Tag: Da’Vine Joy Randolph

2025 In Film: Day 10 (The Amazeballs)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Real Pain
Ups: Emotional. This film will hit you harder than Mike Tyson, and with less mercy.
Excellent use of time. It somehow packs so much into a short runtime.
It’s nice to see Jennifer Grey again. She’s one of the most underrated performers of all time.
Downs: Visually, it could be a little more interesting.
There are fleeting times when the lead characters seem kind of dicks.
Best Performer: Kieran Culkin. Eisenberg is up there, but Culkin JUST about edges it.
Best Moment: Okay this is difficult. There are at least 4 choices. I suppose I have to go with the group posing for pictures with a statue. It shows everything that works. The character interactions, the warmth, and the sadness. You can show that scene and instantly know the characters.
Worst Moment: The ending. The rest is brilliant, and the actual closing shot is good, but it does seem to lose momentum in the final few minutes.
Opening: David leaving A LOT of voicemail messages. A good way to show his character.
Closing: Back at the airport.
Best Line: We’re on a fuckin Holocaust tour. If now isn’t the time and place to grieve, to open up, then I don’t know what to tell you, man
Original review here

Eternity
Ups: The chemistry between the performers.
Will make you feel things.
Unique.
Shows the difference between young/carefree and lifelong love.
Will inspire discussion and self-introspection.
Downs: Won’t appeal to everyone.
Tries to have every possible ending.
Surely this isn’t the first time it’s happened?
Best Performer: Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Everyone else is great as part of an ensemble; she’s great on her own.
Best Moment: The first trip into the archives. Very sweet.
Worst Moment: The fake Dean Martin. It’s very funny, but it stretches credulity that Anna wouldn’t tell Larry that it was an impersonator.
Opening: Larry and Joan are driving to a party, arguing, but in a way it’s clear that there’s no malice behind it. Larry then dies.
Closing: Joan and one of her husbands decide on their Eternity. Very sweet.
Best Line: Love isn’t just one happy moment, right? It’s a million. And it’s bickering in the car, and supporting someone when they need it, and it’s growing together, and looking after each other.
Original review here

Fackham Hall
Ups: Utterly ridiculous.
Perfect casting.
Some truly classic jokes.
Downs: Some of the jokes are made by the characters long after the audience has made them.
The plot isn’t that great.
The detective subplot feels wasted.
Some people may expect it to be a bit more mature/offensive.
Best Performer: Katherine Waterston.
Best Moment: “Watt’s his name”? Yes, it’s an old routine, but it’s classic.
Worst Moment: The section where he’s arrested feels like it could have more jokes.
Opening: Showing the family. Sets up the jokes incredibly quickly.
Closing: “What happened next”, every joke a winner.
Best Line: “I’m here regarding the murder of Lord Davenport”
“I’m afraid you’re too late; it’s already been done”
Original review here

Last Breath
Ups: Tense AF
Anchored (lol) by great performances.
Barely any time wasted.
Emotional
It’s nice to see people who are good at their job.
Downs: Could occasionally a better job of explaining to the average audience member why certain things are done the way they are.
Needed better advertising.
Best Performer: Woody.
Best Moment: When the umbilical cord is disconnected. Caused genuine gasps in the cinema I was at.
Worst Moment: The computer being reconnected. Isn’t explained enough.
Opening: Drone footage of an unconscious diver convulsing on the sea floor. Along with text saying how dangerous the work is. Almost like a horror movie.
Closing: Footage of the main characters wedding in real life.
Best Line: Back in the day, though, you know, when I was starting out, you only needed two things: little common sense and a good bottle of Scotch.
Original review here

Sinners
Ups: A completely transcendent experience.
Phenomenal music.
Some great performances.
Unique.
Downs: Takes a bit too long to get to the point.
The post-credits point is too important to the plot
Best Performer: Miles Caton.
Best Moment: Come on, really? It’s when Sammie plays in the bar and we see it conjuring spirits of the past and future. It’s a good thing nobody was close to me at the cinema, otherwise they would have heard me say “That? That’s fucking cinema”.
Worst Moment: Some of the deaths in the bar aren’t that clear, visually.
Opening: Sammie drives to his fathers church and stumbles in, bloody and beaten, clutching a broken guitar.
Closing: It’s the 90’s; Sammie performs at a club. Great that Coogler managed to get Buddy Guy in. Kind of weird that ALL of this happens during/after the credits as it feels very important to the plot.
Best Line: white folks, they like the blues just fine. They just don’t like the people who make it.
Original review here

