Tag: Joel Fry

2024 In Film: Day Six (The Thoroughly Okay)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Quiet Place: Day One
Ups: When its silent, it’s brilliant.
Shows just how LOUD New York is.
Downs: Too much music. By which I mean “any”.
With the exception of the opening scene, the fact it’s a prequel barely matters.
Best Performer: Lupita Nyong’o. Obviously.
Best Moment: The scene in the jazz club is very sweet.
Worst Moment: Eric on the construction site. Only way it’s not a waste of time is if its referenced in another sequel, but in the film itself? Pointless.
Opening: Sam is in a cancer hospice. Very good way of showing her situation. Excellent example of “show, don’t tell” scripting. Before that, there’s a piece of text telling you that the standard noise of New York City is at the same level as someone screaming constantly.
Closing: Sam commits suicide by Simone. Excellent idea, average execution. The noise difference between her listening to it on headphones and her playing it out loud should be a lot different.
Best Line: This place is shit. This place smells like shit. Betsy’s voice sounds like shit. Cancer is shit. Oscar does that stupid walk when he wants to hide he shit his pants. And Milton has shit taste in music.
Original review here

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Ups: So much more fun than the trailers made it seem.
Doesn’t piss on the legacy of the franchise.
New characters slot in effortlessly with old favourites.
Downs: Doesn’t feel like that much has happened since the last movie.
Relies on nostalgia a bit too much at times.
Some of the performers have aged in the last 30 years and it reminds me I’m old as hell now.
Best Performer: Eddie Murphy
Best Moment: The opening. Reassures you that this will be just as fun as the original.
Worst Moment: The ending feels like the script completely ran out of steam.
Opening: Relatively sombre DJ talking on car radio. Then The Heat Is On plays and we see Eddie Murphy. It felt like it was there to surprise people “hey, you thought this would be a super serious movie but instead its an Eddie Murphy one”. As if people didn’t know that. There’s then a scene in a hockey arena featuring him doing his usual “what, you [make assumption] just because I’m black?” shtick, but this time it’s clearly just to fuck with someone he’s friends with.
Closing: Axel comes out of the hospital and reunites with Taggert and Rosewood. Kind of meh.
Best Line: I’ve been a cop for 30 years, I’ve been black a whole lot longer. Trust me, I know better.
Original review here

Fly Me To The Moon
Ups: Fun dialogue.
Easily digestable.
Charming
Downs: Will fuel idiots.
Forgettable.
There’s a mismatch between the directing and the script. The script is fast and silly, and the directing is slick and slow.
Much longer than it needs to be.
Not Tatum’s best performance.
Best Performer: Scarlett Johansson
Best Moment: The meet cute actually works.
Worst Moment: Kelly’s first actions on the base. Ignoring national security concerns, taking people away from engineering work to paint her wall and put a new window in. Makes her seem incredibly rude.
Opening: Newsposition. Not quite as good as Valerian but very effective at setting up the situation.
Closing: It worked. Obviously, the two characters kiss. Because of course they did.
Best Line: You know what they say about black cats, if they cross your path, they’re probably going someplace else.
Original review here

Longlegs
Ups: Tense.
Good performances.
Downs: Very brown.
I’m fed up with trans-coded villains
Best Performer: Maika Monroe.
Best Moment: The transition shot between the mask and Longlegs face. Simple, predictable, but damn finely executed.
Worst Moment: The victim in hospital. The performance is superb, but the dialogue feels fake.
Opening: Scene fades in from red, nice touch. The music is suitably creepy and sets the tone REALLY well. You can’t watch this and NOT know it’s a horror movie.
Closing: The villain dies, but their legacy possibly lives on as a doll couldn’t be shot (don’t know why they couldn’t just physically smash it with a hammer but still).
Best Line: I know you’re not afraid of a little dark. Because you *are* the dar
Original review here

Monkey Man
Ups: Some superb visuals from a first-time director.
Violent.
Some really good action scenes and fight choreography.
Depressingly relevant.
Downs: Doesn’t make the most of its time.
Leaves a lot unsaid in terms of what you need to know to understand certain parts.
Best Performer: Dev Patel.
Best Moment: The kick to the face.
Worst Moment: The white monkey mask, doesn’t last long enough.
Opening: The story of Hanuman. Not needed, but is appreciated.
Closing: An incredibly personal action scene, rife with emotion and despair.
Best Line: In the great tapestry of life, just one small ember can burn down everything
Original review here

One Life
Ups: Emotional.
A story that needs to be told right now
Downs: Kind of hides the fact they’re Jewish, only slightly alludes to it.
Incredibly predictable
Best Performer:
Best Moment: The Nazi’s taking over the train, heartbreaking.
Worst Moment: Going to focus more on a moment it DIDN’T have. It didn’t show the original film footage of him on That’s Life, bit weird as that felt like a guarantee.
Opening:
Closing: Standard “what happened next” text. More pictures or film footage of the real person would have been nice.
Best Line: I don’t know what you’re doing, but if you’re doing what I think you’re doing, I don’t want to know.
Original review here

