FILMS OF 2021: MONSTER HUNTER

MONSTER HUNTER

Written and directed by Paul W.S Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa and Ron Pearlman with a running time of 1hr and 44 minutes.

Based on a video game, this feels less like an actual film and more as if the movie has just taken all the cut scenes and stuck them together into one film.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the script was written on the back of a postage stamp. The story sees kick-ass marine Milla drop through a worm hole into a strange Dune like world that's infested with monsters. She quickly gets her whole crew killed by a sand monster, before she teams up with some random bloke (Tony Jaa) and starts killing a bunch of monsters before the final boss level fight and a hateful sequel baiting ending.

That's it. In between disgusting gore filled sequences (I can't believe this is only a 12a) Jovovich has some fights, I'm not entirely sure cos the cutting and shaky cam were so excessive you couldn't work out what the hell was going on. Each monster she hunts and kills is worst than the last. Tony Jaa speaks no English so our two hero's bond by hitting each other in the face as hard as possible and, not joking, kidnapping and torturing each other. Later Ron Pearlman later turns up speaking perfect English and punches Jovovich unconscious rather than just talking to her.

The film has no logic, no plot, and no reason to watch. I watched it so you don't have to. You're welcome.

All that said, it's not as bad as F&F9.

3/10 

FILMS OF 2021: FREE GUY, THE SUICIDE SQUAD, WONDER WOMAN 1984 & THE TOMORROW WAR

 FREE GUY

(SPOILER FREE)

Went to the cinema last night, it was a Cineworld secret screening, so no idea what I was going to watch. So, imagine my surprise when Free Guy came on. Directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer. I thoroughly enjoyed this, it was funny, engaging and Reynolds is worth the free admission alone. Plus great to see Jodie Comer in a Hollywood blockbuster.

Imagine Tron crossed with The Truman show and They Live. The plot sees 'Guy' (Ryan Reynolds), an NPC bank teller in a video game set in Grand Theft Auto style world, falling in love with one of the 'Sun Glass Wearers' - real-life players in the game. The story flits between the game and the real world as one of the game players Milli (Jodie Comer) and her game designer friend struggle to find evidence that the game engine is actually theirs and thus stolen by the game company guru Atoine (Taika Waititi).

Engaging, funny, exciting, with a good story, excellent special effects and a satisfying plot.

After The Suicide Squad, this is my favourite film of the year so far.

8/10

The Suicide Squad

At long last the DCU gets it right. And all it took was bringing in the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, ignoring all the other crap films the DCU has puked up and just going for sheer, bloody entertainment.

And I bloody loved this. I was laughing from the off and all the way thorugh. It's profane, insanely violent and utterly stupid. Gunn writes and directs with ease, no violent shaky cam to muddle the action sequences, good CGI and great action beats. And with no saggy boring middle, this film just chuggs along delivering humour and an entertaining plot. The script is packed full of gags, funny dialogue all delivered by a great cast including Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, John Cena, Violet Davis, Peter Calpadi, David Dastmalchian and Michael Rooker. Plus Sylvester Stallone. Indeed everyone seems to be in on the fun.

The plot sees the Suicide Squad sent on a mission that quickly spirals into bat shit crazy daftness and a villain worthy of their attention.

After the dreadfulness of Wonder Woman 1984 and the diabolical shitfulness of the first Suicide Squad this was such a relief to watch and I can't remember the last time I laughed so much at a film.

However, this is an incredibly violent film, and it's a 15 for a reason.

I loved it. Hope you do too.

8/10

Wonder Woman 1984

Yeah, yeah I know I'm late to the party. But I've been waiting for it to come down in price and today in Morrison's it was on sale for £7 and I thought, '£7, that's cheaper than a cinema ticket, I'll give it a go.'

Well...

Two and a half hours later, cos that's how long modern films now take to tell a story, which if you're interested is half an hour longer than Superman 2, which also dealt with its hero giving up their powers for someone they loved, but in a far, far better way.

Why can't modern films tell a compelling story in under 2 and a half hours any more? My heart sank when I checked the timer and realised I still had an hour and 40 minutes to go.

