Revolver is a film of contradictions. It’s ponderous but empty, it’s preachy but confused about its identity. It’s gaudy but plain; It’s a film of contradictions no more obvious in Statham’s appearance; It’s an existential gangster film. It locks you into its weird small little unique world with an arty indie shooting style and some wicked music. If you ignore the potential Kabbalah nonsense and the occasional hamfisted dialogue and uncomfortable delivery, I do think it’s quite a fun and fairly unique flick with blood-vessel bursting performances from Statham, Liotta and unsung Mark Strong as a stuttering Hitman. There’s a fun read wherein the characters take on chess pieces (Strong as the Bishop shooting at an angle in his creative action sequence) and that’s the kind of **** I ate up as a young adult. I enjoy the plot, the relentless comic book style voice over, Statham’s incredible hair and moustache combo and the brisk, sharp editing and action. I think if this was Andrew Haigh‘s Ocean’s film no one would bat an eye, but as this was a Guy Ritchie film it’s expected to be in the calibre and range of Snatch. And it’s very much his personal passion project which I’ll always enjoy more than another Aladdin sequel or something he directed remotely from across the ocean over Zoom. I get why people don’t like this awkward, cringey movie. But it’s a little bit of me.
Has a tiffin of noodles ever looked sexier? If it’s possible for there to be a love Hexagon then it’s here; between Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Christopher Doyle, Shigeru Umebayashi, William Chang and Wong Kar-Wai there is an undeniable propulsive energy and synergy. So it’s ten minutes too long but I’d still give it six stars out of five if I could. An aching, achingly beautiful and evocative iconic love story that manages to say so much in every frame without needing to say much at all. There’s politics, art, class and ethics woven between the fabric between these tremendously raw characters. Has a man smoking a cigarette ever looked sexier?
I really wanted to like this film. I thought Captain Marvel was fun, I loved the underrated Ms Marvel and I enjoyed the potential premise of this movie. It could have been a silly, fun almost high school switcharoo buddy sci-fi thing. It could have been buffy in space. But all the baggy Marvel nonsense just ruins it. A comically generic villain replete with a comically boring and cliche opening and all the attempts to squeeze this around all the shows and films essentially makes this film boring and disengaging. I wanted or needed or perhaps even deserved a Ghost World or Bottoms the superhero movie. Not Quatumania 2. Great actor charisma, creative action, fun needle drops and japes don’t save from a lack of identity.
I have loved Jonathan Glazer for some time, I appreciated Under The Skin, absolutely adored Sexy Beast and even enjoyed Birth very much, but here, finally, he has found his material. His crisp and clear photography just simply plants you with these people, with the sights and more potently, the unavoidable sounds. You are like the black dog, contextless, moving in and out of places, sometimes watching, sometimes being ushered away. Glazer's attention to pacing, shot length and editing is exquisite; he crafts a listless ordinary film as tightly as a coiled spring and as tense as a trebuchet. It is not artless, however, and still trades in some avant-garde and strange techniques that never feel out of place. It wasn't the very clever way of breathing new relevancy into the holocaust genre that resonated most with me, it wasn't the haunting ending credits music that says: stay in your seat and endure or walk outside and discuss, but you won't be talking about this film here, now. What resonated most was the ending collection of scenes on the mundanity and gently servile nature of keeping even things as horrifying as the holocaust alive. It was a powerfully moving and contextualising coda that I rarely see in film.
