Film Review - The Fall Guy (2024)

The Fall Guy is based off of the TV Series and stars Ryan Gosling as a stuntman recovering from an on set accident when he is asked to go to Sydney, Australia to stunt double for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) at the request of his director Jody (Emily Blunt) but while in Sydney Tom goes missing and the stunt man must now go and find him so Jody can finish her film Metalstorm.

The Fall Guy is a lot of fun and is the type of Romancing the Stone knockoff that February’s Argylle utterly failed to be with a dash of Robert Altman’s great film the Player from 1992 thrown in for good measure and some of the movie stuff I had a lot of fun.

Also good fun is Gosling as Colt the titular stunt man and for the second time in a row I have enjoyed him in a movie, that Kenergy from Barbie last year must have rubbed off on him as he is as fun and enjoyable here as he was in that film, Taylor-Johnson is good as well as are Winston Duke as a stunt coordinator, Stephanie Hsu in a small role and Hannah Waddingham and Teresa Palmer (good South Australian kid) in their roles.

But what didn’t work as well for me was Emily Blunt, don’t get me wrong she is a great actress but I didn’t really like her all that much in this role as it feels like she has little to no chemistry with Gosling and he just towers over her in their scenes together and that wasn’t the case when he was playing against Margot Robbie in Barbie last year, personally I would’ve gone with her Devil Wears Prada co-star Anne Hathaway for this role as has that similar vibe to what Gosling does and they would’ve made a much better pairing.

And so that was the Fall Guy and Blunt aside this is a fun time at the movies and for film lovers, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Abigail (2024)

Abigail is the new horror film by the team called Radio Silence who directed the 2 most recent Scream films and 2019’s fun horror film Ready or Not and this movie concerns a group of people (Melissa Barrera, Kevin Durand, Dan Stevens, Angus Cloud and Kathryn Newton) who kidnap a little girl (Alisha Weir) from her wealthy father at the expense of Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) but this little girl is not who her kidnappers think she is.

Abigail is a lot of fun and is much more in line with the tone and feel of Ready or Not than the Scream films Radio Silence made and more than once I had a big smile on my face as this movie has a lot of fun with its horror premise and its one location of a large house similar to Ready or Not and it really works well.

What also works well is the main cast, Barrera I have loved since In the Heights and while it was very disappointing to she her dumped from the Scream franchise recently she shows here why that decision was even more stupid as she does a lot with what could be a thin role on the page and she has a great screen presence with just her eyes and facial expressions, Durand really needs to play Elon Musk in the biopic about him because the likeness is uncanny and he too is good as are Stevens and Esposito in their roles though Cloud and Newton weren’t as good as their performances did very little for me.

But little Alisha Weir is the real standout here and she does a lot with this character and I won’t say too much more than that as the surprises with her character are fun to discover but she does a great job with them.

And so that was Abigail and horror fans will have a lot of fun with this one as I did, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Challengers (2024)

Challengers is the new film by director Luca Guadagnino and stars Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor as three young tennis pros who meet in the late 2000’s and form a love triangle of sorts but many years later Tashi (Zendaya’s character) has fallen for Art (Faist’s character) and now he finds himself a waning pro but before he can go for one last championship shot he’ll have to face Patrick (O’Connor’s character) in a tennis match.

Challengers was a film that I had heard a lot of good things about before seeing it and the feeling I got reading early reviews was that this was potentially better than Dune Part Two and going into it I was expecting this hot, steamy film with electric chemistry between it’s leads and I didn’t get that instead I found myself very mixed on this movie as a whole.

First off Zendaya is terrific here and along with her work in the Dune films by Denis Villeneuve she shows what a great young talent she can be when she has a good character and a good director she can work with as opposed to her forgettable work in the Spider-Man films where it feels like she was just told to stand there, hit her marks, say her lines and it will all be added in post production and those films waste her where as here and in Dune she’s great.

Also I liked the tennis scenes, they are well directed and have some real energy to them and I also liked the storyline of Faist’s character as the seasoned professional wanting one last shot at the elusive open championship he hasn’t been able to get.

