#54: BLACK ADAM

 

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, Quintessa Swindell, Bhodhi Sabongui and Pierce Brosnan. Written by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Budget $195 million. Running time 124 minutes.

This is the role of Dwayne Johnson's life, he's been campaigning for it for the past 15 years, he's perhaps the second most charismatic person on the planet and he's built like a brick shit house. It's had 195 million dollar thrown at it, it's got Jimmy Bond (Pierce Brosnan) in it too and it's being hailed at the film to put DC movies back on the map! What could possibly go wrong?

How about the following 124 minutes? From the minute this starts to the second it finally drags its tedious, boring carcass across the finishing line. 

The plot to this has been plucked from the generic super hero playbook and offers nothing new, the characters are all, every single one of them shit, super, human and villain alike. The plot holes are so numerous that you could use this film to sieve rice. It steals from far better super hero films, and indeed during the film, the X-Men rang and asked for the Lockheed jet back, and Professor X asked for his mansion. The Ant Man called in to get his growth doo-hickey back, Storm her wind control powers and Spartacus his origin. 

And through it all smashes Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson showing all the range of a rock. Normally a throughly likeable actor in this he's reduced to acting only through his eyebrows and biceps. His character emerges from 5000 years of sleep speaking perfect English, it's never explained why, and embarks on a campaign of destruction, we learn his backstory, sorry typo, we guess his back story right from the get go and you can spend some time playing plot/dialogue bingo.  

Often in these sort of films you're left wondering where all the other heroes are, the ones who could deal with Black Adam with one hand tied behind their backs, you know Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, or Fishman, or even Cyborg, but apparently they were all out when Amanda Wallis from the Suicidal Squad called up to ask for their help, so instead we get Atom Smasher and some girl who has super wind. Although sadly it's not the bum kind of wind. It's a question that comes back repeatedly throughout this crushingly boring film, and where as Dr Fate (Brosnan) and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) are fine they really do seem stupidly under powered to deal with Captain Egghead. Come to think about it, where the hell is Shazam himself, Captain Marvel?

The generic baddies cum cannon fodder in this film called Intergang are so inept it's staggering, luckily they all  speak in broad cockney accents, that is when they're not whizzing about on flying bikes. They are legion in number and die in their hundreds, while the inhabitants of the fictitious country of Kahndaq die in their thousands, mostly through collateral damage during the utterly generic final boss level showdown, which features our old friend from DC movies, the Spinning Vortex of Doom (soon to get his own comic). 

It's not just the story that's shit. The effects are pretty box standard too, the lack of gravity niggling, the repetitive overly violent action nasty, the endless debates about justice and good versus evil are crushingly amateurish, although it's the soundtrack that deserves a special mention. It's never lets up, not for a single second, when it's not mawkish full orchestra, with strings, it's dropping snippets of classic rock songs into the mix or the latest from Canyard West. It's intrusive, bland and oh so generic.

Apparently this steaming pile of cinematic feces heralds a new beginning for the DCU and if this is the case god help us all. Recently Warner Bros who were purchased by Discovery, cancelled the Batgirl movie days from complication because it wasn't good enough. Having seen this piece of crap the mind boggles at how bad it must have been.

You'll come for Dwayne Johnson and you'll leave muttering about how you've just lost 124 minutes of your precious life you're never getting back and how that's it for you and super hero movies, you're not going to see another one. Well, first off I don't want to depress you further, but it's actually more like 180 minutes when you factor in the ads and trailers, and secondly all that shit about you not going to see another one of these terrible films is just bunkum. You'll all be out in force for next month's Wanker Forever movie, cos that one's Marvel and they're always good!
Well don't say I didn't warn you.

So, m'lord in summing up, this was boring, generic, stuffed full of plot holes, stupid inane dialogue, tedious action and featuring a pantheon of second tier heroes you've never heard of but who all remind you of Marvel characters. 

God, it's taken me almost as long to write this as watch it so I'm stopping now.

3/10 This is for the first fight Black Adam has with the Intergang out in the desert, which despite 'borrowing' from Quicksilver and The Flash, still manages to be exciting. Plus it name checks C.C. Beck and Bill Parker, the creators of Shazam and Black Adam. 

