Tag: Jenna Ortega

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

2022 In Film: Day Two (The Bad)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Films to which I say “oh, I hated them, but……”. Make no mistake, these are not good films. But the people involved have potential to make good ones in the future, if they stop being shit.

Ambulance

Ups: Some good performances

Unique idea.

A few very good shots.

Downs: All the action scenes feel hollow, when cars crash they’re filmed in a way that has no weight to them so you don’t really feel the carnage.

Too much fluff.

Some baffling shot choices.

Best Moment: The split second where Will gets shot. Changes the ending completely.

Worst Moment: A moment we don’t see, we don’t see the beginning of the bank robbery. There’s no sense of planning.

Best Performer: Jake Gyllenhaal. He makes a good sociopath.

Opening: The character needs money because his wife is dying of something (I’m not sure they ever say what). It really unsubtly mentions/shows his war veteran status. All character work, setting up who he is, and his motivations. Also really long and there must have been a better way of doing it.

Closing: One of the brothers dies, the other one lives but is likely to get away with it because the witnesses like him. I mean, yeah, he was roped into the worst parts, and he wanted the money for a good reason. But he still took part in a bank heist and caused millions of dollars of damages. He’s good, but not innocent.

Best Line: You are all gonna have the greatest story to tell at dinner tonight!

Original Review here

Licorice Pizza

Ups: Looks stunning

Wonderful soundtrack

When the characters are apart from each other, they are actually fun to watch.

Downs: Unlikeable characters.

Meandering plot.

He’s 15, she’s 25. That’s creepy. That’s why this film is rated so low for me. It’s a dealbreaker. Otherwise it would be about 2 blogs higher.

Best Moment: The Jon Peters scene. Funny, and completely disrupts the myth of fame.

Worst Moment: After telling Alana “say yes to whatever a casting agent says”, Gary then gets annoyed when she says “yes” to being asked whether she’s okay with nudity. He then goes full incel and shouts at her that it’s fucked up that she won’t show him her tits, but is willing to show them on camera. She then shows him them. So he’s an asshole, and she’s an idiot.

Best Performer: Sean Penn. He’s not in it much, but he’s so sleazy when he is.

Opening: They meet. There’s not much to it really. Would have felt more natural if he wasn’t 15, and she wasn’t an adult.

Closing: They run together and kiss. Yay, the adult and the child are now able to be together.

Best Line: Fuck off, teenagers!

Original Review here

Men

Ups: Technically, it’s very good.

Smart ideas.

Looks incredible.

Great performances.

Downs: I much prefer narrative.

Very unsubtle.

A bit anvillicious.

Best Moment: When you realise her attackers are getting the exact same injuries her husband had when he died. Sooooo smart.

Worst Moment: Rory Kinnear as a small child. It looks weird.

Best Performer: Jessie Buckley.

Opening: Harper travels to a holiday home. There are some things which could be standard but are instead really creepy shots.

Closing: Batshit insanity. Can’t sum it up.

Best Line: “what is it you want from me?” “your love”

Original Review here

Minions 2: The Rise Of Gru

Ups: Weirdly good opening credits. Very Bond-like

It is much better than the first one.

Downs: For one thing, the timelines doesn’t work out.

Can’t contain the momentum over a long period of time.

Does anybody want this?

Waste of supporting cast.

Best Moment: The opening credits.

Worst Moment: The plane sequence, a bit too silly.

Best Performer: Taraji P. Henson

Opening: A villain steals a map in the 70s. Just an excuse for cheap puns. Some of which did make me lol though. Then leads through to a character called Wild Knuckles (terrible name), who steals something, then gets betrayed by the villain group he’s with. Does a good job of setting up the villains.

Closing: The person you thought died, didn’t. He was never referenced in the other films so I assume he died like 5 minutes after the events of this film.

Best Line: “Call your mom, it’s ransom time” “She might pay you to keep me”

Original Review here

Unhuman

Ups: The line “What in the upper-case fuck?” is one I’m going to have to steal.

Oooooo pretty colours.

Downs: The directing could be better, there’s a conversation at the start which is weirdly shot, with some editing decisions which are definitely conscious choices, but seem like mistakes.

The bus crash itself is well shot, but there’s one a moment in it where someone bashes their head on the chair in front and it has no impact at all, but she gets a broken nose.

Should be gayer. That may not make sense, but watch the trailer. That makes it seem like it will, at the very least, have some degree of non-straight sexuality to it. But it doesn’t.

Best Moment: There’s a great split second moment where a guy is handed a menstrual pad to pass over to someone with a broken nose to help clean up the blood. The pad is new and in an unopened box, but the guy still acts with utter revulsion. I don’t know where that was the actors decision or the directors but it’s really smart.

Worst Moment: Whilst the mid-point plot twist is pretty cool but depends on things happening exactly as they do. So if you think about it for more than a single second the whole thing falls apart.

Best Performer: Brianne Tju.

Opening: Really happy joyous music over a blumhouse logo. Unexpected but fun.

Closing: Everyone who survived is back on the bus, the teacher turns out to have survived. The two villains then get recruited by an anti-drug crusader.

Best Line: “Let’s just hope we hit a racist so we don’t have to feel bad”

Original Review here

X

Ups: Is well aware of what it is and what it’s trying to do.

People who like it, will really like it.

Downs: Very cruel to the characters.

Just not my kind of horror movie. That’s the biggest issue. I can talk about a lot of my issues with it, but my biggest one is it just wasn’t for me. Like how I never vibe with Rob Zombies work for some reason. Some just don’t gel with my horror sensibilities.

Best Moment: Pearl pleading with her husband to have sex with her. Very sweet.

Worst Moment: Same moment, but the fact it was met with disgust and laughter by some of the audience in the screening is kind of bleak. “ewwww, old people want to have sex”

Best Performer: Jenna Ortega

Opening: A group drive to a house, planning to make porn. Could have slipped in a few more Texas Chainsaw references, or get rid of it.

Closing: One of the cops finding a camera, “what’s on there?” “probably some fucked up horror movie”, END!

Original Review here