Month: August 2024

Deadpool And Wolverine (2024) Review

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Quick Summary: hahahahahahaha, as if “what’s the plot?” is a question anybody will ask before watching this.

This film is funny.

What do you mean by “that’s not long enough to be satisfying and you should be ashamed of yourself”? (Obligatory “that’s what she said”). Fine, I’ll add more.

Deadpool And Wolverine (DAW, pronounced Daaaaaaaw like you’ve just seen a kitten wearing a cute hat) is everything you expect it to be. I can’t really imagine anybody who liked the first two would come into this and be disappointed. It won’t win over new fans, but it’s not supposed to. The continuity lockout is not as strong as you’d think it would be. The script gives enough context clues that if this is your first superhero movie and you are paying attention, you should still be able to follow what’s happening. There will be moments where you feel a little bit left out as a few jokes won’t make sense etc, but there’ll be another joke in a few seconds that will make sense so it doesn’t matter. It’s a bit like being non-American and watching an American sitcom, a general air of “I’m sure that would be funny if I understood the reference”.

But for those who do get the references? Damn, they are in for a fun time. This is a film for people who know their Marvel history, not just “I’ve watched the films”, DAW contains references to production issues, unmade projects, and internet gossip, and that’s just the stuff I recognise. I have no doubt that there are a lot of references I didn’t pick up on (like, who’s this “Wolverine” guy? Haven’t seen him before). It is great to finally see Jackman and Reynolds’s most loved characters sharing a screen (Baraka-pool doesn’t count), they have incredible chemistry and obviously enjoy acting alongside each other. The chemistry is so good that you don’t even realise the absence of Zazie Beetz’s Domino, it’s kind of sad that she’s not present, but I don’t think it really affects your enjoyment that much. What did affect my enjoyment was the absence of TJ Miller. His character of Weasel was essentially Deadpool’s best friend in the previous two films, so his absence is definitely felt. But Miller is also a colossal dickhead so fuck him, I’m glad he’s gone.

Now onto the bad. Like the previous two Deadpool flicks, the pacing and actual story for this could be better. You’re not really engrossed in the narrative at any point, it’s mainly used to just jump from joke to joke. That’s not necessarily a huge negative, but it is something that could have been improved upon. The only part with genuine emotion is a quick montage of the non-MCU Marvel films during the end credits, genuinely beautiful. In terms of pacing, there are times when to fit in the jokes, everything grinds to a halt, and then it jumps much further forward in time than it needs to so that it can make up for lost time.

In summary, this review, in fact, all reviews for this, are ultimately pointless. You already decided whether you want to watch it or not. Nothing any review says is going to change your mind. So really this has all been a massive waste of time and I’d have been better off eating two cakes as opposed to just one. There’s a reason it’s now the highest-grossing R-Rated film of all time, (taking the title from Joker which took it from Deadpool 2, which took it from Deadpool) joining such other illustrious films on that list such as *checks list* Terminator 3, Lucy, Fifty Shades Of Sexual Abuse, and Sex And The City. But in case you are one of the very few undecided people. Go see it FFS.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: How Furiosa became, well, became Furiosa.

Mad Max: Fury Road (MM: FR, pronounced Mumfour) was a phenomenally well-made piece of cinema, so you couldn’t help but feel slightly worried with the announcement of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (F: AMMS, pronounced Famms). A lot was working for it though, George Miller directing so it’s not as though it was handed off to someone who couldn’t handle it. Plus it wasn’t written as a cash grab, it was supposed to be filmed back-to-back with Fury Road. The cast seemed pretty solid too; Anya Taylor-Joy is always great, and the trailers made it look like Chris Hemsworth was having a lot of fun.

All of that is a long way of saying that if you enjoyed MM: FR then you’ll enjoy F: AMMS. It’s not quite as busy as Fury Road was, which I prefer. Furiosa actually gives you time to breathe so what happens is allowed to have an impact on you. It also has a much more varied visual colour palette to work from. There is a heavier focus on CGI in this one though, to its detriment. It’s not constant, but there are a few moments where some things just look “off”, and unlike MM: FR it doesn’t have as many exciting action scenes to fall back on. There are still some very good action scenes, but there’s nothing you can count as a “highlight”.

