Film Review - Operation Mincemeat (2022)

 Operation Mincemeat is a new British film that stars Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu who is recruited into Her Majesty’s Government in 1943 during World War 2 and the Allies are trying to find a way into Europe to help liberate it from Nazi occupation and think they may have found a route through Sicily in Italy but the beach area is heavily fortified and will need diverting to have a chance of success so Ewen and a band of other officers (Penelope Wilton, Jason Isaacs, Matthew MacFayden, Kelly Macdonald and Johnny Flynn) decide to use a corpse with false top secret info in a high stakes game of deception that could decide the fate of the free world.

 

Operation Mincemeat was definitely one of those surprise films I didn’t think would be as enjoyable as it was and this along with the Duke (another British film) are probably my favourite films of 2022 so far even though the year is young and not even halfway done.

 

The main reason for this is that I was really riveted by this crazy story, a plan so crazy that it could just work and even though part of you thinks that you know how it all ends given the Allied victory in World War 2 I was still wondering how on Earth they were going to pull this plan off and would it work at all because if it didn’t things would’ve been very different.

 

It also helps that the film has a great cast at its disposal, Colin Firth is a big favourite of mine and here he is as reliable as always, Macfayden and Macdonald are very good as well while Penelope Wilton always charming in a film is good as well also I have to say Hello to Jason Isaacs as well who is great as the crusty admiral who may or may not approve this operation.

 

One part of the film that did make me scratch my head a little was Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming who of course was the creator of the James Bond books and was a real life Naval officer but in this movie they have him almost quasi narrate this story as if he was writing one of his Bond plots and it felt not only a little jarring given Fleming was mainly a desk sailor in his Wartime years but I kept thinking of a 1991 movie called Spymaker.

 

In that film they attempt to make a film about Fleming and his life in World War 2 in the vein of a Bond film and it even has Jason Connery (Sean’s son) playing Fleming himself plus a young Kirstin Scott Thomas as well as David Warner as an M type character and Joss Ackland and granted I’ve only seen a preview for this film but it was something that came to mind while watching this movie.

 

And so that was Operation Mincemeat and I really enjoyed it and I hope people go and watch it if they get the chance as I haven’t enjoyed a movie this much in a while and it is very refreshing, 3 and  a half out of 5.

Film Review - Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022)

 Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is the new A24 film written and directed by the Daniels and stars Michelle Yeoh as the owner of a small Laundromat which is at risk of failing as well as her marriage to her husband played by Ke Huy Quan (Data from the Goonies and Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) but during a tax audit with an IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis) she learns that she is in grave danger and that she must make a trip through the Multiverse to save her life and that of her husbands.

 

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is very much all of those things and its definitely a unique filmgoing experience for sure though at times it didn’t quite all work for me but before I delve into that I want to talk about the positives and there are a lot of them here firstly Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are very good here and work well as a couple plus in their own individual moments where they get to be dramatic, kick ass in very exciting action scenes as well as be funny, I also really enjoyed seeing James Hong (Mr David Lo Pan himself) in a key supporting role as well plus Jamie Lee Curtis is a lot of fun as well.

 

Also the filmmaking here by the Daniels is a lot and for the most part they make good use of the 139 minute running time with a lot of scenes and moments and fast cuts and slower moments but at times I felt that it bordered on being too much, too sentimental and too long and this movie does all of those sometimes a lot and sometimes all at once.

 

It borders on being too much for sometimes overdoing a lot of the fast paced moments to the point where its hard to get a good look at each multiverse variant Michelle Yeoh is in, at times it borders on being too sentimental as I thought towards the end “So this all built to that, that’s a bit disappointing and predictable” and it bordered on being too long as again in the end of the film I started to check my watch on a couple of occasions.

 

And look this movie is not a bad movie at all there is a lot here to like but for me it bordered on all being too much and that’s why I give it a 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the newest Marvel Studios film and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr Stephen Strange and this time he must contend with Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) a former Avenger turned Scarlet Witch as she prowls the multiverse for her children who we saw in the Disney Plus series WandaVision but Strange will need the help of a young girl named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) to travel across the Multiverse to stop her.

 

Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was sadly a bit of a disappointment to me for these reasons:

 

- The first reason is that the Strange and Wanda storylines felt too much at times like 2 separate storylines that on their own could’ve been tweaked enough to justify their own movie but instead they are brought together into this movie and they didn’t really gel together into a cohesive film I felt, in one moment one storyline would build to a big moment and then the next scene would deflate that sense of urgency and it put me off after a while.

 

- Secondly the character motivations especially around Wanda, America and Christine played by Rachel McAdams again really didn’t make a lot of sense to me, Wanda’s arc in this movie just had me thinking “This is either contradicting or ignoring the events of WandaVision entirely” and that really began to bother me as Wanda to me was a sympathetic villain but here not so much and as good as Elisabeth Olsen is in this role I was really bothered by this disconnect.

 

Also Xochitl Gomez’s America felt too much like an anchor on the overall storytelling, from what I’ve read she is a fan favourite character in the comics but here she just got in the way somewhat when the clear focus should have been Strange and Wanda and their conflict especially when their both masters of the mystical arts and with some script tweaking could’ve found their way around the multiverse just fine on their own.

 

And lastly I have to talk about the Charles Xavier cameo (don’t worry this cameo was revealed in the previews for the film so no spoilers here) and this was the most disappointing part of this movie to me, not only was it very short but the way the character is handled just made me think “The Charles Xavier of the X-Men movies would not have let it happen like this” and also as much as I love Sir Patrick Stewart I think it would’ve been better if James McAvoy had done this cameo instead as Stewart looked too old and frail for this small role I’m sorry to say.

 

And so that was Dr Strange and the Mutliverse of Madness and since Avengers Endgame in 2019 I have felt more and more that the MCU has been a real mixed bag quality wise and I fear that between the 3-4 movies a year and the 3-4 Disney Plus shows a year that Kevin Feige is stretching his production resources too thin, asking too much of them and not being able to properly oversee everything in the way he once did when it was just 3 films a year and I think he either needs to let the series take a break or share the workload otherwise this franchise will fall over a cliff and badly, 1.5 out of 5.