Tag: Longlegs

2024 Film Awards Part 6

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Most Disappointing

A Quiet Place: Day One

I LOVE the first one, I was less enthusiastic about the second, but I still had high hopes for this. It’s okay, I guess. But it never quite reaches the heights of the first one and doesn’t even come close. Ultimately, it just comes off as lesser. Almost like a poorly financed spin-off that was dictated by the studio. There’s zero passion, zero creativity, zero reason to care.

Argylle

I like the Kingsman movies, except maybe the prequel. But I had an inkling this wouldn’t be as good. From the moment I saw the trailer I had worries. Those worries turned out to be well-founded. It should never have been a 12A, Matthew Vaughn needs blood and violence, and the rating stops him from achieving that. I don’t know why the studio didn’t push for an increased rating, and I’m not sure whose decision it was to aim for it. But either way, they should have stopped him. If you’re a record company and you land the Bee Gees, you don’t let them do a death metal album, you tell them to play that funky music.

Joker: Folie A Deux

If this was based on the biggest drop between “expectations when I first heard about it” and “expectations when I finished watching”, this would be top, number one with a bullet, numero uno, the head honcho, the casa del pene, I kind of forgot what I was talking about. Luckily for J: FAD, this is based on “expectations going in”, which saves it. I had heard a lot of talk that this was terrible. I hoped they were wrong, but it did mean I went in expecting it might be bad. Still doesn’t mean I was prepared for exactly HOW bad it was. I haven’t seen a sequel drop off this extreme since Mean Girls to the trailer for Mean Girls 2 (I’m not watching the actual film, I’m not insane).

My Spy: The Eternal City

I actually really enjoyed the first one. The second has all the hallmarks of a “straight-to-DVD sequel released in the 90s”. It feels low budget, it thinks you remember much more about the previous film than you actually do, and it tries so hard to be different (changing location etc), that it forgets to be good.

Mean Girls

I’m a massive fan of the original film, and also a massive fan of the dislike button on the trailer of the second one. I’m also a big Tina Fey fan, and one of my favourite TV shows of all time is a sequel. So I should love this. I did not. It had none of the charm of the original, none of the heart. Also, I didn’t find the songs that good, which in a musical is a bit of a problem. I couldn’t hum a single melody from the entire thing, meanwhile, I can still remember roughly 3 songs from In The Heights, which I watched once, back in 2021 (review here). I suppose I should have expected it when the trailer (which I repeat, is for a MUSICAL featuring original songs) had Olivia Rodrigo. Now, I love Olivia Rodrigo, her music is right up my street, but an existing song on a trailer for a musical just indicates the studio has no faith in the songs, and the stage musical itself doesn’t have enough bangers that people are obsessed with and will be like “OMG they do that song in this, I need to watch”, unlike the trailers for Wicked which showed snippets of songs from the musical, so fans of the musical would get excited. I’m right that that was a weird decision on the studio that released Mean Girls, right? It’s not just me being picky? Anyway, this film is weaker than my lawsuit for false advertising against the owner/operator of a bottomless pit in Spokane.

Winner

Unfrosted

I’m a big fan of Jerry Seinfeld, I consider his sitcom one of the best sitcoms of the 90’s (and there’s a lot of competition there). He has definitely been hit hardest by the Seinfeld Curse, with his biggest success being a vocal performance. That being said, Unfrosted looked promising. Not just with him as a writer, but with an incredibly strong supporting cast. Also, the idea was fucking weird, and I like weird. I don’t like Unfrosted though. It is funny, hilarious even. But it is so disposable. This does not seem like a film from one of the co-creators of one of the biggest sitcoms of all time. This feels like a group of kids dicking about with a video camera and making jokes up as they go along.

Most Surprising

The First Omen

The Omen is a franchise in name only. Nobody ever says “Let’s watch the entire film series”, in fact, I’d say a lot of people don’t even recognise there are more than two, the original and the remake. Added to that, prequels are normally pretty shit. So it’s quite surprising that The First Omen is actually solid. It has one of my favourite jump scares I’ve ever seen, a genuinely gripping story, and some good acting. Immaculate explored similar themes, but The First Omen did it much better.