That’s my biggest issue with it. Despite how good it is, despite its noble origins, it still comes off as the cinematic equivalent of DLC for a video game. It never seems to become its own movie; instead, it is content to remind you of things from a better movie. Outside of curiosity, it’s difficult to see what the purpose of this was. If it was released earlier it wouldn’t be as big an issue, but after this long, it feels a bit like it is just a stopgap to tide you over until they release a sequel that will never come.

I’m being overly harsh I know. This is a brilliantly made film, and it’s very rarely boring. The performances are great, it’s an interesting story, and it’s a lot of fun. But, I dunno, I guess, it’s just a 7.8/10 and I want a 9. I think people do need to watch it though, it’s definitely worth your time

Alien: Romulus (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of disillusioned colonists get set for one big job to earn enough money for their freedom from the corporation that essentially owns them. As you can guess from the title, they meet a Xenomorph.

I managed to catch Covenant at the cinema during its theatrical release, and I wasn’t too impressed by it. Part of me wondered whether that was because I hadn’t seen any of the others. However, just through cultural osmosis, I recognised certain bits of it as paying homage to the original, making it seem like a greatest hits package, albeit one rerecorded by a different line-up because the lead singer fired everybody and didn’t want to pay them royalties so replaced them all with session musicians. By which I mean, I recognised the narrative and visual melodies, but they weren’t as sharp and exciting as I knew they had originally been.

Now, onto Romulus. Romulus VERY heavily leans into the original, taking place between that and Aliens, as well as featuring dialogue that explicitly references the original, just oddly delivered. The Xenomorph in Romulus is the same creature from the original, and there is an android that physically resembles Ash (the android, not the result of fire, or the Pokemon animal torturer). Now I have actually seen the first two films in the franchise, so am more able to spot more subtle references, it wouldn’t be a stretch for me to dislike Romulus as much as I did Covenant. Especially since it was written/directed by Fede Alvarez and co-written by Rodo Sayagues, the team responsible for the “you’ve kind of made a rapist sympathetic” horror movie Don’t Breathe (which I heavily disliked) and its “So you’ve made the rapist the hero now?” sequel Don’t Breathe 2, (which I utterly despised).

I didn’t. I, well I don’t want to say “enjoy”, as it was tense as hell and disturbing, but I was thoroughly “oooo”‘d, and a little bit “aaaaaa”‘d. There are some truly fantastic set pieces in this, full of creativity and intelligence. The use of the acidic blood in some of the scenes is superb, with my personal highlight being when the characters make a zero gravity journey through a corridor whilst the acidic blood floats around them. Some amazing scenes make the best use of gravity mechanics available to the characters. It felt like Alvarez and Sayagues looked at the toys they had to work with in terms of the technology and location developed earlier in the franchise, and then thought of scenes that would make the best use of them.

I haven’t felt this tense (at the cinema at least) since Civil War, which also starred Cailee Spaeny. The Alien franchise has many flaws, but one thing it’s always EXCELLED at has been casting perfect female leads. Noomi Rapace, Katherine Waterston, Weaver etc are all critically acclaimed performers, and I know that Spaeny will get there. She received some acclaim for her role in Priscilla, but that’s not enough. She was incredible in Civil War, to the point where in my review (link here) I specifically pointed out her performance, saying (and I quote):

she is damn near perfect. I want to see what she does next because she is fucking phenomenal in this

I didn’t quite expect her next performance to be this good. It’s genuinely difficult to figure out which of her performances is better. I dunno, maybe her next film will be shit. I’ll just see what she’s in next. *checks*. Knives Out 3. Oh damn, she’s in line for a perfect three-film run.

Romulus isn’t all perfect, some of the fanservice is a little bit too obvious, the final third drags a little bit, and some of the CGI feels a little weird. Those are very nitpicking criticisms though. Overall it’s incredible. There’s so much to like about it. David Jonsson (last seen here in Rye Lane) as a defective droid is great, with the character providing so much tension and humanity throughout, especially with a few of the narrative reveals (essentially the trolly problem) adding some background to humanity’s relationship with androids. The other characters are fine, but aren’t really explored enough, they don’t need to be though. Not everybody is a main character, so it’s fine if some characters are less developed than others.