It's not difficult to fall in love with Greta Lee, or the handsome Teo Yoo, or to be swept up in their Korean romance and the space between them. And Seline Song's camera is in love with them also, the way it lingers behind Greta Lee's neck and shoulders and is locked away from Teo Yoo, viewing him through reflections and distance to draw you in or push you away, or husband John Magaro lensed plain and unadorned. It’s a tense movie that I think will seek to galvanize you to favour one of the three in the inyeon triangle which leads the audience to cast a careful watchful eye over them all like a close friend, to see how the "villain" will emerge from this story and who it will be. But it's not a film concerned about that; everyone is balanced and grounded, is nuanced and real, damaged but not broken. And the point is that the film is not a soap opera. In a way that Lost In Translation is ostensibly about an existential ennui inherent in the strange unknowable grief and loss of human connection, Past Lives is about those strange and unique thoughts and feelings you think you only ever have as a child, but form your adult life and come back to refill you when you decide if you want to be more like your aspirational, hopeful and pure self, or your measured, clever and thoughtful self. A thoroughly perfect and gripping second half compliments the necessarily slow first half. John Magaro's painful honesty, rides that line between sympathetic and achingly cloying. I could feel allied amongst the generous and engaged audience at the PCC with the tension in that scene; as a man puts raw and open his thoughts and feelings we all squirm, but by the close, it's exactly why the film ends as it does, it's exactly why she chooses him. Nora is two people. Not just one who goes and one who stays. Not just the Korean and the Canadian. But the 12-year old and the 36-year old. And we all are both those. And we can all feel both those feelings at once. But it's deciding to pick the fantasy and the idea, or the sure-thing and the bird in the hand that may define which of those persons holds the reins at each juncture of our lives. This is a reverse-Korean drama, a reverse-romantic film; it doesn't have time for fantasy. Watching her husband console her at the close of the picture we finally understand her; she has chosen him because of that consolation, that honesty between them, the choice to twin each other's lives together when a more dramatic, electric and fantastical childish idea of life is within her grasp. The unsung hero of the film, John Magaro's Arthur is the real tonal bait and switch and the scene on the steps and the scene in the bed is as fine a set of scenes as I've seen in years. Plus his face at the bar scene was just hilarious. You haven't lived if you haven't been him once. So Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets Before Sunrise is too crass a comparison (although the soundtrack reminded me of Eternal Sunshine heavily). Writing this review I had a delayed emotional reaction, I was looking up the spelling for "inyeon" for this review and I saw that for director Celine Song this is essentially a true story. And I don't know why, but I cried. Greta Lee in THR's Actress Roundtable points to how powerful a film this was for her own mother and I'm inclined, in some small and strange ways, to understand that.
Like all of Yorgos Lanthimos’ films, Poor Things is utterly absurd and yet deeply human. Ostensibly it’s a film about womanhood without the learned baggage and restrictions that by adolescence, one is encumbered, shaped or shackled by. And it works best when it is exploring these ideas and less so when it is delving into the grotesque. It has more than a fair share of the Jean-Pierre Jeunet about it and the stylised sets, backgrounds and costumes are warped and beautiful in equal measure. There’s a wonderful use of lenses that plays with forms of fisheye and other techniques that is fun and the interplay between music, sound and silence is a simmering delight. Obviously Emma Stone is incredible, the way she intones language like it’s Shakespeare and struts about learning without allowing herself to be shamed. Less obviously Mark Ruffalo almost steals the show and devolves slower into childhoodness as Bella does adulthood. It’s stunning to look at, a bravura of acting talent and writing, it is incredibly funny, one of the most brilliantly funny movies I’ve ever seen. But it’s just not for me. I can appreciate it, I can admire it, I can enjoy it once, maybe twice, but it’s just not mine to adore.
I’m glad they still make them like this. Going in without so much as watching a trailer I wasn’t ready for the sheer gravitas on screen. Andrew Scott is nerve-raw pulsing with pain and grief and palpable pathos. Paul Mescal is a terrific foil but it’s Foy and Bell that just bring the thunder in what could easily have been small parts. A euphoric fusion of writer/director Haigh’s life and Yamada’s ghost novel, there’s as much sixth sense in this film as there is It’s A Sin; but it’s the tenderness that makes this film; it’s because of touch and an earnest yearning and a desperate openness that the sex and the more carnal elements work. It’s rare to see intimacy so authentically and boldly in any movie as is on display here. The dialogue is terse and terrific; a simple elegant poetic but grounded affair that allows the actors to do much with little. There’s a touch too much of the “waking up from some sort of dream or is it?” moments in the third act. But the beautiful simplicity of the grounding of London’s suburbs and the indie sensibility of a director who has thought out and planned for every shot does shine through in a world of capitalist toy commercial films of grand faux emotions, green screen, unknowably large stakes and sky beams.
Uses the language and conventions of the high school sex comedy to tell a fight club story that is very witty and droll and simultaneously is also somehow turned up to 11. The fact that it’s played and acted straight makes it very funny. It's a clever send-up of masculine movie tropes and feminist virtue signalling in a tight 90 minutes. Everyone involved is a talent to watch.
