Tag: Orphan: First Kill

2022 Film Awards Day 3: The Personal

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Well I Liked It

Films which I liked, but others didn’t, whether it’s reviews or the general public.

Thor: Love And Thunder (RT Score: 64, Metacritic: 57)

It’s weird, a few years ago Marvel films were all overrated, being described as “the best films ever, they should win Oscars” but now it feels like the opposite has happened, and they’re being looked down on by Marvel fans. A lot of the time it basically comes down to one of two things:

  1. It didn’t have things the audience expected it to. This was especially prevalent for Multiverse Of Madness, in which I’ve seen people genuinely annoyed that Tom Cruise wasn’t in it as an alternate version of Iron Man. There was zero indication he was ever going to be, but that doesn’t matter, these guys heard someone say it on the internet and expected it to be true.

  2. “Too woke”. Which basically means, “It has a woman in it and she’s not overly sexualised or a damsel in distress”

I actually liked this, yeah it’s not the best film ever but it’s not the total piece of shit that some fans say it is. It has genuine emotion and deep themes. Plus the child actor is actually adorable to watch.

Death On The Nile (RT Score: 62, Metacritic: 52)

I don’t get the bile people have for this film. Is it great? Nope, and it’s definitely not as good as the first one, but it’s not terrible. Yes, the CGI for the backgrounds is lacking, but it is an entertaining film to watch. Other films did similar things better, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good film. Just because chocolate cake exists and is delicious, doesn’t mean eclairs aren’t good too.

Winner

Bullet Train (RT Score: 54, Metacritic: 49)

This genuinely baffles me. This is a fantastic film, featuring some of the best action scenes you’ll likely to see. It also has a great soundtrack, is very funny, and has some really good performances. It’s over 2 hours long (including credits) but doesn’t feel it. Is the low score based on the fact it’s a bit sweary? I’d settle for a 7-8 out of 10 for this, but for it to be rated SO low by critics is disappointing. I’m guessing critics just hate fun things.

I Don’t Get It

Men (RT Score; 69 [nice], Metacritic: 65)

Not a fan for one reason and one reason only; I’m not really a fan of weird mood pieces. It set up a plot and depended on the weirdness and mood to carry it through. I wanted to have some idea and grounding as to why it was happening. I don’t need my hand held for every little thing, but I want some idea of the reality.

Winner

Licorice Pizza (RT Score: 91, Metacritic: 90)

This got a lot of love from people. Some people truly loved it and considered it a masterpiece. It also did very well in terms of award nominations. It’s just, I personally couldn’t get past the ages of the people involved. A love story between a 15-year-old and a 25-year-old is not something I want to see, I just find it gross.

Most Surprising

Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers

I had every expectation that this would actually be terrible, turned out to be one the funniest films of the year. It’s incredibly self-aware, and much smarter than you’d think. It’s on par with The Lego Movie in how entertaining it is. Ordinarily, I’d be worried whether my nostalgia is clouding my judgement, whether my growing up on it means that I’m either predisposed to loving this movie because “hey, these characters existed when I had hope, that means they’re good”, or alternatively, it would make me hate it because “His eye colour is Egyptian Blue in the original, here it’s Persian Blue, worst film ever!”. I can safely say that’s not the case because I never watched these characters as a child, and as such, couldn’t give a shit.

Confess, Fletch

“Oh boy, a remake of an 80’s Chevy Chase movie, this is going to be good,” said nobody. Remakes are generally not good. Especially not remakes that are pushed out with zero advertising. It was just kind of put out there for a week. It had all the hallmarks of a film that the studio was ashamed of. I don’t get that, it’s a lot of fun to watch, has a decent story, and has genuine franchise potential. It got really good reviews both from reviewers and audiences. So it feels like a case of “those who watched it, liked it, but not many people watched it”.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

I like trailers. I don’t obsess over them and watch them desperate for details. But if I’m about to see something, I will usually watch a trailer beforehand just so I know what to expect. I purposely didn’t do that with this. I had somehow landed myself in a situation where I heard almost nothing about this. All I know was “something to do with multiverses” and “it’s very good”. I was kind of excited to go in knowing that little. I prepared for something very good, and what I got was something incredible. I expected it to be good, but I didn’t expect to fall in love with it as much as I did.