The location is also a highlight. Much like the other entries in the franchise, there’s a kind of future-retro feel to everything. There’s a lot of future technology, but all the computers etc have all clearly seen better days. It would be much like having a film in 2010 featuring VHS players, but the film itself being released in the 1950’s.

Overall, I loved this movie. It’s cruel, atmospheric, and downright terrifying in parts, absolutely perfect for cinema.

Re-Recording Disney Music.

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I was browsing the book of Face the other day. In between the adverts for businesses in other countries, transphobic memes that have been “suggested for you”, and pages “we think you’d like” that are just hateful shit, I saw a Bowling For Soup post that said they had recorded a cover of Friend Like Me for a new Disney covers album. Now I love that shit, I love covers, I love pop punk, so a whole album full of that is my jam. On the downside, it is Disney and there is a concern that by buying that album I agreed to donate my organs to Disney before I die. Also, some of the choices are weird, would it not have made more sense for a woman to cover Surface Pressure instead of someone who wrote a song about a woman he met at a party and never saw again? So, much like we’ve already done for Bleed American and Black Parade, it’s time to speak about the better options. The only rule is; no Bowling For Soup, otherwise it would be them doing it all. Oh, and try to keep it to one song from each film (a rule which meant I couldn’t have NoFX doing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which is good because then I would have had to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and I’m not completely sure I can spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious correctly).

Rainbow Connection (Link to the original song here) – Ben Folds with Regina Spektor

This one is tricky, Weezer already did a pretty damn good cover of this (featuring guest vocals from Hayley Williams). You need something simple but also majestic. A musician that wouldn’t be out of place with just them and a keyboard/piano/ukulele/electric triangle, but who would also suit a full orchestral/vocal backing for the closing stretch. With that in mind, Regina Spektor was my first choice. As I was looking for a song to post to back up that opinion I dug up the song she made with Ben Folds, after that, I couldn’t unhear the version this could be. Starting off slow, just Ben Folds alone on a piano, an echo on the vocals so it sounds like he’s singing in an empty room, then when you get to the final verse, the strings kick in, as does Regina Spektor’s vocals. It would be emotional, powerful, and so damn perfect. There is a worry that it would come off as being too similar to the aforementioned Weezer cover, but I feel Folds and Spektor are different enough that it will have enough differences.

The case for the defence: Us – Regina Spektor. A great showcase for Spektor’s powerful voice which will help the closing section work.

Brick – Ben Folds Five. To show how bleak and depressing Ben Folds can be at times.

The Bed Song – Amanda Palmer. This is the kind of effect I want for the solo Ben Folds parts. That feeling of musical isolation and emptiness.

The Bare Necessities (link to the original song here) – Less Than Jake

Now this is tricky, mainly because the best cover already exists, no, not the John Goodman and Haley Joel Osment, it’s the Bowling For Soup one. How are you going to get something to match that level of joy and fun? Simple, the same thing you do with your Sims relationships when you have the new Romance update; make it super horny. A horn section makes everything better, even funerals. If they can find a way to merge it into I Wanna Be Like You then even better.

The Case For The Defence: Gainesville Rock City – Less Than Jake

We Bare Bears – Skatune Network. Proof that ska makes everything better

When You Wish Upon A Star (link to the original song here) – Puddles Pity Party

I knew I had to have this song on this album, and I knew I couldn’t fuck about with it. I couldn’t change it too much, I had to instead just enhance what was already there. The deep voice, the resonance, the performance. As has so often been the case in life; I turned towards a depressed clown. Puddles in particular. If you’re English and watch live TV, you have heard one of his cover versions, you just don’t know it. His cover of All The Small Things was used in a Christmas advert last year, I can’t remember which one because all Christmas adverts are the same, they’re essentially “Emotion! Feelings!” with no focus on the actual product or shop. I believe he could pull this off, and it would be fucking magnificent. This is the only one where I actually had to check the artist I chose hadn’t already done it.

The case for the defence: All The Small Things. That level of showmanship and old school brilliance is whats needed to make this work.

Stressed Out The song that made me fall in love with this artist

Be Our Guest (Link to the original song here) – Marina And The Diamonds

For this, I had one goal: strange time signatures mixed with a kooky danceability. Essentially, I needed it to sound like it was made by an art student. Sadly, Do Me Bad Things wouldn’t work as it would be too messy. I needed something relatively simple but effective. For this I’m thinking of it lacking strings in the background, it will be all synth-pop gloriousness.