Something about this film feels icky. All this money and talent wasted on this. An alternative history and the only black man in it is a Butler. But don't worry, he's one of those cool Butlers that can do karate with his top off, so, definitely not dehumanising. Also, I'm SO sick of generic young handsome white milquetoast theatre-school English leading men. There are so many foreshadowing lines of dialogue that it's hard to see this was made at anything past a vomit draft. And most criminal of all, it's so boring. At least Kingsman was silly and energetic. This movie is trying to be Fantastic Beasts meets Sherlock Holmes meets MCU but isn't fun, doesn't earn its drama and is caught between period sets, an ironic message and cartoon sensibility. It ends up being closer to Team Blighty: World Police. Pacing-wise I find it hard to engage when a movie resolves everything in an hour and there's a whole hour left. And it’s difficult to feel any loss when movies like this treat losses as faux, third act twists so often. Some of it works, the strange League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cabal of evil tyrants is like Horrible Histories meets Austin Powers. The war sequences have tastelessly entertaining action. There's a cavalcade of cameos that keeps the interest rumbling along at a baseline. There's a moustache match cut that I enjoyed. And Ralph Fiennes is just too good in everything not to be enjoyed here.
A jaunty and unstuffy film with Frears' usual directorial blend of cinema and realism. Peter Morgan cuts his teeth on the Royal Family pre-The Crown in his functionally engaging way. Michael Sheen as always is doing wonderful heavy lifting here; The film is a fascinating look at collective grief and a real time capsule of Britain; and with the set design and use of filming style and stock, you could be forgiven for thinking this film was made in 1997. I enjoyed its simplicity and its ability to function almost apolitically which renders it an apt comment on the state of the current Royal Family...
I'm a fan of this kind of concept. It's very competently lensed and directed it's mostly the writing that lets it down, despite being solid and not at all bad, it's just a little lacking in pace and structure. Hannah Rose Liu is an absolute chameleon of acting talent. One to watch. The rest of the cast is good also, it's a suitable ensemble and the budget is all on screen. A few twists and turns are exciting and I can't fault it for being exactly what it promises to be.
A simple, brisk, well cast TV-movie masquerading as a feature film. It's pretty and it's serviceable and engaging but it's not directed with any authorship, any memorable panache, or with any POV. A little more character depth, some more moments between moments to surprise or show creativity or realism or humanity could have elevated this material. The politics of people working in an embassy are so varied that it would be interesting to try and understand that. 6 Days is often so perfunctory that its cliches almost stray into parody.
This film has the kind of irreverence and creativity of a solid limited series and I mean that in a good way. It starts slow and deceptive and makes for a fresh approach to the Groundhog Day formula. Samberg and Milioti are consummate professionals flexing their skills and in between the japes are some really funny moments. I wonder halfway through where it could go and what it's really about and just as my attention wanes, it throws some interesting and human drama in there. As for what it's saying, not too much beyond usual romcom fare but it wraps up well and hits its marks with vim.
Seems to have accurately adapted the ambling depth and breadth of a novel; anchoring its social and artistic satire around a family dynamic. Wright and Brown are a scintillating pair and it’s a very funny movie. It reminded me of Adaptation, as the film uses the language of very white middle class cinema (whatever that means) with the Spike Jonze / Jon Brion aesthetic and music interspersed with stings of creeping jazz as the plot kicks in. The film seems to deal with empowerment and disempowerment in different ways throughout the characters in a way that is its most subtle but enjoyable facet across both class, race and other divides. The ending is perfectly seeded and very welcome. This might also by my lowkey favourite performance from Wright in some time.
A well cast, acted and helmed “one room” play about a bunch of children who think they know everything. The trailers made it look quite silly and bubblegum and an out and out comedy but it’s much more of a steadily made character and dialogue piece, a dark black comedy with some edge and closer to The Descent than anything else. It’s a film that loves its characters even as they hate themselves.
I do enjoy an independent low budget high concept genre film and I really enjoy everything Kaitlyn Dever has done since the days of Justified. I am extremely in awe of how the intentional and distinct lack of dialogue throughout doesn’t detract from the engagement of the film and the miracle of this piece is how it doesn’t feel out of place or too forced either. Almost everything else, however, is only serviceable; the plot beats, the music, the directing, photography and design are all unspectacular in a genre full of spectacular little flourishes and artistry. The ending seems to be talked about a fair chunk on the internet but I found it innocuous and perfectly fine. It’s quirky and interesting and serves as a character arc of sorts and even if it doesn’t really make sense, Dever brings it home.
