Tag: Film

Juror #2 (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Justin Kemp (Hoult) is called to jury duty for a man accused of murdering his girlfriend, a man Kemp knows is innocent because the actual killer was him, during a distressing car journey home on that night.

I will admit, I was a little lost going into this as I hadn’t seen Juror #1.

Now that that terrible joke is out of the way, I can get serious. I’m not going to, but the option is there. Juror #2 can best be described as a competent movie. It’s possibly Clint Eastwood’s last movie as a director and a fine film to exit on. Eastwood is a good director, but let’s face it, his real talent is picking really good scripts. That continues with this, where his directing never really gets better than “serviceable”. Actually, that’s mean, I suppose “functional” would be more accurate. There are no bad visual moments, but nothing that will really impress you.

Something like this isn’t about the visuals though, it’s all about the story and the performances, both of which are pretty damn fine. It’s not perfect. There are definitely a few scenes that don’t do enough to justify their inclusion. That’s especially disappointing in a legal thriller. When you watch a film based on truths coming out, where characters are trying to hide their past actions etc, you expect things to matter. If a random scene happens, you expect that it’s actually important and will matter. There’s a scene here where the main character picks up the phone that belongs to the lead prosecutor (played by the About A Boy pairing of Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette) after she accidentally drops it in the car park. There are a lot of ways this could have come up again; maybe she uses it to get his fingerprints, and maybe she will remember something about him later on. Nope, nothing. It doesn’t even tell us anything about the characters. That’s followed by another scene which is an intro to jury duty, again, completely unnecessary. It feels like it was only there because the writer did their research into what happens before you serve on jury duty, found out that you go into a room and watch a video before the trial starts, and wanted to show off that research.

There’s some great character work here. So many of the jury members have enough backstory and motivations to come off as believable. It would be nice if a few more of them were fleshed out, especially because of all the wasted scenes. There’s one weird character. Harold, played by JK Simmons is written almost TOO well. He’s a former detective who takes an interest in the case. His interest in the case gets him kicked off the jury, which is realistic. He then doesn’t appear again. Soooooooo, what was the point of that? Are we to believe that he just stopped? “Well, I’m not part of the case anymore, so who gives a shit?” If anything, he would feel more free. He can investigate it as a private citizen on his free time now he’s not locked in a jury room all day.

The performances? Pretty damn good. Why don’t films cast Nicholas Hoult as a leading man in romance films? He has the best eyes. The rest are pretty good, it is weird to see so many English actors in SUCh an American movie. Zoey Deutch is a delight, as she always is. Eastwood does cast his daughter, but it’s a minor role, the kind of role that’s okay for a nepotism hire as you’re not exactly going to get a major performer in such a small role.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: In the 1950’s Appalachian mountains, Hellboy and his rookie teammate hunt down a local legend.

I mentioned to someone that I had watched this. The response to that is normally a quick “is it worth watching?”, “How is it?” etc, the usual questions. The one I got for this? “What new Hellboy movie?”.

The first Hellboy movie had box office takings of nearly $100million, so A LOT of people saw it. Even the 2019 one (which I reviewed here) made $55million on a budget of $50million (you wouldn’t think it would be that expensive to put a massive pile of dog shit in front of a camera and then film it). Those numbers prove one thing; a lot of casual moviegoers are aware of this character. So it’s baffling that the studio not only released this straight-to-VOD but also had a marketing campaign that consisted of “just post a video on YouTube, people will find it”. Really, Hellboy: The Crooked Man (H: TCM, pronounced Ha-took-em) SHOULD be a cult classic. It should have a reputation as a folk horror comic book movie, a low-budget but high-effort hidden gem.

It won’t have that reputation though, because it’s a bad film. Maybe I’d be more favourable towards this if it wasn’t for how good the first two are. Then again, maybe I’d be less favourable if I didn’t have to suffer through the last one. Actually, that does a disservice, as even without the comparisons, H: TCM would still seem cheap. At times it looks like a video game, and at other times it looks like a porn parody where the actors forgot to have sex. I knew it would have a lower budget, so visually it wouldn’t be able to match the previous entries, but it still tries to, and it fails in that trying. The things we see in films aren’t real, but I appreciate some effort in concealing that. I’m well aware that Wallace and Gromit are claymations, but if the next film has a moment where we see the animators’ fingers moving them around, I’m gonna be pissed. This makes no effort to hide the metaphorical strings behind the visuals, so it’s hard to lose yourself in what you’re seeing as the visuals constantly pull you out.