Transformers One

I’m not too fond of the live-action Transformers movies. I know I watched one of them at the cinema, there’s a chance I might have watched the second one as well, but I genuinely can’t remember. Also, unlike Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles, I never had any Transformers toys growing up (if anybody would like to fix that neglect and buy some, contact me), nor were there any video games I played. So I had zero emotional connection with the franchise, until now. This movie is superb. I think it may have helped that I had no connection to the franchise as it meant that I didn’t know who these characters were. This wasn’t like watching X-Men: First Class, knowing that Magneto and Charles will eventually become enemies, this was watching two complete strangers as their friendship slowly disintegrates. It’s a much more mature movie than you’d expect, dealing with themes such as colonialism, disability rights, hierarchal power structures, appeals to authority fallacies, and transforming into a car (all issues that we face). If it was a bit more “safe”, would it have made more money? Probably (it’s hard to tell because of how badly marketed it was). But by going as dark as they did, going as deep as they did, they’ve created something truly remarkable. This WILL be a kid’s favourite movie, and when they watch it again as an adult, they won’t be disappointed or embarrassed. They will fall back in love with it all over again.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

I’m not saying this is a great movie, it’s not. But it’s A LOT better than a sequel 30 years after a disappointing (to others, I still love it) third movie should be. Every New Year’s Eve, me and my family sit down and watch a franchise, in the past, it’s been John Wick, the modern Planet Of The Apes, Back To The Future etc. As the years go on, the choices get harder and harder, primarily because the trajectory for a lot of franchises is downward, and you don’t want to end the night on a low (can you imagine if the last movie you watched in a year was Die Hard 5?). With Axel F, if we watched this franchise, the year wouldn’t end badly. And really that’s all you can ask for.

Winner

Alien: Romulus

I like the Alien franchise, kind of. I’ve watched the first two and enjoyed them, but I’ve also seen Covenant and wasn’t a fan. When Alien is good, it’s phenomenal, among the best thing that exists in the media it’s created in, when it’s bad, it’s Colonial Marines. Romulus could have been bad, it SHOULD have been bad. It’s not, it’s utterly fantastic. It’s creepy, intelligent, and makes the most of what it has. There are so many times when you’re watching films and, as an audience member, you spot things you would have changed, untaken opportunities or wasted moments. Romulus will have less of that than others. It takes a Blue Peter/artist approach to scenes. It looks at what it has to play with (acidic blood, messed up gravity etc), then tries to create something with them. It could have been dumb and made bank, instead they put A LOT of effort into it, and I cannot thank them enough.

I Don’t Get It

Essentially these are for films which received a lot of love, either critically or commercially, that I just did not care about.

The Beekeeper

I heard a lot of people say this is really good, that it would even appeal to people who aren’t fans of the typical Statham films. I’m not buying it. It’s about 5% more interesting than the rest, but that’s not a huge amount. Otherwise, it’s more of the same. It’s Jason Statham walking around and punching people, only this time he has a bad American accent.

Longlegs

A LOT of people loved this, describing it as one of the best horrors of modern times. I respect that, but I didn’t feel it. Primarily because of how exposition-heavy it was, particularly in the final third. Either the studio or the screenwriter didn’t feel confident enough that the story was clear enough for the audience. Once the writer gets more confident, they WILL make my favourite horror movie of the year, of that I am certain. But this isn’t it.

Winner

The Zone Of Interest

Obviously, this was going to win. The review of it was the hardest I’ve ever had to write. I couldn’t articulate WHY I didn’t like it, I just didn’t. That’s annoying as I feel I should. I love serious movies, so it’s not as though I was sitting there thinking “Need more jokes”. I love POWERFUL movies too, I actually went into HMV a few days ago and asked for “Something that will hurt me and make me feel things”. It genuinely got me worried, am I a shitty movie watcher? Why should anybody take my reviews seriously if I don’t like one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year? In a way, it still bothers me. I find it difficult to reconcile why you should value my opinion alongside my opinion being that I didn’t like this film.

Well I Liked It

The opposite of the last one, these are films which either the internet or professional reviewers hated, but I enjoyed (or at the very least didn’t hate them as much as others).

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

At the time of writing, this sits on Metacritic with a score of 46. That’s only 1 score higher than the new Hellboy, which is dreadful beyond comparison. I’m not arguing this should be in the high 90s, but it definitely deserves higher than that. Yes, it is a bit too long and unfocused, but it is SO damn charming that it’s hard to see where the hatred comes from. The relationship between Phoebe and Melody is damn sweet (and kind of gay-coded, can’t tell if that was intentional) and it warmed even my bitter and cynical heart.

Boy Kills World

I had no intention of putting this in this section. Primarily because I assumed it was well-reviewed. It was only when looking up the Metacritic score for Ghostbusters that I saw this had a score of 47. How? This is freaking insane. The stunts are badass, the jokes are hilarious, and the performances are everything they need to be. It’s one of the most fun experiences I had last year, and I ate ice cream TWICE!

