Tag: Poor Things

2024 Film Awards: Day Four (The Visuals)

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Best Looking

Nominees

Poor Things

This will be divisive. The shots themselves are undoubtedly beautiful. But the weird fish-eyeness may put some people off. You’ll either be nauseous or entranced. but either way, they will affect your opinion of the film. I won’t lie, they are fucking weird, but so is the film, so it works. There’s a dreamlike quality to a lot of the shots, especially the exterior ones.

The Holdovers

Just watching the trailer gives you an idea of why I like the visuals. Yes, they’re not particularly stunning or incredible. But they really sell the period the film is set in. You can show someone this and tell them it’s from the 70s and they could believe you. I know it is something that just involved a filter and changing the lighting a little bit, but it was really effective.

Sometimes I Think About Dying

Sometimes beauty comes from bright colours, sometimes it comes from fluid motions, and sometimes it comes from making every shot like a painting from the 1800s. This is in the last category. Yes, there’s not much colour, but the use of greys, the use of blank space and desolate backgrounds, it’s art. No, it’s not complicated, but it’s stunning in its own way. This film is why “mise en scene” is talked about.

The Wild Robot

I’ve mentioned in a few of these about how sometimes the visuals match the story and enhance the viewing experience. I’ve mentioned mise en scene, I’ve talked about specific camera techniques etc. With this? All I can say is “Ooooooo, pretty”.

The Substance

Every film released this year was in focus, that’s an obvious point to make. But somehow, The Substance seemed more in focus. Striking visuals

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

It’s weird how something with so few colours can look SO good. I personally was not a fan of this movie. But it would be a lie to say it didn’t look absolutely sublime. Every inch of the screen is permeated with love, care, and artistic flair. Hey, I made a rhyme, and it was not even intentional. A lot of films (and video games, mainly video games) use dusty brown colour palettes as an excuse to look blander than a toast sandwich. Furiosa shows that up for the bullshit lazy excuse that it is. You can use that as the basis for your visuals, and still inject beauty, still inject moments of colour. Essentially, you CAN make it so it’s not fucking ugly.

Winner

I Saw The TV Glow

Much like Schoenbrun’s previous work (We’re All Going To The Worlds Fair), there are times when TV Glow makes you feel like you’re in a lava lamp being hypnotised. The bright colours, the cinematography, it’s absolutely stunning. It’s not just beauty for beauty’s sake, the ethereal nature suits the story too, enhancing the illusion the film is trying to sell.

Best Music

Side note, I’m not doing a “worst music”, but if I did, The Fall Guy would have won because of how often it played the same song by a band that f*cking sucks.

Madame Web

There’s a total of around 19 seconds where Madame Web is a good film. The music is 10 of them; when they play The Cranberries, and when they play Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That’s literally half of what is good in this movie, those two song choices.

The Iron Claw

A film’s soundtrack is not just “songs we want you to listen to in the car on the way home”. Sometimes they set the mood, sometimes they describe the characters, and sometimes (like in The Iron Claw) they PERFECTLY encapsulate the era. The visuals don’t really give away the period (outside of buildings which no longer exist), but as soon as you hear the soundtrack you know when the film is set, and you also KNOW it’s the United States, specifically one of the southern states. It would be like if a movie was soundtracked entirely by Blur, Oasis and Pulp, you’d know it’s 90’s England.

Sometimes I Think About Dying

For most of these, I have described the soundtracks as “the use of pre-made songs that have been chosen”, and haven’t delved much into the score. Obviously, that’s about to change, otherwise, that would have been a f*cking weird way to start this entry. Mute YouTube, then watch the trailer for SITAD. I can guarantee you know how it sounds just from the visuals. That’s not a criticism, by the way. It would be weird if this used joyful summer sounds. The music is PERFECT for this.

Winner

I Saw The TV Glow

Much like Worlds Fair, Glow is enhanced by the music choices. It’s not a soundtrack that will stick with you, there’s not really many songs that you’ll remember when its over. But while the film is playing? Alongside the visuals? It’s gorgeous. You can tell every song has been deliberately chosen to enhance the viewing experience. One of the few films I can imagine releasing its soundtrack on cassette and it wouldn’t feel like a gimmick.

Best Effects/CGI

Immaculate/The First Omen

Yes, I’m lumping these two together again, because there are moments for which I genuinely can’t remember which of the two they come from. So take this entry as if the two are a double feature counted as a single film.

