#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

#4: THE FABELMANS

Starring: Michelle Williams, Gabriel LaBelle, Paul Dano, Seth Rogan and Judd Hirsch. Written by Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Music by John Williams (obvs). Budget $40 million. Running time 151 minutes. 

As we bask in the a glut of Award Season movies, give pause of thought for our poor bottoms, flattened into hard little chairs for extended periods of time as films arrive that wallow in at well over two and a half hours, nearing three hours in length. Woe betide a film maker worth his salt who dares to put out something that only 90 minutes long, he will be strung up by his short and curlies and left to ponder his transgressions. 

And so we have The Fabelmans (not to be mistaken for Meet the Feebles, Peter Jackson brilliant first film, which will have you laughing your socks off). Not so Steven Spielberg's 34th movie to date, this is 'coming-of-age' drama based loosely on his own life sees our plucky hero Sammy taken to see his first movie The Greatest Show on Earth at the tender age of 8. It has a profound effect upon his life and sets the course of his destiny. And for the next 140 odd minutes we'll marvel at the highs and lows of this young boy's life through primary school, high school and college as he navigates the boy scouts, some anti-Semitic abuse, some house moves and the break up of his parent's marriage.

But the plot really doesn't matter, this is the story of a young boy with a vision and an obsession that seals his destiny for ever. 

Everything about this film is top-notch, the direction, obviously is peerless, the music outstanding, the performances, the art direction indeed everything. And yet two things bugged me. Two things that shouldn't have but did. The first is Paul Dano, who I just don't like as an actor and the second is Seth Roger who I really dislike as an actor, although I found him far less objectionable here as he plays it straight. In the case of Paul Dano, it's the size and shape of his head that really narks me and the way he looks like he's permanently squeezing out a silent but deadly fart.

I have nothing to add, I was engrossed and loved the young boys homemade movies which became more dramatic and accomplished with each outing, culminating in a very entertaining High School documentary which leads to a very funny punchline. 

But for me the standout scene, the one that made the hairs stand up on my arms was the last scene where the young Sam gets to meet his hero John Ford, the director played to perfection by none-other than David Lynch who gives our hero a truly fantastic piece of advice about movie magic which had me roaring with laughter.

I left with a warm glow and a sense of deep satisfaction, any film about the creative process fascinates me and one about the birth of the creative process is a rare treat indeed. Definitely one of my films of the year!

9/10

#3: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

STARRING: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Buric, Iris Berben, Vicki Berline some other people, then Woody Harrelson. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund. Budget $15.6 million. Running time a not at all brief 147 minutes far too long.

Back in 2003 the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which included a £50,000 prize, went to Vernon God Little, a book described by some in the intelligencia as 'the funniest book of the Century'. I read it and discovered it wasn't. In fact, it was one of the most boring and unfunniest books I had ever read. However, I did learn a valuable lesson that day. If a book or film has been lauded by the critics as the 'funniest thing ever', or won the Booker Prize, or the Palme d'Or, then not only is it not funny it is indeed going to be both deeply unfunny and frankly unbelievably pants.

Now, 20 years later Triangle of Sadness is released, a film described by New Yorker as: 

"a movie of targeted demagogy that pitches its facile political stances to the preconceptions of the art-house audience; far from deepening those ideas or challenging those assumptions, it flatters the like-minded viewership while swaggering with the filmmaker’s presumption of freethinking, subversive audacity".

This satirical black comedy about how disgustingly the over privileged and super wealthy are won last year's Cannes Palme d'Or (and an eight minute standing ovation). 

I can only assume that last year two films starring Woody Harrelson about the super rich onboard a luxury yacht where released at the same time and with the same title, one was fantastic and the other was the one I saw, which turned out to pretentious, pompous, self-important and actually really, really rather boring.

The plot, sees two over-privileged models land a free trip onboard Jackie Onassis's old yacht which is filled with only horrible super rich shits, the serving staff, the maids and finally the engine room boys and we learn that even among those below stairs there exists a hierarchy. 

For the next hour and 45 minutes absolutely nothing happens, until, communist and alcoholic Captain Woody Harrelson turns up for the trips obligatory Captain's Dinner meal which quickly turns into the Mr. Creosote scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life as the ship hits an extreme storm and the projectile vomiting and liquid diarrhoea are explosively released from both ends .  

Then the ship is attacked by pirates and sunk. The next day the survivors wash up on a desert island and you realise this is a remake of the vasty superior 1957 The Admirable Crichton starring Kenneth More. There on that beach, the ship's hierarchy is shattered and the poor become the rulers and there, dear reader is where my patience finally snapped and I gave up. Yes, after having spent over £20 to see this literal piece of crap, I stood up, grabbed my coat and left with my Brother-in-Law in tow, leaving behind an utterly empty cinema. 

I had enjoyed Ruben Östlund's last film, The Square about an Art Museum installation but not so this self indulgent mess of a film, the points it raises are facile, the pace leaden to the point of self-induced narcolepsy and the humour, what little exists, relies exclusively on the Captain's Dinner scene and Woody Harrelson drunken tirade over the ship's tannoy and once he's gone, so did my patience.

