Cassandro (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Saul Armendariz is a gay luchador wrestler under the name El Topo. His career and life changes when he starts to compete as Cassandro, a flamboyant exotico wrestler.

I’m a big fan of films like this. Professional wrestling is f*cking weird, there’s no other way to say it. The people who fund it are weird, the people who perform it are weird, and the people who watch it are weird. So it usually makes for fantastic watch. But this? It fails to do one basic thing: explaining the lingo, it assumes you know what an exotico is. I mean, I do, because I’m a fucking mark for this business. Unless you know the business, the story won’t mean as much. Not just the aforementioned exotico, but it also doesn’t really do a decent enough job of explaining why certain people are big deals. His match with El Hijo Del Santo was a HUGE deal, Santo is a legend in lucha libre and his importance cannot be overstated. In Cassandro, his importance and relevance aren’t even stated. It’s this kind of attitude which makes it difficult to figure out whether this will appeal to people who aren’t fans of wrestling in the first place. It’s important for a film to know that audiences don’t know everything. Even I know that, and I’m basically an idiot. In my Napoleon review, I originally had a joke about how “This film is long, 157 minutes. Although that’s English minutes, in French minutes it’s much shorter”. That’s an obscure (even by my standards) reference to how the French and English had different calculations for what counted as a foot, which is partly what led to the fallacy that Napoleon was short, listed as being 5 foot 2 when in English measurements he was 5 foot 6. I loved that joke, but I knew if I did, I’d have to explain it, and as has just been proven, that would be dull and shit.

So yeah, this could prove impenetrable for casual moviegoers. For those who know? It’s delightful. It’s not great for providing you a life story, but it does provide a useful foundation for you to want to find out more. It’s helped by the performance of Gael Garcia Bernal, showcasing Cassandro as someone deeply insecure and broken but whose entire wrestling persona is based on overconfidence. His story is deeply emotional to watch unfold, especially the frayed relationship with his homophobic father. Yes, this is a story about professional wrestling, but it’s also a story about finding yourself (always make sure to check down the back of the sofa), about masculinity, and about being true to yourself.

Originally that ended with me saying it’s about bigotry, but it’s really not. The story itself is, but the way it’s told means it doesn’t really come through. The very nature of exotico’s traditionally existed to reinforce negative gay stereotypes. They were/sometimes still are grotesque caricatures of male feminity, whose entire purpose was to repulse and annoy the audience, who would then cheer when the traditionally heterosexual male hero would come along and beat the shit out of them whilst the crowd shouted homophobic slurs. That’s still the world we see in this film, but then he wins them over almost instantly. That kind of undercuts the homophobia he endured, like as soon as they saw him they all changed their minds. It kind of feels like a wasted opportunity. His rise to fame also seems to skip over a few things, so his match with Del Santo doesn’t really feel earned.

I have been a bit harsh to this but it is still a fun watch. His first entrance to a flamenco Spanish-language cover of I Will Survive is fun as hell, and there’s a scene near the end which is an absolutely fantastic piece of performance storytelling. Cassandro is on a talk show and a fan stands up and thanks him for giving him the courage to come out to his father. You can tell this means a lot to Cassandro, but he’s also slightly bitter and jealous that he’s talking to someone who was accepted by their own father when he still isn’t accepted by his. It’s a subtle facial performance and is so damn perfect.

In summary; it’s on Prime so if you have an account you might as well watch it, but you might be best off watching a documentary instead.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: How did Coriolanus Snow rise to the position we see him in in the original franchise? Let’s find out.

I like the original Hunger Games movies, but I can’t really remember that much about them. So I’m glad this was a prequel and not a sequel, otherwise, I’d spend half of it wondering “Who’s that guy?”, like a gender-flipped 1987 Madonna film. Fun fact; the director of that movie later went on to direct two films in the Fifty Shades series. Okay, it’s not that interesting, but I thought if I didn’t mention the Fifty Shades series in this one, nobody will speak about them.

