Tag: Bob Marley: One Love

2024 In Film: Day Five (The Meh)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Back To Black
Ups: Marisa Abela’s singing voice.
Captures the time period.
Emotional.
Downs: Doesn’t go quite as in-depth as it could.
Seems to hate its main character.
Occasionally seems like we’re watching a romcom about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Best Performer: Marisa Abela
Best Moment: The meeting between her and Blake is quite sweet.
Worst Moment: When her and her dad reject rehab. Makes them seem a bit shitty.
Opening: Family party. Lets us know the main characters and their dynamics. Good introduction.
Closing: Blake has a new partner who is now pregnant, Amy is sad and walks up some stairs.
Best Line: I want people to hear my voice and just forget their troubles for five minutes. 
Original review here

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
Ups: It’s nice to see these characters again
Some fun moments.
Dark, but not in a scary way.
Downs: Pays too much reverence to a character played by a paedophile.
Burton hasn’t advanced his directing skills since the first one.
Unfocused, to the point where it seems like even the film itself doesn’t know what the story is.
Best Performer: Catherine O’Hara
Best Moment: The snake death, manages to be obvious but also comes out of nowhere.
Worst Moment: The wedding, mainly because the song choice feels wrong.
Opening: Lydia Deetz hosts a talk show. Would have been nice to see more of this.
Closing: Dream sequence!
Best Line: I want to make memories with people I love, rather than be haunted by them later
Original review here

Bob Marley: One Love
Ups: Good performances.
Genuine use of Jamaican patois in dialogue. Some may feel this is a “down” as it’s hard to understand, but I think it’s authentic, and it never affects how you understand the narrative, you just don’t understand certain sentences.
Downs: Unfocused narrative.
Lacks an emotional anchor.
Best Performer: Kingsley Ben-Adir
Best Moment: When he gets shot.
Worst Moment: The argument between him and his wife. Feels half-done.
Opening: He gets shot. Emotional, shocking, and sets the scene.
Closing: He dies. Spoilers. Doesn’t really have the emotional impact it could have. We don’t really see him mourn his own mortality and don’t get a sense of how his death was perceived. We are then shown real-life clips of Bob Marley on stage, and it makes you realise that Ben-Adir was too restrained in his performance, the real-life Marley was a ball of energy on stage.
Best Line: You can’t separate the music and the message.
Original review here

Don’t Move
Ups: Believable sociopath.
Minimalist cast.
Downs: Needs a hook. Something to make it stand out.
Quite plodding
Best Performer: Kelsey Asbille
Best Moment: When she finds the strange man. I was concerned he would turn out to be a creepy rapist. But nope, he’s nice, and helps figure out a way to converse with her and help her.
Worst Moment: The “I wanted to die” car conversation, feels very first draft.
Opening: The sound of screaming over a national park. Then cuts to Iris laying perfectly still in her bed. Neat if you know the concept of the film.
Closing: She survives, stands over his dying body and thanks him for making her want to live. So really he did a good thing.
Best Line: His explanation of the effects of the drug.
Original review here

If
Ups: Funny.
Cute.
Inventive.
Downs: Doesn’t make the best of Reynolds.
Bit predictable.
Some more coherent world-building would be nice.
Best Performer: Caily Fleming
Best Moment: When she changes the home. Magical. Although the moment when her grandmother dances is also excellent, but for different reasons. The dance is more emotional brilliance as opposed to whimsy.
Worst Moment: When you realise she’s been walking around New York on her own every day and nobody seems to care.
Opening: Rapid montage of Bea growing up. Could have done a better job of expressing just how important creativity is to her character, it would have helped sell some of the later reveals. Also, just because that’s quick, doesn’t mean the rest of the film is. It takes a long time to bring you the gimmick.
Closing: The most obvious twist ever. The very end, where her dad falls over his invisible imaginary friend is very funny though.
Best Line: Hey, Keith!
Original review here

The Critic
Ups: Feels like a time capsule
Subtly subversive
Looks good
Downs: Not as tense as it could be.
Best Performer: Mckellan
Best Moment: Him telling her why he doesn’t like her. Fantastic performances.
Worst Moment: Them coming up with the scheme. Doesn’t feel earned.
Opening: Jimmy is watching a play and is deliciously bitchy,
Closing: He’s in prison. The only way it could end really.
Best Line: There is art in you, Miss Land. My disappointment is in your failure to access it.
Original review here