When I got home I looked up how it ended on Wikipedia and thanked the gods of cinema from saving me from this wretched piece of twaddle. 

A total bag of piss, tied up with string and run over by a truck carrying liquid shit to a vomiting convention. Not worth even checking out for the Captain's Dinner. 

Wretched beyond belief. 1/10  

#2: BABYLON

 

Starring Margot Robbie, brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo Li Jun LI. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle. Budget $80 million. Running timer 189 minutes, or three hours and nine minutes.

Imagine if Singin' in the Rain remade in the 21st Century with added drugs, sex and violence and you have Babylon. Set in 1926, Babylon follows the fortunes of four characters, Brad Pitt's silent movie star Jack Conrad, Margot Robbie's wannabe sex siren Nellie McRoy, Diego Clava's fledgling Mexican movie producer Manny Torres, and Jovan Adepo's African American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer as they navigate the silent days of Hollywood and the introduction of sound to the movie industry. It's the classic rise, and fall story for our four lead characters as their lives intertwine and collide and in some cases spectacularly implode. 

The first hour of this three hour plus visual onslaught is an extraordinary visual and audio delight of such energy and frenzied relentless kinetic fury that left me happily dazed, confused and breathless. It's an arms-flung-wide celebration of the golden age of cinema and I found myself utter in love with it. I was desperate for it to retain that sheer bravado of that opening hour for entire length of its running time, but sadly, it couldn't and oddly it's when Manny Torres travels to NY to see Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer that the film starts to loose momentum. Indeed you could say it's the introduction of sound that not only changes the shape of cinema forever but also this film.

Apart from the staggering opening Hollywood party of such wanton drunken debauchery as to beggar belief, There's an extraordinary sequence that takes place in a dusty field outside Los Angeles where a dozen different movies are being made at the same time, that makes this film so astonishing, it's pure unadulterated chaos. The frenzied action and pure energy of the films being filmed leaves you bludgeoned with delight. It shows us simultaneously the making of a Middle-Ages war epic and Nellie's first movie and it's glorious. Indeed the scene where she cries on demand take-after-take is superb. 

But as sound comes in and the studios change, the gonzo rawness becomes replaced with a machine-like quality that sees our four heroes fortunes change and not all for the good, or worse.

Brad Pitt's Jack is the funniest of the four, his Conrad the most at ease in this world and he stumbles from one disastrous marriage to the next, and from one debauched party to another. Margot's Nellie gives both the most powerful performance and the most divisive, while Manny our touchstone ultimately becomes the most ridiculous particularly during the coda moment of the film. Sadly Jovan's Sidney Palmer, perhaps one of the most interesting characters, becomes just a side note.

And giving the proceedings its furious heart beat is the music, a glorious frenzied jazz funk soundtrack by Justin Hurwitz which matches proceedings perfectly. 

Sorry, way too many superlatives. 

And yet despite all this positive shtick, this doesn't really nail the landing. Sure, it's a visual tour-de-force that left me dazed and breathless, but it left the group of chums I saw this not only unmoved, and divided but openly hostile about it.

That it apes Baz Luhrmann style too much (true), that Margot Robbie's character is horribly anachronistic, that Sidney Palmer, the only black actor feels badly short changed and that the ending set in a cinema with Manny (now a late middle aged man) watching Singin' in the Rain is badly fumbled and ludicrous and yet despite all that I was still profoundly moved and delighted by the sheer power and energy of its opening hour.

8/10

 

#1: M3GAN

Starring Alison Williams, Jenna David, Violet McGraw. Written by Akela Cooper for a story by Akela Cooper and James Wan. Directed by Gerard Johnstone. Running time 102 minutes. budget $12 million.

When Cady, a young girl is orphaned she's sent to live with her next of kin, Auntie Gemma who just so happens to be a roboticist working for a high-tech Seattle toy company making artificially intelligent toys for children because you know it's a movie.  

Obviously being a scientist, Gemma is incapable of just giving her grieving Niece, who let's not forget lost both her parents just two days early, a hug and instead gives her a AI powered robot doll called M3GAN. This is bonded to the child and very quickly, I mean with in minutes develops a deep connection with Cady, becoming her best friend, surrogate parent and fanatical defender. Obvs, M3GAN is perhaps a tad over protective and sets about protecting the young Cady the moment anyone, say Gemma's cranky next door neighbour, or that kid at camp, does anything that upsets, potentially might injure or god forbid bullies Cady. 

Soon, Gemma begins to realise that maybe giving your niece a lethal, walking talking AI robot wasn't the smartest thing to do especially when the bodies start stacking up and said doll goes on a killer rampage at your place of work on the eve of a big presentation. 

An absolute hoot, not big or clever (hee hee, I almost wrote cleaver), but nevertheless entertaining. M3GAN is excellently realised using a combination of a small very flexible young girl, a very creepy mask and some subtle CGI. 

I wish this had had more teeth and been a tad more horrific, because it's a great idea, as long as you ignore the ridiculous plot contrivances. A slow start to the new year although this wasn't a bad way to get things going.

7/10