I will admit I wasn’t really a fan of the series during the original theatrical run. I wasn’t actively against it, I just never got into it. The first one I saw at the cinema was the second part of Mockingjay (it was split into two parts, I didn’t just wander in halfway through) and my main memory. One thing I did notice from going to a cinema screening is that despite this franchise not having a cinematic entry since 2015, it still has an audience. A young audience too, there were a lot of teenage girls in the screening, they couldn’t have been more than 10 when the last film was released, which indicates that the films are gaining a new audience as time goes on, which can only be a good sign (unless Suzanne Collins turns out to be a massive bigot, but what are the odds that would happen to two franchises?). Of course, none of that would matter if this film was a piece of shit. Thankfully, this matches the previous entries. It’s helped that (with the exception of the first one), all the films have been directed by Francis Lawrence, which means that visually and thematically they remain consistent. This is probably the most grounded movie in the franchise, where Panem isn’t quite the technological power that it grows to be. It’s the early days, and the colours represent that; instead of the blues and neon, it’s all brown and murky. You really get the oppressive poverty people are under.

The other positive for Songbird is that it doesn’t seem to miss the franchise characters as much as you’d expect it to. Katniss/Jennifer Lawrence was a big part of why the original franchise worked, so there was concern that the studio would get nervous and insist on forcing the character into it, even if just as a framing device of her telling the story. That doesn’t happen, and Zegler/Lucy Gray is given a chance to shine. The character of Lucy Gray (or Lucy Grey in England) is determined, likeable, and different enough from Katniss that she doesn’t just feel like a literary replacement. Rachel Zegler gives one hell of a performance and makes you think that she actually is going to be a great Snow White, everything about her screams “Disney princess”. The best bit of casting is Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius Flickerman, not because his performance is particularly outstanding, but because of how much he resembles Stanley Tucci from the original series. To the point where (because I couldn’t remember the name of Tucci’s character) I thought they were the same person, just younger.

Now onto the negative; the story is kind of weak. I think we’re supposed to be shocked that humanity can be so blasé about the suffering of people like we’re supposed to think “holy shit that’s terrible, how bad must a society be to let that happen? This is an indication of a dystopia”, but it’s a little difficult to be shocked when we live in a world where homeless people sleep under newspapers that brag about the good economy because of how well millionaires are doing, and the only part of that which looks like changing in the future is the existence of printed media.

It’s not helped by how the characters can sometimes seem like idiots. There’s a moment where Coriolanus records another character (Sejanus) talking about overthrowing the government, he then sends the recording off and then is surprised when the government arrives and executes Sejanus for treason. It feels like such a lazy way of getting rid of that character, and it derails the heel turn of Coriolanus. He should have admitted it and be proud of it, it should be an indication that not only is he now a dick, but he is proud of it.

Actually, the whole final third is a complete mess, both too short and too long. It feels completely disconnected from what came before, kind of like a quick epilogue, but one that takes about 30 minutes so isn’t really quick. But this is where Snow melts and becomes a dick, he doesn’t show that before this section. So his entire turn takes place in that 30 minutes, which feels too short. It feels like it could have been its own entry. Doing that would have allowed some of the other tributes from the games to be more fleshed out, as opposed to just the walking soon-to-be-dead. The games themselves are absolutely brutal, the lack of technology means that the deaths have an intimate feel to them, and a lot of them are quite disturbing (with points going to the girl with Down syndrome, and the starving girl who unknowingly drinks poison). The best death is one that belongs to Coral, where in her dying breath she expresses regret that she killed all those people for nothing. That one line is sooooo damn good. I haven’t seen a dying line change character motivations that much since The Suicide Squad when Starro said “I was happy, floating, staring at the stars”. It’s helped that Coral is played by Mackenzie Lansing, who is just fucking great in this. It would be easy for that character to be a caricature, but Lansing gives them enough reality that it’s easy to see them as a real person.