The case for the defence; Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land A demonstration of the kind of synth dance feel I’m going far.

Oh No! Her most popular song, and the one which demonstrates the drumbeat backing I’ll be looking for.

Feed The Birds (Link to the original song here) – Meryl Streep

A weird choice, I know. Streep is generally known more as an actor than a singer (and a pretty good one too, in case the CONSTANT awards didn’t give that away) but she has sung in a few roles before. You may assume I heard Streep sing in Mamma Mia, but that would mean I had to watch that film, and that’s too much effort. Instead, I’m going with this based on her song from the VERY New York murder mystery show Only Murders In The Building. I feel she’d do a good job with this. Plus both Streep and Andrews have worked with Anne Hathaway, which doesn’t mean anything but like Marge Simpson with a potato, I just found that neat.

The case for the defence: Look For The Light. I kind of think I should put Ashley Park somewhere on this album but not sure where.

A Whole New World (Link to the original song here) – Brendon Urie with Sara Bareilles.

Based on the last song, I was going to put Ashley Park here, I was looking for some of her songs to put in the defence and some of her stuff with Girls5Eva from the TV show of the same name. As good as she is, I feel Sara Bareilles is the musical star, and it would be weird to overlook her. I knew I was going to have Panic guy as the lead though as I needed something bombastic and theatrical. On the actual album that inspired this blog, it’s being sung by Yellowcard, which might work, but I have a worry it will be flat. The version I’ve chosen here I think will soar and be as majestic as it deserves. Plus, no matter what, it’s going to be better than the fucking Jordan one.

Case for the defence: Into The Unknown – Panic At The Disco. They clearly have no objection to doing a Disney song, and this demonstrates how full-blown I want it to be.

Gravity – Sara Bareilles. The millennial equivalent of that Sarah Mclachlan song that makes everybody cry.

Part Of Your World (Link to the original song here) – Chrissy Costanza

This was unexpected. I asked someone for suggestions for a female vocalist for the previous song and someone suggested this artist, although it turns out they meant We Are The In Crowd, but I’m glad they introduced me to this band. I’m glad she suggested it though as it solved I problem I had. I was concerned this album wasn’t upbeat enough. I had emotion, I had theatrics, but I haven’t had much fun yet. I needed more pop punk, and this was perfect. Whilst also being melodic enough to not be a huge departure.

The case for the defence: Part Of Your World – New Found Glory. The kind of thing I’m aiming for, it will be similar to this version but different enough to stand out.

If Looks Could Kill – Chrissy Costanza The song that introduced me to this band

This Is Halloween (Link to the original song here) – Qveen Herby

Continuing with the upbeat theme, this time more hip hop/r&b based. The background beats for this will be HEAVY and slow. I feel Herby could do something weird with this where you know it’s different but you can’t quite figure out what she’s changed about it. I’m not sure what way she’d go with it, whether she would quicken the pace, slow it down, or change nothing. But I’m excited to see it.

The case for the defence: Barbie Girl. For if she does a more straight cover

Sade In The 90’s. For if she decided to go a bit more sensual and laid back

Surface Pressure (Link to the original song here) – K.Flay

This was probably the hardest one (and Can You Feel The Love Tonight which can clearly only be covered by Queen, and as such can’t be included). The version on the actual album is going to be done by Plain White T’s, them of the “I met a girl once at a party and wrote a song about her, no I’m not creepy why do you ask?” and I haven’t heard it yet but I’m assuming it’s going to “rock” (make a note of the deliberately small r) which is a weird choice. I knew it had to be performed by a female vocalist, that part was non-negotiable for me, but which vocalist? Part of me wanted to lean into the emotion, much like the Amanda Palmer cover does, maybe by going with Kesha in full Bob Dylan cover mode. But if a depressing slow ethereal cover already exists, will I be doing more of the same by having that version? A small part of me also wanted to lean into the flamenco aspects and have Bitter Ruin do a version, but I feel that would mean either wasting the brilliant guitar playing of Ben Richards or having that overshadow the vocals. I needed to do something noticeably different. I decided to lean into the slight hip-hop aspect of it, and pick a white girl from Illinois. This will work though, she creates good beats which will replace the instrumentation of the original, and can manage to do both fast vocal delivery and then heavy emotion. It might not be as good as the original, but it will be strong enough to justify its existence.