Winner

Paddington In Peru

This has a Metacritic score 60. I don’t accept that. This deserves a 90 at the very least. It’s not quite as good as the first two, but it is still exactly what we need at this time. I know the world is going to shit: racism has become normalised, there’s war in the middle east, and I dropped my biscuit in my tea. But it’s at times like this when we need something like this; something optimistic, something cute, and most importantly; something kind.

Worst Movie

Nominees Everything here

Winner

The Crow

This was actually difficult. Whilst a lot of films were bad, there wasn’t one that stood out as a lot worse than the others. They were all equally bad. This wins pretty much just because it’s a remake. As such, there is a definite blueprint for how to make it work. They had over 30 years of focus groups and audience feedback to work from. The fact they did that, they had talented performers, as well as a wide variety of screamo bands to use for the soundtrack, and still couldn’t do better than this shit? Nope, fuck you, you suck.

Best Movie

Nominees: Everything here

Winner

Civil War

There are multiple ways to judge a film. Technical brilliance, personal taste, uniqueness. This has all three. But so do quite a few other films nominated. It’s difficult to think of one that stands out above the rest, unlike next year, where it’s already looking like A Real Pain is going to win best film (unless the new Knives Out is incredible), spoilers for a post I won’t write for another 365 days. Really, any of the nominees could have sneaked it. So why did I choose Civil War? Because there was a moment which was so harrowing I was close to leaving just to decompress for a few minutes. No other film has come close to having that effect.

2024 Film Awards: Day One

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Saddest

Nominees

I Saw The TV Glow

A lot of TV Glow is too weird to be counted here. But there’s a scene near the end which is as bleak as it gets. The main character is at work, older, with no achievements, and he has a full-on breakdown, screaming that he’s dying. It’s not the breakdown that is sad or the fact he’s wasted his life, it’s the utter callousness of the other characters, who all just ignore him.

Inside Out 2

I remember when I came out the screening of this, and a little kid said to their parent “That didn’t make sense, why would someone’s brain be against them?”.

Oh that sweet summer child.

Joker: Folie A Deux

The film itself is not good. But there’s a scene in the court where one of his former friends is testifying about Arthur killing someone in his presence in the first movie. He’s talking about how he’s never felt as much fear as he did at that moment, how it haunts him and completely ruined his life. The fear in his voice, and Arthurs reaction to it, when he finally realises the damage he caused, it’s just….it hints at a much better film than what we got.

Civil War

Specifically for the scene where they come across the piles of dead bodies. I mentioned in my review that there was a moment where I felt I had to leave, this was the moment. It’s…..it’s harrowing.

One Life

The first of two holocaust movies in these nominations. The guilt the character feels for not being able to do more oozes off every scene. It’s helped by some pretty darn good performances. This is more personal than the other holocaust movie, and definitely has more parallels to modern life (sadly). This was the first 2024 film I saw, I probably should have gone with something a bit happier. To quote my original review (and still one of my favourite paragraphs):

“It’s a good reminder that the people being helped aren’t soldiers, politicians, or anybody who had a choice in the war or where they live. They were just children who were at constant risk of being arrested and executed just for existing in their current location or as their current ethnicity/religion. It’s impossible to comprehend something similar in modern society.

Unless you’re Ukrainian

or Palestinian”

The Zone Of Interest

Look at what the film about, that should indicate why this film was nominated. I was not a massive fan of this film, but when it worked, it REALLY worked, with one of the characters’ emotional breakdowns mirroring yours (only you’re hopefully not a nazi). But the real sadness comes from how unaffected people are. It’s harrowing how normalised genocide is to some of them, with one of them admitting he couldn’t pay attention to a speech because all he could think about was how he could gas everybody in the room. It’s callous, cruel, and far too true.

Winner

The Iron Claw

Obviously, this was going to be here. I knew the story, and I’m still unsure if that made it better or worse. I want to watch this with someone who knows nothing, to see what’s worse. Because I knew what was going to happen, I saw the set-ups and the train of sadness approach with full knowledge of what would happen. But the surprises may catch you off guard if you don’t know. You may sit there thinking “Ohhhh, one of the brothers died, this is so sad” and think that’s it, that’s the end of the sadness. Spoilers; THAT IS NOT THE END OF THE SADNESS! It just keeps going and going. Yes, it may feel a bit weird to put a film about a singular family as sadder than a holocaust movie, but I argue that’s due to the emotional connections made with the characters. Yes, the numbers are smaller (much smaller), but it hits harder. That’s not sociopathic, it’s natural. It’s why people view the funerals of a relative as sadder than earthquakes in another country. Sadness is all about emotion, and few films are better at realising that than this.

