Bad Boys: Ride Or Die
Ups: Some creative shots.
Fitting continuation of the story.
Downs: Too many scenes exist just to exist.
The villain reveal is too obvious.
Best Performer: Will Smith
Best Moment: Reggie killing everybody.
Worst Moment: The Tiffany Haddish scene. I like her as a performer, but her entire section was unnecessary, if it was cut out it wouldn’t be missed.
Opening: There’s a wedding, and then Marcus has a heart attack. Some good visuals and sets up the characters’ relationship well.
Closing: Mike and Marcus argue about who gets to cook on a grill. They then insult Reggie before remembering what he did earlier. It takes the two characters WAY too long to remember.
Best Line: Y’all are some terrible fucking fugitives.
Original review here
Drive-Away Dolls
Ups: Some nice visuals.
Unique.
So very horny.
Downs: Unfocused.
Characters are unsympathetic too often.
Best Performer: Geraldine Viswanathan.
Best Moment: The fall of the Senator. Gloriously cathartic, and gives a reason to some of the plot points.
Worst Moment: The small flashbacks. Don’t match the tone of the rest.
Opening: A man is killed carrying a briefcase of dildos. You don’t find out what the briefcase contains until later.
Closing: The two leads drive off to get married. Kind of sweet. But I felt like them meeting up with the Aunt would matter more, like she’d have an effect on the plot. Or at the very least say something surprising/funny to end the film.
Best Line: I’ve had it with love. I know bards and troubadours are high on it, but I don’t believe it’s relevant to the modern 20th soon to be 21st century lesbian.
Original review here
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Ups: Actually has space to breathe so the action impresses you.
Nice colours.
Hemsworth is clearly having a lot of fun.
Downs: Some of the effects are a bit weak.
Nothing makes it stand out.
Not that memorable.
Best Performer: Hemsworth.
Best Moment: When Dementus captures Furiosa’s mother. Harrowing.
Worst Moment: There’s an action scene near the end with really flat visuals
Opening: Weirdly calm talking about destruction and society ending. It’s pretty harrowing, but there’s not much urgency about it.
Closing: Hemsworth has a tree growing out of him.
Best Line: Where are you going, so full of hope? THERE IS NO HOPE!
Original review here
Malum
Ups: Some pretty damn good music.
Downs: Bad dialogue.
Some pretty bad editing.
Best Performer: Jessica Sula.
Best Moment: The cult staring her down, chilling.
Worst Moment: The interviews, mainly because whilst they are creepy, but there’s a way to make them creepier.
Opening: Police notice saying this is footage from the event. REALLY helps you buy in. Then creepy handheld footage. Well, some of it is creepy (weird chairs etc), and some is so mundane that it becomes creepy. Yes, it feels cheap, but its effective. Then, it transitions into modern times, where you assume the person we meet is our hero. Nope.
Closing: The plan worked
Best Line: “She don’t even look like people anymore”
Original review here
Never Let Go
Ups: Anchored by some great performances.
Some very creative visuals.
Original
Downs: Disappointing script.
Trips over itself trying to confound expectations.
Needed to focus on the survivalism aspect more, as those are the most interesting moments.
Best Performer: Berry, obviously.
Best Moment: The suicide. Horrible to see.
Worst Moment: How “the evil” is defeated, bit weak.
Opening: Simple world-building. Effective.
Closing: The monsters were real, society collapsing wasn’t.
Best Line: One touch without a rope on, is all it takes.
Original review here
Sting
Ups: Some pretty brutal moments.
Pretty damn impressive characterisation.
Downs: Wastes time.
Not the best lit.
Weird music choices
The winter aspect doesn’t really come into it as much as it could.
Best Performer: Part of me says Alyla Browne, but Ryan Corr just edges it out due to the emotional complexity.
Best Moment: When the mother tells the step dad how much he means to her daughter. Odd to put a piece of character work instead of a horror/action set-piece, but it’s really sweet. The fact its then followed by someone screaming when they find the skinless corpse of a bird says a lot.
Worst Moment: The exterminator’s reaction to the dead bird “looks like it had sex with a blender”. Feels too “written”.
Opening: An old woman knits whilst watching tv, then hears scuttling in her walls. It does a pretty good job of setting up her current state of mind, with her needing notes on the walls to tell her her name and address. The exterminator arrives and is killed. The set-up? Brilliant. The death itself? Weak. As an opening, it’s okay, but it does take longer than it should to get to the credits, especially for such a short movie.