The case for the defence: Self Esteem. Where she changes a cover version AND showcases emotion, both will be vital.

Blood In The Cut. To showcase her beat creation

Four Letter Words. To demonstrate that she does have a sense of playfulness and speed.

Borderlands (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of people aren’t friends, but have to work together to do something to save others. Yeah, original.

I love watching films, I’d just like to point that out (just in case the almost 500 reviews on this site didn’t make that clear). But I’m not one of those people who hunt down trailers of everything and absorb information about everything that’s coming out. My at-home trailer use mainly consists of films I already know I’m interested in/curious about. The way I find myself watching NEW trailers is generally at the cinema itself. So I distinctly remember the first time I watched this trailer (I believe it was one of the trailers before Frozen Empire), I turned towards my cousin and said “Well someone’s watched Guardians Of The Galaxy”. The whole thing looked like a mockbuster GOTG directed by some music video guy on a budget of $11.50 and a tin of chopped tomatoes, starring the editor’s best friends cousin’s wife, only it was directed by Eli Roth and had a budget of around $120million, starring scream queen (and star of Scream Queen) Jamie Lee Curtis, five-time winner of “ohhhhh, her, I like her” award Cate Blanchett (whose crown has now been taken by Olivia Colman), and the person who stole the “I’m gonna fuck that Peach” award from Timothee Chalamet, Jack Black.

Maybe that was just the marketing, maybe the film itself will actually be surprisingly good. I mean, it’s directed by a competent director and has a very talented cast. So there’s always a possibility it will actually be really good. But is it? To answer that question I’ll show you a sentence I sent to someone after I left the cinema that day:

“Watched Borderlands and the new Alien movie today. The new Alien is very good”

That sums it up. Borderlands is not just bad compared to Alien (spoilers for that review), it’s a bad film. For a storyteller as creative and visionary as Eli Roth, Borderlands is a shockingly cliche piece of work. It follows the standard “ragtag group of misfits go in search of a MacGuffin” plot that has already been seen in both GOTG and DAD: HAT. It has gone through ten different scriptwriters in its development, and usually, that causes a film to be inconsistent and a tonal mess. Thankfully that’s not the case here, it keeps a pretty even tone and level of quality throughout; it’s just a shame that level of quality is complete shit. I’m not going to go into the “Blanchett is 52 but the character in the game is 22, and the character Kevin Hart plays is taller” etc. Those are valid concerns and criticisms for fans of the game, but I’ve never played the games so they didn’t affect my enjoyment of it at all. In fact, the cast is one of the few things Borderlands has going for it (and there are some subtle visual storytelling touches which are really good), everything else sucks.

It’s not terrible in a “nobody is trying” way, people are trying, they’re just making terrible decisions. The chief one is the violence, there’s not any. Borderlands NEEDS blood, this film is crying out for it. I’m guessing it’s so it can get a 12A rating instead of a 15, and thus appeal to more people. It’s clear that the studio wanted Borderlands aimed at the mass market, which was a mistake. Not only because of the lack of violence but also because it seems to assume the audience is full of idiots. That’s clear from the opening, which features far too much narration, and holds your hand more than a nervous mother teaching her child to cross the road. It doesn’t trust you to work something out for yourself. Such is its dedication to “No questions! No wonder!” I’m surprised that every character isn’t introduced with a fact sheet saying where you’re likely to know each actor from. The most egregious demonstration of this is when the film tells us that Lilith is from Pandora. Now, how do you think this film did it?

  1. “I haven’t been there in a long time”, and leave the meaning hanging in the air.
  2. Have another character tell them “I need you for this job, I know you were born there”
  3. When she arrives on the planet, have her say something along the lines of “This planet is shit, I should know, I was born here”.

Take a guess. I’ll wait. Have you guessed? Congratulations! You’re correct. I’m not saying that because I guessed that you picked the one most likely, I’m saying that because whichever one you picked you are correct since it does all three. They aren’t even spread out, all three of them take place within a few minutes. So it’s not even “we’re recapping this in case you went to the toilet”. There are other issues with the writing; primarily the amount of moments which make no sense.

