Tag: Review

IF (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A young girl discovers she can see everybody’s imaginary friends.

John Krasinski has had a weird film career, especially as a director. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was a comedy-drama based on a series of short stories by David Foster Wallace. The Hollars was standard film student drama fare. Then came A Quiet Place. If you thought that was a weird transition, nothing will prepare you for this.

It kind of makes sense though. There are many similarities in visual/narrative storytelling between horror and kids’ fantasy. Both of them depend heavily on effective world-building, creating something unbelievable but making it believable, and both depend on a “WOW!” shot, where the audience is made aware of the scale of what’s happening. He does a good job though; there are not that many moments where the visuals feel cheap or distracting in a way that takes you out of what you’re watching. On the other hand, there are not that many visuals that will stick with you. There’s nothing that makes you think “f*ck damn that is cinema”. I can’t imagine a child watching this and having a scene stick with them that they’ll remember forever.

The story will though. It’s incredibly sweet. Yes, people who have seen a lot of films and are familiar with story structure etc will guess the ending relatively early on, mainly because it’s the only way that plot holes aren’t created. But if you’re one of those fortunate people who can just sit and watch something without overanalyzing everything, you’re in for a treat. It has a sense of genuine heart and warmth to it. It does look like it’s heading in one direction, and I’m pleased it went in another way. The new way ended up being able to display much more heart. Spoilers, I watched this the same day as I saw Inside Out 2: Inside Harder. I didn’t expect THIS to be the film that slightly broke me. The moments where we see some of the characters “reunite” with their childhood IFs are genuinely delightful and emotionally powerful. They’re helped by the performances, Reynolds does exactly what you expect (For better and worse), the vocal performances are all good but most are too brief to matter that much (the fact that Brad Pitt is credited as an invisible and silent character is hilarious though), Cailey Fleming is incredible considering her young age, especially considering she’s playing a character at that awkward age where they want to be seen as an adult, but they are still kids. Alan Kim is fun whenever he’s on-screen, and Fiona Shaw provides a touch of “theatre, darling” prestige.

The biggest criticism is that it feels kind of dated. There is a distinct lack of technology and mobile phones present. If this was firmly set in the 90s, that criticism would disappear so it is kind of weird that they didn’t just do that. It also takes FAR too long to get to the point. I know it has quite a bit to set up, but it spends forever getting to the main premise that you’ve paid to see.

Those are minor criticisms though. Overall I enjoyed it. It’s not going to change your worldview forever, but there is a chance it might remind you about the joys of innocence and inner strength. It handles topics such as bereavement (and fear of it in regards to others) and childhood anxiety with sensitivity and class. It very rarely puts a step wrong, but it also rarely puts one forward in amazement. It’s a difficult film to really LOVE, but it’s an incredibly easy film to like.

The Watched a.k.a The Watchers (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: A guilt-ridden American is trapped in an Irish forest when she is shepherded into a mysterious dwelling with three strangers, all being watched by strange creatures in the night.

I hadn’t planned on watching this, I only decided to see it because it started 10 minutes after another film I saw at the cinema ended. As I watched The Watched unfold I was slightly disappointed with many of the script choices. I didn’t want to be too harsh on it though, this was obviously a story told by a first-time Irish storyteller and as such I felt I needed to be more encouraging than dismissive. Then the end credits started (about 10-20 minutes after they should have) and I saw the words “directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan” and that need for encouraging and forgiving of mistakes disappeared like a shot of piss in a swimming pool. Yes, she is still a first-time director, but she’s a first-time director with access that no other first-timer would get. She’s in a position most people would kill for, and needs to justify it. This needed to be incredible to wash away any claims of nepotism.

It’s not incredible. Nothing in the script or the directing justifies the chance she has been given. It’s 102 minutes long, which is about 90 minutes longer than it deserves. At times it felt like most of that 90 minutes was spent on expositional dialogue. There’s no attempt to make these moments interesting visually. That’s a shame as there are parts which look pretty damn good, the moment where the creatures first stand up and stretch is haunting and wonderful. There are a lot of moments when it’s too dark to see anything, especially with the exterior shots.