But what didn’t work as well was the love triangle, the hot steamy chemistry I had heard about before seeing it wasn’t really there, those scenes are okay but didn’t really do it for me and it isn’t helped that both Faist and O’Connor didn’t really do it for me in their performances, Faist I loved in West Side Story and I could see him becoming a lead after that film but whatever Steven Spielberg saw in him isn’t there under Guadagnino’s direction and it’s a real shame as he’s a good young actor.

But the real weak link here was O’Connor, both his performance and his character did next to nothing for me, the latter is a terrible person and you just don’t know why Tashi would fall for him and O’Connor’s performance just felt flat at times and the rivalry he had with Art didn’t really work for me either, I wish that the love triangle segment had been scaled down so this tennis rivalry could be brought into more focus as I found that much more interesting.

And so that was Challengers and it’s a mixed bag for me overall, some parts work, other parts didn’t, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Civil War (2024)

Civil War is the new film by Alex Garland and stars Kirsten Dunst, Steven McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny and Wagner Moura as a team of photo journalists during a Civil War in the United States of America where they hope to interview the President (Nick Offerman) before the Western Front takes Washington DC and executes him but that journey will not be an easy one especially with armed men and women around any corner.

Civil War is sadly a disappointment for me film wise and it’s a shame because I was looking forward to it, I liked the previews for the film and I also like movies about journalists doing their job on film though some are better than others.

Before I delve more into my disappointment I want to talk about what I did like and that is for the most part the performances, Dunst/Henderson and Moura make a good trio and play off each other well in their scenes together while Spaeny is very good as the young rookie who finds herself face to face with the very combat she wants to photograph someday.

I also enjoyed seeing Jimmy from Yellowstone in a small role and Jesse Plemons steals the movie with one scene who is at times amusing but also very scary and Plemons’s ability to switch from comedy to straight laced roles is a great one.

Also the film is well made by Garland as a director, the world he creates here is a very real looking one where danger lurks around every corner and you never know who you will come across on the journey to Washington, will it be friend? Will it be foe? The film does a very good job at showcasing this and it really brings you into the world of the film.

Sadly Garland the writer does not do this as well and here is where the film fell down most for me, the world building on the page is very thin and more often than not while watching it I kept thinking to myself “How did we get here?” “What happened?” “Who are the main factions?” and the film doesn’t really give you any answers to those questions and I wanted some especially when you have journalists as your leads who could’ve asked some of these questions without it interfering with the broader storytelling too much and more than once I thought of the opening scene from Mad Max 2 which gave you a brief enough history of the time of chaos, the ruined dreams, the wasted land and the white line nightmare on the roads before throwing you into the action and I wish Garland had done similar here.

Now I get you don’t want to over explain things but some explanation would’ve gone a long way to making this movie a winner.

Before seeing this movie I thought of a similar film called Under Fire from 1983 directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy as photo journalists in Nicaragua and I think I would’ve enjoyed that film more than this one which was a big letdown despite some strong positives, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (2024)

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is the new installment in Warner Bros/Legendary’s Monsterverse series and this time Kong is in Hollow Earth trying to find other members of his kind while Godzilla has been hunting Titans on Earth but when new trouble emerges these once deadly rivals will now have to work together to save their worlds.

Godzilla X Kong is not that different to how I felt about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in that it’s not a bad movie but its only an okay but I liked this one a little more than I did Ghostbusters because when the monsters were fighting I had a smile on my face even though at times I kept thinking “I bet people lived in those buildings that are being flattened like pancakes” as buildings and populated areas are being flattened like it’s nothing in this movie and sometimes that can be fun to watch but sometimes you watch that type of mass destruction and think “Um people might live there.” And this was one of those times.

As for the action scenes well their fun for the most part but after a while feel a bit video gamey as more often than not your looking at digital monsters fighting it out and hearing very loud noises and deep bass in the sound mix especially if you watch it in a theatre with a loud sound system like I did and I wish there was more of a sense of stakes or peril with those big battle scenes that felt more real instead of digital and the human eye is often pretty good at telling what is real and what isn’t.

As for the human characters well their okay but not the reason you’re watching it, Rebecca Hall is such a good actress but this role is doing little to nothing for her save for putting a roof over her head (those bills aren’t cheap nowadays), Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry are having some fun though I did get a bit annoyed with the needle drops during key action moments (seriously guys can we PLEASE stop doing this it’s getting very annoying.) while it was nice to see Rachel House a New Zealand actress from Thor: Ragnarok and Hunt for the Wilderpeople in a small supporting role.

