Well, 2021 is almost over and I went to the cinema over 45 times and watched 37 movies. These are some of the films i sat through, some good some bad.
FAST AND FURIOUS 9
Last night I went to the cinema and watched the worst film of the year. It didn't cost me much, just three hours of my life that I will never get back.
The funny thing was I thought I'd already seen the worst film of the year the previous night when I stupidly went to see Monster Hunter. But by comparison that was Citizen Kane.
Indeed not only was last night's film, without doubt, the worst film of the year, it might also be one of the worst films of the decade and the worst thing to happen to the world since Covid.
I'm talking about FAST AND FURIOUS 9 (you're furious I'm bloody livid).
Before I start my rant I have to say that I really enjoyed F&F 5, 6 and 7.
This new outing was a film I TRULY, TRULY LOATHED. One that was so ugly, so empty, so vacuous, so utterly without merit, so mind- numbingly tedious that it went from bad to 'so-bad-it's-good', to - oh my god this is shit, to 'I want to die', to 'please someone kill me!' to finally "zzzzzzzzzz." when I at all dozed off during the climatic fight.
And god is it boring. Boring, boring, boring. Bo-ring.
It is one of the laziest films I have ever seen. The plot is risible, it is a film with no dialogue at all - just a series of one-liners and I don't mean jokes, I mean motivational poster sayings - "we are family." "shit just got real." that sort of thing.
The effects aren't that great, the stunts are rendered meaningless by CGI and the plot holes are so VAST you could skid an articulated lorry sideways through them. The lack of physics, which in the past was kind of fun, is in this outing an actual insult to the audience's intelligence.
Old, apparently much loved, characters return from the dead. New characters are introduced and given vast back stories, and the main plot Mcguffin is pure piss.
It occurred to me that the F&F franchise uses James Bond as its template, but instead of character, plot, drama, globe-trotting and adventure they just have cars. At least in a Bond film you get sex. In this franchise, sex would probably focus on Wim Weasel looking lovingly up the exhaust pipe of his Dodge Charger while rubbing his crotch and drooling a little.
Vin Disel playing the hard-boiled-egg-headed super hero lead, Dominic Toretto, is thankfully absent for large swaths of this film, which I think is a blessed relief. He barely mumbles a word through most of it. Luckily the film makers (I suppose someone must have made this, I know it took five people to write it) lets the audience know how its hard-boiled-egg-headed super hero lead is thinking and feeling by changing the colour of his vest, or having him put on or take off his leather jacket. Oh and pouting while squinting.
It's not all a huge bag of shit tied up with string and run over by a truck carrying rancid piss to a vomiting convention, there is Tyrese Gibson playing Roman who brings some real humour to the proceedings with his character's realisation that he's in a movie and therefore invincible.
Nothing in this film makes any sense. For example. The science, the plot (or lack of one), the action or everything else.
Some things that bugged me.
When did this bunch of car thieves become super spies? Why are they sent on missions into South American countries to rescue CIA operatives, were all the other CIA agents busy? Why is our band of plucky heroes' secret base such an open secret? Why didn't the villain, when he has our bland of heroes utterly surrounded by 50 armed men kill them? Who is looking after Dominic's son while he's racing off around the world? And what about the appalling collateral damage in this film? If you thought the tank slaughter of F&F 6 was a bit much, you ain't seen nothing yet!
Now, a bit of investigation shows that this film has made over $300 million worldwide, scored a 62% on Rotten Tomato and even garnished a four star review from The Guardian. So just ignore me. I clearly know jack shit about movies.
2/10 (thanks to Tyrese Gibson)
King's Man (2021)
Co-written and directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou and Charles Dance.
And only 131 minutes long! That's only two hours and 11 minutes, which is short for a modern film. Shame it felt longer.
