Tag: Film

2023 In Film: Day Seven (The Good)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Man Called Otto

Ups: Very sweet.

Genuinely touching at times.

Downs: Tom Hanks doesn’t make a believable grumpy old bastard.

Some characters seem a bit pushy, I’d be annoyed at them too.

Occasionally a bit too “old man yells at cloud” with how it treats younger people.

Best Moment: There’s a seasonal transition that is the most perfect I’ve ever seen. It’s a standard shot that I’ve seen many times. But in this, it’s done so seamlessly (and during a scene in motion) that it stands out.

Worst Moment: Marisol laughs when she finds out Otto nearly died because his heart is too big. I get why it’s funny, the irony of a grumpy person having a big heart etc. But for her to react so openly makes her appear slightly callous.

Best Performer: Mariana Treviňo. Her character could be annoying if played badly, but Mariana plays her with an infectious warmth.

Opening: Otto tries to kill himself. Well, he’s at the shop buying the stuff and gets into an argument. It’s an effective way to demonstrate the character, but again it feels a bit “grrr, young people are useless today” because they’re bound by corporate policies they can’t control. News flash to every person out there; the teenager behind the till at Mcdonald’s is not responsible for the prices or the menu, so don’t yell at them about this, if you do, you’re a prick.

Closing: Otto dies, leaving the house to Marisol and her family. It is very sweet and lovely, although maybe he should have left something to his lifelong neighbour who is about to incur huge medical expenses in the next few years due to an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s.

Best Line: “Your father doesn’t support you just because you’re trans? Then he’s an idiot”. It’s nice that even though the character is fueled mostly by anger, he is still pro-trans rights.

Original Review here

Air

Ups: 2 hours, but doesn’t feel it.

Incredibly well-written.

Downs: There’s no dramatic tension because we know how it ends.

None of the actors feel like they’re pushing themselves.

Distracting amount of swearing at times.

Best Moment: Where Matt Damon is telling Jordan’s parents about how his life will go. How the public will both worship and resent him.

Worst Moment: In that same moment where we find out about his fathers’ death. Such an important part of his future life is underplayed.

Best Performer: Matt Damon

Opening: Nike are nearly closing down their basketball shoe division. It’s weird to think of Nike being shown as an underdog.

Closing: Standard “what happened next”.

Best Line: Damon’s entire speech to Jordan’s parents.

Original Review here

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

Ups: Kang looks like a formidable villain for the next stage.

Some good visuals.

Funny

Kathryn Newton is a good addition to te MCU

Downs: M.O.D.O.K

Inconsistent CGI

The MCU REALLY needs to start moving forward.

Best Moment: How Kang gets Scott to help. Spectacularly brutal.

Worst Moment: M.O.D.O.K . Words cannot exaggerate how stupid that looked.

Best Performer: Kathryn Newton

Opening: Opens with Janet meeting Kang. Nice way to get people excited for what’s next.

Closing: Everything is fine, but it might not be. There’s an ominous feeling that Scott can’t shake off.

Best Line: “Oh, you’re an Avenger. Have I killed you before? They all blend together after a while.” Really sells Kang as a threat.

Original Review here

Champions

Ups: Funny.

Has more heart than you’d expect

Surprisingly subversive at times.

Actually cast actors with Down syndrome.

Downs: Doesn’t have that little extra something to make it stand out

Too predictable at times.

May come across as patronising to some.

Best Moment: When we find out why Darius won’t play for Marcus. Some great character stuff.

Worst Moment: The NBA coaching sub-plot

Best Performer: Madison Tevlin

Opening: Marcus gets fired from his job after shoving his boss. Good way of showcasing both his talent and his anger issues.

Closing: A chumbawamba sing-along. Fun.

Best Line: Your heart’s a long way from your knee. Suck it up!

Original Review here

Elemental

Ups: Very sweet.

Good pacing

Downs: I get what they’re going for, but if you’re pushing a story about tolerance, maybe don’t have one of the people involved be a constant threat to the other one. “People who are different from you can kill you” may give out the wrong intention.

The music is a little weak.

Very predictable story.

Best Moment: When Ember is taken to see a flower, incredibly sweet and gorgeous to look at.

Worst Moment: The whole leak sub-plot feels first draft.

Best Performer: Mamoudou Athie

Opening: Bernie and Cinder move to Element City. Very cute, but nowhere near as good as similar scenes you’ve seen before.

Closing: Wade and Ember move to a different city. Again, very predictable, but sweet.

Best Line: The shop was never the dream. You were the dream. You were always the dream

Original Review here

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Ups: Incredibly important.

Well-written characters

Best website.

Downs: Needs to be shorter.

Weak music

Doesn’t focus on the wider implications as much as it should.

Best Moment: The conversation about what they’re about to do. Feels genuine, and says a lot about how society treats revolutionaries.

Worst Moment: The explosion itself. Its not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t feel like something that everything has been building towards.

Best Performer: Ariela Barer

Opening: A woman is nervously walking down a street, making sure nobody notices when she lets the air out of a tyre. She then places a leaflet on the vehicle explaining why. I checked, and the leaflet is fully typed out. I appreciate that. We then see a small group of other people preparing in different ways; some clone their security cameras, some throw their phones away etc. Very “heist”.

Closing: The pipeline is blown up; a few members of the group take the fall. A very dark ending considering what we know is going to happen to some of them soon.

Best Line: “But by the time the market solution does shit, billions will be dead……we need to start attacking the things that are killing us”.

Original Review here

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

Ups: Some of the best sound design you’ll see (hear?)