So in summary; go watch it. But only if you have a passing knowledge of the rest of the franchise. It is a weak point that this doesn’t talk about the distracts, or the rules of the games etc because it knows you remember them from the previous films, so if you are a newbie, you might be lost, which is a shame. Just be prepared to be incredibly disappointed for the final third.

Apocalypse Clown (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After a mysterious technological blackout plunges Ireland into anarchy and chaos, a group of washed-up clowns travel the country for one last shot at their dreams.

Apocalypse Clown is ridiculous. But it’s aware of it. Comedy horrors can be difficult to get right because if they lean too far in the direction of comedy then the horror doesn’t work, and if they lean too hard into the horror then you risk the comedy coming off as inappropriate, with characters witnessing horrific and traumatising murders, and then making jokes about it like the deaths of people not named Henry Kissinger are funny. The director, George Kane, has previously directed episodes of Inside Number 9, so he has a track record of being able to balance the two genres effectively.

He’s helped by the characters taking the situation seriously, the threat feels VERY real throughout, so even when people are dying in ridiculous ways (Like when a character nearly died from being creampied repeatedly, I heard rumours that’s how David Cameron kills pigs), it still feels horrific enough to hit the right horror notes, like John Carpenter at a keyboard.

Now onto the (kind of) negative. If your exposure to British media is big-budget films, reality shows, or bleak murder shows, then the performances are fine. If, however, you’ve watched much comedy then you are left with feeling that too many of the performers seem to be doing tribute acts to other performers; David Earl is doing Joe Wilkinson, Fionn Foley is basically MC Grindah as a clown, Amy De Bhrun is very Sharon Horgan, Ivan Kaye is Roger Allam (he’d also make a good Desmond Tiny if they were to redo Cirque De Freak), so when you’re watching it, you are slightly distracted by thinking “who does that guy remind me of?”. That being said, Natalie Palamides is a f*cking delight. I mean, it’s weird for me to say that “being a tribute act to a better performer” is a bad thing but then also praise Palamides based on the fact she has a real Carol Kane energy. I think the difference is that cinema sees a lot of despondent clowns, but very manic excitable Carol Kane types. It helps that Palamides feels like the only performer who threw out the script and is just making shit up as she goes along. She’s the epitome of vulnerable chaos and I absolutely love her. It would be so easy for her to overegg her coulrophilia pudding (that sentence is clearly there just to make people google coulrophilia, and enjoy the strange targeted ads you’re going to get). Palamides plays it perfectly though, she never feels too much, like she’s trying too hard. She’s an incredible physical performer, turning a scene as simple as “eating ham” into something incredibly unsettling. Her tornado of chaos also means that when she acts scared, it sells the situation. If a depressed and nihilistic clown is worried, not a big deal, but if a psychopathic clown is scared, shit has got real.

In terms of visuals, it’s fine. There are a few moments where you feel a bigger budget might have improved it, but it mostly works. The opening scene showing the chaos is incredible for a film of this budget. The music could have been better, I can’t really remember any of it to be honest, which is a shame as this is apt for a scene of soundtrack dissonance, playing a bright and cheery song over scenes of brutality.

The script could be a bit more focused, there’s an entire subplot which could be removed and the only impact it would have is to slightly lessen the impact of the ending. On that topic; the ending reveal is SUPERB. I haven’t seen a reveal this satisfying and unexpected since Bodies Bodies Bodies. Before this, Killers Of A Flower Moon was locked on to win the award for best ending, now it has competition.

So in summary; it’s on Netflix so you really should watch it while you can. It’s not the greatest film in the world, but it’s a welcome distraction in a world full of war, famine, and Piers Morgan.

Napoleon (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: The (partial) life story of a French Emporer

Napoleon is a strange film, and one I’m not entirely sure needs to exist. For something like this to exist it needs to be either educational, overblown, or relevant. This fails on all three counts.