The deformed fetuses are horrific, which considering what they are, is good. This has some truly wonderful body horror. When she witnesses the birth of something……well it’s not right, it looks awful, in a good way. There’s something truly unsettling about how the demonic hand comes out of the woman.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

The modern Apes movies have always looked spectacular, and there were concerns this wouldn’t match it. Thankfully, it does. The original Superman movie was advertised with the tagline “You will believe a man can fly”. In this? You will believe an ape can speak basic English. You can make criticisms of this movie, but you can never say that the visuals took you out of it.

Abigail

Horror movies, particularly ones aimed at the audience Abigail is aimed at, need to make sure the kills are good. And how do you do that? By making them look good. If they look silly, or too fake, the audience is immediately taken out (unless the film leans into it). Abigail has some fantastic deaths, and the blood looks REALLY good. It doesn’t just look like water with food colouring, it looks thick, it looks heavy, it looks, well it looks fucking gross. So when you see someone covered in blood, the horror of the moment truly hits you, as opposed to making you think “That’s good makeup”, you think “Oh shit, that’s a lot of blood”.

Sting

Almost entirely due to how good the spider looks. Spiders are tricky to make look real when you increase the size because the way they actually move is weird as hell so when you see it close up there’s something “off” about it, and not in a scary way, in a “this looks stupid” way. Sting somehow manages to look real. I’ve said it before, there is an inkling of a GREAT movie under the surface here, and the visuals are a part of that.

Winner

The Substance

I was thinking twice about having this as a category. What made me decide to go through with it was knowing that The Substance was going to walk away with this award, and I feel I need to show this more love than I have done. In a film about beauty, it’s magnificent at showing ugliness. Not just the big moments, like the giant headf*ck at the end. But also the withered body parts that look suitably gross. The key moment is the first time she takes The Substance, where her back seems to rip apart. This could look painless, as if it’s just something that’s happening like someone opening their mouth. But the makeup up etc means that every inch of that back opening up looks like absolute agony, as it should.

Worst Effects/CGI

Nominees

Alien: Romulus

As much as I hate to give this a negative mark, the Ian Holm head is too off-putting to not mention. Apparently, they have fixed it for the Blu-ray release, but I haven’t got around to watching it yet. Also, I’m not rewarding them for fixing a mistake that shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Films shouldn’t need patches.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man

I’ve said it multiple times; this movie looks like low-budget porn, and the makeup is a big part of that. It looks like they didn’t have enough time to get it done properly, so it looks cheap and weird. Like it’s the base for a shot they’re going to improve later, rather than the finished shot.

Kraven The Hunter

There’s a scene in this movie where it looks like they CGI’d moving lips and blinking eyes on a still image to insert some ADR. It looks exactly as good as I made that sound. The rest of the CGI isn’t much better, with inconsistent effects, cartoonish blood, and “character in panto” levels of makeup, but the “look at what you became” moment is unforgivable.

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

When you want to make something look large, it’s not enough to just have low-angle shots for the whole thing. You need comparison, you need the giant monster to stand next to a building or a human, so you can truly be awed by the size. That’s where this movie fails, it spends most of the runtime with the monsters just standing around each other, so they don’t seem particularly impressive. It’s only in the final third when they start to fight in populated areas that you begin to get a sense of scale.

Winner

Argylle

I assumed the bouncing cat would be the worst CGI moment of this movie. Nope. There are multiple moments which look faker than a shop assistant’s smile. I know some things are difficult to make real, and that there will always be something that looks wrong with some moments. But when a close-up of a face looks fake, you’ve done goofed.

Best Stunts/Action Scenes

Nominees

Alien: Romulus

Normally, I reward action scenes based on speed. Romulus is different, the best moments aren’t really fast, but they’re SO well-crafted that I have to commend them. Some action scenes in movies are like smashing a snooker ball into a group of others, and watching them move. Romulus is more like dominos, you spend a lot of time watching them carefully be set up and positioned, and then they finally come down, it takes a while, but it’s immensely satisfying to watch them fall.

Boy Kills World

This came SO close to winning. The TV Show fight at the end is worthy of mention on its own. But there are so many other fights which come close to that. It’s especially remarkable considering its a directorial debut. It’s not just that they’re well-crafted, they’re inventive too, in an obvious way. By which I mean, there are things done that you haven’t seen before, but once they happen you think “Well now I’ve seen it, that was an incredibly obvious thing that should have happened before”. Boy Kills World was criminally under-advertised and undersold, and I highly recommend checking it out. Part of that is how funny it is, how sweet it is, how good the performances are. But none of them would matter if it wasn’t for just how damn entertaining the fights are.

Abigail

Mainly because of how the scenes perfectly blended the violence of death with the beauty of ballet. There’s a simple elegance to Abigail (Simple Elegance Of Abigail would make a grand album title btw) that helps it to stand out in the inevitable sea of clones.