There are some good moments. It is suitably violent and doesn’t waste time getting to the violence. The witch coming back to life scene was pretty damn good. Very creepy. There are a few other moments where you can see what it is aiming to be. It’s in those moments where you see the influences, the most obvious one being The Evil Dead. Considering how heavily indebted it is to The Evil Dead series, it’s surprising they didn’t just get Bruce Campbell to play the lead. It certainly would have been a better option than Jack Kesy. Nothing against Kesy, but he doesn’t have that special otherworldly factor to lead a film like this. There’s no presence, no sense of authority, he doesn’t feel like he OWNS the scenes, he never feels any more than just an actor playing his part. He lacks the physicality too. There’s a moment where I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be in slow motion, or if he just can’t run fast in the prosthetics.

Another positive is that, unlike similar movies, they do explain the myth behind the villain etc. So it’s very easy to understand motivations and character. The trouble is, it’s delivered in such a dull way that it’s hard to pay attention. Yes, the 2019 Hellboy was terrible, but it was never as boring as this.

The Whip (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: In response to government welfare cuts, a group of people attempt to steal a black book of blackmail material from the Houses of Parliament.

I was wary of this. It looked interesting, but so did A Kind Of Kidnapping, which was kind of a letdown (especially since I’m a fan of the director). I knew nobody who worked on The Whip, and even from the trailer it looked low-budget. After watching it, I can confirm its low-budget nature. I don’t know if it’s a green screen or was filmed on location and lit badly, but there are far too many moments where there’s a disconnect between the characters and the background. In a student film, that’s okay, but in a wide-release feature, you can’t help but feel a little disappointed.

The directing is definitely the weakest link in The Whips’ chain. Not just in terms of visuals, but the physical geography is lacking. One scene featuring a walk and talk on a bridge is particularly clunky regarding how it’s set out concerning character placement. What was even weirder about that is that the next scene is a static shot on a nearby bench which would have been much easier to play out, it would have had the advantage of hiding the Houses Of Parliament out of shot so that the “so what’s the target?” shot reveal would have felt more natural, rather than “stop and look behind us at the thing that’s been in the shot all this time and that we’re actually walking away from right now”. I also have issues with some of the performances. None of them are bad, but there are definitely some inconsistencies that should have been taken care of in rehearsals, or as Cath Clarke put it in the Guardian “more wooden than the panelling in the chief whip’s office”. Also, there are a few bad edits where the match-cutting could be a lot better.

Now onto the good; A LOT of effort has been put into this, and it shows. The opening credits are unique, with the names being written down in a notepad before appearing on screen. I love it when films put the extra effort in and tell a story or tone by the way they display the credits. Haven’t seen it done as well since Sometimes I Think About Dying. The closing credits are creative too, the traditional “photo alongside name” but done as newspaper headlines, and having other headlines providing a “what happens next” coda. I really appreciate that level of creativity.

So how about the actual film? Imagine there’s a line between “funny because it’s relatable” and “not funny because it’s too relatable”, this film dances down that line and then snorts it. The opening scene with the assessment is uncomfortably realistic; a government worker who’s not listening and spends more time looking at the computer than actually paying attention to the person she’s interviewing. Everybody who has had to speak to someone at the DWP can recognise that. The “can you tell me about her condition?” attitude of asking the carer when the actual person is RIGHT THERE is so prevalent that it’s actually taught as an example of what not to do because of how dehumanising it is. It’s frustrating the amount of effort disabled people have to put in to convince people that they haven’t magically healed, and just because they can manage their condition whilst at home and under certain conditions, doesn’t mean they can work full time. It’s difficult to watch scenes like that and not be fucking furious at our government (including the new ones who are basically the old ones just in a different jacket). On that note, Meg Fozzard is superb.

That frustration is shared by the characters, alongside their helplessness. They point out that marching isn’t enough, people marched against the invasion of the Middle East and it still happened. Being on the right side of history doesn’t mean dick if it kills you and nothing changes. As someone says “There’s being right, then there’s doing something about it”.