Winner

Orphan: First Kill

The first one is a, well, “modern classic” is pushing it a bit, but it’s certainly earned its place as a good showcase of modern horror. But it was built around a killer twist, a twist which the audience will know going into this one. It’s also a prequel, and those are never good. So how can this work? How can it be anything but a colossal (well, medium) failure? By being really f*cking good, that’s how. Also by pulling off a much better twist than the original, because you don’t know there’s a twist. You assume everything is going as it should, then when the reveal of a character’s true intention is revealed, it suddenly explains a lot of things. I loved this film, and considering I expected it to be terrible, the fact it’s one of my favourite horror films of the year says a lot. Are other films in this category better? Yes, easily. But the gap between “how good this film is” and “how shit I thought it would be” can’t be beaten.

Most Disappointing:

Firestarter

Why do so many films mess up King adaptations? Dark Tower was a mess, IT: Chapter 2 was disappointing, and this? This is just bad. It’s a shame as a character like this should be updated. The world we live in now is very different from the world we lived in when the original film was released (except for the threat of nuclear destruction from Russia). It would be interesting to see how the modern military would react to someone with these powers, and what would happen in an internet world where any incidents can be shared online instantly. Sadly, this film isn’t interested in showing any of those things. The only way it could be more predictable is if it actually played the Prodigy song, but at least then it would have some energy.

The 355

I thought this was going to be the first movie I saw in 2022, luckily it wasn’t, it would have kicked the year off on a somewhat sour note. It feels like it thinks that putting women in a generic spy movie is somehow groundbreaking. Without gender, it’s the same film you’ve seen many times before. Stunningly predictable, and with bland action scenes. Just not good enough for a modern audience.

Unhuman

This should be gayer. I don’t know how to explain it, but it should be. It does some good things with the villain reveal, but you can’t watch it and not feel like you’re watching a PG edit of a 15-rated film.

Winner

Halloween Ends

Obviously, this wins. I really enjoyed the first two (well, technically the second and third, or the eleventh and twelfth), to the point where Halloween Kills is genuinely one of my favourites in the franchise. But this? A steaming pile of shit would be kind. It feels like it was written on a napkin by someone who hadn’t watched the others. This is not the movie that the previous two set up. It seems like they were so focused on subverting expectations they forgot to make it workable. You can’t have the final Halloween movie barely feature Michael Myers, and you’re a dumbass if you think you can.

Worst Movie

The Bubble

This is bad. It’s such a waste of so many talented people. It feels like Apatow just got everybody to make shit up, and kept the worst options from every take. The pacing is terrible, it completely wastes what could be a good comedic sequence of them in quarantine. Absolutely nothing about it works. It focuses on the wrong characters, and the characters it does focus on aren’t likeable, but aren’t really detestable enough to be the figures of hate the film portrays them as. I’m not even nominating anything else, because this is such a colossal failure that nothing deserves to be compared to it.

Best Film

Belle

I saw this relatively early on last year, and it immediately disqualified quite a few films I saw prior to being nominated for this award. The difference between this, and films I liked that came before it in 2022 was huge. I am so glad I saw this, and I immediately told my friends about it. It’s hauntingly beautiful, and I am still occasionally emotionally affected by the flashbacks. If this was a different year, this might have won, but it was SUCH a stacked year in terms of quality films.

Fall

There’s a moment in this film where a ladder snaps and the character is left hanging in the air. At this point in the screening I attended, someone a few rows over just stood up, said “nope, fuck that” and left. There were a few moments when I considered joining him. It’s so well done that I couldn’t watch it, it was too tense. There’s a part of my brain that sees the things that happen in this and go “nope, that’s a bad thing to do”. Despite the fact it is obviously fictional, you get lost in the world so convincingly that your brain forgets it’s not real.

The Batman

Mainly for the fact that it’s only 20 minutes away from being the same length as Avatar: The Way Of Water, yet never feels it. I would watch this again, in fact, I did. I saw it twice at the cinema and was just as into it the second time. I’m not even sure I want to watch a trailer for Way Of Water again. It is not a perfect film, but it is the best comic book MOVIE in a while. It feels actually mature (rather than what it usually means when people say “we’ve made a mature comic book movie”: tits and guns). It also does the best job of showing WHY Batman does what he does.

Glass Onions: A Knives Out Mystery

Trust me, any other year, this could have won, I know people who have watched this multiple times already, and I don’t blame them. Everything about it works. It’s funny, it’s clever, and it’s just so damn entertaining to watch. I still count it as one of the best films I’ve seen and is definitely in my top 50, maybe top 10. So why isn’t it top? Because it was against something magnificent.

