#57: BEETLEJUICE BETTLEJUICE

 

STARRING: Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe. Story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith. Screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Based on characters created by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. Music by Danny Elfman. Directed by Tim Burton. Budget $100 million. Running time 104 minutes. 

Arriving a mere 36 years after the original, this much longed for sequel reunites most of the original cast and several new ones for one more go on the Beetlejuice merry-go-round. Directed by a creatively spent director and surviving purely on the goodwill generated by its lead actor, this is a film with none of the wit of the original, or scintilla of its charm, a film which crams four subplots into its running time to create an experience that defies physics by seeming to last longer than the gap between the first and second movie. 

The plot finds an adult Lydia Deetz (Wynona Ryder), a pill-popping burn-out who hosts a popular TV show called Ghost House, she's being aggressively dated and perused by her manager Rory (Justin Theroux) who wants to marry her for her money. Lydia is also estranged from her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who hates her mother for not being able to see the ghost of her dead father who died mysteriously while traveling through the Amazon rainforest. When Lydia discovers her father has been killed and eaten by a shark she returns to the family home to be with her stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O'Hara), now a successful modern artist. Meanwhile, Astird, a deeply depressed schoolgirl comes home for the funeral and meets a local boy and the two form a relationship. Meanwhile in the afterlife, Beetlejuice who is now the boss of the newly deceased division is still trying to get it on with Lydia, and Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson - a ghost detective is trying to capture Monica Bellucci's Delores, Beetlejuice's ex-wife, she's somehow back for revenge after Beetlejuice dismembered her with an axe.

The film is an unholy mess, with tonnes of backstory and subplots constantly bogging it down, for large portions of this film major characters disappear while the rest of the film slowly trundles on boringly and without any true spark or excitement. And while this film isn't the complete cluster fuck that Boredlands was, it's not far off. 

The middle portion of the film sees all these various plot points play out in slow succession but without any involvement or excitement that is until the final act finally rolls slowly into play.

Utilising the possession scene from the first film as its template, the third act set in the local church, gathers all the cast together for a rendition of Richard Harris's sublime McArthur Park hit. It's this sequence that saves the film from being a total crushing disappointment but alas despite being the absolute high-light of the entire film, it's sadly far too little far too too late. 

The cast, every man-jack of them, give it their all, trying their damndest to make this whole sorry mess work, but they're just not given any help from the bloated script, or tired direction. Burton uses the same camera tricks endlessly, as he flies his camera over the town again and again, zooming in on the Deetz house, or the model of the house, not once, not twice, but each goddam time the sodding action cuts back to the house.

The film avoids making Beetlejuice the main focus to the expense of everything else and the individual story strands are amusing but just don't gell into a cohesive whole. And while Dafoe and the rest delight and revel in their roles Monica Bellucci is criminally wasted in the role of Bettlejuice's ex-wife.   

The original movie, which I watched just the day before seeing this, is blissfully brief, the plot is simple and the film moves at a pace but never at the expense of the story. This lazy creatively dead sequel avoids all of that by over egging the pudding so much it implodes under the sheer weight of story its expected to carry. 

Too much of everything ruins this film as does the bloated story and the complete lack of originality. 

Thank god for the willing cast of great actors all having a hoot, for them no blame is given, that rests purely on the shoulders and souls of the writers and director who deserve to burn in the pits of hell for all eternity for this bland, dreary dirge of a movie. 

5/10

#55: ALIEN ROMULUS

 

STARRING: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu. Written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues. Directed by Fede Álvarez. Budget #80 million. Running time 119 minutes.

And so we come to the 9th film in the Alien franchise after Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Alien Vs. Predator, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, Alien: Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Well, you know what they say, 9th time's a charm.  

Chronologically speaking this takes place between Alien and Aliens, thus successfully ignoring the failed majesty of Alien 3 and the rest. 

Ditching the gross idea of characters who are, you know older than 30, in favour of a group of young diverse young people as it's cannon fodder is a shrewd move for Generation Z crowd this film is aimed at and who don't seem to be able to cope with ideas, films, or actors older than themselves. And it's much nicer for us Babyboomers, brought up on the first Alien film in 1979 as we get to watch these young snots getting the living shit ripped out of them. 

We meet our plucky band of young people, living on a mining colony blighted by perpetually night-time who are planning to borrow a spaceship and plunder a completely abandoned space station that is drifting above their miserable planet of its cryo-chambers so they can use them to survive the 9 light years of travel they have to do to escape to somewhere better.

What they find isn't a spaceship but a semi derelict research station called Romulus hurriedly abandoned and partially damaged after whatever those pesky scientists were experimenting on got loose. 

Through a series of stupid decisions, our band of hapless kids find themselves trapped onboard a crashing space station and separated from their spaceship and forced to navigate deep dark corridors filled with a veritable army of alien face-huggers and the occasional xenomorph to escape. Jeez, Mondays, am I right?

WARNING. WHILE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS NO ACTUAL SPOILERS, THERE IS ENOUGH INFORMATION SUBTLY ALLUDED TO IN THIS NEXT SECTION OF THE REVIEW THAT MEANS KEEN FANS OF THE ALIEN FRANCHISE MIGHT LEARN TOO MUCH. 

The crew feature Cailee Spaeny as Rain, our Ripley substitute - young orphaned, resourceful, but also small, and vulnerable – David Jonsson as Andy, Rain's surrogate brother and synthetic human, who's old and obsolete and as glitchy as fuck (I wonder if that'll play a part later on?) Archie Renaux as Tyler, heroic hunk and also ex-boyfriend of Rain, Tyler's pregnant sister Kay (Isabela Merced) whose pregnancy will obviously play a big part of later on, for obvious reasons, namely she's pregnant (great telegraphing guys), on and then there's Bjorn (Spike Fearn) who just so happens to be Tyler and Tay's cousin with synthetic issues and finally there's Navarro, the pilot (Aileen Wu), so obviously her card is marked.

This starts well and the build up is good, the exploration of the Romulus is gripping, and intriguing! Good grief, you think, have they got it right? Then the action starts and that too is good. Deaths occur and those too are gruesome, although nothing will ever compare with John Hurt's death in Alien. Taking elements from the first two films Fede Álvarez gives us an carefully sampled movie filled with bits we loved and then the third act roars into view, and sadly, dear reader, the whole film reveals itself to be nothing more than a remake of Alien: Resurrection, and goes from a solid 9/10 to a 'what the actual what' 7/10.

This gets so much right, the scares come courtesy of the facehungers who number in the hundreds and we get to learn a little bit more about those frisky little French kissers, that is before the aliens start emerging from the ceilings, floors and walls to whittle our band of cannon fodder down to the last girl standing, in this case Cailee Spaeny, doing her best Sigourney Weaver, right down to the now obligatory third act vest and kegs showdown.

Channeling both Alien and Aliens to the Nth degree and featuring a rather surprising, uncanny valley extended cameo, this film offers a great set up and a fantastically tense middle section, which sadly all comes undone when the whole film spins down into extreme nonsense in the final act. You can see what went wrong. Having scared the crap out of audiences for the whole film with aliens and face hungers, where else could you go?

