#78: MUTINY

 

STARRING: Jason Statham, Annabelle Wallis, Roland Møller and Adrian Lester. Written by Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis. Directed by Jean-Francois Richet. Budget $50 million. Running time 95 minutes.

Jason's job in this new outing is bodyguard and chauffeur to shipping magnate, Tibor (Ramon Tikaram). Jason or Cole Reed as he's known in this outing has naturally a hidden past, he used to be not only a commando, a special forces operative but also a policeman, highly decorated, stoic, deadly serious, driven, committed, lethal, dangerous, fighter, loner, chess-champion, and most importantly one-man-killing machine. So when his surrogate father figure Tibor gets killed on his watch during a botched kidnapping attempt, that sees Cole framed for the murder of Tibor and death of four policemen and the small army of thugs out to kill Tibor he does the only thing he can. He goes undercover as a sailor on a shipping container ship Tibor owned to find out why Tibor was killed.

That's the plot, sort of, there's other stuff too, a container holds trafficked people who a bunch of pirates want, but mostly it's just Cole on a ship killing off the 20+ sailors under the stewardship of villainous Captain Marko Madsen (Roland Møller), who it turns out had something to do with the killing of Cole's dad some years earlier. Added to the mix is 3rd Mate Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis) shoe-horned into the script because the focus group that shaped and moulded this felt it was a little sausage heavy. So in comes Angie who's more than capable of fighting and killing with impunity.

And so with the scenario set up and the plot running it's just a case of watching JS butcher 20 odd men using his fists, feet, and whatever guns, knives, hay hooks and harpoon guns that come his way. 

But unlike his previous cinematic outing's character, Shelter's Michael Mason, Cole Reed isn't invulnerable and actually gets stabbed in the chest, top left, which after a minimal bleed does no more than to make him even more peevish. 

Then it's Die Hard on a boat, or Underseige: The Remake, as Cole just does his thing in confined spaces before finally confronting Marko Madsen for one last fight. then it's back to Far East to get revenge on the man who set the whole film in motion. 

If you've read enough of my posts you know I like Jason Statham films and this is no exception. It's vicious, nasty, and surprisingly violent. The action isn't edited to death and the gore and injury details are surprisingly not skimped on. This isn't big or clever, it's not creating something new, and it most certainly isn't reinventing the wheel. There's no humour to undercut the violence and the only one liner we get is Cole thanking Tibor for gifting him a Rolex watch that enables Cole to unscrew some screws. 

Like all Statham films it's not big, or clever, it just gets the job done. Bish Bosh. And unlike the American based adventures, he gets to keep his British accent. 

6/10 

 

#77: TONY

 

STARRING: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Dagmara Dominczyk, Rich Sommer, Stavros Halkias, Leo Woodall and Antonio Banderas. Written by Matt Johnson, Matthew Mller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe. Directed by Matt Johnson. Running time 106 minutes. 

It's 1975 and Jaws is playing in a double bill with the classic Charles Bronson movie, Violent City, while staggeringly creepy 19-year old Vassar College student, Anthony 'Tony' Bourdain (Dominic Sessa)lies to everyone he meets, knows or has even the merest of interactions with that he's a budding writer and winner of a writing scholarship, even his family. Latching on with all the focus of a laser guided missile, Tony fixates on fellow student Nancy Putkoski (Emilia Jones) and follows her to Provincetown in Massachusetts, for the summer, after stealing a couple of hundred dollars from his doting father. Once in Provincetown, Tone gets pissed, runs up a debt in a lobster restaurant called the Flagship, loses all his money, gets beaten up and knocked unconscious. In the morning he wakes up in a hammock on the back porch of the kindly owner of the Flagship (Antonio Banderas) and blags himself a job as a dishwasher where he slowly befriends the gang of psychopaths and maniacs who work in the kitchen. Every morning the unnamed Flagship owner throws a bucket of water over Tony, who then spends the day, smoking, taking drugs and flirting with Nancy. All the while Tone pretends to be a writer while not writing anything while secretly observing the practices of the kitchen. Finally he convinces the owner to open a special Friday night dinner service and serve lobster thermidor to impress Nancy, so he can shag her, and ends up burning down the restaurant. Which naturally upsets Antonio who tells Tone he was going to offer him a full time job. To repay the kindly old man, Tone and his junkie friend break into Antonio's house, steal a cooking book and stage a clam bake BBQ on the beach pretending to raise money to rebuild the Flagship. Happily the two young men collect a huge amount of money for 'charity' when Antonio arrives and Tone decides to make amends for being an absolute shitberg for the previous 100 minutes and sods off to culinary school in New York, but only after reuniting with his family so they can forgive him for stealing and running away. Before a series of captions tell us that the real life Anthony Bourdain went on to write a book about kitchens and travel the world. 

