Tag: Review

2023 In Film: Day Four (The Meh)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Haunting In Venice

Ups: Solid mystery.

Branagh is always good to see as Poirot.

Some of the deaths are very shocking.

Downs: Some of the shot choices are a bit weird. By weird, I mean shit.

The “maybe magic, maybe mundane” nature doesn’t suit a franchise like this.

Features some truly terrible editing.

Venice doesn’t feel alive.

Not enough clues were given to the ending.

Best Moment: The reveal. The build-up isn’t great but the reveal itself is a lot of fun.

Worst Moment: All the ghost moments.

Best Performer: Tempted to say Branagh, but gonna give it to Emma Laird. She has great potential.

Opening: Poirot has retired. Would have been nice to see more details of what he did during the war, it would have backed up his feelings of despondency.

Closing: Poirot has started to investigate again, leading to potential more sequels. It’s nice to see an excited Poirot again, but we haven’t seen enough of that character in this series for this to feel like “he’s back”. He’s always been “oh no, I’ve retired now” in this film franchise.

Best Line: Scary stories make real life a little less scary

Original Review here

A Kind Of Kidnapping

Ups: Funny.

Ambitious

Good music.

Downs: A bit too sweary at times

It’s too surface-level. All it seems to be saying is “politicians are bastards”, we know that.

Once you’ve seen the trailer you’ve essentially seen the entire film.

Mean-spirited.

Best Moment: The moment with Leila Hoffman. Shocking and hilarious.

Worst Moment: The sex scene is a bit out of place

Best Performer: Jack Perry Jones

Opening: Dramatic music as a taxi drives down a country road. Both suits the film and doesn’t. Then straight into the kidnapping. Threats of violence and foul language immediately.

Closing: One of the characters leaves after finding out the other one cheated on them; leaving a dickshot politician and his former partner tied together.

Best Line: “This isn’t America, you can’t just walk into a corner shop and ask for a handgun and a Wispa”

Original Review here

Slotherhouse

Ups: Moves quickly.

Leans into its ridiculousness

Surprisingly, a REALLY good soundtrack of unknown rock bands filled with youthful energy.

Downs: Some of the crowd scenes in supposedly busy shopping centres are too sparse.

The “I don’t like seeing animals get hurt” line is far too obvious and unsubtle

The characters could react to being murdered by a sloth.

Best Moment: The title drop. The fact it was met with silence and “dude, not the time” makes it hilarious.

Worst Moment: The death of Mayflower. Goes on too long. Isn’t funny enough to justify its length, and she doesn’t seem to be taking her impending death that seriously.

Best Performer: Bianca Beckles-Rose

Opening: A sloth kills a crocodile, or an alligator (I don’t know the difference without knowing if I’m going to see them later or in a while).

Closing: Everything is back to normal and they’re celebrating, a kind of bland ending. We then get a scene back in Panama of a tour guide with a group talking about how animals are dangerous. Felt a bit superfluous.

Best Line: “We’re all gonna die slow, horrible deaths at the hands of an adorable little killing machine”

Original Review here

Strays

Ups: Funny.

Good allusions to domestic violence.

Original.

Downs: Does anybody really give a shit about Dennis Quaid? This film treats him like a source of memes like Chuck Norris is, but I’ve never heard anybody mention Quaid in that way. Or in any way in a long time, if I’m being honest.

Repeats some of the jokes too often.

Very basic plot

Requires too many narrative handwaves for it to work.

Best Moment: The rabbit massacre. It’s brutal.

Worst Moment: The couch humping, goes on a bit too long.

Best Performer: Will Forte. He’s utterly detestable. No attempt to humanise or make him sympathetic.

Opening: How Doug got Reggie. Essentially he’s a pawn in a break-up revenge. Very sad.

Closing: The dick gets bitten. It’s incredibly cathartic.

Best Line: Why is Doug so great? Where do I begin? He loves being around me so much, he doesn’t even have a job.

Original Review here

The Equalizer 3

Ups: A fitting end to the franchise.

Incredibly violent

Downs: Drags slightly.

Best Moment: The explosion. Shows how horrific the aftermath of something like that can be.

Worst Moment: The photoshopped picture at the end.

Best Performer: Denzil

Opening: A lot of dead bodies. A good reminder of how violent this franchise can be.

Closing: An incredibly bad photoshopped picture lets us know one of the characters in this is related to someone in the previous film. Doesn’t add much to the story really.

Best Line: That’s a 3. You don’t want me to go to 4. I go to 4 you shit on yourself. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. They don’t want that.

Original Review here

The Flash

Ups: Genuinely touching (but not in a Kevin Spacey way)

Funny.

Some fun action scenes.

Nice to see Keaton again.

Some of the cameos in the multiverse sequence are fun.

Downs: Underutilized performers

Woeful CGI

The centrepiece of the whole thing suffers from severe continuity lockout. The Nicholas Cage cameo etc will only make sense to people who know the story of the cancelled Superman Lives film. Otherwise, it’s just a random Cage.

The DCEU is being reset, so it means nothing.

Best Moment: Him saying goodbye to his mum. That is EXACTLY how I would have done it.