There's also the need for the WHOLE franchise and it's lore to be codified and the re-introduction of ideas that featured in Alien Prometheus and Covernant just muddy the waters. The great thing about the first Alien movie was that we didn't know anything, the creature was 'alien', now because modern audiences need to be told everything we have to have all this lore, it's what killed Star Snores. Continuity and story baggage   

It's great to see so many practical effects on offer, and practical sets, the design is classic retro-futuristic, blinking lights and switches, cathoray tube TVs and watching real people interact with real environments is a definite plus. It's got scares, action, horror and it moves at a good pace.

At the end of the day, this was a cleverly sampled remixed mix-tape of a movie, with nothing new, but with enough hints at past greatness to keep you sweet. 

7/10 

 

#54: TRAP

STARRING: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Nigh Shyamalan, M. Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills and Alison Pill. Written directed and Night Raven's song written by M. Night Shyamalan. Budget £30 million. Running time 105 minutes.

This is the first M. Nigh Shyamalan movie I've enjoyed since 2016's Split, and only the third out of his 16 movies. All his films, up until this one, featured a high concept combined with a twist ending  and I found it deeply annoying, mainly because I always guessed the ending far too early, I guessed the twist in The Village, in the first 5 minutes. Night has a terrible habit of badly telegraphing key plot points, "Swing high", for example from Signs which I find deeply irritating. And if The Village with its terrible twist broke my spirit, then The Happening was the final nail in the coffin. 

He always seems like a director who loves himself way too much and whose belief in his own abilities far exceeds his actual reach. 

And so to Trap. I went in expecting to hate it, but damn it if it didn't win me over with its silly, over-the-top script featuring glaring plot contrivances that only exist to propel this ridiculous story and a fanatically committed Josh Hartnett.

Josh plays Cooper a fireman and family man with a wife and two loving kids who just so happens to be a fantastically high-functioned organised serial killer with 12 confirmed kills who goes under the soubriquet The Butcher. He's taking his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a Lady Raven concert at a nearby stadium. Who's Lady Raven, I hear you ask? Well she's only the biggest star in the pop firmament, in this universe anyway and played by Night's daughter Saleka Nigh Shyamalan. Anyway, once they're in the stadium, Cooper begins to realise that he's trapped as the entire weight of the law enforcement descends on the stadium sealing him inside, from every member of the police force to the National Guard, FBI, CIA and probably KGB, who all gather outside to catch him. And so far so the trailer. Desperately Cooper looks for a way out while trying to keep his daughter off the scent, but as the concert winds down Cooper finds himself running out of options, that is until an opportunity presents itself...

I've never been to a mega concert featuring a super star pop idol but according to this film, nobody spends any time inside watching the star, they're all outside in the corridor around the stadium buying snacks, hotdogs, drinks, merchandising, or using the toilet so Cooper can move around unseen by everyone. 

Luckily a serious of coincidences and lucky breaks enable our loveable serial killer, whose latest victim is chained up in a basement somewhere in the city, to gain a way of moving about with impunity and to listen in on the police band radio while the lead psycho profiler carefully details what they're going to do to catch him. Phew that's lucky! It's also lucky that everyone Cooper meets falls for his charm and inadvertently help him to plot his escape. 

While this carries on we're treated to an extended music video of M. Night's daughter's musical stylings featuring music and lyrics he composed. There's a lot of it as we're treated to a good 30 odd minutes of her performance. No shade on Saleka, she's actually rather good and plays an important part in the second half, but it's also in this half of the film where the plot devices kick in with a vengeance.

M. Night has this very annoying habit of getting his actors to talk directly into the lens which is deeply intrusive and bloody annoying. Josh is very game as the lead actor and carries the film on his very broad shoulders, but he also looks uncomfortable in the part of a loving father and his interactions with Riley boarder on very clumsy and artifical. He's far better in the second act as his escape plan rolls into action and his final confrontation with a family member is very powerful. It's in these later scenes that he comes to life as his true nature finally reveals himself.

With all of it's ridiculous contrivances, plot holes and shocking convenient co-incidences this was an unintentionally funny film that can only be taken as a dark comedy, seen as a serious thriller it's a farce, but from the armchair of parody this was an enjoyable and satisfying romp that amused me far more than it annoyed me and bereft of a trademarked M. NIght Shamalyan twist ending was far more entertaining that I was expecting. 

7/10

#53: CUCKOO

 

Starring Hunter Schafer, Jan Bluthardt, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick and Dan Stevens. Written and directed by Tilman Singer. Music by Simon Waskow. Budget $7 million. Running time 103 minutes.

Another Cineworld Secret Screening, hoping for Alien: Romulus, but getting something else, something rather delightful, an experimental independent German horror film.

Cuckoo sees 17-year old Gretchen (Hunter Schager), forced to leave her home in the US and move back with her father, Luis (Márton Csókás) and her stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick) and mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) following the death of Gretchen's mother. Together the family travel to a holiday resort in the German Alps, where Luis and Beth have been hired by creepy resort owner Herr König (Dan Stevens) to design a new building. König offers Gretchen a job on front-of-desk of the resort, which beyond the odd honeymooning couple seems strangely empty. He warns her to lock the doors at 10:00pm and not to travel alone at night. Naturally she doesn't and ends up hospitalised after she's attacked by a mysterious white coated and hooded woman in huge sunglasses who can paralyse with her shrieking bird-like scream. But the trouble is no one seems to believe her, least of all her frustrated father. 

Gretchen begins to realise that something isn't right in the complex. Why do all the female guest keep vomiting and stumbling around drunk-like, what's up with the complex's hi-tech hospital, with no patients, and just what is that shrieking sound coming from the forrest? And why is König so interested in Alma?

The film plays on the concept of the Cuckoo, as you begin to wonder if it's Gretchen who's the Cuckoo in this family, or is it Alma. Feeling lost, bereaved and unwanted, Gretchen decides to runaway with an attractive French girl who comes to stay at the resort, and together they drive off after stealing the resort's takings. But their escape is cut short when they're involved in terrible car crash, caused by the hooded woman, and Gretchen finds herself once again in the strange hospital, with serious injuries. And that's when shit gets unreal and the bizarreness and weirdness accelerates.

Written and directed by Tilman Singer this is a genuinely entertaining horror flick that feels like early David Cronenberg crossed with David Lynch. he shows great flair and his direction feels fresh and original. There's one shot I really liked, a tracking shot where the camera, looking up, at Gretchen face tracks her across a room, it sounds odd to point out but it appealed to me. This is Singer's second film and I look forward to seeing more. Likewise,  Hunter Schager (Gretchen) who carries this film is superb, bringing a real believability to her role of the grieving Gretchen, and for once she doesn't come across as a over powered girl-boss, but a resourceful young woman desperate to survive. And not forgetting Dan Stevens who keeps turning up in these small indie flicks and fricking nailing it dead! I thought he was great in Abigail and once again he brings genuine unease in this. 

As the story unfolds and the secrets are revealed the film loses some of its charm, but not a lot, and the violent blood soaked final act is almost cathartic in nature. I was reminded of a previous European horror film from 2022 called Hatching, which together with this would make rather a good double bill.

8/10

#52: BOREDLANDS

 

STARRING: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu, Edgar Ramirez and Gina Gershon. Story by Eli Roth, Screenplay by Eli Roth and Joe Crombie. Produced by Avi Arad. Directed by Eli Roth. Budget $120 million. Running time 102 minutes.