My biggest issue is the script. It’s a mess. There are plot holes so big you could drive a truck through them. I also get the feeling that the Night Shyamalan family assume audiences are idiots and must be directly told every piece of information because just seeing it unfold in front of us isn’t enough. I haven’t been spoonfed so forcefully since I was in a high chair.

The third act is one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. At one point I genuinely picked my bag up because the cinematic and narrative language was telling me “okay the film is ending in a few minutes”, there’s then another entire 10-20 minute section that kills the minimal momentum it had. I get why she went with the ending she did, it fleshes out one of the characters, and layers over a few of the smaller plot holes. But it could have been done a lot sooner. Spoilers btw.

Okay so three of the characters escape the forest, they fall asleep on a boat and drift away until they wake up near the main city. They then all split up and go about their day, one of whom (the main character, played by a Dakota Fanning who’s underacting to the extent it barely registers more than if she didn’t turn up at all) has made it clear she plans to go to the university and destroy the research into fairies/the watchers that another character (The Professor) has written. Now, one of the other survivors (played by the brilliant Olwen Fouere) turns out to be The Professor’s dead wife so is actually a Watcher who now plans to kill more humans in revenge for fairies being forced underground. So she was on a boat with two humans she’s spent a lot of time with, and didn’t think to quietly sink the boat and escape onto land? She’s spent enough time with both of them so that she can change to look like them, and thus gain access to more people. Plus it would stop Dakota’s character from finding out the truth about her.

There is sooooo much wasted potential. So The Watchers want to watch humans so they can best imitate them, and they watch them through a mirrored window, with numerous shots of the humans standing next to the mirrors and looking at their own reflections. You know what shot DOESN’T happen in this film? A split shot of someone in the building looking at their Watcher double with the two of them being similar but different (as was done a few times in Us). WHY would you not have that shot? Surely the only reason to make this film is so you can wow people with that shot? It reminds me of the end of Glass where the whole thing was building up to a fight scene that then didn’t happen just because the writer wanted to trick the audience and subvert expectations. Sometimes expectations are there for a reason, and you can only subvert expectations if you replace it with something good. You can’t just cut it and then be like “We didn’t do what you thought! Surprise”. Its why food places that offer surprise menus still offer plates of actual food as the surprises, as opposed to if a Shyamalan did it, in which case you’d be served a plate of burnt pornography with rat droppings sprinkled over it. Just give me f*cking food.

I should probably add that due to personal reasons, I don’t think I’m ready to watch a horror film where a young male called Daniel dies. But even without that personal bias, this is still shit. At most, that bias knocked it down a 0.1 mark. Which considering I don’t give marks out of 10, doesn’t really matter.

Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A story about isolation, boredom, and lacking purpose. No it’s not my biography and it’s rude of you to say that.

A few years ago I travelled to New York at the end of winter. In preparation, I purchased some winter clothing. Among them was a new pair of boots. Not just warm and sturdy, but they also came with a neat little extra; spikes on the soles that you could flip down in harsh icey conditions. I still have those boots (we don’t really have “winter” here, we just have rain) and I consider the flippable cleats a genius design. It’s so simple too, you see them and think “why don’t more companies do this?”. That’s how I felt about the opening credits of Sometimes I Think About Dying (Otherwise known as SITAD, pronounced sit-add). The fact that they use a different font is embarrassingly mindblowing. It takes the same amount of effort as doing them the same way as everyone else, but it does SO much in establishing style. I’ve mostly seen it in horror movies to be like “Oh look, we’re spooky”, or to establish the time period in which the film is set. Here it’s to establish a theme. It’s such a simple thing but it works beautifully and it means that no matter what happened for the rest of the runtime, I was going to take something positive from this.

Thankfully, even without that, I’d be able to be positive about SITAD, it’s delightful. But not in a “everything is fantastic and wonderful if you just believe” fake BS way that Hollywood provides. In a way, you can say it’s twee, kind of. But it’s a sense of twee with all the colour and joy drained away from it. Mostly it’s a film that says “I don’t understand people”. Those three previous sentences may seem disjointed (and some would say inherently contradictory) but that’s the wonder of SITAD. It’s depressive elegance, with some stark cinematography that’s beautiful in its simplicity. It’s shot not to sell a story, but to sell a character and a mood.