The educational: the accuracy of it has been called into question multiple times. This was going to be obvious from the first time you see the tagline: He came from nothing, he conquered everything. He didn’t come from nothing, and it’s weird to say he did. For starters, his dad was an aristocrat (not to be confused with an aristocat. who are pets who get to sleep on velvet mats, naturalment). It puts him present at the execution of Marie Antoinette when he was actually on a battlefield at the time. It also shows him firing at the Pyramids in Giza, which never happened. These are such needless lies too. But they call into question the accuracy of everything, did Napoleon mastermind a victory over the English at the siege of Toulon? Did his marriage fall apart because of fertility issues? Is there even a country called France? These are all things presented as true within the film, but so are proven falsehoods, so it’s hard to tell.

It has been accused of being anti-French, but what else would you expect from a Scott? You know, because the director is Ridley Scott, and Scotland is part of the UK, who have famously nearly always been at war with France? I know, the joke would have worked better if the film also involved Britt Eckland (if I spelt it Brit), Robert Englund (if I spelt it England), or Kerry VonFuckTheFrench (if I spelt it Kerri).

It’s not just the French who are annoyed at this movie; idiots are too. Accusing Ridley Scott of making a film that discriminates against white men by showing one of them as a bit of a dick and he had a wife who cheated on him. The wife part; yes, she did cheat on him, but he cheated on her. He ended the marriage just because she couldn’t get pregnant, and impregnated a teen. The wife ended up dying alone and in pain, what a bitch. And of course, it shows him as a bad person, he was a military leader responsible for the deaths of thousands. Something that’s not in the movie is the siege of Jaffa, where Napoleon allowed/encouraged his soldiers to spend two days massacring and raping the inhabitants of Jaffa (a city in now-Israel, not the chocolate and orange treat that’s a cake for tax purposes). Most European leaders in history were dicks, and most of them were white men, both of those things are facts. So if you want to watch a movie about European history, you’re going to have to put up with a white man being terrible. So we can either not make historical movies, we can make historical movies about non-Europeans, or we make Henry VIII a black woman. Maybe then the internet will stop complaining. In response to the historical inaccuracies, Ridley Scott has said that historical accuracy isn’t important. I’m hoping he continues this point of view when I release my new film “Ridley Scott once bummed a hedgehog”

The overblown: it’s all a bit dour. There’s not much on the excess of emperors. It’s a Ridley Scott film so there are some fantastic shots in it. I’m normally not a fan of animal deaths in movies, but I’m very glad his horse got shot with a cannon in this because it means I could make a joke about how his horse was Napoleon Blown-Apart.

I’m not going to though.

The horse death does give me an excuse to talk about the violence. It’s incredibly violent, in a good way. You can tell this from the opening scene when Antoinette is executed. Usually, when you see that on screen it’s a clean cut and the head is held up like a mannequin head. When her head is held up here it’s dripping blood and bits of skin, it’s horrific, but does a good job of reminding you that this is an actual human head that just a few seconds ago was full of life. Whilst the visuals are good, the audio is a bit meh. Not in terms of music and sound, but the accents. Nobody has a French accent. This would be okay if it was all taking place in France or if every character was clearly defined, and it’s fine for small scenes. But when there are scenes of characters from multiple countries it can be a bit confusing. This is best highlighted in battle scenes which just consists of people with English accents and nondescript outfits charging at each other, with no idea of who belongs to which side. I haven’t seen fight scenes this confusing since the last Transformers movie I watched where action scenes were just chunks of metal rolling around. (I think it was the second one).