The best Shrek film since the first

Provides a good sense of existential dread for a kids’ film.

Downs: The suitcase of villainy is a bit overpacked.

Two of the voices seem a bit too similar.

The physics doesn’t work sometimes.

Best Moment: The death montage

Worst Moment: The sequel hook.

Best Performer: Harvey Guillen

Opening: Standard fairy-tale opening about wishes. Doesn’t inspire hope.

Closing: A sequel hook. Eugh.

Best Line: “You’re not gonna shoot a puppy, are you?”

“yeah, right in the face. Why?”

Original Review here

Renfield

Ups: Fun

Bloody

Clearly made by people who have researched the mythos

Dracula looms over the film even when he’s not physically in it

Downs: Could go further

Predictable at times.

Needs stronger supporting villains

Best Moment: Renfield disposing of gang members in a restaurant

Worst Moment: The ending.

Best Performer: Awkwafina

Opening: A retelling of the Dracula myth.

Closing: A group of dead people have been brought back to life. Because who wants consequences in their movie?

Best Line: You know when something crazy happens and someone’s like, “It’s okay. I’ve seen way worse?” Everything I saw you do today is gonna be my “way worse.”

Original Review here

Return To Seoul

Ups: Very sweet.

Park is incredible.

Truly emotional.

Cool music, reminds me of 27

Downs: The sound is a bit off at times. Particularly in the restaurant scene. Feels like they forgot to put in background noise for a lot of it.

Given a UK release in the same year as Past Lives

Best Moment: An employee has found her mother. Top work from everybody involved performance-wise. She is never more vulnerable than at that moment.

Worst Moment: When she’s dancing on her own in a bar, it’s written and performed brilliantly. But it’s shot via a lot of close-ups so you don’t really get her sense of social isolation. Not the “worst” moment per se, but the gap between what it could have been and what it is is quite huge.

Best Performer: Ji-Min Park

Opening: K-Pop on headphones being listened to by a hotel worker who is then interrupted by a customer who wants to check into the hotel, rude I know. A quite cute moment between two people ended with “But you’re French!”. Good way of showing her cultural identity and confusion. And it’s a very cute moment between the two characters.

Closing: She sends an e-mail to her mother, getting a “This e-mail address is no longer valid” response.

Best Line: “You’re A Very Sad Person”

Original Review here

Saw X

Ups: Bloody.

Has one of the most despicable characters in the history of the franchise.

More mature than it needs to be.

Rewards patience.

Downs: It’s a prequel, so all sense of tension is gone from certain scenes.

Not as cathartic as other entries

Pointless.

Best Moment: The bone marrow trap is deliciously disgusting.

Worst Moment: The conclusions to most of the traps. They feel too timed-based. So many of them nearly make it and if they were given 5 seconds more would have completed it. This goes against Jigsaws’ modus operandi of testing people; technically they did pass the test and proved how much they were willing to sacrifice, but because they were slightly slower than Jigsaw thought they should be, they die.

Best Performer: Tobin Bell

Opening: Kramer is at a cancer support group. An incredibly mature and bloodless way to start, almost like a proper movie.

Closing: The main villain is left trapped in a room, presumably to die. Shame, she’s truly detestable and it would have been good to actually see her comeuppance rather than just know.

Best Line: This is not retribution. It’s a reawakening.

Original Review here

Scream 6

Ups: It doesn’t miss Sidney as much as you think it would.

New York changes it, turns it into a completely different type of slasher.

Disgustingly brutal kills,

Downs: The online conspiracy that Sam really killed everyone doesn’t ring true.

So Gale can do research on finance records of dead people but isn’t a good enough journalist to realise family connections? BS

Worst reveal in a Scream movie so far.

Gale’s character seems to have relapsed into her Scream 1 version

Best Moment: The subway scene. A perfect use of location.

Worst Moment: The reveal. Have you seen a movie before? Then you’ll be able to guess at least 2 out of the 3 killers. It’s far too obvious.

Best Performer: Melissa Barrera

Opening: A professor is killed by Ghostface, who then immediately unmasks. Genuinely shocked me.

Closing: Somehow everyone survives. That’s a big issue with this film is how unscathed the main characters remain throughout.

Best Line: “Not every movie needs a post-credits scene.” as a post-credits scene

Original Review here

2023 In Film: Day Two (The Bad)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Films which I didn’t like, but I can at least appreciate brought SOMETHING to the table

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom

Ups: Great chemistry between the leads.

Potentially good villain.

Momoa is still the best possible Aquaman.

Always fun to see Randall Park.

Downs: Feels pointless.

Boring story.

The villain is defeated too easily.

Best Moment: The trident backstory.

Worst Moment: The final fight, is so underwhelming.

Best Performer: Momoa

Opening: Aquaman is telling his story to his kid. Cute, and a fun introduction to the character.

Closing: Atlantis reveals itself to the UN, something that won’t matter AT ALL as this iteration of the DCEU is over.

Best Line: No one hits my brother, but me!

Original Review here

Asteroid City

Ups: Unique look.

Fun performances.

Sweet at times.

Downs: Dull.

Far too Wes Anderson. I know such a shock for a West Anderson film. But if you don’t like his usual fare, this won’t change your mind.

Best Moment: The Montana/June subplot, because it isn’t really given enough time, and doesn’t seem to be saying anything that’s not said in any of the other plots.

Worst Moment: The conversation between the actor playing Augie and the woman playing his dead wife. Quite sweet.