There's just too much story, crammed into the 151 minutes of screen time this film took to finally drag its boring carcass across the finishing line. Every minute filled with angst-filled, Olympic-moping, and so, so much earnest guff, waffle, chit-chat, exposition, and tedious pointless dialogue that did nothing to propel the plot.

And with obligatory action beats shoe-horned into the talking every half hour or so, just to stop the audience from dozing off through boredom - from an early thwarted heist, to a ridiculous invisible jet, to a desert motorway chase and the incredibly damp final showdown, this film had literally none of the charm, excitement or vim of the original. And I literally had no idea what the hell Max Lord wanted or was up to for nearly all of the film's bloated running time up until the introduction of the third act's MacGuffin when his plan finally made some vague sense.

And featuring a final showdown and ending that felt more Doctor Who than DCU.

All that said, this did start well with a trip back to the land of Themyscira, but that quickly becomes a distant fond memory when we're dragged kicking and screaming into the wacky world of 1984, where the film quickly gets bogged down in Max Lord farcical plan. As villains go, Max Lord is useless offering WW nothing to get her teeth or lasso into, since all he does is talk.

Kirsten Wigg offered up a far more interesting character in the guise of Barbara Minerva, who is done a dis-service in the final act when she has to become The Cheetah just so WW has someone to fight, before one more very long-winded chat-down with Max Lord

BTW, Minerva is the most interesting character in the film and so it comes as a complete letdown of her character when at one critical point in the film, her role is suddenly reduced to nothing more than a simpering female sidekick when WW turns up to mansplain a major plot point to her.

And don't get me started on the staggering creepy explanation of the return of Steve Trevor, which if you think about it is very icky in the extreme.

But the most annoying plot contrivance in the entire film is the embarrassing and sudden introduction of the President of the United State's top secret MacGuffin - in the guise of a device that can access any broadcast device in the world - which is just awful. This is introduced to the story in the same way as a plot device in an 1980s kid's animated TV Show with the plans of the device literally mounted on display boards in the background of the Oval Office.

And how the hell does Gal Gadot manage to convey the sense that she's sick to death of the character of WW after just one movie? And why the hell does every superhero movie have to be about the world being devastated or destroyed, what's with all this goddam end of the world shit? Can't we just have a superhero film where just a city is threatened or something?

Normally at this point I'd whinge that I'll never get the 151 minutes of my life back, but this time I'm going to thank the heavens I only wasted £7 on this, rather than the £25 it would cost me to take my family to be disappointed by this in the cinema.

I really enjoyed the first WW film, well apart from the final battle with the God of War, but this film will be making its sweet way to CEX first thing in the morning when I can trade it in for 10p.

4/10

And the introduction of Linda Carter in the post credit extra was just offensive.

The Tomorrow War

What a lazy, half arsed mish-mash of a film. Stealing from Starship Troopers, Live, Die Repeat and The Thing to name but a few. This features some of the worst telegraphing I have seen in a long while. The film feels as if the entire third act was just bolted on due to bad early previews. Creature design is poor and the plot holes many. And I am so bored by the trope of killing monsters by endlessly shooting them to literal pieces.

This is not a terrible film, it's all the above but it still has its moments of fun, sadly it rushes interesting plot points and stretches credulity but hey, it's a film about an invading alien attack, so you know cut it some slack, Jack.

I went along with it, because I liked the set up in the beginning. And I liked the father/daughter dynamic and I also loved Sam Richardson, who sadly is reduced to one of the fore-mentioned telegraphing roles.

I'd give it a half-hearted 5/10.

FILMS OF 2021: SNAKE EYES

SNAKE EYES G.I. JOE ORIGINS

I went to see this today, not too sure why. Perhaps a break from the drawing.

I think it was a film, but I'm not too sure. Maybe it was cutscenes from a video game spliced together. To while away the running time I played guess the next line of dialogue and awarded myself a bonus by successfully predicting the very last line of the film. I scored about 80 points in total, that's five for every correct line and 10 for the last line.

The plot saw some kid witness the execution of his dad and embark on a revenge quest for justice, the kid earns the nickname Snake Eyes and spends the next 20 years getting the living shit kicked out of him in cage fights and gutting tuna fish, which earns him his second nickname of Fish Boy.