10/10 for Julia Roberts' dancing. Sam Esmail of Mr. Robot and Homecoming fame creates a companion piece of sorts, a kind of thematic bottle episode or epilogue to his previous work. Leave The World Behind has an appropriately vague title that keeps recurring during the exquisitely strong start as it plays gently in and around the tropes of horror with some superb writing and **** **** directing, misdirection and a simply simple premise brimming with potential. It’s a slow film and runs slightly long but it unfolds well, it really takes pleasure in giving its actors chewy material to work with and they do a bang up job. The great soundtrack, true moments of horror and red herrings and mystery are carried by genuinely incisive and funny moments. I had heard that the ending was curious, or disappointing, or bad. But I loved it, it was absolutely for me; it's a deft, pure, fourth wall indictment of complacency, escapism and denial.
A grand, handsome and bravura outing that draws in broad but classic strokes with some standout moments and a lot to love such that it eclipses its myriad small flaws. The geopolitics of Herbert's Dune novel is timeless and ubiquitous such that it still resonates today and would have done a decade ago. The film (literally and figuratively) paints in black and white; the world of Dune lacks nuance but makes up for it by really painting the two sides of capitalism and fundamentalism as both pretty evil in equal measure. It teases an old-fashioned war/action epic then it teases a really disgusting and weird horror-sci-fi, and it almost reaches those heights, but it keeps wanting to pull back, it wants to balance being so weird with being approachable and it mostly works. I'm glad a book so odd has been recreated in ways that honestly eclipse what was in my head while reading it, and has done so well with the general pop. The worm-riding sequence is truly stunning and all-encompassing and a real piece of art in itself, the film breathes in glorious IMAX 70mm and despite rushing the ending that loses a little steam, it's arthouse in movement, creating images and soundscape like Baraka or Samsara or the Quatsi trilogy but with spaceships and laser guns. So better.
As well as an anatomy of a fall director Justine Triet achieves an evisceration of a man. And the evisceration and examination of a marriage, parenting, art, guilt, time, perception and story. And like real examination, the central and starting fall breaks everything open and lays it on the courtroom floor to be picked up and turned over one by one. I was trepidatious about the runtime prior and as the opening develops. Foundational though, exactly as Sandra plays the piano with Daniel, I found my mind talking to itself; wandering to the case, to what was previously discussed, to the way people had chosen to use or not use language. The shot length and deliberate distance to character with some dark or neutral space allows you to ruminate and decode and decide what you think about proceedings in a way you might with someone else at home of watching a trial or a true crime TV show. It’s an elegant and critical factor in this film’s success. I found many powerful and emotionally impacting moments in the construction of scenes, it’s very deft; The way an argument develops, the way a fight is withheld visually and the jarring and acerbic cut to the clinical courtroom. The way the courtroom is alive with lightness and humanity and the people’s own stories between the moments of the trial. The forced and sudden intimacy of strangers in the legal process that then become as quickly and unceremoniously detached. At the close and amidst the unbearable tension of the uncertainty of a child’s mind and the amount of life that rests on the shoulders of some small moments, there is a culmination of the notion pervading throughout the film that the truth doesn’t matter. Now that child has a mother again. Does the truth matter at the expense of that? And does it require to eviscerate one person further to exonerate another?
I had seen an old special edition DVD of this film a long time, it had a haunting standoffish and dream-like quality that resulted in all three of us falling asleep. And I never revisited it, mostly because of the butchery this film underwent, I rarely had a fancy to go back and indulge in an unfinished and adulterated vision. But a chance to see it at a packed house, with a pal who loves it, at the Prince Charles I couldn't pass up and I was greatfully surprised at the film and slightly surprised at how much of a campy, guffawing audience we had; it's a silly movie, it's cheesy and it is camp, but it's not that bad. I think the first half of the film won me over. As a fan of the book it's a remarkably faithful translation and shares many hallmarks with Villeneuve's modern duology. The first half has remarkable physical effects, sets and design, digital effects ahead of its time, very strong directing, edgy creative choices, a really mature and ugly visual style that now feels like a modern video game, a spectacular soundtrack and a really very strong cast. The middle sags and I did feel the familiar pang that dreamlike science-fantasy delivers as it tried to pull me to sleep, but the final third is so mired in montage, desperate to cram everything that the book held (and missing much of the satire and commentary) and also so full of bonkers ideas and imagery that I couldn't help be repulsed and engaged by. This is where the camp lies and the film is a comical, rushed jumble until the end. But overall I really love campy, cheesy sci-fi-fantasy that really tries something weird and po-faced and bold, and this film hits all of that. Also I love their tan uniforms and non-binary Military.