And that's it plot wise.

This is a tonally weird film about a miserable, self-obsessed teenage arsehole who thinks the fucking world owes him a living. Convinced of his own greatness and happy to roll over anyone he chooses and to lie, steal and cheat to get what he wants, the young Bourdain is a thoroughly unlikable little shit played horribly by Dominic Sessa who makes Bourdain appear to be a serial killer in training. He spends the whole film looking dirty, unkempt and disgusting, he's a boy who never bathes or brushes his teeth. All he does is stalk Nancy and try and groom her into having sex with him. He spends every second he is with her staring at her as if she's a piece of meat he's about to fillet. Every moment Sessa takes the stage you find yourself subconsciously scratching and fantasying about having a wash once the film is over. 

At no point does Bourdain become even remotely likeable and his grubby, greedy, self-obsessed narcissism becomes quite exhausting. The film presents him as a loner, a rebel destined for greatness but Sessa who spends the film slumped over like a hunchback and peering through greasy curly bangs is so unlikeable there's never any chance you'll buy into his self-obsessed bullshit. 

As an award-winning TV chef, I love a film about cooking but it seems the only nation capable of creating fantastic films about cooking are the French. For comparison, the French gave us the exquisite fare like The Taste of Things, about a banquet of fine wine and food while the yanks gave us Chef, about a food van selling cheese toasties. In fact the best movie America has ever given us about food was The Menu.

Because Sessa's Bourdain is so sleazy and unlikeable you spend the film wanting the foppish haired twat to fail, you're practically egging him on to so so in spectacular fashion, however, when the fail finally arrives late in the third act, it's handled with all the finese of a dine and dash. It's clumsy and implausible, he apparently doesn't realise that throwing buckets of water over an oil fire isn't a good idea and only succeeds in setting fire to the restaurant. Thank fuck then for Antonio who at least offers a subtle masterclass in less is more acting, but that's really about all I've got to praise it. 

It looks okay, some of the scenery is nice but that's all it really has going for it. I think a film following Bourdain after he leaves culinary school for his journey round the world would have been more interesting. Not so this, which arrives with all the pomp and ceremony of a disappointing desert.

6/10

#75 & 76: THE END OF OAK STREET. Revisited

 REVISITED

STARRING: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. Produced by J.J. Abrams, Hannah Minghella, Jon Cohen, David Robert Mitchell, Matt Jackson and Tommy Harper. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Budget $92 million. Running time 99 minutes. 

Can't help thinking the people who churn out the utterly turgid Jurassic Park films must be slapping their foreheads in disbelief and shouting, "So, that's how you do a dinosaur movie!", their last film – the 2025 woeful Jurassic World Rebirth cost a genuinely staggering $254 million dollars to make, while this one a 'mere' $92 million, which in comparison is low budge and ten times better!

It's 1982 and life, or so it seems is good in the Oak Street neighbourhood, there's a massive street party underway and everything seems wonderful and everyone seems happy, although scratch the surface of Platt family, Denise and Gret Platt (Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor) and you can easily see their marriage is on the rocks and their two children, Audrey and Brian (Maisy Stella and Christian Convery) know it. Greg's hiding a secret – that he's lost his job and trying to make ends meet by working as a pizza delivery boy and she's an aspiring novelist who's written something wonderful using her own family as her inspiration. Then one night during a particularly violent lighting and thunder storm, the entire neighbourhood is transported via a worm hole, or ball, back 65 millions years ago to the Cretaceous Period and the family find themselves fighting for their lives as the neighbourhood goes to the dinasours. As their neighbours get whittled down and the family dog goes missing, the family naturally, because it's a film, split up and go off looking for him leading to a genuinely scary sequence that just keeps building. Finally our nuclear family piece together what's happening and how to get home and then late into the third act, something truly shocking and unexpected happens and the stakes rise meteorically leading to a superb third act that does not disappoint. 