It seems some folks are excited by the prospect of the post credit teaser, well it's not worth sitting through 124 minutes to get to, mostly because it makes all of what's gone before seem like nothing more than a boring prologue. 

#53: THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

 

Starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, music by Carter Burwell, Pat Shortt, JOn Kenny, Gary Lydon, Shelia Flitton and David Pearse. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Running time 114 minutes.

It's 1923 and the Irish civil war is in full swing on the mainland, while on a small island off the coast of Ireland two men's friendship comes to a sudden dramatic end, when folk musician Colm Doherty (Brendan Glesson) tells his life-long friend and drinking buddy, nice but dull, Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) that he no longer wants to be his friend. Colm explains that he wants to spend what life he has left having interesting conversations and creating music, something to mark his existence, and not wasting it listening to Pádraic's increasingly boring conversations about, among other things, the things he found in his pigmy donkey's shit. To prove he's not larking about, Colm threatens to cut off a finger each time Pádraic tries talking to him. 

This is an extraordinary film that aches with sadness, a film about loss, loneliness, and love both lost and longed for. Visually breathtaking, from the first overhead shot of the cloud covered unnamed desolate and wind swept, yet beautiful, island to the last when the camera flies away the way it came, everything about this film is a delight, every performance and every line of dialogue. 

Written and directed by Martin McDonagh whose previous films include Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and In Bruge, Banshees really is one of the best films I've seen all year. Farrrell, who is the main focus of the film is superb bringing a real sense of bewilderment and confusion to the role as he struggles to understand what has happened to the most important relationship in his life. While Glesson brings true depth and sorrow to the role of his ex-friend who yearns for something more from life, and yet neither character is a cypher, or stereotypical. Neither are perfect, and both men have real depth to their characters, Colm is a snob and Pádraic shows he has a mean streak when pushed. The chemistry between the two men is palpable and gives the film its beating heart. 

Wrapped around these two men are the other inhabitants of this tiny island whose lives are effected, quite profoundly, by their falling out. Pádraic's sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), a young, self educated woman whose whole life has been spent on the island and too yearns to live, then there's Dominic Kearney (Barry Keoghan) the sexually and physically abused son of the island's only police man, a young man desperate for love. And through all of this there's a mysterious hint of the magical at work, strange portents and hints of what is to come, that only become apparent once the film has ended.

Trailed at the cinema for what seems like months, it's a relief that the trailer doesn't try and overplay the humour of this wonderful film, doesn't try to hint at sinister or mysterious forces at play, it's a film hard to define but perhaps that's part of its undeniable charm.

The ending arrives all too soon and leaves no pat answers or conclusion, there's a resolution of sorts, but as in life, it's neither tidy or conclusive.

It is a brilliantly written black comedy with the humour, as black as coal, wrapped up in expertly written dialogue and well-rounded characters. I loved each and every second of it and this will be one of the few films of this year I'll be buying to keep on blu-ray.

Without a shadow of a doubt a 10/10.

#52 BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

Starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Sadie Frost, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Tom Waites, Monica Bellucci and Billy Campbell. Written by James V. Hart. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Music by Mojciech Kilar. budget $40 million. Running time 128 minutes.

When Vlad Dracula the Impaler returns from a holy war against the Turks to discover the love of his life and wife is dead, having taken her own life, when she was misinformed that he was dead, he is somewhat crestfallen. However when his head priest tells him she's going straight to hell he proper loses his rag, desecrates the alter, renounces God and curses the almighty right to his stupid face, thus cursing himself to roam world looking to revenge his wife. 

Sticking closely to the book in terms of its plot, this film is as theatrical as the title. it's a glorious, over-egged delight of a movie, heavily stylised, art directed and lit and embracing as much Victorian melodrama as it can. Filmed using only practical effects and in shot trickery and also studio bound except for a few location shots all helps it achieve a wonderful 'other-wordly' quality. Gary Oldman is brilliant in this channelling his own personal real-life demons to bring some real passion and humanity to the role of Dracula. Likewise Winona Ryder positively pants under the weight of Victorian repressed sexuality as Mina Harker and Elisabeta, Drac's long dead wife. No one brings anything other than an 11 to the proceedings and the film is a wonder because of that. Even poor Keanu Reeves forever ridiculed for his role as Jonathan Harker is good and after all this time, it's hard to remember why he was vilified as much as he was. 

