Tag: A Quiet Place: Day One

2024 Film Awards Part 6

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Most Disappointing

A Quiet Place: Day One

I LOVE the first one, I was less enthusiastic about the second, but I still had high hopes for this. It’s okay, I guess. But it never quite reaches the heights of the first one and doesn’t even come close. Ultimately, it just comes off as lesser. Almost like a poorly financed spin-off that was dictated by the studio. There’s zero passion, zero creativity, zero reason to care.

Argylle

I like the Kingsman movies, except maybe the prequel. But I had an inkling this wouldn’t be as good. From the moment I saw the trailer I had worries. Those worries turned out to be well-founded. It should never have been a 12A, Matthew Vaughn needs blood and violence, and the rating stops him from achieving that. I don’t know why the studio didn’t push for an increased rating, and I’m not sure whose decision it was to aim for it. But either way, they should have stopped him. If you’re a record company and you land the Bee Gees, you don’t let them do a death metal album, you tell them to play that funky music.

Joker: Folie A Deux

If this was based on the biggest drop between “expectations when I first heard about it” and “expectations when I finished watching”, this would be top, number one with a bullet, numero uno, the head honcho, the casa del pene, I kind of forgot what I was talking about. Luckily for J: FAD, this is based on “expectations going in”, which saves it. I had heard a lot of talk that this was terrible. I hoped they were wrong, but it did mean I went in expecting it might be bad. Still doesn’t mean I was prepared for exactly HOW bad it was. I haven’t seen a sequel drop off this extreme since Mean Girls to the trailer for Mean Girls 2 (I’m not watching the actual film, I’m not insane).

My Spy: The Eternal City

I actually really enjoyed the first one. The second has all the hallmarks of a “straight-to-DVD sequel released in the 90s”. It feels low budget, it thinks you remember much more about the previous film than you actually do, and it tries so hard to be different (changing location etc), that it forgets to be good.

Mean Girls

I’m a massive fan of the original film, and also a massive fan of the dislike button on the trailer of the second one. I’m also a big Tina Fey fan, and one of my favourite TV shows of all time is a sequel. So I should love this. I did not. It had none of the charm of the original, none of the heart. Also, I didn’t find the songs that good, which in a musical is a bit of a problem. I couldn’t hum a single melody from the entire thing, meanwhile, I can still remember roughly 3 songs from In The Heights, which I watched once, back in 2021 (review here). I suppose I should have expected it when the trailer (which I repeat, is for a MUSICAL featuring original songs) had Olivia Rodrigo. Now, I love Olivia Rodrigo, her music is right up my street, but an existing song on a trailer for a musical just indicates the studio has no faith in the songs, and the stage musical itself doesn’t have enough bangers that people are obsessed with and will be like “OMG they do that song in this, I need to watch”, unlike the trailers for Wicked which showed snippets of songs from the musical, so fans of the musical would get excited. I’m right that that was a weird decision on the studio that released Mean Girls, right? It’s not just me being picky? Anyway, this film is weaker than my lawsuit for false advertising against the owner/operator of a bottomless pit in Spokane.

Winner

Unfrosted

I’m a big fan of Jerry Seinfeld, I consider his sitcom one of the best sitcoms of the 90’s (and there’s a lot of competition there). He has definitely been hit hardest by the Seinfeld Curse, with his biggest success being a vocal performance. That being said, Unfrosted looked promising. Not just with him as a writer, but with an incredibly strong supporting cast. Also, the idea was fucking weird, and I like weird. I don’t like Unfrosted though. It is funny, hilarious even. But it is so disposable. This does not seem like a film from one of the co-creators of one of the biggest sitcoms of all time. This feels like a group of kids dicking about with a video camera and making jokes up as they go along.

Most Surprising

The First Omen

The Omen is a franchise in name only. Nobody ever says “Let’s watch the entire film series”, in fact, I’d say a lot of people don’t even recognise there are more than two, the original and the remake. Added to that, prequels are normally pretty shit. So it’s quite surprising that The First Omen is actually solid. It has one of my favourite jump scares I’ve ever seen, a genuinely gripping story, and some good acting. Immaculate explored similar themes, but The First Omen did it much better.