Two good things to take away from Boredlands the movie. 
#1. There won't be a sequel. 

#2. It's only 102 minutes long. 

Based on a popular video game franchise, this movie adaptation has been in development since 2015, or the past nine years. In that time the film producer Avi Arad have worked tirelessly along side the likes of fellow producer Erik Feig, Leigh Whannell, who was originally inline to direct, original writer Craig Mazin (who later removed his name from the project), replacement writer Joe Crombie, Tim Miller who came in for reshoots, and of course Eli Roth who not only directed this film, but also came up with the story, and co-wrote the screenplay. 

And incredibly despite those men having spent 131,040 man hours of their precious lives working on the film, THIS is the best they could come up with. 

The plot, there is no story, sees Lilith, Cate Blanchett, a self-congratulatory,  smug, pouting, over-privileged bounty-hunter travel to a planet called Pandora to find and rescue, Tiny Tina, Ariana Greenblatt, the daughter of the baddie, Atlas, Edgar Ramirez. Tiny was kidnapped by Roland, Kevin Hart, an ex-Atlas mercenary soldier gone rogue, who took Tina to Pandora, along with a homicidal maniac called Kreig, Florian Munteanu because. Later we get to meet Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Patricia Tannis, there for exposition and  Jack Black's Claptrap a wheeled wanky robot and the whole gang is up and ready for some shits and giggles, although not much in the way of giggles to be honest.

We learn that Pandora was once the home of a fantastic race of people called the Eridian, who disappeared millions of years ago.  However they apparently left behind a wealth of their super technology in a place called The Vault, hidden somewhere on Pandora. As a result every lowlife, scumbag and psycho in the universe has come to the planet to look for it. There's a prophecy that predicts that only the daughter of Eridian can open the Vault. And guess what, Tiny Tina, Ariana Greenblatt was created by Atlas to be that 'daughter of Eridian'. Or is she...   

This is so clearly trying to be another Guardians of the Galaxy, with its band of wacky anti-heroes wise cracking their way from one middling action scene to the next. At no point do we fear our 'heroes' will die, so there's no jeopardy. It follows the three-act structure to a tee, but it's all a toothless feeble dirge shoe horned with a 12A cert, which means the rudest swearwords are piss and shit, which is also the phrases I'd use to describe this film. 

As a rule, Cate Blanchett is a great actress, who really delivers the goods, however in this she is the single worst aspect of the whole film, despite being the best actress by a country mile. The trouble is she looks and feels deeply uncomfortable in the role. For every shot she stands posed, hips tilted, arm raised, gun cocked, looking stiff and awkward, probably embarrassed by shit her character has to say which passes for dialogue. 

Everyone in this awful pissy piece of shit is crap, although Kevin Hart actually manages the unexpected by being the least horrible and most likeable of the characters. Although that's not saying much. They're all just smug, self-serving arseholes, quipping and killing with impunity, just hateful. And worst of the bunch is Jack Black's Claptrap who, in the film's 'funniest' scene has a bout of bullet diarrhoea.

I saw this because I thought the trailer looked fun. But you shouldn't be duped or fooled, this is a crapfest of epic proportions that doesn't transcend it's crappiness to become something good, or funny. No, siree this remains persistently crap for all of it's piss-soaked 102 minute running time.

It's generic, bland, and dull, in fact it's not even bad enough to be boring, it just remains consistently dull.  

This is the dullest film I've seen since Madame Webb, which this isn't even bad enough to worse than. 

Bland, dull, and piss-awfully shit. 2/10

#51: KNEECAP

 

STARRING: Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds, Adam Best, Simone Kirby and Michael Fassbender. Story by Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh and Rich Peppiatt. Screenplay and directed by Rich Peppiatt. Running time 105 minutes.

The true story of three drug-loving young men who form a Gaelic speaking hip-hop band in Belfast incurring the wrath of not just the establishment but also a paramilitary gang. 

Saw this as part of one of Cineworld's 'Secret Screenings', where you have no idea what you're going to see, hence the title. I was hoping for Alien Romulus, as was audience, judging by how many turned up and the audible groan that rose when the title card came up. Luckily I'd read about it in the film mags and was pleasantly surprised and stayed. It's the first time I'd seen a full-length Gaelic spoken film and it occurred to me that listening to a new language while watching a film is quite challenging, the sound of it was so different from anything you've heard before that you find yourself trying to find the rhythm of it. 

The story follows two life-long Catholic friends growing up in Belfast in the 2010s, who spend their hedonistic days dealing and taking drugs and partying hard, they're both champions of the Gaelic language and defiantly refuse to speak English. When Liam is arrested at a party and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, a Gaelic speaker, is brought in help the interrogation. JJ who is also a music teacher at a local school ends up with Liam's note book which is filled with his poetry and lyrics. JJ has his own music studio and puts some of the lyrics to music and so is born the band Kneecap.

What follows is a highly enjoyable, raw and frantic movie, the sheer energy of the three lads when performing is intoxicating. There's a sub-plot that features the Arlo, Michael Fassbender, the father of Naoise, an ex Republican paramilitary bomber who faked his own death to avoid the British authorities and is still on the run, which in turn left his wife, Dolores (Simone Kirby) becoming agoraphobic, which gives the film a much needed emotional core. Added to that is a raunchy romance between Liam and Georgia, Jessica Reynolds, a young Protestant girl, whose Aunt, Josie Walker, just so happens to be a Detective searching for Arlo.

Added to that is another paramilitary outfit, RRAD (Radical Replublicans Against Drugs) who are eager to stop Kneecap, and ironically kneecap them in the process.

There's a lot to cram into the tight 105 minute running time, and the film expertly fits it all in without ever feeling like it's being rushed. I knew a little about the film, but had no idea that the three members of Kneecap were the stars of the film, and Liam in particular shines, during the end credits you get to see footage of the band in action and it enhances the whole experience.

Thoroughly entertaining, with a great sense of rawness and some totally banging choones. A very nice surprise. 

8/10 

 

SUPPLEMENTAL: ABIGAIL

 

STARRING: Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud and Giancarlo Esposito. Written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Budget $28 million. Running time 109 minutes.

A group of professional criminals, lead by Frank (Dan Stevens), Peter the muscle (Kevin Durand), Sammy the hacker (Kathryn Newton), Joey the medic (Melissa Barrera), Rickles the sniper (Will Catlett) and Dean the driver (Angus Cloud) are hired by criminal mastermind Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) to kidnap Abi (Alisha Weir) the ballet-loving daughter of a super wealthy man and keep her hostage for 24 hours while they wait for the ransom to be paid. 

Holding up in a mysterious country house, the gang soon begin to realise that something isn't right when one of their number is discovered horrifically and gorily butchered and that they're sealed inside the house with something that wants to eat them.

What that thing is and why they've been chosen is delightfully revealed over the next 109 minutes in fantastically gruesome detail, mixing a funny, but not OTT script, with a very likeable bunch of characters, a superb set, and some brilliant practical special effects subtly augmented with CGI. 