The Trouble With Jessica
Ups: Very funny.
Moments of biting satire.
Downs: It doesn’t hit as hard as it could/should.
Doesn’t seem to know what to do with its own concept.
REALLY loses steam towards the end, with some baffling character changes which render most of the film pointless.
Best Performer: Shirley Henderson
Best Moment: The dinner itself. Very socially tense.
Worst Moment: The post-suicide. The use of establishing shots kind of takes away from the tense nature of the situation.
Opening: A preparation for a dinner party. Very stylish, much more than it needed to be, and I appreciate that. Sets up the “they’ll be moving soon” quite subtly.
Closing: A couple eats a clafoutis.
Best Line: “I fucking hate cross-examining rape victims. It’s impossible to do and not look like a cunt”
Original review here

Timestalker
Ups: There’s a very sweet unspoken relationship between her and Meg
Unique idea.
Fun.
Downs: Could have had more fun with the music.
Runs out of momentum.
SHOULD be great.
Best Performer: Aneurin Barnard
Best Moment: The entire 80’s section.
Worst Moment: The carriage wheel decapitation. Mainly because it’s much shorter than the others, but not in a fun and frantic way, more in a “we lost a lot in the edit” way.
Opening: A pink heart floating in the air like a Princess Peach power up. Then a woman operating a loom. Some really vibrant colours, and then it flashbacks to a man being brutally murdered. If you didn’t know what this film was about, this wouldn’t tell you. It’s only when she falls over and kills herself that you get the feeling this is going to be a bit weird.
Closing: She finally gets the “I love you”, and runs away from it.
Best Line: “It’s all in your head”
Original review here

Twisters
Ups: Characters speak genuinely.
Good action scenes.
Actual emotion.
Downs: One of the characters is too unlikeable.
Could tie into the original more.
Best Performer: Daisy Edgar-Jones
Best Moment: That opening.
Worst Moment: The almost vehicular manslaughter. Knocks this down further than any one scene has done to another film in quite a while.
Opening: Put it this way; it shows why tornados are dangerous. Shocking, and brilliant.
Closing: Standard romcom closing. Kind of dull compared to what came before.
Best Line: Can always trust a guy who puts his face on a t-shirt.
Original review here

Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Bob Marley once existed. Here’s what happened.

Biopics of musicians are always difficult to pull off in a way that will satisfy everybody. What’s the thing most people know about musicians? What? No, not their penis size, that’s weird. The answer is their music. You go into a film about a musician, and you expect to hear music (Unless you’re watching Stardust, the movie about David Bowie where the makers didn’t license ANY David Bowie music). So I think my enjoyment of Bob Marley: One Love (or BMOL, pronounced, well there’s no other way to say this; Bum’ole) was limited by the fact that I don’t actually know that many Bob Marley songs. I only know about five or so. If I were a fan, then I imagine I would have enjoyed seeing the songs come together, from a single bassline, then gradually more and more elements added until it becomes the song we all know in some kind of improvisational mix of jazz, reggae, and singing which people in the people in business call Jeggings. Okay, they don’t, but I just wanted to get that jeggings joke in there. Not worth it really was it?

But for those who aren’t familiar with the music, all they’re seeing is a song they sort of recognise. I’m not sure how much there is in this film to draw in non-Marley fans. It pains me to say this, but his life doesn’t have THAT moment to anchor the narrative around, which really hurts the film. It doesn’t feel like it’s building towards anything or is about anything in particular, stuff just happens, and then more stuff happens. I would have liked to have seen more about the gig he was shot at etc, more about his political side and what inspired it.

Some people had issues with understanding what was being said. I sort of did, but I don’t mind it. A look of the dialogue is in Jamaican Patois, and I’d much rather have that authenticity than the fakeness of just doing the accent whilst speaking full English.

Onto the positives, there are times when you do forget you’re watching an actor play Bob Marley. In reality, Kingsley Ben-Adir looks nothing like Bob, but when you watch him perform and hear him speak, you believe. When you see footage of the real Marley at the end you’re like “Oh yeah, we haven’t actually been watching him”. The other performances are fine, but none of the background characters are really built up enough to come close.

In summary, it’s a good film. It’s an interesting film. It’s also incredibly unfocused and feels like it was made for the sake of being made. Worth a watch if you can catch it though.