The script matches that, doing so much with so little. Normally characters establish themselves by saying things, SITAD establishes itself by having the main character not say anything while everybody else talks around her. In a lesser film, this would be met with scenes of her trying to say something but getting cut off whenever she tries to speak. Here, she doesn’t even attempt to say anything, she just stands in the background until she can safely leave without anybody noticing. She doesn’t have isolation thrust upon her, she actively prefers it. It’s great because when she speaks out loud, it actually means something. It’s at least 20 minutes before Fran (Daisy Ridley’s character) utters her first words. Side note, one of these days I’ll remember what Daisy Ridley looks like when I’m not looking at her, my brain keeps picturing Charlotte Ritchie. Daisy Ridley gets a lot of praise (and she should, she’s PHENOMENAL), but I feel that Marcia DeBonis needs praise too. Her speech near the end where she’s talking about her husband suffering health issues is heartbreaking and delivered perfectly. Crucially, it’s not delivered as “a performance”, with perfect diction and line delivery. She stumbles over her words, is slightly unclear on a few syllables, and pauses mid-sentence. In essence; she feels REAL.

That’s partly why I loved this film so much, nothing about it felt fake. It doesn’t feel like we’re there watching them, it’s better than that. Even though we see her from an audience’s perspective, it somehow feels like we ARE Fran. It’s helped by a powerful score (brought to you by Dabney Morris), and a powerful performance. But it is mostly anchored by how good the writing is.

It’s not perfect though. Fran is a little bit too cruel at times which can make her hard to root for. But when she does say something heartless such as “You’re exhausting, no wonder you can’t stay married”, the VERY next scene shows her obviously regretting it.

As you can probably tell. I LOVED this movie. It’s not up for my favourite of the year, but it is possibly the one I’ve connected with the most. Good films entertain, and great ones inspire. This will inspire you as a writer, as a director, as a musician, as a performer, fuck it, with the way this tackles themes of isolation and self-sabotage, this will inspire you as a person. A lot of people won’t like it, and even those who do like it might not like certain parts of it. For example, I saw some reviews say the party scene was cringe and went on too long. Personally, that was the highlight of the movie. It felt like the first time Fran felt accepted, she was letting the mask of insecurity slip, and the sheer joy she showcases is infectious. I’m not saying this is the best film of the year, but it is probably the one I would recommend most at the moment if you want to feel things and be touched (not in a Kevin Spacey way). One of the most genuine movies I’ve seen all year, and I’m a better person for having watched it.

Lisa Frankenstein (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A misunderstood teenager and a reanimated Victorian corpse embark on a murderous journey together to find love, happiness, and a few missing body parts.

I was looking forward to this. I’m not gonna lie, that was mainly because of Kathryn Newton. I absolutely LOVED her in Freaky, and I thought she was one of the best things about Quantumania. I’m unsure as to whether I like Diablo Cody or not. I loved Juno and Jennifer’s Body, but even then in those I was aware of how overly written and stylized the dialogue was.

If you’re on the fence about Cody, this won’t push you towards being a supporter of her. The dialogue is still overly painful to listen to at times, and she feels like she’s holding back a bit. The violence feels incredibly sanitized, which makes me think the studio wanted to lower the rating at the last minute, or they’re planning to release an unrated version later. It’s not just the violence, the dialogue also suffers from a general sense of “edited for television”. And that’s before you listen to the words being said and realise how overly hipster and fake the characters sound. This would be easier to deal with if the characters were likeable. As you can guess by that previous sentence, they’re not. What made Juno work was how relatable and real the characters felt, even when the dialogue was a bit naff. You don’t get that here. There’s also a stunning lack of consistency in characterisation, Lisa in particular seems to change personalities more than me when I’m creating a Sim in that video game where Sims do things in their Sim house, speaking Simlish and living with other Sims (I think it’s called The House That Keeps Burning Down). There’s a way to make it so characters can kill people and still make them likeable. Lisa Frankenstein doesn’t bother with that. As such, there’s a feeling that somewhere there’s another 10 minutes of LF which helps bridge the gap and makes their actions feel more real. As it is, it’s essentially “You killed my stepmother? Well let’s bury her and I’ll sew her ear to your face”. Yes, the stepmother was a bitch, but it still seems like they missed a few steps in making her death feel deserved. Especially since the creature was hiding in a cupboard, and was established as not being able to hear that well, so do we know for certain that he actually heard what she said? Doug was a sex pest so his death would have been much more cathartic. Doug does die, but not for much longer into the film than he should. I feel he should have been explored more, not explained or justified, he’s a date rapist. But he only appears in like two scenes, flesh out that character as a supposed “nice guy” then his rapey tendencies (and taking advantage of a drugged woman IS rape, and it’s weird how that is a controversial statement) would come off as more shocking and would allow an instant death.