Weirdest

Nominees

Argylle

Not all weird is good. Sometimes weird is a skiing action scene taking place on a floor coated in oil, just after a smoke-filled dance scene set to a song even Waitrose customers would describe as “a bit soppy”. It’s creative, I’ll give it that. It’s not like anything else you’ll see. But it’s also kind of embarrassing to watch. With some baffling creative decisions in terms of visuals.

Boy Kills World

This leans into its oddness, with some truly jaw-dropping fight scenes alongside some “lol, the main character is deaf” scenes. Imagine if John Wick was a comedy, written by the creators of Airplane before they went all right-wing and “People holding a right-wing president to account are all terrorists!”.

Longlegs

Maybe “weird” isn’t the word I’m looking for here. “Utterly disturbing” would be more accurate. What makes the weirdness stand out is how normal the rest of the film is. A lot of it is played like a straight detective drama, so when Cage is on-screen, or when the murders themselves are looked into, it feels even weirder than it would if it was spooky spooky woo all the way through (like Malum was)

The Beast

This is weird in a non-English movie way. I’m not even sure if “weird” is the right word, I’d say more “hypnotic”. Each scene on its own is relatively normal, but when you see how they interact with each other and tie into the overall narrative, the oddness reveals itself like a flasher on a street corner. It’s a strange watch, where you constantly have to adjust your expectations of traditional narrative structure, remembering scenes that happened in a different time, and playing the current scene alongside that in your head. Essentially, it’s the narrative version of a Mobius strip.

Winner

Poor Things

From the second the trailer came you could tell this was going to be weird. I heard Kinds Of Kindness was weirder, but I wasn’t able to go to the screening of that for health reasons. Poor Things is unique in every aspect. From the script, the story, the performances, the music, and the visuals. There are moments it’s too weird, mainly with the audio being discordant which made it difficult to focus. Emma Stone is on top of her game, you can truly believe she’s not in full control of her faculties. The visuals are also unlike anything else. Not just in the lens choices, but also wit the use of colour, particularly on the exterior shots which at times resemble paintings. You may not agree with every choice made, but it’s easy to tell that everything WAS a choice, nothing was accidental or left to chance. At the very least you have to respect that.

Sweetest

Venom: The Last Dance

Not the whole film, but there are moments which are incredibly touching. Two moments stick out. One is when Venom dances in a hotel room. That’s let down by how out of place it is, but in the moment it’s very sweet to see. The next is probably my favourite scene from the film; the family singing a David Bowie song. There’s a simple truth to the scene that rings through and makes you nostalgic for an experience you’ve never had. As I’ve said before; there are moments when the Venom series has shown just how much potential it has, but not many moments where it’s lived up to them.

Alien: Romulus

Almost entirely due to the relationship between two of the characters, Films like Alien have a problem; how do you make the characters smart enough to be in this situation but not quite smart enough to see the issues before they happen? You can’t have a film where scientists land on a planet then immediately remove their helmets and get infected. Okay, you can have that, but you shouldn’t. One way to excuse characters as making rash decisions is personal emotions. Zombie movies have nailed this down, with almost every single one having a scene where someone is infected and a loved one is hesitant to kill them, resulting in chaos. Romulus has similar moments, where the characters’ love for each other is the driving motivation for what would otherwise be questionable choices. Despite the fact one of them is an android, it’s a very human relationship

Babes

A movie like this lives and dies on the romantic relationship seeming believable. That’s difficult to do when we only meet one of the characters once and then he dies. The meet-cute is so damn believable that it actually made me jealous. Yes, one of the participants dies, but the moments they spend together? It’s fucking adorable.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

Again, fucking adorable. This could be terrible and melodramatic. But the central relationship is damn cute that you can’t help but fall in love with it. HVSCSP is flawed, but without the moments (particularly the two of them just sitting there listening to music), it would be a failure. With them? It’s genuinely lovely.

Paddington In Peru

Do I even need to justify this? It’s a Paddington movie, OF COURSE, it’s going to be adorable.

Thelma

It’s difficult to not watch this and fall a little bit in love with how lovely June Squibb is. She plays her role perfectly, with a mix of defencelessness and aged smarts. I like how Thelma didn’t just do the “old lady does a rap” style of comedy. The jokes have actual heart to them, it’s why it works. What could be just a silly dumb comedy, is actually a heartwarming look at ageing, family, and the defenceless you can feel after being scammed. The relationship between her and her grandson are delightfully sweet.

