#8 WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

 

STARRING Lily James, Shazad Latif, Shabana Azmi, Emma Thompson, Sajal Aly, Oliver Chris, Asim Chaudhry, Jeff Mirza, Alice Orr-Ewing and Rahat Fateh Alli Khan. Written by Jemima Khan. Directed by Shekhar Kapur. Running time 108 minutes.

As part of the most bizarre double bill I've ever been to, I followed Cocaine Bear with this, and boy did I wish I hadn't.

The plot sees (only in the movies) documentary film maker Zoe (Lily James), who lives on a house boat on the Thames by Chelsea use her childhood friend and next door neighbour, Doctor Kaz Khan's (Shazad Latif) upcoming arranged marriage as the basis of her latest fly-on-the-wall documentary with 'hilarious' results. We follow Zoe and Kaz, who really should be a couple, as she films his half hearted matchmaking attempts and subsequent arranged marriage which results in a trip to the wonderful city of Lahore in Pakistan, where everything is unbelievably lovely, clean and utterly beggar free, for a ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS three day wedding. Along for the ride is Zoe's mum, Cath (Emma Thompson) who naturally is obsessed with how wonderful everything about her next door neighbour's family culture is, she's a totally paid up and fully committed Pakistani-phile, she loves every thing about their muslim culture to such an extent, you'll actually find your toes curling in embarrassment each and every time she's on the screen. 

Cue lots of examples of how awful Western attitudes towards marriage and dating are compared to the enlightened, marvellous, mysterious ways of the far East. Until an incredible late in the third act reveal when you realise the whole film has been a subversive rug-pull.

Kaz's arranged wife is less than enthusiastic with the prospect of moving to the UK and harbours a secret, there's a plain speaking grandma who spouts mostly racist sentiments from her wheelchair, and added to the mix - a banished daughter, who dared to marry a western for love and bear a child, and finally a lovelorn English vet, set up with Zoe by her mum, Cath.

The film, which to its credit brought out a nicely and surprising ethnically diverse crowd at my cinema, begins as the most generic of sit coms, ticking off all the familiar tropes, to such an extent I scored well over 50 points with my cliche bingo card, everything about Zoe's romantic life is held up as wrong footed and terrible, while the arranged marriage model is lauded and hailed, "did you know that only 1% of arranged marriages fail." we are told, while we see Zoe's latest drunken one night stand fail when she finds out her date is married, then her best friend's marriage fails when the husband cheats. Meanwhile arranged marriage couples give talking head interviews to camera praising to the heavens the glories of their couplings, claiming that you 'fall into like, walk into love'. It really is the worst type of propaganda, that is up until the film pulls a Syd Field in the third act with a literal rug-pull and that the whole film is revealed to have been one fantastically miss-direct. It's cleverly timed to arrive just at the end of the second act and the beginning of the third, when Zoe shows the rough cut of her movie to the Khans and family secrets are exposed and confronted, a divorce is announced, and true love, un-arranged, wins out.

This is button pushing at its finest, a hideously manipulative, smug and self satisfying movie which insults with its stereotypical portrayals of two cultures to such an extent that it loses all credibility, and the ending which dawns on you, well before it arrives with such cringe-inducing schmaltz that your already toe curled feet will roll back up your legs to your knees.

It's great to see Clem Fandago's Shazad Latif back in action, and Lily James is a good actress, but I just wish they'd had a better story together, because this one holds absolutely no water at all and is as about as believable as the idea of a cocaine addicted black bear killing scores of people. 

Smug, satisfying, simpering and sickeningly twee. This film also loses marks thanks to Emma Thompson who is so bad in this that you find yourself hating her each time she bobs into view. 

5/10

#7 COCAINE BEAR

STARRING Keir Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr. Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta. Written by Jimmy Warden. Directed by Elizabeth Banks. Running time 95 minutes. Budget $30 mill.

Welcome to this century's Snakes on a Plane, a film with a great title, and a simply superb trailer. It's moderately funny, nicely gory, and thankfully brief. It's not a terrible experience, but it's sad to see late great Ray Liotta in his last film. There's laughs to be had, some good set pieces but ultimately you won't remember this a week from now. 

The plot sees a drugs pilot dump millions of dollars of duffle bags holding packets of cocaine over a National Park. The drugs get eaten by a black bear and it becomes insanely addicted. Add to the mix, two school kid friends bunking off school, a mum looking for them, a gang of pathetic delinquents, a detective nearing retirement age, a drug baron and his two henchmen, a holidaying couple, an ambulance crew, the Park Ranger and an environmental protection officer all wandering around the park looking for the drugs or each other. Some of them, in fact most of them, will die, horribly and the rest won't. And that's the plot. It's all over nice and quick, it doesn't linger, it funny without trying too hard and you won't hate it. Elizabeth Banks directs it speedily and doesn't waste time. The plot contrivances matter not one jot, once you've accepted the central conceit.

