#25: TOP GUN MAVERICK

Starring Tom Cruise,  Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powel, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer. Script by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Budget $170 million. Running time 131 minutes.

36 years after the original film, Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is back to lead a new generation of hot shot Top Gun pilots on a suicide 'Hail Mary' mission to take out an illegal secret Uranium enrichment plant deep inside enemy territory. Along the way he's going to reconnect with the son of his old navigator, 'Rooster' (Miles Teller) and prove he's no dinosaur!

Queue a surprising amount of story and character growth before a truly spectacular third act non-stop aerial combat, featuring real footage that'll have you on the edge of your seat, holding your breathe and whooping with delight.

I seriously wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I've always liked Cruise and nearly all his films, but can't say I'm a fan of the original movie, it's a bit too much American pie for me, too gung-ho and too stylised. I think he's got better as he's got older, and he brings a sense of energy to his films that's very intoxicating.  Anyway, He is the last of his kind, a proper movie star and his films feel like proper events. This new one, TG:M has been a long time coming. Filming originally began in 2018 with a release date of 2020, but Covid had other ideas and so it's taken almost four years to finally get to our screens. In that time, the pundits have been gunning for it, telling tales and whispering that this was going to be a major flop, but boy were they wrong. Garnishing a simply staggering score of 97% on Rotten Tomato, making it the best reviewed film of the year so far, TG:M is a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining romp, that ditches the jingoistic pomp of the first film and focuses on a gripping and highly likeable story. Even the outrageous third act secondary mission, which should have drawn groans manages to be exhilarating! 

It's a film with quite a lot of heart, with an emotional subplot between Cruise and Connelly, a surprisingly moving sequence between Cruise and Val Kilmer (back as Vice Admiral Iceman), and a some nice friction courtesy of Jon Hamm and Ed Harris. 

Sure there's cliche unbound too, with talk of dinosaurs, shots of American flags, beach football, racing motorbikes, classic muscle cars, slow motion galore and endless footage of jet fighters doing their thang. What makes it so gripping is so much of it is done for real and only goes to make the whole thing so goddam enjoyable!

See it at the biggest screen possible I saw it on screen 12 (the biggest) at my local Cineworld, sat in the second row from the front and left with a nice neck ache and a big grin.

8/10

(post note)
I've now seen this twice, and was pleased to see it still holds up. 

#24: EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis. Written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Budget $25 million. Running time 140 minutes.

This is perhaps the most unique film you'll see all year, or even decade. A film that is bewilderingly inventive, refreshing and very entertaining. A film whose plot can't be safely explained, except for the fact it concerns a woman's battle with her frantic home life, her failing marriage, a visit from her aged father all the way from China, her fractured relationship with her lesbian daughter and an IRS audit all told across one day and several million alternate universes. And yet at its core is the story of a family slowly coming apart at the seams through the sheer pressure of everyday life.

And I've already said too much. 

This is Michelle Yeoh's film from the moment it begins 'till it ends. And she's ably supported by the cast, all of who give terrific performances and praise should be heaped on the heads and shoulders of the two Daniels who wrote and directed this astonishing film.

That said, it's not an unquantified success. It's a film of three distinctive parts signposted by the use of caption cards. The first card, 'Everything' carries the majority of the film and does the most heavy work introducing the incredible concept, and the multiple characters. It all builds wonderfully and concludes with a continuous action sequence that is as inspired as it is relentless, all coupled with a wonderful sense of humour. And suddenly, jarringly, that first act ends with such finality that the film loses all of its glorious momentum and grinds to a complete dead-stop. Then, the plot starts up again and struggles to claw back all that wonderful energy it once had. The film finds itself bogged down by the drama at its core as the various multiple story threads slowly start to pull themselves back together again.

It is a very talky film, and each character gets given a chance to explain and dump exposition, as well as punch and kick their way out of an endless army of situations. It's also a film that is heavy on meaning and subtext, a film that finds a new way to explore the core relationships at its very centre. 

Me personally, I loved that first act but got worn down by the second and by the time we finally get to the third act, I just wanted it all to end. It's too long and frankly exhausting, but that said it's still a fantastically original and gloriously inventive movie that thrilled the whole family.