Best Performer: Jeffrey Wright

Opening: Brian Cranston (playing a TV show host) introduces a televised production of the Asteroid City play. It’s at this point I realised what kind of film this is going to be, and how divisive it would be.

Closing: The quarantine is lifted and everybody leaves. Augie gets the address for Midge, and Woodrow receives a scholarship.

Best Line: We’re just two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of our pain because… we don’t want to.

Original Review here

Cat Person

Ups: It has some interesting themes.

Depressingly relevant.

Sometimes very funny,

Downs: Loses focus.

Since a lot of the worst things happen in her imagination, it doesn’t seem to ring true how terrible he is.

Best Moment: The sex scene. Fun, creative, and allows you a look into her psyche.

Worst Moment: The imagination spots.

Best Performer: Geraldine Viswanathan

Opening: She flirts with a guy at her work. Not really sure why. At no point did we see WHY she would be into him.

Closing: She meets someone at her work, thus repeating the cycle.

Best Line: Things have changed on the surface, which means they haven’t really changed at all

Original Review here

Dumb Money

Ups: Funny in parts.

Definitely has an audience.

Interesting story being told

Downs: But being told very badly.

Paced terribly.

Doesn’t do a good enough job of explaining itself.

Weird music choices.

Best Moment: Marcos quitting his job.

Worst Moment: Most of the editing decisions.

Best Performer: Paul Dano

Opening: I genuinely can’t remember.

Closing: A very depressing “here’s what happened to everybody”, but it doesn’t have the anger needed to be effective. It seems too morally neutral.

Best Line: “I like the stock”

Original Review here

Ferrari

Ups: Good race scenes.

Doesn’t sugarcoat history.

Does a really good job of showcasing the era.

Downs: Everybody’s an asshole.

Needs more Italians

Best Moment: The aftermath of the crash at the end. Really sells how brutal it is.

Worst Moment: The set-up to that. It foreshadows it way too obviously. Introducing another family just to kill them.

Best Performer: Penelope Cruz

Opening: Text telling us the company was founded in 1947, we then cut to 1957. Not entirely sure why we needed to be told that, and only that. Either give us more detail about the financial state of the company or say nothing.

Closing: The wife dies and finally the son can be recognised as a Ferrari and now runs the company. I think the film thinks that’s a happy ending.

Original Review here

Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story

Ups: Good performances

Interesting story

David Harbor is entertaining

Downs: Geri Halliwell is terrible

The theme of “it’s not like a video game” doesn’t mesh well with making all the races look like video games.

Best Moment: The section at the training camp.

Worst Moment: The crash, only because it’s a little weird.

Best Performer: David Harbor.

Best Line: You get extra points for that in the game?

Original Review here

It’s A Wonderful Knife

Ups: Some very creative shots, where she’s wearing red in a room that’s almost entirely washed out.

The town becoming more nihilistic due to a serial killer is a smart move.

Downs: A little too unsubtle.

Takes a while to become a horror movie.

Best Moment: Weirdo revealing they were going to commit suicide.

Worst Moment: There’s a shot of her exiting the house which is overexposed as fuck.

Best Performer: Jane Widdop/Jessie McLeod

Opening: An advert for a shopping/entertainment destination. Sets up comedy really quickly. Then a scene with the person from the video turning on a Christmas tree, in case you couldn’t tell this was a Christmas film from the title.

Closing: She goes back to her timeline. Somehow Bernie can remember from the other timeline but nobody else can. Maybe would have been better if they left it more subtle and hinted at a relationship starting rather than having her already remember, seems kind of cheap.

Best Line: “I wasn’t Clarence, you were”

Original Review here

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerra

Ups: Some funny lines

Talented ensemble cast.

It’s always nice to see Carey Elwes again.

Downs: Lacks identity.

Doesn’t feel very Guy Ritchie

Jason Statham has never come off more Garth Marenghi

Best Moment: The moments with Hugh Grant.

Worst Moment: When we meet the two tech moguls, mainly because of how underwhelming it all is.

Best Performer: Hugh Grant.

Opening: Carys has been summoned and told to retrieve something that gets stolen. A weirdly subdued opening for a Guy Ritchie film. Nice to see him again though. Also, they explain why it’s called Ruse Du Guerre.

Closing: Fortune takes a holiday and invested his money in a movie based on the events of this film. It’s a decent joke but it goes on far too long.

Best Line: “money doesn’t make you happier.” I tell you what, Danny, it fucking does.

Original Review here

Pearl

Ups: Commits to the style

Great central performance

Clearly a lot of research has gone into it

Downs: No likeable characters

Runs out of steam

Best Moment: Pearl’s monologue near the end. Absolutely stunning.

Worst Moment: The scarecrow sex.

Best Performer: Mia Goth

Opening: Time-period appropriate music, sets up the themes well.

Closing: A very long single shot of Pearl smiling through the pain.

Best Line: Her entire monologue at the end, I don’t have the space to type it all

Original Review here

2023 In Film: Day One (The Awful)

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Spoilers, but 2023 was actually a pretty good year for film. There was a lot of excellent stuff, much more great than awful, but tradition states we must start with the worst, and these are pretty damn bad.

65

Ups: It is good to see spectacle cinema again.

Fun idea.

Pretty good CGI.

Downs: Dull.

No sense of peril, obstacles are approached, defeated, and then forgotten in a few minutes.

Zero reason for it to be set 65 million years in the past rather than in the future.

Terrible title.

Best Moment: When Koa finds out the truth about Mills.

Worst Moment: The parasite nearly killed one of them. Completely inconsequential.

