Month: January 2025

2024 In Film: Day One (The Awful)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Borderlands
Ups: Some nice little visual touches.
Good cast.
Downs: Nonsensical action scenes.
Treats the audience like they’re idiots.
Inconsistent characterisation.
Keeps reminding you of better films.
Best Performer: Ariana Greenblatt
Best Moment: When Lilith meets Claptrap.
Worst Moment: The fight against the psychos. Remarkably unexciting. There’s no sense of danger
Opening: Quick explanation of the world. It kind of works and does its job. But it’s all stuff that could have been shown in the narrative rather than just narrated to us.
Closing: They all celebrate. Predictable, and doesn’t work to get you excited.
Best Line: I’m a bit old, I think, to be setting myself on fire for your amusement.
Original review here

Hellboy: The Crooked Man
Ups: Violent.
Some nice folk horror moments
Downs: Looks cheap.
Mind-numbingly dull.
The lead has zero presence.
Best Performer: Adeline Rudolph
Best Moment: Cora’s body is filled. It’s so creepy.
Worst Moment: No matter how much you try, you CAN NOT make “thing reaches out slowly to touch a bone someone is holding” scary, it looks more like someone was eating chicken and being told “There loads of meat still left on that”
Opening: Gothy text over woodland area. Then Hellboy on a train. Instantly, it makes it seem cheap.
Closing: They defeat evil. For some reason, Bobbie sleeps holding Hellboy arm. The words “beware! I am a witch!” are painted on the evil horse. So as long as that doesn’t wash up, it will be fine.
Best Line: “Come on snake, let’s rattle”. Wait, did I say “best”, I meant “worst, one that’s absolutely terrible and shit”.
Original review here

Lift
Ups: Good ensemble cast
Some good shots.
Downs: Predictable.
Boring characters.
Best Moment: When it looks like someone is about to be tortured. Could be a good way of showing the villain being a prick. Sadly it then cut away.
Worst Moment: The plane flying upside down for an extended period of time.
Best Performer: Billy Magnussen
Opening: Some absolutely STUNNING shots of Venice. A lot of the time when you see Venice on screen it seems like just one street with a river instead of a road. This makes it look like an actual city with historical significance. Essentially, it makes it feel like a city that isn’t just canals, gondolas, and a tourist industry that is killing it.
Closing: The thieves switched the gold around, much to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
Notable Line: “It’s too big a risk”
“you know how much I like risk”
It’s not a good line but it indicates the level of effort put into this. None.
Original Review here

Night Swim
Ups: Competently made.
Downs: Stupid premise that is taken far too seriously.
Characters don’t behave realistically.
Not enough meat to stretch out to a full-length movie.
So many logical inconsistencies.
Best Performer: Wyatt Russell I guess.
Best Moment: When he hits a baseball. Kind of majestic.
Worst Moment: The pool party. It displays that the real horror is ineffective health and safety.
Opening: A foreboding shot of a swimming pool. Then a young girl is pulled into it by an unseen force. It’s technically well made etc, but it’s still very difficult to get past the notion of an evil swimming pool. It’s almost a parody.
Closing: The dad sacrifices himself by walking into the deep end of the pool. The family then fill the pool in, which you’d think somebody would have done in the hundreds of years this has been an issue.
Best Line: It’s funny, isn’t it, though. I mean, we evolved out of the water, and some part of our reptilian brain knows we’re not supposed to be there anymore. But… I guess that’s why we try to tame it so hard. It’s like trying to conquer death.
Original review here

Tarot
Ups: Shows grief believably.
The flashbacks are well-made.
Downs: No horror movie should have a Howard Jones song.
Terribly written characters.
No decent scares.
Best Performer: Olwen Fouéré
Best Moment: The lead-up to Paige’s death has a cool elegance to it.
Worst Moment: The baby’s death flashback. Mainly because the Count seems to be waiting for the narrator to stop speaking before he reacts. It’s like the scene starts and he’s waiting for his cue.
Opening: A bunch of teens play “Guess the Future” or something. Where they sit around a campfire and guess “who’s most likely to get pregnant?” and the “winner” drinks. Weirdly, every round has a complete agreement between everybody. Personal truths are revealed but more shocking, they ran out of beer. This is treated as a new revelation, but wouldn’t they have noticed when getting the previous beers out?
Closing: “Fuck fate”. Then we find out how someone escaped death; someone opened a door. Kind of a cop-out.
Best Line: “Do you know why there are so many murder podcasts? Because people are always getting murdered”
Original review here

The Crow
Ups: Some pretty shots.
Downs: Bland.
Obviously sets up a sequel it will never get.
No memorable music.
Best Performer: Danny Huston. So threatening.
Best Moment: The first sight of purgatory.
Worst Moment: When the film ends and you realise you’ll never get that time back.
Opening: An absolutely GORGEOUS shot of a kid walking through mud and coming across a dying horse. He puts it out of its misery. Sets up the character okay, but my main takeaway is how pretty the visuals are.
Closing: His girlfriend comes out of hell.
Best Line: “If I’m ever hard to love, try to love me harder”. That just sounds abusive as hell.
Original review here

