaging three-second incident since [paternity suit pending].

The End We Start From (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: After floods decimate the UK, a new mother does her best to find a safe space for her and her child.

I watched this in the middle of summer, and you’d think a film about torrential rainfall wouldn’t make sense to be watched in the summer. Ordinarily, you’d be right, but you’ve forgotten one thing; I live in England. I’ve spoken before about how the external atmosphere can affect the film-watching experience (I am wondering if part of my disdain for how Oculus ended was because the cinema turned the lights on early), but watching this in a weirdly wet summer definitely changed it, was like having surround sound.

The End We Start From (TEWSF, pronounced Two-soff) sets its genius relatively early on, having the scenes of her giving birth be intercut with scenes of her house being flooded. This is both smart and an obvious thing to do, but obvious like “having cheese on pizza instead of boiled foot dust” is obvious, in that if you did otherwise it would be weird. I do have some issues with the opening section though. It has her husband (referred to as R, and played brilliantly by Joel Fry) be away. With that, you’d assume the story would be about the two of them trying to reach each other. But then he just appears at the hospital after she’s given birth, so his not being in the opening didn’t affect the plot. It’s peculiar when you consider they get separated again. So their on-screen chemistry feels very stop-start. Ordinarily, I’d say “Keep them separated until the end so when the two meet again it feels special”, but that would be a stupid thing to do as it would rob TEWSF of a key scene; the one where R’s parents die. We know one dies but aren’t told anything about how or why until a few scenes later, and when you find out, damn it’s brutal, so, damn, brutal. It all feels real too. COVID taught us a lot (For example; that you should wash your hands after peeing, and that you shouldn’t sneeze directly on people. Both of which are things that apparently needed teaching), but the most sobering thought (so sobering it drives me to drink) was that people are dicks. They need to go to Ladbrokes even if it does kill the person behind the counter who’s forced to work even whilst sick.

I kind of wish we saw more of the world the film takes place in, most of what we see is just the universe surrounding the main character (Jodie Comer, credited as Woman). Much like AQP: DP, it all happens so quickly and the character isn’t at the centre of it. We do see a few other people, but only sporadically. It’s essentially a road movie where we only see the pit stops. As such, we feel like we’re in a weird purgatory where the character spends a lot of time in various places but none long enough to let the audience feel grounded and like we’re getting to know anybody. So much happens, but because they all feel like they have no impact, weirdly it seems like nothing happens.

That’s a shame as I would like to see more of some of the characters; partly as an excuse to see more Gina McKee and Katherine Waterston, especially Waterston who is always incredible. Of course, Comer is great, but that’s to be expected. I was surprised by how good Joey Fry is, I’ve only seen him in comedies, or acting alongside other sitcom actors. He more than holds his own in this. He’s surprisingly key to how this works. Considering it’s about a mother and a newborn child, you’d think it would contain a lot about modern femininity, and it does. But it also tackles masculinity, the feeling that if you’re not a provider then you are failing as a man.

It’s not just the people on screen, there’s a lot of talent behind the camera too. The music is mostly fitting, there is one part where it feels slightly too jaunty for what just happened, but otherwise, it’s dour and depressing. The visuals are sublime too, there are no gorgeous shots in it, but it’s not a movie for beauty, it’s about ugliness. Mahalia Belo has done a fantastic job of directing TEWSF. Even just the little moments are done as well as they could be. There’s a two-second shot of the television networks shutting down, that two seconds is creepier than most horror movies. Watching TEWSF is like wading through a murky puddle, but doing so in the middle of summer so that even when you are nearly stuck, you can still feel the warmth and have a small glimmer of hope of what’s coming.

In summary, it has flaws, but it’s incredibly powerful and definitely worth your time. Although I do question the logic of the main character crying so much during a flood; that’s just making it worse.

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: New York city comes under attack from an invading force of noise-hating aliens.