Best Performer: Ariana Greenblatt

Opening: Adam Driver’s character convinces his wife to let him go on a two-year trip to raise money for his daughters’ healthcare. She dies whilst he’s away. All of that information is delivered to the audience FAR too quickly. It would have been better if they opened with the crew members of the ship just sitting around joking, that way when they died we would actually feel something.

Closing: An asteroid hits Earth, killing most life. The audience feels NOTHING.

Best Line: “65 million years ago a visitor crash-landed on Earth”

Original Review here

Assassin Club

Ups: Good idea.

Made it very easy for me to pick “Worst Film of the Year”

Downs: Wastes so much potential.

Stupid character decisions.

Edited in a way that makes parts of it incomprehensible to watch.

Dull.

Best Moment: The subway fight.

Worst Moment: When a mysterious character is unmasked. Because it happens one scene after the concept of them was introduced, so felt like a waste of a mystery.

Best Performer: Henry Golding I guess.

Opening: He tries to kill someone, and helpfully explains his process to the audience, but is shot-blocked.

Closing: I genuinely don’t remember. I think he shot a woman. I stopped caring by this point.

Best Line: However they described the person in the worst moment section, only because it actually created intrigue.

Original Review here

The Pale Blue Eye

Ups: Some lush visuals

Downs: This could have been a chance to showcase some American talent, going with an almost entirely British cast is a strange choice.

Best Moment: The shot of the house burning down, elegant in its simplicity.

Worst Moment: The reveal, when you find out the whole film is balancing on an incredibly convenient coincidence in timing.

Best Performer: Toby Jones

Opening: With an Edgar Allen Poe quote, obviously. The last media I partook in that started like that was Eternal Darkness back in *coughs to obscure date*

Closing: The killer has been revealed. But the film then carries on for another few scenes where we get flashbacks about things we didn’t need to see.

Best Line: “I didn’t want them to confess, I wanted them to die”

Original Review here

Thanksgiving

Ups: Gory

Deliciously satirical

Creative kills

Downs: I hated every single character.

The villain makes too much sense.

Predictable.

Too bleak, stopped caring.

Best Moment: When the killer kidnaps them in the middle of a parade.

Worst Moment: The reveal, because it’s too obvious.

Best Performer: Patrick Dempsey

Opening: The store massacre. Bloody, chaotic, and quite fun. But also renders every main character too unsympathetic to give a shit about.

Closing: The killer’s body wasn’t found. Sequel!

Best Line: “Don’t slide into the killer’s DMs”

Original Review here

Good Burger 2 (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Dexter Reed and cashier Ed reunite at fast-food restaurant Good Burger

Do people like Good Burger? I think it’s like Space Jam, where if you mention it then you will get positive response from people, but it’s not really brought up that much. It also is very limited in their fanbase, people who were kids in the 90s. There’s not really a large number of modern kids and teens being like “You should totally check out this 90s film I just found”. So the market for a sequel would be people who watched the original in the 90s, and now have both disposable income, and an impending sense of time passing which means they want to recapture their youth. So in that sense, a sequel does make sense, and would be a good way for a streaming service like Paramount+ to gain a foothold.

It doesn’t mean the film is good though. The director was asked about a potential sequel to this, and gave the world the following sentence:

“The character of Ed has not changed […] he now has a family, he’s got a bunch of kids and a wife, but he is still the same old Ed. As that doesn’t change, we can just do it again and again and put them in crazier and crazier situations.”

And that’s a problem. It worked when these characters were teenagers, but it’s 25 years later and Ed hasn’t changed, and seeing that level of naivity, stupidity and immaturity, is no longer charming or funny, it’s actually kind of annoying and makes you concerned. It doesn’t feel like a movie, it feels like a television show. A character like that is needed in a TV show because you need an excuse for them to not learn over the course of 25 episodes, but for a 90 minute movie? You’re allowed to have your characters seem human.

There’s also an issue with the way the film handles Kenan Thompson. He’s a TREMENDOUS comedic talent, but he’s forced into a straight man role that doesn’t really suit him. Most of his screen time is him watching crazy shit, and then explaining what he’s just seen in case the audience didn’t understand it.

The best showcase of Kenan Thompson has been his SNL stint, and people who have watched that will know he’s capable of much more than he’s been allowed to show here. Those who haven’t watched SNL? Best of luck with this, as that’s where a lot of the cameos come from.

With only 2 or 3 exceptions, most of them are relatively low-level outside of the US. I watched Wonka recently, and this feels like it’s aiming for similar, but not really doing it. It has a similar method of casting television comedy actors in small parts so that people who watch it can do the DiCaprio point. I felt it worked better in Wonka though, and not just because I actually knew who they were (although that helped). The cameos in Wonka felt like full characters, even if they were only on screen for one scene (thinking specifically of the couple played by Charlotte Richie and Phil Wang), so that they didn’t feel like cameos, they felt like characters who just happened to be played by comedy performers. Good Burger has the cameos be so obvious that it’s distracting. It puts them front and centre, over the lead actors. You can almost sense the “look, it’s [person]! Applause”. It’s like when I watched the Uncharted movie and the cameo of the original voice actor stood out like a sore thumb covered in fairy lights, begging for people to notice it. “I don’t know who that is, but I assume that’s somebody” is the general feeling.
It’s not all negative though, there is some tremendously funny dialogue with some genuine laugh out loud moments. The scene where Ed is introducing his family has some really randomly funny lines. “he’s allergic to hippos” was my personal favourite because it’s just so stupid and wonderful. Whilst I did say Thompson was miscast, he is still pretty good at what he has to do in this. Kamaia Fairburn is talented as hell and has great potential, as do the Hinkler sisters, who in their all-too-brief moments show enough that I feel casting directors need to focus on developing a vehicle for them.
There’s one area where this is a definite improvement over the first one: no creepy sex pest Dan Schneider, which as anybody who has read I’m Glad My Mom Died (or has heard anything said about him in the last few years), is a definite good thing. The ending reprise of “We’re All Dudes” is also pretty damn entertaining.

Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: Ginger and Rocky are now raising a child, one with ambitions of leaving the farm they raised her in.

The original Chicken Run has a weird place in people’s hearts. It doesn’t feel like it’s many people’s favourite film, there’s not exactly a rabid fanbase who do yearly showings and conventions about it and discuss its themes at left. That being said, it is a comfort film for many people. It’s a film which whilst people don’t LOVE, it does give them a place of warmth and security. That’s, you know, if you ignore the Mel Gibson of it all.

The recasting of Gibson made a lot of sense, his career has never really recovered from people discovering he’s a massive racist (by which I mean, “he uses racist words”, not “he sometimes criticises Israel when they kill children”). Whilst he’s not box office poison (the reaction to Hacksaw Ridge proves that), he is box office Evri, his involvement will drive more people away than it will bring them in. Zachary Levi is a good replacement though, providing enough emotion and vocal depth to the performance that you don’t really miss Gibson. I have a bigger issue with Thandiwe Newton being in this. Julia Sawalha was great in the first one, and her being recast for seemingly no reason genuinely annoys me. It’s claimed it’s because she sounded too old, but Newton is only 4 years younger, so maybe it was to get a bigger name? Either way, it’s bullshit, and did kind of sour the whole experience for me.

It kind of sums up my issues with the film. It doesn’t seem to have the same warmth and cosiness as the original. It feels more, well not cynical, but more business-like, as if they were focused on the reaction it was going to get rather than what they were making. It has a Paloma Faith song. That somehow feels wrong, she’s too cool for this. Especially since it seems to be recorded especially for the soundtrack. It just kind of feels like a tonal misfire, it would be like if Wallace and Gromit used a Stormzy track.

That’s a shame, if this was a stand-alone film, I would rate it relatively high. It’s funny, it looks good, and it’s f*cking weird at times. A joke involving an eye-scanner made me laugh so much that I spat out tea (such a sad waste of tea). It is also genuinely unsettling at times, more kids’ films should aim to occasionally scare the living shit out its intended audience. There’s one area where this is better than the original; it has much more emotion. It definitely has an air of “aiming at the parents as well as the kids” with how it’s got themes of parental worry and a need for independence.

I mentioned the cast briefly, this has quite a few new voices, and they work. Bella Ramsey sounds exactly how that character should sound; with the right mix of youthful enthusiasm and paranoia. My personal favourite was Josie Sedgwick-Davies, who (at the time of writing) doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Her character could be annoying if it was voiced wrong, but Sedgwick-Davies makes it work, with her character coming off as endearing rather than frustrating (it helps that her voice makes her sound like someone who goes on Bake Off and bakes rainbow cakes which look weird). She’s absolutely fantastic and I love her in this. Curious as to what she does next, but she’s on my radar for now so I’m hoping it’s something good.

So in summary; because this is on Netflix, I’d say you should watch it. It’s a great Netflix film, but only a good Aardman one. If you’re looking for a good family movie, you could do a lot worse than go with this. I mean, you could also do a lot better, but still.

A Kind Of Kidnapping (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: A young, broke couple kidnap a sleazy politician who decides he can spin the story to his advantage.

I wanted to like this, I really did. If you can, check out the absolutely SUBLIME television series How Not To Live Your Life. From that, it’s clear that Dan Clark has a lot of talent, not just for the absurd, but also for finding humanity, with an almost Seinfeldien level of talent for making you root for characters who by all rights you should dislike. Plus, I love a good political satire, and this looked like it might be that. Alas, it was not to be.

I’ll start with the positive, Dan Clark is a hell of a director. He could have gotten away with this being low-budget and grim, but it’s really slick and has a big-budget feel, albeit one of those big-budget films mainly played in theatres that cater to cinema snobs. The performances are all pretty solid too. Leila Hoffman isn’t in it for long but shines when she is in it. Patrick Baladi was born for this kind of role, he has Thick Of It face. He’s perfect to play a slimy opportunistic Tory wanker.

Now onto the bad; it just feels a bit too mean-spirited. We know politicians are shits, so if the sharpest your satire gets is showing us that, it will feel a little weak. Good satire should be an explosive firebomb of inspiration, this is more like a pathetic discharge of a mouse coughing. It’s not telling us anything we don’t already know, and it doesn’t offer any glimpse of an opportunity to change anything. If anything, all this has to say is “The ruling class are shit, deal with it”. The pacing is a bit odd too. The moment where Baladi’s character doesn’t want to go because he realises it’s good for his career possibly should have come earlier. It’s the main gimmick of the film and it doesn’t occur until a third of the way through the runtime.

This wouldn’t matter if the rest of the time was well spent, if a holiday is good enough, you don’t mind the queues to get there. But the other two-thirds of the runtime feels kind of wasted. There’s not enough in there that wasn’t in the trailer.

Don’t get me wrong, this does have some cracking dialogue; my personal favourites:

“Japs Eye is not very PC, in fact, it’s pretty racist”

And, this is the only film to have “if you do that again I’ll put a bullet in your dick” as a threat.