Worst Moment: The Multiverse of Superman. Mainly because the use of dead actors in CGI is still a bit icky.

Best Performer: Sasha Calle. Miller leads, but Calle is the one I want to see again.

Opening: The Justice League stop a hospital from collapsing. Nice to see Gadot and Affleck again, but there are a few bits which feel a bit too comedic.

Closing: George Clooney

Best Line: These scars we have make us who we are, we’re not meant to go back and fix them. Don’t let your tragedy define you.

Original Review here

They Cloned Tyrone

Ups: Really commits to the blaxpoitation effect

When he’s talking about wiping the blood off his brother, that shit hurts.

It made a scene of people laughing really disturbing

Downs: Little bit too dark to see things clearly at times.

Takes a while to get going

It could stand to be a little dumber

There’s a tonal conflict. It’s not sure whether it wants to be silly or a serious look at racism. It tries to do both, but the silly moments let it down a little bit.

Best Moment: Laughter in the chicken restaurant. It’s weird how a group of people laughing and enjoying themselves can seem so creepy and unsettling.

Worst Moment: A moment that’s not there, the clones exiting the church and meeting the news cameras. We get the build-up, and the news cameras already there interviewing them, but no connnecting moment.

Best Performer: John Boyega

Opening: Opens with credits made to look dated. I like the effort put in to make it seem like it’s front a different time. Then a discussion about how Michael Jackson is alive and works at a local shop “he’s black now”, putting the science fiction themes in your head. And then a convo about Spongebob. So in terms of time, it’s all over the place in a great way.

Closing: We finally meet Tyrone. Damn funny ending

Original Review here

2023 In Film: Day Three (The Not Great)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Dream Scenario

Ups: Unique concept

Good performances

Downs: Kind of dull.

Lacks purpose

Doesn’t seem to know where it wants to take the story

Best Moment: The fart joke.

Worst Moment: The sex scene leading up to that is kind of uncomfortable and not needed.

Best Performer: Cage

Opening: Cage’s daughter dreams of him standing by watching as she floats into the air. It’s a dream, surprisingly.

Closing: Cage transports into his wife’s dream and saves her, while wearing a giant suit.

Best Line: Do you think I could handle the emotional burden of having an affair?

Original Review here

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Ups: The central relationship between the siblings is fantastic.

The animatronics.

Intriguing narrative.

Downs: Feels too neutered.

The universe it creates doesn’t feel real.

How did Afton get a job after killing those kids? Even if you do the “he just changed his name and got fake identification”, the fact he looks like the main suspect in a mass murder case would have raised suspicion.

Constantly reminds you of better films

Best Moment: The fake-out death with Rubio’s character. You do wonder if they would kill a child.

Worst Moment: The reveal of the child murders. Mainly because that kind of thing would become a local legend, so people who live there would know about it, especially if the building was still there.

Best Performer: Piper Rubio

Opening: A security guard is murdered. Lets you know immediately what type of film this is; bloodless and without any sense of tension.

Closing: Everybody smiles and lives together. Oh, and the villain somehow isn’t dead because they want a sequel.

Best Line: “And you only have to worry about one thing. Keeping people out. And, and you know, and keep the place tidy.”

“That’s two things”

Original Review here

Good Burger 2

Ups: Some delightfully dumb dialogue, almost Airplane/Paddington-esque

Unlike the first one, it doesn’t have creepy Dan Schneider.

Downs: The characters haven’t developed since the first one.

Thinks the first one is much more iconic than it is

Very basic plot.

Best Moment: The “rousing speech” which is just Ed standing silently. Somehow, it manages to inspire everybody.

Worst Moment: The car chase scene, mainly because there are some really weird shot choices, random quick cutaways of glasses of water etc before they’re hit.

Best Performer: Kamala Fairburn

Opening: Ed opens up the burger place and starts a musical intro. I don’t want to be rude, but his voice isn’t suited for this. It then turns out he’s been dreaming and he wakes up being shouted at by Pete Davidson. Then see a scene of Dexter as an inventor who burns his house down demonstrating a fireproof spray. I think the fire scene would have been a better opener, it’s more engaging

Closing: Good Burger is reopened, and permanent ice has been invented. An obvious ending. The credit sequence of everyone singing We’re All Dudes is fun though. Especially since they seemed to get the crew in too.

Best Line: “He’s allergic to hippos”

Original Review here

Hypnotic

Ups: Well-performed.

Smarter than you’d think.

Keeps you on your toes.

Downs: Feels a bit too similar to other films which have been done much better

Hard to get emotionally invested.

Wastes potential

Best Moment: The rugpull. Superbly done.

Worst Moment: The post-credits scene. Feels a little optimistic setting up for a sequel.

Best Performer: Affleck

Opening: Affleck in therapy. Whilst watching this I thought this was a mistake, that they should have led with the bank robbery. But when the twist is revealed, I get why they did this.

Closing: The villain has survived. We thought he didn’t, but that was just because we saw a version warped by hypnosis. Not a surprise, but is narratively unsatisfying.

