#31: FINAL DESTINATION

STARRING: Seann William Scott, Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Tony Todd. Written by Glen Morgan, James Wong and Jeffrey Reddick, from a story by Jeffrey Reddick. Directed by James Wong. Originally released in 2000. Budget $23 million. Running time 98 minutes.

A group of excited teenage high school kids board a plane for a trip to Paris. One of the kids, Alex Browning (Ali Browning) has a horrific premonition that the plane is going to go down in a ball of fire and gets himself and five other passengers thrown off the plane. When the plane promptly explodes killing everybody onboard, Alex is ostracised by both the other survivors and the families of the victims. He's also a person of interest for the FBI who hound him constantly assuming he had something to do with the disaster. When the survivors start dying in a series of ghastly, gruesome, elaborate W.H.Robinson style accidents, Alex realises that because they've all cheated Death, Death is now coming for them, can Alex find a way to survive? 

What follows is an enjoyable, gory, slasher film, where the deaths cause you to laugh with amusement, so inventive and outlandish are they. You find yourself trying to second guess how each death is going to occur. Naturally, when I first saw this the shocks worked brilliantly, this time round, you remember what's about to occur. Although that doesn't stop this from still being a lot of fun. 

It's directed and edited well, the performances didn't win any Oscars and it's done and dusted in 98 minutes. It's not a film you need to rewatch over and over again, but once every 25 years seems about right. 

Overall, this isn't big, or clever, it looks a tad cheap and low budget, but  nevertheless it's silly, exceedingly gruesome and loads of fun. Like watching 24 HRs in A&E, but one where you not only get to see the accidents too. 

7/10 

#30: THUNDERBOLTS*

STARRING: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Screenplay by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo. Directed by Jake Schreier. Budget $180 million. Running time 126 minutes.

Facing impeachment, Congress woman and C.I.A. Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) decides to destroy all evidence of her criminal experiments and illegal covert activities by sending all of her various freelance enhanced agents, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) to a top secret storage facility in the desert to kill an intruder and destroy everything they find inside. However the various characters all discover they've been lied to by Fontaine who wants all of them dead and they find themselves locked deep underground in the complex which is counting down to destruction. While bickering and fighting, they manage to release a young man called Bob, who has no idea where he is or why. Together they manage to escape the base and find themselves on the run from Fontaine and the might of the US Intelligence services. Luckily Yelena's dad, Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian (David Habour), helps them escape and with the aid of Bucky the Winter Solider (Sebastian Stan) the gang of misfits team up to stop Fontaine and her incredibly powerful new enforcer called Sentry.

Well, here we are the 36th installment of the MCU and the last film in the utterly terrible Phase Five series that has included some of the worst movies in the entire canon including: Pant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum-tedium, The Marbles, and Crapton Americant: Bland New World. As well as the mediocre Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. and the candy floss emptyness of Deadpoo and Wolverwhine.

But what of Thunderbolts*? Well, what an utter and unexpected surprise, this one ain't just not bad, it's actually pretty goddam good! A very satisfying, funny, action-packed and engaging movie with good performances, especially from Florence Pugh who is this film's MVP, and backed up by solid turns by the rest of the cast and a very game Julia Louis-Dreyfus who brings a glorious level of comedic malevolence to the role of Fontaine.

The time flew by, there was no saggy middle, and it had not only a strong emotional arc but also a good third act structure and conclusion. And I'm as surprised by this outcome as you probably are. I'm sure, like me, you probably can't see the point in a film featuring a bunch of characters you either don't know or can't remember, but wasn't that the same for the first Guardians movie? And this one too creates something enjoyable with an unknown cast of characters. 

Sure it's not perfect the ending feels a little rushed but regardless it's thoroughly entertaining, satisfying and the cast have good group chemistry together. The humour isn't forced or too much like the last two Thor movies, and the the film isn't flooded with too many pixels like Pant-Man. And finally there's no spinning vortex of doom and no 'oh my god the whole world, sorry Solar System, sorry Universe is going to end.' threat. Even if it is city-sized.