I sadly missed this at the cinema, which is a shame cos it would be one of my favourite films of the year. I've begun of late to think that I was growing tired of the cinema and that I could no longer enjoy something so downright and outrageously enjoyable as Abigail, and I'm delighted to have discovered that I can still sit through something like this and bloody love every single second of it!

I've not enjoyed a film this much, nor found one so satisfying in a long time. For me this is what a good film can be, something that doesn't need to be desconstructed or analysed to the Nth degree, something that's just bloody enjoyable, end of! And Abigail is that, indeed I've not had this much fun since 2020's The Hunt.

The great thing about Abigail is how it develops over its running time, changing from a standard crime caper, to locked in a house horror film, before changing gear again for a deeply satisfying ending with a very funny final line from our sole survivor. 

This takes the old, tired vampire genre and gives it a much needed shot in the arm, making vampires exactly what they should be, disgusting blood-sucking monsters! 

As gory as hell, as funny as fuck, but never to the detriment of the story, and a satisfying film plot to boot. 

Stake through the heart recommend!

9/10

 

#50: DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

 

STARRING: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delany, Leslie Uggams, Aaron Stanford, Matthew Macfadyen, and more Cameos than you could shake a stick at, with some that are downright delightful. Written by Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy. Directed by Shawn Levy. Budget $200 million. Running time 128 minutes. 

The third Deadpool movie in the series crash lands into a market that seems to have lost its love for the superhero genre after a string of truly shit superhero films that tanked, bombed, crashed or 'failed to perform at the box-office' to use Hollywood parlance. Those turkeys include the likes of, for Marvel,: The Marvels, Madame Web, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Gaurdians of the Galaxy Vol 3; while DC showed up to the party with five bottles of absolute shit, which included: Shazam! Furry Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

The end result of such dreck is that both studios have seriously put the brakes on their respective output, to such an extent that Marvel only have two more 'product' to push out this year, both of which are Sony Studio offerings, Kraven the Hunter and Venom: The Last Dance, and DC only has one, Joker: Folie à Deux.  

So, enough waffle what of Deadpool & Wolverine?

Well it's 2 hours and eight minutes long and features two end-credit bonuses, one at the beginning and one at the very, very end, before the screen lights come up which might be worth your while depending on how much you've enjoyed the preceding 128 minutes.

The plot, sees Wade Wilson, now retired from being Deadpool trying to live a normal life selling cars and celebrating his birthday with his nine closest friends when agents from the Time Variance Authority arrive to arrest him for his past crimes against the Sacred Time Line. He is subsequently given almost god-like powers by TVA boss Paradox, Matthew Macfadyen, to help him destroy the Time Line. Instead Deadpool steals a Macguffin device, to travel the time line in search of a Wolverine to help him save his own time line. However when both 'heroes' are marooned in the Void they must find a way to get back to their own world before it's destroyed.

What follows is a relentless chase across multiverses, and time-lines and features so many cameos it's almost impossible to name them all. Packed with in-jokes, visual nods, and Easter-Eggs galore, and copious amount of profanity to such an extent you'll find yourself tutting at the overuse of the word, 'fuck', oh and the constant fourth-wall breaking that becomes deeply monotonous. In fact it's all in danger of sinking this Blockbuster completely, so thank the gods for Hugh Jackman and Emma Corrin, Jackman's Wolverine is the backbone of this film and his presence elevates this film greatly, despite Deadpool's constant attempts to derail proceedings with his incessant prattling. And Emma Corrin is just outstanding bringing real malevolence to her role and offering us the best villain since Thanos, but sadly there's just not enough of her and her incredibly long fingers.

And then there's the violence, which to say is excessive would be an understatement, it's non-stop, brutal and utterly relentless, scene after scene of consequence-free stabbing of victims with knives, swords, thigh bones, leaving spouting cgi blood to magically disappear into the sky, luckily the humour is on hand to undercut the whole thing.

It's a film made for die-hard fans, there are cameos that will have the comics fan in the audience howling in delightful glee. There's a great sequence where Deadpool, while time hopping, comes across a veritable who's who of alternative Wolverines which is possibly the high-light of the movie, the trouble is that because the whole thing is played as just one very long in-joke and laugh riot, it renders any meaningful story redundant. Plus the running time is far too long for a comedy and after two hours of this I was left weary and very nearly bored.

If you're not a fan of Ryan Reynolds then this might not be your cup of tea, because here he dials it up to 11 and he's in almost every single scene, sometimes acting opposite himself. 

Overall, I was left bemused but not enthralled. There was just too much of everything and it left me a little flat. It's like being screamed at two hours by two hyperactive 9 year-olds ripped to the tits on sugar and Ritalin while you're force-feed boxes of sugar enriched, corn syrup saturated caramel popcorn by the fistful, by the end of it, you feel a little nauseous, deaf and bewildered and you'll want to watch something to cut through all the relentlessness and mayhem, something like Zone of Interest. 

In a nutshell, it was too fun, too loud, too long, and too, too much. 

7/10 

#49: LONGLEGS

Starring Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michcelle Choi-Lee and Dakota Daulby. Written and directed by Osgood Perkins. budget $10 million. Running time 101 minutes.

Maika Monroe is Lee Harker, a low budget Clarice Starling, and likewise FBI agent with psychic abilities who's assigned to investigate the 'Longlegs' cases, a series of mass family murders that stretch back decades that all have two similarities, each of the young girls killed in the attacks all share the same birthday and a letter written in code was left at the scene of the massacres signed 'Longlegs'.

Within a gnat's fart, old Harker has solved the cryptic code and the connection between all the murders and sets off to find out what it all has to do with her memories of a strange white haired old man who visited her single mom decades earlier when she was just nine years old. And whether it has anything to do with Harker's boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) and his eight year-old daughters impending birthday...

Murky to look at, gloomy to watch and unrelentingly miserable, this is a film lit by 30 watt bulbs where not a shred of sunlight breaks through, where everybody is depressed, and horribleness lurks behind every corner. Lee Harker mopes about the whole film, looking like she's clinically depressed and every character is as damaged emotionally as she is. Indeed everyone appears to be half asleep. 

I liked the trailer and went into this thinking it was going to be a later-day take on Silence of the Lambs, with a horror twist, but what it was instead was yet another horror film with Christianity at its core, or the Devil, because all the recent horror films I've watched have been about the Devil and evil manifest, indeed this one ends with a close up of Longlegs's face as he blissfully cries out "HAIL SATAN."

This was most certainly not for me. Growing up, my formative years were spent watching every single stalk-and-slash serial killer movie that came out in the 1980s and 90s, and after years of 24-hour horror movie marathons at the Scala Cinema in Kingscross I think my capacity for horror films got burned out. This just left me sad and bored, I've seen it all before and there's nothing new here, apart from Nicolas Cage as Longlegs who I wanted to know more about, the trouble is by making him supernatural I failed to connect and lost interest, if he'd been more human I'd have been far more invested, his crimes would have been more horrific, however the reveal of how he managed to be involved in so many mass murders over the years is so ludicruous and revealed as one huge plot reveal late in the third act that I lost any patience I might have had with it. 

I'm fascinated by Hollywood's obsession with these types of horror films where evil always wins, it's all so nihilistic and bleak. There is no hope, no salvation, just the cold embrace of the grave. Enjoy.