Deadpool And Wolverine

The Deadpool franchise has always had excellent fight scenes, and DAW is no exception. From the moment the beats of Bye Bye Bye kick in and he’s beating people to death with a skeleton, you know you’re in for some inventive shit. The multi-deadpool fight could (and should) have been a lot better. But when the action scenes of DAW are good, they’re incredible and well worth checking out.

Gladiator 2

Have any of you played Condemned? I remember the first time I played that and beat someone with a crowbar. I was used to “hit thing, it falls down” standard physics in video games. But that’s the first time I remember thinking “fuck, that must have hurt” after hitting someone with a weapon. The hits had weight to them, meaning you felt every impact. That’s what Gladiator 2 does. Yes, the sharks are f*cking stupid, but the man-to-man fight scenes all feel spectacular, making you feel as if the lives of any of the characters could be ended in a single moment. It really helps to sell just how brutal and inhumane gladiator fights were, and why it’s a good thing Netflix didn’t make this movie otherwise they’d hold them for real, completely missing the “wow, look how horrible this is, and how horrific a society that allows this to happen would be” point of the movie. Yes, that was a Squid Games reference.

Winner

The Fall Guy

It’s a movie about stunts, if they messed up the action scenes then it would be a complete failure. What I loved about it was how practical the stunts were. David Leitch is tremendous at fight scenes (as anybody who has seen Bullet Train and Atomic Blonde can confirm), but action scenes involving non-humans are much harder. You can fully control a person, if you tell them to move backwards, you have a general idea of what their body parts are going to do, and they’re unlikely to suddenly do a backflip into a nearby fridge. Vehicles are different, a slight variation in speed or ground level can completely change how it reacts. So it’s amazing that Leitch managed to do what he did here, with every piece moving like a finely controlled part of a system. Also, they broke a world record for most cannon rolls in a car. I can’t watch a film that has that level of dedication, and not reward it.

Worst Stunts/Action Scenes

Nominees

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die

I wish the action scenes were better, I really do. But truth be told, they’re bland. I’m assuming they are anyway, I can’t remember them. As good as this franchise has been, it’s always been focused on the dialogue and plot rather than the gunplay. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be nice if some of the creativity in some of the shots was extended to the action.

Lift

There are many reasons why some action scenes fail. Sometimes it’s the performances, sometimes it’s the choreography, sometimes it’s the CGI. My issue with Lift is much simpler; the idea of the scene itself is too stupid. I’m talking about the “plane flying upside down” moment. It’s a scene so ridiculous (and not in a fun way) that it’s almost impossible to enjoy.

Borderlands

My main issue with the action scenes in Borderland is just how dull they are. There’s no creativity or skill to any of them. They’re also shot with the idea of “we need to see these actors” rather than logic, so characters supposed to be in disguise walk around without masks. There’s no sense of storytelling to them either, they’re just a series of action scenes with no connective tissue.

Winner

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

I’m actually not going to talk about the issues I have with size this time. Instead, I’m going to focus on one moment; when the titans etc are fighting on the beach near the end, smashing into buildings and destroying them. This should be epic, we should feel terrified for the people in those buildings. We should notice that there are people who’s lives are being ruined because their home/place of employment is being destroyed. Essentially, it should feel like this fight has an impact. It doesn’t. It feels like if you and I were having a punch-up in a model village. Yes, one of us will fall on a house, but we won’t feel any guilt for the people in it.

2024 Film Awards: Day Three (The Individual)

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Best Performer

Marisa Abela – Back To Black

I wasn’t a fan of the film itself, I found it was a biography that seemed to absolutely detest its lead character. Abela handles the role well, to the point where you sometimes forget you’re not watching Winehouse. The character goes through a lot, but Abela’s performance is consistent throughout.

Demi Moore – The Substance

It’s hard to think of what hasn’t already been said about Demi Moore in The Substance. Margaret Qualley is good, but Moore is the lynchpin. Qualley’s character is more an idea than a fully formed person, so she doesn’t really need to stretch her skills that much. Moore, however, has to go through so much emotional turmoil. The scene where she has a breakdown and smears her make-up is a masterclass in performance.

Nell Tiger Free – The First Omen

Considering the talent in TFO, it would be easy for Nell Tiger Free to be overshadowed. The knives were going to be out, they always are for lead performers in horror prequels. Those knives will have to be resheathed, Tiger Free does a phenomenal job. She has incredibly expressive eyes, reminds me of Daniel Daluuya in Get Out.