It seems that the whole concept of a multiverse is the movie biz's next big 'high-concept' obsession and this, the third film in almost as many months to avail itself of the limitless possibilities of parallel worlds is without doubt the most unique of them all! 

Go and see it, not just because you'll never see anything like it again, nor because it's funny, life-affirming, witty and rarest of all original, but because in a sea of mediocrity this stands like a big shiny beacon of hope.  8/10

 

 

#23: FIRESTARTER

 

Starring Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben, Sydney Lemmon, John Beasley and Kurtwood Smith. Written by Scott Teems and directed by Keith Thomas. Budget $12 million. Running time 94 minutes.

A girl, Charlie McGee, is born with the pyrokinesic powers, after her parents (Zac Ephron and Sydney Lemmon) are given experimental drugs by a shady corporation. Now that corporation want her back so they can, you know experiment on her. To do this, they send out a psychotic Native American assassin, John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) with his own psychic abilities to kill absolutely anyone who interacts with her. 

This is a remake of a far better 1984 version of the film based on the book by Stephen King. In the origin Drew Barrymore played Charlie, David Keith played her dad and the great George C. Scott played John Rainbird and rounding out the cast Martin Sheen played the director of The Shop, the shady corporation. That film wasn't a masterpiece, in fact it's rather ploddy and a little slow, but it's a lot better than this shit show.

Tweaking the plot of the original film and in the process pissing about with the ending doesn't help this remake at all. Zac Ephron, who is now playing dads rather than teenagers, still gets his top off to showoff his impressive abs and pecs, and is usually worth watching, but in this he just comes across as a bit bored with the whole thing, which is exactly what I felt.

It wasn't helped by the fact that the budget couldn't stretch to any 100 watt bulbs and so the entire film is lit with just one single 60 watt bulb, making the whole thing murky, gloomy and incredibly dark.  

Martin Sheen who brought much needed sleazy villainy to the role of the Head of The Shop in the original is here replaced by Gloria Reuben, who starts off appearing to be quite a sympathetic character before morphing into a cardboard villain in the third act. 

But, perhaps the worst misstep, mistake, or fuck-up if you will with this film, comes in the revision of John Rainbird, who in the original brought real menace and threat to the film, as he befriended Charlie when she's captured by The Shop. In this, he's changed into a bungling psycho who's just there to kill everyone. He's also given powers too, and this just makes the whole thing rather pointless since it seems everyone and their cat has powers. 

The film plods away from A-B until the third act showdown when Charlie gets to The Shop and finally unleashes her firey potential. Sadly by this point I really couldn't be arsed and dozed off, meaning I had to go online to find out how it ended.

Thank god I missed that, my blood would have boiled.

3/10  

#22: DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS.

 

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elisabeth Olsen, Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Stuhlbarg. Written by Michael Waldron and directed by Sam Raimi. Budget $200 million, running time 126 minutes. Number of post credit stings - two, one right at the absolute very end. 

This is a fully spoiler free review.

The plot. Oh god. Dr Strange must save a young girl with the power to travel the multiverse or die trying. Everyone else is along for the ride.

Gosh, that was a relentless movie, 126 minutes later and I leave having enjoyed the movie but also, sadly, never really engaging with it all that much.

The odd thing is I don't know why I didn't engage, I just can't put my finger on what it was that niggled me, because there was nothing I didn't like about it. In fact I liked it all. I enjoyed the performances, I thought the cast was all great, the effects were superb and the whole thing was absolutely bonkers! 

Every now and then you'd get wonderful flashes of that Sam Raimi genius, which only made you wish he put in more flourishes. The film was funny when it needed to be, and equally dramatic and shocking the next. It moved with a breathless pace and it avoided having a flabby middle, so it ticked all the right boxes and yet...

It never connected with me. 

In preparation for this I rewatched the first Dr. Strange movie and really enjoyed it, I love how Strange battles the big cosmic threat in that one, and I really enjoyed Dr. Strange in the last Spiderman movie, so perhaps my lack of connection this time round is that I'm just a little overdosed on Strange? 

By the way, it seems everyone picked up on the audio cameo revealed in the trailer, but I was delighted to discover there was one reveal not spoiled by anyone, and I won't be doing it here, which made this fan boy giggle with delight!

My son, in comparison, loved this and gave it a solid 9/10, which is high praise indeed from the Baxter (perhaps it's cos he got name-checked in the movie), I on the other hand will be giving this an 7/10.