Longtime readers (or those who click this link here) will know that as much as I loved the first Quiet Place, the second one (A Quiet Place Two: Shhhhhh-it Happens) didn’t do as much for me. My biggest issue with it was the use of music. The first one used silence perfectly, to the point where it affected audiences watching it; the screening I was in had the quietest audience I’ve ever been a part of. The second one? It had music to set the tone, which meant it just felt like any other horror movie, and the effect of silence wasn’t as big as it could have been. That same issue plagues A Quiet Place: Day One (AQP: DO, pronounced Aquop-do), I’d actually argue it’s worse in this. In the start, the time before the attack? There it makes sense. In fact, the use of noise in that section is brilliant. There’s SOOOO much background sound that when it does turn silent it is a huge difference. The use of music does ruin it though, and lessens the impact of one of the closing scenes. Spoilers; this film ends with a character committing suicide by music by unplugging their headphones from a radio, thereby broadcasting music everywhere, ensuring their death. If there was NO music before that, the impact of that would be HUGE. But because we’ve heard music throughout the film, it doesn’t hit quite as hard as it could. There’s also not as big a difference in audio level between “music on headphones” and “music unplugged” as there could be.

There’s also one pretty big flaw with AQP: DO. It doesn’t feel like a prequel We see what life was like before the attack, and we have a character who was in the second movie. But other than that, there’s not that much of a difference between this and the other two in terms of what it does. There’s nothing here that could only be done in a prequel. No questions are answered, and because the main character passes out we don’t see that much of the initial panic.

There was a perfect opportunity to use this to find out more about the initial response, but we don’t get that. How do we know they hunt by sound? No idea, the film doesn’t tell us. How did politicians respond? We don’t know. What was the initial media reaction? We don’t know. Yes, communications do get cut out, but there would still be a few minutes/hours of social media reactions. But the most important question that goes unanswered: exactly how much hentai of the invading aliens was drawn before the world collapsed?

Other than that, the film itself is good. The characters are likeable. Lupita Nyong’o’s character (Samira) is beautifully written. She’s a terminal cancer patient so her character shows us something so far unexplored in this franchise; those who NEED civilization to survive. Those with illnesses that require medication, and those with health issues that mean they’re dependent on others. In an apocalypse situation there will be people like that, people who know that if people don’t turn against them now, they will when resources start getting depleted. It is seen in a somewhat more optimistic light than in The End We Start From (spoilers for that review), with Samira having a more “fuck it, let’s do this” attitude.

When the film does remember its gimmick, it’s brilliant. There’s a scene of Samira and Eric (played by Joseph Quinn) at a jazz club. The silence lends it a weird sense of intimacy which would otherwise be lacking. It’s one of the few moments of hope in an otherwise quite bleak experience (bleak in a good way).

That scene is helped by the performances of Nyong’o and Quinn. They play off each other very well. That’s probably for the best as most of the film is spent just with the two. For a film set in New York City, it does feel incredibly isolated in terms of other characters. We occasionally spend time in the company of others, but not that much. Everybody has found themselves groups to hang out in very quickly. We all know that if this did happen they’d be separate factions etc, none of that in here. Everybody just stays silent and moves as a group (except for the leads).

It is a pleasant surprise to see effective organisation though. The military quite quickly figured out a plan to send one helicopter to make a lot of noise in the city, and thus distract the aliens to allow another helicopter to marshall survivors onto the boat. That kind of competence porn is always great to see.

In summary; this is a really good film, but it would have been SOOOO easy to make it great.

Fly Me To The Moon (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: NASA is struggling to make people give a shit about them, so they hire a marketing expert.

