Tag: Sasha Calle

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

The Flash (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Synopsis: The Flash breaks reality by running fast (despite running fast multiple times in the past and it never being an issue) ending up not only in the past, but in a different universe with another Barry Allen.

I went into this with one thought in mind: this is going to be a complete mess. I mean; it had an advertising campaign which consisted of trailers that would play in the cinema and then have “full trailer available online” at the end, and fuck that. At the very least they could have done something cool and released the whole trailer early but sped up so it goes by in a second. That level of laziness when it comes to marketing is never a good sign. I assumed it would be worse than Morbius and that I’d hate it, but it would at least be fun to complain about. That’s why I’m actually slightly annoyed that The Flash is *whispers* kind of good.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some serious flaws here. The CGI is shameful at some points, and there are some characters who are underused. None more so than Sasha Calle’s Supergirl. The restructuring at DC makes me worried that this will be her only appearance in the role; which is a shame as she’s really good. She has the screen presence needed for such a lofty role. Then again, she HAD to be great, because if she wasn’t then the online reviews would consist of unwashed masses insulting her. I mean, those kinds of people are still going to insult her, but at least now they’re not backed up by the general public agreeing with them.

The other downside was the advertising. There were rumours Michael Keaton was going to reprise his role as Bruce Wayne from the early 90’s Batman movies, these rumours were confirmed when he was put front and centre of the marketing campaign, to the point where it didn’t really feel like The Flash was the main character in his own movie. It would have been nice to have that as a surprise, as without that there are not too many “OMG” moments (with the exception of one near the end). I get why the studio did this; with all the controversy over Ezra Millers’ behaviour, they needed to find a way to draw people into theatres; and the only way they could think to do it was “Look, Michael Keaton’s back!”. I think it worked, it got people interested, but it did have the unfortunate side effect of making people expect more.

Don’t get me wrong; there are some great moments and cameos in the final section, but they’re not important to the story and are only seen briefly, to the point where it feels like they’re only there for fanservice. There has been some controversy about this section as it involves CGI use of dead actors in a way that some people might be uncomfortable with. It is a bit uneasy to think about the potential applications of deepfakes of actors, particularly at a time when streaming companies are trying to use AI to screw over writers.

Now onto the good: The performances are all great. Keaton crushes it as Batman, the aforementioned Calle could not be better. The main issue with some of the supporting cast is a lot of them aren’t given enough to do. Michael Shannon, for example, is underutilized despite being the main villain. The story itself is pretty good. The worry with a multiverse story is how you make it simple enough for the mass public to understand. It turns out the answer is spaghetti. It’s a bit weird how the character who mentions it would know of it, but as far as exposition goes, there are worse examples.

I did LOVE one moment. There’s a section near the end where he works out how to fix everything but at a personal sacrifice. It’s absolutely perfect. By which I mean; that is EXACTLY how I would I have done it. The unsaid heartbreak, the crushing weight of responsibility that decision leads to, the wonder whether the other person is aware or not. It’s up there as one of my favourite moments of the year, just a shame the rest of the film doesn’t come anywhere close. Overall; nowhere near as bad as you think it would be, but not as good as it needs to be. Plus, it is a bit weird that it’s ANOTHER Barry Allen story, no Wally West (Which would have been nice) or Bart Allen (which could have led to something fun).