The bear is CGi, which is disappointing, the kills are mostly funny and it's not shit. The best part takes place in the Ranger office when the ambulance turns up, and the best kill happens soon after. I burst out laughing several times and found the whole thing entertaining and funny. 

Look, I don't know what more you want from a film called Cocaine Bear? 

And it adds a new punchline to the joke: Do Bears shit in the woods? No, they do drugs and kill people while ripped to the tits on coke.

6/10      

#6 ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA

 Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, Katy O'Brian, William Jackson Harper, Mill Murray Michelle Pfeiffer, Corey Stoll and Michael Douglas. Written by Jeff Loveness and directed by Peyton Reed. Running time 124 minutes.  

You know how it is, you wait 15 years for a super hero movie based on the Marvel Universe then 31 come at you! Yes, that's right 31 super hero movies, like a conveyer belt churning them out, one after another, up to three a year in furious quick succession, the idea being that if you didn't like the current one then don't worry there'll be another along in a month or too. And so be it with this one which for the sake of speed I'm just going to call AMATWQ.

Yes! The third instalment of the Ant Man movies, the ones that star Paul Rudd, and Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer. Oh and Evangeline Lilly!

The first Ant-Man film released in 2015, was the last film of the second phase and was great fun, being quite down to Earth and having the incredibly charismatic Rudd as its eponymous hero. The second released three whole years was, as is often the case, nowhere near as good, being overblown, over-bloated and rather unnecessary, much of which can be said of this the third standalone movie for our titular hero, which marks the beginning of the MCU's fifth phase.

The plot which races out of the starting gate and has all our heroes, and there a lot of them, trapped in the Quantum Realm quicker than you can say Syd Field arrives at the 10 minute mark, as prescribed and then adheres to the formula like glue. There's the mid point mark, the end of the second act which sees our hero seemingly lose and the obligatory third act triumph. It's all there to see!

This has so much plot wedged into it that none of the characters have time to actually explain the situation, and indeed it's one of those films where the main protagonists know far more than the rest of us and if they'd only taken a few moments to explain themselves and what they know every thing could be resolved in a matter of minutes. On top of that, you need to have watched the TV series LOKI to understand the post credit sequences and also to understand who Kang is and what his objectives are, something not necessary with the development of Thanos.

Anyway our band of heroes, there are five of them, and an ant farm of intelligent ants, which I'm sure will play a part later on in the proceedings, are all transported to the Quantum Realm where they get split up and instantly form and are forced to do battle with the limitless and nameless army of Kang an evil baddie with evil on his mind. He obviously shares a history with one of our band of heroes but neither bothers to tell anyone else about the other or indeed what they hell they've been up to in the realm for the past 30 years... 

After that, our heroes battle to reunite, get captured, escape, form allegiances with the repressed peoples of the Quantumverse and do all the things heroes in these films when transported to an alien world, or quantum realm (if you will) to fill the two hour plus running time. 

Add to that a lot of pixels, action beats, all with rapid editing, and the need for the patented Marvel Movie Humour matrix, for some 'hilarious' funny quips and gags, a surprising cameo or two and bob's your uncle, or Ant-Man if you will.

Because the entire cast has the ability to change their mass and height at will, there really is nothing special about Ant-Man and he ends up being quite a secondary character to the others. Similarly being in a realm where size is everything, our Ant-Man needs to start calling himself Giant Man, since he spends most of the time in that form. There's also this deeply annoying need for each sequence of action featuring Ant Man in full garb to instantly deactivate his nanobot helmet to reveal Paul Rudd's face, the second the action has stopped. I want my superheroes to remain in full costume, not be constantly popping it on and off again. 

This being the film to really introduce the new MCU villain to the cinematic world, much time is given over to Jonathan Majors' character Kang and he really is the films MVP. Majors is pure acting power and he gives Kang some real menace. Although despite that, we know nothing about him except for the fact he wants to escape from the Quantum Realm with his army of Storm Troopers. 

This film has no real highs or lows, it sort of meanders along at its own pace leading to action–packed showdown, followed by two post credit stings where the whole film reveals itself to have been nothing more than one massive prologue for the rest of the phase.

It feels more like a Star Wars film than a Marvel Universe movie, especially tonally and in it's alien and spaceship designs. Thankfully it's not the terrible unfunny mess that Thor: Love and Thunder was, nor is it as poe-faced as Black Panther: Wankars Forever, or as crushingly dull and tedious as The Eternals. Infact it's better thanall but two of the Phase Four's rather dull output..