Closing: The spider is dead, but it lay eggs. Sequel!
Best Line: “my dad is awesome”
“is that why he never visits?”
Cutting.
Original review here
The Beekeeper
Ups: Some interesting fight scenes.
Could be a useful tool to teach people about phishing scams.
Downs: Stathams accent.
Some of the worst dialogue ever committed to film.
Best Performer: Josh Hutcherson. Utterly despicable.
Best Moment: The original call centre being burned down. Deliciously cathartic.
Worst Moment: The aftermath of the suicide. Mainly because of how bad the dialogue is.
Opening: Quick unsubtle introduction to the relationship between Clay and Eloise.
Closing: Parker points a gun at Clay then lets him scuba away. Kind of disappointed it ended so quickly, not because I wanted more of the film, but because the implications of the events of the film are never given enough time to be explored.
Best Line: “Madame President”
Original review here
The Zone Of Interest
Ups: Harrowing.
A fascinating look at the psychological tricks ordinary people needed to use to survive that time.
Downs: Bit dull.
Meanders at times.
Could teach more.
A bit more clarification could have been helpful.
Personally, did nothing for me compared to similar films.
Best Performer: Christian Friedel.
Best Moment: When Hoss notices human remains in the river his family play in. The first crack in his armour.
Worst Moment: The random girl hiding food. Doesn’t really add too much.
Opening: Can’t remember it exactly, but I remember it did do a good job of setting up the idea that this was just a normal day to them. The soundtrack of screaming was just something they put up with during their gardening.
Closing: Janitors clean up the museum which stands on the site. Good to know that it pushes the idea that his ideas failed and are now (kind of) condemned to history. That his legacy was one of cruelness and inhumanity. Might have worked better with people on a tour.
Best Line: I wasn’t really paying attention… I was too busy thinking how I would gas everyone in the room.
Original review here
Venom: The Last Dance
Ups: Sweet at times.
Shows glimpses of brilliance.
Downs: Too often it hints at concepts which would have made a much better movie.
Never feels like a finale.
Some of the coincidences are far too convenient.
Krull is underused
Best Performer: Tom Hardy
Best Moment: The Space Oddity scene.
Worst Moment: The fight between the many symbiote, because it hints at what would have been a MUCH better film.
Opening: Eddie Brock is getting drunk. Essentially, what we saw in the last Spider-Man movie. The multiverse aspect NEVER comes up. Sooooo, why?
Closing: Venom is dead but the symbiote lives on. Reports that Sony celebrated this movie by having a cake and eating it were made up by me.
Best Line: I’m so done with the multiverse shit.
Original review here
graphic novel, Watchmen. And it was a bit mixed. People either loved it for its gritty, stylish, thought provoking take on the superhero genre, while others hated it for all those things. But you can guess which side of that I fall upon. Hell, I still think it’s the best superhero film ever made, yes, I like it more than any Dark Knight or Marvel film, and here’s why…
, what would that world be like and who would those heroes be?
directed film, his key hyper-reality style that mixes CGI better than almost any film, works masterfully to bring the pages of the book to life, without losing the texture and grit. With the talent he showed here he could have easily gone on to be a blockbuster director like a quirkier James Camron, but instead he made Sucker Punch.
detached humanity of Dr Manhattan, Jackie Earle Haley embodying Rorschach’s grizzled insanity, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan embracing the assholeness of The Comedian, costume changes aside they walk right off the page.
is carefully implemented, from the iconic Bob Dylan opening credit sequence, the cheesy Leonard Cohen sex scene, and the sad Simon and Garfunkel funeral, Watchmen took seminal well known songs, and instead of being distracting fit them skilfully into the story as if they’ve always been there. Oh and the My Chemical Romance cover is badass, they really embrace the 80s punk vibe.
ending better than the comic, even amongst people who have read the comic. The comic’s ending may work better from a plot stand point (some say), but the film’s use of Dr Manhattan in it’s climax comes from much more of a character and thematic place, and ties into Dr Manhattan’s dehumanizing arc so much tighter, and the ideas of nuclear war. It’s not just that I think the endings better than the book; it’s what that represents about the power of adaption through someone else’s vision, that making changes to original text doesn’t have to come from a hollow, money grubbing place, but from the texts itself…also the giant squid would of looked silly on screen. But more so because it wasn’t Hollywoodised, it was complex and morally gray and left us with a message not many blockbusters have the balls to tell, that as people we will expect an easy lie over a hard truth. We are compromised.
Troubled Productions 