Actually going to go and see this again as a double bill with The Accountant 2.
Hopefully this will see off the curse of super-hero fatigue to do well at the box office, cos it deserves too.

And as always with these films there are two post credit stings, the first is an amusing throw away but the second at the very end had me squeaking in delight, although I guessed what was about to occur, it's for once well worth the long slow crawl through the credits.

8/10

#29: STAR TREK III: REVENGE OF THE PITH

STARRING: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiamrmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Phil Daniels, Kenny Baker and Frank Oz. Written and director George Lucas. Music by John Willimas. Produced by Rick McCallum. Budget $113 million. Running time 140 minutes long.

I remember that when this originally came out in 2005 the critical opinion of it was, 'Thank god it's not as shit as The Phantom Dennis, or Attack of the Clowns.' Well, 20 years has now passed since it was first released and since I last saw it on the big screen so an opportunity to rewatch this again on the big screen was an opportunity not to be missed.

The plot would take far too long to synopsis, but in a nutshell. This film chronicles the final birthing pains of an evil Empire that will rock a galaxy far, far away a long time ago.

Boy was there a lot to cram or shoehorn into this one. It's a film that doesn't have time for contemplation or pensive moments, not when you've got a whole galaxy-spanning order of Jedi to eradicate, an iconic villain to create, and several future plot points and holes to establish. Lucas races through incident and battle at breakneck speed, from one planet to another, one light-sabre battle to blaster attack at a time. And all the while you get the sense that Lucas stands behind the camera with his bull horn screaming, "Go faster! Quicker! Hurry up! We've got to get 305 set-ups done today!" And woe-betide anyone fluffing their lines!

Lucas who wrote and directed all of the prequels does so without any studio interference and as such he has free reign to do whatever he wants, and what he wants is to shot all the boring human interaction stuff as quickly as possible, so he can be left to noodle around with creature and space stuff design. Because anything other than flat-out special effects is deeply lifeless and dull.

And to speed up the film making process Lucas opts to shoot everything with three cameras, two for one-shots and a third for a two-shot pick up and then gets everything he needs in one take. To paraphrase Blain from Predator, "He ain't got time to reshoot." There's a scene in License to Kill where Bond (Timothy Dalton) interrogates Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) on a bed, it's directed by John Glenn and edited by John Groover, it's an incredible scene in terms of editing and camera cuts, try watching it and counting how many times the camera cuts and how many camera angles there are. Lucas is the antithesis of this approach and as a result, These films have a daytime TV soap quality about them. Everything is perfunctory at best.

However, all that said, this wasn't the horrible mess I remembered, and I found myself rather enjoying it, as long as I just allowed it all to wash over me. Definitely the best of the prequels. There's pathos here, but no joy, no fluffy critters for the kids either, but lots and lots of smashing space battles. That opening battle and the rock-ship crash landing are spectacular and well worth it on the big screen. However the endless light sabre battles are repetitious. Sadly, unlike the originals time has not been as kind to the SFX, which all look a tad fuzzy and clunky and was it really this dark? The performances save one are pretty good given the material they have to spout although Hayden Christensen really is the acting equivalent of a plank of wood mated with a boiled ham. 

The dialogue is laughable at times and the amount of exposition required of the cast to deliver borders on a hate crime. There are elements that are hilariously bad, Princess Amadala's death, Ben not finishing off Anakin as he lies there burning in the lava, and any time Hayden's on screen, but there's also genuine horror, the slaughter of the younglings and General Grievesses death by blaster at the hands of that cheating Jedi scum Kenobi, who has to cheat to win, no wonder the Empire won.

Oddly enough I'm pleased to read this did good business on its re-issue taking a respectable $18 million in its first weekend. It shows there is hope for Star Wars on the big screen, I just wish there was less of the TV shows to dilute to brand and make it less special. There used to be something genuinely exciting having to wait between films and the anticipation was intoxicating. 

8 out of 10 get this one does. 

#28: THE ACCOUNTANT 2

 

STARRING: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda and J.K. Simmons. Written by Bill Dubuque. Directed by Gavin O'Connor. Budget $80 million. Running time 132 minutes.

