Film Review - Belfast (2022)

 Belfast is the new film by Sir Kenneth Branagh and stars Jude Hill as a young boy in Belfast, Ireland in 1969 he lives with his Mum and Dad played by Catriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan and likes a young girl named Katherine at school as well as spend time with his grandparents played by Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds but his life is turned upside down as the Troubles begin between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and his family will be faced with a difficult choice whether to stay or to leave for a better life.

 

Belfast is an okay film but before I delve into my problems with it I want to talk about what I did like about the film and that is mainly the performances, little Jude Hill is wonderful and I wish that he was in the conversation regarding Best Actor at the Oscars this year as he really deserved a nomination, so much of this movie rests on his little shoulders and he carries it so well that I really enjoyed watching him.

 

Catriona Balfe is also good as his Mum while Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds often anchor many of the films best moments as the grandparents with the good natured humour and wise council.

 

However I think Branagh’s script has a conflicted tone to it, on the one hand it wants to be this childlike fable about a young boy growing up with this element of wonder and positivity to it yet on the other hand it wants to seriously document the Troubles and how it all began and I wish Branagh had made either film and let that be the driving force particularly regarding the Troubles which is a dark period in Irish history that deserves a movie all on its own whereas here every time the little boy and his family went down the street I thought “Their going to die either by a gunshot or a shop explosion” and because of that I began to lose interest after a while.

 

And so that was Belfast and its an okay film and that is really down to the performances and less to do with its tonally mishmashed script, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Uncharted (2022)

Uncharted is based off of the successful series of video games on the Sony Playstation and stars Tom Holland as Nathan Drake a young man working as a bartender who one night meets a man named Sully (Mark Wahlberg) who knew his older brother Sam who went missing looking for a lost fortune of gold said to be worth billions of dollars but the descendant of the original family who found the fortune hundreds of years ago (Antonio Banderas) eyes a mysterious cross that could be the key to finding the lost fortune but Drake and Sully also want that cross so they can find the fortune for themselves.

 

Uncharted was for me not a great film and regrettably after getting off to a good start 2022 has served up its first turkey of a film and firstly I have to start with the films storytelling, it has some fun action scenes such as one with a line of cargo boxes on an aircraft but so often this movie resorts to every 2^nd or 3^rd scene being a double cross, every other line being a sarcastic joke and so many of the actors treating the script with this frivolous tone that I just got so fucking sick of it sitting there watching it in the cinema.

 

Now don’t get me wrong both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade have humorous moments in them but not to the extent where it undercut the tone of “We have to find this object before the Nazis do or the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth” that those films have, the influence of Joss Whedon in the last 10 years is one that I really really really wish would stop because I’m just that sick of all the cynical frivolousness of many modern movies nowadays where everyone seems to just treat everything like a joke well sir I ain’t laughing,

 

As for the cast well their for the most part either wasted or boring, Tom Holland is a good young actor who has proven himself to be more than capable of carrying a film but this is the second time in a row where the film he’s in doesn’t either seem willing or able to trust him to carry it all on his shoulders and last time it was for nostalgic fanservice this time it feels like he’s in a straitjacket while other characters take the spotlight and I just thought “Piss off you, I want to watch Holland do all this” and when he does get to do some of the puzzle solving its great but there wasn’t enough of it.

 

As for Mark Wahlberg well he’s Mark Wahlberg and he’s becoming another Nic Cage, Jeff Goldblum and Samuel L Jackson where he just plays himself rather than a character and here it’s the usual fast breathing and talking in the Mark Wahlberg voice can you hear it while you reading this because I can hear it while I’ve written this review and in some of the bartender scenes I thought of the 1988 film Cocktail with Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown and I wish that a Bryan Brown type had been cast as Sully instead as someone like that could’ve been the cynic but still have that heart of good and that doesn’t come across in Wahlberg’s work here.

 

As for Antonio Banderas well what a waste of a great talent here being given a thankless role and like Holland tries his best to make it work but the film itself just doesn’t want to let them shine in it, there are 2 ladies here Sophia Ali and Tati Gabrielle and Ali has her moments but again just can’t make anything work in this material and Gabrielle was so forgettable I didn’t really care about her much.

 

And so that was Uncharted and I did not care for this one much I’m afraid, it all just feels like a waste of potential and a waste of a good cast and that’s just sad given what is capable nowadays, 1 out of 5.

 

Film Review - Death on the Nile (2022)

 Death on the Nile is the second Hercule Poirot film to be directed by and star Sir Kenneth Branagh (the first was Murder on the Orient Express back in 2017) and this time Poirot is in Egypt enjoying a holiday when he was tasked with investigating the murder of a wealthy woman (Gal Gadot) who has recently married her fiancé Simon (Armie Hammer) but as always with a murder to solve there are many suspects each with their own alleby’s and possible motives.

 

Death on the Nile I think is a better film than Orient Express was and a lot of that comes down to firstly having a more luxurious location to explore in Egypt and the Nile River than just the snowy mountains and the Orient Express train and also the mystery itself is a better one than the Orient Express film and it allows to get to know Branagh’s take on Poirot more than we did in the previous film.

 

Now Branagh’s take on Poirot is not a patch on Sir David Suchet who was the definitive Hercule Poirot but he is still a good watch in this role and I enjoyed watching him more than I felt the broader ensemble cast, as for Branagh’s direction its okay and he definitely wants to take his time in laying the tracks for this mystery to unfold as well as show off the Egyptian locales and develop his ensemble cast before the killings begin plus there is a very nice Black and White filmed prologue that felt like a bit of a dry run for his current Oscar competitor Belfast.

 

As for that ensemble cast they are okay, Gadot and Hammer play off each other fine enough but they don’t have a lot of romantic chemistry as a couple, Letitia Wright and Sophie Okonedo were good in their roles, I really liked Emma Mackey as the spurned lover and hope to see more of her in future movies while I always enjoy seeing Annette Bening in any role she does.

 

The main highlights of the broader cast however are Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders who make a great pair and generated a good amount of laughs from me while Russell Brand was actually pretty good in this movie and he is someone I’ve never really been a big fan of over the years.

 

And so that was Death on the Nile and its enjoyable enough to make for a watch if you get the chance, 3 out of 5.