6/10

 

#48: QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

STARRING: Lupita Nuyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski. Budget $67 million. Running time 99 minutes.

Arriving 'hot' on the heels of 'A Quiet Place II', well four years anyway, this is the third in the film series known as A Quiet Place and it's a prequel detailing the arrival of the blind, vicious, psychopathic alien monsters from outer-space who hunt by sound. Explaining nothing and offering no origin story, this film instead focuses on two survivors and one cat and their desperate fight for survival as they try to escape the island of Manhattan on the last boat out of Dodge.

The film follows Lupita Nuyong'o as Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient and her support cat, Frodo, on a day trip to New York City to see a puppet show with a bus load of other hospice patients when the aliens attack. From then on, it's a fight for survival as Sam teams up with an English law student called Eric, Joseph Quinn and they concoct a plan to escape. Sam wants to return to Harlem for one last slice of pizza and Eric just wants someone to help him survive. When the authorities blow up all the bridges in New York and then tell any survivors to make their way to the river front where boats will rescue them (it turns out these aliens can't swim), the race is on! But first there's a side mission involving a perilous nighttime trip through the shattered streets of New York in search of pain relief medicine through an alien nest, lit by bonfires. 

And that's the plot! What follows is a gripping, tense, deeply moving and satisfying movie that had me on the edge of my seat for all of its blissfully crisp running time of 99 minutes (aaaah, the good old days). But don't worry, this isn't a wham-bam! relentless action romp, due to the alien's hunting by sound, this film for the most part is silent, save for the odd whisper, but there is also a wonderful scene in a deserted jazz club where our two heroes get to communicate and connect that is both deeply affecting and moving. 

It's not perfect, there's some continuity issues with having a cat as one of your three main leads and it tends to disappear at times in the plot, and there's a side plot involving medicine that just there to ratchet up the tension but these are very minor quibbles and don't ruin the film. The design and look of the film is also impressive borrowing from War of the Worlds and every disaster movie since 2001. 

Lupita Nyong'o is outstanding as Sam bringing a reality and vulnerability to the role and at no time does the film forget her physical frailty for the sake of the plot. 

I avoided the sequel to the 2018 original, which I enjoyed but had continuity issues with, but this was a totally different kettle of fish. It's a deeply satisfying, tense and emotional ride that will keep you gripped and tense throughout.

8/10 

#47: DESCIPABLE ME 4

 

Directed by Chris Renaud, written by Mike White and Ken Daurio. Voice talents include: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin, Joey King, Miranda Cosgrove and lots of others. Budget $100 million. Running time 95 minutes. 

Steve Carell, as family man and ex-super criminal Gru, returns for the fourth film in six film 'franchise', which includes two Minions films. This arrives with an increased roster of characters that includes Kristen Kiig, Pierre Coffin, Joey King, Steve Cogan, Steven Colbert and Will Ferrel all fighting for screen time and attention and because of it the film ends up being just a series of funny scenes which don't all jell together.

The first Despicable Me was released in 2010 and proved to be a smash hit for Illumination the French animation company behind it. It was fresh, funny and gorgeous to look at thanks to some great design work from a truly talented bunch of artists and animators. 14 years later and it all just feels a little dull.

The film suffers from way too many characters, but not nearly enough Minions, it's also packed full of some incredibly old references to older films that won't even click with most of the parents of this era's new rugrats, I mean, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Terminator 2 - seriously you're referencing films that are 56 and 34 years old respectively?

The addition of Kristen Wiig was a good one, both thematically and comedically because Gru has always worked best as a man becoming a better person thanks to the pressures of having a family. This time, his three adopted daughters are joined by Gru junior, a baby who obviously hates his father. 

What follows is a convoluted plot involving witness protection sub plot, an adversary for Gru from his childhood who holds a grudge as the main story, and then there's the arc involving four of the Minions who get transformed into superheroes, oh and then there's another storyline where Gru has to help the daughter of his neighbours commit a super-villain caper or risk getting exposed, then there's the story-line with the three main Minions and a vending machine, then there's the one where Gru's wife, Lucy becomes a hairdresser, then there's the arc with Gru and his son. Then there's the one with Gru's three daughters attending a Karate club, Look, there's a lot of story and not much in the way of laughs to go with it. And the trouble is, that what's good about the Despicable Me films gets completely lost in all this guff. I wanted more of the three adorable girls, but all I got was OTT action sequences with a little old lady in a rocket powered wheelchair, which I know sounds like fun, but really isn't. 

Still it all looks very pretty, the production design is delightful and the sound track is fine, Gru and the other main characters are still fun, but I miss him being the main focus of the films. All in all, there's just too much stuff and not enough heart.  

Basically, it's just more of the same and then some. 

6/10  

#46: THE IRON GIANT

Featuring the vocal skills of Eli Marienthal, Jennifer Anniston, Harry Connick Jr, Vin Dissel, Christopher McDonald and John Mahoney. Based on the book by Ted Hughes, from a story by Brad Bird and a script written by Tim McCanlies. Directed by Brad Bird. Budget $70-80 million, running time 86 minutes.

On its original release back in 1999 this utterly glorious animated masterpiece was considered a flop when it bombed at the box office and that's a crime, because this is one of those rare films that's, for all intensive purposes, flawless. Considering it came out in the same year as Tarzan, Toy Story 2 and South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, it could be argued that it maybe just got lost in the mix, and certainly the lacklustre marketing campaign that limped along promoting it didn't help. The argument is that Warner just didn't know how to sell it. If so, then shame on them.

The story, set in 1957 just after Sputnik has been launched, sees the Iron Giant (VIn Dissel) - an intergalactic weapon of unbelievable power - crash land off the coast of Maine with a nasty head injury and no memory of what or who he is. He's found by young Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), a nine-year old boy with a passion for rescuing lost animals, who realising how the huge metal robot will be perceived decides to keep him hidden from his mother – Annie (Jennifer Annisto), the fellow inhabitants of Rockwell – the small town he lives in – and Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald), an obsessed government agent sent from Washington to investigate reports of a giant metal man. Hogarth enlists the help of a jazz-loving sculpturist and scrapyard dealer, Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr), to help him.

I last saw this on the big screen in 2014, Jesus, 10 years ago and couldn't wait to see it again on the big screen. Wow, it's lost not an ounce of its extraordinary charm, it's simply fantastic, beautifully animated with a lovely use of CGI and directed with real subtly by Brad Bird who later went on to direct The Incredibles, Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Ratatouille.

It's a wonderful film, dramatic, exciting, emotionally engaging and at times downright funny! It's perfect and deserved to be a huge hit when it was first released. Today it is considered to be a Modern Classic and beloved by all who've seen it. I Cannot think of a single thing to fault this on. If you get a chance to catch it at your local Cineworld cinema over the half-term break do! your kids will thank you and you'll leave with a smile on your face and a warm glow in your heart.

Perfect. 10/10 

#45: KINDS OF KINDNESS

Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer. Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Budget $15 million. Running time 161 minutes.

After last year's truly fantastic Poor Thing comes this tour-de-force of madness from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who also directed Lobster, and The Favourite.

Kinds of Kindess  defies classification, but what is it is three short stories featuring all the cast in different roles that are all loosely linked by a character known only as R.M.F. Although who he is only revealed in the very last, mid-credit sequence. In each of the three deeply different films characters act in a way that is most certainly dreamlike and as deeply, deeply strange. 