I like the dialogue, I like the concept, I like the performances, I like the direction, but the film didn’t really do it for me. I can tell they tried though. There’s a lot you can say about this, but you can’t say it’s low effort. I’ve given negative reviews to a lot of films, but this is one of the few I’ve felt genuinely guilty about writing. That’s probably because when I shit on something like Assassin Club or Wolf, I don’t see myself in those films. They’re not the kind of scripts I would write, or the mistakes they make are ones I would never make. But this? A sweary political satire that kind of lacks focus and passion? I could do that. This feels like something I would do, so I see any issues more easily, I take them more personally out of my own personal fear of failure.

It’s A Wonderful Knife (2023) Review

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Quick synopsis: Winnie wants to see what the world would be like if she had never been born and is shocked to find out that if she didn’t stop a serial killer, people would die.

It’s hard NOT to compare this to Totally Killer. I mean, you can also compare to Freaky and Happy Death Day, but the “person in familiar yet new environment” is more applicable to TK. That was fun and had good ideas and logical storytelling. And I actually enjoyed TK. This? Not a fan. I think it’s because I expected it to be much better than it was.

If you’re doing a parody of an iconic film like It’s A Wonderful Life, you need to go all in. You can’t gently kiss or tease the concept, you need to fuck it. You need to make it as fun as possible and play with expectations and societal differences in regards to what was acceptable in the original, and what isn’t now.

Importantly, you need a lot of thought and love. This kind of seems like they came up with the title first, and then the idea whilst having no idea how to flesh that idea out. The Wonderful Life comparisons aren’t as central as they could be. For most of the movie, it doesn’t really matter. A lot of the central problems aren’t related to her, it’s just standard “there’s a killer on the loose” mixed with “alternate universe”. The “here’s what it would be like if you never existed” differences are ONLY related to the murders. Which is my central problem; she stopped a serial killer. She knows this. So her “I don’t matter, I’ve never done anything important” attitude doesn’t really ring true. Might have made more sense if her absence in the town CREATED the killer somehow, like she stopped someone on their path of darkness etc. Because at the moment it’s “without you stopping a serial killer, that serial killer KILLED PEOPLE!” *dun dun dun*. She only gets to that feeling of worthlessness because her parents take a personality change from the opening to the “one year after”. In the opening they’re normal and kind parents, afterwards, they’re swaggering bags of douche cleanse. If it played into “they’re traumatised too so they don’t know how to talk to their daughter” it would work. But at the moment they’re the kind of people who buy their son a new car, and their daughter a single item of clothing (I think was a jumper). To be fair, the rest of the characters aren’t that smart. One character punches the killer and then runs into the dark woods rather than BACK INTO THE HOUSE. I mean, luckily it ends up working for her but still.

The other timeline isn’t that interesting either. For one thing, it would have been more interesting if the killer from the first timeline died early in the second but the killings continued. Then there’d be a sense of mystery. And it wouldn’t make the characters seem so lazy. At the moment she goes into a new timeline, realises the mayor is still killing people, and then goes to watch a movie. This would be so easy, especially since there IS another killer in this timeline, but they don’t reveal that until very late on. The only twist is some mind-control gimmick, but that doesn’t count as a worthwhile twist because it’s fucking stupid.

We’re also not given enough time to really explore the new reality. Which is linked to another problem; the pacing. It takes 8 minutes for the film to realise it’s a horror movie, and 15 minutes to get to the title card, IN A 90 MINUTE MOVIE. It takes her almost half the run-time to discover what kind of movie she’s in.

Now onto the good, there are some beautiful shots, especially in regards to the use of colour. There’s a moment where she’s dressed in red whilst in an incredibly washed-out room. I like that the town somehow became more nihilistic in response to an active serial killer, that seems very realistic. There’s a romantic relationship between Winnie and Bernie that is very sweet. The reactions between the two of them are very genuine. They have great chemistry, and apparently, that’s why the relationship between the characters happens as it does, they wanted to take advantage of the actors’ natural chemistry. So whilst it is nice, it’s kind of sad that the best part of the film wasn’t written. The performances are all fine, but I kind of think it might have worked better if Joel McHale and Justin Longs’ characters were switched. As I said, the best parts of the films are all related to the central two; Jane Widdop and Jessie McLeod. I want to see them in a buddy road trip movie, or a weird millennial remake of Thelma and Louise. McLeod is delightfully weird, seeming to operate on a different level from anybody else, and I absolutely love her for it. Those kinds of performances are tricky to do because they can often come off as fake and over the top. McLeod is talented enough that she seems genuine throughout.

So in summary, maybe watch if it’s on TV at Christmas time, but you don’t NEED to see it. If you want a violent Christmas movie, watch Violent Night, if you want a Christmas horror movie, watch Gremlins, if you want a parody horror, watch Totally Killer. This is not the best option for any choice, which I’m sorely disappointed by. This has all the ingredients to be a classic; fun premise, bloody kills, Katherine Isabelle from Ginger Snaps. But instead of utilising those ingredients to make a delicious cake of greatness, it underbakes them and then adds a secret ingredient of piss. If I hadn’t watched Totally Killer 2 days before, I might have been kinder. But it’s hard to watch economy after watching first class.

Cassandro (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Saul Armendariz is a gay luchador wrestler under the name El Topo. His career and life changes when he starts to compete as Cassandro, a flamboyant exotico wrestler.