Now on the bright side; it looks fucking fantastic. Kathryn Newton’s wardrobe is like someone sitting on a thumbtack; it’s on point. Hard to believe this is Zelda Williams’ feature-length directorial debut. I see in her what everybody else sees in Tim Burton. There’s a beautiful gothic elegance to a lot of the scenes, especially the opening which reminded me a Lotte of the work of Reiniger (possibly the most dated reference I will ever make). That gothic style meshes well with the 80s setting, everything feels oversaturated to the point where it seems to drain all sense of fun out of the colours. It’s stunning, showing great potential for her as a director, but it is a shame she will never get a chance to mesh her visual style with her dad’s acting style.

And now I’m sad.

Oh, and the music is good too. So overall, I’m not angry at this film, I’m disappointed. It’s too difficult to truly like and enjoy this film. Visually it has an identity, but in terms of story etc it just comes off as a parody that’s taking itself far too seriously.

Mean Girls (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: A cinematic adaptation of the musical you haven’t seen, which is itself an adaptation of the film you’ve definitely seen, which is an adaptation of a book you probably haven’t read.

I get what they were going for, I really do. The original film is iconic, and the musical was very well regarded. With all that considered, there still didn’t seem to be that many people excited about this. It certainly didn’t feel like it warranted a cinema release, it felt more like something a streaming service would use in their early days to persuade people to subscribe. The trailer didn’t seem to do much to get people excited either. On the bright side; it didn’t hide the fact that it was a musical. I’ve seen people claim it did, but the trailer I saw featured the characters performing a professionally choreographed dance number in the middle of a canteen, so if you saw that and DIDN’T know it was a musical, that’s on you. My issue with the trailer was the song choice. Musicals have songs in them (shocking revelation, I know), so you’d think when it came to “songs we should have in the trailer” then you’d, you know, pick one of the ones you already have the rights to and which people who know the source material would recognise but which those who don’t can use to ascertain the type of musical stylings the film will contain. They picked an Olivia Rodrigo song. Now I love her music, but none of her songs are in the film, so why (again, for a musical) would you choose her?

So how are the songs? They’re okay. The best way you can describe them is “serviceable”. Very few of them can be described as memorable though. There are apparently 17 musical numbers in the film, without the list in front of me I can recall three. Even with the list in front of me, I can only recall small details about 8 of them (as in, where they were in the film, or who sang them, or any lines). That’s an INCREDIBLY low hit rate. It doesn’t feel like a musical, instead feels more like a film that’s occasionally interrupted by music videos. The opening two songs feel a bit too small and individual. Imagine if La La Land started with City Of Lights instead of Another Day Of Sun. The second song feels like a Sara Bareilles song, which is nice as she’s cool. The others feel interchangeable in terms of style. With the exception of some of Janice Imi’ike’s songs, none of them feel unique to the characters.

None of the issues are due to performance, everybody does a great job of portraying their characters, Some of them are vastly different from the original film but this actually helps as it means that the characters don’t feel like imitations of what we’ve seen before, they all feel like their own person unique to this adaptation. Some of them are overly sexualised, which is weird due to the ages of the characters. The performers aren’t helped though by how the teachers are played by Ashley Park, Jon Hamm, and Tina Fey. Having them (mainly Hamm and Park) as extended cameos does slightly overshadow the core cast. Oddly enough, I feel if they were in it more then it would be less of an issue as it would normalise them.