You’d think that all of this would make this a deeply cynical watch, and at times it is. But it is also weirdly idealistic. Hard to explain but I’ll try. I guess the message of it is; everything fucking sucks UNLESS we do something now! It has moments which are clearly made to inspire you, whether it’s the scene in the back of a car where a politician tells someone “Young people don’t tend to vote for us, so we encourage them not to vote”, it’s made to encourage you to engage in politics (although that scene does take too long to get to the point). It’s also nice how it shows an older politician who is just as disgusted with his party’s actions. Makes you wonder if a better world is possible if we just remove the person at the top (and as someone who is currently reading a book about the history of Rome, the answer as to whether that is true is……unclear). He’s clearly not comfortable with repeating his party’s message, especially as he knows it’s barbaric and badly explained. As he says:

“Of course they didn’t get it, they’re not supposed to get it, if they got it they’d be furious”

The lack of internet security in government buildings is depressingly accurate. It is FAR too believable that our government’s wi-fi has zero encryption, probably because the people who need to use it are computer illiterate to the point where they DEFINITELY keep their passwords on a post-it attached to the computer screen. Just as believable is that they’d purchase a safe which opens if you tap the top of it. Just as believable. It’s that reality that really helps this film work. It doesn’t quite feel like a documentary, but it does feel so believable that there’s a small part of you that wonders “Could we do this?”. It provides hope, and that’s sorely needed right now.

Transformers One (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A look at the inciting incident in the hatred between Optimus Prime and Megatron

I was mildly looking forward to this. The trailer caught my attention, and I thought, “That looks like a lot of silly fun.” A bit like the second coming of The Lego Batman Movie, which I still think is dumb brilliance. It’s not dumb brilliance, it’s just brilliant. Yes, it has some silly jokes, but nowhere near as much as it could. Before it fully settled into the tone I spotted numerous opportunities for some silly jokes, and I assumed it was the scriptwriters missing opportunities. That’s my bad, this is not attempting to be silly, just entertaining, and yes, Virginia, there is a difference. Everything makes sense within the logic created. Also, EVERYTHING is played straight, to a horrific extent at some points.

This isn’t a “fun and joy for kids” movie. It deals with colonialism, disability rights, hierarchal power structures, appeals to authority fallacies etc. It doesn’t shy away from darkness, characters are decapitated, torn apart, mutilated at birth, and stabbed repeatedly. You don’t expect kids’ films to feature a scene of a main character being horrifically tortured, and you certainly don’t expect it to be shown and not just implied or cut away from.

This is only the second film that Josh Cooley has directed, and he does brilliantly. It will be a weird thing to say as a response to an animated kid’s film, but I feel he would make a fantastic horror film. He knows about scale, he knows about tension, and he knows how to maximise character pain so that the audience can feel it, I shouldn’t wince in pain when an animated robot gets hurt, but this manages it. He’s helped by the animation style; it is almost stop-motion in how physically real the world looks.

It’s very well cast. There are NAMES in this, Johannson, Hemsworth, Fishbourne, Hamm etc. And all of them nail it, they actually act, and they’re not just doing their normal voices. The real MVP is Brian Tyree Henry. There’s one moment in particular where his performance is one of the best I’ve heard all year, not just in kids films, in general. His conviction and passion is breathtaking, and it’s genuinely chilling to hear him deliver it, particularly the line “No, I want to kill him” which would easily be seen as cheesy if delivered by a lesser performer.

I know I’ve seen the first Michael Bay Transformers movie, and I think I’ve seen the second one too. But I can’t remember much from them, they were fine as I was watching them, but nothing stands out, it was just metal smashing metal like some Robot Fuck Club (great band name). This? I will remember this. At the risk of sounding crude, it’s f*cking fantastic. It has everything I want in a movie; laughs, good characters, references to Key And Peele sketches, looks fantastic, heart, and some mild terror. Some people may argue that the start of darkness is too obvious. Those people are wrong, it’s not “predictable”, it’s foreshadowing/storytelling, and damn fine storytelling at that.

AfrAId (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A family takes an experimental AI into their house. Everything works out fine. Psych! Stuff starts to suck.

AfrAId was directed by Chris Weitz, who also directed About A Boy, The Twilight Zone: New Moon, and The Golden Compass, which is a weird film history if you think about it. Not really relevant at all, I just wanted to mention it.