This does have the potential to be a good movie, and there are times when it does live up to that potential. But it mostly doesn’t. The pacing is weird, skipping over important details way too quickly. His first exile and escape took place entirely in my quick pee break. But this is a moment where he was exiled and completely hopeless, yet he escaped by commandeering the people who were supposed to be guarding him. That’s a classic moment of historical farce, which with the right build-up and setup could have been incredible. There are multiple moments of that. It’s both too short to go into things with as much detail as it should, but also too long to hold your attention. I would say it’s wasted potential, but really, I expected nothing less. Every worry I had about this turned out to be correct. And really that’s the most disappointing thing, well, that and the fact that I still can’t stop singing the name to the tune of Linoleum by NoFX. The film also doesn’t contain a scene where goes around San Dimas eating ice cream and helping two kids with their history presentation. Bullshit. *storms out review*

Wait

*comes back in*

I forgot my chocolate, I’m still angry.

*storms back out*

Thanksgiving (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: A year on from a black friday tragedy (that the town doesn’t really feel haunted by), an axe-wielding killer is killing people, sometimes with an axe.

It may not seem like it sometimes, but I do genuinely love horror movies, they’re often on my list of favourite films. But they’re also my least favourite. Horror is all about personal taste. To some people, a certain film may be the best film they’ve ever seen, to some, they just won’t like it no matter how many positive reviews they see; it’s just not their type. It’s a lot like comedy in that sense (or porn, actually, now I think about it).

I know that some people love this film, and I can see why. It’s gory, has some very creative kills, and is unique. But it’s all just so miserable and pretty much every single character is a prick. You don’t really want to see anybody survive. All you want is for someone to appear and beat everybody on-screen to death with a shit-covered hammer. This is a common problem in horror movies; characters are so unlikeable that you cheer when horrible things happen to them. But they’re also characters who we have to spend all our time with, and that 90% of time spent being annoyed isn’t worth the small catharsis.

I try not to go into spoilers too much in my reviews but I feel I have to do so here to demonstrate a logical issue I have with it. It’s mentioned early on that nobody involved in the riot at the start was prosecuted and the police couldn’t do anything. The killer turns out to be the local cop. Now call me crazy but I don’t think it would be that difficult for a small-town cop to invent a reason to arrest or kill someone. Literally, all he’d need to do is say “They were speeding, they got aggressive so I had to shoot them”. Yeah, it wouldn’t make the deaths echo as much as they did, and it wouldn’t be as cinematic, but it would be a lot more effective, and he wouldn’t need to wait a year to do it. He could even pull people over and say he needs to check their car for drugs etc, then subtly cut their brakes. I know I’m expecting too much from something dumb, but if something is dumb it can at least have the decency to not be so utterly miserable throughout.

From a technical standpoint, it’s all fine. The performances are standard for a horror film, with Patrick Dempsey being the only obvious standout. It’s not helped by how generic a lot of the characters are, to the point where a climactic final scene involving finding dead bodies left me trying to figure out who those people were.

In summary, I get why people would be into this. But for me, it was a case of “too bleak, stopped caring”. The closing credits were pretty fun though.

Anatomy Of A Fall (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A woman is suspected of her husband’s murder

I didn’t really know much about Anatomy Of A Fall (Aoaf, pronounced Eye-aff) when I watched it, when I came out of it I assumed it was a short movie, around the 100-minute mark. It’s actually 150. That says a lot about how incredibly paced this is. It’s odd as really you can sum it up quite quickly; a woman is accused of killing her husband. That’s it, we get a quick set-up, the death, and then the court case. I genuinely have no idea what the 2 and a half hours came from, despite not much really happening, nothing felt like it took up a long period of time. It says a lot about the talent of Triet that this works as wonderfully as it does.

He’s helped by terrific performances from Sandra Hueller and Samuel Theis, who have a chemistry which makes you think they’re constantly one sentence away from either murder or marathon sex (that’s sex that goes on for an extended period of time, not sex with/using the chocolate bar now known as a Snickers).

The look and general tone reminded me of a Nordic noir, but that might have just been the snow and the lighting. It also reminded me that I know next to nothing about the French legal system but it seems interesting.