Usually Affleck acts as if being an insanely wealthy Hollywood actor and director is extremely hard work and he's really above it all, he comes across as bored and weary, and you can almost hear him sigh as he sags his huge shoulders and shuffles off frame. Not so with Accountant 2, where he doesn't have to show any emotion at all, indeed I imagine that the director pleaded with him to act at just 40% and Ben enthusiastically stepped up to the plate and delivered. However, this isn't a bad thing here, in fact it's an absolute boon. 

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a high functioning autistic beloved by Hollywood, one who is super fantastic at one, or a, particular set of skills and slightly awkward in social situations in a way that is usually amusing for the audience. In Wolff's case he's a financial genius, a gifted forensic accountant who launders and manages money for various high level criminal organisations during the day and one of the world's greatest assassins at night. But he's not unique, cos his estranged brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal) is also a fantastic world class assassin who has his own anti-social problems mainly his management of anger. 

Nine years ago we meet these adorable siblings for the first Accountant film, which was a far more sombre and serious affair that only came alive when the two Wolff brothers finally got together for a team-up and glorious shoot-out against a veritable army of nameless goons in the final act. 

This time round, the film makers, returning writer and director, realise that there's gold to be mined from their two male leads' chemistry and gets them together in the first ten minutes and boy does it pay off. The actual story doesn't really matter, it revolves around a Mexican child trafficking gang and another super-supreme assassin, this time a woman called Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) who's somehow connected to a mysterious family trafficked 10 years earlier. Cynthai Addai-Robinson and J.K. Simmons return to reprise their roles of Treasury agents Marybeth Median and Raymond King.

It's taken nearly 10 years for this belated sequel, which is a shame, cos based on this outing the bromance and chemistry between the two leads is almost intoxicating. Their bickering banter and brotherly petulance is very funny and makes this film a real delight, and while this isn't a full-blown comedy, its humour is a welcome addition and hints at a sustainable franchise. 

Entertaining, satisfying with good action sequences and meaty action sequences. I'm already looking forward to rewatching this again as a double bill. And the inevitable sequel which I guarantee won't be 10 years in the making.

8/10

#27: WARFARE

 

STARRING: D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo and Michael Gandolfini. Writtten and directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland. Budget $20 million. Running time 95 minutes.

Based on testimonies of the actual platoon whose experiences this film is a truthful re-enactment of. The film follows what happens when U.S. Navy SEAL platoon Alpha One takes over an ordinary Iraq one story house in Ramadi prior to the Battle of Ramadi. The film takes place in real time to give it an massive dose of reality, as if experiencing what is about to unfurl in ghastly close-up gory detail isn't immersive enough. What follows is the platoon trapped and fending off repeated attacks as they desperately wait to be rescued, while the two families who live in the house have to shelter in a bedroom wondering if they'll live to see the morning, their plight isn't of any interest to the film makers, who are far more interested in our plucky bunch of heavily armoured warriors and their toys of warfare. 

Most of the war re-enactments I've ever seen usually consist of people dressed as either roundheads or cavaliers staging battles, skirmishes and sieges of the English Civil War, I hope this more modern updating doesn't become the norm, it'll make for some rather unsettling Bank Holiday weekends if we have to sit through IEDs, battlefield surgery and airstrikes. 

This isn't a fun watch, it's grim, ghastly and deeply immersive, you'll feel the shockwaves and find yourself tense and shell-shocked by the events. You'll watch a whole platoon of sweaty, gear-ladden troops besieged and shreded by mostly unseen enemy, who when they are revealed, look nothing more than a group of sheep herders holding AK47s. 

It's loud, brutal and exhausting. But it's not a film, there's no usual cinematic structure, no story arc, or secondary story, no emotional beats or witty dialouge. Just a barrage of gun-fire, explosions, mayhem and battle field gore all in real time. It's truly hammering. And even now two days later I don't know how I feel about it. I see no reason to watch it again.