Best Line: I love you… don’t ask me why

Original Review here

Meg 2: The Trench

Ups: Some creative shots

If you like the first one, you’ll like this

Dumb, in an entertaining way

Downs: Doesn’t do enough to stand out

Should be bloodier

Doesn’t feel like a Wheatley film

Depends on you being able to remember a lot from the first film

Best Moment: The exosuit death. Shocking.

Worst Moment: The revelation of the villain, feels too obvious.

Best Performer: Shuya Sophia Cal

Opening: Dinosaurs killing each other.

Closing: The Meg might be pregnant. Sequel!

Best Line: After last time, y’all begged me to come back. “DJ, oh, we family, DJ. DJ, we need you.” Yeah, all right. Bet. But I ain’t stupid. I trained up, I learned how to fight, I learned how to swim, and I will never go anywhere without my survival pack

Original Review here

Talk To Me

Ups: Some good scares

Shows great potential for everyone involved

Downs: Doesn’t quite live up to what it could be.

Best Moment: Riley attempting suicide. Horrific.

Worst Moment: The possession party, only because they could be combined into one.

Best Performer: Sophie Wilde

Opening: A stabbing at a house party. Bit weird as doesn’t show enough to add to the story, it just introduces characters who never matter again. I got what they were going for, but didn’t work for me.

Closing: Mia is dead and finds herself summoned at a party. So we see what it’s like from the spirits’ side.

Best Line: “I let you in”

Original review here

We Have A Ghost

Ups: Has some funny moments.

Has heart.

Good cast

Downs: Odd sup-plots

Not enough funny moments to sustain it.

Best Moment: The TikTok response. It feels so real and how people would respond. It’s also one of the few “goes viral” moments in horror movies that feels legit.

Worst Moment: The Tig Notaro sub-plot, mainly because it goes nowhere.

Best Performer: David Harbour. Mainly because he does the whole thing without saying a word.

Opening: Static shot of a family running out of a house scared. Then the title card. It’s nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before and it’s weird that THIS was how they chose to open it. A horror comedy has to nail the opening, and there’s nothing here which can be considered a joke or a scare in the opening. They then played the Jim Cornette theme song, which was the first laugh it got from me, and that was completely unintentional.

Closing: “Ernest” moves on. Expected, and very predictable. But handled so well. Annoyingly, it then moves on to another scene of the family moving house. That coda slightly broke the flow. It’s annoying as there’s a personal reveal that is nice to see and completes a narrative, so that’s needed. I just feel the place for it is wrong. If they swapped the scenes over it might have had a slightly better flow.

Best Line: “When your kids are little it’s easy to be a parent. They don’t see who you actually are, they just see the good stuff, what you want them to see. But eventually, as they grow up parts of yourself that you don’t like become harder and harder to hide”

Original Review here

Your Place Or Mine

Ups: I like the way she shoots phone calls. It does a standard split screen, but they’re all in sync.

Interesting idea.

Downs: Actors aren’t playing to their strengths.

The actors don’t share chemistry.

Everybody involved is capable of better.

Doomed by the concept.

Best Moment: The argument scene. Really creatively shot.

Worst Moment: The inciting incident seems too fake.

Best Performer: Notaro

Opening: “It’s 2003. How can we tell?” it then points to early 2000’s fashion choices made by the characters. It’s a fun opening. Even more so when the guy keeps interrupting sex to talk about short stories he’s written.

Closing: “They lived happily ever after. Just kidding, marriage is hard, but they had a good life”

Best Line: “Notes on parenting from someone whose only pet was a goldfish that died in a bong fire”

Original Review here

2023 In Film: Day Two (The Bad)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Films which I didn’t like, but I can at least appreciate brought SOMETHING to the table

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom

Ups: Great chemistry between the leads.

Potentially good villain.

Momoa is still the best possible Aquaman.

Always fun to see Randall Park.

Downs: Feels pointless.

Boring story.

The villain is defeated too easily.

Best Moment: The trident backstory.

Worst Moment: The final fight, is so underwhelming.

Best Performer: Momoa

Opening: Aquaman is telling his story to his kid. Cute, and a fun introduction to the character.

Closing: Atlantis reveals itself to the UN, something that won’t matter AT ALL as this iteration of the DCEU is over.

Best Line: No one hits my brother, but me!

Original Review here

Asteroid City

Ups: Unique look.

Fun performances.

Sweet at times.

Downs: Dull.

Far too Wes Anderson. I know such a shock for a West Anderson film. But if you don’t like his usual fare, this won’t change your mind.

Best Moment: The Montana/June subplot, because it isn’t really given enough time, and doesn’t seem to be saying anything that’s not said in any of the other plots.

Worst Moment: The conversation between the actor playing Augie and the woman playing his dead wife. Quite sweet.

Best Performer: Jeffrey Wright

Opening: Brian Cranston (playing a TV show host) introduces a televised production of the Asteroid City play. It’s at this point I realised what kind of film this is going to be, and how divisive it would be.

Closing: The quarantine is lifted and everybody leaves. Augie gets the address for Midge, and Woodrow receives a scholarship.

Best Line: We’re just two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of our pain because… we don’t want to.

Original Review here

Cat Person

Ups: It has some interesting themes.

Depressingly relevant.

Sometimes very funny,

Downs: Loses focus.