I’m a big fan of films like this. Professional wrestling is f*cking weird, there’s no other way to say it. The people who fund it are weird, the people who perform it are weird, and the people who watch it are weird. So it usually makes for fantastic watch. But this? It fails to do one basic thing: explaining the lingo, it assumes you know what an exotico is. I mean, I do, because I’m a fucking mark for this business. Unless you know the business, the story won’t mean as much. Not just the aforementioned exotico, but it also doesn’t really do a decent enough job of explaining why certain people are big deals. His match with El Hijo Del Santo was a HUGE deal, Santo is a legend in lucha libre and his importance cannot be overstated. In Cassandro, his importance and relevance aren’t even stated. It’s this kind of attitude which makes it difficult to figure out whether this will appeal to people who aren’t fans of wrestling in the first place. It’s important for a film to know that audiences don’t know everything. Even I know that, and I’m basically an idiot. In my Napoleon review, I originally had a joke about how “This film is long, 157 minutes. Although that’s English minutes, in French minutes it’s much shorter”. That’s an obscure (even by my standards) reference to how the French and English had different calculations for what counted as a foot, which is partly what led to the fallacy that Napoleon was short, listed as being 5 foot 2 when in English measurements he was 5 foot 6. I loved that joke, but I knew if I did, I’d have to explain it, and as has just been proven, that would be dull and shit.

So yeah, this could prove impenetrable for casual moviegoers. For those who know? It’s delightful. It’s not great for providing you a life story, but it does provide a useful foundation for you to want to find out more. It’s helped by the performance of Gael Garcia Bernal, showcasing Cassandro as someone deeply insecure and broken but whose entire wrestling persona is based on overconfidence. His story is deeply emotional to watch unfold, especially the frayed relationship with his homophobic father. Yes, this is a story about professional wrestling, but it’s also a story about finding yourself (always make sure to check down the back of the sofa), about masculinity, and about being true to yourself.

Originally that ended with me saying it’s about bigotry, but it’s really not. The story itself is, but the way it’s told means it doesn’t really come through. The very nature of exotico’s traditionally existed to reinforce negative gay stereotypes. They were/sometimes still are grotesque caricatures of male feminity, whose entire purpose was to repulse and annoy the audience, who would then cheer when the traditionally heterosexual male hero would come along and beat the shit out of them whilst the crowd shouted homophobic slurs. That’s still the world we see in this film, but then he wins them over almost instantly. That kind of undercuts the homophobia he endured, like as soon as they saw him they all changed their minds. It kind of feels like a wasted opportunity. His rise to fame also seems to skip over a few things, so his match with Del Santo doesn’t really feel earned.

I have been a bit harsh to this but it is still a fun watch. His first entrance to a flamenco Spanish-language cover of I Will Survive is fun as hell, and there’s a scene near the end which is an absolutely fantastic piece of performance storytelling. Cassandro is on a talk show and a fan stands up and thanks him for giving him the courage to come out to his father. You can tell this means a lot to Cassandro, but he’s also slightly bitter and jealous that he’s talking to someone who was accepted by their own father when he still isn’t accepted by his. It’s a subtle facial performance and is so damn perfect.

In summary; it’s on Prime so if you have an account you might as well watch it, but you might be best off watching a documentary instead.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2022) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of eco-warriors are frustrated that they’re not being taken seriously, so plan to blow up a pipeline

First off, I am very glad this appeared on Netflix because it means I didn’t have to google “How To Blow Up A Pipeline” (or HTBUAP, pronounced Huh-tub-wapp). My research for horror scripts has already probably already put me on a list.

Films can inspire a lot of different reactions in people. In 2023 alone I’ve had surprise from Missing, joy from Shazam, and utter boredom from The Pale Blue Eye. This? Well considering I mentioned in my Holy Spider review that the theme for this week is anger; you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this made me angry; in a good way. I wasn’t angry in a “this film sucks” way, I was angry in a “how is everybody okay with this happening?”

Everybody in it is frustrated, they’re not annoyed at what may happen, they’re not dealing with “in a hundred years” hypothetical situations, they’re dealing with current consequences, and they’re consequences which people in real life are dealing with. There’s no “but maybe in the future if”, these are things that are happening: farmers are losing their livelihoods from chemical spills killing off their livestock/crops, people ARE being forced from their houses so that companies can build pipelines, people ARE getting cancer due to the effects of pollution. It’s easy to ignore these things when you’re not presented with them, but when you are then it infuriates you. People criticise climate protesters for being angry (even if they’re just standing there waving signs), but after watching things like this; if you’re not angry then you’re not paying attention. It would be easy for this film to come off as preachy or anvilicious. Crucially; there isn’t some big oil baron as the villain, because there’s not one person to defeat to stop this; it’s a systemic problem.

But it’s a problem everybody is encouraged to ignore. The current policy of “If you’re not happy with the planet burning, write a polite e-mail and then the government might do something if they find it profitable”. This is probably because of the way that civil rights are taught. It’s best summed up by one line from the film:

“Anytime anyone has challenged authority they call it terrorism, then when the terrorism works they lie about the legacy and say that it was all passive nonviolent kumbaya bullshit.”

HTBUAP definitely doesn’t shy away from pointing out how everybody regarded MLK as a ruthless terrorist back in the day, and it’s only after he won that public opinion changed. The fact that it reminds you of this is a good indication of how important films like this are.

But is it any good? Yes. It’s engrossing, the non-linear aspect allows us to connect the actions to the consequences, and the motivations. Daniel Goldhaber has a history in horror, a genre which (when done well) is all about gathering sympathy for characters and creating good ensemble chemistry. The cast is fantastic. Ariela Barer, in particular, has a fantastic presence and is utterly captivating to see. HTBUAP is incredibly well made, and it’s quite telling that most of the negative reviews focus on the premise rather than how it’s carried out. I know that’s somewhat hypocritical considering how I spent half this review, but I’m not a paid reviewer for a national newspaper.