I loved Blow Up when I first saw it on a rough looking DVD many moons ago. I wasn't sure what a cinematic experience would be like but as always at the Prince Charles, it was transformative; the print is exquisite and Antonioni's beautiful but unstuffy and unpretentious shooting style is so fresh, and London so well rendered, the movie could have been made yesterday. What was, upon my first viewing, a film about an expression of the swinging 60's is now, clear to me, as an indictment of it. It does not glorify how awful the magnetic main character is and how unhelpful and vapid and selfish his friends are. He is popular and talented to us, simply because he says he is and acts like he is, a dangerous prophetic warning in the 60's for the decades to come. David Hemmings is incredible and he's playing a man, not of his time, but of a time about to end. His way is (thankfully) at an end; he's violent, self-interested, he only knows the value of something by how much other people want it, he barely has an idea of his own outside of his job. He's a perfect, nasty, ugly, sexy bastard and a perfect protagonist for this film. Blow Up is a tough movie: breathing room, periods of silence, a lack of resolution, meandering and fetishisation of how the photochemical process works can be a turn off for most, but it's exactly why I love it. I love that it asks more questions than it answers. I love the sequence with the guitar neck, I love the mime sequence at the end, it's bravura filmmaking of a bygone era. The film clearly shows you right and wrong but it doesn't tell you. Hemmings' character is a photographer after all, not a journalist; The loudest moment in the film is when he takes advantage of the two girls in a way that Antonioni codes as wrong but always at the fringes it allows the main character's (and society's) acceptance of it let it play out in full. It's a difficult sequence to watch but a powerful and necessary one. The film is an anti-thriller, the work an influence on DePalma and Polanski and Edgar Wright. It's darkly comic, it is showing you the fringes of real evil. It seems to be about nothing but it's loaded with screaming subtlety. It's ahead of its time but shows a bygone era, before paparazzi and mobile phones but also manages to show us how far and how little we've come.
Civil War might be the single timeliest movie of my lifetime and maybe the best movie I've ever seen. The film manages not to sacrifice cinema at the altar of realism and yet manages to generate in creative and bold ways some of the most disturbing and striking images I've seen in a movie. Alex Garland, himself influenced by video games and comic books has created a stealth post apocalyptic science fiction movie with an elegantly simple thrust to the plot. And then within has hung politically agnostic images, scenes, people and horrors pulled directly from history, from countries around the world, some of which have been dealing with this day by day for a long, long time. Cailee Spaeny is hot ****, she's an absolute talent and the rest of the movie is extremely well cast and rendered as slight caricatures in a way that works deftly. The film works by being the characters it portrays; the journalists (and the film) are the dispassionate conduits to display images that can connect people across hundreds of thousands of miles. They dispassionately relay images so that we may be passionate. Much will be said about the cleverness of this movie, the images, the cinema of it which is simple yet exquisite in show don’t tell, the agnosticism of not taking sides and yet being potently political and anti-war. One of the best things the film did was market itself for the people who should watch it, including slight tweaks to scenes and the overall bent of a film adaptation of the videogame Homefront. Which it very much isn't. It may be a parable that’s too late for the US but it’s also very much not about the US alone. But the greatest twist the film manages to make is: when there is an epic, flowing protracted action sequence at the tail end of the film, I hated it, I didn't want it, I didn't want it to happen, I didn't revel in the glory of it, it was clinical and brutal and efficient and frightening and the horrible culmination of noise and fire that the film promised as it drew to a logical end. Human beings are built strangely and sometimes, but not always, struggle to see foreign or alien images as something to connect to. Being of mixed heritage and a history of immersion in multiple cultures and sub cultures I don't get this. And I still found the fact that a mainstream western film producing visceral connections to the harrowing events happening in many wartorn countries is a fundamental part of the potential of cinema: Narrativising human stories to engender empathy or connection or introspection.
Chock full of the energy of a first time director amidst the pleasurable tropes **** film. A Hong Kong inspired martial arts revenge picture with a message. Dev Patel directs and helms with wit and verve; he’s always been a dark horse and my shoe in for James Bond. The action is gripping and well choreographed, the photography is crisp and beautiful and the editing has many excellent and grin inducing moments. The film says towards the back half but every time it lost me it just gets me right back with another fantastic and bold creative choice. I enjoyed that it was such a crowd pleaser, playing in the sandbox of its genre and yet I walked away with cultural questions and a desire to learn more about what passed me by. This movie is a bit of me, I watched it with my brother and my Dad (who used to watch martial arts films with his brothers as a young lad in Indonesia) and we had an absolute blast.