Since a lot of the worst things happen in her imagination, it doesn’t seem to ring true how terrible he is.

Best Moment: The sex scene. Fun, creative, and allows you a look into her psyche.

Worst Moment: The imagination spots.

Best Performer: Geraldine Viswanathan

Opening: She flirts with a guy at her work. Not really sure why. At no point did we see WHY she would be into him.

Closing: She meets someone at her work, thus repeating the cycle.

Best Line: Things have changed on the surface, which means they haven’t really changed at all

Original Review here

Dumb Money

Ups: Funny in parts.

Definitely has an audience.

Interesting story being told

Downs: But being told very badly.

Paced terribly.

Doesn’t do a good enough job of explaining itself.

Weird music choices.

Best Moment: Marcos quitting his job.

Worst Moment: Most of the editing decisions.

Best Performer: Paul Dano

Opening: I genuinely can’t remember.

Closing: A very depressing “here’s what happened to everybody”, but it doesn’t have the anger needed to be effective. It seems too morally neutral.

Best Line: “I like the stock”

Original Review here

Ferrari

Ups: Good race scenes.

Doesn’t sugarcoat history.

Does a really good job of showcasing the era.

Downs: Everybody’s an asshole.

Needs more Italians

Best Moment: The aftermath of the crash at the end. Really sells how brutal it is.

Worst Moment: The set-up to that. It foreshadows it way too obviously. Introducing another family just to kill them.

Best Performer: Penelope Cruz

Opening: Text telling us the company was founded in 1947, we then cut to 1957. Not entirely sure why we needed to be told that, and only that. Either give us more detail about the financial state of the company or say nothing.

Closing: The wife dies and finally the son can be recognised as a Ferrari and now runs the company. I think the film thinks that’s a happy ending.

Original Review here

Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story

Ups: Good performances

Interesting story

David Harbor is entertaining

Downs: Geri Halliwell is terrible

The theme of “it’s not like a video game” doesn’t mesh well with making all the races look like video games.

Best Moment: The section at the training camp.

Worst Moment: The crash, only because it’s a little weird.

Best Performer: David Harbor.

Best Line: You get extra points for that in the game?

Original Review here

It’s A Wonderful Knife

Ups: Some very creative shots, where she’s wearing red in a room that’s almost entirely washed out.

The town becoming more nihilistic due to a serial killer is a smart move.

Downs: A little too unsubtle.

Takes a while to become a horror movie.

Best Moment: Weirdo revealing they were going to commit suicide.

Worst Moment: There’s a shot of her exiting the house which is overexposed as fuck.

Best Performer: Jane Widdop/Jessie McLeod

Opening: An advert for a shopping/entertainment destination. Sets up comedy really quickly. Then a scene with the person from the video turning on a Christmas tree, in case you couldn’t tell this was a Christmas film from the title.

Closing: She goes back to her timeline. Somehow Bernie can remember from the other timeline but nobody else can. Maybe would have been better if they left it more subtle and hinted at a relationship starting rather than having her already remember, seems kind of cheap.

Best Line: “I wasn’t Clarence, you were”

Original Review here

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerra

Ups: Some funny lines

Talented ensemble cast.

It’s always nice to see Carey Elwes again.

Downs: Lacks identity.

Doesn’t feel very Guy Ritchie

Jason Statham has never come off more Garth Marenghi

Best Moment: The moments with Hugh Grant.

Worst Moment: When we meet the two tech moguls, mainly because of how underwhelming it all is.

Best Performer: Hugh Grant.

Opening: Carys has been summoned and told to retrieve something that gets stolen. A weirdly subdued opening for a Guy Ritchie film. Nice to see him again though. Also, they explain why it’s called Ruse Du Guerre.

Closing: Fortune takes a holiday and invested his money in a movie based on the events of this film. It’s a decent joke but it goes on far too long.

Best Line: “money doesn’t make you happier.” I tell you what, Danny, it fucking does.

Original Review here

Pearl

Ups: Commits to the style

Great central performance

Clearly a lot of research has gone into it

Downs: No likeable characters

Runs out of steam

Best Moment: Pearl’s monologue near the end. Absolutely stunning.

Worst Moment: The scarecrow sex.

Best Performer: Mia Goth

Opening: Time-period appropriate music, sets up the themes well.

Closing: A very long single shot of Pearl smiling through the pain.

Best Line: Her entire monologue at the end, I don’t have the space to type it all

Original Review here

2023 In Film: Day One (The Awful)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Spoilers, but 2023 was actually a pretty good year for film. There was a lot of excellent stuff, much more great than awful, but tradition states we must start with the worst, and these are pretty damn bad.

65

Ups: It is good to see spectacle cinema again.

Fun idea.

Pretty good CGI.

Downs: Dull.

No sense of peril, obstacles are approached, defeated, and then forgotten in a few minutes.

Zero reason for it to be set 65 million years in the past rather than in the future.

Terrible title.

Best Moment: When Koa finds out the truth about Mills.

Worst Moment: The parasite nearly killed one of them. Completely inconsequential.