Who would have thought dinosaurs could be scary, taking place mostly in the day light, these beasties are feathered, ugly and unbelievably lethal. The action builds nicely and as the town is reduced to a burning ruin, our family keep running looking for a way out. This feels like a Spielberg film, hardly surprising since this is a Bad Robot Production and one of the producers is J.J. Abrams, who for a long time was hailed as the next Spielberg, much in the same way Christopher Nolan is called the next Kubrick.  

This looks, feels and sounds like a Spielberg film, it's packed full 1980s elements, like kids riding their BMX bikes around the neighbourhood, 8-tracks, Battlestar Galactica movie posters, typewriters, and not a mobile phone in sight! Kids take centre stage for much of this and are deeply annoying at times, asking stupid questions, taking ridiculous risks and running off whenever the plot needs them to. 

Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable, action-packed, dramatic and emotional romp, a true rollercoaster of excitement and one that utterly nails the landing. What an utter treat. Sure without Jurassic Park, we wouldn't have this, but boy what we do have is a dinosaur film that's actually scary.

Do yourself a favour and pay Oak Street a visit, you won't regret it!

8/10

REVISITED
Back from seeing this for the second time, I dragged Petra. So, what was it like second time round? 

Don't get me wrong the dinosaur bits are still great, the whole third act is a hoot and it sure is exhilarating, it's just that there are elements that really drag this down and those elements are the family at the centre of it all. Them and more importantly all the male characters in this film – from Ewan McGregor's Greg, to Brian, his idiot son (Christian Convery), their next door neighbour, Mel (P.J. Byrne) and any other random male we see are all stupid, pathetic and ineffective. While every single woman is dynamic, go-getting, pro-active and the utter opposite of pathetic. Denise (Anne Hathaway) is an uber girl-boss in the mould of Alien's Ripley, who shots and fights her way to victory, while their daughter, Audrey (Maisy Stella) is the brain box able to offer her expert opinion on wormholes and quantum physics. Greg is a milk-sop, weak, wimpy, pathetic, he acts like an anchor slowing them all down, offering empty hope and platitudes, while Brian, the boy child, is just there to put himself and his family in constant jeopardy, and whine incessantly and it grates, boy does it grate. Actually, I really wanted Brian to die horribly. He spends the whole film running round the town armed with a child's bow and arrow set and feebly fires arrows at everything missing every single time. That said, he does happen to hit the side of a barn with an arrow, but that's from inside the barn and the wall is behind the dinosaur that's trying to eat him. Oh, how I screamed for that dinosaur to tear his stupid face off, but sadly Brian survived, only to fall off a roof at the most  in-opportune moment, putting his whole family in danger - AGAIN! Although I don't suppose there's a right time to fall off a roof. 

There's also a bizarre lack of other people in this world, when the Pratt [sic] family first realise what the fuck is going on, they go exploring and beside one single neighbour going to work, there is simply no other living person in this neighbourhood. Finally as the film progresses we see bodies and the occasional group of dinosaur fast food (slow-running packs of humans), and corpses but that's it, I think this would have been better if the neighbours had banded together to survive and then been whittled down. 

As we walked home, Pet and I talked about the film and both agreed that the one thing both the children needed was a bloody good thrashing, Greg and Denise are dreadful parents and I for one wish the bastard dinosaurs had eaten them all.

FINALLY, one really important thing for anyone with young children to know. THIS isn't the film for your under 12s, stop bringing them. yet again a performance marred by frightened children who had to be 'rescued' by their parents because this is too violent. It's a 12A for a goddam reason you stupid shits. 