A fairly typical late-90's early-00's film where girls talk to each other exclusively in their bras and pop-punk music is a substitute for personality. However, over and above this, director Peyton Reed does an admirably creative and energetic job and Kirsten Dunst elevates the material as she always, always does.I can't figure out if the characters are ahead of their time or of it, I can't figure out if they are to be appreciated or hated, and I'm not sure the script or actors know **** thing is though, this movie isn't bad. It's fun and while it doesn't have a lot progressive or cute to say like Mean Girls or Heathers, it's not all backwards and the franchise (although rinsed to within an inch of its life on the Direct-to-Video market) has potential, if not just to be a pithy and fun musical adaptation like everything else these days.
Such an immediately boring and flat film from such an accomplished classically bent creative team and a potentially rich premise. But something is off, the writing, the pacing, the editing, the visual style and the directing are all woefully sub par. Maybe this is a **** version of a much longer much slower film but as it is it’s too plain and unexciting to feel relevant and not artistically connected to great heist/chase/war films from the past feel inspired by great cinema of the past.
I'm always willing to rewatch a popular film from my youth with an open mind to see how it holds up, and I'm always willing to digest a film's ethics or politics optimistically, openly and with good faith until the end even if it seems iffy. Firstly, the film genuinely has some great moments in it, there are bursts of social commentary and humanity, mostly in the Eddie Murphy focussed moments, and between the fat-shaming jokes, the awful 90's "comedy" ****, the "zany" music and the painfully generic beats, there's something real and sweet and earnest and powerful here. But it's just a decade or two too early to be good. The Klump family: funny, Eddie Murphy: a tremendous pathos-wielding performance, the physical effects: loveable. The specks of commentary on America, the Black experience, arrogance, ego, body image, self-esteem and mental health are there a little bit, and some of the very very stupid gags work. But the movie hasn't got one voice (see the number of screenwriters) and sadly the Tom Shadyac-ness gets in the way and forces the movie often to be a backwards, dated and stupid film that's like a sad cross between Flubber and The Mask but with 500% more uses of the N-Word.
I'm starting to understand American court room and jury dramas are a piece of American fantasy; they are as idealised and exciting, and have content that verges on ridiculous, as the Western genre does, because they are almost akin to it; America was, in many ways, also founded in the court rooms. So I forgive the zippy attempt in the directing to make this exciting, I forgive the schmaltzy tone and do-goddery as I would a John Ford flick, and I accept the John Grisham OTT contrivances and coincidences as much as I can because it's such fun to imagine this kind of thing can happen and good guys can win and also make a cheeky buck on the side in the process. The American dream.
I almost admire how stunningly tasteless Argylle is, how brazenly it steals from better films and how abjectly weird it is. If you want to be punched repeatedly in the nads by Mr & Mrs Smith meets The Long Kiss Goodnight but ****, then by all means, stick on Argylle. I want to first point out the two (three?) things to admire about Argylle and get them out of the way because they in no way at all absolve or save it. First: Sam Rockwell. He's seldom used as a lead but here he's not wasted at all. (See: First head squishing scene) Second: Bryce Dallas-Howard as a normal human woman as an action lead is refreshing and fun. And the action is sometimes well choreographed, but that leads me to the next point. We’re in this sad strange zenith where good action in cinema is easy to do. But that means that the cheap stuff like in Argylle drowns out all the truly great action. Argylle's action is fine. And in places creative, but it's faceless (sometimes literally and painfully with face replacement) and it's gauche and awkward and gravityless and too...digital. At first glance the switching between actors, Cavill and others, is terrifically bad. It’s awkward and stilted and annoying. There should have been a tangible difference between fiction and real spies in the reality and comedy and physicality and wire work between them but the film isn’t that sophisticated. Watching Rockwell kick ass and spearhead the film is fun but the plot is so obvious and protracted and boring; it doesn't function as a satire or an homage to Bond because the spy stuff isn't well rendered. The directing, the photography, all just bargain basement. And the opening was done better in Austin Powers Goldmember. The ending stretch is almost so bad it's good. When it comes to the crude oil figure skating with machine guns and slow mo winks segment, I almost died in my chair. But throughout the Mr & Mrs Smith rip off, it has no taste, it's cheap, ugly with no irony, no wit and the worst needle drops I have ever witnessed. This year has brought both my favourite and least favourite films of all time. So I guess that's something of an achievement.