Fish Boy gets hired by a Yakuza boss and when he refuses an order to kill somebody called Tommy he ends up recruited by and ultimately working for Tommy who turns out to be the heir to a vast crime syndicate in Japan. Fish Boy gets flown to Japan and ends up training to be a ninja for the heir, but secretly he's working for the Yakuza boss. Apparently there's some crystal or something that the Yakuza boss wants, which Tommy's clan guards, oh and there's this terrorist group called Cobra who want it too.

Oh, but there's also this group called the G.I. Joes who want to stop everyone naughty from doing anything bad.

There's lots of shaky-cam, furious-cutting fighting with lots of swords and knives and a body count in the high hundreds, but without a single drop of blood, making the 'film' a 12A, cos kids need to see as much violent consequence-free killing as possible.

The cast is rather good, the film is mostly set in Japan so it looks good but the rest of this film is just bland, dull and utterly pointless and un-engaging, there are huge sections of this film which are just fight scenes, which because of the fore-mentioned shaky cam and fast editing are rendered unwatchable. Oh and all the fight scenes take place either at dusk, or darkest night.

I finally drifted off into blissful sleep for about 20 minutes, then woke up and just sort of let the rest of the film wash over me. By the end of it, Fish Boy gets given his G.I. Joe battle suit, and Tommy and him are now mortal enemies.

All that said, if you had a gun put to your head and you were ordered to chose a film to watch between Fast and Furious 9 and this, I'd go for this one.

I'd give this a resounding 4/10 cos I really like Henry Golding, he deserves far better than this. 

FILMS OF 2021: VENOM: LET THERE BE GARBAGE

Venom: Let There Be Garbage

A film utterly let down by a woeful third act, that was lazy, visually incomprehensible, badly edited and just plain boring, as if the writer and director suddenly remembered they had to have a big showdown cgi punch up and just wedged one in to it. "Hey," said the writer, "the first Batman movie had a cathedral in it, so let's put one in this!"

It's a showdown so dull that Andy "There but the grace of God go I." Serkis couldn't even be bothered to give us an establishing shot for the final showdown, or layout the geography of the fight between Venom and Garbage. By this stage in the movie, he probably thought what's the point?

However before this low mark we have quite a funny film, or at least bits that are funny, like when Eddie and Venom are bickering, particularly when Venom becomes a sort of therapist, and Tom Hardy's verbal fighting as both characters is a treat, it just really didn't need Carnage, although that said it does need Cletus (Woody Harrelson).

Carnage just never feels like anything other than a shoe-horned in character there just to give Venom something to fight. And once again it's that fight that's the weak point of the whole movie. The last three super hero films I've seen have all felt diminished by the need to have a big climatic fight at the end. At least this one wasn't Earth threatening.

There's also a major problem with Carnage. He, or it, he's never clear on his preferred pronoun choice, is so spectacularly over-powered compared to Venom that it renders the final showdown bland and boring. There is literally nothing it can't do.

And Questions as to where it and Venom get their vast supplies of extra mass from are never explained, nor are any rules as to their abilities established beyond the fact Venom needs to eat chocolate and chicken heads on a regular basis. Instead we just sit there and watch two cgi monsters blurringly fight in near darkness until one of the emerges the victor. And frankly there's never any doubt as to the outcome.

You come out feeling sorry for Tom Hardy, he gives it his all but his Eddie Brock is such an unlikeable character that it's hard to feel any sympathy for him at all and it's Venom who steals the show, but only when we don't see him.

As this is a sequel, it'll come as no surprise that true to the classic form of story telling, the boy loses the girl, or alien symbiote, and has to win him back to save the day.

I saw the original at the cinema and cannot remember a single thing about it, so unmemorable was it. I doubt I will remember this one either.

4/10 

FILMS OF 2021: DUNE PART ONE

 DUNE

So, that's Dune done. Saw it last night. A film I've been aching to see for a year.

I've listened to the audible book, rewatched the Lynch version in anticipation.