Winner

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Of course, it’s this. Nothing else could even come close. This is one of the best things I have ever seen in my life. This truly had everything I want in a film. It was funny, it had great action scenes, good music, yet it was also incredibly heartbreaking. I didn’t think a scene of two rocks talking to each other could make me feel as tearful as it did here. This should be a mess, it tries to do SOOO much, and the things it tries to do all have different tones. It balances the silliness of dildo fights, and the meaning of existence and trauma. It’s weirdly existential and nihilistic at the same time. This isn’t just film, this was a life-changing experience.

2022 Film Awards Day Two: The Technical

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Best Looking

I tried to go for different types of visuals here, so everything here has a different reason for me liking the visuals. On the downside this means that some did miss out, purely because what they did very well, others did better.

Avatar: The Way Of Water

Obviously, this was going to be here. The film itself is dull, but it’s a visual masterpiece. The worlds feel lived in, with environments and buildings showing suitable wear and tear.

Encanto

The level of detail on the clothes is amazing. You can almost feel the fabric. There’s a great visual flow to everything too. The house etc looks lived in due to the little visual details.

Fall

Mainly because it did a great job of making you feel like you were high up. This was probably the most nauseating film I saw all year, and that’s entirely due to how effective the visuals were.

Licorice Pizza

I hated this film, but I loved the way it looked. It looked like it was being watched on an old cathode TV.

Orphan: First Kill

It’s a prequel, filmed 13 years on from the original, but you never think that the actress is 13 years older than she was originally. All practical as well.

The Batman

Very rarely has Gotham looked quite as grimy as it does here.

Winner

We’re All Going To The Worlds Fair

Without the visuals, this would be poor. It would be too incomprehensible. With it, it’s hauntingly beautiful. Some films have looked better, but few films have enhanced the quality of a film as much as was done here. It’s like being trapped in a lava lamp.

Best Music

Belle

I watched this film once, haven’t watched anything on youtube about it since, and I don’t own the soundtrack. I can still hear some of the songs in my head sometimes.

Bullet Train

It had a Japanese cover of Holding Out For A Hero playing out during action scenes, what else do you want?

Licorice Pizza

A good mix of classic music that suits the tone perfectly. Yes, I am aware it’s weird to nominate a film for two positive awards if I hated it. Deal with it.

Men

So very creepy. Incredibly effective at making you feel wary of what would otherwise be beautiful countryside.

The Justice Of Bunny King

Mainly for the cover of What’s Up that plays over the end.

We’re All Going To The Worlds Fair

I mean, I purchased the soundtrack. The only movie soundtrack I purchased all year in fact. So it’s kind of here by default.

Winner

Encanto

“The Family Madrigal” earned this film a nomination, “Surface Pressure” won this for it. A legit heartbreaking song.

Best Character

Bee – Bodies Bodies Bodies

She’s one of the few likeable characters. She’s just so damn kind that you see her in this world and really feel for how the dickweeds are treating her. She goes through so much through the course of this film that your heart just breaks for her.

Jupe – Nope

A character is in such strong denial about his trauma. Only being able to talk about it through the medium of an SNL sketch, and then repeating the exact same damn mistakes. It’s stupid, and it’s baffling, but it’s so human.

Luisa – Encanto.

Had a lot of options for this and really there are many that could be chosen, in the end I went with her because it’s specifically her song where the whole tone changes and the film becomes something different.

Mina – Ballad Of A White Cow

She is so beaten down by her situation, and you can’t really blame her for feeling like she does. It’s made worse by the fact that this happens all the time to women in certain parts of the world. They’re powerless to stop it, and others are powerless to help. There’s a scene near the end which demonstrates this. I talked about it in the original review and I’ll post it again here:

Sadly, this act of kindness ends up getting her evicted (for having an unrelated male in the house), but she never mentions it to him. She hides it from him out of kindness for him. Because she doesn’t want him to feel guilty.

The Riddler – The Batman

Takes a character who is usually seen as a joke by the film-going audience, and makes him a highly disturbing serial killer.

The Wolf – Bullet Train

He gets a whole sequence fleshing out his backstory, giving him a compelling arc which you know he’s going to use as the basis to redeem himself later in the film. Instead, he dies, very quickly. And it’s brilliant.