Best Performer: Ariana Greenblatt

Opening: Adam Driver’s character convinces his wife to let him go on a two-year trip to raise money for his daughters’ healthcare. She dies whilst he’s away. All of that information is delivered to the audience FAR too quickly. It would have been better if they opened with the crew members of the ship just sitting around joking, that way when they died we would actually feel something.

Closing: An asteroid hits Earth, killing most life. The audience feels NOTHING.

Best Line: “65 million years ago a visitor crash-landed on Earth”

Original Review here

Assassin Club

Ups: Good idea.

Made it very easy for me to pick “Worst Film of the Year”

Downs: Wastes so much potential.

Stupid character decisions.

Edited in a way that makes parts of it incomprehensible to watch.

Dull.

Best Moment: The subway fight.

Worst Moment: When a mysterious character is unmasked. Because it happens one scene after the concept of them was introduced, so felt like a waste of a mystery.

Best Performer: Henry Golding I guess.

Opening: He tries to kill someone, and helpfully explains his process to the audience, but is shot-blocked.

Closing: I genuinely don’t remember. I think he shot a woman. I stopped caring by this point.

Best Line: However they described the person in the worst moment section, only because it actually created intrigue.

Original Review here

The Pale Blue Eye

Ups: Some lush visuals

Downs: This could have been a chance to showcase some American talent, going with an almost entirely British cast is a strange choice.

Best Moment: The shot of the house burning down, elegant in its simplicity.

Worst Moment: The reveal, when you find out the whole film is balancing on an incredibly convenient coincidence in timing.

Best Performer: Toby Jones

Opening: With an Edgar Allen Poe quote, obviously. The last media I partook in that started like that was Eternal Darkness back in *coughs to obscure date*

Closing: The killer has been revealed. But the film then carries on for another few scenes where we get flashbacks about things we didn’t need to see.

Best Line: “I didn’t want them to confess, I wanted them to die”

Original Review here

Thanksgiving

Ups: Gory

Deliciously satirical

Creative kills

Downs: I hated every single character.

The villain makes too much sense.

Predictable.

Too bleak, stopped caring.

Best Moment: When the killer kidnaps them in the middle of a parade.

Worst Moment: The reveal, because it’s too obvious.

Best Performer: Patrick Dempsey

Opening: The store massacre. Bloody, chaotic, and quite fun. But also renders every main character too unsympathetic to give a shit about.

Closing: The killer’s body wasn’t found. Sequel!

Best Line: “Don’t slide into the killer’s DMs”

Original Review here

Good Burger 2 (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Dexter Reed and cashier Ed reunite at fast-food restaurant Good Burger

Do people like Good Burger? I think it’s like Space Jam, where if you mention it then you will get positive response from people, but it’s not really brought up that much. It also is very limited in their fanbase, people who were kids in the 90s. There’s not really a large number of modern kids and teens being like “You should totally check out this 90s film I just found”. So the market for a sequel would be people who watched the original in the 90s, and now have both disposable income, and an impending sense of time passing which means they want to recapture their youth. So in that sense, a sequel does make sense, and would be a good way for a streaming service like Paramount+ to gain a foothold.

It doesn’t mean the film is good though. The director was asked about a potential sequel to this, and gave the world the following sentence:

“The character of Ed has not changed […] he now has a family, he’s got a bunch of kids and a wife, but he is still the same old Ed. As that doesn’t change, we can just do it again and again and put them in crazier and crazier situations.”

And that’s a problem. It worked when these characters were teenagers, but it’s 25 years later and Ed hasn’t changed, and seeing that level of naivity, stupidity and immaturity, is no longer charming or funny, it’s actually kind of annoying and makes you concerned. It doesn’t feel like a movie, it feels like a television show. A character like that is needed in a TV show because you need an excuse for them to not learn over the course of 25 episodes, but for a 90 minute movie? You’re allowed to have your characters seem human.

There’s also an issue with the way the film handles Kenan Thompson. He’s a TREMENDOUS comedic talent, but he’s forced into a straight man role that doesn’t really suit him. Most of his screen time is him watching crazy shit, and then explaining what he’s just seen in case the audience didn’t understand it.

The best showcase of Kenan Thompson has been his SNL stint, and people who have watched that will know he’s capable of much more than he’s been allowed to show here. Those who haven’t watched SNL? Best of luck with this, as that’s where a lot of the cameos come from.

With only 2 or 3 exceptions, most of them are relatively low-level outside of the US. I watched Wonka recently, and this feels like it’s aiming for similar, but not really doing it. It has a similar method of casting television comedy actors in small parts so that people who watch it can do the DiCaprio point. I felt it worked better in Wonka though, and not just because I actually knew who they were (although that helped). The cameos in Wonka felt like full characters, even if they were only on screen for one scene (thinking specifically of the couple played by Charlotte Richie and Phil Wang), so that they didn’t feel like cameos, they felt like characters who just happened to be played by comedy performers. Good Burger has the cameos be so obvious that it’s distracting. It puts them front and centre, over the lead actors. You can almost sense the “look, it’s [person]! Applause”. It’s like when I watched the Uncharted movie and the cameo of the original voice actor stood out like a sore thumb covered in fairy lights, begging for people to notice it. “I don’t know who that is, but I assume that’s somebody” is the general feeling.
It’s not all negative though, there is some tremendously funny dialogue with some genuine laugh out loud moments. The scene where Ed is introducing his family has some really randomly funny lines. “he’s allergic to hippos” was my personal favourite because it’s just so stupid and wonderful. Whilst I did say Thompson was miscast, he is still pretty good at what he has to do in this. Kamaia Fairburn is talented as hell and has great potential, as do the Hinkler sisters, who in their all-too-brief moments show enough that I feel casting directors need to focus on developing a vehicle for them.
There’s one area where this is a definite improvement over the first one: no creepy sex pest Dan Schneider, which as anybody who has read I’m Glad My Mom Died (or has heard anything said about him in the last few years), is a definite good thing. The ending reprise of “We’re All Dudes” is also pretty damn entertaining.

