Tag: Here

2025 In Film: Day 6 (The Thoroughly Okay)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Complete Unknown
Ups: Good performances.
Sells the time period it’s set in.
Killer soundtrack
Good chemistry between the leads.
Downs: Incredibly unfocused script
Doesn’t really tell you much about who he was.
The narrative doesn’t build effectively to the end.
Best Performer: Scoot McNairy
Best Moment: The first performance of “The Times They Are A-Changin”
Worst Moment: Dylan and Sylvie’s final meeting. Lacks the emotion needed for it to work.
Opening: Dylan travels to see Woody Guthrie in a hospital. Therein lies the problem; it assumes you already know who Woody Guthrie is and why he’s a big deal.
Closing: Johnny Cash approves of Dylans’ actions at the festival. Pretty cool moment, but doesn’t feel like it really closes anything.
Best Line: It was the Newport Folk Festival then, Bob, and it still is the Newport *Folk* Festival! Not the teen dream, Brill Building, Top Forty British Invasion Festival — a *Folk* festival. Do you even remember folk music, Bob?
Original review here

Elio
Ups: Looks incredible.
Very sweet at times.
Some of the aliens are fantastic.
Downs: Underwritten side characters.
They can do better.
Best Performer: Yonas Kibreab
Best Moment: Olga investing.
Worst Moment: Elio showed the Communiverse. Mostly fine, but the backdrop looks a little fake and disconnected.
Opening: Elio is at a diner, hiding under a table as his Auntie tries to get him to eat. Establishes that his parents are dead (because it is still a Disney movie, so dead parents are a necessity), and how isolated he feels.
Closing: People rush out to see aliens. Very beautiful.
Best Line: Since the dawn of time, humans have gazed at the stars and wondered… are we alone? Voyager is our attempt to find out. This intrepid explorer is on a mission, traveling farther than any human has ever gone, to the distant reaches of the cosmos and beyond. Voyager will never see those who made it again. It will drift on, solitary and alone. But maybe one day, distant worlds will receive its message, and Voyager will complete its mission, proving we aren’t so alone after all.
Original review here

Fear Street: Prom Queen
Ups: Doesn’t skimp on the blood.
Era-appropriate.
I will ALWAYS love seeing Katherine Waterston in things.
Downs: It takes too long for certain characters to realise things.
Best Performer: Katherine Waterston
Best Moment: The prom massacre. Violent carnage.
Worst Moment: The dance-off. Feels out of character.
Opening: Narration of “everyone always said I’d either be dead or a killer by graduation, I guess they were right”, blood dripping off a crown, and cool synth music. Yup, sold.
Closing: Someone gets bludgeoned with a trophy. Nicely thematic way to end their life, and I liked that they didn’t die immediately. They collapse, there’s not that much blood, but you can tell by the way they’re speaking that their brain is fucked.
Original review here

Friendship
Ups: Delightfully awkward.
Allows performers to spread their wings.
Downs: The fact he’s recovering from illness doesn’t come up as much as it should.
It WILL be a difficult watch for some.
Ingrid Goes West did it better
Best Performer: Paul Rudd
Best Moment: He meets his neighbours friends. It does not go well.
Worst Moment: The “welcome back” party. Most of his reactions are stupid, but you can kind of understand them. Here? It’s a little harder.
Opening: An awkward help group.
Closing: A hostage wig disaster. Nope, not giving you more information or context.
Best Line: Look, we had a couple of really nice hangs, but I think it best that we go our separate ways. I don’t wish to continue this friendship at the moment.
Original review here

Here
Ups: Unique idea.
Stunning visuals.
Downs: You’re constantly looking for the next scene to start instead of living in the moment.
A lot of wasted time.
The story is trying too hard to move you
Best Performer: Tom Hanks.
Best Moment: The dementia reveal. It’s built up beautifully.
Worst Moment: The modern family. Mainly because it feels like a massive waste of time.
Opening: The house is built. Really its the only way it could open.
Closing: We see outside the house for the first time. Cute, and really the only way it could end. But ties into my theory that the concept was more important than the narrative.
Best Line: I put things off, and I kept putting them off. And I would say, “Oh, we’ll do it next year.” And then that next year would come, and I’d say, “Oh, next year, next year.” And…
Original review here