The best example; everybody in the group is wanted by the police, so how do they disguise themselves? With a hologram mask. One of the characters has bright red hair, one talks like Kevin Hart, one is giant and muscled, one is a one-of-a-kind robot, and another has bunny ears. With all those visual and audio clues, I don’t think “slight covering of the face” is going to do much good to hide your face. If you saw Superman walking around in full costume but wearing a Lucha Libre wrestling mask, I’m pretty sure you’d still recognise it’s him by the giant fucking S on his chest. Same issue here. That’s not an issue for long as the masks are never used again once the characters pass that level scene. Fuck it, I hid it there but I’m going to flat-out say it here now; there’s zero cohesion between different scenes, as such they all come off as a series of levels rather than one continual narrative. As a result, it sometimes feels like we’re not watching a movie, but instead seeing a 2-hour “highlights” package from a 13-hour videogame. That’s why there are random things which aren’t explained at all, why certain characters’ relationships with each other seem to be based not on emotion or truth, but on the amount of time left in the film, and why it makes bafflingly random time skips at a level not seen since Fant4stic.

It’s nowhere near as bad as Madame Web was, but that’s damning it with faint praise. As I said, the performances from the leads are fine, Ariana Greenblatt in particular is a ball of chaotic energy. There are some nice ideas at play here, and the visuals are pretty nice to look at. But otherwise? When the universe collapses in on itself and completely destroys existence, the resulting void of infinite nothingness will still have more stars than this deserves out of 5. Harsh? Yes, but it deserves it.

Thelma (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Thelma loses $10,000 to a con artist, she is not very happy about this.

June Squibb is pretty damn cool. She’s best known to me for her role in the (criminally under-appreciated) Table 19, which is still near the top of my list for confusion at the negative reviews. She’s also been utilized in a lot of recent Pixar movies, recently voicing Nostalgia in Inside Out 2: Inside Harder. Yes, she was also in Father Figures but I can’t hold that against her. Thelma is her first chance to lead, and at the age of 94, it’s (as the great philosopher Lizzo once said) about damn time. The only disappointing part about June’s performance is if it was bad I would have had the perfect opportunity to make a “damp Squibb” joke, and now I can’t, stupid actresses ruining my jokes by being talented.

The script does help Thelma too. In the wrong hands it would risk coming off as condescending, or alternatively going too far the other way and having a message of “no, 94-year-old women can still parachute out of a burning helicopter whilst smoking meth, and if you try to stop them then you’re a terrible person”. It also doesn’t attempt to do an “old people swearing/rapping/sex references=comedy” thing, which is a relief. The title character feels real, and her interactions with her grandson (played by Fred Hechinger) are so lovely that I want to watch a road movie featuring the two of them. The two actors share surprisingly good chemistry, there is no sense of distance between them and the warmth radiates off the screen. Not so much with the two parent characters, but they’re not as fleshed out as the main two so that’s to be expected.

Anybody who has spoken to me for more than twenty seconds will know that I’m quite a moody and cynical person. So in many ways, a film like Thelma is the opposite of what it’s expected I’d like. But in another, more accurate, way, this is the exact type of shit I love. Sometimes it’s nice to have “Hey, stop being a condescending dick to your elderly relatives” as a message. It’s not exactly subtle with that message, having characters openly discuss moving Thelma into a home whilst she’s in the room, but discussing it like she’s not there. The moments where it plays like a pseudo-action film are fun to watch too, but it never goes quite as far as you feel it could.

A part of the film I didn’t think worked out that well was the sections in the nursing home. They feel a bit too sitcom-like as if they belong in a lower-quality film with a completely different tone. The director’s use of soft focus on the edges of the frame may be annoying to quite a few people too. It also sucks that this was Richard Roundtree’s final film role, and I’m not a fan of how it reminded me of my grandmother and hence now I’m sad.

Overall, Thelma is delightful. A bit too cutesy at times, but it would take a heart of stone to not be charmed by it. It is not among the best of 2024, but it is certainly among the films that made me feel most warm inside. It’s definitely the best of the two “Old person gets scammed by someone on the phone” movies of the year. Here’s the other one if you were wondering.