It being a musical means we don’t get that much time with the characters. If one character spends a three-minute song singing about themselves then it means there’s less cinematic space for other characters to be explored. The reason Mean Girls (the first film) is so revered is partly because of the side characters that people enjoy. That’s not present here. The main characters are the ONLY ones you’ll get to know stuff about, the only ones who are allowed quirks and personalities. I can’t help but feel that “only pay attention to the cool popular kids as none of the others matter” is the message this film wants to teach. That sums up my issues; the original film was aimed at the Janice Ians, at the Damiens, and at the Cady’s of the world. The 2024 iteration? It’s aimed at the Regina Georges.

Tarot (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: It’s essentially Final Destination if the set-up was tarot cards. If the writers aren’t going to put the effort in, I’m not either.

I do love a good horror movie. I need to say that because (spoilers) this review is going to be mostly negative. With some horror films, my issues have been difficult to explain, I just haven’t vibed with it. So I suppose I should at least thank Tarot for making my issues with it easy to explain: it’s shit.

On the plus side; the performances aren’t completely terrible, and I will commend the scriptwriter for showing a believable scene of grief and how it affects you. You know that these characters are haunted by the first death, and it hangs over everything that happens. There’s also a scene at a magic show that’s pretty damn interesting and chilling to watch unfold. Plus the flashbacks are pretty well made and provide an interesting story. That is all the nice things I can say about Tarot. The rest of this review will basically be me chopping this film down with my axe of criticism.

None of the characters show much of a personality, usually with this it’s because the characters are archetypes so the writers don’t have to put too much effort into writing the characters because the audience already knows who the characters are; this person wears their football jersey away from the field? They’re a jerkass jock with a heart of gold. The guy with glasses? He’s a nerd. The woman in the cheerleader outfit? She’s a cheerleader. Tarot avoided making the characters cliches but didn’t bother to give them anything else. Watch something like the first Scream movie, you can tell by the way those characters interact that they have been friends for a long time and are comfortable in each other’s presence. You don’t get that in this. There’s no sense that these characters have much of a history with each other. There’s no closeness, they might as well be strangers.

I should say, they are sometimes on the same page, but in a weird way. They play a game where they have to say who they think a certain subject applies to (first to get pregnant etc), over three rounds the group agree fully on every choice. There’s no “two people say this, three of them say this”, they’re all in total agreement. That’s weird, and feels very fake. The lack of believable friendships isn’t helped by how inconsistent the characters are. That’s partly why it’s so hard to figure out who they are, just when you think you’ve got their personality down they say something to contradict that because that’s what the plot requires and the scriptwriter has realised that character hasn’t said anything that page yet.

Nobody seems to have any convictions or realism. The main character points out that she shouldn’t use tarot cards which don’t belong to her, she’s later shown to take tarot and horoscopes very seriously. So how do her friends convince her to break that rule? Basically just by saying “come on” and she does it. There’s no inner turmoil or conflict, she just decides to do it.

Their actions when they realise the tarot cards are killing them aren’t much better. Mainly because they come to that realisation twice. So the second time it feels a bit like “Yeah, you already know that, why are you shocked?”.

It looks bad. Traditional film language regarding horror movies boils down to shadows and lighting, here it’s just dark with no sense of “why” other than “other horror movies do it”. It’s rare for the phrase “too bleak, stopped caring” to apply to visuals, but it does so here. The audio isn’t much better, with random volume jumps replacing actual tense audio. The music choices are baffling. No teen horror movie set in 2024 should have Things Can Only Get Better by Howard Jones on the soundtrack.

Just, nothing about this movie works. It’s uncertain as to whether to be serious or funny and isn’t good enough at either to be an effective horror comedy. All I can say this; Tarot should be VERY thankful that Madame Web and Nightswim were released this year.

Malum (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A rookie police officer takes the last shift at the decommissioned police station where her father worked and killed himself/others. Turns out the hauntings from her past are very literal.