Quiz Lady (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Anne and Jerry’s mother gets into debt with the mob. In order to pay off the debt (and get her pet dog back), Anne goes on a quiz show.

I fucking love Awkwafina. From the first time I saw her on-screen in Jumanji: The Next Level, through to Renfield, she has consistently been the highlight of almost every film she’s in. She’s carved a niche as a sarcastic brilliant mess. Conversely, Sandra Oh is best known for playing smart characters who are in control. So it’s weird that Quiz Lady has them do the opposite. It’s a nice subversion of audience expectations. Doing something like that does run the risk of coming off as an acting exercise, but it works in this. They’re both clearly having a blast, being surprisingly great at playing against type.

They have really great chemistry, to the point where it is easy to buy them as siblings. They’re helped by a script full of moments which showcase how much Jenny (Oh) really does care for her sister Anne (Awkwafina). There are so many moments where the script is damn near perfect. The story, however, not so much. It’s incredibly predictable, in a basic way. Just by watching the trailer you can probably pinpoint the three-act structure. But it’s what it does within those confines that make it interesting. Even though the moments are predictable, it still surprises you with how it does it. Even the traditional “what happened next” ending includes a random “Capitalism is broken” message in it.

It also uses the framework it’s in to create some genuinely heartfelt moments, mainly between the sisters. Weirdly (and never thought I’d say this), the most emotional scene comes from Will Ferrell, where he showcases his affection for previous guests on the show. He’s aided by his “rivalry” with Jason Schwartzman’s character, who feels like he’s just doing a Steve Carrell impression.

Now onto the bad; it has one of the worst uses of Eye Of The Tiger in cinematic history. Because of the Rocky movies (a touching tale of unrequited love between one man’s fist and another man’s face), that song has certain expectations attached to it. When you hear that, you expect something triumphant and epic, and that doesn’t really happen in this. It builds up to it, then neutered like a feral cat, only much quicker.

The rapid-fire nature of the jokes also means that some don’t work, there’s an entire character that clearly seemed hilarious on paper but just does not work on screen. I think it’s because it feels shoehorned in. It had the potential to affect the plot, all it would have needed was one conversation between that character and one of the sisters, one moment of meaning could have justified his inclusion. As it is, it just felt like “Okay, they’re staying in a hotel, add some jokes”, like they’re just jokes for joke’s sake, rather than having any thought between them, and they’re not even good jokes.

Overall, this is definitely worth a watch. It’s not going to change your life, but it’s not meant to. It’s escapism at its (almost) best. Sometimes that’s all you want in life. In the UK it’s available on Disney+, and you could do a lot worse.

Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: Ginger and Rocky are now raising a child, one with ambitions of leaving the farm they raised her in.

The original Chicken Run has a weird place in people’s hearts. It doesn’t feel like it’s many people’s favourite film, there’s not exactly a rabid fanbase who do yearly showings and conventions about it and discuss its themes at left. That being said, it is a comfort film for many people. It’s a film which whilst people don’t LOVE, it does give them a place of warmth and security. That’s, you know, if you ignore the Mel Gibson of it all.

The recasting of Gibson made a lot of sense, his career has never really recovered from people discovering he’s a massive racist (by which I mean, “he uses racist words”, not “he sometimes criticises Israel when they kill children”). Whilst he’s not box office poison (the reaction to Hacksaw Ridge proves that), he is box office Evri, his involvement will drive more people away than it will bring them in. Zachary Levi is a good replacement though, providing enough emotion and vocal depth to the performance that you don’t really miss Gibson. I have a bigger issue with Thandiwe Newton being in this. Julia Sawalha was great in the first one, and her being recast for seemingly no reason genuinely annoys me. It’s claimed it’s because she sounded too old, but Newton is only 4 years younger, so maybe it was to get a bigger name? Either way, it’s bullshit, and did kind of sour the whole experience for me.

It kind of sums up my issues with the film. It doesn’t seem to have the same warmth and cosiness as the original. It feels more, well not cynical, but more business-like, as if they were focused on the reaction it was going to get rather than what they were making. It has a Paloma Faith song. That somehow feels wrong, she’s too cool for this. Especially since it seems to be recorded especially for the soundtrack. It just kind of feels like a tonal misfire, it would be like if Wallace and Gromit used a Stormzy track.