Winner

Benoit Blanc – Glass Onion

I think he’s now up there with the greatest characters in modern cinema. Everything about him is notable. The fact that “Benoit describing other films” is now a meme, displays just how well-written and defined this character is.

Worst Character

Cyclone – Black Adam

Mainly because it did a terrible job of explaining her powers.

Spider – Avatar: The Way Of Water

His characterisation is all over the place. He was raised with the Na’vi and dislikes humans. He gets kidnapped by humans and then starts liking them, even though many of his friends have been killed by them. He then watches the humans attempt genocide, and decides that’s too much, he has to leave them. But not before saving the villains life, making sure he can come back in the sequel.

Billy Lomas – Scream

Hallucinations always feel like a cheap way of bringing dead characters back, and that’s definitely the case here. It’s nice to see the actor again, and it does make some narrative sense, but it kind of feels like they came up with the concept of him coming back first, and then wrote a reason for it.

Will – Ambulance

Only because it’s yet another “No, I don’t kill” character who then DEFINITELY kills nameless characters by causing accidents and vehicular destruction. He’s written too much like a cliché, which renders him really uninteresting to watch.

Alana/Gary – Licorice Pizza

When the two characters were apart, they were smart, funny, likeable, and I wanted to see more of them. When they were together they were selfish, manipulative, and nonsensical. It drove them to be the worst versions of themselves. Which for a film about a relationship is a bad thing.

Winner

Corey Cunningham – Halloween Ends

His entire arc lessens not just this film, but the entire modern trilogy. They really dropped the ball with this entry, and part of that is because of the sudden focus on Corey. I refuse to believe this was the plan all along, if it was, it should have been threaded through the previous two films.

Best Performer

Janelle Monae – Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

A strong cast throughout, but Monae inches ahead because of her (spoiler) duel roles. It’s difficult as not only does she have to play both, but also has to play one who is pretending to be the other. It’s a really tricky performance, but she manages it, and provides the glue that holds the film together.

Ayden Mayeri – Confess, Fletch

She’s surrounded by veterans of the comedy game in Roy Wood Jr, Jon Hamm, Annie Mumolo, and John Slatterly. Meanwhile, she is still yet to have a Wikipedia page. That’s a damn shame, as in a film of comedy giants, she stands out. Her line delivery provides some of the biggest vegan laughs (that’s laughs that contain no Hamm). I want to see her in more stuff, especially leading a sitcom. She’s got the skills, and now she has the credibility.

Grace Carolyn Currey – Fall

The film is anchored around her performance, if she fails, she drags the film down and it sinks. I kind of regret saying “anchored” now, feels like it clashes with the metaphor, but the point still stands.

Anastasia Budiashkina – Olga

If this was “best film debut performance by a sports star” then Anastasia would definitely……be in the top two for this year (spoilers). Even without her complete inexperience, this would be an astounding performance. But when you consider that this is her only acting performance, it’s almost impossible to believe.

Kali Reis – Catch The Fair One

The other sports star performance of the year, this time from a boxer. She has an advantage over Budiashkina in that she has acted before, in an episode of True Detective. Normally, that wouldn’t be enough experience for a director to base a film around. She brings an energy to this film that is unmatched. I also love the fact that she seems like a genuinely good person, albeit one that punches women in the face for a living.

Austin Butler – Elvis

Everyone is familiar with Elvis Presley. They know his voice, they know his look, and they know his mannerisms. So if a performer is lacking in certain aspects, not only will it be noticed, but the person will be ripped apart by a truly passionate fanbase. If you even get a syllable wrong, you’ll be crucified. It’s a LOT of pressure, and it could destroy a young actor. I know Elvis fans, and ones who dislike a lot of things, they liked his performance. I did too, there’s a moment near the end where it shows footage of the real Elvis and it suddenly hit me “oh yeah, I was watching an actor”.

Winner

Stephanie Hsu – Everything Everywhere All At Once

I tried to limit it to one performer from each film, and this was the hardest one to pick. Everybody in this is at the top of their game. There’s not a single moment where the performances could be improved. In a way, this film is for all three of the leads, but Hsu deserves highlighting because of the sheer amount of differences she has to give her variations. Michelle Yeoh does too, but a lot of her hardest work is in the physical fight scenes, and the differences aren’t quite as varied as the ones Hsu is given to do. Very few performers can be both an omnicidal maniac, and a broken and scared teen who just wants her mother to recognise she’s in pain, even fewer manage both of those in the same film.