Going to start this review off with something that may be important; Malum is a remake of the 2014 film Last Shift, also directed by Anthony DiBlasi. No I have not watched Last Shift, so I can’t talk about the differences and improvements between the two. I don’t know what DiBlasi changed, what he added, or if it was just a “I have better technology now” situation. I do occasionally put some research into my reviews (I think I put more research into my review for Antlers than the writers of the movie did), but watching an entire film is a bit much. I will say the title is better though. Last Shift is kind of bland and could be any genre, Malum (latin for evil), is definitely a horror movie title.

Now onto Malum itself. I feel I’d like this more if I watched it years ago. Horror movies are a lot like comedy movies, the first time you see something happen in a movie it can be shocking and brilliant, but if every film you watch starts doing that same thing, it can quickly become tiresome, so by the time you see the tenth movie pulling the same tricks, you feel a lot more negatively towards it than you did the first one. This doesn’t mean the tenth film is worse than the first one, but I will give it a negative review because I’m just tired of seeing certain things. Now this isn’t a fault of the movie, I watch a lot of films, so I am exposed to more repetition, reiterations and retellings than most people. With that in mind, Malum does a lot of shit I’m quite frankly just tired of seeing the same old shit in a lot of horror films. I am bored of hallucination horror. Mainly because it always feels like such a fucking cop-out. “oooo spooky stuff, but is it real? we don’t know, and neither will you”. Far too many films are pulling the same tricks, which would be okay if that wasn’t the only way they had scares. I have a limit on how many times I can see the “character witnesses something horrific, but then its not there, did they dream it?” trick pulled in a movie. Pull it off towards the end or at the start, but far too many films have that as the only trick in its arsenal. Specifically, I could do with a 5 year ban on any “Person kills what they think is an evil thing but turns out they were hallucinating and it was actually a relative/friend” scenes in horror movies.

As I said, if I watched this earlier I’d feel much more warmly towards it. There is a fair bit to like about it; the cult aspects are fascinatingly creepy, and the use of practical effects is to be welcomed. I kind of wanted more from the cult. There are two movies; one is about a demonic cult that sacrifices people and who are planning a night of carnage focused on the daughter of an officer who went after them. It’s a very human story, and the idea of her being trapped in a locked building as they try to hunt her is terrifying, especially since her colleagues refuse to help her because of what her dad did (great opening by the way, the scene where her dad shoots Not Jodie Foster is genuinely shocking). It’s simple, but it’s effective. But the other movie is paranormal, where the cult’s tricks work, and they have demonic powers which cause her to hallucinate/control her. And that’s not as effective, as once you see it happen once, you assume that’s the case with every scare. So even at the end where she’s gravely injured after having killed someone, there’s a part of you that assumes it’s just going to cut back and she’s going to be sitting at her desk absolutely fine. The first movie? That’s one I want to see, it’s creative, and incredibly creepy. The second? Seen it. If you cut out the demonic stuff it wouldn’t be as technically impressive, but I think it could end up being an improvement from a narrative standpoint.

It also might have worked better if we went straight from the snuff movies to the police station. If the audience never sees the outside world it would make her world seem smaller and claustrophobic. It’s similar to the Colin Firth “I’m on a boat motherfucker don’t you ever forget” movie from a few years ago. The acting is mostly okay, Jessica Sula has a lot to carry and does it as best as you can hope. Some of the snuff movie sections are great visually, but the vocal performances feel fake.

Overall, I couldn’t help but feel I was watching cutscenes for a horror video game rather than a feature-length, erm, feature. It’s definitely ambitious, but I can’t help but feel it may have worked more if it aimed for something a bit simpler. Although considering how fake some of the dialogue sounds, I can see why they’d feel the need to wow with effects and visuals. The music is pretty damn good though. Like I said, there is a lot to like about Malum. But it’s standing in the shadows of stuff I’ve seen before, mostly Hereditary. Yes, I know the original of this was released 4 years before Hereditary, but this remake was made afterwards, so it might have been advisable to try and avoid comparisons and, I dunno, not make this movie? Or change the hallucination stuff and just focus on the cult-killing people.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he’s been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

I consider the 2010 Planet Of The Apes trilogy as close to a perfect trilogy as one could get. It’s right up there with the three Creed movies as not having a weak entry. So it’s easy to see why I was concerned that a new entry 7 years later and without Andy Serkis wouldn’t be able to live up to the legacy, especially since it’s being directed by someone (Wes Ball) whose only previous cinematic experience as a director is the Maze Runner franchise. There was the potential for this to come off as cheap and a cash-in. Thankfully, that’s not the case. This easily matches the rest of the franchise and helps bridge a gap between the original and modern franchises.