George Mackay – The Beast

Based almost entirely on the incel speech he delivers. I estimate that in roughly 10 years he will be known as one of the great actors of this generation. He’s not always in good films (Marrowbone), but he’s always good. He does have “Fighter in a world war” face, so parts of The Beast are very different from him, really showing his range.

Emma Stone – Poor Things

Emma Stone has a history of traditional leading role parts, but in the last few years she’s got fucking weird, and I’m all for that, because she’s good at it. Her physicality, in particular, is tremendous in this. There’s no point where she seems like a normal human adult. She carries herself in a very unique way that’s mesmerising.

Anne Hathaway – Mothers Instinct

Mothers Instinct would fall apart without Hathaway. Because the audience is never sure whether she’s actually a bitch, or whether she’s just haunted by trauma, she needs to find a way to play it both ways at the same time. If she leans too much in one direction it would give the game away (or seem disingenuous). Most performers would not be able to do what she did as effectively as she did it, and it just adds to the reasons I love her.

Daisy Ridley – Sometimes I Think About Dying

As I said in the year round-up “If your lead character doesn’t say something for 20 minutes and you’re not frustrated, she’s doing a good job.” She’s been unfairly maligned by internet fans for having the temerity, the absolute gall, to be a woman in a modern Star Wars movie. But times like this remind you that she’s actually a FANTASTIC performer. Her subtle expressions and change of vocal performances to every line means she does so much with so little, and I love her for it.

Kate Winslet – Lee

Kate Winslet is one of those performers I’ve never really “got”, primarily because she tends to be in the kind of films I don’t particularly like. But it’s when you see her in something like Lee that you realise “ohhhhh, she’s actually really good at this whole acting thing”. She’s let down by acting alongside performers who aren’t quite on her level. But I absolutely love her performance in this, it’s pain, in a good way.

McKenna Grace – Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

If she’s in a film I watch, she gets nominated, thems the rules. Plus I nominated her for the same role in the other film, so it would be weird if I didn’t do so here.

Zac Efron – The Iron Claw

Efron looks nothing like who he’s supposed to portray, truth is, almost nobody in this film does. But he carries himself with such presence that it doesn’t matter. People who know the real-life family have complimented him on his performance. Efron seems to be doing everything he can to step out of the shadows of his famous role, and The Iron Claw is another step towards doing that. He shows just how damn good he can be when he’s given the chance. You can see it in his face how his character gets gradually broken down as his family unit continues to disappear. What really nails it, is the final scene when he’s talking to his sons. That moment was one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen, and I once had my biscuit fall into my cup of tea.

Winner

Cailee Spaeny – Alien: Romulus/Civil War

Both of those performances are award-worthy on their own. She went from “I have no idea who she is” to one of my favourite performers in just two films. I’m genuinely excited to see what she will do in the next Knives Out movie. She has a lot on her shoulders in both these films; in one she’s working alongside much more experienced performers, and in the other? Well it’s a fucking Alien movie and she’s a female lead, she’s going to get attention, and has to be strong enough to not buckle under it. Alien has a tendency to have incredibly strong female leads, and manage to find incredibly talented performers to play them. I was more impressed with Spaeny in Civil War though. Kirsten Dunst is kind of war-weary and cynical, so a character like Spaeny is needed to really sell how horrific everything is. She provides the human viewpoint to an inhuman world, and if Spaeny wasn’t talented, it wouldn’t work. Her character could easily be too tough, which would make it hard to buy into the horror. Alternatively, she could appear too weak, and then you wouldn’t root for her. She has to find a fine balance between “innocent” and “not naive”. She plays it perfectly.

Worst Performance

I should point out, there was a genuinely TERRIBLE performance that I haven’t nominated here. It’s a low-budget movie and it’s the first notable role for the performer who has only ever been credited as “unnamed maid” in things before. Essentially, I felt it would be bullying to name them, and if they googled themselves and stumbled upon me lambasting them and comparing their performance to low-budget porn, I would genuinely feel mortified. Big-name actors, or actors in multi-million dollar films? Yeah, they’re fair game, fuck ’em.

Aaron Dean Eisenberg – The Iron Claw

I often call out fans for disliking a casting because “they’re not exactly like the person they’re supposed to be. The character is 6 foot, and this person is only 5 foot 11. Ruined!”. And I appreciate when castings look nothing like the person, but embody the character. But my word, Eisenberg could not have been less like Ric Flair if he blacked up and spoke with an Australian accent. There is nothing in the real-life Flair in his performance. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, well this is an insult.

Jerry Seinfeld – Unfrosted

It reminded me of that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry kept corpsing. Oh wait, that doesn’t narrow it down.