That said, despite the pathetic males, and the annoying family, this was still loads of fun. And more importantly, Pet loved it and gave it an 8/10 so who am I to disagree, 8/10 it remains.

  

#74: SUNNY DANCER

 

STARRING: Bella Ramsey, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Ruby Stokes, Earl Cave, Jasmine Elcock, Conrad Khan, Jessica Gunning, James Norton and Neil Patrick Harris. Written and directed by George Jaques. Running time 106 minutes. 

Ivy (Bella Ramsey) is 10 months into her cancer remission, but living effectively as a shut-in with her loving and supporting parents, Bob and Karen (James Norton and Jessica Gunning) home. Abandoned by her old friends and suffering from survivor guilt, she's terrified of living prompting her parents to enrol her into a four week chemo camp with other cancer survivors, and off she goes reluctantly, defiant and determined not to enjoy it or fit in. But once there she quickly makes friends with a group of young wacky teenagers on the cusp of adulthood including Jake (Daniel Quinn-Toye), Ella (Ruby Stokes), Ralph (Earl Cave), Maisie (Jasmine Elcock) and Archie (Conrad Khan) and locking horns with camp commander Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) the well-meaning rule obsessed and overly cheerful ruler of the camp who naturally becomes her nemesis, until his tragic background cracks Ivy's cynical nature and she begins to emerge from her emotional cocoon. The film broken down into chapters named after each week follows the group as they bond over the four weeks on an overnight camping trip, a day out to a local funfair, go skinny-dipping, fall in love and battle a gang of normals who make the mistake of insulting them leading to a funny punch up. All these events bring the gang of five together and create a bond that only death will end. 

The film offers nothing new and it's tropes and beats are what you'd expect from a coming-to-age comedy/drama about cancer, and yet it's an engaging, funny and kind film. Watching these young people connect and bond is quite powerful, particularly when they gingerly talk about their own cancer experiences. Likewise the relationship between Ivy and Ella, Ivy's room mate is charming and funny. There's no 3rd act fall-out for this gang of survivors, although the film does deal an emotional gut punch in the third act which is quite clumsily telegraphed and in hindsight unnecessary. 

It also does something quite, quite extraordinary, it made me like Bella Ramsey. I find her performance in both the Last of Us and Game of Thorns awful and yet she's expected to carry most of the heavy emotional luggage in this film and does so with grim determination. The rest of the cast are fun and my personal favourite was Ruby Stokes who was genuinely funny. And I think this is saved by being a UK film and not American one, so it avoids giving the young cast lessons to learn, or a bully to thwart or overcome and allows the 17 year-olds to engage in a very touching and sweet sex scene.

Despite some rough edges and clunky direction from director and writer George Jaques, plus some continuity errors that jar, this film also suffers from an over abundance of Ikea dressed sets, which pull you out of the film.

Overall, this is a kind, gentle and fun film about surviving cancer that only suffers from the need to pour on the pathos in the third act, which feels there just to give Bella one last chance to cry and emote. 

8/10  

#73: SUPER TROOPERS 3

 

STARRING: Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, Hannah Simone, Nat Faxon, Chace Crawford, Brian Cox, Lynda Carter. Written by Broken Lizard. Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. 104 minutes long.

The continuing adventures of a group of idiot state troopers as they do very little but prank motorists and each other while swearing, drinking to excess and being marginally crude. I have no desire to do a deep dive into this. I think I saw the first one, the second one was crowd-funded and apparently terrible and this is a soft as putty, vaguely amusing, although not funny, sort of thing. The characters all look the same and it features Brian Cox clearly doing it to pay the mortgage. There's a nice bottom on show, some sexy underwear and a flash of boob, but that's about it. The plot has something to do with drug smuggling and maple syrup. There's some nonsense about the funniest character getting married to the sister of one of the others, but the brother isn't happy and tries to sabotage the wedding. At the stag do, strippers are called in to disgrace the groom to be. Mild racist jokes are made, but they're utterly inoffensive and are mostly unfunny, as is the whole thing. 