The cast is fine, Rudd gives good, hmm 'Rudd', and the rest do everything required of them, they're professionals how could they not? But god I'm getting bored of this all and I never thought I'd say that, although that said, of course I'm going to go and see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol3, it's an addiction, but I'm aware and they say that's the first step on the road to recovery.

And I'll still take this over the DCU's efforts, I know everyone's losing their collective sanity over the next Flash movie trailer, but I'll still take Marvel any day.  

There's nothing here new or worth writing home about, apart from MODOK, but I don't want to spoil that here. Added to that the sheer volume of knowledge needed to understand these films, which on one hand demands you have a knowledge of the canon, while on the other expects you to ignore each and very other Marvel movie, for example STILL no mention of the half dead Eternal sticking out of the Earth, nor ever any other superhero in this overbloated universe. 

After 31 films, the MCU is has become samey, boring, almost bland and most certainly generic. They follow a pattern religiously, both in terms of tone and structure, there's nothing unique, they've lost the ability to be smaller in scope or scale having to have the threat in each film been universe sized leaving no room for smaller or relatable threats. 

And at least it's less than three hours in length.

6/10

#5: TITANIC 3D

 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill Jonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci David Warner, Bill Paxton. Written and directed by James Cameron. Running time 195 minutes and budget $200 million. Box office takings so far and as of 2023 $2.225 billion.

CHRIST ALMIGHTY! It's the middle of Feb and I've only seen five films this year! What the hell is wrong with the cinema, where is all the new stuff!!

With absolutely nothing new to see at the cinema and nothing seen in a couple of weeks I was forced, at gun point by my wife, to go and see 'something, anything as long as it gets you out of the house!' So I opted for this a film I've not seen in its entirety since 1997 when it was first released and a film I disliked a great deal.

So, 26 years how did it fare? First off this time it was in 3D, that miracle saviour of the cinema that gave film makers and cinema chain owners a new way to squeeze extra money out of its punters having exhausted their plunder on the concessionary stand, I mean, surely that's it for popcorn prices? This time round as indeed with almost every single 3D film so far made (apart from Avatar Way of Water) the 3D does nothing at all and enhances nothing either, you quickly forget you're even watching a 3D film and indeed I was half way out of the theatre before I realised I was still wearing mine. Annoyingly I couldn't see this film in any other way, so that's an extra £1.25 Cineworld has got out of me. 

As to the film, well, was it as thrilling as the first time? Did I fall in love with Rose and Jack all over again, or did I wish they'd all died in that freezing cold water. Nope, nothing's changed.

What I realised watching it was what a great question it makes for film nerds. There's this game we play at work, where you ask for the name of a film giving only the roles the same actors played as comic book characters in other films and people have to guess the film, so in this instance you have this:

What film saw Jeff Tracey, The Phantom, Jack the Ripper, Black Beauty and Reed Richards fight over the world's biggest diamond. 

At over three hours I nodded off for half an hour but missed nothing coming back just after the sweaty shagging scene in the back of a car and nicely in time for the date with destiny and a sodding great ice cube. 

As with all Cameron's modern films, you cannot fault that man's commitment and technical abilities, the staging of the sinking and the drama of it all are superb and he's great at staging action, it really makes that part of the film simply thrilling.

Sadly the same thing cannot be said of the rest, indeed what I hated the first time round still bothered me this time too – the addition of the stupid made up romance between Jack and Rose, and all that that entailed, all that running about back and forth back into the sinking ship over and over again, at one point, Rose leaps back into the sinking ship several stories below, meaning Jack, who's only just escaped from drowning has to go back inside again just to rescue her again! Typical, it's all about her.

I would have loved it far more if there hadn't been the romantic bit wedged into it and he'd focused on actual real people, like they do with Roy Ward Baker's 1958 movie, starring Kenneth More - A Night to Remember, that splendid British movie about Titanic, but then it probably wouldn't be the third highest grossing film of all times.

This time I was also struck by just how genuinely stupid Rose actually is, why does she chuck that blue diamond into the sea at the film's climax? Think about it, it brought her and Jack nothing but trouble and it's not as if it was given to her as a token of love, if only she hadn't been so self centred and ego-centric she could have sold it, or when her vile ex-fiancee claimed the insurance she could have exposed him for the crooked bastard he was. No, instead she chucks it over board! Makes no bloody sense at all.

I've Nothing else to add really. It's Titanic, it was absolutely critic proof back then, in the exact opposite way that the real life Titanic was unsinkable and I still remember with great amusement how ALL the film pundits and critics alike were predicting the biggest flop ever and the world's biggest filmic disaster movie EVER before it even opened and all the humble pie they had to eat afterwards.

Me personally, only last week, I predicted it would be a huge hit and this week it over took Avatar: Way of Water to become the third biggest grossing picture of all times! Well that is until next week when Avie overtakes it again. 

Haha, how wrong they were.  

8/10