I went into this with lower expectations than I would if Gillingham were playing Barcelona (football joke, I NEVER make them), I knew it had bad reviews and box office, and bad horror movies are usually The Crow-est of the low. So I knew this would be terrible. But then something went wrong; it’s not terrible. It’s not good, but it’s not terrible. It is never bad enough to be awful, but also it’s never quite good enough to stand out. It doesn’t help that it’s quite derivative, it’s not saying that much which hasn’t been said before (primarily by equally stupidly titled M3gan). It can’t compare to that, and not just because the AI in this isn’t as memorable, or as well-written. Occasionally it only does things BECAUSE it’s a horror movie, there’s no “non-creepy” justification for many of the AI’s choices.

On the plus side, it does seem like it has something to say, which I always like to see in a horror movie. The proliferation of AI is a concerning development and one that’s too big for films to ignore. This film also says a lot about how families interact with themselves and with technology, especially concerning how that affects parenting. It doesn’t always work, though. There are some parts where the AI nature of it just

The revenge porn bit, in particular, didn’t sit right with me. I don’t care that it ruined that kid’s life, he knowingly made and shared porn of his girlfriend. I don’t give a shit that he won’t go to college or that he’s being tried as an adult. To be perfectly honest I hope he gets hit by a fucking car. Now it gets fun. No word of a lie, I legit wrote that line, and then that character died in a car crash. So that’s nice.

On the upside; the performances are good. John Cho is underrated (as anybody who has watched Searching will know), and I’m still waiting for the world to pay attention to just how utterly fantastic Katherine Waterston is. Both of them feel slightly beyond this movie, almost like this was a film made years ago and only just released now to make use of their fame. There’s also no issue with direction; it looks good, has decent audio cues etc.

The main issues are pretty much entirely down to the script. The pacing is like a drunk driver; all over the place, causing great damage, and indefensible. The ending is a huge letdown. It goes too “real”, with the AI making incursions into reality which are a bit too far-fetched and would be easily solved by humans. The closing scenes are also far too predictable, to the point where it feels like a parody.

In summary; not as bad as I expected, but not as good as I wanted. AfrAId is like people who discuss politics on Twitter, too concerned with saying stuff “now” than trying to figure out how to say it.

Never Let Go (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: In response to a worldwide evil, a mother (Halle Berry), protects her children via tethering them to the house with a rope, thus ensuring no evil can come to them. As the years go on, she struggles to keep them content with their new lifestyle.

I have a mixed history with Alexandre Aja (the director of Never Let Go, or NLG, pronounced Nelgg), I enjoyed Horns, but I found Crawl a bit poor, so I was unsure what to expect. Halle Berry is in it, which bodes well as she does seem to be more careful about what scripts she chooses lately (probably because of Catwoman), and even if a film is bad, Berry is always good. I wasn’t aware of the two child actors in this, but they are pretty damn good in this. It’s not “good for child actors”, just flat-out good. So that’s definitely a plus. Aja’s directing is pretty decent too with some brilliantly creepy set-pieces and creative visuals. There are moments where it is a bit too dark to see, but that’s to be expected in a film set in a cabin that lacks as many lights as this does. It’s also a genuinely interesting story, and provides a real sense of survivalism, particularly with how difficult it is even for those experienced in it. Doesn’t matter how good you are at hunting if the animals have all gone somewhere else (unless you’re a nomadic tribe obviously). And it doesn’t matter how good you are at farming if it’s too cold and flooded for the crops to work. It’s not “organic salads made entirely from hand-grown fruits”, sometimes it’s “eating fried bark”. You’re only ever one winter away from starvation, and that will lead to you making difficult decisions like wondering if you should kill your dog. So much of NLG is utterly fantastic. The film itself? Far from it.

Whenever you watch a film, you don’t watch it in a vacuum (or any other household appliance), it can set up expectations and then subvert them, and other times it makes them seem predictable. So movies now need to be written with that in mind. Never Let Go attempts to play with expectations, but in its attempts to do so, it traps itself like a fly in a spider’s web and is just as ugly. It knows that your first thought while watching this will be “Okay so is the twist going to be that she’s actually just making it up?”, which would work. Instead of subtly laying in clues, it has characters outright state that they believe that to be the case. It sets up that “twist” far too obviously, to the point where you begin to wonder if it’s actually a double twist and it turns out she was telling the truth all along. But that’s not a twist, that’s just a straight story. The way that NLG tries to set up both endings means that whatever ending it picks, it will end up feeling predictable. It traps itself by attempting to be too clever.

