Tag: IF

2024 In Film: Day Five (The Meh)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Back To Black
Ups: Marisa Abela’s singing voice.
Captures the time period.
Emotional.
Downs: Doesn’t go quite as in-depth as it could.
Seems to hate its main character.
Occasionally seems like we’re watching a romcom about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Best Performer: Marisa Abela
Best Moment: The meeting between her and Blake is quite sweet.
Worst Moment: When her and her dad reject rehab. Makes them seem a bit shitty.
Opening: Family party. Lets us know the main characters and their dynamics. Good introduction.
Closing: Blake has a new partner who is now pregnant, Amy is sad and walks up some stairs.
Best Line: I want people to hear my voice and just forget their troubles for five minutes. 
Original review here

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
Ups: It’s nice to see these characters again
Some fun moments.
Dark, but not in a scary way.
Downs: Pays too much reverence to a character played by a paedophile.
Burton hasn’t advanced his directing skills since the first one.
Unfocused, to the point where it seems like even the film itself doesn’t know what the story is.
Best Performer: Catherine O’Hara
Best Moment: The snake death, manages to be obvious but also comes out of nowhere.
Worst Moment: The wedding, mainly because the song choice feels wrong.
Opening: Lydia Deetz hosts a talk show. Would have been nice to see more of this.
Closing: Dream sequence!
Best Line: I want to make memories with people I love, rather than be haunted by them later
Original review here

Bob Marley: One Love
Ups: Good performances.
Genuine use of Jamaican patois in dialogue. Some may feel this is a “down” as it’s hard to understand, but I think it’s authentic, and it never affects how you understand the narrative, you just don’t understand certain sentences.
Downs: Unfocused narrative.
Lacks an emotional anchor.
Best Performer: Kingsley Ben-Adir
Best Moment: When he gets shot.
Worst Moment: The argument between him and his wife. Feels half-done.
Opening: He gets shot. Emotional, shocking, and sets the scene.
Closing: He dies. Spoilers. Doesn’t really have the emotional impact it could have. We don’t really see him mourn his own mortality and don’t get a sense of how his death was perceived. We are then shown real-life clips of Bob Marley on stage, and it makes you realise that Ben-Adir was too restrained in his performance, the real-life Marley was a ball of energy on stage.
Best Line: You can’t separate the music and the message.
Original review here

Don’t Move
Ups: Believable sociopath.
Minimalist cast.
Downs: Needs a hook. Something to make it stand out.
Quite plodding
Best Performer: Kelsey Asbille
Best Moment: When she finds the strange man. I was concerned he would turn out to be a creepy rapist. But nope, he’s nice, and helps figure out a way to converse with her and help her.
Worst Moment: The “I wanted to die” car conversation, feels very first draft.
Opening: The sound of screaming over a national park. Then cuts to Iris laying perfectly still in her bed. Neat if you know the concept of the film.
Closing: She survives, stands over his dying body and thanks him for making her want to live. So really he did a good thing.
Best Line: His explanation of the effects of the drug.
Original review here

If
Ups: Funny.
Cute.
Inventive.
Downs: Doesn’t make the best of Reynolds.
Bit predictable.
Some more coherent world-building would be nice.
Best Performer: Caily Fleming
Best Moment: When she changes the home. Magical. Although the moment when her grandmother dances is also excellent, but for different reasons. The dance is more emotional brilliance as opposed to whimsy.
Worst Moment: When you realise she’s been walking around New York on her own every day and nobody seems to care.
Opening: Rapid montage of Bea growing up. Could have done a better job of expressing just how important creativity is to her character, it would have helped sell some of the later reveals. Also, just because that’s quick, doesn’t mean the rest of the film is. It takes a long time to bring you the gimmick.
Closing: The most obvious twist ever. The very end, where her dad falls over his invisible imaginary friend is very funny though.
Best Line: Hey, Keith!
Original review here

The Critic
Ups: Feels like a time capsule
Subtly subversive
Looks good
Downs: Not as tense as it could be.
Best Performer: Mckellan
Best Moment: Him telling her why he doesn’t like her. Fantastic performances.
Worst Moment: Them coming up with the scheme. Doesn’t feel earned.
Opening: Jimmy is watching a play and is deliciously bitchy,
Closing: He’s in prison. The only way it could end really.
Best Line: There is art in you, Miss Land. My disappointment is in your failure to access it.
Original review here

The Trouble With Jessica
Ups: Very funny.
Moments of biting satire.
Downs: It doesn’t hit as hard as it could/should.
Doesn’t seem to know what to do with its own concept.
REALLY loses steam towards the end, with some baffling character changes which render most of the film pointless.
Best Performer: Shirley Henderson
Best Moment: The dinner itself. Very socially tense.
Worst Moment: The post-suicide. The use of establishing shots kind of takes away from the tense nature of the situation.
Opening: A preparation for a dinner party. Very stylish, much more than it needed to be, and I appreciate that. Sets up the “they’ll be moving soon” quite subtly.
Closing: A couple eats a clafoutis.
Best Line: “I fucking hate cross-examining rape victims. It’s impossible to do and not look like a cunt”
Original review here

Timestalker
Ups: There’s a very sweet unspoken relationship between her and Meg
Unique idea.
Fun.
Downs: Could have had more fun with the music.
Runs out of momentum.
SHOULD be great.
Best Performer: Aneurin Barnard
Best Moment: The entire 80’s section.
Worst Moment: The carriage wheel decapitation. Mainly because it’s much shorter than the others, but not in a fun and frantic way, more in a “we lost a lot in the edit” way.
Opening: A pink heart floating in the air like a Princess Peach power up. Then a woman operating a loom. Some really vibrant colours, and then it flashbacks to a man being brutally murdered. If you didn’t know what this film was about, this wouldn’t tell you. It’s only when she falls over and kills herself that you get the feeling this is going to be a bit weird.
Closing: She finally gets the “I love you”, and runs away from it.
Best Line: “It’s all in your head”
Original review here

Twisters
Ups: Characters speak genuinely.
Good action scenes.
Actual emotion.
Downs: One of the characters is too unlikeable.
Could tie into the original more.
Best Performer: Daisy Edgar-Jones
Best Moment: That opening.
Worst Moment: The almost vehicular manslaughter. Knocks this down further than any one scene has done to another film in quite a while.
Opening: Put it this way; it shows why tornados are dangerous. Shocking, and brilliant.
Closing: Standard romcom closing. Kind of dull compared to what came before.
Best Line: Can always trust a guy who puts his face on a t-shirt.
Original review here

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.