Sadie Frost as Lucy Westenra brings some real raunch to the role of the staggering horny heiress with three suitors - Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes and Bill Campbell. And her transformation into a vampire is deeply chilling.

It's been 30 years since this last graced the big screen and definitely that long since I've last seen it on the big screen and boy did I enjoy it. So satisfying to see a film made by one man and his obsessive-driven drive and I realise that many craftsmen and artist worked on this, but it was Coppola's baby all along. 

This is a wonderfully over-the-top production, filmed on a studio backlot somewhere without a single optical or digital effect. With a cast as wonderous and a script that never slows down this was a wonderful and delightful movie! 

9/10

#51: THE WOMAN KING

 

Starring Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega, John Boyega, Jimmy Odukoya). Directed by Gina Prince_Bythewood, written by Dana Stevens from a story by Maria Bello and Dana Stevens. Music by Terence Blanchard. Budget $50 million. Running time 135 minutes.

It's 1823 and people of the state of Dahomean, under the benevolent rule of their King Ghezo (John Boyega), are at war with the Oyo Empire and their warlord leader General Oba Ade (Jimmy Odukoya), with villages on both sides being raided and the prisoners raped by the other and sold into slavery to the white Europeans.

However this does not sit well with General Nanisca (Viola Davis) leader of the all-female group of warriors known as the Agojie who wants an end to the slavery.

The film follows the recruiting of a new warrior to the ranks of the Agojie in the guise of a fiesty, firey, speak her mind, orphan called Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) and most of the action revolves around her as she embarks on her training, falls in love with a half-Dahomean called Malik, and takes part in an extraordinary battle that sees her captured along with Lashana Lynch's Izogie and sold to the white slavers. Thus forcing Viola who shares a past with the girl, to defy her king and launch a dangerous attack against the European compound to free the last of the slaves.

This is a truly impressive film that avoids the usual Hollywood cliche and delivers a satisfying, violent and dramatic movie, Viola Davis delivers a career defining performance that roars with power, while Lashana Lynch is superb as fellow Izogie brings real heft to her role. The film cleverly avoids an excess of bloodshed and gore but does not skimp on the violence, and the choice of ignoring Hollywood's hateful practice of shaky cam for filming action in favour of well edited battles is a welcome relief.

Overall this is a gripping, intense and satisfyingly dramatic movie, featuring some wonderful cinematography and excellent performances. It's also a very female centric film from its production to its subject matter and is infinitely stronger because of it. 

Well worth two hours of your life. 9/10

#50 VENGEANCE

Written, directed and starring B. J. Novak, co-starring Boyd Holbrook, J. Smith-Cameron, Issa Rae, Lio Tipton, Dove Cameron, Issa Rae and Ashton Kutcher. Running time 107 minutes.

When New York blogger and journalist Ben Manalowitz receives a phone-call from Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook) the brother of a girl Ben dated twice telling him that she's died of an apparent drug overdose while attending an illegal drug party out in the desert he packs his bags and heads off to the oil fields of Texas for her funeral believing it may be subject he can blog about. Once there he discovers that Ty and his family are adamant Abby Shaw never took drugs and believe she was murdered, and her brother wants bloody revenge. Ben's curiosity piqued, he agrees to investigate and is invited to stay with the girl's family while he does so. it's there with the family that Novak provides the emotional core of the film with a group of characters we come to know and like, mother Sharon, sisters Paris and Kansas City, younger brother 'El Stupido' and Granny Carole. It's this rag-tag bunch of seemingly arch characters that first indicate that there's more to this film that you first expect.

What Ben uncovers as he interviews this band of red-necks won't have a profound impact on the world, won't bring governments to their knees, and won't uncover sinister corruption or even a conspiracy at its centre, or involve a rage filled man on a revenge kick, and boy is that refreshing! Although it does feature a car bombing. 