As an exercise in film making it's a masterclass, Alex Garland is proving to be a truly unique and impressive film maker, but for me this has no emotional core, and because it's so real there's no sense of it being a story in the true sense of the word, it's a clever warts-an'-all re-enactment which seems obsessed in making sure that the exact number of pebbles on the road are correct. It's hard to work out who's who and ultimately the relief you finally feel when the last bullet is fired is the true highlight of the film, because you never need to watch it again.

That all said this is a technical tour-de-force and the realism borders on perfection. But I don't want that from my cinema I want escapism and larger-than-life experiences.  

7/10

#26: SINNERS

 

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'COnnell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Buddy Guy, Delroy Lindo and Li Jun LI. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler. Budget $100 million. Running time 138 minutes.

It's 1932 and identical twins Elijah and Elias, Smoke & Stack (Michael B. Jordan) return to Mississippi after 10 years working for Al Capone. Armed with a truck load of stolen booze and weapons the brothers buy up an old saw mile from a Klansman before recruiting friends young and old to run the Juke joint, including Sammie 'Preacher Boy' Moore (Miles Caton) - a young and up-and-coming guitarist, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) - childhood friend of the brothers and ex-lover of Stack, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) - the mother of Smoke's dead daughter, and Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) - an alcoholic blues legend drinking himself to death between sets. Together this disparate group friends and family convert the old saw mill and get ready for their opening night. However when sinister Irish folk singer Remmick (Jack O'Connell) and his two companions turn up late in the night and ask to be let in, the night quickly escalates into a genuinely unsettling supernatural slaughter-house as the white interlopers reveal themselves to be vampires. 

From the look and feel, to the superb music from Ludwig Göransson, the excellent acting and direction, Sinners is an absolute delight from beginning to end. It's reminiscent of the equally superior 1987 movie, Near Dark and both succeed in making their vampire protagonists deeply unsettling and disgusting. 

This is a deeply satisfying, energetic and gorgeous looking film and I goddam loved it! Definitely the best horror film I've seen in an absolute age!

One word of warning, you HAVE to stay to the end, don't get up and go as soon as the credits start or you'll miss something very important, and no, it's not a hateful dose of sequel-bating but rather a very satisfying coda to what has gone before.

9/10 

#25: ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO

 

Starring: John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Produced by Peter Worsley, Kevin MacDonald and Alice Webb. Edited by Sam Rice-Edwards. Directed by Kevnin MacDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards. Running time 100 minutes.

Creating an exact replica of John and Yoko's Greenwich Village apartment as a framing device, right down to over-flowing ashtrays, album sleeves strewn across the floor and half drunk wine glasses, the film follows the first 18 months of John and Yoko's life after they left England for good to settle in the US from 1971-1973.  Using footage from the Free the People and One to One benefit concerts, taped phone calls, vintage news coverage, adverts and recorded interviews from the era, while at the same time documenting Nixon's successful re-election campaign and the growing anti Vietnam War movement and the birth of civil disobedience. 

Watching the two of them together and listening to them talking, or being interviewed is a unique experience, you get to hear a side of him, in particular, which is real, you glean an insight into their relationship and then you get to watch him perform and it's almost profound.I truly adored the Get Back documentary, I've always been drawn to witnessing the creative process in action and although you don't get to see that here with Lennon, you do get to see him perform and it's nothing short of mesmerising. 

This film offers a deeply fascinating glimpse into a bygone era and even if you're not a fan of Lennon or the Beatles it's nevertheless an incredible slice of social history from over 50 years ago and on that basis alone is well worth the admission price. You'll marvel at how much our world has changed, and tragically the miserable parallels with the present and the rise of a fanatical celebrity worshiping Right. The 70s seems so innocent, so naive, it never ceases to amaze me how much the world has changed in a fantastically short period of time. 

All that said, there is also a terrible sense of foreboding in this movie. You the viewer, know what is to befall Lennon just seven years on from the events of the film and I found myself just wishing I could some how let him know, so engaging and personal was the film and just how engaging it was. 

This was a deeply satisfying an enjoyable cinematic experience. On a musical front we are most certainly being spoiled by films this year. My top three films of the year so far are all musical documentaries or bio pics. Roll on Pink Floyd at Pompei.

9/10