Tag: Zachery Levi

2023 In Film: Day Six (The Fairly Good)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

These are films I did like, but there were a few things that just put me off needing to see them again anytime soon.

Blue Beetle

Ups: Good performances

Almost every character is a highlight

Unashamedly Latino

Some great body horror moments

Downs: Formulaic story

Some people may be put off by the random non-English parts which aren’t subtitled.

The superhero sections are the weakest parts.

Some strange sound mixing.

Best Moment: The backstory for Carapax.

Worst Moment: The parts involving Rudy on the island at the end. He’s great and played brilliantly. But his parts feel rewritten as it’s difficult to get a good grasp on where he is at certain times.

Best Performer: Adriana Baraza as Nana. Although I’m quite fond of Belissa Escobedo

Opening: Victoria Kord finds the Scarab. A relatively weak opening tbh, “Look, we found a thing” doesn’t launch into “high octane opening credits” as much as the film seems to think it does.

Closing: The neighbours help the family rebuild. Very sweet and wonderful, but it doesn’t really feel earned. We haven’t seen any of the neighbours before so their coming around at the end feels a bit odd. If we met them before or had a sense that the family members helped them it might work better.

Best Line: “Batman’s a fascist!”

Original Review here

Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget

Ups: Some genuinely unsettling scenes.

Downs: Still bitter about recasting.

Best Moment: The eye scanner joke is ridiculously silly and I love it.

Worst Moment: The chase towards the end is sometimes too convenient.

Best Performer: Josie Sedgwick-Davies

Opening: Rocky sums up the first movie. Smart move as it’s been a while. Then we find out where the characters are. Effective way of catching people up, and good character work. Could do with more jokes though

Closing: Everything is fine, the chickens now continue their liberation techniques across the land. Would have been nice to see more of those raids in the credits. Could have had some funny moments.

Best Line: “You can’t right all the world’s wrongs”. Perfectly sums up her character.

Original Review here

Killers Of The Flower Moon

Ups: Incredible performances.

The best ending I’ve seen in a long time.

Beautiful to see.

A story that needs telling.

Downs: Sooooo long.

Some characters are underutilized

Too white-centric

Best Moment: The ending.

Worst Moment: All the “look at this random thing” insertions.

Best Performer: Lily Gladstone

Opening: A quick history of the tribe and how they made their money.

Closing: A standard “what happened to them?” epilogue, created like a radio show. It’s incredibly creative and one of my favourite moments of the year.

Best Line: “” Mrs. Mollie Cobb, 50 years of age, passed away at eleven o’clock Wednesday night in her home. She was a full-blood Osage. She was buried in the old cemetery in Gray Horse beside her father, her mother, her sisters, and her daughter.” There was no mention of the murders””

Original Review here

Next Goal Wins

Ups: Funny

Has genuine heart

Unique story

Downs: Needs more football.

Too many pivotal moments were in the trailer.

Risks coming off as slightly condescending

Best Moment: The daughter reveal. It’s obvious, yes, but it’s done sooooo well.

Worst Moment: “We didn’t send you there to help them, we sent you there to help you” It feels a little weird

Best Performer: Kaimana

Opening: A priest (played by the director) welcomes us to the film, telling us what we saw is (mostly) true. Funny, and a good way of setting the strange tone.

Closing: Standard “what happened next”, along with footage of the actual people it’s based on. Very sweet.

Best Line: “We’ve worked too long and hard” “You’ve only just got here”

Original Review here

Oppenheimer

Ups: Great practical effects

Good ensemble cast.

The idea that someone’s career can still be ruined by accusations of communist affiliations is depressingly relevant today.

Downs: Might be too much to unpack for some.

The sex scene is a bit pointless, and cost the film a lot of money in some markets due to the use of religious text.

It’s so long.

Best Moment: The explosion itself.

Worst Moment: The sex scene. Just feels a bit out of place.

Best Performer: Murphy, obviously.

Opening: Oppenheimer poisons his teacher

Closing: The realisation of the effects the building of the bomb will have.

Best Line: You drop a bomb, and it falls on the just and the unjust. I don’t wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.

Original Review here

Piggy

Ups: A good look at the effect that bullying can have.

Doesn’t shy away from what it needs to say.

Unique

A very pink colour scheme. Like an anti-Barbie.

Downs: Seems to run out of momentum

Best Moment: When the bullies try to drown Sara. It’s at that point they go from “standard bullies” to slightly sociopathic.

Worst Moment: There’s one shot (when she goes in the water the first time) which is weirdly lit, to the point where it kind of looks cloudy

Best Performer: Laura Galan

Opening: The credits are intercut with food being prepared; pigs being hung on hooks, knives being sharpened, and animal bodies being hacked. It’s hauntingly quiet. We then get our first look at Sara; chewing on her own hair as very pop-punk music plays. Kind of weird that the first look at her face was covered up by the title card. Does a good job of showing her position in her social circles.

Closing: A blood-soaked Sara walks home before getting picked up by Pedro on his bike. I think it might have worked better without Pedro, the visual of her walking covered in blood could be iconic, so might have been a smart idea to end the film with that as opposed to a shot of two characters on a bike and then a shot of the local area. Would have been a better transition into the credits too.

Original Review here

Shazam: Fury Of The Gods

Ups: Funny

Levi is still perfect in this role.

The family relationship is much better defined than it was in the first one.

Downs: Helen Mirren is the wrong choice

Not as playful as the first one.

Bit creepy at times.

Predictable

Best Moment: A teacher being forced to walk off a building. Terrifying.

Worst Moment: The Wonder Woman cameo feels like an ass-pull to the extent I haven’t seen, outside of surgery videos.

Best Performer: Levi, obviously.