Before this, I assumed that the two iterations of the Apes franchise had different continuities, but Kingdom makes it clear that they both may exist in the same universe. That opens up future possibilities which I’m very excited about.

Besides that, is this worth watching? I have to say yes. Visually it’s stunning. Water is notoriously difficult to animate due to how unpredictable it is. It is a brave choice to have SOOO much of this film’s climax in running water, as it has the potential to look shit. But Ball (lol, buttball) managed to pull it off with aplomb. There are zero moments where you don’t believe what you’re seeing is real, which isn’t easy considering the subject matter.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (or KOTPOTA, pronounced cot-pot-ah) feels more ape-focused than the previous entries, which makes sense considering that they are the dominant species on the planet. This also means that when we do see humans, it is a genuine shock. The humans we see are kind of feral, which again sets up the timeline established in the first film. They’re also not good. It would be so easy to make them sympathetic heroes, but the ones we spend time with are either cowards or duplicitous backstabbers. We don’t spend that much time with them though, this is definitely an Ape movie (as in, about them, not aimed towards them, are apes capable of understanding fiction?).

KOTPOTA doesn’t miss Serkis as much as you think it would. To be honest, it would have been weird if he was in this considering the character he portrayed has been dead for 300 years. The actors playing the apes don’t let you down in this, either in motion or voice. Peter Macon, in particular, is incredible as Raka, and I really hope that his character actually did survive the seemingly certain death, as I want to see more. Really though, this belongs to Owen Teague, who I wasn’t that familiar with despite having seen him in things. Teague plays Noa as someone who is emotionally conflicted about having to work with humans, wanting to be proven wrong about them but is not given very many reasons to trust them. I hope KOTPOTA gets a sequel as I’m interested in where his character goes. Unlike Caesar, there is the definite possibility that Noa could die in the second film of a new trilogy, he lacks the plot armour of previous leads. There’s also the possibility of him deciding to get more vicious and become a villain. There are countless possibilities, all being logical options.

In summary; if you liked the previous trilogy (and you really should) then you’ll like this. It lives up to the legacy and slots beautifully alongside it.

Night Swim (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A haunted swimming pool exists.

I started talking to someone online recently and she mentioned that she doesn’t watch movies. I remember thinking how weird that is, to spend your evenings or days NOT watching something. After watching this, I’m slightly jealous of her for being lucky enough to avoid this. After a series of reviews which basically amounted to “this film was weird, I loved it”. It’s nice to have a film where the review will boil down to “this film was weird. I hated it”. To paraphrase the Benoit who solves murders instead of causing them, this isn’t so dumb it’s brilliant, it’s just dumb. Seriously, just look at that synopsis. They somehow stretched this out to 90 minutes.

I think the issue is that Night Swim takes its concept seriously, and with a concept like “a haunted swimming pool” I think it’s best to lean into the absurdity. I like it when films have emotion and realism, characters you can believe exist and all have backstories. But there’s a time and a place for that, and there’s a time for stupidity and ridiculousness. Guess which one this is? Here’s a hint, look at the synopsis again.

It’s competently made and performed, but just not effective. Probably because, again, it’s a haunted swimming pool. Some of the scares aren’t so much “evil pool trying to kill someone” as “person forgets basic safety rules”. The most obvious one is where the male lead leans over the pool and lands on the pool cover, almost being trapped underneath. That’s an actual danger with falling onto plastic pool covers, it’s as much a “ghost scare” as someone jumping down stairs and breaking their leg is a scare to do with a haunted stair.