There's a talking eco car, a car stunt and a baddy who's hiding in plain sight. That's it. The ending rolls to a halt at the wedding and someone, the baddy is shot and killed. Then there's three weddings and a final post credit sting with Brian Cox and Lynda Carter lying in baths. The whole thing is written by the cast and has all the spark and vim of a ward full of medicated geriatrics. 

I've seen a lot worse and a lot funnier. This is the mildest of films and I doubt any of you will go and see it, and if I'm being honest I'm really not too sure why I went, I knew it was going to be this sort of film and yet I went. Is my life this meaningless that i fill the waking chasm in my soul with this sort of shit? Isn't there a single other thing I could do than sit in a cinema with just two other patrons and watch this. I mean I could have stayed at home with the wife, still recovering from a hip replacement, but oh no, I choose to go and see this. I suppose it was cooler inside and the cherry slushy was nice.

What I will say is that I saw something that deeply shocked me, and no it wasn't the sight of Brian Cox in a bath, it was a trailer for Silent Night 2, a film about an ultra violent Santa Clause that's not out till November. What the hell is wrong with this goddam world, this week, Harrods opened its Christmas department and the cinemas are trailing films for Xmas, it's the middle of August you sons of bitches, we're living through the worst heat wave in living memory and you're already getting excited about Christmas. Put a fucking sock in it you pricks. 

Anyway back to this. I missed the second outing, only vaguely remember the first and will never watch this ever again. I suppose I saw it so you don't have to. So, don't and if you do, then don't say I didn't warn you. 

Middling, dull, and rather bland. Thank god for Brian Cox who gives a 5% performance that still 10 times more than the rest of the regular cast.

3/10 mostly for the fore-mentioned nudity and the occasional chortle. 

#72: DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA

 

STARRING: David Byrne. Written by David Byrne. Produced by David Byrne and Spike Lee. Music by David Byrne. Featuring the Chris Giarmo, Tendayi Kuumba, Karl Mansfield, Angie Swan, Bobby Wooten III, Mauro Reosco, Tim Keiper, Gustaveo Di Dalva, Jacquelene Acevedo, Daniel Freedman and Stephan San Juan. Directed by Spike Lee. Running time 105 minutes.

This is the second concert film for me of the year following the sublime EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. This one, directed by Spike Jones is a filming of the 2020 tour, which due to Covid didn't get released at the time. It's a filmed performance of the New York Broadway run. Back in 2020 I was lucky enough to see this extraordinary performance at the O2 just before Covid shut the country down. It was the second time I've seen David Byrne perform live, the first as part of the Talking Heads tour, was back in 1982, that was an experience that bordered on the religious for me and I was profoundly moved by it. Watching American Utopia live 28 years later was similarly sublime. Sadly this year's David Bryne American Utopia world tour was prohibitively expensive and I had to give it a miss, so when news of this one night screening of the 2020 show was announced I pounced and I'm glad it did.

Featuring among other Burning Down the House, Don't Worry About the Government, Once in a Lifetime, and Road to Nowhere as well as 17 other numbers from Talking Heads: 77 to American Utopia, Little Creatures, Remain in the Light and Fear of Music this really is a visual and audio masterpiece. The band and Byrne surge endlessly across the stage, wearing their instruments and dancing, as they follow their glorious leader from one song to the next, this ebbs and flows and is a vision to behold. As a committed Talking Heads fan I can only fault this for one glaring omission, the lack of Psycho Killer, the song that made me a fan and that I've listened to more than any other song. But that is the only negative I have for this wonderfully moving and extraordinary film. 

Spike Jones directs this wonderfully, the camera never intrusive, flowing with the cast and feels organic. the way the performers move around the small stage is a marvel, performing as they dance, there is no backing track, no speaker stack, no leads and cables just Byrne's crew wearing their instruments, playing, singing and dancing, always moving. I wish I'd seen this on a bigger screen, but regardless it was a joy, and Petra on only her second cinema visit since her hip replacement gave it a very rare, for her, 10/10.

Me I couldn't possible disagree, that would be rude. 10/10

#70: SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY

 

STARRING: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Florence Pugh, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando and Mark (I'm not the Gruffalo) Ruffalo, Marisa Tomei and Liza Colón-Zayas. Written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (not the brother of Scott Sommers, who spells his name Summers). Based on the comic strip created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Budget $225 million. Running time 145 minutes. 