It’s not as gratuitous as a lot of similar films have been. It’s not about the shocking death, but about the shocking nature of the human condition. It’s more about relationships and fractured romance than it is a mystery. I don’t really remember being transfixed into the mystery of whether she killed him or not. Really the only part of my enjoyment of this film that depended on the truth was whether it would match with the ending. If she didn’t do it and was free then that’s fine, if she did it and ended up being found guilty that would also be fine. But if she did it and got away with it, or didn’t do it but was convicted anyway, then I would have soured on it. Thankfully, the ending does play it true and wraps it up nicely too.

I mentioned earlier that Aoaf reminded me of a Nordic noir series. But that’s not a good indication as to whether you’ll like this. Really, the closest I can think of is Gone Girl, and I mean that as a compliment. The central relationship is certainly more believable in this. It’s nowhere near as tense or as compelling. But that’s only because Gone Girl is superb. This is just very very good. I’ve only just touched on all the wonderful building blocks that go towards the creation of the house of Aoaf. The honest look at depression, the way it handles media intrusion on celebrities’ lives, the balance between art and realism when it comes to violence, and the incredibly well-made scientific analysis made on screen. I have never been as comfortable yet also entranced as I have here.

Return To Seoul (2022) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A 25-year-old French woman returns to South Korea, where she was born, for the very first time.

2023 has definitely been a year of pairings; films made separately but would make good double bills; Aftersun and Scrapper, Assassin Club and Film-maker Shits On Audience, and now, Past Lives and Return To Seoul (RTS; pronounced Real-Time Strategy). They both deal with Asian (specifically South Korean) born women who have lived most of their lives in another country (France with RTS, and USA for PL), and the personal cultural schism they go through, trying to work out their identity between the country that birthed them and the country that raised them. Whereas Past Lives focused more on romantic and personal loss, RTS focused more on family loss and not being in touch with your roots. There are some nice moments where the film explains the cultural differences between France and Korea. Highlights how while biologically she is Korean, culturally she is completely devoid of her birth nationality. The focus on family loss hits hardest in a scene where she tries to talk to her father but needs an interpreter. It’s absolutely heartbreaking and played perfectly by Ji-Min Park.

Park is fantastic in this, she really knocks it out of her surname. The difference between her at the start and her in the years afterwards is astounding, feels like a completely different person, and all of that is down to her performance.

I will say that this is kind of frustrating but in a sort of good way. We, the audience want answers and an explanation. But so does she. So thematically it makes sense, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a frustrating watch for the audience at times.

It’s good to listen to though, the music is really good. Reminds me of the hard-to-google band 27. In that way, it is better than Past Lives, but in almost every other way it doesn’t compare. Which is a shame. If this came out any other year it would be incredible, but it does suffer from being released so close to something superior. Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth watching, and it is available online for those with a Mubi account, and if you’re a fan of cinema then you really should have one, so many of my favourite films have come from that. There are a few moments where I feel it had no focus and they were just making it up as they went along, and other moments where you feel they could have gone further (especially considering the chemistry between her and a hotel worker). In summary: if you’re a casual movie-goer you’re not going to like this, if you have ever used the phrase “Dutch angle” or “establishing shot”, then this is the film for you.

The Marvels (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: It’s an MCU film.

What is it about female-led movies that annoy male movie fans so much? “But Brie Larson is unlikeable” say people who then bitch about how racists and sex offenders should still be in movies because “You need to separate the art from the artist”. People are talking about this as if it’s one of the worst comic book movies of all time. As someone who is currently watching the 2004 Catwoman movie, I can categorically say that’s not the case. At worst, The Marvels has a few wasted opportunities. In particular, it doesn’t seem like it makes the most of the body-swapping gimmick. They do it a few times, and it is integral to the plot, it does allow for some fun moments. But it doesn’t provide any “Wow, this incredible amazing action scene can ONLY be done in this movie” moments. I’m opposed to random hires on films, particularly when it comes to scripts, but if they had someone whose job it was to just think of those set-pieces then it would have improved it so much.