2022 In Film: Day Nine (The Almost Amazing)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

These are films which are incredible, they’re just not among the best I’ve ever seen. There’s some great stuff in this section, most years, these would be among the best, but 2022 was actually an INCREDIBLE year for cinema, as will be proven in the next entry.

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Ups: Very funny.

Some great deaths.

So damn clever at the end.

Downs: You might get frustrated before it gets to the end.

Characters are a bit unsympathetic.

Pete Davidson could tone it down a bit.

Best Moment: The ending, easily.

Worst Moment: The sub-plot about the texts. Could have been done better.

Best Performer: Maria Bakalova

Opening: Bee and Sophie are travelling to a hurricane party. The fact they’re travelling to a hurricane party says everything you need to know about those characters. Perfect.

Closing: I don’t want to spoil it, but trust me, it’s good. It changes the entire film and is everything an ending should be.

Best Line: “I’m not escalating you’re holding the knife and you’re moving your hands while you talk.”

Original Review here

Boiling Point

Ups: The fact it was made. A technical masterpiece.

Downs: It’s supposed to be a very busy night, but never really feels like it. Feels very low-stakes.

Best Moment: Chef Carly bringing one of the front of house staff to tears just through words alone. It’s a long-ass speech and it’s delivered perfectly.

Worst Moment: The ending. Seems a bit too reminiscent of the original ending of Clerks, like they didn’t know how to end it.

Best Performer: Graham. Easily.

Opening: The main character walking to work whilst on the phone, and then meets an environmental health officer. Does a great job of setting up him and the situation. Then the health officer starts criticising people, “I know that’s regulation temperature, but ideally I want it lower”, so he essentially marks them down for following the rules. Sets up the conflict.

Closing: He cries on the phone to his estranged wife, getting her to tell their son that he loves him. He then promises to get into rehab. He then keels over, possibly dying as we fade to black. That’s…….brutal.

Best Line: The aforementioned speech. It’s cutting, and perfect. Can’t type the whole thing here.

Original Review here

Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers

Ups: Very funny

Very meta

The animation differences actually work.

Lots of cameos.

REALLY dark.

Downs: A bit predictable

Some of the characters from the original series are sidelined.

If you’re a child, are you going to understand all the references and cameos?

Best Moment: When one of the characters uses a Rescue Rangers episode to indicate they’re in trouble. The code is not picked up, but another one with the same message is. Very funny.

Worst Moment: The cheesemonger moment feels a bit of a waste of the performers talent.

Best Performer: Samberg. His child-like enthusiasm is perfect for this.

Opening: Voiceover, showing how the two met. Cliche, but works, also adds some great jokes in there “you’re not Donald Duck, you have to wear pants”

Closing: They decide to release a reboot of the Rescue Rangers TV show. Works. Suits the style of the film.

Best Line: “What’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say Chip N Dale? I’m willing to bet it’s Thomas Chippendale, the london cabinet maker. I bet the second thing is these guys *shows the chippendale dancers*“

Original Review here

Confess, Fletch

Ups: So damn funny.

A compelling mystery.

Great ensemble cast.

Downs: Other mysteries have been better.

Terribly marketed.

Could be smarter.

Best Moment: The scene with the neighbour, chaotic comedy.

Worst Moment: Some of the police scenes undermine their characters a little bit.

Best Performer: Ayden Mayeri. Tempted to go with Hamm, but he has enough recognition, Mayeri doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. So just mentioning her now so that when she inevitably becomes a huge sitcom star, I can point out I was a fan of her first.

Opening: The lead is sent by his girlfriend to recover stolen paintings. Might have set up the character more if we caught him at the end of a previous job so we get more of an indication of how good he is. But I respect how quickly it leaps into the main story.

Closing: The redistribution of the stolen paintings. In a lot of films, I would criticise this as being too “look, this character is likeable”, but in this, it kind of makes sense with the way the character is written.

Best Line: “We obtained surveillance footage from a store around the corner.”

“Where the fudge is made?”

Original Review here

Fall

Ups: Effective, to the point it almost made me nauseous watching it.

Likeable characters.

Simple story, done in the best possible way.

Downs: “so it’s just them on a small platform?” If you can’t get past that, you’re not going to like this.

Visuals in the opening are a bit weak.

Might not be able to stomach it more than once.