Andy Samberg – Lee

It’s not that his performance is bad in a vacuum, but he’s acting alongside Kate Winslet, so had to be on the top of his game, and it feels like he’s not.

Jack Kesy – Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Think of the performers who have taken the mantle of Hellboy; Ron Perlman, David Habour; two genuine heavyweights who can add gravitas, humour, and physical intimidation to the role. And now? It’s some guy. I’m not saying the character needs to be played by a big-name actor. But it needs someone with presence, someone who you can look at and KNOW “That? That’s a star. Or at the very least, that’s someone I know will beat the shit out of me and make jokes while doing so”. It feels unfair to criticise someone for not having something unreachable. And I’m not saying Kesy is a bad actor, far from it, but he was without a doubt the wrong choice for this role. It would be like casting Christopher Reeves as Superman, in 2024.

Chris Evans – Red One

Much like Kesy in H: TCM, the main issue here was of being miscast. It’s not quite as bad as it was in Hellboy, because we hadn’t already seen Chris Evan’s character in 3 other films being played much better. But it is still an issue, and one I can’t ignore.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson – Kraven The Hunter

Mainly because of his accent. Sorry “accents”, plural, because he couldn’t decide on just one.

Winner

Dakota Johnson – Madame Web

I have issues with the Razzies. I don’t believe they recognise the difference between “this performance was bad” and “this was a performance in a bad movie”. For example; Joker: Folie A Deux had MANY problems, but the performances of Phoenix and Gaga were not among them. So it came as a shock to me that we actually agree on this. Dakota Johnson gave a performance that was so flat that even if you saw it in 3D she’d be 2 dimensional. She looks like she can’t be bothered to show emotion. I recently had incredibly bad toothache which required me to be shot full of painkillers in my jaw. The bottom right of my face was unable to move for half a day, it still did more work than she did in this

Best Character

Nominees

Andy – Alien: Romulus

Yes, I gave Cailee Spaeny the best performer, but Andy’s character was better. Incredibly awkward, disliked by most people, and fond of making terrible puns. Still not entirely sure why I related to him so much.

Monk – American Fiction

Yes, this character has been done before. The “I created this as a joke and now people are taking it seriously” trope is not exactly completely original, especially in regards to black stories, where it has been done before (I’m thinking primarily of 2000’s Bamboozled). But there’s something about the way Monk is written (and performed, that has to be pointed out) that is utterly captivating. You feel his frustration, his anger, and eventually his acceptance. You can tell how beaten down he is by the world, and how (white) people are reacting to his words. He’s also INCREDIBLY funny.

Lee Smith – Civil War

Everything about this character can be summed up in a single line of dialogue: “”Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home – “Don’t do this”. But here we are.””. Named in tribute to WW2 journalist Lee Miller (who JUST missed out on this list), her tenacity and character earn the honour of her namesake. More than anything else, her character shows the importance of war journalism. It’s difficult to distance yourself and realise you can’t help. But it’s essential to document how everything has gone to shit. I feel that’s an important message for the next four years.

Paddington – Paddington In Peru

It would be so easy for this character to be awful. If miswritten, it would be a very annoying bear, overly optimistic to the point of being naive, and just coming off as kind of annoying. I mean, he is overly optimistic to the point of being naive, but for some reason, it works. He is such a lovable character, incredibly endearing and sweet. It helps that he is pure. He isn’t kind because he wants something out of it, he doesn’t help people so they help him back, he has absolutely zero cynical motivations for his behaviour. In a cold world of greys and dark browns, Paddington is a kaleidoscopic rainbow of warmth

Kevin Von Erich – The Iron Claw

I feel conflicted about this because he’s based on a real person, the only one on this list (sorry to break it to you Paddington fans, he’s not real). But so was Amy Winehouse in Back To Black, and her character was terrible (It’s difficult to find a biography that hates its main character as much as that one does). So I decided to put him in this category, mainly because it highlights how well the script handled him. Watching The Iron Claw is watching a human slowly get broken, and when you think it’s over, things get worse. If this was fiction, you’d think it over the top. So the fact its real makes it more impressive. In fact, it’s actually toned down from reality. He had another brother who passed away, and the film skips the moment where his drunken dad tells him “The only reason you’re alive is that you don’t have the guts to kill yourself like your brothers”. It’s heartbreaking to see what he goes through, and it’s weird to have a film where the “happy” ending is “he cries”.