Transformers One

I’m not too fond of the live-action Transformers movies. I know I watched one of them at the cinema, there’s a chance I might have watched the second one as well, but I genuinely can’t remember. Also, unlike Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles, I never had any Transformers toys growing up (if anybody would like to fix that neglect and buy some, contact me), nor were there any video games I played. So I had zero emotional connection with the franchise, until now. This movie is superb. I think it may have helped that I had no connection to the franchise as it meant that I didn’t know who these characters were. This wasn’t like watching X-Men: First Class, knowing that Magneto and Charles will eventually become enemies, this was watching two complete strangers as their friendship slowly disintegrates. It’s a much more mature movie than you’d expect, dealing with themes such as colonialism, disability rights, hierarchal power structures, appeals to authority fallacies, and transforming into a car (all issues that we face). If it was a bit more “safe”, would it have made more money? Probably (it’s hard to tell because of how badly marketed it was). But by going as dark as they did, going as deep as they did, they’ve created something truly remarkable. This WILL be a kid’s favourite movie, and when they watch it again as an adult, they won’t be disappointed or embarrassed. They will fall back in love with it all over again.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

I’m not saying this is a great movie, it’s not. But it’s A LOT better than a sequel 30 years after a disappointing (to others, I still love it) third movie should be. Every New Year’s Eve, me and my family sit down and watch a franchise, in the past, it’s been John Wick, the modern Planet Of The Apes, Back To The Future etc. As the years go on, the choices get harder and harder, primarily because the trajectory for a lot of franchises is downward, and you don’t want to end the night on a low (can you imagine if the last movie you watched in a year was Die Hard 5?). With Axel F, if we watched this franchise, the year wouldn’t end badly. And really that’s all you can ask for.

Winner

Alien: Romulus

I like the Alien franchise, kind of. I’ve watched the first two and enjoyed them, but I’ve also seen Covenant and wasn’t a fan. When Alien is good, it’s phenomenal, among the best thing that exists in the media it’s created in, when it’s bad, it’s Colonial Marines. Romulus could have been bad, it SHOULD have been bad. It’s not, it’s utterly fantastic. It’s creepy, intelligent, and makes the most of what it has. There are so many times when you’re watching films and, as an audience member, you spot things you would have changed, untaken opportunities or wasted moments. Romulus will have less of that than others. It takes a Blue Peter/artist approach to scenes. It looks at what it has to play with (acidic blood, messed up gravity etc), then tries to create something with them. It could have been dumb and made bank, instead they put A LOT of effort into it, and I cannot thank them enough.

I Don’t Get It

Essentially these are for films which received a lot of love, either critically or commercially, that I just did not care about.

The Beekeeper

I heard a lot of people say this is really good, that it would even appeal to people who aren’t fans of the typical Statham films. I’m not buying it. It’s about 5% more interesting than the rest, but that’s not a huge amount. Otherwise, it’s more of the same. It’s Jason Statham walking around and punching people, only this time he has a bad American accent.

Longlegs

A LOT of people loved this, describing it as one of the best horrors of modern times. I respect that, but I didn’t feel it. Primarily because of how exposition-heavy it was, particularly in the final third. Either the studio or the screenwriter didn’t feel confident enough that the story was clear enough for the audience. Once the writer gets more confident, they WILL make my favourite horror movie of the year, of that I am certain. But this isn’t it.

Winner

The Zone Of Interest

Obviously, this was going to win. The review of it was the hardest I’ve ever had to write. I couldn’t articulate WHY I didn’t like it, I just didn’t. That’s annoying as I feel I should. I love serious movies, so it’s not as though I was sitting there thinking “Need more jokes”. I love POWERFUL movies too, I actually went into HMV a few days ago and asked for “Something that will hurt me and make me feel things”. It genuinely got me worried, am I a shitty movie watcher? Why should anybody take my reviews seriously if I don’t like one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year? In a way, it still bothers me. I find it difficult to reconcile why you should value my opinion alongside my opinion being that I didn’t like this film.

Well I Liked It

The opposite of the last one, these are films which either the internet or professional reviewers hated, but I enjoyed (or at the very least didn’t hate them as much as others).

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

At the time of writing, this sits on Metacritic with a score of 46. That’s only 1 score higher than the new Hellboy, which is dreadful beyond comparison. I’m not arguing this should be in the high 90s, but it definitely deserves higher than that. Yes, it is a bit too long and unfocused, but it is SO damn charming that it’s hard to see where the hatred comes from. The relationship between Phoebe and Melody is damn sweet (and kind of gay-coded, can’t tell if that was intentional) and it warmed even my bitter and cynical heart.

Boy Kills World

I had no intention of putting this in this section. Primarily because I assumed it was well-reviewed. It was only when looking up the Metacritic score for Ghostbusters that I saw this had a score of 47. How? This is freaking insane. The stunts are badass, the jokes are hilarious, and the performances are everything they need to be. It’s one of the most fun experiences I had last year, and I ate ice cream TWICE!

Winner

Paddington In Peru

This has a Metacritic score 60. I don’t accept that. This deserves a 90 at the very least. It’s not quite as good as the first two, but it is still exactly what we need at this time. I know the world is going to shit: racism has become normalised, there’s war in the middle east, and I dropped my biscuit in my tea. But it’s at times like this when we need something like this; something optimistic, something cute, and most importantly; something kind.