One thing this did get right is the chemistry between the three leads. I haven’t got around to Ms. Marvel yet, but the performance of Iman Vellani in this makes me think I should. Kamala Khan is so damn likeable in this, and she provides comic relief in an actual realistic way, as opposed to the standard Marvel way which is “We’re in the middle of a fight where we may die, time to quip” which usually feels overwritten and takes away from the seriousness of the action. Her comedic dialogue mostly focuses on being completely overwhelmed by what’s happening in front of her. I should point out that despite not having watched the Ms. Marvel series, I wasn’t lost while watching this. It does a pretty decent job of getting you up to speed with both her powers and her personality.

So it’s a shame that the villain is so underwhelming, especially since there’s so much potential. Zawe Ashton is a good performer, and none of the fault lies with her, but the character of Dar-Benn isn’t given enough screen time to really make an impact. What we see of her is pretty good though, she’s given believable motivations, a heartbreaking backstory, and has the potential to destroy the entire universe even after she dies by creating energy/resource-sapping jump points. But it feels like those jump points are the main villain and she’s just an afterthought.

Nia DaCosta is still relatively new as a director, but she steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park here, scoring a complete third sports reference. Visually there’s a lot going on, and a lot of it is CGI, but it all feels real. There are no obviously embarrassing CGI failures like the ones which haunted the last Captain Marvel movie. There are some places where the music choices could have been slightly better though. In particular, there’s a section set on a planet where everybody communicates by singing. It has some fun moments but it doesn’t quite lean into the weirdness as much as it could. It could have been a highlight of the film if it had the guts to go weird. Just as I said when I first saw the casting for She-Hulk; they should have just got Rachel Bloom in and told her to do what she wants. It may have been terrible, it may have been amazing, but it would have for sure been memorable.

There is a lot to like about this, and nowhere near as much to dislike as the internet would have you believe. It’s probably one of the most solid entries in the post-Endgame MCU, and I hope the takings eventually reflect that.

Dream Scenario (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Nicholas Cage suddenly appears in everybody’s dreams. Well, a character who in this film is played by him. Which isn’t anywhere near as interesting.

This shares two cast members of Mouthpiece, which is always a good sign as it gives me a chance to talk about how much I love that movie. It’s one of the most creative and brilliant movies I’ve ever seen. Dream Scenario? Not so much. It has a great concept: “What if a random man starts appearing in everybody’s dreams?”, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with that concept. It raises some interesting questions but then has zero interest in answering them. It kind of feels like a lot of it is filler until they can think of a better scene. It also feels a bit unfocused. Is it attacking cancel culture? Memes? The capitalist desire to exploit wonder for adverts? It attempts to talk about all of them and ends up not discussing any of them.

The fact we don’t really find out why this is happening also means it’s kind of narratively unfulfilling. I have a feeling it’s something to do with the technology later shown which allows advertisers to enter dreams, but that implies an issue of consent which was never there in the start. It also would be an incredibly risky advertising strategy “Hey, we made a guy appear in people’s dreams and kill them, buy our product”. Nobody seems to make the connection between the two either, and if the capitalist aspect was taken from the narrative it wouldn’t cause that much difference. The only change would be you’d no longer have the ending of Cage appearing in his wife’s dream in a giant suit and saving her from being sacrificed, this shows that he………is willing to dream about her? I dunno. I feel it would have said more if she just happened to have that dream, showing that no matter what, her opinion of him hasn’t changed.