I suppose that’s to be expected, I mean, it has to attempt SOMETHING, the story itself really doesn’t lend itself to a 100-minute feature. It only has three characters, and the very notion of the story means they can’t interact with anybody else, and two of them have known only this life forever. So with nothing to upset the status quo, and no new characters introduced, it’s difficult to be hooked. I’ve seen worse films, but I’ve yet to see a semi-decent movie be as derailed by a poor script as much as this one was. I suppose at least they’re trying.

The Garfield Movie (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Garfield gets roped into a scheme alongside his dad to steal milk.

Well after insulting it in my review of Jackpot, I had to actually watch it, didn’t I? If only so my despair at that being rated lower than this would be accurate. There was always a chance that I would be wrong and that this would actually be really good. I mean, look at the cast. Hannah Waddington, Nicholas Hoult, Brett Goldstein, Ving Rhames, and Samuel L Jackson, that is a weirdly strong cast for a non-ensemble piece.

Like all good films, The Garfield Movie (TGM, pronounced Tigg-um) leaves you asking questions, especially with the final action scene. It’s just a shame that those questions are ones like “How fucking long is that bridge? This scene should have ended minutes ago, this movie fucking sucks”.

In 2010 there was a woman named Mary Bale who was filmed walking past a delightfully cute kitty-cat named Lola. She stroked Lola, who was clearly approachable and friendly. Lola’s tail was raised in happiness and delight. Mary then picked Lola up and threw her in a fucking wheelie bin like a bitch. That video was posted online and she became infamous. I have seen that video (I had to, it was EVERYWHERE at the time), so I can confirm that that footage is now the SECOND most painful video I’ve seen involving a cat. You know, because this movie is also about a cat, and is fucking terrible (in case I was being too subtle).

I should have known this would be terrible from the very start. It starts with Garfield ordering food on an app. So the first shot is of a phone screen. There is no effort to make it seem like real food is being ordered on a real app. It moves from the item he wants to the next item he wants, there is no scrolling and picking an item, it just magically goes from one thing he wants to the next thing. I know it’s a small thing to be annoyed about, but it does annoy me because it makes it seem low effort. Also, he’s not ordering a lasagne, he’s ordering a pizza (with sides, which he knocks off the table in the bag without eating them).

This just doesn’t feel like a Garfield movie. There’s nothing specific to the character. In fact, there are very free moments specific to him being a cat. For example, when his dad is tied up with rope, Garfield tries to untie him; he has claws. It’s not a Garfield movie, it’s a movie that has Garfield in it. He’s not a character with his usual characterisation and foibles. He’s not sarcastic or dour, he’s just a normal animated movie lead. I haven’t seen a film misjudge its own main character this much since the Artemis Fowl casting call. It’s not a Garfield movie, it’s more like it’s a standard kids film, that stars Garfield. He’s not a character, he’s an actor playing a character that doesn’t suit him. The tone is completely wrong too, it’s too fast.

So I’ve established it fails as a Garfield movie. It’s not even a good animated movie. It fails at being a movie, and the animation is terrible. It reminds me of the South Park game on the N64, only with less piss-soaked snowballs. The human characters look okay, but the animals themselves look terrible. There’s no sense of realness to it. The animals don’t feel fluffy or cosy, they look like balloons. This is going to be a weird criticism of an animated film, but it’s too much of a cartoon in terms of the physics. There’s a scene where Garfield bounces from one tree to the other without losing any momentum. I know, standard modern animation. But still, it’s completely out of place in a series such as Garfield which has always maintained a somewhat realistic style.

I’ve seen worse films this year, but I can’t think of a movie which has completely failed its own lead character as much as this one did. On the plus side, I don’t have to see it again.

My Spy: The Eternal City (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: JJ (A “very noticeable for a spy” Batista) reunites with Sophie (Chloe Coleman), accompanying her on her school trip where they find themselves at the centre of a terrorist plot.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a normal reviewer; I don’t put definitive star ratings at the end of reviews for one thing. I will always admit that personal bias counts for a lot, sometimes negatively (I am predisposed to dislike anything with certain actors in), sometimes positively. My review of Hereditary was (I assume) the only review of that movie to include the phrase “cocking shit fuck” (unlike reviews of Morbius, which were fucking littered with that phrase, especially the one in the Holy Jesus Mary Church Weekly newsletter). On the plus side, that does mean there are lower expectations of me to maintain professional standards. As such, the following sentence won’t harm my reputation among readers as much as if it was said by someone like Peter Bradshaw (who only uses professional review lines, like in Twisters where he said “Certainly, the twister here is an obvious symbol for orgasm”). Here goes, the sentence which would doom me if I was a professional:

I stopped paying attention before this movie ended.