Best Moment: When the ladder breaks. You know it’s not real, and you know the characters won’t die that early. But you can’t get past the “holy shit, that should not happen” part of your brain. Plus, when it happened in the screening I was at, a guy immediately shook his head, stood up, and loudly exclaimed “nope, fuck that”

Worst Moment: The ending.

Best Performer: Grace Caroline Currey. The film is anchored around her performance, if she fails, she drags the film down and it sinks. Kind of regret saying “anchored” now, feels like it clashes with the metaphor.

Opening: Becky, Hunter, and Dan (Becky’s husband) climb a mountain. Dan makes a quick dismount, by which I mean he falls and dies. The weakest visuals in the whole thing, the backgrounds look incredibly fake.

Closing: Obvious ending. But it happens way too quickly and feels like they cut a 5 minute scene out filling in some things.

Best Line: “If you’re scared of dying, don’t be afraid to live”

Original Review here

Orphan: First Kill

Ups: Actually adds to the mythos.

Great use of practical effects.

Incredible plot that rewards rewatching

Downs: A bit too many “this is a reference to the original” moments.

Best Moment: The reveal. Trust me, it’s glorious.

Worst Moment: “Esther” finding a missing child who looks like her, is like a needle in a haystack. May have worked better if she saw news about the missing child, then decided to make most of the opportunity.

Best Performer: Julia Stiles.

Opening: Leena/Esther escapes an institution by seducing and killing a guard. It’s weird the guy was sexually aroused by someone with a disease that makes them look like a child, right? Very slasher movie, and works well.

Closing: The original film starts. Good to see.

Best Line: What was I supposed to do… put my surviving child in prison over some sibling rivalry shit?

Original Review here

Scream

Ups: Very clever.

Tackles the darker side of fandom.

Good kills.

Has the best use of Red Right Hand in the franchise so far.

Likeable characters

Downs: Wastes some good potential killers.

The twist could have been foreshadowed slightly better.

Best Moment: Dewey’s death. Truly shocking.

Worst Moment: The hallucinations of Billy are an acquired taste that doesn’t fully work.

Best Performer: David Arquette.

Opening: It’s a Scream movie, you know how it’s going to start: ghostface stabs someone. Major difference in this is they survive. It’s a good way of saying “yes we know the conventions, but we’re going to swerve away from them”

Closing: Gale decides to not write about the killers, leaving them anonymous. Good ending, but might have worked out better for the fourth.

Best Line: “See, you can’t just reboot a franchise from scratch anymore. The fans won’t stand for it. Black Christmas, Child’s Play, Flatliners, that shit doesn’t work. But you can’t just do a straight sequel, either. You need to build something new. But not too new or the Internet goes bug-fucking-nuts. It has to be part of an ongoing storyline, even if that story should never have been going on in the first place. New main characters, yes, but supported by, and related to, legacy characters. Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel, like the new Halloween, Saw, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, fuck, even Star Wars. It always, always goes back to the original!”

Original Review here

See How They Run

Ups: Compelling mystery

Saoirse Ronan is a ball of energy.

I like that I know there are many Agatha Christie references I missed out on.

A classic throwback to a genre.

Once you realise where the ending is going you’ll laugh your ass off.

Downs: Loses momentum going into the third act.

Some wasted time.

One of the misdirect attempts really doesn’t work.

Best Moment: The murder reveal is executed (pardon the pun) perfectly.

Worst Moment: The dream sequence.

Best Performer: Saoirse Ronan

Opening: Pan down from the theatre down to the eventual murder victim as he monologues.

Closing: Two characters sit down to watch The Mousetrap. Weirdly nice and quaint. Plus it allows the film to end in a thematically suitable way.

Best Line: “What’s next? A caption that says Three Weeks Later” *caption saying Three Weeks Later appears on screen*

Original Review here

The Banshees Of Inisherin

Ups: Darkly hilarious.

A lot of beauty in the shots.

Tremendous attention to detail for the sets and costumes.

Incredible performances.

Downs: Relentlessly bleak, which stops the emotional moments from hitting quite as hard as they should.

Repeats narrative beats.

Best Moment: When Colm actually cuts his fingers off, brutal.

Worst Moment: Dominic dying, only because it’s handled very quickly.

Best Performer: Colin Farrell. Could easily be Gleeson though.

Opening: Pádraic goes to see his friend Colm, who ignores him. That’s it. That’s also the opening 30 minutes or so. It works though.