Saturday Night
Ups: Fascinating time piece.
From a technical perspective, it’s fascinating to see what goes into the making of a show.
Fun to see moments you recognise and get a glimpse at the build-up to them.
Downs: Assumes you know everything already.
Such a cluttered cast that many aren’t given time to shine.
Best Performer: Cory Michael Smith
Best Moment: The argument with the censor.
Worst Moment: Meeting Alan Zweibel. He is a big deal, and very important to SNL. But we’re not given a reason as to why. It assumes we already know, and that moment will be met with “yes! Finally!” like Freddy Mercury joining Queen.
Opening: Lorne arrives at the studio, showing a mix of nervousness and cockiness. Jumps into the plot very quickly, which I appreciate.
Closing: The show starts. Would have appreciated seeing the culmination of what we’ve been building towards. Even if it is just snippets.
Best Line: Art is but a measure of sacrifice and tears
Original review here

September 5
Ups: It’s always good to see people being really good at their job.
Interesting behind-the-scenes look at the event.
Downs: Feels like propaganda at times.
None of the characters feel haunted by their own choices.
Best Performer: John Magaro
Best Moment: The FANTASTIC rug pull at the end when the truth of what happened to the hostages is revealed.
Worst Moment: “Wait, are they watching this?” Because they don’t feel particularly troubled by it. They realise the hostage-takers are using the footage they’re shooting to keep abreast of developments, and at no point show guilt that they exacerbated the situation.
Opening: The crew is setting up for the day. Considering it’s about a specific day, you have to start at the beginning of that day. I’d have preferred a faux documentary to keep us up to date with the political landscape at the time. We’re thrown into it with no knowledge of what led to the events.
Closing: He’s told he did a good job. Despite alerting the attackers to the police plans, exposing their viewpoints to a worldwide audience, and providing false hope. But those ratings.
Best Line: “So I… I don’t know about the Israelis, but David Berger’s folks are in Ohio, so I’m pretty sure they’ll watch.”
“Then tell them not to watch it”
Mainly because it demonstrates their shitness.
Original review here

Shelby Oaks
Ups: Incredibly creepy.
Rife with lore, all the characters feel real, as does the world they live in.
Downs: Loses focus in the final third.
Not as interesting once it stops being found-footage.
Best Performer: Camille Sullivan.
Best Moment: The format switch. Genius.
Worst Moment: The final showdown in the house, feels too much like a Conjuring movie.
Opening: An explanation of Riley’s disappearance. Exactly how a story like this should begin.
Closing: The death of Riley. It’s a bit of a bummer that we spend so long looking for this character, only for her to die.
Original review here

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Ups: Reminds you just how good Springsteen is.
An important look at men’s mental health issues.
The weird shit? That all happened.
Downs: Invents a character, seemingly just to make Springsteen look like a dick.
Seems to be deliberately avoiding a mass audience.
Avoids a lot of what you want to see.
Best Performer: Jeremy Allen White
Best Moment: When he plays at a local club. It really captures the energy of those smaller gigs.
Worst Moment: The end of his relationship with Faye. He does not come out of that looking good.
Opening: Bruce is on top of the world, which only fuels his anxieties about what to do next. Interesting move, to have him already be a big deal, skipping the usual biopic tropes.
Closing: A “what happened next”. Turns out, Springsteen became quite successful.
Original review here

The Ballad Of Wallis Island
Ups: Much more sedate than you’d think it would be.
Carey Mulligan is lovely.
Downs: The ending switch doesn’t seem as genuine as it could.
Ultimately, rather forgettable.
Best Performer: Tim Key
Best Moment: The peanut butter cup
Worst Moment: Michael chewing out Herb (not literally). Doesn’t seem like the kind of cruelness that character would do.
Opening: Herb arrives at an island, disappointed that there’s no harbour and he has to swim to shore.
Closing: He plays the gig, but for free. Very sweet. Also, very telling that for the song in the closing credits, he chooses his real name, not his recording name.
Best Line: “saying my own name isn’t name-dropping”
Original review here

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
Ups: Incredibly disturbing at times.
Some great performances.
Downs: Reveal isn’t set up as well as it could be.
Feels a bit pointless.
Doesn’t know what to do with its own revelations.
Best Performer: Maika Monroe
Best Moment: The villain reveal. Truly chilling.
Worst Moment: The lead-up to the baseball bat death could have been shortened by a second. Also, the sex scene felt a bit superfluous.
Opening: A very cinematic fire.
Closing: The daughter has copied Polly’s mannerisms.
Original review here