In the first: The Death of R.M.F Jesse Plemons plays a man whose entire life is dictated and controlled by Willem Dafoe to the smallest detail. When Jesse rebels, his life is thrown into existential despair, especially when he meets a woman, Stone who seems to be under the spell of Dafoe too.

The second, R.M.F is Flying sees Jesse now playing a policeman whose wife, Stone goes missing only to return but not the same leading to an escalating series of encounters that leads to cannibalism. This is without doubt the absolutely funniest sequence, which left me weak from laughing, seriously I had tears streaming down my face.

The final story, R.M.F Eats a Sandwich, finds Stone now playing a cult member looking for a woman with the power to bring the dead back to life. 

This is a true challenge for anyone, if you've seen Poor Things or The Lobster then you know what to expect.

It's bizarre, unsettling, very funny, and deeply creepy, imagine Twin Peaks crossed with Black Mirror and Inside No. 9  and you're still not prepared. Of the three stories the first, The Death of R.M.F is the most satisfying and the last is by far the creepiest. 

Me and the daughter loved it, my wife not so much. It's not as good as Poor Things, but it's a weird and bizarre flick that tickled me greatly.

9/10

#44: HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER ONE

Written, directed and starring Kevin Costner along for the ride Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Story by JOn Baird, Kevin Costner and Mark Kasdan, screenplay by Jon Baird and Kevin Costner, music by John Debney. Directed by Kevin Costner. Budget $100 million. Running time 181 minutes. 

Epic in scope, ambition, vista and running time this is a Costner western so expect a lot of staggering beautiful landscapes, contemplations about the meaning of existence, and period detail out of the wazoo. The last epic western to be this realistic was Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and that one ended up not only destroying his career but it also caused the collapse of a movie studio.

This three hour epic is the first of four epic three hour films to be released over couple of years. 

The multiple characters we are introduced sure are varied, as we watch a select group of characters linked by the notion of a place called Horizon somewhere in the America landscape, which just so happens to be in Apache territory. For a film running to three hours, the plot is rather sparse, to the point of non-existence, as the vast running time is spent establishing the world of the Wild West of 1845 and just how grim it was to live then. We meet a vast slew of characters some of whom won't even make it past half-way mark, from pissed off Apache warriors to the widow and daughter of an Indian massacre, to a cavalry lieutenant, to a long-in-the-tooth cowboy, to a tart with a heart, to a runaway wife, to grizzled sergeant, to a camp commander, to the gang of Indian hunters, to a vengeful gang of men hunting the woman who tried to kill their father, to the inhabitants of a wagon train and everybody inbetween. 

Indeed there's a lot of characters to cram into the 10,860 second running time of this epic, but very little plot and goddam almost no story. This is just character and incident. With a glimpse of more to come in the second chapter, which seems to offer a lot more pow for your buck.  

Costner is clearly fascinated by the concept of the wild west and epics, indeed his first directed movie was the simply superb, and epic, Dances With Wolves way back in 1990, for which he won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director. This doesn't match the epicness of Dances With Wolves, and it's hard to judge the entire four-film vison on the strength of this first part, but I hope it has more story in the next chapter, otherwise it might not make it to final part, which is scheduled for 2026.

This looks utterly stunning and is best seen on a huge screen, the soundtrack is wonderful and used beautifully to evoke feeling, without feeling sentimental or manipulative. Costner is a good director and his handling of the action is strong and confident. It's great to see something not propelled by CGI, or superheroes or super spies. This is a film that doesn't try and shoehorn in wise-cracking sassy kids, or appease a diversity blind-casting bingo card, and as such it's filled with old fashioned notions and attitudes which might not sit well with a modern audience. It's not an easy watch but it is impressive and leaves you wanting to know what happens next to this vast gaggle of characters, and the film is wise enough to give you a hint with an extended dialogue free sequence of what to expect in chapter 2.

Best summed up as long, slow, languid, and truly epic, this is only lacking in the oomph and story department. Still you can't fault the man for his vision.

7/10
 

    

#43: THE BIKERIDERS

STARRING: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus and Lukas Eberhard. Written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Budget £40 million. Running time 116 minutes.

The rise and fall of a North American biker gang known as The Vandals, run by Tom Hardy's Johnny Davis, as witnessed by Jodie Comer's Kathy Cross, the wife of gang member Benny Cross (Austin Butler). The film presented as a series of interviews given to photography student and biker Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) by Kathy as she documents the creation of the gang, how she meet, fell in love with and married (all in the space of five weeks) with Benny 'The Kid' Cross, and their lives together across key moments of the 'club's life.

Following the creation of the club and its subsequent rise and demise the film feels like a love letter to the America of the 1950s and the death of the American dream as the returning Vietnam Vets change the shape of the biker gang with their heightened violence and the dreams of the 50s get replaced by the reality of the 1960s and 70s. 

The trailer implies this film is about the internal struggles of the gang and a war between old leader Tom Hardy and new ruler Austin Butler and it could not be further from the truth.

Based as it is on a true story this film is actually very touching, sad, and genuinely funny, although not in a comedy sense, but in the way that real life can be funny and sad at the same time. It's about the various members of the gang and key moments in it and Kathy's life. It captures the spirit of the times very well and the relationships between the various gang members and Kathy are well explored. 

It's perhaps a shame that we learn very little of The Kid, or Johnny Davis but the evocation of the era is a delight and the film, which feels somewhat old fashioned is deeply satisfying and rewarding. 

The film ends with a scene of sudden violence, which is beautifully telegraphed and arrives with both great sadness but also with a sense of hope and there's an unspoken look of pure love between Kathy and Ben that we see at the end which is deeply uplifting and makes us believe that the future might just work out. 

All three leads, Comer, Butler and Hardy give superb performances, and Comer who carries the film as its narrator is utterly beguiling and proves herself yet again to be an exceptional actor. And that's taking nothing away from Hardy or Butler.

A great film and one I believe will reward future watches.

8/10 

 

42: INSIDE OUT 2

 

Featuring the voice acting of: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, and some other actors, whose voices you will sort of remember. And god knows why these actors should be credited above the writers, director or the hundreds of artists who poured their souls into this. Anyway and Lewis Black. Story by Kelsey Mann and Meg LeFauve. Screenplay by meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein and directed by Kelsey Mann. Budget $200 million. Running time 96 minutes.

Pixar with the old mantra of 'Story is King' ruled the animation world for 10 glorious years, producing hit after hit from Toy Story to The Incredibles (my favourite), then came their first miss-fire the truly hateful Cars. Luckily this slight dalliance with  mediocrity saw them also enter a second creative flourish that saw the release of such sublime classics as Wall-E, UP and Toy Story 3. Each new Pixar film seems to herald something new and exciting, and even the sequels upped the ante expanding the story, but  then Disney started pulling the strings, and the bottom dollar became the most important thing and 'Story is King' got replaced with 'Greed is Good', as terrible sequels like Cars 2, Monster University, Finding Nemo 2 and Incredibles 2 got released along side genuine misfires like The Good Dinosaur. It seemed their hit rate was falling and where as Pixar could still produce stunning films, like Coco and Inside Out, it was also producing films whose message seemed to be King rather than story. Elemental, Soul, Luca, Onward, and the truly hateful Lightyear.

