Tag: Gran Turismo

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

Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A player wins a series of Nissan-sponsored video game competitions through his gaming skills and becomes a real-life professional race car driver.

Yes, colloquially this is known as Gran Turismo, and if you tell people about it, you’re going to say “I saw Gran Turismo at the cinema”, but the official title (at least in UK markets) is Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story (or GT: BOATS, pronounced Git Boats). I say that now for two reasons: one is accuracy. The other is because it’s a stupid f*cking title. It’s a title that feels like it was decided by a committee with no idea how actual people talk. That sums up the experience of watching GT BOATS, to be honest. It has no emotion, no personality, it’s film as product and marketing rather than storytelling. There’s no actual humanity to the whole thing. It attempts it; the moment where Mardenborough crashes and kills a spectator is the closest the whole thing gets to showing genuine emotion. Fun fact; the crash did happen to the real Jann Mardenborough (who plays his character’s stunt double in this, which I thought was a nice touch). But it didn’t happen when he was training. In real life it happened four years into his career, in this, it is showcased as an event which motivated him to a podium finish. Some may say this is disingenuous, but Mardenborough wanted it in there, saying “It would have been a disservice for the audience for that not to be in there”. Would it? Would it really? Also, at the wish of sounding rude, that’s not your decision to make, yes you were injured, but someone else died. So unless you got permission from the family, then it feels kind of exploitative. Tbh, it feels that way in the film itself, even without the wider context. The fact that someone died is given away in dialogue that’s almost throwaway. The film seems to be saying: yes, somebody died, but look on the bright side, it inspired the lead character to win so it’s all good.

None of the faults of this film lies on the head of the performers btw. Archie Madekwe has a great screen presence and could have a good future ahead of him. David Harbour seems to be doing his best impression of Tough Enough Season 5 era Bill DeMott (just without the sexual and physical abuse). Orlando Bloom seems to be transitioning out of his heartthrob era, and I’m all for it. Not every performance is worth a positive comment though: Djimon Hounsou is completely wasted in such a small role, and he’s not helped by the fact he has to act alongside Geri Halliwell. Well, I say “act alongside”, it feels more like he’s acting against her, with her utterly dismal performance dragging him down with her. I’m sure her being married to the team principal of a Formula 1 team had nothing whatsoever to do with the choice to cast her. I kind of hope she was forced upon the production because I can’t bear to stand the idea that someone saw her performance and thought “Yup, she’s the best choice”.

It’s a shame I didn’t like this as it is an interesting story. Someone being chosen to join a race team because they were good at a video game is a fascinating story. But it shows its hand far too early. It’s so desperate to tell you how realistic the game is, that it never gives us any reason to doubt that he’s actually a good racer. There’s no “but will the skills be transferable?” conflict, he’s almost immediately very good. He goes through the training programme very quickly. Personally, I would have liked to have seen more of that. The section with the group of gamers training and being evaluated is the most interesting part of the film. Partly because there’s an interesting set of characters, all of whom are flawed but still likeable. They’re all in the same position, and from all over the world so you have a wealth of eclectic characters to work with. Instead, the film spends most of the time with the background characters being a group of spoiled rich dicks, but never focusing on or fleshing them out. They’re more annoyances than proper antagonists. The shift from “training camp” to “driving in Le Mans” also changes how some of the other characters are; they go from potential antagonists to helpful friends. It’s completely inconsistent and means we don’t really have much of a conflict. It’s all “Will he become a proper driver” when we know he will otherwise there’s no story. If he was working against somebody then at least they’ll be something there the audience can latch onto.

The lack of a compelling narrative might have been easy to ignore if it at least looked good. But it doesn’t. It looks too much like a video game, even when it’s not meant to. The scenes where it’s supposed to look like a video game are a weird choice. There are videogame style overlays over some of the races, to indicate how he sees the world. But it makes it seem TOO much like a video game. Having someone say “This isn’t a video game” and then making it seem exactly like a video game slightly undermines the message, somewhat. The races don’t look that exciting. There are too many close-ups of the internal machinery firing up etc, I’m sure for people who like cars it means something, but to everybody else, it just looks like small bits of metal and fire doing shit. There’s not even a decent soundtrack to the whole thing.