A great cast, great looking, some great action sequences and a shocking end to the 2nd act, but sadly overwhelmingly flat. It just doesn't engage. Ralph Fiennes carries the film, almost single-handily and the trailer miss-leads you into thinking this film is about the setting up of Kingsmen. It's not that, it's actually the world's longest prologue.
The plot sees the entire first world war and its causes carefully woven together into a complex plot that sees the whole real-life saga, manipulated by one single person, an unseen, shaven-headed, thick-Glaswegian sounding Bloefeld wannabe. Together with his gang of five, real-life villains to help him including Mata Hari, and Rasputin, played by a scene-stealing Rhys Ifans who's hands-down the best thing in this film.
This isn't a terrible film, it's far more enjoyable than Matrix: Resuscitation, although not nearly as good as Spider-Man NWH, it's just doesn't entirely work. Perhaps it's too po-faced, too earnest, too serious. It's hands down better than the dreadful second Kingsmen movie, but it's in need of a major injection of some much-needed humour.
7/10
The Matrix: Resuscitations
Oh boy, thought Hollywood it's been 18 years since we last plundered the legend of The Matrix, I'm sure everyone's forgotten our last two efforts, let's try again!
And off they went, recruiting Lana Wachowski, but not her sister, and all of the original cast, except for Fishbourne and Weaving, who clearly got a sense of 'one trip too many to the well'.
Because Matrix: Resuscitations is the perfect movie for Christmas time, since it's a Grade A turkey!
It doesn't start out as such, it's actually rather intriguing and you find yourself swept up by a giddy, relentless and frenzied set up, with new characters, a new Morpheus and an older Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves, all running around and fighting and referencing the original at every opportunity. And then the plot kicks in.
Which, as far as I could fathom, sees Keanu reprising his role of Thomas Anderson, who is creator of the smash hit video game trilogy called The Matrix. At some point in the past he suffered a nervous breakdown and tried to jump off the roof of a building to prove he could fly and as a result he's had to spend the rest of his life in therapy with Doogie Howser, Neil Patrick Harris, and his black cat. Harris is keeping our plucky hero doped up on blue pills. Meanwhile, there's this female character called Bunny, who has a rabbit tattoo, and someone else claiming to be Morpheus belting about in the Matrix and fighting Agents and trying to find Neo. Back in Earth, Anderson keeps bumping into a woman who looks like Trinity but who's called Tiffany, and Morpheus keeps trying to pull or push him through mirrors. It turns out that both Neo and Trinity are dead, but if that's true then who is Tiffany and Anderson? Look I don't know, I watch these films and usually I have a good handle on what's going on, but this one, sort of just became so mind-bogglingly complicated that I just sort of stopped trying to keep track and just switched my brain to neutral and smiled my way through the rest of it.
All the recent sequels/reboots/prequels movies have followed the model of fan-service movies, shoehorning in lots of your favourite bits from the previous movies. The Matrix: Resuscitations, comes up with some altogether radical and completely new, by actually reusing literal snippets from the previous films, so you don't have to try and remember what's being referenced.
As well as old clips reused, old characters return, all of whom have to give vast and lengthy speeches to propel the plot along and the film soon falls into the following formula – ACTION! EXPOSITION. ACTION! EXPOSITION. And every time one of these characters turn up, the action stops and chat is given. There is one incredibly lengthy action sequence that just goes on and on and on and has so much collateral damage that you start hoping the robots win.
Similarly, the villain of the film is also multi-layered and unfathomably complex and I'm not entirely sure who the villain actually was, nor who they were fighting for.
Look, fuck it. I saw it last night, it was a complicated, mindbogglingly, visual cacophony of mayhem that ultimately just became a protracted punch-up punctuated by copious gun play. It had Keanu in it. Moss was good, as before, and some of the action was fun.
However it's long, 2 and a half hours and it even has a post credit sequence that really isn't worth waiting for and it just felt staggeringly pointless and utterly unnecessary. The first Matrix was a modern classic, they should have stopped there. But at least it's not as bad as the last one.