I watched this at home, but there weren’t any active distractions (local building work etc). I just…I just found myself watching but taking nothing in. When I speak of Come True, I often find myself talking about how despite watching it on a small screen, in my memory, it’s on a big one. With this? I will remember I watched it on my TV, not the cinema. It never felt big enough to be worthy of anything except “straight to streaming”. That’s a shame as I enjoyed the first one, and My Spy: The Eternal City (or MS: TEC, pronounced Ms. Tech) actually soured my memory of it. It assumes I can remember much more from the first one than I can. Characters turn up and the film is like “OMG it’s you guys”, whereas the audience’s reaction is “Who the fuck are these guys?”. I don’t want films overrun with flashbacks, but a few of them might have been helpful. It would be easy to do too; just frame it as Sophie giving a presentation in class or something. It would definitely be better than the current opening; a dream sequence. Never open an action movie with a dream sequence, it sets up action setpieces that can’t be recreated in reality.

Other scenes are similarly misjudged. The biggest misstep is when JJ is being tortured and threatened with death. I don’t know if it’s the way it’s shot, the way it’s written, or even just where it is in the script, but it’s devoid of any tension. I doubt a single person who watches this believed for a second that that scene would be where the character dies, even the stupid people watching it would realise that was never going to happen.

Another issue is how it wastes the location’ Venice is cinematic, but you would not know that from watching this. It could take place in any European city and it wouldn’t require that many changes. It’s a shame as I really enjoyed the first movie, and this feels like a massive step down.

MS. TECH isn’t all negative though. The cast has good chemistry, and Anna Farris is clearly having a lot of fun. There are some genuinely funny moments, especially when someone is getting stone dicks thrown at their face. Taeho K doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page but shows fantastic promise in the small moments he’s given.

Finally, and much more importantly; it’s great to hear an Ashnikko song in a film. Love that shit.

The End We Start From (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: After floods decimate the UK, a new mother does her best to find a safe space for her and her child.

I watched this in the middle of summer, and you’d think a film about torrential rainfall wouldn’t make sense to be watched in the summer. Ordinarily, you’d be right, but you’ve forgotten one thing; I live in England. I’ve spoken before about how the external atmosphere can affect the film-watching experience (I am wondering if part of my disdain for how Oculus ended was because the cinema turned the lights on early), but watching this in a weirdly wet summer definitely changed it, was like having surround sound.

The End We Start From (TEWSF, pronounced Two-soff) sets its genius relatively early on, having the scenes of her giving birth be intercut with scenes of her house being flooded. This is both smart and an obvious thing to do, but obvious like “having cheese on pizza instead of boiled foot dust” is obvious, in that if you did otherwise it would be weird. I do have some issues with the opening section though. It has her husband (referred to as R, and played brilliantly by Joel Fry) be away. With that, you’d assume the story would be about the two of them trying to reach each other. But then he just appears at the hospital after she’s given birth, so his not being in the opening didn’t affect the plot. It’s peculiar when you consider they get separated again. So their on-screen chemistry feels very stop-start. Ordinarily, I’d say “Keep them separated until the end so when the two meet again it feels special”, but that would be a stupid thing to do as it would rob TEWSF of a key scene; the one where R’s parents die. We know one dies but aren’t told anything about how or why until a few scenes later, and when you find out, damn it’s brutal, so, damn, brutal. It all feels real too. COVID taught us a lot (For example; that you should wash your hands after peeing, and that you shouldn’t sneeze directly on people. Both of which are things that apparently needed teaching), but the most sobering thought (so sobering it drives me to drink) was that people are dicks. They need to go to Ladbrokes even if it does kill the person behind the counter who’s forced to work even whilst sick.

I kind of wish we saw more of the world the film takes place in, most of what we see is just the universe surrounding the main character (Jodie Comer, credited as Woman). Much like AQP: DP, it all happens so quickly and the character isn’t at the centre of it. We do see a few other people, but only sporadically. It’s essentially a road movie where we only see the pit stops. As such, we feel like we’re in a weird purgatory where the character spends a lot of time in various places but none long enough to let the audience feel grounded and like we’re getting to know anybody. So much happens, but because they all feel like they have no impact, weirdly it seems like nothing happens.