The Long Walk
Ups: Tense
The Barkovitch characterisation is intriguing.
Brutal and unforgiving.
Great performances
Downs: Could have done with more background into the world.
The central concept doesn’t ring true.
Best Performer: David Jonsson
Best Moment: Ray meets his mothers on the walk. Heartbreaking.
Worst Moment: When they walk up a hill. Mainly because it feels like a cheap way for the film to kill large groups of people.
Opening: Ray is being driven to the walk. Feels a bit of a shit move to make people so poor they’d risk death have to fund their own way to a random part of the country.
Closing: Peter keeps walking after killing the major. Makes sense, but feels a bit sudden.
Best Line: You walk as long as you can. But sometimes the body won’t listen. For some, your heart will stop. For others, your brain. And the blood will flow… suddenly. There’s one winner and no finish line.
Original review here

The Penguin Lessons
Ups: Very emotional.
Cute moments.
Political, but in a way that people might not notice.
Downs: We don’t really know that much about him before he gets the penguin. Which lessens the supposed impact.
Best Performer: Steve Coogan
Best Moment: When Tom meets the militant who “arrested” Sofia.
Worst Moment: The journey to Uruguay. Not a bad scene, but not necessary.
Opening: Tom arrives at his new school, and his shoes are immediately ruined by someone painting over revolutionary graffiti, accompanied by explosions in a nearby city centre.
Closing: We see real footage of the penguin swimming in the pool. Very sweet.
Best Line: I can handle when bad people are bad, but when good people do nothing (CHECK LATER)
Original review here

Time Travel Is Dangerous
Ups: Funny.
Likeable leads.
Depressingly accurate for those of us who have worked in secondhand shops.
Downs: Not that interesting when it goes away from the main characters
Sometimes forgets its own format.
Best Performer: Megan Stevenson
Best Moment: When Ruth becomes a teenager.
Worst Moment: The game. It’s not bad, but it feels like it should be better, with more historical injokes.
Opening: Sets up the story almost immediately. “So we brought it inside, then went to 1945”
Closing: A new inventors headquarters is open. We get to see some of the inventions talked about throughout the film, which would have had more of an impact if we haven’t already seen them. It then goes on, and we see they’ve used the dimension as storage space.
Original review here

Together
Ups: Creepy.
Looks fantastic.
Downs: Loses steam at parts
Characters don’t behave realistically.
Best Performer: Dave Franco
Best Moment: His declaration of love before he attempts suicide. It feels so damn real.
Worst Moment: When she refuses to test it by placing her hand near his. It’s one of those “this would instantly answer questions and stop momentum if she does it” moments, but it can’t give her a decent reason not to do it.
Opening: Flashlight searching in the woods. As in, searching with flashlights, not searching for them. Someone stumbles across two dogs fused together. I get what they were going for, but it looks kind of goofy.
Closing: They fuse together, pretty sure they put this in the trailer, kind of ruins it a bit.
Best Line: It’s called diazepam now! It works quicker if you snort it!
Original review here

Presence (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A family becomes convinced they are not alone after moving into their new home in the suburbs.

Full disclosure: I was originally going to post the review of Black Bag today and The Electric State on Friday (and spoilers for that, but “state” is an apt description). But then I watched Presence and realised I had the opportunity to review two films by the same director (Steven Soderbergh) in one week. I may never get that opportunity again, so I felt I had to take it.

Spoilers for the Black Bag review, but while I liked that more than Presence, I was more impressed with Presence. It was mismarketed though. The trailers etc made it feel a bit like a horror movie, when it’s more like a family drama. Yes, it involves ghosts, but that doesn’t make it a horror. Not in the traditional sense either. You won’t be scared of the ghost, you’ll be scared of one of the human characters definitely, especially since people like him are not only prevalent in society, but thrive.

At its heart, Presence is a tale of a family suffering. A mother who is doing *something* illegal, a husband who is worried he’ll be implicated and is slowly becoming disenfranchised with the relationship, a son who is so protected by his mother that he is doomed to fail, and a daughter who feels lost and alone while in mourning of her friends. None of these characters are perfect, all are DEEPLY flawed, the mother and son more than the others, she’s incredibly dismissive of her daughter while showering her son with praise, and he tricks girls into sending him nudes and then shares them with friends. All of them feel real. The performances are great (and Lucy Liu continues to prove that Bill Murray was wrong), and their chemistry is incredible. They all feel like family members, but family members with strained relationships.