The film follows Ben as he travels around the small town with Abbey's brother Ty and starts to interview her friends, family, an insanely mellow music producer called Quentin Sellers (Ashton Kutcher), a local drug gangster and the various law enforcement agencies involved in the crime to find out what actually happened and who might of killed her and why? 

This is a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable film and features some excellent work from the cast, especially Kutcher who delivers a wonderful performance as the laid-back music producer who once helped Abby record a demo album. B.J. Novak who writes and stars in this funny, but not LOL funny, black comedy murder mystery isn't really that concerned as to whodunnit, although he does investigate and does provide a solution to the crime, he's more interested in the characters he meets along the way and in playing with our expectations of rural Texan life. The many characters regularly confound expectation and offer us something other than just generic stereotypes.

It's interesting to watch Novak's buttoned up New York blogger getting a reality check and becoming a better person as he pieces together the crime and structures his blog with his producer Eloise (Issa Rae). The film is languid, although never dull and the payoff while never in doubt is still satisfying and rewarding. 

Hats off to Novak for honing such a satisfying and rewarding movie.

8/10

#49 AMSTERDAM

Starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro. Written and directed by David O. Russell. Music by Daniel Pemberton. Running time 134 minutes. Budget $80 million.

In this day and age of super hero blockbusters and action franchises, it's great that Hollywood, still makes films that try to do something different like this, perhaps it helps if you're David O. Russell, the man behind Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, American Hustle, The Fighter, Joy and Silver Lining Playlist. It's just a shame the end results are a little dull. 

The story sees three American friends, two soldiers (Harold Woodsman - a lawyer-to-be (John David Washington), Burt Berendsen - a doctor (Christian Bale), and Valerie Voze - a rich socialite nurse and avant-garde artist (Margot Robbie) meet and bond during WWI after the first two are injured in battle. After the war they travel to Amsterdam and live a glorious live together until Burt decides to return to his wife in New York and Valerie disappears from their lives with no warning. 

The film picks up the action 15 years later, with Harold and Burt still friends and working to help war veterans in New York. When their old commanding officer dies in mysterious circumstances, the pair are asked to investigate his death and it's not long before the two men are framed for the murder and on the run from a dangerous secret fascist organisation. Chased and hounded by both the police and the proto-Nazis, the pair's search for truth reunites the three friends and exposes a deadly conspiracy that could lead to the downfall of the Presidency.

This is a gorgeously mounted and beautiful looking film, the cast, ALL of the cast of very well known actors, all at the top of their game, bring their A-Game, and seem to go out of their way to out act their fellow actors. All that is except for the three leads who are all excellent! Their chemistry together is a delight, and Margot dazzles with a beauty and energy that is breathtaking. Meanwhile, the set designs, the costumes, the art direction and indeed everything else is just superb as is the direction. The trouble is that despite being packed to the gills with so much good, the film is somewhat underwhelming and, I'm sorry to say, a little flat. The plot is also extremely labyrinthine in structure, and you're in danger of getting lost unless you keep copious notes. 

As the conspiracy unfolds, great actors are rolled out until Robert De Niro breezes in and shows how acting royalty does it. 

I wish I'd enjoyed this more, it has so much going for it, but sadly I left somewhat unmoved by it all. 

This gets a 9/10 for all the production aspects of this beautiful, glorious looking film, but sadly a 7/10 for overall enjoyment.

#48: MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

Starring Lesley Manville, Isabelle Huppert, Lambert Wilson, Alba Baptista, Lucas Bravo, Ellen Thomas, Rose Williams and Jason Isaacs. Written by Carroll Cartwright, Anthony Fabian, Keith Thompson and Olivia Isaacs. Directed by Anthony Fabian. Running time 115 minutes. Budget $10.4 million.

It's 1957! it's London, a city bright breezy and insanely cheery! A city not riven by racial strife or even racism, where everybody, if they're the working class that is, are loveable, happy in their lot and well up for a sing-song and knees up at their local, while the upperclass are ruthless bag of stinking, greedy, thieving, cheating, bastard scumbags.  