I remember as a stupid teen not being entirely sure of what a “director” did. “All they do is point the camera and film it”, which may have had something to do with me discovering Kevin Smith movies. I’m older (definitely) and wiser (debatable) now, so I know better. It’s with that knowledge I can say that Greg Berlanti was the wrong choice to direct Fly Me To The Moon (FMTTM, pronounced Fem-toe-Tom). He’s not a bad director, he’s actually really good and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise. But it doesn’t matter how good someone is, sometimes it’s just not a good fit. It doesn’t matter how talented a guitarist Jimi Hendrix was, I wouldn’t hire him to remodel my back garden (partly because he’s dead). And just because Berlanti is a good director, doesn’t mean he was the right choice for this. It’s obvious why he was chosen, he has a background in romantic comedies so knows how to craft them to make them believable (the “meet-cute” between the two leads in this is brilliantly done, it has to be said), but he directs very slowly; shots linger, characters stay still, there’s a lot of blank space in the background. Meanwhile, the dialogue is quick and almost Noël Coward-esque. So you have incredibly quick-witted characters stuck in a directorial style that doesn’t really suit them.

I was somewhat disappointed by how FMTTM wastes its satirical possibilities. It says nothing about life or the politics of the time. A large portion of the runtime is focused on the “making a fake moon landing in case the real one doesn’t work” part. Which is silly. There was a lot of silliness in international politics around that time, especially regarding the moon. Fun fact, at one point the US planned to nuke the moon. That’s not mentioned here, nor are the multiple other mindblowing moments of stupidity that were everywhere at the time. It doesn’t even attempt to lampoon the society and politics of the time. It’s as biting as a gummy bear.

The performances are fine. I will admit this isn’t Channing Tatum’s best work, Scarlett is fantastic though; showcasing her talent with accents. The rest of the cast is fine, and they’re talented enough that this would work as an ensemble piece if they wanted to make it a television show instead so they could focus on the background characters more. The focus is definitely on the two leads, and it works for this genre. They share a definite chemistry, the kind where even when they’re not saying anything it feels like they’re flirting with each other just by being in the same room. That’s difficult to do because Kelly (Scarlett’s character) isn’t the best-written character. Sometimes, she’s supposed to come off as dynamic and forceful but just as incredibly rude and condescending. She’s written like a Bill Murray character, and let’s face it, most of them are annoying pricks when you think about it.

I was a bit mean about Berlanti earlier, but it has to be said that whilst his style doesn’t suit the script, it is slick and stylish as hell. It’s helped by the costume design, but a lot of the reason the film feels like it genuinely takes place in the period it’s set in is down to how Berlanti shot it. A sense of nostalgia permeates every inch of the screen. It could do more with the music. I can only remember two pieces of music from it, one is Fly Me To The Moon being sung by Woody at the end (and you just KNEW they were going to play that), the other is To Love Somebody by the Bee Gees, which is a ducking fantastic piece of music, but isn’t a song that inspires a sense of nostalgia. Put it this way, there’s no way they could sell a soundtrack album to this, which feels like a waste.

In summary; a good film, but you can’t get past the sense of both wasted opportunity, and how “made by committee” the whole thing feels. This is film as product, not as art.

Inside Out 2 (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: Riley is now a teenager, and with increased age comes increase emotion.

With Pixar, you know what you’re getting; emotions. They’ve given emotions to a wide variety of things: toys, dinosaurs, Scottish people. Inside Out is the most obvious example of this: What if emotions had emotions? It wasn’t crying out for a sequel, it was pretty self-contained and didn’t leave any unanswered questions. That doesn’t mean a sequel doesn’t make sense. It was a film about childhood emotions, and (spoilers), emotions don’t stop when people hit their teens.

Let’s be honest, even if it didn’t NEED a sequel, it’s very easy to picture how to do one. As people grow, their emotions develop and become more complex. It’s the complexity of developing emotions that drives the plot of Inside Out 2 (IO2, pronounced Eye-owe-two, like the surname of a lower league Ghanaian footballer). As well as the returning Sadness, Joy, Disgust (sadly no longer voiced by Mindy Kaling over a pay dispute), Anger and Fear, there are also new emotions in the form of Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui. Three of them slot effortlessly and are believable (albeit incredibly late arriving, are you saying other people didn’t have anxiety until they were teens? Lucky bastards), Ennui feels the most out of place and unnecessary.