Now, onto the ending. I’ll try not to say what happened, but those who do know will know what I’m talking about. I wasn’t a fan of the last scene where it explained what the presence was. Mainly because I feel it didn’t suit that narrative. I can buy that the ghost stayed to “fulfil its purpose”, which was killing someone. I can also buy that when it did that, it ceased to exist and floated outside the house into nothingness. What I have a little trouble with, was why it waited so long afterwards. It doesn’t disappear straight after doing what it was supposed to, it hangs around. And considering the characters are shown moving out, which doesn’t happen quickly, it’s obviously a while later. So why is the presence still there? Was part of its “mission” to hang around a bit until the characters realised who it was? I get WHY, it’s so that the audience understands what happened, but it felt like there could have been a better way of doing it. Even if it just involved the presence turning towards a mirror that was at the scene of the death, and we saw the reveal then. But at the moment? It’s too “there for the audience’s sake”. Unless, was it buffering? Is that a thing for ghosts that transcend? Obviously not, that’s stupid.

There were times when Presence didn’t feel like a movie, but like a video game. Not a Turok or GTA obviously, more like What Remains Of Edith Finch or Gone Home. You walk around and witness the environment, piecing together the story as you find objects, occasionally interacting with them, with occasional moments where people do a Darth Vader on Christmas impression and sense the Presence. To be honest, I feel that may have been a better medium to tell the story because as a film, there’s a disconnect between the film and the audience. It reminded me of Here, and not in a good way, although Presence is definitely a better watch. Presence is more emotional. I was always more touched by Presence, Here not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, Presence is an impressive feat, and it’s original, which I always appreciate. But if you strip away the fact it’s from a ghost POV, it’s not that interesting. I wish I could watch this on a virtual reality device, I get the feeling that I’d really get lost in it then. But on a standard television screen? Not so much. It feels more of a curiosity than a finished product. If it was a short? I’d have loved it.

Here (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Multiple generations of couples and families inhabit the same home over the course of a century.

I knew one thing before sitting down to watch this: the CGI used to de-age Tom Hanks was not good. I have to be honest, that didn’t bother me that much. There are moments where you can see the CGI and you’re brought out of the narrative, but it doesn’t happen anywhere near as much as it could.

Here is a fascinating watch, all taking place at the exact same location over the course of hundreds of years in a non-linear fashion. The non-linear nature was a smart choice because it allows you to see how actions can influence people years later. It also allows for more interesting transitions because you can see the changes.

That leads me to the visual downside. Here doesn’t fade directly from one scene to the next, there’s also no attempt to make it look like it’s one scene. Instead, it brings up a small box on the screen which contains the same location at a different time or with different people, it’s only once you get used to that new scene that the movie moves on fully. It’s visually compelling, but there’s one major drawback. It makes it difficult to be invested in the current scene as you’re always seeing what’s next. It would be like if the “here’s what’s up next” part of television shows happened halfway through the episode instead of at the end. The constant look into the future stops you from focusing on the present, Here never exists in the moment, instead just constantly dangling the narrative carrot in front of you and waiting for you to catch up.

As much as it is cool to see it through the different time periods, there’s a definite focus on what happened after 1945; with the characters from then onwards being the ones we see the most of. To be honest, they’re the only ones needed. Yes, the look into the Lenni-Lenape couple and their courtship and burial rituals are interesting, and the William Franklin connection does come into play in the present-day scenes, but they’re not needed. They feel like narrative sorbets designed to cleanse our palate. The post-Young scenes also aren’t that interesting, seemingly just there to remind us that COVID existed, and police racism still does. If anybody watched this movie without those scenes, nobody would say “hey! This family drama set from 1945-2000 doesn’t focus on 2020 pandemics and race relations enough”. It feels like they were put in there just because Zemeckis feels this is an “important” movie, and “important” movies need to discuss themes.

I hate to sound like a Daily Mail reader, but this needed less politics. If it focused just on the family and their life in the house, it would be a much more interesting watch. I can accept the scenes of the house being built, because the house is a character, so seeing how it was “birthed” could also tie in thematically, but we didn’t need the inventor, the wannabe flier etc. If you cut out all the fluff, it would be much shorter. That’s not too big an improvement, as timing isn’t an issue. The “here’s what’s next” nature of the visuals means that even when you’re not interested, you’re still paying attention, so it flies by much quicker than it should.

In summary, it’s an interesting art experience, not a great movie. As much as I did enjoy the narrative, it feels like it’s trying too hard to move you. It’s so heavy-handed that if it slapped you it would knock you out. As Peter Sobczynski said in his review posted on rogerebert.com “there is a point when you find yourself thinking that the only thing that Zemeckis hasn’t thrown into the mix is a needle drop of ‘Our House’ and then he proceeds to do just that”. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s not one that wouldn’t have worked better as a 20 minute short instead. Also, a simply terrible title that makes it really awkward to talk about.