That’s a shame as I would like to see more of some of the characters; partly as an excuse to see more Gina McKee and Katherine Waterston, especially Waterston who is always incredible. Of course, Comer is great, but that’s to be expected. I was surprised by how good Joey Fry is, I’ve only seen him in comedies, or acting alongside other sitcom actors. He more than holds his own in this. He’s surprisingly key to how this works. Considering it’s about a mother and a newborn child, you’d think it would contain a lot about modern femininity, and it does. But it also tackles masculinity, the feeling that if you’re not a provider then you are failing as a man.

It’s not just the people on screen, there’s a lot of talent behind the camera too. The music is mostly fitting, there is one part where it feels slightly too jaunty for what just happened, but otherwise, it’s dour and depressing. The visuals are sublime too, there are no gorgeous shots in it, but it’s not a movie for beauty, it’s about ugliness. Mahalia Belo has done a fantastic job of directing TEWSF. Even just the little moments are done as well as they could be. There’s a two-second shot of the television networks shutting down, that two seconds is creepier than most horror movies. Watching TEWSF is like wading through a murky puddle, but doing so in the middle of summer so that even when you are nearly stuck, you can still feel the warmth and have a small glimmer of hope of what’s coming.

In summary, it has flaws, but it’s incredibly powerful and definitely worth your time. Although I do question the logic of the main character crying so much during a flood; that’s just making it worse.

IF (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A young girl discovers she can see everybody’s imaginary friends.

John Krasinski has had a weird film career, especially as a director. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was a comedy-drama based on a series of short stories by David Foster Wallace. The Hollars was standard film student drama fare. Then came A Quiet Place. If you thought that was a weird transition, nothing will prepare you for this.

It kind of makes sense though. There are many similarities in visual/narrative storytelling between horror and kids’ fantasy. Both of them depend heavily on effective world-building, creating something unbelievable but making it believable, and both depend on a “WOW!” shot, where the audience is made aware of the scale of what’s happening. He does a good job though; there are not that many moments where the visuals feel cheap or distracting in a way that takes you out of what you’re watching. On the other hand, there are not that many visuals that will stick with you. There’s nothing that makes you think “f*ck damn that is cinema”. I can’t imagine a child watching this and having a scene stick with them that they’ll remember forever.

The story will though. It’s incredibly sweet. Yes, people who have seen a lot of films and are familiar with story structure etc will guess the ending relatively early on, mainly because it’s the only way that plot holes aren’t created. But if you’re one of those fortunate people who can just sit and watch something without overanalyzing everything, you’re in for a treat. It has a sense of genuine heart and warmth to it. It does look like it’s heading in one direction, and I’m pleased it went in another way. The new way ended up being able to display much more heart. Spoilers, I watched this the same day as I saw Inside Out 2: Inside Harder. I didn’t expect THIS to be the film that slightly broke me. The moments where we see some of the characters “reunite” with their childhood IFs are genuinely delightful and emotionally powerful. They’re helped by the performances, Reynolds does exactly what you expect (For better and worse), the vocal performances are all good but most are too brief to matter that much (the fact that Brad Pitt is credited as an invisible and silent character is hilarious though), Cailey Fleming is incredible considering her young age, especially considering she’s playing a character at that awkward age where they want to be seen as an adult, but they are still kids. Alan Kim is fun whenever he’s on-screen, and Fiona Shaw provides a touch of “theatre, darling” prestige.

The biggest criticism is that it feels kind of dated. There is a distinct lack of technology and mobile phones present. If this was firmly set in the 90s, that criticism would disappear so it is kind of weird that they didn’t just do that. It also takes FAR too long to get to the point. I know it has quite a bit to set up, but it spends forever getting to the main premise that you’ve paid to see.

Those are minor criticisms though. Overall I enjoyed it. It’s not going to change your worldview forever, but there is a chance it might remind you about the joys of innocence and inner strength. It handles topics such as bereavement (and fear of it in regards to others) and childhood anxiety with sensitivity and class. It very rarely puts a step wrong, but it also rarely puts one forward in amazement. It’s a difficult film to really LOVE, but it’s an incredibly easy film to like.