Closing: The former friends aren’t so much at loggerheads anymore, but definitely won’t can’t be friends again. It’s good as it shows you although this is the end of the film, it’s not the end of the story.

Best Line: “Look at this I found. A stick with a hook. What would you use it for, I wonder. To hook things that are the length of a stick away”

Original Review here

Turning Red

Ups: Likeable characters.

Has something to say, you can tell this is a writers dream project and is deeply personal to them.

Downs: The animation isn’t as good as Pixar usually is.

The characters are slightly obnoxious at times, but then again, they are teenagers so….

Best Moment:

Worst Moment: The furore about “sexualising children” that surrounded the release of this.

Best Performer: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, brilliantly deadpan.

Opening: Mei doing the usual “so this is me” opening. Instantly sets out who she is, and her relationship with her family. She’s incredibly likeable and her personality shines through.

Closing: The family relationship is fixed, and the red panda is now a tourist attraction at the temple. Kind of obvious was going to end that way, but allows some sweet moments.

Best Line: Honoring Your Parents Sounds Great, But If You Take It Too Far, Well, You Might Forget To Honor Yourself.

Original Review here

Orphan: First Kill (2022)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Leena Klammer is a 31 year old woman with a rare disorder that causes her to look like a child. She uses this to worm her way into a family by pretending to be their lost daughter Esther.

When you go to see a film you usually have questions you want answered: How will John Wick surpass the previous films? Who’s that mysterious person in the trailer? Is this where we begin to see that the MCU actually does have a plan? With this, the question was more “so it’s a prequel to a film that came out 13 years ago? How’s that going to work? And we already know the twist, she’s not a child, she’s an adult killer, so again; how is this going to work?”

As a general rule, prequels are terrible. They have zero tension because the film tries to put have life or death situations with characters we know to survive. As good as they were, NOBODY watches X-Men First Class and thinks “oh no, I don’t know whether Magneto or Charles Xavier are going to survive”. There’s also sequel escalation to deal with: because it comes after, the natural choice is to have bigger stakes, but it’s a prequel so it just feels weird. The “prequels are terrible” rule is ESPECIALLY true in horror movies; they have a habit of exploring characters who we don’t want to see explored, they ruin the mystery of the villains and make them seem weaker, ruining the whole franchise.

All of that, combined with the fact that I didn’t see any trailers at the cinema for this lead me to go in with low expectations. On the bright side, it’s just over 90 minutes so at least it will be over soon, plus I’m getting free nachos so that’s something.

I was surprised. I genuinely loved this movie. There’s a reveal in this where your experience as a viewer changes. It’s SUCH a good reveal too. The kind that makes you want to watch the film again to see if you can catch it before it happens. It also doesn’t impact the other film in the franchise. This does tie into the previous film, there are a few allusions to it here and there, and the ending directly leads into it. But it is a stand-alone film. It explains the character well enough that if you hadn’t seen the original, you won’t be lost. THAT’S how a film like this should be, it should reward viewers of the original, but it shouldn’t appeal ONLY to them. This is probably my favourite prequel I’ve seen.

Now onto the stand-alone analysis. There seems to be more of a focus on bright colours in this one, which provides a kind of nice motif throughout the whole thing. It’s not exactly unique, but it does make it stand out among the dark greys and browns of a lot of horror films. Directed by William Brent Bell, I’ve seen two of his films before (The Devil Inside, Brahms The Boy 2) and I fucking hated them, but his style works for this. There are some great uses of blank spaces to highlight how small Esther is compared to her surroundings.

Onto Esther, she’s played by Isabelle Fuhrman again, the last time she played her she was 12, she’s now 25. To reiterate: she’s 25, playing a 31-year-old who looks like a 9-year-old. It’s so weird but she pulls it off. This performance puts the character of Esther on another level, and makes you think that they must be really regretting killing her off at the end of the first one, and making the ending of this one tie so heavily into the start of the original. This character deserves to feature in more films, and I’m not sure how they’re going to do that now (although they are planning it). Her story is locked in, we’ve essentially seen the beginning and the end, with no room for a middle. The other members of the cast are okay, most of them are serviceable. Julia Stiles is a revelation though, I’ve seen her in a lot of stuff before, but this is her at her best. It felt like the first time she was a character and not just Julia Stiles. Rossif Sutherland is okay, I guess, but he’s stuck between two superb performances, and just doesn’t match it.

In summary I’d say definitely watched this. It’s a different film to the first one, but one I enjoyed a lot more.