Winner

Monster

I had no idea what Monster was going in, I assumed it wasn’t a biography of the drinks company or the Imagine Dragons song. For a large period of the runtime of the film, I still wasn’t sure. Monster isn’t a film, it’s a puzzle that gradually reveals itself to you. But when it does? Oh my science is it worth it. Once you realise the romantic relationship at the heart of the Rashomon-style narrative, your heart will melt. It may seem like it comes out of nowhere, but that’s only because your brain wasn’t trained to read the foreshadowing. The two characters interacting is damn adorable, especially with the conflicted feelings they obviously have, knowing how the world is against their pairing.

Most Me

This is both the easiest and hardest to explain. They’re essentially the films I think are closest to my personality. Sometimes that’s “These are the films I feel I would have made”, sometimes it’s “I have never identified with a character more”.

American Fiction

It shifts skilfully between incredibly unsubtle satire about race in 2020’s America (especially in regards to expectations and preconceptions placed upon black people), to discussions about family trauma, and then ridiculously silly dialogue about nothing. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you feel things. I could never write this movie, but I would really want to.

The Iron Claw

It’s a wrestling movie, this was going to be here. I’m a huge professional wrestling fan, and the backstage stories are fucking insane sometimes. You need a certain personality type to be involved in the business, and those personality types tend to do crazy shit. There are a lot of stories from the history of it which would make good films, but I’m not sure any would be as heartbreaking as this.

Winner

Sometimes I Think About Dying

Yes, I rated this movie lower than the others on this list. So it’s not the best movie of the year, but it is the one I would show people if they wanted to know me. I really identified with the lead character and understood her feelings of preferred isolation. The dreary drudge of day-to-day domestication and how you escape into bleak fantasies to feel something is all too relatable. There’s also something to be said about how she craves human connection but denies it to herself, sabotaging her best chances of happiness and romantic relationships. Yet again, the character I related most to in a movie is a woman, that just keeps happening for some reason.

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

Longlegs (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Lee Harper is a clairvoyant who is assigned an unsolved murder case involving satanic sacrifices, possession, and Nicholas Cage

I will say this to start: there have been three films this year with lead characters named Lee, none of them male. Longlegs, Civil War, and the one where Kate Winslet played Lee—I can’t remember what that one was called though. Of the trilogy or trilog-lee, as some people (nobody) calls it, Longlegs is probably the one I enjoyed least.

I get the feeling it’s not supposed to be enjoyed though. It’s dark, gritty, and disturbing. That works in its favour as it means every moment is full of tension, so you never get a chance to relax. Osgood Perkins has made it so that even when the characters are in no danger, it somehow still feels uncomfortable. This is partly due to the way it is shot; the colour scheme and use of focus make everything feel like a mix of memory and a dream, where the rules of reality are still there, but you have a sneaking suspicion those rules could be torn up at any point. The narrative also helps; the sudden death of a character plants in your head the idea that all bets are off and nobody is safe.

On the downside; it is sometimes too bleak to care about, and the lighting makes it an uncomfortable watch for all the wrong reasons at times, making it resemble the visual equivalent of Tenat’s dialogue, you know stuff is there, and you know it’s important, but you can’t make it out at all.

The performances also help the tone. Cage, in particular, is disturbing. It is slightly disappointing how horror movies keep falling back on the “androgynous people who were assigned male sex at birth are creepy and likely to be serial killers” cliche that has real-world implications for trans people, but arguing for horror movies to stop doing that would be like asking Will Smith to stop saying “aw hell no” in his films, it’s not going to happen so you might as well just accept it.

Maika Monroe continues to be excellent. She has a habit of picking really good horror movies to start in, first It Follows, and now this. Nobody else is really given that much time to shine, but whoever decided to cast Alicia Witt as Monroe’s mother deserves a raise as that is spot on. Kiernan Shipka continues to impress whenever I see her, but her appearance in this is basically an extended cameo, and features some truly bad dialogue.

The dialogue is definitely the worst part of Longlegs, especially towards the end where it treats the audience like a nervous mother treats a child at traffic lights and holds their hand so tightly that you can sense it doesn’t trust you to know what’s happening. It then dumps so much information on you at once that it’s kind of annoying. Especially since it’s a detective horror, it would have been so easy for the script to simply reveal the killer M.O gradually throughout the runtime instead of “and here’s EVERYTHING”. The lead up to that with a character killing themselves by headbutting a table is pretty damn gnarly though.

So in summary, disturbing, kind of wonderful, but completely falls apart in the third act.