That’s a shame, if this was a stand-alone film, I would rate it relatively high. It’s funny, it looks good, and it’s f*cking weird at times. A joke involving an eye-scanner made me laugh so much that I spat out tea (such a sad waste of tea). It is also genuinely unsettling at times, more kids’ films should aim to occasionally scare the living shit out its intended audience. There’s one area where this is better than the original; it has much more emotion. It definitely has an air of “aiming at the parents as well as the kids” with how it’s got themes of parental worry and a need for independence.

I mentioned the cast briefly, this has quite a few new voices, and they work. Bella Ramsey sounds exactly how that character should sound; with the right mix of youthful enthusiasm and paranoia. My personal favourite was Josie Sedgwick-Davies, who (at the time of writing) doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Her character could be annoying if it was voiced wrong, but Sedgwick-Davies makes it work, with her character coming off as endearing rather than frustrating (it helps that her voice makes her sound like someone who goes on Bake Off and bakes rainbow cakes which look weird). She’s absolutely fantastic and I love her in this. Curious as to what she does next, but she’s on my radar for now so I’m hoping it’s something good.

So in summary; because this is on Netflix, I’d say you should watch it. It’s a great Netflix film, but only a good Aardman one. If you’re looking for a good family movie, you could do a lot worse than go with this. I mean, you could also do a lot better, but still.

A Kind Of Kidnapping (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: A young, broke couple kidnap a sleazy politician who decides he can spin the story to his advantage.

I wanted to like this, I really did. If you can, check out the absolutely SUBLIME television series How Not To Live Your Life. From that, it’s clear that Dan Clark has a lot of talent, not just for the absurd, but also for finding humanity, with an almost Seinfeldien level of talent for making you root for characters who by all rights you should dislike. Plus, I love a good political satire, and this looked like it might be that. Alas, it was not to be.

I’ll start with the positive, Dan Clark is a hell of a director. He could have gotten away with this being low-budget and grim, but it’s really slick and has a big-budget feel, albeit one of those big-budget films mainly played in theatres that cater to cinema snobs. The performances are all pretty solid too. Leila Hoffman isn’t in it for long but shines when she is in it. Patrick Baladi was born for this kind of role, he has Thick Of It face. He’s perfect to play a slimy opportunistic Tory wanker.

Now onto the bad; it just feels a bit too mean-spirited. We know politicians are shits, so if the sharpest your satire gets is showing us that, it will feel a little weak. Good satire should be an explosive firebomb of inspiration, this is more like a pathetic discharge of a mouse coughing. It’s not telling us anything we don’t already know, and it doesn’t offer any glimpse of an opportunity to change anything. If anything, all this has to say is “The ruling class are shit, deal with it”. The pacing is a bit odd too. The moment where Baladi’s character doesn’t want to go because he realises it’s good for his career possibly should have come earlier. It’s the main gimmick of the film and it doesn’t occur until a third of the way through the runtime.

This wouldn’t matter if the rest of the time was well spent, if a holiday is good enough, you don’t mind the queues to get there. But the other two-thirds of the runtime feels kind of wasted. There’s not enough in there that wasn’t in the trailer.

Don’t get me wrong, this does have some cracking dialogue; my personal favourites:

“Japs Eye is not very PC, in fact, it’s pretty racist”

And, this is the only film to have “if you do that again I’ll put a bullet in your dick” as a threat.

I like the dialogue, I like the concept, I like the performances, I like the direction, but the film didn’t really do it for me. I can tell they tried though. There’s a lot you can say about this, but you can’t say it’s low effort. I’ve given negative reviews to a lot of films, but this is one of the few I’ve felt genuinely guilty about writing. That’s probably because when I shit on something like Assassin Club or Wolf, I don’t see myself in those films. They’re not the kind of scripts I would write, or the mistakes they make are ones I would never make. But this? A sweary political satire that kind of lacks focus and passion? I could do that. This feels like something I would do, so I see any issues more easily, I take them more personally out of my own personal fear of failure.

Next Goal Wins (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: Football (the foot-to-ball kind, not the hand kind) coach Thomas Rongen has been given the job of coach of the American Samoan national team with one task; to score a goal.

The best thing this film has going for it is it’s likeable. Next Goal Wins (or NGW, pronounced Noog-wah) has an inherent cosiness and warmth that makes it very easy for the audience to not want to turn away. It has the air of a comfortable end-of-year movie you watch with everybody; a bit like Cool Runnings, it all feels very Disney, in a good way. But much like a ska song about the holocaust, that lightness is hiding something very dark. Underneath the tale of the worst football team in the world lies a story about national pride, parental grief, transphobia, and personal belief. But those topics are woven so intricately that you don’t even realise they’re breaking your heart until they pile up. Mostly, the subplot about parental grief plays its hand too easily, it’s trying to give you a peak behind the curtain but instead pulls the curtain wide open, the hints just aren’t subtle enough to hide the reveal. I am very glad that that wasn’t invented for the movie though. His daughter genuinely did pass away in a car crash, and it was her hat he was wearing during American Samoa’s match against Tonga. That’s the kind of thing which if it was invented for the film, would have come off as weird and unrealistic. Related to that, there are quite a few moments which if they weren’t real (and if the film didn’t come from someone with ties to the area) would come off as incredibly condescending. Even the whole premise of the film, that these natives were hopeless until they were “saved” by a white man, comes off as a little strange in the current climate, by “current climate”, I mean “past the 1970s” (which didn’t reach some parts of the Midlands until 1998).