Oh, I get this movie. The immediately silly opening titles makes it look like a videogame, namely Hitman, and that sets the plasticky, ironic and gonzo tone that is undermined (and then hammered home hilariously) in the opening sequence. I read about half of Matz and Jacamon's graphic novel on which this is based and where they interweave and differ is fascinating; both are pitch black comedies that use juxtaposing images and voice over (suitable for both mediums) to create that comedy. In the comic The Killer is an out and out klutz, a moron failing upwards in a job he has because he's a psychopath, unravelling and bumbling well through a series of messes. The film plays The Killer like a poker player, reacting to the cards and the people opposite him which is part of the fun. Of course it is stunning, flawless and rhythmic as all Fincher works are. But it's in the details I like (and forgive) this film: using the defunct offices of a wework as a base, the deep clarity of the comic book framing, lighting and staging, the way the film drops you part way through the comic, the break in his voice over as if he's thinking to himself rather than totally omniscient voice over that makes it even stranger. The Smiths. The use of sound and music to divine POV and the many other nuances of hitman life in AKW's screenplay. It's not a movie designed, or to be appreciated, in the cinema really. It is a solitary watch, quiet, alone, at home, in the dark, and in that way it succeeds in a meta way and also in a way suitable for Netflix. It's far from perfect but it's close to fascinating.
I hate how funny, how smart, how smutty and how emotional this **** stupid movie was. It’s got a genuinely interesting twist, some totally saccharine nonsense that really got to me and all the raunchy sex stuff of an early naughties pie-based/road trip movie. And it really did all click, it went harder and farther than it had to and had an energy I really enjoyed from start to finish.
A neat premise watered down by an un-engaging mystery, wish washy politics and lacklustre performances by miscast actors. As a much cheaper film, maybe a bottle-type one room affair with nastier grittier actors and a more streamlined plot with better characters it could have been an excellent little thriller for the current age.
If it's possible for Mike Flanagan to have directed this film like a Stephen King short story, he has. There's a neat one-room premise, a modern/relevant take on the bulk of the source material, some wonderful central performances and a relatable slew of voices inside your head. Classic King ending intact. Bonkers. But done well.
There's enough good will in the pace and execution and steady hand in the first act of the film to allow me to forgive the horror movie cliches I hate surfacing as the film ramps up. But for every step backwards there's a creative, sneaky and surprising double step forwards. Casting Sarah Goldberg from Barry as the best friend, with the baggage she brings from Barry, makes her a great uncertain and unpredictable foil. And even before the movie begins to flourish there's engaging human discussion and deep, nuanced characters and relationships and Rebecca Hall acting her balls off. It seeds in its mystery and its direction well so I won't spoil it here. Suffice it to say that the best of these kinds of horror films are at once predictable and then surprising and The Night House delivered for me in spades.
Jordan Peele is, amongst other things, a master of delivering haunting and curious images. For that aspect alone, Nope is his visual opus, even if it doesn't have the spark and cohesive satire of Get Out, it exceeds far beyond the messy, rushed and confused sophomore entry Us. Peele's films have other strengths; they're exceedingly human and nuanced; they have great dialogue and they unfold neatly and layers upon layers reveal and coalesce. The disparate elements don't always gel, but it's cinema at its best when they do.Kaluuya and Palmer are a perfect duo and there's a decent chunk of comedy and black comedy in their performances. Nope is slow, haunting, surprising with clever use of music, character backgrounds and costume and design work. It's solid with some fine IMAX photography and a nice take on the genre.
Came here to see who the new Alien film is being entrusted with; and some things are clear: Fede Alvarez makes a solid Hitchockian chiller and manages to do a lot with little and flirts well within the tropes of the home invasion/slasher horror, his camera roaming around in search of what may or may not lurk in the dark; the audio doing some serious heavy lifting and Stephen Lang as a tremendous disgusting, brilliant monster of a **** film is tight, and surprising and the beats and gags of the genre are well-conceived, well-shot and are effective.