And so that was Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire and it’s fun for the most part but again it doesn’t help that this has come out in the shadow of Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters and that film has really shown up the laziness in this industry the last 10-15 years hopefully with streaming and Disney’s dominance starting to abate the other studios will start to lift their game, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Wicked Little Letters (2024)

Wicked Little Letters stars Olivia Coleman as Edith, a woman who lives at home with her conservative father (Timothy Spall) and who has been receiving wicked letters with profane language in them and she suspects her next door neighbour Rose (Jesse Buckley) who is unmarried and likes to go to bars and behave suspiciously but there is more to this than one sees.

Wicked Little Letters is good fun and I laughed quite a bit watching it but the film earns it’s MA15+ rating here in Australia as it has a lot of fowl language and if that kind of thing bothers you a fair bit then I won’t recommend this movie but if it doesn’t it’s good fun.

And firstly I have to mention Jesse Buckley in this movie as she is really one of the best actresses around right now and she is so much fun to watch here in both her rowdy pub scenes, her standing up for herself moments or even in the quieter moments where she is fighting for her innocence and ever since Wild Rose in 2018 she has been a real fan favourite of movie goers and here is no exception.

Olivia Coleman on the other hand who has rarely given a bad performance in a film well I struggled with her performance in this movie at times mainly because I struggled to buy her in this role as a straight laced God fearing woman and she has this devilish sense of humour be it in Hot Fuzz or Wonka and here I just thought “I’m not quite buying it here” now that isn’t to say she is bad on the whole as she gets better as the film goes on but in the opening parts of it I struggled with her performance.

And so that was Wicked Little Letters and it is good fun if your not bothered by fowl language, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire is the follow up to 2021’s Ghostbusters Afterlife and this time Gil Kenan takes the directorial chair instead of Jason Reitman who directed Afterlife and is the son of the late genius Ivan Reitman, this story sees the Spengler family (Mackenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd and Finn Wolfhard) living and working as Ghostbusters in New York City when Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) comes into possession of a mysterious orb that contains a powerful ice goddess who if unleashed could bring about a new ice age in a New York Summer.

Frozen Empire isn’t a bad movie per se but it is also a movie that in all honestly isn’t really much of anything either and in the very small group I saw this in the cinema with all it raised was a chuckle at best and that was mainly at the “look who’s shown up” variety as well which isn’t great for a Ghostbusters movie on either front.

The main problem this movie has is in its scripting, it takes far too long to get it’s main plot into motion and when it does it doesn’t have any of the stakes or horror or comedy or scale that it really should and what the original Ghostbusters movie which celebrates it’s 40th anniversary this year had, it had great laughs, it had great horror moments, it had great visual effects, a comedy cast on top form and an iconic movie monster but then again Ivan Reitman was a genius for the most part so that was no real surprise.

It also doesn’t help that this movie is also the first big movie to be released after Dune Part Two 3 and a half weeks ago and that movie showed what movies really could be when you had a passionate creative team and a willing and able cast working their hardest to deliver something special for audiences whereas here the cast does what they can but no one really gets a chance to shine.

William Atherton from the original is basically a “remember him” fan service cameo, Patton Oswalt only gets one scene which feels like a waste as he fits right in with this universe, the OG Ghostbusters are either exposition dumps on legs or fan service cameos or in the case of Bill Murray here to cash an easy cheque because he was in lockdown for 2 years and wants some easy money plus due to COVID he missed out on being in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last year and as for the Spengler family their okay and Coon and Rudd have some good chemistry but they don’t really get to show it, Wolfhard really only exists to have an excuse for Slimer coming back and Grace well she does get a subplot of her own but it doesn’t really add much to the greater storytelling.

And so that was Ghostbusters Frozen Empire and once more Columbia Pictures a studio celebrating 100 years this year has delivered another lazy blockbuster, in my State of the Studios roundup last year I said that they really needed to both lift their game and stop relying on Spider-Man to save them and with this and now Madame Web being lazy hangabouts in cinemas that feeling is stronger than ever, 2 out of 5.