The Naked Gun
Ups: Hilarious.
Damn near perfect casting.
Pays tribute to the original, but not too much that it overshadows the narrative.
Downs: Misses some joke opportunities.
Few too many pop culture references.
Not as quick as the originals.
Best Performer: Liam Neeson.
Best Moment: The cavalcade of “did you get that?” scenes. Utterly stupid but brilliant.
Worst Moment: The snowman scene. It’s very good, but it goes on too long.
Opening: The bank scene from the trailer. Then (and this is the most offensive part), they DON’T do the cars POV for opening credits.
Closing: Freeze frame shenanigans!
Best Line: Like an idiot’s completed jigsaw puzzle, I was being framed.
Original review here

The Roses
Ups: Incredibly funny.
Good chemistry.
Has much more heart than you’d think
“FFS, communicate” is an important message.
Far too relatable.
Downs: A few moments that don’t go anywhere.
Sometimes it feels like characters improv too much.
Best Performer: Olivia Colman.
Best Moment: The final scene. Caused an audible reaction from everyone.
Worst Moment: The almost murders near the end. Seems too far. The marriage counselling scenes also don’t seem to go anywhere.
Opening: The two are at marriage counselling. Allows a perfectly natural “how we met” flashback.
Closing: The two reconcile. Awwwww. Then almost certainly die in a house explosion that we don’t see.
Best Line: If you need a shoulder or an inner thigh to lean on…
Original review here

The Holdovers (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: It’s 1970 and a New England boarding school sends it’s students and staff home except for Christmas, with the exception of classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), student Angus (Dominic Sessa), and greaving cafeteria worker Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Normally, I start these reviews with an introduction, or sometimes just a weird wandering paragraph that’s very loosely tied into the themes (spoilers for my review of The Iron Claw, which is likely to start with a paragraph about Mulan). Today, I’m going to launch into it on the back of a single sentence:

I see in The Holdovers what everybody else sees in Wes Anderson. The time capsule nature approach to directing, the rapid-fire dialogue, and the general nostalgic feel to it. The main difference between this and Wes Anderson films is that I actually like The Holdovers. I like how it never breaks the 70’s immersion, even in the opening classification card. I’m sure there are a few anachronisms, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the songs are actually modern indie. I like how funny the dialogue is. I like the performances, Giamatti continues to remind the world just how brilliant he can be, Da’Vine Joy Randolph provides a good foil with her warmth and humanity providing a contrast to the sarcastic misanthropy of Giamatti. The real revelation is Dominic Sessa. This is his first acting role but you wouldn’t guess. He easily holds his own against acting heavyweights. Time will tell if this leads to Sessa developing further, if he continues on this path he could genuinely become one of the best actors of this generation. That’s not an exaggeration by the way, if this is his first EVER performance, then who knows how far he could go. The big downside is he does look distractingly like an American James Acaster.

The thing that will stick with me the most about The Holdovers is just how utterly charming it all is. The whole thing feels incredibly real and relatable. The script is one of the most effortless of the year. It flows from one moment to the next with ease. Heartbreaking tales of loss and mental illness sit aside quick scenes involving frozen prostitutes. At times it feels like nothing is happening, but then you realise that so much is developing inside the minds of the characters. I did mention how good the dialogue is, but there is so much that happens when people say nothing. The unspoken conversations, the unsaid realisations, they’re all so powerful.

There are moments where it does feel like the film is pottering about a bit too much. Annoyingly, there are moments where it feels like it’s doing the opposite and moving on too quickly. There are numerous moments where the scenes fade out and I was disappointed because it didn’t feel like the scene was over. I wanted to see where the conversation was going to carry on to, or how people would react to what had just happened. On the other hand, there are scenes that reach their natural ending point, then continue to the point where it’s tiresome.

Some people won’t like it, they’ll find it dull, maybe a bit too nostalgic for a time that a lot of people don’t belong to, that a film focused entirely on privileged people isn’t something the world needs right now. But then again, sometimes it’s nice to have a distraction, something that’s not ABOUT anything, something that’s not important or out to change the world, something that exists simply as observation and storytelling. On those days, there will be few better options to watch than this. That being said, it is absolutely baffling that the studio decided to release it in the UK in late January, it’s clearly made to be watched in December. There was nothing really Christmas-ey out at cinemas in December (nothing that was new anyway), and it would have been nice to have the option to watch a new potential Christmas classic.