Malkovich is the star of the show, his performance, for the most part, is almost earnest and not snide or smug; It makes him more of a match and foil for the damaged hidden psyche of Eastwood’s ageing traumatised agent. In The Line of Fire is a psychological thriller as much as a potboiler boiler-plate assassination/chase/cat and mouse hunt flick. Wolfgang Peterson does steady work and the print is spectacular, one of the best I’ve seen. It's worth a watch on a lazy Sunday or of a late night
Finally, Nickelodeon's first superhero movie is here. I'm all for representation but doing it in a bland way using the language of generic American superhero fare is always disappointing, and even worse, when it looks and feels authorless and cheap it's a wasted opportunity in a field already stacked against it. Blue Beetle has a cheap kid's TV-movie look and feel most of the time. I enjoy the social commentary, some of the horror leanings, the film's anime action and some dialogue and character moments stand out. But beyond that, it's sadly, predictably, nothing especial.
Somehow, Bad Boys returned...Ride or Die doesn't have the surprise, the emotional authenticity or the genuine relationships of the third one, but the franchise film no one was asking for, is an electric reprise of the dumb, fun buddy action comedy. I don't want these movies to be so good, because it means I have to keep seeing them. The action is zippy and fun, not great but never boring, the directing homages Bay but doesn't rely on his worse tendencies and the plot and story meanders and isn't incredible, but it is simple and fun. It's a film that has two ageing badasses in it that isn't afraid to ride with real-world issues against them and a passing of the torch that feels very un-franchisey and more tongue-in-cheek and human. The real genius at the heart of Ride or Die after the Will Smith heavy For Life, is that Martin Lawrence is the star again, he does so much in this movie, moves through so many hilarious modes in his journey and the movie isn't afraid of being abjectly silly and wasting a lot of money on simple visual gags and moments designed to make people laugh.
You either fade into obscurity with dignity or live long enough to shill schlock for the streaming giants. And let's not forget that David Ayer has already done this once with Netflix's **** The Beekeeper is far from a bad movie; Even when it almost is, Ayer manages to keep it punchy, po-faced, pretty, silly and simple. The action is fine but not ****, it's more the John Wick meets Payback plot that **** film addresses Statham's awful transatlantic accent, it's got some interesting motivations, some good dialogue and solid casting. Sure it's cheesy and makes no sense, but it's earnest and has a cute villainous organisation for our anti-hero thwart.
So Ben Wheatley won’t sell his soul to Marvel but he will to the Chinese box office? And if this is his first “mainstream” blockbuster film, why did he pick one with a script entirely unconcerned with being actually entertaining or interesting - I'm guessing he had a mortgage to pay off in a recession. By the time the Kraken turns up and everyone starts getting eaten I’ve already exhausted all the good will I had ready to distribute evenly throughout this film. Statham is such a bad actor that he looks like he’s about to beat his daughter up every time he speaks to her. Sets ok. Photography ok. CGI ok. And it’s fine to have B movies bereft of meaning and character, but they should at least be schlocky or brisk or dirty. This film just simply exists. Possibly to launder money.
An admittedly cute premise is squandered on the most benign, middle-of-the-road, pallidly directed, and vacuously written smack-bang average film I've ever seen. Soarsie Ronan is perfectly cast and exceedingly magnetic and Rockwell has a very solid English accent. But the prospect of a locked room murder in a theatre overnight following (and linked intrinsically to) a performance of The Mousetrap somehow eludes everyone involved and it becomes a very boring and listless and unfunny detective film. The film feels neither fun nor fresh (Enola Holmes) or grubby and retro (Sherlock Holmes) or cool and slick (Maltese Falcon) and has not even one shred of the wit, tension, energy, character or plot to bear even a whiff of Agatha Christie's name. It looks like a bad TV episode with no style, no sense of pace in the macro or micro and it's cringey. It thinks it's smarter than it is. And I just can't emphasise how BAD the directing is.
It's terrifying how much of your personal space, your comfort and what you take for granted is collapsible in a whim and a second. It's a breath of fresh air that the film was directed by a woman, it had to be; there's violence in every look that Reality receives, there's threat constantly behind the smiles and friendly, coercive and rehearsed patter among the all-male cadre. Syndey Sweeney is electric and the up-front honesty and intercutting between real footage and audio serves to deepen the connections to Reality rather than distance themselves, it's a cleverly employed device and makes the film haunting and present. The nasty and manipulative psychology is scary, Sweeney is a powerhouse, and just the looks, the natural tics, the pauses, the patience of the film, the moments captured between the fear and pressure, are an exercise in perfect movie pacing and psychology. A bravura and poignant debut that is illuminating, slow-burning, political and with additive detail in every frame especially when it doesn't seem like there is.