Into this wonderful world of racial harmony strides cleaning lady, invisible mender and war widow Mrs Ada Harris (Lesley Manville) imbued with that plucky, Dunkirk spirit that only the working class can 'ave. She's doing at least 90 different jobs a day to make ends meet and spends her spare time with her best friends, fellow cleaning lady - Vi Butterfield (Ellen Thomas) and cheeky Irish bookie Archie(Jason Isaacs) down their local, doing the pools or attending the dog track in White City.

One day, lovely, plucky Mrs Harris's simple, but frugal and 'umble life, is rocked by a series of incredibly lucky incidents that gifts her more money than sense and sends her off to Paris to buy a Christian Dior dress worth £500. And before you puke your guts up in disgust and contempt at the sheer hideous portrayal of both Paris and London in the 1950s you're swept up in a hideous fairytale of loveliness as Mrs Harris single-handedly saves the House of Dior from financial ruin, unites two young lovers, bonds with the entire Paris down-and-out community (which consists of three old men) and solves the city wide garbage strike all before tea time. That is when she's not falling for a man, insanely wealthy and 'andsome who is only attracted to her because she reminds him of the cleaning lady at his boarding school called Mrs. Mopp.  

Look I hated this, it wasn't my cup of tea at all. Although I saw it with friends who danced out of the cinema, with dewy-eyed delight and smiles as big as the Cheshire Cat's, who claimed I was a miserable old git, that they loved every stinking minute of this vile, hideous puke fest of loveliness. It's the sort of film this country needs right now, apparently, something to take our minds of the shit storm we're living through right now. 

I think they have a point, although I will say after watching this ghastly, wretched, smug-filled sac of shit I went home and watched Hard to Kill, perhaps Steven Seagal's finest movie just to cleanse my cinematic palette.

This film is well outside my comfort zone and despite loathing it with a patience, I can't deny it wasn't well made and that Lesley Manville was bloody good in it.

 6/10

#47: SMILE

 

Starring Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn and Rob Morgan. Written and directed by Parker Finn. Based on the short story Laura Hasn't Slept also by Parker Finn. Running time 115 minutes.

Written and directed by Parker Finn and based on a short story also by him, and this is his only film. Phew. 

The plot sees psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter, Sosie Bacon, witness a patient cut her own throat with a shard of broken vase whilst wearing a huge grin, or smile if you will. What happens next will try your patience and leave you edgy, irritable and aware once again that you've wasted another 115 minutes of your life that you're not getting back, no matter how many letters you write to your MP. 

In order to try and replicate the use of JUMP SCARES in this film, I shall be suddenly introducing bold and all-cap words, without any warning.

After the initial death of the first patience who claimed she was being stalked by something that kept smiling at her, Cotter begins to realise that the same something is hunting her. This causes the foundations of her logic and science ordered world to be rocked by the supernatural as Cotter begins to experience events THAT make all around her assume she's gone doo-lally. First her boss puts her on paid leave, then her fiancee leaves her, her sister disowns her and someone kills her cat. Luckily HER ex boyfriend, who just so happens to be a cop investigating the suicide of the patient believes her story and discovers that the patient witnessed her own college professor kill himself a week earlier and that he himself witnessed someone else kill themselves and so on and so FORTH. So it becomes clear that some sort of curse is hunting her. 

The JUMP SCARES begin in the first few minutes, as the viewer is bombarded by a lazy sludge of SHOCKS, that arrive every five minutes, indeed these are used so frequently in lieu of anything resembling actual scares, or anything unsettling that they soon become comical and elicit LAUGHTER not fear and are also annoyingly repetitive.

Cotter is an unlikeable character and there's a sense of Schadenfreude at her expense. The film wearily drags us and her to A double ending that's signposted and uses yet another trope that generates both the biggest groan of the whole film and also the film's funniest moment.

This is a clumsy, STUPID film which has at its core an interesting idea, that of a victim of the supernatural trying to turn the tables on their adversary, but it's all so CLUMSY and stymied by the jump cuts that it's just a TEDIOUS test of your patience.

Interesting aside, the film's tag line is also a warning, sadly it's a warning that you only realise once you've left the cinema, and realise your life is now shorter. 

Smile? I doubt you will, although I certainly did and for all the wrong reasons.

4/10