This isn’t an essential watch, but it is very good. It’s not going to change the world, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to just entertain you, and tell a really unique story. The American Samoan team’s loss to Australia was huge, literally, it was 31-0. NGW does do a great job of pointing out that the American Samoan goalkeeper actually had a fantastic game, and if it wasn’t for him the score would have been a lot worse. The rest of the players don’t come off with quite as much dignity. But even when the film portrays the players as not being that good, it never dehumanises them. The joke is purely on the observer, not the person being observed. This is the difference between something like Next Goal Wins, and The Gods Must Be Crazy. You don’t come out of this pitying the people you’ve just watched. But you also don’t come out with some condescending thoughts of “Ah, but they’re the real smart ones”, you come out realising that they’re just people with ambitions, hopes, dreams, and moments of stupidity.

It’s not perfect. We could stand to be given a bit more background into his coaching career. We don’t really get a sense of what level he was at in his career. So we’re not given any indication of how big his “fall from grace” is. Was it a huge scandal? Was he not known by anybody? We don’t know, and it kind of harms his character not knowing. Fassbender does do a great job portraying him, though. Due to the nationality and race of the cast, it’s not exactly going to be full of performers you’re familiar with. The only one I recognised was Talia’uli Latukefu from Young Rock, but there are so many performers from this who I want to see again. They’re helped by a really fun script that knows that it’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s a sports movie where the end result isn’t to win the tournament or beat their rival, it’s to score a single goal. Delightfully unique, and I look forward to watching it again.

Ferrari (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: With the company in dire straits (not the band), Ferrari need to win their next race in order to survive. Will they? I mean, they still exist, so yeah.

Many people like this film, it’s got pretty decent reviews. I have to be honest; I don’t get it. The main issue I had with it was I had nothing to hang a positive thought on. It didn’t feel informative enough to be interesting, the characters (particularly the lead; Enzo Ferrari) were too unlikeable to root for, and you knew how the main conflict would end. Let’s go through all three.
The lack of information. You don’t come out of this with a better understanding of the person, or the company. It’s so heavily focused on one event that it neglects to give you any other information. It feels like the second part of a ten-part documentary series. I’m not asking for every single piece of the company history to be covered, but it would be nice to have at least one “oh, I didn’t know that!/that’s interesting” thought whilst watching it.
The predictability. This also affected the shoe-opic Air. We all know that Ferrari exists (spoilers?). So you can’t really watch this and think “OMG! I wonder if the company is going to survive this.” If you push that a company is dependent on doing well in a race, and the company is still around today, you know what’s going to happen.
Now onto the unlikeability. I thought the lead character was a complete prick. I didn’t care about anybody, especially the lead. “oh no, if this doesn’t work he might have to sell the house he purchased for his mistress and illegitimate child. Or stop drinking quite as much expensive wine.”
He’s not in a “I’m financially struggling and if I don’t turn it around I won’t have enough money to pay rent” situation. The film seems to really hate his wife, with his mother blaming her for his cheating “Well if you can’t give him an heir, it’s his right to look elsewhere”. The film ends with the wife saying “I’ll lend you money but only if you never acknowledge your illegitimate son as your heir”, then a few minutes later you get a piece of text onscreen saying “She died in [year], and now the son is the head of the company”. It seems to treat “but then his wife died so the son he had with his mistress was finally able to inherit the business” as a happy ending. Like his wife was being the bitch for not allowing that.
I like Shailene Woodley, she gave a fantastic performance in TFIOS, anchored the Divergent series, and rightfully puts herself forward for causes she believes in. I think she is a good person and a good performer, but she is a terrible Italian. A lot of the accents are bad, but hers is one step away from “It’s a me, a Mario! I make-a the pizza”. Out of the cast, only Penelope Cruz gives the impression of someone who can actually point out Italy on a map of Europe.
To the film’s credit, the racing scenes themselves are fantastic, injected with a sense of realism missing from similar films. They don’t feel like you’re watching a film about racing, it feels like you’re actually there experiencing it, being fully aware of just how f*cking fast these things can go.
Mann has also managed to recreate the period. I’m not aware of how accurate it is, but it feels right. It doesn’t even need to tell you when and where it’s set, as the set design does a good enough job of telling you. The aftermath of a crash at the end is much more brutal than I thought it would be, although that is somewhat ruined by the reaction of Enzo being one of nonchalance. That’s to be expected though, another character died in one of his cars early on, and there’s no mention of him for the rest of the film. There’s no sense of “but am I responsible?” guilt, it’s just “his mother caused him to crash” (that’s genuinely what he says by the way) and absolves himself. Again, he’s an asshole.
I wish I liked this film, I really do. But it’s the second Adam Driver film of the year with an exciting concept, rendered incredibly dull. Maybe if you like cars etc, this might mean more to you. But it left me colder than the weather is currently.