Film Review - Mercy (2025)

Mercy stars Chris Pratt as a Los Angeles Detective in a future where LA has become overrun with Crime and so the LAPD brings in the Mercy Justice System where an AI judge oversees criminal cases in 90 minutes but he is later brought before this judge (Rebecca Ferguson) to prove his innocence over the murder of his wife.

Mercy was not a movie I had high hopes for and while it wasn’t terrible its also a movie that feels very farfetched and very predictable at the same time, Chris Pratt is fine as the Detective character but there is very little here that you haven’t seen him do before and better and it felt like a waste of his everyman qualities, Rebecca Ferguson is clearly here for both the pay check and easy access to a role as it felt like she did her role over Zoom from home and that is a real waste of her remarkable talents.

And one should not simply waste the Reverend Mother like that.

But the main issue here is the storytelling as for a movie about AI it feels like it was written by one that knew how every other AI story played out over the decades and went down the same path those did and so much of it feels so predictable in terms of who did what and where things will happen and how things will play out that you felt like you were ahead of the storytelling instead of being engaged with it and some of the uses of screens and social media accounts and phones just had me going “what the fuck” more than once as it felt like everyone just said Yes to all that stuff in the usual way people do with Terms and Conditions and it really felt like 10 steps too far for me.

And so that was Mercy and I will be Merciful here and say not to bother unless you have a free ticket voucher from Christmas to watch it, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - Marty Supreme (2025)

Marty Supreme is the new movie by Josh Safdie and stars Timothee Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a high wire hustler and table tennis player in 1952 New York who wants to be the very best like no one ever was but his ego and drive to succeed more often than not gets in his way not too mention his abrasive personality.

Timothee Chalamet has been on a role for me lately with the Dune films, Wonka and A Complete Unknown a strong run of films of high quality and Chalamet himself proving himself as one his generations best actors could this movie build on that or would it be defeat.

Sadly this is somewhere in the middle for while there are good elements to this movie I was ultimately let down by the movie, firstly Chalamet is very good here anchoring the film very well with a high wire and high energy performance that if it was anyone else probably wouldn’t work as well and Safdie’s direction with its energetic and fast pacing suits him well, Odessa A’zion is also good here as Marty’s love interest Rachel and so is Fran Drescher and Abel Ferrara (director of King of New York and Bad Lieutenant) in their small roles.

And the table tennis scenes are excellent, shot and edited with high energy that really got me hooked into them when they were playing out on screen plus the music score by Daniel Lopatin is very good as well.

But there are some big issues I also had with this movie:

- First of those is Marty as a character is very very annoying at times with the ways he gets in everyones faces, makes promises he surely cannot keep and in the sport of table tennis finds it hard to accept loss and learn the lesson that there is always someone stronger out there in that same sport and having a worthy rival around is good to keep you on your toes and on top of your game but it seems that this lesson goes ignored throughout the film and it’s a real shame

- Secondly a number of the films character scenes resort to people simply yelling at each other in high voices and it bothered me so much that I wanted to yell out “SILENCE!!” like in the Dune films I hated it that much

- Third is Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance, she has been good in roles in the past but here it just felt like she was resorting to sad face a lot of the time she was on screen and I couldn’t help but wonder what Cate Blanchett might have done with this role as I feel she would’ve sold the underlining tragedy of that character in a more resonant way.

- And lastly some of the song choices felt very out of place in the films 1952 setting and again I started to wonder if the story might have worked better if the setting was the 1980s or a post GFC world so the song choices on the soundtrack wouldn’t feel so jarring, some of them worked but others did not.

And so that was Marty Supreme and like One Battle After Another this is another Best Picture nominee that has good moments but didn’t work as well for me as I had hoped, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - The Choral (2025)

The Choral is a British drama that stars Ralph Fiennes as a Chorus Master living in Germany in 1916 at the height of World War One when he is asked to come to England and take over a local Choir after their own chorus master enlists for the front but his living in Germany doesn’t quite sit well with the British Choir in a time of War.

The Choral is a little long at times especially towards the end but it is a nice little British drama to be enjoyed with a Cup of Tea one day, something the film does well is the effect that World War One has on the British community depicted in the film from the postboy delivering messages of condolence to loved ones to people demanding why young boys aren’t fighting when families are losing sons all over the country to how the Chorus Master is affected by the anti-German mindset even if he doesn’t always show it.

As for Ralph Fiennes who will be the main draw for most who choose to see this movie he is his usual reliable self though there were times where I did wonder what Colin Firth might have done with this role as there are times where Fiennes talks a little too softly which he can do at times and Firth might have brought more of a resonance to that role but Fiennes is a great actor in his own right and he delivers the goods once again.

And so that was the Choral and it starts this new movie year off on a good note, 3 out of 5.