D-16 – Transformers One

This is pretty much entirely due to my ignorance. I had no idea that character would later turn out to be Megatron. So watching his descent into heeldom was a genuine shock. But it made sense. The building blocks of the evilness were there, and the way he arrived towards the switch made more sense than most films that attempt the same thing. There’s a definitive moment where the change occurs. Before that, he’s a “hmm, that’s not great”, but after it, you can tell he’s heading down a dark path, with nobody to turn the light on (probably due to the high cost of electric bills). It’s heartbreaking to see so many moments where he can be saved, and see those moments pass by again and again.

Winner

Fran – Sometimes I Think About Dying

You will either be bored by this character, or you will GET this character. If you get her, you will emphasise with this character, understand her motivations and meaning, and you will like her. You will see a little bit of yourself in her, and you will be annoyed at what she does and how she self-sabotages her personal relationships, but that annoyance will be because you recognise that you have done the exact same shit in the past, and you KNOW you will do it again in the future because of who you are.

No, just me? Doubt that.

Worst Character

Nominees

Lady Raven – Trap

The character is clearly just a way for M.Night to get his daughter in the movie. Not only is she presented as the most talented and beautiful musician in the world, she’s also smart, integral to the plot and helps defeat the villain. If it wasn’t his daughter, it would still be badly written tripe, but with the caveat of it being his daughter? Fuck that.

Garfield – The Garfield Movie

Who is Garfield? He is a cat. He is snarky. He eats lasagne. But most of all; he is lazy. Who is Garfield in this movie? He’s an action hero with daddy issues. Essentially, he’s just another Chris Pratt character.

Liam – Dear Santa

Only due to the inconsistencies in his character. The writers seem to forget what age he is so he switches between a helpless child and a teen, depending on the joke. It sums up my issues with the whole film; nobody knows what age this film is aimed at, so they try to hit all of them.

Amy Winehouse – Back To Black

I feel weird putting this in here, as she is a real person. But that’s part of the reason I disliked her character in this, it doesn’t feel honest. It’s not “here is who Amy was, she was flawed”, it’s “Here’s who Amy was, and why everyone who says her dad and partner were abusive are wrong, it was all her, they were completely innocent and never did anything wrong”. She isn’t an independent character, she’s a way for two mediocre (at best) men to justify themselves and why they deserve any money she earned.

Winner

Charles Deetz – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Jeffrey Jones is a paedophile. Tim Burton decided to get around this by not having him in the film. Instead, they just have the character he played be lionised by everybody, and have a claymation representation of him. Nope. You find out an actor is a paedophile, you don’t have his character in the film at all. Just say the mother divorced and remarried, then kill THAT dad off.

2024 Film Awards: Day One

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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 Seven (The Good)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Immaculate
Ups: Good chemistry between performances.
Great score.
Downs: Wastes potential.
Sweeney isn’t quite a strong enough performer for large sections.
Best Performer: Benedetta Porcaroli. Sweeney is great in the final section, but she’s too weak in the opening two-thirds to really be effective.
Best Moment: The entire final third.
Worst Moment: Sister Gwens’ death, happens off-screen and we should have seen it.
Opening: A nun tries to escape through a locked gate but instead gets her leg broken and is buried alive. Standard horror movie opening but it does let you into the fact that the nuns are evil, which is obvious anyway, but at least TRY to have a mystery.
Closing: She gives birth to the antichrist, bites through her own umbilical cord, and then kills the baby with a giant rock. Shocking, disturbing, and so well made.
Best Line: “If this is not the will of God, why does God not stop us?”. I used a similar line the time I got urinating in the font, just before I was struck by lightning.
Original review here

Jackpot
Ups: Satirical brilliance.
Some brilliant lines.
Pretty damn good soundtrack.
Downs: Issues with the plot are so big you can drive a bus through them.
Tonally inconsistent.
Best Performer: John Cena
Best Moment: The wax museum. So fun.
Worst Moment: The villain reveals, only because it’s so obvious that you’re surprised the characters didn’t see it coming.
Opening: A text narration explaining the premise. Bleak but comedic. Then Sean William Scott running down a street being chased by a mob
Closing: She survives, they become rich, and massive pricks. There are some outtakes too, which are pretty fun to see.
Best Line: “The California Grand Lottery © started during the Great Depression of 2026. The New Government was desperate for money and so was the public. It was simple. Kill the winner before sundown and legally take their jackpot. The only rule? No guns. No Bullets Some people call it dystopian. But those people are no fun. LOS ANGELES 2030” Sets the tone perfectly.
Original review here