The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: A top-secret group of rogues embark on a mission to something something Nazi’s.

“This does not feel like the Guy Ritchie who gave the world Snatch or Lock Stock. This feels like the Guy Ritchie that gave us Swept Away and Aladdin. It doesn’t feel like there’s any love in it. There’s nothing memorable about it. It lacks not only his visual flair but also the crowd-pleasing narrative twists and turns. There’s a real identity crisis about the whole thing. There are so many moments which if they were fleshed out could form the basis of a great film,” that’s from my review of the last Guy Ritchie film I watched, and it’s true here. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t entertained whilst watching this, I was actually bored. The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare (or TMOUW, pronounced Tomorr-woo) is only memorable because I wrote down that I saw it. Much like OFRdG, there’s not much here to recommend (and it has a clunky title). The action scenes are okay, but the film seems to want them to take a back seat to “banter” that shouldn’t be in the driving seat. It manages to be overwritten to the point that none of it feels natural and also like a first draft.

The opening scene is fun, shockingly violent, and features some pretty decent performances. If the rest of TMOUW was like that, I’d have enjoyed it a lot more. By “a lot more”, I mean “at all”. Ritchie’s strength is not in the faux-gentlemanly characters of WW2. None of them feel genuine, instead coming off as a modern person’s idea of what people from the 90s would sound like in the 1940s.

The plot feels like a prequel to a film that has never been made. There’s no jeopardy, it’s all building towards something inevitable but never entertaining enough to distract you from that. The “heist” aspect isn’t as smart as it needs to be, and the surrounding scenes just aren’t interesting enough to hold your attention.

I can’t even say I’m disappointed. I didn’t have high expectations because of my issues with OFRdG, but there was a small part of me that hoped that Ritchie would pull it off, especially since how well-received The Gentleman TV series has been. It’s like going back to a restaurant that used to be good, but the last five times it’s given you intense diarrhoea. You know you shouldn’t go back, but your memories of the first time linger, and you will always have that hope, even when you should know better.

Sting (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: An alien spider grows and kills, serving as a warning to humans: “Don’t stand so close to me”.

Sting is not a smart movie. It’s not brave, it’s not challenging, it’s not something that’s going to stay with you for years after you see it. It’s also not bad. Not everything needs to change the world, some things can just be entertaining, and this is definitely that. Yes, it’s the dumbest thing the name “Sting” has been attached to since Starrcade 1997/Track 12 from the Brimstone And Treacle soundtrack. You’ll be entertained once you get past the disappointment that this isn’t actually a horror movie based on a guy who once watched The Crow or the writer of Roxanne (the song, not the movie).

It’s not perfect, for one thing, Robyn Nevin is clearly not using her natural accent, and it’s noticeable. Noni Hazelhurst is pretty damn fun though, and has the name that’s the most fun to say. There are also moments where the writers skipped over things we should have seen. For example, the police are seemingly accusing Ethan (played by a pretty damn great Ryan Corr) of harming his neighbour. While they talk to him he receives a phone call saying “come here” from his neighbour (Danny Kim), and he just leaves. There are also issues with pacing, the opening in particular is far too long in comparison to the rest of the film.

It is mostly just a lot of fun. The way the opening is filmed may make you think it would be cheaply made, especially since the attack there didn’t show that much (for reasons that become clear later on, but in the moment, it does seem cheap), but when it needs to, it goes hard. There’s one death in particular which is BRUTAL and I love it.

Sting has an advantage (not in a Wargames way) over horror movies in that people already find spiders kind of creepy, probably because the way they walk doesn’t seem natural, and they look more like hydraulic robots. Sting makes the most of the creepy nature they naturally have. Yes, it does augment it with sci-fi stuff, but it never comes across as horror you laugh at. There are some funny moments, but they’re based around the characters rather than the situation.

I went in with low expectations, and it exceeded them. I don’t think I need to watch it again at any point, but I don’t regret seeing it, and I would definitely watch a sequel (which, judging by the ending, we’re getting). Yes, it’s shlock, but it’s so fun. Taking inspiration from Alien, but also from those terrible 80s slasher movies that people love. It may not be your favourite horror of the year (I think The First Omen is my favourite so far), but it won’t be the worst (Hello there Tarot, Night Swim, The Watchers etc).