Worst Movie

Nominees Everything here

Winner

The Crow

This was actually difficult. Whilst a lot of films were bad, there wasn’t one that stood out as a lot worse than the others. They were all equally bad. This wins pretty much just because it’s a remake. As such, there is a definite blueprint for how to make it work. They had over 30 years of focus groups and audience feedback to work from. The fact they did that, they had talented performers, as well as a wide variety of screamo bands to use for the soundtrack, and still couldn’t do better than this shit? Nope, fuck you, you suck.

Best Movie

Nominees: Everything here

Winner

Civil War

There are multiple ways to judge a film. Technical brilliance, personal taste, uniqueness. This has all three. But so do quite a few other films nominated. It’s difficult to think of one that stands out above the rest, unlike next year, where it’s already looking like A Real Pain is going to win best film (unless the new Knives Out is incredible), spoilers for a post I won’t write for another 365 days. Really, any of the nominees could have sneaked it. So why did I choose Civil War? Because there was a moment which was so harrowing I was close to leaving just to decompress for a few minutes. No other film has come close to having that effect.

2024 In Film: Day Six (The Thoroughly Okay)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Quiet Place: Day One
Ups: When its silent, it’s brilliant.
Shows just how LOUD New York is.
Downs: Too much music. By which I mean “any”.
With the exception of the opening scene, the fact it’s a prequel barely matters.
Best Performer: Lupita Nyong’o. Obviously.
Best Moment: The scene in the jazz club is very sweet.
Worst Moment: Eric on the construction site. Only way it’s not a waste of time is if its referenced in another sequel, but in the film itself? Pointless.
Opening: Sam is in a cancer hospice. Very good way of showing her situation. Excellent example of “show, don’t tell” scripting. Before that, there’s a piece of text telling you that the standard noise of New York City is at the same level as someone screaming constantly.
Closing: Sam commits suicide by Simone. Excellent idea, average execution. The noise difference between her listening to it on headphones and her playing it out loud should be a lot different.
Best Line: This place is shit. This place smells like shit. Betsy’s voice sounds like shit. Cancer is shit. Oscar does that stupid walk when he wants to hide he shit his pants. And Milton has shit taste in music.
Original review here

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Ups: So much more fun than the trailers made it seem.
Doesn’t piss on the legacy of the franchise.
New characters slot in effortlessly with old favourites.
Downs: Doesn’t feel like that much has happened since the last movie.
Relies on nostalgia a bit too much at times.
Some of the performers have aged in the last 30 years and it reminds me I’m old as hell now.
Best Performer: Eddie Murphy
Best Moment: The opening. Reassures you that this will be just as fun as the original.
Worst Moment: The ending feels like the script completely ran out of steam.
Opening: Relatively sombre DJ talking on car radio. Then The Heat Is On plays and we see Eddie Murphy. It felt like it was there to surprise people “hey, you thought this would be a super serious movie but instead its an Eddie Murphy one”. As if people didn’t know that. There’s then a scene in a hockey arena featuring him doing his usual “what, you [make assumption] just because I’m black?” shtick, but this time it’s clearly just to fuck with someone he’s friends with.
Closing: Axel comes out of the hospital and reunites with Taggert and Rosewood. Kind of meh.
Best Line: I’ve been a cop for 30 years, I’ve been black a whole lot longer. Trust me, I know better.
Original review here

Fly Me To The Moon
Ups: Fun dialogue.
Easily digestable.
Charming
Downs: Will fuel idiots.
Forgettable.
There’s a mismatch between the directing and the script. The script is fast and silly, and the directing is slick and slow.
Much longer than it needs to be.
Not Tatum’s best performance.
Best Performer: Scarlett Johansson
Best Moment: The meet cute actually works.
Worst Moment: Kelly’s first actions on the base. Ignoring national security concerns, taking people away from engineering work to paint her wall and put a new window in. Makes her seem incredibly rude.
Opening: Newsposition. Not quite as good as Valerian but very effective at setting up the situation.
Closing: It worked. Obviously, the two characters kiss. Because of course they did.
Best Line: You know what they say about black cats, if they cross your path, they’re probably going someplace else.
Original review here

Longlegs
Ups: Tense.
Good performances.
Downs: Very brown.
I’m fed up with trans-coded villains
Best Performer: Maika Monroe.
Best Moment: The transition shot between the mask and Longlegs face. Simple, predictable, but damn finely executed.
Worst Moment: The victim in hospital. The performance is superb, but the dialogue feels fake.
Opening: Scene fades in from red, nice touch. The music is suitably creepy and sets the tone REALLY well. You can’t watch this and NOT know it’s a horror movie.
Closing: The villain dies, but their legacy possibly lives on as a doll couldn’t be shot (don’t know why they couldn’t just physically smash it with a hammer but still).
Best Line: I know you’re not afraid of a little dark. Because you *are* the dar
Original review here