Poor Things
Ups: Breathtaking visuals.
Unique.
Good ensemble cast.
Downs: Some of the music is physically painful to hear.
Repeats itself a lot.
Might be too weird for some.
The idea that so many men are sexually attracted to someone with the brain and capabilities of a baby is………strange.
Best Performer: Emma Stone
Best Moment: Harry showing Bella cruelty. It’s heartbreaking.
Worst Moment: Duncan finds Bella’s hidden money, mainly because if he didn’t find it then the story would advance in the exact same way.
Opening: A suicide. It’s always a weird way to open a film, but it’s good. It lets you know the visuals straight away.
Closing: The weird family dynamic characters all live together, with the evil ex-husband now having the brain of a goat. I genuinely assumed they were just going to put the dying Dafoe brain in his body, kind of surprised they didn’t.
Best Line: “I’m going to punch that baby”
Original Review here

The Beast
Ups: Hypnotic.
If you stick with it, it makes sense.
Definitely a relief that a film called “The Beast”, based on a piece of work from 1903, and released in 2024, isn’t subtly racist.
Downs: The directing style will be divisive.
The narrative could be clearer at parts.
The central concept doesn’t kick in for 20 minutes
It does the “imagine spot” trick too often.
Best Performer: George MacKay. He is such a good actor. His incel speech is brilliant
Best Moment: The introduction to the 2014 world where Louis is an incel dickbag.
Worst Moment: The earthquake is pretty weak
Opening: Gabrielle is acting in a room comprised entirely of green screen, being ordered around by a director.It then kind of dissolves into he title. Weird, doesn’t really intrigue you and force you to continue watching, but doesmake you wonder “how weird is this going to be?” Especially since it then goes into what looks like an 18th century party of nobility.
Closing: The classic “invasion of the body snatchers” ending. But then it does something very cool, instead of end credits, it has a QR code. The downside is that in a few years they will likely forget to keep up the domain rights, that WILL lead to either porn or a virus.
Best Line: “Tell me why, at parties, we seek the people with whom we live and whom we see every day?”
Original review here

The First Omen
Ups: Some great scares.
Good performances.
Unsettling body horror.
Decent twists.
Downs: Too reverential of the original.
Best Performer: Nell Tiger Free
Best Moment: The childbirth scene about halfway through. Very unsettling.
Worst Moment: The ending, drags.
Opening: Two Fathers (of the religious variety) discuss an evil occult plot. One of whom then dies brutally and with a pie-sized chunk missing from his skull. The death is horrific and scary, but it’s also only done like that as a reference to the original.
Closing: The demon child has been delivered to the correct person. Which we knew. He’s been called Damien. This just confirms it is the same child as the original, which we would have guessed.
Best Line: “What’s not real?” the line itself isn’t great, but its use is my favourite jump-scare of modern times.
Original review here

The Substance
Ups: Creepy.
Some great body horror
Amazing performances.
As subtle as a brick, a brick to the face, a brick to the face with the words “older women have value too and we need to stop placing so much of a woman worth on how men perceive her beauty” written on it, which would be a pretty fucking big brick.
Downs: REALLY loses focus and steam in the final third.
The world feels too protagonist-centered. There’s no indication that the world of this film exists outside of these characters. Every person in this universe exists solely to serve the narrative, there’s no attempt to make it feel lived in. If it sorted this out, it would be at least 2 blogs up, but it REALLY hurts it and kind of dampens the message.
“Look how disgusting the way we treat women is” followed by lots of close-ups of tits and buttcheeks. I get that that’s the point, but still.
Best Performer: Demi Moore
Best Moment: The first transformation.
Worst Moment: It repeats a dream sequence. Not really necessary.
Opening: A walk of fame star being constructed then neglected. The “look at how the world ignores this star until it cracks under pressure” double meaning isn’t exactly subtle. But it looks gorgeous.
Closing: Elisabeth’s face crawls out onto her own star then dissolves into nothingness before wiped away by a floor scrubber. Like I said, not subtle.
Best Line: Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect. One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division, that will release another version of yourself. This is the Substance. You are the matrix. Everything comes from you. Everything is you. This is simply a better version of yourself. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. The one and only thing not to forget: You. Are. One. You can’t escape from yourself
Original review here

Thelma
Ups: Very sweet.
Funny.
Pretty darn good chemistry between the two leads.
Teaches you basic cyber security.
I found it very funny how when she called her old friends she went through a list of various deaths and then “moved to Cleveland?”
Downs: The use of focus on the surroundings may be distracting to some.
Richard Roundtree has since passed and this was his final film.
Doesn’t quite run with the concept as much as it could.
Best Performer: June Squibb. Obviously.
Best Moment: The villain reveal.
Worst Moment: The phone call with the ex doesn’t seem as important as it could
Opening: Thelma being shown how to operate her e-mails by her grandson. Then the two sit around. Very sweet interactions between the two. Did kind of make me miss my nan though so boo for that.
Closing: She succeeds. That’s the real ending, but then it continues. But I don’t mind. Because whilst the story is over, the themes continue, and the post-story interactions are so sweet and wonderful that it’s heartwarming. She then twats a cockroach with a newspaper.
Best Line: “If I fall over I’m toast, that’s why I don’t fall”
Original review here