Seize Them!
Ups: Very funny and brutal.
Brilliantly silly.
Those who love British sitcoms will have a blast with the cast.
Downs: Is it really the best time for a “Rich people are actually fantastic, and anybody who goes against them is a tyrant in disguise” message?
Terribly marketed.
A lot of convenience.
The third-act argument seems a little contrived.
Best Performer: Aimee Lee Wood.
Best Moment: The potential assassins all dying. So stupid, goes past funny straight to annoying, and then back to funny again.
Worst Moment: The split between the group doesn’t really feel earned.
Opening: Narration, then a servant gets stabbed. Sets up the tone (funny and bloody), and the character of Queen Dagan as a spoilt brat.
Closing: “what happened next”, would have been nice to see this for more of the characters. Does mean the film ends with the line “the two died in separate wanking incidents”, which would improve every film ever made. Even Schindlers List
Best Line: I’m finished. Strangle me … but gently
Original review here

Sonic The Hedgehog 3
Ups: Made with a genuine love of the franchise.
Funny.
Has actual emotion.
Continues to be much better than you’d expect.
Downs: Inconsistent speed.
A bit TOO similar to the first two.
Predictable.
Some REAL pacing issues.
Best Performer: Idris Elba
Best Moment: Maria and Shadow bonding. Incredibly sweet and feels very real.
Worst Moment: The two Robotniks meeting. Feels very self-indulgent from Carrey.
Opening: The birth of Shadow.
Closing: Another sequel hook. Exciting, but quite frustrating from a narrative standpoint.
Best Line: I have dishonored my marshmallow
Original review here

Spaceman
Ups: Some good shots.
Sandler gives a decent performance (albeit as the wrong nationality)
The flashbacks are really well done.
Downs: The spider moves too fluidly to feel like a real spider.
The character doesn’t react to the spider in a believable way.
Best Moment: The reveal of the spider. The director knows he’s got a good design here, and wants you to know it.
Worst Moment: When the president withholds Lenkas message, seems to only be done to advance the plot.
Best Performer: Paul Dano. I know Sandler is great in this, but his accent is too bad for me to have him as the best.
Opening: The titular character wearing a spacesuit, walking. Then we see him on his ship doing mundane shit that astronauts need to do. I feel the walking part wasn’t needed. Start with him on the ship.
Closing: We see that him walking through the lake at the beginning was a dream, which continues on here. Nice book-end, but is only there to be a bookend. Like it had to end like that because it started like that, and it had to start like that because it ended like that.
Notable Line: “You have many boundaries skinny human, perhaps they are the cause of your loneliness”
Original Review here

The End We Start From
Ups: Excellent use of water.
Joey Fry is REALLY good.
Downs: Her being separated from her husband for the duration of the birth doesn’t affect the birth much.
Characters don’t have names so it’s really weird to review and describe them.
Best Performer: Katherine Waterston.
Best Moment: The two women walking down a road whilst singing the song from Dirty Dancing. Very sweet.
Worst Moment: After the mother’s death, scenes of sadness etc but there’s a section where the music is a little bit too upbeat.
Opening: Woman runs a bath whilst on the phone. Eventually, the water covers the camera. This is an effective way of setting up the themes without hitting you in the face with them. She then sits her pregnant self in the bath. I appreciate that she didn’t mention it in the phone call, in fact, it would have been weird if she did it.
Closing: Both characters arrive home. Kind of bittersweet but really the only way it could end.
Best Line: “They trampled on my mum’s neck, people are starving, they don’t give a fuck”
Original review here

The End We Start From (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: After floods decimate the UK, a new mother does her best to find a safe space for her and her child.

I watched this in the middle of summer, and you’d think a film about torrential rainfall wouldn’t make sense to be watched in the summer. Ordinarily, you’d be right, but you’ve forgotten one thing; I live in England. I’ve spoken before about how the external atmosphere can affect the film-watching experience (I am wondering if part of my disdain for how Oculus ended was because the cinema turned the lights on early), but watching this in a weirdly wet summer definitely changed it, was like having surround sound.

The End We Start From (TEWSF, pronounced Two-soff) sets its genius relatively early on, having the scenes of her giving birth be intercut with scenes of her house being flooded. This is both smart and an obvious thing to do, but obvious like “having cheese on pizza instead of boiled foot dust” is obvious, in that if you did otherwise it would be weird. I do have some issues with the opening section though. It has her husband (referred to as R, and played brilliantly by Joel Fry) be away. With that, you’d assume the story would be about the two of them trying to reach each other. But then he just appears at the hospital after she’s given birth, so his not being in the opening didn’t affect the plot. It’s peculiar when you consider they get separated again. So their on-screen chemistry feels very stop-start. Ordinarily, I’d say “Keep them separated until the end so when the two meet again it feels special”, but that would be a stupid thing to do as it would rob TEWSF of a key scene; the one where R’s parents die. We know one dies but aren’t told anything about how or why until a few scenes later, and when you find out, damn it’s brutal, so, damn, brutal. It all feels real too. COVID taught us a lot (For example; that you should wash your hands after peeing, and that you shouldn’t sneeze directly on people. Both of which are things that apparently needed teaching), but the most sobering thought (so sobering it drives me to drink) was that people are dicks. They need to go to Ladbrokes even if it does kill the person behind the counter who’s forced to work even whilst sick.