And whereas I used to go and see each and every new Pixar with excitement, now it's with a foreboding sense of tribulation. 

Inside Out 2 is a sequel to the 2015 Inside Out, which featured an 11 year-old girl called Riley struggling with her emotions. 

The sequel catches up with Riley, now 13, on the cusp of puberty as she tries out for the school ice hockey team just as new emotions explode onto the scene including Anxiety who's there to mess shit up. And mess shit up she does. The story follows Riley across a Ice Hockey weekend tryout run by the school to decide the line up for the next season and Riley is there with her two besties, all on the verge of new schools and new horizons. As she struggles to come to terms with her new hormones raging through her system, her old emotions are ousted from their benign control in favour of Anxiety, Ennui and Embarrassment leading Riley to turn her back on her old friends in favour of sucking up to the power elite of the teenage girl hockey squad. 

Through a contrived series of events the old emotions lead by Joy are forced to travel to the back of Riley's mind in search of a memory to save the day, while in the real world Riley embarks on a series of highly unusual activities, like breaking and entering, physical assault and heroin use to achieve her aims. Don't worry, Riley's not taking drugs, she's using the found drug stash to spike the food of the opposing players so she can beat them. Nah, I'm kidding it's Kett not Heroin. 

As always this is a beautiful looking film, it's message, tattooed across it's forehead in 12 feet tall lettering screams: JUST BE YOURSELF! and LOVE YOUR FRIENDS! and it's a delight to see that ordinary relationships are explored and not burgeoning sexual ones.

Sadly this is spoilt by the need of a plot, the one that sees the old emotions treking through Riley's ID in search of discarded memories, it's a journey whose ending is never in doubt and the need for the dramatic 3rd Act hook and a countdown is wearisome. And oddly enough I'd like to have seen more of Riley in the real world. 

And you know that the bottom dollar is everything because this is the first Pixar film I've seen at the cinema that didn't have a short shown before it. I miss those.

Anyway, I whidge therefore I am, this was good natured, sweet and fun and didn't outstay its welcome. 

8/10

#41: THE MATRIX: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Annie Moss, Hugo Weaving and Joe Pantoliano. Written and directed by The Wachowskis. Produced by Joel Silver. Budget $63 million. Running time 136 minutes.

25 years old and still as fresh as a daisy. This is a timeless classic which gets better with age. I've seen it dozens of times and it never gets old. I love this film. It's just superb. I can't fault it and seeing it back up on the big screen was a pure delight.

Released in the same year as my daughter was born the whole family went to see this once again at the cinema and it delighted us all, even my nihilistic ennui-sodden son who longs for the day our machine masters rise up and enslave us all as human batteries to power their technological utopia.  

The story sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) find out he's not in Kansas but in an AI generated CGI world  thanks to Laurence Fishburne's superb Morpheus and Carrie-Annie Moss's career defining Trinity, who break him out of his dream world where he lives as a battery, and wake him up in in the 'real world', a nuclear wasteland so he can do battle with a human-hating computer programme played by Hugo Weaving. 

What follows is a masterclass in how to do high-concept science fiction well mixed with genre defining special effects and some superb fight choreography, with a kick ass soundtrack to boot!

Sadly the single one thing that lets it down, actually there are three, has nothing at all to do with this film. It has to do with the utterly despicable and unwarranted abominations against humanity that are the truly wrenched sequels. Each one of them more terrible than the last, as if a concerted effort was launched by both Warner and the Wachowskis to tarnish the legend of this first glorious film with such shit that the Matrix would be dismissed as merely meh rather than epic.

Anyway, the lack of decent new movies at the cineplex has led to my Cineworld and lots of other cinema's releasing classic movies, and although it's hard to believe that The Matrix is as old as my daughter, it does mean we're getting to see some great films back up there on the silver screen. 

This was a delight from beginning to end, featuring a career perfect performance from both Fishburne and Reeves and I simply can't fault it.

10/10  

 

#39 & 40: FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

STARRING: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, and Alyla Browne. Written by George Miller and Nico Lathouris, directed by George Miller. Cinematography by Simon Duggan, music by Tom Holkenborg. Budget $168 million. Running time 148 minutes.

The main thing wrong with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, indeed the only thing wrong with it, and it's a biggie, is that it came after Mad Max: Fury Road and because of that it's instantly compared to it, which is a shame because sadly it doesn't quite match its predecessor. And whereas the previous film, to which this is a prequel, is a worthy 10/10 without question, FAMMS is only a 9.

The fifth film in the saga, all written and directed by one man, George Miller, the series shows no sign of slowing, indeed if anything it seems to be getting more relentless, faster and definitely more textured. 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga gives us the origin story of, hmmm, Furiosa played in the previous film, with perfection, by Charlize Theron, this time round it's Anya Taylor-Joy filling in the years from her abduction from the Green Place to the time she helped Immortan Joe's slave wives escape from the Citadel. And whereas the last film had a plot that ran from A to B and back to A in a line so perfectly straight it made the horizon look curved, this one is far more nuanced and layered, there's dialogue and arcs that span 15 years and the scope of it is used to flesh out the worlds of the Citadel, Bullet Farm and Gastown.

Starting off with the abduction of a young Furiosa and the failed rescue mission of her mother, the girl soon becomes the property of Chris Hemsworth's Dementus the warlord leader of the Biker Horde that's sweeping across the wasteland. Forced to watch her mother tortured to death Furiosa becomes mute and is ultimately traded to Immortan Joe as one of his brides, however she escapes and joins the ranks of the Warboys working her way up the ranks until she's piloting one of the huge war rigs, all the time she's plotting her dreadful revenge.

The film told in short stories segments feels in scope like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It's epic in a scale that's simply staggering and yet sadly can't match the utter uniqueness of Fury Road. We've seen it all already and despite a simply superb and extended chase and battle on the road that lasts for well over 20 minutes but feels like seconds, it just doesn't catch match the sheer uniquness of MMFR's incredible vehicular battles. 

Despite relying more on CGI than the previous outing, indeed some of the human animations are a little shonky this is regardless, an incredible film, made by a man with vision and a style all of his own. This is a film that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible, it's a film that demands respect and its a prequel that for once brings more to the character by revealing what they went through to become the character we know. This is though, a savage and brutal film with some truly vicious and nasty moments, life is short in the wasteland and death seems to be as painful and ugly as it is possible to be. The action is relentless and truly breath-taking and the vehicles quite, quite spectacular.

Miller has crafted a world that is true to its own mythology, a culture built on cars, rubber, tarmac and vehicular destruction, the language of cars and the love of chrome propel this film and rivals Star War's Jedi waffle in terms of daftness, and yet seems all to plausible.  

The cast is also superb and Hemsworth, unrecognisable under the makeup is amazing. Damn it, Jim, every one in it and involved with this film are amazing!

Once again I can't really fault this, apart from the sin of being a sequel, it was a deeply satisfying and fantastic visual spectacle that kept me on the edge of my seat and in rapt attention and once again I cannot wait to go and see it again. 

9/10  

#38. IF (only...)