Opening: The daughters break into a museum and kill everybody there. A really good start actually, suitably creepy, and sets the villains up.

Closing: Wonder Woman cameo, the sacrifice means nothing.

Best Line: The message to the gods that was dictated by Steve.

Original Review here

The Night Of The 12th

Ups: Honest

Does a great job of putting you in the shoes of the characters

Good performances.

Downs: The lack of a conclusion could annoy people.

Jarring time skip.

Best Moment: The murder itself. It’s shocking and brutal without being exploitative or creepily sexualised.

Worst Moment: The cycling scenes are too long

Best Performer: Bastien Bouillon

Opening: A piece of text saying how “a lot of murders are not solved, this is one of them” so not as though you can claim to be surprised when the case doesn’t get solved

Closing: The crime is unsolved.

Original Review here

The Super Mario Bros Movie

Ups: Goes by quickly enough.

Jack Black.

The suicidal star.

A lot of great visual references to the series.

Downs: The jokes and script seem very “by committee”. With the exception of the aforementioned visual references, a lot of the dialogue and jokes in this could be used in any animated movie.

Some of the references feel a bit forced.

Best Moment: The Peaches song.

Worst Moment: The Mario Kart section, only because it feels unnatural in how they got to it. If Mario Kart wasn’t a thing, that entire section would not exist. It’s only there to make references.

Best Performer: Jack Black

Opening: Mario and Luigi have started a plumbing business, but it’s not going well. Simple start, and has some good references to the video game franchise.

Closing: The brothers now live in the Mushroom Kingdom, but work in New York, so commuting is gonna be a bitch.

Best Line: Peaches peaches peaches peaches

Original Review here

The Whale

Ups: Haunting.

Great performances

Sadie Sink looks a lot like Samantha Morton, which helps sell the relationship.

Downs: Hard to shake the feeling that the main character is supposed to be a figure of disgust.

It’s a little hard to give a shit at times.

Feels like it hates the main character.

Ellie’s characterisation feels inconsistent at times.

Best Moment: The reveal of why he likes the essay that much.

Worst Moment: The Thomas sup-plot feels like it doesn’t achieve much.

Best Performer: Sadie Sink

Opening: We see the main character and his condition is explained. Effective enough.

Closing: He (probably) dies, because that’s all this film thinks that character deserves.

Best Line: I need to know that I have done one right thing with my life!

Original Review here

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: After the events of the first film, Billy Batson lives with his super-powered siblings, then shit goes down due to Helen Mirren using a magic tree.

Before talking about Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (or FOTG, pronounced Phottog), I’m going to start talking about a subject I don’t often delve into; sports. You occasionally get times towards the end of the season when teams have nothing else to play for. From the fans to players and to the owners, everybody knows that what is about to happen is not important, so they don’t really pay much attention to it. It makes sense, it’s difficult to convince yourself to be invested in something when you know it doesn’t matter (that’s why nobody pays attention to any of my opinions). Fury Of The Gods has a similar problem, it’s hard to get invested in it when there’s a small part of you thinking “This is the last film with this character”. Nobody knows the future of the DC Universe, and Warner Bros are at the point where even “this film has been advertised and is in post-production” won’t stop them from cancelling a movie (RIP Batgirl, damn I wish I could see that movie). There’s no plan, everything seems to be decided on a whim, which causes a problem with audiences. The big problem is; Audiences don’t trust DC any more. There’s no excitement for the Flash movie, despite the fact it features the return of Keaton as Batman. This should be a big deal, but people are so jaded with DC at the moment that it doesn’t matter (doesn’t help that Ezra Miller is a prick). So how is that relevant to this? Well, it’s the only reason I can think of for the lacklustre box office. If you enjoyed the first one, you’d enjoy this. It’s tonally very similar to the first one; with a mix of genuine emotion and innocent humour of a kind you can only get away with if you have a character like this. Weirdly, and I am aware this may be sacrilege, the worst casting decision in this is Helen Mirren. She is a fantastic actress, and she does it well, but she’s just quite right for the character, especially compared to the other two. Lucy Liu, everybody knows what she’s capable of, and while it’s a shame she’s not given more to do physically, she has just enough to do for it to work. The best new cast addition is Rachel Zegler. Zegler is in a weird position because she has only had one film credit before this, so a small part of you considers her inexperienced and new. But that one role? Maria in West Side Story. So you go in with high expectations of her, whilst still being unsure of what she can bring. She brings everything, her character’s true motives are a bit too obvious to anybody who has ever seen a movie before, but she performs it so damn well that you don’t care.

That predictability is one of the weakest parts of FOTG, it doesn’t feel like it’s bringing anything new to the table. There are moments where it does look like it can, the opening attack on the Acropolis wouldn’t look out of place in a horror movie and really sets up the villains as a force to be reckoned with. Sadly, the villains then fall victim to the standard action movie trope of being able to wipe out hundreds of named characters immediately, but have to get close and get a direct hit to even damage a named character. There’s another scene where a teacher is compelled to step off a high building to their death, which is terrifying, and not really used again. The other weak part if the ass-pull at the end, where a certain superhero cameos to fix a problem that comes up, then leaves. This person shows up with the smallest amount of foreshadowing possible, with no indication of how she got there or how she knows to fix the problem, or even if she knew what the problem was.

On the plus side, there are things FOTG does a lot better than its predecessor. The relationship between Billy and his family is more developed in this. The family members themselves are also given a lot more to do. Darla, especially, now has enough about her that a spin-off is not completely out of the question. I mean, it’s not likely, but it would be fun to see. That’s kind of this film in a nutshell; not essential, but a lot of fun. I hope this isn’t the final outing for Levi as this character as he is damn near perfect in the role, I doubt they’ll find anybody better.