Tag: James Acaster

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A death-chilling god seeks to build a spectral army. And in that scenario, who are you gonna call? Well, text, nobody answers the phone anymore.

I didn’t understand the negative reaction Afterlife got. Well, I say “negative reaction”, it was mainly from critics and online douchbags. Actual people who aren’t just going to be annoyed because “it’s gone woke” all enjoyed it. The same negative reviews and internet comments were there for this one. Logically I shouldn’t have cared because of what happened with Afterlife. But I had similar situations with Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, poo-pooing the negative reviews of Ends, when they later turned out to be accurate as the film was shit.

I can gladly say, negative reviews of this are wrong. If you enjoyed Afterlife, you’ll enjoy this. The things which made that film work, also work here. It’s charming, it’s funny, and McKenna Grace continues to be one of the best young performers in the industry. Frozen Empire does have the advantage of being a bit spookier than Afterlife. There are some great scares and genuine tension, with a villain who’s much better defined than the previous one.

Just because he’s better defined, does not mean he’s better utilized. It’s a nearly two-hour film, yet it still doesn’t have time to properly flesh out the villain. He appears sporadically throughout, so never really overhangs the film like he could/should. When he’s on-screen/being discussed, definitely feels like a threatening threat of threatening proportions, but he’s definitely not used as effectively as he could.

I think part of the problem is that there are essentially two BIG threats in one movie. There’s the “Frozen” part, where the world is at risk of being frozen and people being killed via death chill so they will never want to build a snowman ever again. That could be a huge threat to overcome, and there’s a reason it’s all over the marketing.

But there’s another threat at play; all the ghosts that have been captured by the team are at risk of being broken out of “prison” and all returning. That was underplayed in the marketing and the film itself. But let’s face it, that should have its own movie. That concept has so much potential for greatness, and it’s as undercooked as that chicken that I had from KFC in ‘94 in which the only compensation we got was Viennetta ice cream.

It’s a shame as apart from that this is great. All the performers are great, although some aren’t in it enough but that’s probably because there are just SO many of them; not only do we have the cast from Afterlife, but we also have the surviving originals and some new ones we’re introduced to play by James Acaster, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Alyn Lind. There are about 12 characters, so obviously, its going to be a struggle to juggle them all. Alyn Lind’s character in particular is interesting. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but there did seem to be a slightly sapphic undertones to the interactions between her Melody and McKenna Graces Phoebe. I’m not sure whether it was implied intentionally in the script, or whether it’s just the chemistry between the actors, but I did sense it there. As everyone knows, I’m a huge fan of McKenna and what she brings to the table performance-wise, and I want to see more from Alyn Lind, there’s an inherently loveable quality to her. She could easily lead a horror franchise, in the right hands, she could be mentioned in the same breath as Jamie Lee Curtis,

In summary, I love this movie. It’s not quite as good as the previous one, but it’s not a shame to the franchise. This is much better than the 5th (or 4th depending if you take the 2016 as canon) movie in a franchise should be. Few franchises this far in are very rarely this inventive, this fresh, this joyful. I want a lot of these characters and this world. I love it so much.

Seize Them! (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn Review, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Queen Dagan has been toppled by a revolution led by Humble Joan. With the help of servant Shulmay, she aims to get her crown back.

I’m aware I am kind of pretentious sometimes when it comes to my film taste. But it’s a weird kind of pretentiousness, one which will talk endlessly about obscure Polish films, or how the work of Lotte Reiniger still holds up almost 100 years later. Yet, I also dislike Men (the film, not the gender, although….) and I’m not that fond of the films of Wes Anderson.

So whilst my taste may run a little weird at times, I love films that are just dumb fun. They’re not trying to change the world, or wow you, they’re just there to distract you from the Western-supported genocide occurring 2000 miles away (wait until you find out the fucked up shit I found out whilst googling that distance by the way). It’s in this sphere of silliness that Seize Them falls. It’s different from something like Bill, which had historical in-jokes and at least had the pretence that it happened in reality. There’s no effort to pretend this is real; it’s a live-action cartoon in a fictionalised version of history. This has as much in common with the Dark Ages as the Artemis Fowl movie has with the books it was (supposedly) based on.

This isn’t something you can see being quoted in an academic paper. It’s not supposed to be though. It’s just dumb jokes wrapped up in a different time. It does make the most of the concept though, there are a lot of jokes which wouldn’t work outside of this context, which is something I always like. I like when jokes are unique to a film, especially if it’s a comedy set outside of “now”. Crucially, it doesn’t have any of those “knowing” jokes. You know the kind, where someone invents a modern invention and is rubbished, or otherwise makes a reference to modern times. The kind of “It’s a communication device mixed with a telescope, we call it an Eye-Phone”. I know comedy is subjective, and different jokes for different folks. But those are the ones that come up a lot in films like this and I cannot stand them, not just in a “that joke didn’t land” way, when I see those jokes, it actively turns me against the film.

The jokes are helped by just how talented the cast is. Casual audiences are more likely to be aware of Nick Frost (from his films with Simon Pegg), Nicola Coughlan (from Derry Girls, Bridgerton, and “you won’t believe how old she is” posts on Facebook), or James Acaster (from memes about the world falling apart). It’s mainly led by Aimee Lou Wood (from Sex Education) and Lolly Adefope (from Ghosts/Taskmaster), they make a good pair, sharing natural chemistry. They spend a lot of time with experienced comedy performer Nick Frost, and they easily match him. They both nail their roles perfectly. Lou Wood turns what could be an annoying character into someone sympathetic. Kind of sympathetic anyway. The third-act conflict only really happens because of her character derailment. Also, I’m still not quite sure that with the world the way it is at the moment, a movie about how “this rich useless person who holds all the power is someone you should be sympathetic towards, the woman fighting against her and campaigning for equality is just a phoney who will end up being a dictator”, is that really a message that needs to be put into the world right now?

In summary, a hilarious movie, with oddly memorable music. Not the best film of the year, but incredibly fun. For better (the jokes, the performances) and for worse (the production values, the pacing), it does feel a bit like an extended episode of a Channel 4 sitcom. Funny as hell though. I mean, how many other films have two characters die from fatal wanking incidents? It should have had a better cinema release though, at my local it was only on once a day, and with zero promotion.