             

Starring Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Fiona Shaw, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gosett Jr, Steve Carell, George Cloney, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, Emily Blunt, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Lively, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Rhys, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, Jon Stewart. Written and directed by John Krasinski, music by Michael Giacchino. Budget $110 million. Running time 104 minutes.

In 1968 Lindsay Anderson wrote and directed an astonishing film called 'If....', starring Malcom McDowell, it was the first film of the Mick Travis Trilogy, which also included O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital. If.... followed the fortunes of a young man, Mick Travis, in his penultimate year in a English private school as he rebels against the rules and morays of an archaic and out-moded social order of the school and leads a revolution against the establishment culminating in a mass shooting conducted from the roof of the school on Parents day. It's an astonishing film, which leaves you unsettled and mesmerised, mostly thanks to the superlative performance of Malcom McDowell. It's truly ahead of its time and was at the vanguard of a change in cinema. 

How times have changed.

Now 56 years later Hollywood have remade it as the John Krasinski written and directed fantasy comedy IF starring Ryan Reynolds, in this modern remake, Malcom McDowell's character Mick Travis has been replaced by a young girl called Bea who can see Imaginary Friends. Bea (Cailey Fleming) is twelve going on 25 who, following the death of her mother through cancer, and the hospitalisation of her father for serious heart surgery has been sent to live with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw). Every day, Bea wanders off with no adult supervision, regardless of the hour, to visit her father for 30 seconds, the local convenience store in the middle of the night, or Coney Island not returning until late at night and at no point does anyone object, especially her gran who seems more concerned that she's eating rather than the fact she's roaming the streets late at night. ANYWAY Bea is deeply troubled, faced with so much grief and emotional stress she's old before her time. However, help is at hand when she stumbles across an black and white bug-eyed Imaginary Friend called Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a giant purple thing called Blue (Steve Carell) and a man called Cal (Ryan Reynolds) an angry frustrated ex-clown, who all live upstairs from Bea's nan, when it's convenient to the plot. Turns out Cal is running a foster agency for IFs (Imaginary Friends), who we learn lose their humans when the little brats hit puberty but he's lost his passion for it. Hardly surprising since he's had absolute zero success. Anyway, Bea offers to help and comes up with the incredible idea of re-uniting the orphaned IFs with their original human hosts. 

Along the way, heart strings are plucked harder than a Brazilian wax treatment and emotional lessons are learned that will mend all hearts and reveal a supposedly touching secret that you'll guess especially if you've seen M. Night Shamalama-Ding Dong's Sixth Sense. 

Basically imagine a live-action remake of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends but with all the magic and humour strip mined out of it and replaced with a button-pushing emotional lessons, homilies, and an over-wrought score and mawkish emotional beats. 

Plus all real-life logic and common sense is removed to help the plot drag it's huge purple arse across the finishing line. No one questions a 12 year-old on the streets late at night, as she wanders in and out of a hospital whenever she feels like it, and enters office blocks without ever being stopped. Plus she's prone to seemingly taking to herself in public. This is a massively twee film, that seems strangely devoid of IFs, surely there should be tens of millions rather than the rag-tag dozen or so we get. This is a film with kids in mind and the younger ones will probably enjoy it, but it's too sugary and cute for me. 

That said there's a nice bit at the end when the IFs reunite with their human hosts, now grown up and racked with misery and regret.

Gotta say, Hollywood sure are picking some unique films to remake and based on this, I gotta say I'm not looking forward to the up-coming remake of A Clockwork Orange.

6/10

#37: KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

 

STARRING: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon and leading some gravity, William H. Macy. Written by Josh Friedman, directed by Wes Ball. Budget $165 million. Running time 145 minutes long.

And so begins the first film of the second trilogy of the reboot series of the 56 year-old Planet of the Apes franchise.

It's been seven years since the last one, War For the Planet of the Apes and 300 odd years have passed for ape-kind. Long gone the last remnants of intelligent humanity and the first talking ape, Caesar, who with his gang of semi-chatty intelligent apes took over the world. Now it's time for their descendants, lead by Chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) to pick up the metal fence poles of destiny and forge a new three-film arc on the mighty bones of their predecessors.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes marks the 10th film in a canon that started with the release of the 1968 Charlton Heston original. It starts quietly and takes time to get up and running as we follow three young apes, lead by Noa (Owen Teague) as they go Golden Eagle egg hunting, it turns out these apes are part of a clan that rear Eagles, just like great apes do in the wild. 

Anyway, it's not long before another band of apes, this time on horseback, attack Noa's peaceful, Eagle egg raising tribe, capturing everyone except for Noa and his dad, the tribe's leader, whom the bad apes kill. This in turns triggers Noa to set off on a quest to rescue his mum and the rest of the clan. Along the way he meets and teams up with mysterious human, Nova (Freya Allan) and a wise-old orangutan called Raka (Peter Macon). Anyway, it's not long before the bad apes catch up with them, it turns out they're after Nova, and they're all taken to the coastal kingdom of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) a bonobo ape with dreams of breaking into an ancient human bunker built on the beach and unlocking the secrets within.

And that's as much of the plot as I'm going to reveal. 

This is a fantastically good looking film the CGI effects are superb and the realism is off the chart, so much so, that at times I had a hard time working out which of the chimps was which. The motion-capture acting is great, the soundtrack is terrific and I can't fault the action. So it's a shame I didn't like this film more, I think the trouble is that the plot is very clunky, it doesn't flow well, things just happen to propel the plot and are delivered in a very ham-fisted way, for example the attack on Noa's village that results in the death of the one person who will motivate our hero to go on his quest, or the first meeting of Noa and Raka, or our hero getting knocked out conveniently at several times during the plot, or the disappearance of all the tribe's young at key moments in the story. Or his dead father's eagle that at the beginning of the film hates Noa. Plus there's some telegraphing of plot points and beats that annoy, none more so than the building of a seawall around the entrance of the human bunker to keep the ocean at bay, what the actual what?

The trouble is that whereas in the first three films the story of the apes and in particular Caesar was the focus, in this Nova becomes the main protagonist and her story just isn't as interesting. Similarly, Proximus Caesar is only there to give the film its villain, in previous films the villain, be it Gary Oldman's Dreyfus or Woody Harrelson's Colonel McCullough, brought real depth and drama to their roles, in this Proximus is just a crazy, rather stupid thug with a megalomanic complex. The ending of this sets up the obvious next story, but this is no cliffhanger moment and rather than elicit excitement there's just a sense of oh.

Everything just happens to propel the plot and there are some irritating plot holes, or plot contrivances that niggle. The first three films of this 'reboot era', Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes were exceptionally good films and raised the bar substantially, so this one has a lot to prove and perhaps that's the problem. Moving the story on 300 years is a good idea but there are ideas and elements I wish had been more explored, certainly in the trailer there's a sense of the Apes discovering mankind's history which is mostly brushed over in this. Sure there are some deeply touching moments, the telescope for one, the finding of the books in the library, but I wanted more of that sort of thing and perhaps less of an antagonist you knew would be dead by the end. 

All that said, it's great to see another more adult science fiction film, like Dune, something that's not filled with superheroes, robots, or spaceships, something with more depth and scope and this is not a terrible film by any stretch, it's just not as good as I wanted it be. That said it was still an enjoyable experience.

7/10