I kind of wish we saw more of the world the film takes place in, most of what we see is just the universe surrounding the main character (Jodie Comer, credited as Woman). Much like AQP: DP, it all happens so quickly and the character isn’t at the centre of it. We do see a few other people, but only sporadically. It’s essentially a road movie where we only see the pit stops. As such, we feel like we’re in a weird purgatory where the character spends a lot of time in various places but none long enough to let the audience feel grounded and like we’re getting to know anybody. So much happens, but because they all feel like they have no impact, weirdly it seems like nothing happens.

That’s a shame as I would like to see more of some of the characters; partly as an excuse to see more Gina McKee and Katherine Waterston, especially Waterston who is always incredible. Of course, Comer is great, but that’s to be expected. I was surprised by how good Joey Fry is, I’ve only seen him in comedies, or acting alongside other sitcom actors. He more than holds his own in this. He’s surprisingly key to how this works. Considering it’s about a mother and a newborn child, you’d think it would contain a lot about modern femininity, and it does. But it also tackles masculinity, the feeling that if you’re not a provider then you are failing as a man.

It’s not just the people on screen, there’s a lot of talent behind the camera too. The music is mostly fitting, there is one part where it feels slightly too jaunty for what just happened, but otherwise, it’s dour and depressing. The visuals are sublime too, there are no gorgeous shots in it, but it’s not a movie for beauty, it’s about ugliness. Mahalia Belo has done a fantastic job of directing TEWSF. Even just the little moments are done as well as they could be. There’s a two-second shot of the television networks shutting down, that two seconds is creepier than most horror movies. Watching TEWSF is like wading through a murky puddle, but doing so in the middle of summer so that even when you are nearly stuck, you can still feel the warmth and have a small glimmer of hope of what’s coming.

In summary, it has flaws, but it’s incredibly powerful and definitely worth your time. Although I do question the logic of the main character crying so much during a flood; that’s just making it worse.

In The Earth (2021)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YYnSJF0fcY

Quick synopsis: Two people (Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia) attempt to find a cure for a virus in a forest. Weird shit happens in this incredibly British folk-horror.

Ben Wheatley, he’s a weird one isn’t he? Well I’m assuming he’s weird because his films are really strange. But they’re strange in a kind of dreary way, where his films sometimes feel like you’re slowly moving through a dense swamp. The films of his I’m most familiar with are Sightseers and Free Fire, and tonally they’re completely different. And that’s not taking into account the sheer batshit insanity of A Field In England and the brutality of Kill List. You never know exactly what you’re going to get with Wheatley, but you know you’re going to get something unlike anything you’ve seen before.

And this? This is unlike anything else. The best way to describe it would be a, and bear with me here, a plant-based horror film. It’s nature infecting people and killing them. It’s hard to go into more details without spoiling it. Normally I freely spoil plot points in these reviews, but I’m not going to do this. For the same reason I didn’t spoil Searching or Knives Out, part of the pleasure in this film is watching it all unfurl.

Okay, maybe “pleasure” isn’t the right word. You don’t really “enjoy” this movie so much as survive it. It’s a horrific experience, but in a good way. The kaleidoscopic images really fuck with your head and make you feel like you’re suffering like the main characters are. It’s really good at putting you in their shoes, making you feel just as disorientated as they are. Just as pained too, especially in a scene where the main character gets his toes amputated, without anaesthetic. It’s brutal, disturbing, and weirdly funny. Wheatley is great at that, he makes you laugh at things you really shouldn’t. It probably helps that he works extensively with comedic actors; Alice Lowe, Julian Barrett, and Reece Shearsmith (better known now for the absolutely sublime Inside No. 9). Shearsmith is also in this, but surprisingly he’s not leading. That honour goes to Joel Fry, known better for his television work in Game Of Thrones, Plebs, and Trollied. It’s a bold choice to have him lead, but it’s one that pays off. He has that everyman quality which makes him easy to identify with, so when we see him suffer, we emphasise with him.

My biggest disappointment was that I didn’t get a chance to see this at the cinema. I had trailers for it but for whatever reason it wasn’t released locally to me. It’s a shame as I feel this on a big screen in a dark room would have been an intense experience, and one I sadly won’t get to partake in.

Narratively, not everything works. But the type of film this is, that doesn’t work too much against it. It withholds quite a lot of information from you, but that kind of works as the stuff it doesn’t tell you would be hard to bring up without it seeming like unnatural exposition. It would make the audience feel too much like they’re viewing something on a screen. The way it is it makes it feel like you’re actually living it.

There is a high chance you will hate this film. From the way I’ve gone on about it you may think it’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year. It’s not, it’s a solid 7/10 for me, it’s something I appreciated more than I liked. But it’s something I’m very glad I watched. And it’s something very unique, and that has to be applauded.