#21: DOWNTON ABBEY: THE NEXT GENERATION

 

Starring Hugh Bourneville, Elizabeth mcGovern, Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Kevin Doyle, Michael Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Robert James-Collier, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sue Johnston, Allen Leech, Sophie McShera, Tuppence Middleton, Lesley Nicoll, Dominic West, Imelda Stauton, Penelope Wilton, Jonathon Zaccai. Written by Julian Fellowes, directed by Simon Curtis. 125 minutes of your life.

There's a great British tradition, stretching right back to 1961 with the release of the movie version of 'The Army Game' of adapting popular sitcoms into movies and transporting the loveable cast, via a holiday scenario, to a location overseas. And so comes the latest effort, Downtown Abby. Although be warned, we never meet Abby, nor do we discover where Uptown is.

The 'plot' sees a group of toffs discover that some rich French idiot had died leaving a fabulous villa to the matriarch of the family (Maggie Smith). So Hugh Bourneville and some others all sod off to the South of France to fleece the idiot. Meanwhile, a film company arrives at Downton Abbey to film a movie and the rest of family who stayed behind, help set up the first ever talking movie in the UK and then proceed to fleece the movie company, just so they can repair the roof. And that is the entire extent of the movie's plot. 

Having NEVER EVER watched a single episode of Downton Abbey before in my life, I have absolutely no idea who any of these characters were, or if they even had names. However, I was able to ascertain that one half of the characters were the indentured slaves of the other, who were a bunch of over-privileged, opinionated and disgustingly wealthy crypto-fascists. Thus I was confident that by the end of this cinematic excuse for entertainment, the workers would rise up and butcher these disgusting money-grabbing scum bags in one glorious scene of class retribution. 

Well, dear reader, let me tell you that nothing of the sort occurred! Indeed, rather than rise up and smash the yoke of their tyranical masters before grabbing the means of production, the workers just merrily doffed their collective caps, or curtsied, and thanked them for allowing them to live out their lives fulfilling their master's every whim or desire without complaint until, I'm assuming, in old age, they would be finally lead out to behind the potting shed and executed with a cattle gun. 

I went to this, not because I liked the trailer. I did not, but for something different to watch, something outside my comfort zone. Talking of the trailer, there's one scene that is totally different in the final film. in the trailer, the Butler (Jim Carter) smugly announces to some woman he's walking out of a church with, I don't know who she was, that the French had better watch out because the "English are coming."

However, in the finished the film the scene plays out somewhat differently. Now see see the Butler shagging some French maid on a table, it's all very tasteful, but he's holding both her legs up by the ankles. Suddenly he stopped thrusting. The camera cuts to his hot sweaty face, he makes eye contact with viewers and with the most filthy and disgusting grin says "The English are coming." Well, it's how I would have shot it.

This film had no emotional depth, no narrative drive, no challenges and absolutely nothing in the way of dramatic involvement. The entire cast grinned, and talked smugly to each other how wonderful it was to have money and do whatever you wanted, while the other half professed their love for their masters. The direction, was just as smug and self serving, the camera swopping in to show you how wonderful everything was, how majestic. The soundtrack, which never for a single second ceased to catch its breath just carried on, with the musical equivalent of smiling. Self serving and as smug as everything else. The only drama in the entire film occurs when at one point one of the rich ones visits a friend's house to get a will signed and that was the extent of the drama. 

To say I hated this despicable pile of cinematic tripe would be an insult to all those terrible films that I've had to sit through in the past. This was a film with nothing to say except, greed isn't good, landed gentry is. You would need to have watched every episode to have any hope of understanding who everyone was , Don't, like me, go in cold cos there's nothing here for you and you'll be in for 2 hours of smug misery. 

Apparently according to my friends who went with us to see this, I can't give it a score of zero, because 'the costumes' and 'scenery', besides they loved it and told me I was just being deliberately belligerent about it, they'd watched every episode and tried to convince me that it was good, however all I could think was, come the cinematic revolution mate, you'll be first up against the wall. 

Not for me. Give me Upstairs Downstairs any day, or Bertie Woster, Lord Peter Wimsey or even Decline and Fall. But NOT Brideshead, dear god, not Brideshead. 

4/10