Set four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which saw Spider-Man, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) forced to cast Dr. Strange's spell that robbed the whole of the world of the knowledge that he was Spider-man, including love of his life MJ (Zendaya) and bestest friend in the world, Ned (Jacob Batalon). This Spider-Man has been fully accepted as NY's masked avenger and rightly feted by its populace, there's no J.J. Jameson to sully his name, so he can concentrate on dealing with a seemingly never-ending wave of street level villains from Scorpion, to name but one, as I don't want to spoil anything for you here. That said, there's one wonderful homage to a comic that had me squeaking in sheer delight, and on the Amazing-o-meter it rated a solid 15! He's got a friend in the NYPD, detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), acting as his Commission Gordon, and a love/hate relationship going on with Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) aka The Punisher. Parker lives an almost monastic life from his attic, alone and mourning his lost relationships. Then, one day an audacious attack on Damage Control HQ by a little old lady in an armoured tank, brings Spider-Man face-to-face with a mysterious villain who can leap into the minds of people and take control, but who are they and what does it have to do with Damage Control?

There is a lot of plot, characters and incident to shoehorn into this film, no wonder it's so long, at its core the loneliness of Peter Parker - still grieving for the loss of Aunt May and MJ, but there's also the sense of hope, of a 'brand new day' as Parker goes about trying to build new relationships, like the unlikely one between Parker and Castle, or Detective DeWolff, as well his feeble attempts to somehow reconnect with Ned and MJ. 

The action aspect often takes a sidestep, which isn't necessarily a bad thing although it certainly spoiled a lot of the younger kids in the audience's enjoyment, this is a 12A film, it's quite sophisticated in its language, plus it's not a live-action animated film, there's a lot of talking and I think younger kids are going to be bored by this, one such tyke in the audience last night started playing with his pinging tablet last night and his mother couldn't seem to care less, till several people around her told her to shut it off. 

ANYWAY, the film itself. It was surprising to see so much of Spider-Man in full costume talking and interacting with people, it felt strange, but in a good way and soon became quite believable, he's a very likeable character perhaps the most relatable of all the superheroes. The action is jawdropping, the Hulk, revealed in the trailer so there's no spoiling to mention him here, is great, brief but great, and when he finally goes full Hulk it's fantastic! Likewise the relationship between Parker and The Punisher is funny and rewarding too, but the Punisher struggles to work in a 12 A universe, ultimately his superpower is just shooting guns, but there's a connection between the two that reminds me of Superman Vs Batman, but done better. In fact all of the relationships at play in this film are deeply rewarding, perhaps none more so than the final one between Ned and Parker which really choked me up.

The phrase Super Hero Fatigue gets thrown around a lot these days, but I can tell you there's no such think as Spider-Man Fatigue, judging from the crowd I saw this with. I think the fatigue comes from a hideous glut of truly mediocre superhero fare with generic off the peg stories, and threats too big to comprehend. Not so this, the story at it's core is the important sauce. Give the audience a strong story with a proper emotional core and some stakes they can relate to will win the day.

This isn't a perfect Spider-Man film, for me that would be Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2004). This is a tad too long, and the effects are a little soft and murky at times, the direction by Destin Daniel Cretton is very perfunctory and pedestrian and lacks the visual flair of Sam Raimi, he's just a safe pair of hands. Plus the villain, as surprising as they start out to be is, if I'm being honest, a tad disappointing by the end. The soundtrack, which seems to be mostly pop songs doesn't really register and this feels like a TV movie rather than a spectacle and doesn't quite have that gloss of a big Hollywood blockbuster, which at a price tag of $225 million it should have.

Anyway, exceedingly fun and entertaining and filled with some simply excellent Spider-Man moments, with plenty of action and emotional resonance, but sadly not quite firing on all cylinders. It flew but just didn't quite soar.

So this gets an Amazing Fantasy rating of Tim Boo Ba, or 9/10 if you don't know your comics.