The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Ups: Fun concept
Downs: Drags, a lot.
Completely forgettable. To the point where having watched it is VERY similar to having not watched it in terms of the impact it has on you.
Best Performer: Henry Cavill.
Best Moment: The opening, very violent and fun.
Worst Moment: Genuinely can’t remember anything else from the movie. And I’m writing this a week after watching it.
Opening: Text telling us that the following story is true and wasn’t discovered until Churchill’s notes were declassified in 2016. Which is weird as it’s based on a book made in 2014. Then we get a scene of Nazis threatening two people on a ship by saying “You can either die in the ocean or die on fire. The last person nearly made it and we rewarded him by shooting him in the head”, firmly setting up that, yes, despite some politicians best efforts to state otherwise, Nazi’s were the bad guys
Closing: A “what happened next” to the main characters. It’s nice to see, but it would have meant more if the characters were memorable.
Best Line: I’m not leaving until I have a barrel full of Nazi hearts.
Original review here

Trap
Ups: Some decent performances.
Downs: Stupid characters.
Wastes its own story.
Nepotism.
Best Performer: Josh Hartnett
Best Moment: The very end where one of the characters realises he helped a serial killer. Although that does back up a criticism I had where I was annoyed that he gave a stranger so much information.
Worst Moment: I want to say “every moment Saleka is onscreen” but I’m going to get very specific. There’s a shot near the end where Josh’s character is sitting down and talking, and there’s a HUGE corner of the screen being blocked off by an overhanging cupboard. In terms of shot composition, it’s hard to find anything worse in a seasoned directors work. It makes it look like he’s just poking his head around
Opening: It opens with a song by M. Night’s daughter. I’m not talking about the actual opening showing the father and daughter relationship. Because I can’t get past the nepotism.
Closing: He’s arrested but escapes. I hope we don’t get a sequel.
Best Line: There isn’t any.
Original review here

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Sonic, Knuckles and Tails reunite to battle Shadow, a mysterious new enemy with powers unlike anything they’ve faced before. With their abilities outmatched in every way, they seek out an unlikely alliance to stop Shadow and protect the planet.

During the Nintendo/Sega “war” of the 1990s, I was firmly on the side of Nintendo. It just suited me better. I liked Mario’s intricate level design, the lush visuals of Donkey Kong, and Luigi’s CEO-handling skills. Truth be told, I’ve never really “vibed” with the Sonic games (except Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine for some reason), so the expectation would be that I’d be glad to see the end of this franchise.

Truthfully? I hope there is a fourth one. Not just because the way Sonic 3 ends means there kind of has to be one. But also because I’ve kind of liked these movies. None of them have been among my favourite films of the year, but none are ones that I will consider “bad”. At its worst, it’s mediocre, with weak plotting and no idea how to keep Sonic’s speed consistent. But it never ever gets worse than that. Weirdly, it’s probably among the most consistent franchises of the modern age; with no major changes in tone or quality throughout. It’s hard to imagine somebody only liking one of them as they are all very similar, for better and for worse.

It’s the best one of the three so far, mainly because it cuts down on what I didn’t enjoy of the first two. There’s much less wasted time (still some, but nowhere near as much). There’s one scene in particular which stops the movie dead for a few minutes, and WILL be mentioned in the end of year summary (starting Monday, very excited about that).

For worse, the story of the third is very similar to the second. The story arc that Knuckles and Shadow go on is basically the same. There was a chance to do something special, but it never manages it. This means that from the trailer, you can kind of figure out what’s going to happen. It tries to swerve you by having Robotnik’s grandfather appear as a secondary villain, but it’s not difficult to figure out where that’s going. There are also moments which feel disconnected from the story as if they’re left over from an early draft. On occasion, there are moments where it feels like the story wasn’t decided until the edit, and somewhere there are huge plot points on the cutting floor but they couldn’t remove every reference and set-up.

Overall, this is a really difficult film to dislike. It’s fun and contains more references to the games than you could shake a stick at. In the Mario movies, a lot of the best references were done by the artists, with the narrative references feeling shoe-horned in (especially the kart section). The references here are done by the writers. If you are a fan of the games, you WILL be excited by the post-credits scene, and you will enjoy seeing the likes of Maria on screen and being fleshed out as characters.

It also benefits from having a better sense of emotion at its core. The Maria story is heartbreaking to watch unfold. Its believable backstory is simple but effective. The human characters are essential but not the main focus. This is how it should be. Nobody buys a ticket to watch Sonic to see Tom’s adventures, but those parts still have to be well-written so they don’t come off as annoying.

The key to this has always been the performances. Ben Schwartz was a weird choice for Sonic, but he is perfect for the hot-headedness of the character. Idris Elba is a LOT better at comedy than you’d think he’d be. I know Liam Neeson is up for the lead in new Naked Gun, but I’d like to think there’s a place in that movie for someone like Idris. Keanu Reeves is a fun new addition too, providing genuine gravitas to what could be too silly.

In summary, the franchise continues to impress. Being a lot better than it needs to be. They’re not great, but they’re entertaining distractions from the inevitable heat-death of the universe.