Its That Time Again: 2019 in Film Part 1

And thus it was on every December film pundits the world over begin to write up about the year that was in film.

The favorites they watched and the Turkeys they watched, the latter having them wish that they could be cooked like a Turkey for the Christmas Table at least then they could get some enjoyment out of it but alas they just mention 5 of them one last time as they took a combined 12 to 13 hours out of their life that they’ll regret throwing away as their dying.

Speaking of Turkeys its time to talk about those first as they need a well deserved cooking in the oven before I feast on them in the favourites section which will be the focus of Part 2.

With that out of the way coming in as Turkey Number 4 is:

The Lion King: Yes Jon Favreau’s semi live action/animation remake of the classic 1994 animated film is fifth on this list.

But why you ask well like so many of Disney’s live action remakes of their animated classics it has so little understanding of why that animated film was so good and holds up so strongly to this day as like 2016’s the Jungle Book Mr Favreau opts for a more realistic look and feel to the animals and the environments that they live in.

And for the opening of Circle of Life it kinda works but one scene makes not a movie and the rest of the movie that comes afterwards the animals have to actually emote and express themselves and it instantly pulls you out of the film as you just keep replaying the original in your head which had wonderfully expressive eyes and faces on the animals which helped to land the emotional resonance of the story whereas here everything just starts to look dull, lifeless, brown and scorched after a while and I almost got up and walked out.

But that’s only the first sin this King makes, the second is failing utterly in its attempt to recreate key emotional moments from the original and that is most noticeable when it comes to the handling of Mufasa, yes James Earl Jones came back to reprise the role but like in Rogue One his voice sounds very frail and very weak and the filmmakers don’t commit enough to his characters death or ghost scene.

The former is done in a lot of wide shots and without the look Scar gives him before he sends Mufasa to his death which every time I watch it in the original film gives me chills and a big smile on my face whereas the Ghost scene doesn’t “Remember” how the original scene played out and instead “Remembers” how the Simpsons spoof played out between Bleeding Gums Murphy and Lisa and during the redo of this scene I half expected the James Earl Jones heads from the Lisa version to appear.

And if Disney is going to have all of this power and muscle within the industry it has to damn well earn it first and foremost and how its handled the 20th Century Fox library is a disgrace to every movie lover around the world and it has to also justify it by giving audiences quality products which it has done with many of its core brands but these remakes just deserve to be thrown off the proverbial cliff and never be heard or seen again.

2. Mary Queen of Scots: Way way back in late January and early February came this movie with Saiorise Ronan and Margot Robbie as the queens of Scotland and England as the 2 nations tried to come to an arrangement of power.

And if I haven’t said much about the story well its because this movie stunk from top to bottom and it had so much going for it, a story of powerful women played by 2 great actresses, the Scottish Fucking Highlands the home of Connor Macleod of the Clan Macleod, women front and centre making this movie and all the sex, romance and intrigue this type of story lends itself.

And it manages all of these elements very very badly and the more I sat there watching the fucking thing the more I got bored of the film being projected in front of me and the key reason this fell off its throne like a drunk jester is that it has no clue what story to even tell.

Did it want to be a sex and violence power play like Game of Thrones, did it want to be a Costume Drama or did it want to be a “They May Take our Lives BUT THEY’LL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEEDOM!!!!” movie like Braveheart, well dear reader it decided “Ah fuck it let’s just do all 3” and none of them came together in any cohesive or satisfying way as they just got thrown onto a goddamn wall to see what if anything would stick and none of it did.

And now we come to the truly bottom of the barrel when it comes to 2019 in film and well there wasn’t just one major turkey that gave me the same taste of bitter that seeing my mighty West Coast Eagles the reigning premiers finish 5th but they all tie together as my 3 big Turkeys of this year and we start with in 1c:

Glass: M Night Shymalan went back once more to the world of his 2000 film Unbreakable and its 2017 sequel Split and this was my second most anticipated film of this entire year as everyone was back, the trailers were great and the tagline of “You Cannot Contain What You Are” was one that had me very intrigued to know more in the movie itself.