Woman Of The Hour
Ups: Creepy.
Never pretends to be anything that it isn’t.
Kendrick is a pretty damn good director.
Made with passion.
Downs: Somewhat weak narrative
Muddled story.
Doesn’t make the most of the premise.
Best Performer: Anna Kendrick
Best Moment: When she asks her own questions.
Worst Moment: Valentine’s day car ride with one of his victims. Just feels a bit superfluous and kills momentum.
Opening: A guy takes photos of a woman in an isolated exterior. You can tell he’s creepy because he has long hair. Some beautiful establishing shots though. Yup, he kills her, and it’s REALLY well shot.
Closing: The truth is fucking infuriating. He was released on bail where he then killed more people.
Best Line: “Did you feel seen?” “I felt looked at”
Original review here

Poor Things (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Bella Baxter is a young woman with the brain of a child, who goes on a journey of self/sexual discovery before her impending marriage.

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, specifically, May 30th 2022, when I posted my review of On The Count Of Three, and mentioned that the two leads (Jerrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbot) will be sharing the screen in this. They didn’t actually share the screen at any point, but they are both vitally important to the plot in how they affect the lead character of Bella. Abbots’ character of Alfie Blessington is incredibly vile, one of the most despicable characters in modern cinema. It’s not just him though, the world of Poor Things is full of cruelty, abuse, and manipulation. It’s so cruel that it’s kind of uncomfortable to watch. The whole film is uncomfortable really. Bella’s sexual awakening is treated as a feminist story about her escaping the trappings of man and discovering herself. But considering she’s treated by men as the Ultimate Sexual Fantasy it’s kind of unsettling once you realise the implications. I mean, she has the mind of a child, clearly not understanding consent. There’s a lot of that, characters show their true selves not by how they act in public, but by how they treat Bella. There’s a fascinating “you’re defined by who you are in the dark” message, but it seems underdeveloped and like it’s not given enough care.

Something which was given care and love is the world that Lanthimos has created. It’s a visual masterpiece with ancient architecture and bright colours creating a real treat for the eyes. The skies in particular are breathtaking to watch, full of true beauty and wonder. The beauty of the visuals is matched by the performances. The aforementioned Abbot and Carmichael are great. Ruffalo is suitably pathetic, Dafoe brings his usual creepy energy, and Ramy Youssef is innocent but with dated notions of gender equality. But the real star is obviously Emma Stone. Most of the other performers could be replaced by someone similar, but only a handful of performers could bring what Stone does. It helps that she brings a tremendous physicality to the role. If she brings anything less than 100% she’d risk coming off (weirdly) as overacting. But because she throws herself completely into it, she’s believable, she does so much that she kind of feels grounded because “well nobody who was TRYING to be weird would do that”.

Now onto the downside, some of the music makes it difficult to pay attention. At times it’s so abrasive it feels like it doesn’t want you to be comfortable. I’m used to that when it comes to visuals, but uncomfortable sounds are different, it’s not just uncomfortable, it’s painful. It backs up my theory that sometimes Lanthimos doesn’t want you to like the film, and is actively hoping you’ll dislike it. It’s sometimes so weird that you can see it being off-putting to a lot of people. I wasn’t put off by the weirdness, but I was put off by how the script sometimes seemed to be made up as it was going along. At times it feels like it’s forgotten that it already made a point, and so makes it again in a slightly less effective way. There are a few things which feel like Chekovs Guns, but when they are eventually fired feel like a damp squib, like the writers realised “Oh shit, we set this thing up earlier, we need to pay it off quickly” and just had a quick line (as in, a line of dialogue, not cocaine).

It may be weird at times, but it does raise a lot of questions. Is it, as Samira Ahmed described it “a heterosexual middle-aged man’s fantasy about nymphomania, with the flimsiest covering of “satire” and a tagged-on message about female genital mutilation being “bad””, or is it as Leslie Felperin puts forward, just a tale of a woman “unburdened by any of the inhibitions women of her time would usually be tethered by, limiting their interests and ambitions”? Is it feminist? Misandrist? Misogynist? Or is it none of those things? That’s always up to interpretation, and no matter what you say about this film, you can’t say it’s boring and doesn’t inspire discussion. And sometimes that’s what you want from a film.