It’s difficult to make an immovable object scary (except for Andre The Giant obviously, if you don’t think he’s scary, just ask Bad News Brown about the incident in Mexico). The simple answer to it is “just don’t go near the object”. To make up for that, there’s a possession thing going on which compels one of the characters to act a certain way. But that also opens up new issues. Spoilers, btw. The pool operates on a “we will give you health in return for a sacrifice”, and lines up the dad for a sacrifice. But then tries to make him kill a random child, and at one point has him chase his daughter around. The writers said they wanted to make people scared of swimming pools, but they failed. Because of the amount of time spent on the possession angle, it makes you more scared of violent men. And I’m sure countless women already have true stories they can tell which will do a better job of that.

It tries to set up the pool as evil early on by having a scene where a cat is scared of it. But that isn’t really an indication that the pool is evil as much as it is cats hate water, as anybody who has tried to bathe them can attest. By the logic of Night Swim, tiny plastic vials of flea treatment are all haunted because every time I approach one of my cats whilst wielding one, they get scared and either run away or pee on me. The cat disappears, gets referenced in a single sentence in the next scene, and then is never brought up again. It wasn’t brought up that much before then either. Also, if the cat is dead, does that not count as a sacrifice? The pool is shown as killing people in return for something, so why did it kill the cat? Just to be a dick? Things like “cat is scared of water” are set up as big deals. Meanwhile, when a character has a demonic force trying to pull them under they treat it as a “everything is okay, everything is cool when you’re part of a team” situation. Sure, they are a little wary, but that only extends to “watching out for the kids when they go swimming”, which THEY SHOULD BE DOING ANYWAY!

As you can guess, I was not a fan of this. It took itself far too seriously, and yet not seriously enough to actually think about what it was doing. For example; the dad sacrifices himself at the end, after which the family fill in the pool. A few things: Why was that not done earlier by ANY of the previous families? Also, the husband dies, and then they perform a large landscaping job. Would that not raise questions with the police?

The Fall Guy (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: Retired stuntman Colt Seavers is hired by a studio to attempt to find a missing actor. Yup, it’s just as intelligent as that makes it sound.

I’m a big fan of the work of David Leitch. Every film I’ve seen from him has been reviewed well on this site (Deadpool 2, Bullet Train etc), in fact, they’ve often been the highlights. They’re the kind of films I enjoy watching; fun action movies with creative set pieces. The Fall Guy (or TFG, pronounced Tafug, as in “What ta fug is going on in this movie? I don’t know but I love it”) is no exception. It’s a film about stunt work, so the action scenes have to be top-notch, which they are. From the looks of it, a lot of the work on this was done practically, so everything has a weight to it. When someone ducks, you feel like they’re actually getting out of the way of something the director has thrown at them, rather than just ducking then something being added in post production. Every hit has an impact, so when someone is punched in the face you actually feel the pain. The vehicular stunts are impressive too, with it achieving a Guinness World Record for most cannon rolls in a car. That alone shows the dedication that Leitch and his crew have to making everything feel real.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very silly at times. Ryan Babygoose has seemingly stopped attempting to be taken seriously, instead just doing stuff that is fun and a bit weird; which I love. I never would have guessed he had the comedic chops that he does. He’s not quite as brilliant as he was in Barbie, but that’s probably because he’s got less to do. The whole cast is tremendously funny; Blunt is brilliant, Waddington is wonderful, and Taylor-Johnson has too long a name for me to work into an alliterative compliment, but he’s good too, and incredibly punchable in an entertaining way. Annoyingly, this berth of talent does mean that some do feel wasted. Stephanie Hsu in particular feels incredibly underutilized. Even Blunt feels like she could have more to do, which is weird as she’s one of the leads; but there are times when she feels more like a plot device than an actual character. The relationship between the two is very cute, but the tension between them feels overexplained; there are times when the characters defend their motivations for past actions, then say practically the same thing again in case the audience doesn’t get it. My other big criticism of TFG is it uses a Kiss song far too much, I get wanting to associate a certain song with your movie, but Kiss fucking suck and are as manufactured as Boyzone or the Sex Pistols. On that note; fuck the sex pistols.

In summary; TFG is well worth a watch. I’m not sure how it relates to the original television show as I’ve never seen it, but on its own merits it’s an incredibly fun watch which doesn’t feel anywhere near as long as it actually is. It’s a love letter to cinema, to action, and to stunt performers. We need more films like this; ones made with genuine love and care. Where you just know that EVERYBODY is giving their all.