Monkey Man
Ups: Some superb visuals from a first-time director.
Violent.
Some really good action scenes and fight choreography.
Depressingly relevant.
Downs: Doesn’t make the most of its time.
Leaves a lot unsaid in terms of what you need to know to understand certain parts.
Best Performer: Dev Patel.
Best Moment: The kick to the face.
Worst Moment: The white monkey mask, doesn’t last long enough.
Opening: The story of Hanuman. Not needed, but is appreciated.
Closing: An incredibly personal action scene, rife with emotion and despair.
Best Line: In the great tapestry of life, just one small ember can burn down everything
Original review here

One Life
Ups: Emotional.
A story that needs to be told right now
Downs: Kind of hides the fact they’re Jewish, only slightly alludes to it.
Incredibly predictable
Best Performer:
Best Moment: The Nazi’s taking over the train, heartbreaking.
Worst Moment: Going to focus more on a moment it DIDN’T have. It didn’t show the original film footage of him on That’s Life, bit weird as that felt like a guarantee.
Opening:
Closing: Standard “what happened next” text. More pictures or film footage of the real person would have been nice.
Best Line: I don’t know what you’re doing, but if you’re doing what I think you’re doing, I don’t want to know.
Original review here

Seize Them!
Ups: Very funny and brutal.
Brilliantly silly.
Those who love British sitcoms will have a blast with the cast.
Downs: Is it really the best time for a “Rich people are actually fantastic, and anybody who goes against them is a tyrant in disguise” message?
Terribly marketed.
A lot of convenience.
The third-act argument seems a little contrived.
Best Performer: Aimee Lee Wood.
Best Moment: The potential assassins all dying. So stupid, goes past funny straight to annoying, and then back to funny again.
Worst Moment: The split between the group doesn’t really feel earned.
Opening: Narration, then a servant gets stabbed. Sets up the tone (funny and bloody), and the character of Queen Dagan as a spoilt brat.
Closing: “what happened next”, would have been nice to see this for more of the characters. Does mean the film ends with the line “the two died in separate wanking incidents”, which would improve every film ever made. Even Schindlers List
Best Line: I’m finished. Strangle me … but gently
Original review here

Sonic The Hedgehog 3
Ups: Made with a genuine love of the franchise.
Funny.
Has actual emotion.
Continues to be much better than you’d expect.
Downs: Inconsistent speed.
A bit TOO similar to the first two.
Predictable.
Some REAL pacing issues.
Best Performer: Idris Elba
Best Moment: Maria and Shadow bonding. Incredibly sweet and feels very real.
Worst Moment: The two Robotniks meeting. Feels very self-indulgent from Carrey.
Opening: The birth of Shadow.
Closing: Another sequel hook. Exciting, but quite frustrating from a narrative standpoint.
Best Line: I have dishonored my marshmallow
Original review here

Spaceman
Ups: Some good shots.
Sandler gives a decent performance (albeit as the wrong nationality)
The flashbacks are really well done.
Downs: The spider moves too fluidly to feel like a real spider.
The character doesn’t react to the spider in a believable way.
Best Moment: The reveal of the spider. The director knows he’s got a good design here, and wants you to know it.
Worst Moment: When the president withholds Lenkas message, seems to only be done to advance the plot.
Best Performer: Paul Dano. I know Sandler is great in this, but his accent is too bad for me to have him as the best.
Opening: The titular character wearing a spacesuit, walking. Then we see him on his ship doing mundane shit that astronauts need to do. I feel the walking part wasn’t needed. Start with him on the ship.
Closing: We see that him walking through the lake at the beginning was a dream, which continues on here. Nice book-end, but is only there to be a bookend. Like it had to end like that because it started like that, and it had to start like that because it ended like that.
Notable Line: “You have many boundaries skinny human, perhaps they are the cause of your loneliness”
Original Review here

The End We Start From
Ups: Excellent use of water.
Joey Fry is REALLY good.
Downs: Her being separated from her husband for the duration of the birth doesn’t affect the birth much.
Characters don’t have names so it’s really weird to review and describe them.
Best Performer: Katherine Waterston.
Best Moment: The two women walking down a road whilst singing the song from Dirty Dancing. Very sweet.
Worst Moment: After the mother’s death, scenes of sadness etc but there’s a section where the music is a little bit too upbeat.
Opening: Woman runs a bath whilst on the phone. Eventually, the water covers the camera. This is an effective way of setting up the themes without hitting you in the face with them. She then sits her pregnant self in the bath. I appreciate that she didn’t mention it in the phone call, in fact, it would have been weird if she did it.
Closing: Both characters arrive home. Kind of bittersweet but really the only way it could end.
Best Line: “They trampled on my mum’s neck, people are starving, they don’t give a fuck”
Original review here

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

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.