But instead this movie was an awful mess of what felt 3 or 4 separate story ideas for both an Unbreakable and Split sequel and instead of taking the time to pair them down M Night decided to just do all of them through a fucking storytelling blender and what you end up watching is a mess and a half of a film that starts off well and then just grinds to a fucking halt in the mental hospital with Sarah Paulson of all people being handed these mouthfuls of dialogue that just lumber out of her nasily voice like she’s pushing this huge weight up a mountain and I love love love this woman in movies and it still saddens me to say all of this but it has to be done though I take no pleasure at all in doing it.

As for Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson well the former gets a couple of good scenes before being locked in a cage for most of the second act and getting a crummy fight scene at the end while the latter for a movie called Glass barely does anything and for half of his screen time he sits there silent, silent I mean this movie is meant to be about the existence of heroes and the one person to naturally counteract the Dr character doesn’t get to do so and it robs the story of any kind of proper resonance, what a horrible horrible waste of it all.

1b. X-Men Dark Phoenix: Now to be fair many of us well those of us to be precise didn’t really expect much from this movie, we just held out hope, maintained it and kept to that continuing search for hope before seeing this movie well I did at least as this franchise which would’ve turned 20 years old next year has been so instrumental in the evolution of this genre that we wanted to walk out with hope kindled that we hadn’t wasted our time.

Well sadly we did and this is just a nothing movie if there ever was one, Simon Kinberg a man who hadn’t even directed a short movie gets handballed this huge movie and makes every single rookie mistake in the book, he doesn’t know how to handle his villains properly as those scenes could have easily been removed without affecting the movie in any way shape or form, he doesn’t know how to pace the action and character moments and he doesn’t know how to show off these mutant powers in an exciting way like Bryan Singer, Matthew Vaughn, Tim Miller and James Mangold have done in their X-Men movies.

Now again James McAvoy like in Glass is the true saving grace if there ever was one along with Michael Fassbender and I would watch them do anything together on film as they have such magical chemistry but like X-Men Apocalypse the movie pushes them apart for no reason when this greater threat should have brought them together as allies which at the very least Apocalypse did albeit all too briefly.

And lastly this movie just wasn’t about anything regarding the human condition here on Earth, the best X-Men movies (X1, X2, Days of Future Past and Logan) had something to say about that very thing, about racism, bigotry, coming out to your family, the hope for a better tomorrow, the hope that those you love will learn the error of their ways, the hope for humanity to put its pettiness aside for a greater good, death, dying, what you leave behind.

These things were at the core of those films I mentioned above and 3 of those were produced by Lauren Shuler Donner whose extraordinary tweet the weekend this movie opened where she disowned it and Apocalypse said volumes to me, that she the lady who not only got this up and running but engineered the comeback after X3 and Origins: Wolverine scorched it almost beyond repair gets pushed out or leaves and the buffoons of Kinberg and Parker firstly can’t keep Singer in line on Apocalypse and secondly throw the heart away for one made of rusty tin that means nothing, hopefully Marvel Studios can bring it back to life again but we wait we see.

And lastly, we come to 1a:

Rambo Last Blood: Yes Sylvester Stallone not content with reviving Rocky with the 2 Creed films decides to bring back John Rambo for one last adventure that preview wise looked exciting, a Logan/Unforgiven esque film showcasing this Vietnam vet going on one last adventure.

But sadly this movie like Dark Phoenix just had nothing new going for it, it had nothing new in terms of action scenes it just repeats the R18+ rated violence that Rambo 4 from 2008 did first and while some of it was fun it too just got tiresome after a while.

And also it had nothing new to say with this character, the first 2 Rambo movies were born out of the very politically charged environment of the Vietnam War and how the attitude to that conflict in the minds of the American public shifted first with the sobering reality that was portrayed in First Blood and then the Reagan era fantasy of “We Get to Win This Time” that Rambo 2 portrayed whereas here the lead Mexican villain may as well as have been Dick Dastardly as he looked so much like him.

And the story felt so fucking old hat it just came across as Sly dusting off an old Taken esque script written after the surprise success of that film and tweaked it to make it a Rambo movie and kablamo you have a cheap Rambo sequel that feels very cheap in terms of its filmmaking, storytelling and treatment of its fans and this along with Creed 2 last year have me thinking that as reliable as Sly is as a screen presence it was high time he either rode off into the sunset for good or only come back when he has something worthwhile to give to his fans.

Boy did that feel good especially venting about that 3 way Turkey tie but their all cooked now and in Part 2 we can feast on them at the Christmas table and talk about my favourite films of 2019.

See you then.