It’s not a perfect film, it could definitely stand being trimmed or adjusted slightly so that it doesn’t drag as much as it does. The music could stand out more, there’s a litany of suitable music to choose from, played by artists who I’m sure would love to stand alongside this film, but as it is it’s mostly just “there”. It also could stand to focus more on the outside world; for a topic that affects us all, it feels incredibly localised. It could definitely stand to do what Blackkklansman did and end it with a news montage of the real-world effects of what we’ve seen.

I do have to say though; this has the best website of any film this year. It perfectly matches the themes; with resources for activists who were inspired by it, as well as a free e-book of the book the film is based on. I like that, it shows that the filmmakers are not doing this as performative showmanship activism, they actually care about what happens and want things to change. And for a film like this, you NEED that.

You also need to probably space your watching of it out so you don’t go out and punch strangers in anger.

65 (2023) Review

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Synopsis: Mills (Adam Driver) crashes on earth 65 million years ago and fights dinosaurs.

Oh this is annoying. A title like that, and a film like this, you can almost sense that a review would say “65; a film as dull and unoriginal as the title suggests”, that comment itself would be (ironically) really lazy and predictable. But I can’t think how else to put it. Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs should not be as dull as this. Everything is just incredibly bland and dour. I think the problem is that the premise and the length (93 minutes) would lead you to believe that 65 will be an action-packed thrill-ride, albeit one that is a bit tongue-in-cheek and silly. Instead, the whole thing is far too serious, which feels like a missed opportunity.

That’s actually a good summary: a film of missed opportunities. Throughout, the script makes the wrong choices, goes down the wrong path, eats the wrong berries (I forgot the point I was making). Usually a script is lucky enough that these choices would be placed far apart in a script so that it isn’t too egregious but here it’s unlucky enough that it makes two narrative missteps in the opening.

One: Starting with Mills leaving his family behind so he can take part in a two year expedition. His daughter (Nevine) is sick so he needs to be able to afford healthcare etc. We find out relatively early on that Nevine died midway through Mills’ expedition. That should have been spread out. If we start not knowing this daughter is sick then it can unveil that to the audience through the film, and allow us to mentally go back and use the new knowledge to recontextualise earlier scenes. This doesn’t do that, because it gives us so much, so early on, it kind of feels like there’s no character exploration because we’re told too much early on. It’s the narrative equivalent of not bothering to wrap up Christmas presents. It also means that the film starst off calm and serene, which is the opposite of what you want. If it opened up with the spacecraft crashing then the audience would automatically be on the edge of their seat.

Two: We don’t see anybody else on the ship before it crashes. We aren’t introduced to them, the first time we see them, they’re all dead. This feels like a mistake because it means the audience doesn’t feel anything when they die. If we replaced the opening with a small scene of crew members joking around with each other it would flesh them out, so when everybody dies, the audience would actually feel something. The only other character we see is Koa, and with the exception of her desire to be reunited her parents, the deaths of the crew don’t effect the plot at all. There are no moments where Mills feels particularly haunted by all his colleagues being dead (or walking through their blood, in one of the few effective scenes). So what was the point of it? Why kill off that many people if you’re not going to have it have any baring on the plot?

That’s the other thought 65 provoked in me: Why? There are so many times where I don’t know why the writers made the choices they do. The core one: why is it set 65 million years in the past? Why not just have them as humans in the present day on a distant planet? The fact it’s earth, and in the past, adds NOTHING to the story. The odds that human life would evolve to the EXACT specifications on two different planets is astronomical. Is it just there so they can tie in the giant asteroid that caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event? I think it is. I did think that whole plot made the characters look like idiots. Mills is an experienced spacecraft pilot, so he is aware of what asteroids do. Yet when he spots a giant flaming rock moving gradually closer to earth, he just seems to be like “meh, not my world, not my problem, YOLO”. Both characters are a bit stupid to be honest. Koa traps a small dinosaur in a tunnel and throws a handful of grenades down, one would have done, and the other grenades could have been used for something else. It doesn’t matter in the end, they don’t need the grenades at any point, they were only used in 2 scenes and they didn’t matter. A lot that happens in this doesn’t matter. For example, at one point Mills wakes up and finds that Koa is foaming at the mouth. He opens her mouth and pulls a parasite out, then she recovers. That’s it, from “oh no, this character might die” to “everything’s fine” in less than a minute. The parasite thing isn’t mentioned again, doesn’t threaten the characters again, so ultimately a near-death of a main character means NOTHING. This keeps happening, something seemingly important happens, they get past it, the threat is no longer there. It’s not narrative, it’s video game levels. It might have worked better if the film had more survivors, then we could see them being killed off as the film develops. It would mean the world actually FEELS dangerous, instead of fake danger that we know can’t pierce the characters plot armour.

Of course, this could have been on a different planet with a different asteroid, and nothing would have been different. In fact, it didn’t even need to leave earth. The plot, as it is, would work perfectly fine if it was a character in modern times who is on a ship that lands on a deserted island full of creatures. I mean, that would basically be King Kong, but this is not a film aiming for originality anyway so fuck it.

So in summary; a film clearly aiming for spectacle, but instead ends up being utterly forgettable. Far too many pointless scenes adding up to a pointless movie. It also has possibly the worst title of the year in terms of making it easy to find in a few years time.