The lack of agency and control that Cage’s character shows also means the reaction to him is a bit weird. When he starts attacking people in their dreams EVERYBODY takes it seriously and blames him. I could understand a loud section of the internet doing so, but it feels like there’s not a single person who says “Wait, this is stupid” and defends him. I don’t object to the fact that if this happened in reality, people would blame him for it, but I find it hard to believe there wouldn’t be people just as passionately defending him. People will defend anything on the internet: the right to murder people just for being trans, sexually assaulting women if they wear skirts, microwaving tea. Cage is the only sane man in this movie (which is usually the complete opposite of what happens), with every single other character lacking any sense of realism. Remember that scene in Friends where Phoebe is annoyed at Ross because he did something rude but in the end, it turns out it only happened in her dream? That’s Dream Scenario. The big difference is that in Friends, when Phoebe realised it was a dream she forgave him and thought of herself as being silly. The idiot character in a sitcom populated by not-smart characters is STILL MORE LOGICAL than ANY other character in this movie. It does have some really sweet moments and some horrific ones. But that’s all they are; moments. There doesn’t feel to be the momentum required to carry it through. I will say this though; it does have the best fart joke I’ve seen in a while.

It’s annoying as I REALLY wanted to enjoy this, I love weird things (probably because I am a weird thing), and Nicholas Cage is entertaining as hell. It looks good and has some really good supporting performances. It’s just, how can I put this in a way that makes sense? The only way I can describe it is it’s like when you’re English and watching an American sitcom and you hear jokes about certain basketball players or shops, you sit there like “I’m sure I’d appreciate that if I got the reference”. That’s how it feels watching this, you’re left with the feeling that scenes, dialogue, and character motivations are all references to an obscure film you haven’t seen.

They Cloned Tyrone (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A series of eerie events thrust an unlikely trio onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy.

I think my slight apathy to this is all on me. I didn’t watch the trailer or read much about it, I just saw the title and the synopsis and made my mind up about what kind of film this would be. I assumed it would be a silly wacky comedy. It’s definitely not that. I mean, it is funny at times, but it is also INCREDIBLY serious at other times. Let’s be honest, Netflix originals do not have the “must-see” status they used to have. Their output over the last few years has included The Gray Man, Red Notice, and a slew of Adam Sandler films, so not exactly. There have been a few impressive ones but they’re mainly adaptations or sequels; All Quiet On The Western Front, Glass Onion etc. So with a film like this, something a bit silly is to be expected. Because of this tonal misexpectation (not a word) it’s possible I didn’t fully buy in as much as I would have otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, it is a really good piece of filmmaking and storytelling. It’s difficult to say what genre this belongs to but if I had to categorise it I’d say it’s Sci-Fi Blaxploitation Mystery Satire Thriller. That’s very ambitious, especially for a first-time director like Juel Taylor. It’s a difficult balancing act and I’m not quite sure he manages it. There is a lot to like about it. It’s slick, it’s stylish, it’s sooooo damn smart. Much smarter than Netflix deserves. I’d like this a lot more if I watched it at the cinema, but watching it at home just felt kind of wrong.

Taylor is obviously one hell of a writer/director. There’s a scene where the characters are just sitting in a chicken restaurant (think more KFC than Nandos in terms of lighting) and everybody around them starts laughing. That’s all it is, people laughing. It’s somehow one of the most unsettling scenes of the year. It’s at its best when it is taking itself seriously; when it goes full batshit insane conspiracy. That’s when TCT is at its smartest and most entertaining. But then it lets itself down by just going a bit silly.

The performances are as good as you expect. By this point it’s expected that John Boyega and Jamie Foxx can give good performances, Teyonah Parris isn’t as well known but still gives a great performance, and plays such a different character than she does in the MCU which is where most people would probably know her from.

It looks great, a lot of love has obviously gone into creating this visual style, and that effort certainly pays off. There are a few moments where it’s a bit too dark to figure out what’s going on. But mostly it works visually. The soundtrack also really suits it.

In summary, it’s worth seeing, it’s an intriguing watch; albeit one that doesn’t quite live up to the potential it offers. On that note; the next review will be Dream Scenario.