It's a long film, a deeply serious film, with a great cast, great acting, a well-written script, it adapts the book extremely well, the space ships and set designs and all that are glorious. I admired it's scope, its languid pace, the acting and all that, BUT...

Why the hell did it all have to be shot in sepia? Just a sea of orange and browns, everything looked so murky and gloomy.

Several years ago, there was a depressing trend for shaky cam and violent editing in action films, then we had that fad for never having a static camera, as if every movie was a fly on the wall documentary and now it seems we can't have a science fiction film unless it's gloomy, murky and bleached of colour.

You, or should I say 'one', can't help but compare it with the flawed 1984 Lynch version and realise how much he got right. His film, the part that works is, what we get here, Paul and his family arriving on Dune and ending up with the Fremen. The difference here is that rather than shoehorn all that into a single hour, Denis Villeneuve has 155 minutes to do the same.

Apart from that, the film is exactly what I wanted. But be warned you have to invest in it, my son feels you need to have read the book to fully understand it and judging by the number of walk outs, mostly from people with kids, and teenagers, he might have a point.

And even though Denis The Vill-nace has 155 minutes, it still feels as if he's rushed some of this, particularly in setting up Paul and the abilities his mother has given him.

This is another meaty, solid 'hard' science fiction film and I look forward to watching it again, although next time, probably at home, with the brightness and contrast turned up high.

8/10

FILMS OF 2021: THE FRENCH DESPATCH

The French Despatch

Wes Anderson's latest.

What a triumph, visually, stylistically and story wise. A visual feast, a delightful slice of whimsy and silliness, went as a family and we all adored it.

It looks superb, lovely vibrant colours, I never thought I'd ever seen another film that looked bright again. Mixing black and white with colour in a series of stories all highlighting stories written for a fictitious American magazine, the French Despatch of the title published in France, ranging from teenage rebellion, deranged artists and police chefs. The film takes the stories from the last issue published after the death of its editor, played by Bill Murray.

With a fantastic cast ranging from the usual Anderson stalwarts like Bill Murray, William Defoe, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman and also featuring the likes of: Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric and Stephen Park.

There are three main stories, the first concerns a suicidal homicidal artist, del Toro, his muse and prison guard Léa Seydoux and the efforts of art dealer, Adrien Brody to get him out of prison. The second sees reporter Frances McDormand become emotionally involved in a student uprising lead by chess protege Timothée Chalamet, and the third sees Jeffrey Wright discovering the joys of a detective eating club and helping to rescue a kidnapped boy. All bookended by the brilliant Bill Murray playing the editor of the magazine each of these stories appeared in.

As with every Anderson movie, the music plays an important part and the soundtrack for this was no exception. Indeed I would have to say that I loved everything about this film. It's funny, touching and insanely quirky. Everyone involves seems to be enjoying themselves and the richness and depth of the film was a delight. Anderson's meticulous attention to background detail and the framing of each and every shot enriches this film.

But be warned, this is a film unlike any other, no one else makes films like Anderson.

If I had one quibble, it would be that as Wes Anderson develops he becomes perhaps too obsessed with style and although I loved this film, it wasn't as brilliantly written as say Rushmore or The Royal Tennabaums.

Still, this was a delight from beginning to end.

9/10

FILMS OF 2021: FINCH

FINCH 

It's a post apocalyptic movie set in a world ravaged by a cataclysmic solar flare that has destroyed the ozone layer and burned the planet. The cast consists of 1. Tom Hanks. 2. A robot. 3. A dog.

Nothing dramatic really happens, there's no threat, no violence, no big danger. Just a man travelling across country in his RV teaching his robot how to live in the world once he's dead and how to look after his dog. At one point a car follows them, I won't spoil what happens...

And I bloody loved it. Heart warming, moving and gentle. Just what I need. it won't be for everyone, but I've reached a point in my life where I like gentle things, like this and Gone Fishing, or The Detectorists. I'm hoping tonight's cinema offering of Last Night in Soho will continue the trend.

Tom Hanks, as ever, brings such a warmth and sweetness to a role. The robot, brilliantly CGI-ed using motion-capture was played by Caleb Landry Jones and is the classic trope of a child-like artifical intelligence learning what it means to be human. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik.

8/10