The main difference in this entry is the importance placed on Sense Of Self. At first, it just seems like a clever way of displaying something, but the pay-off when Riley is affected by self-doubt, and how it affects her sense of self, is f*cking marvellous and one of the best things I’ve seen this year. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how you can crippled by anxiety and worries, and how they can lead to you keep making things worse in an attempt to make them better.

IO2 actually does a pretty good job of explaining the benefits of anxiety; preparing you for things which have not yet come to be (a bit like that super scary thing in The Muppet Christmas Carol). On the downside, that does mean that Joys arc of “oh, I see that negative emotions value now, I should help them and ease them into this system” is very similar to her arc in the first movie. I know there will be some narrative crossover, but there are times where it does feel like we’re just watching the same thing again.

That’s a very small issue though, overall it’s delightful, in a kind of depressing way. This, like all Pixar films, will break you slightly. But it will also rebuild you. That’s what Pixar do, they make you sad, but then they leave you feeling inspired and hopefull. They’re masters at it, and nobody does it better, except for Carly Simon.

Fun fact btw: When I left the cinema after seeing this I overheard a small child say it wasn’t very realistic because “why would someone’s brain make them feel worse?”. That poor sweet innocent child.

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis; Will Smith slaps people, which never happens outside of these movies.

Is it just me or does it feel like there’s a missing film in this franchise? To me, it feels like the franchise has been: Original film in the ’90s, a surprisingly improved sequel in the mid-2000s, a more serious and mature entry from roughly 2010 or so, a “we’re back” 4th movie, then a 5th “we’re old now” entry. But nope, there was no 2010’s entry. That genuinely surprises me, and not just because I assumed the 2020 one was called Bad Boys For Life only so they could get a “4” in the poster somewhere. None of that was relevant at all, I’m just saying it to demonstrate how, despite having now seen all of them, I don’t particularly have warm feelings toward this franchise. I don’t dislike them, and will never turn them off if they’re on, but I will never go out of my way to watch them. More importantly, I could never speak about anything from these movies with any passion. I never really think of this franchise unless I’m watching them or someone talks to me about them (which makes reviewing it a bit difficult).

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die (Or BB: Rod, pronounced exactly how you expect it to be) doesn’t change that. It’s the most stylistic of them by a long shot; with some actual visual creativity displayed. There were inklings of that in the third one, but Adil and Bilal really let their creative flair flow in this, usually to its advantage. “Usually”. There are moments where it’s ugly as fuck in terms of shot composition. Not every shot HAS to be creative and visually impressive, sometimes a standard shot or transition is acceptable. Yes, there are times when you want cinematic deliciousness, but sometimes you just want a simple toast. BB: ROD has far too many moments where it takes a simple toast and over eggs it like a [generic hotel breakfast joke]. I know it’s weird to criticise a film for being too creative but it definitely does hinder this. Some of the shots are so weird that they actually distract you from what you’re actually seeing.

The story is okay. Doesn’t really surprise you at any point and it is far far too busy. It kind of feels like it wasted some things which could be decent subplots but instead, it was decided to use them for a single joke. There’s one running joke/theme that just doesn’t work though. It feels completely out of place and far too mystical/spiritual for a relatively grounded character. Let’s face it, you’re not watching this for character consistency though. A character nearly dies and is told that he needs to look after his health; this only ever comes up in non-action scenes. Even after being told to avoid stressful situations, he still chases down villains and shoots them with seemingly no issue. The other character does have issues in those scenes though, and it’s here where the film thinks it’s making a point about the need for therapy and dealing with PTSD. But considering the characters actively mock the idea of panic attacks, it doesn’t do a VERY good job of being supportive of mental health issues.

In summary; frustratingly mediocre, but at least it’s trying.