2022 in Film Part 1

 Hard to believe it but another movie year is coming to a close as we’re only 3 weeks or so until 2022 ends and 2023 begins.

 

And man oh man has it been an eventful year in film with a sequel to Top Gun buzzing every box office tower you could ever ask it to do while our 2 biggest studios Disney and Warner Brothers struggle to recover from Covid while the other 3 (Paramount, Universal and Columbia/Tristar) all enjoyed good to great box office success.

 

But this was the year that without a doubt saw movie going especially in movie theatres that holy church of the cinema came back in a big way, yes 2021 in particular was the beginning of the comeback with the Dry in January of that year and then the opening weekend of A Quiet Place 2 and Cruella being the first big movie going weekend since the dark times began but we were crawling and taking our first steps into cinema going again.

 

But this year well the huge success of Spider-Man No Way Home and Top Gun Maverick saw a real cascade effect on the box office as both of those films were the 2 main films that brought huge swathes of the audience back to movie theatres and that has flowed on ever since with Dr Strange, Jurassic World Dominion, Uncharted, the Batman all enjoying healthy box office success among other films such as Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and the indie breakout hit Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.

 

But as the year ends we finally get Avatar: The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish 2 very warmly received films that should help the end of the year box office with a much needed boost along with a major awards contender in the Banshees of Inisherin and 2023 looks to be a very strong year at the box office.

 

With movies like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Force of Nature the follow up film to the Dry with Robert Connolly and Eric Bana returning, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Dune Part 2 among other movies that should now that we’ve found our way back this year should continue on this momentum and build on it more and I for one am very hopeful/optimistic that becomes the case.

Film Review - Violent Night (2022)

 Violent Night stars David Harbour as Santa Claus and he is working away on Christmas Eve delivering toys and games and other presents to the children of the world but one night his reindeer fly away on him and he gets stuck at the house of a rich family called the Lightstones who are later taken hostage by a team of terrorists led by John Leguizamo so its up to Santa to grab some weapons and say Ho Ho Ho while saving that family’s Christmas.

 

Violent Night is okay but not one of the great Christmas movies for me and firstly I want to touch on David Harbour’s Santa as he is good fun to watch in this role even if at times it felt like he was impersonating John Goodman and by that I mean it feels like he is picking up where Goodman left off in terms of playing likeable everyday characters and that isn’t a bad thing here or elsewhere as Harbour is a good actor and while at times it feels like he’s given a couple of too many jokey type moments he makes the most of them for the most part.

 

Also the film has some good action moments with guns firing and hammers being wielded and traps going off like in Home Alone and the music score by Dominic Lewis isn’t too bad to listen to either even if you feel the huge inspiration of Michael Kamen’s score from Die Hard all through it.

 

But this movie has some big problems for me and the first of those is Leguizamo as the main villain, he is a good actor and is very good in another recent release the Menu but here watching him makes you appreciate so much more what it was Alan Rickman brought to Hans Gruber in Die Hard as this movie so very much wants his character to be in that same vein but instead he felt more like a senior Wet Bandit and it really hurts this movie for me.

 

Secondly the film has way too much fowl language now normally this doesn’t bother me Die Hard (the Greatest Christmas movie ever made) has plenty of cursing in it but here its just used over and over again and it really bothered me because it just felt kind of juvenile like someone learning these words for the first time and now can’t stop using them even though he really should and I wouldn’t blame them either.

 

And lastly this movie so wants to be a new Die Hard and Home Alone but every time it tries to riff on those films or do similar beats to them I was just reminded of how good those 2 films really are and all this movie can do is just fall short of that very high benchmark.

 

And so that was Violent Night and it’s a fun watch mainly due to Harbour and some of the action scenes but I would watch Die Hard and Home Alone instead as those are just so much better its beyond a joke, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - She Said (2022)

 She Said is based off of the novel by New York Times Journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twoey (Carey Mulligan) who were also the main reporters who helped expose Harvey Weinstein’s many abuse allegations in October of 2017, this film version stars Kazan and Mulligan as the two reporters who did the long hard work it takes to bring down a powerful person who has helped squash this story time and time again and how its writing helped to launch a major movement worldwide.

 

She Said is a very good film and first off I have to praise director Maria Schneider and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz who not only adapt this story for the big screen in the kind of journalism film we expect after movies like All the Presidents Men and Spotlight and the Post but also they take the time to take you into the private lives of both of the reporters.

 

These 2 ladies who are very well played by Kazan and Mulligan both individually and as a pair but also you see the fact that these 2 reporters aren’t the Redford/Hoffman types who were working in newsrooms since they first hit working age and still had pimples on their faces no these 2 are everyday mothers with young children in one case and the other has just had a baby and returned from maternity leave while also going through post partum depression.

 

Another great performance is by Samantha Morton as one of the many assistants who have a story of their own to tell and this movie spells out in pretty direct detail what it was these young women went through and it’s a hard watch because you sit there and think “This is horrible” and I felt horribly for these ladies who thought they had a dream job only for it to become a nightmare and I love dark movies but this was tough for me and women deserve better.

 

And lastly the way that this movie handles Harvey is also very well done, more than once I was comparing him in my mind to Jabba the Hutt from Return of the Jedi, this large ominous and powerful figure who if he was displeased essentially blackballed their careers (and there is a cartoon of him as Jabba drawn by Mark Knight from the Herald Sun) thankfully the business has seen the back of him.

 

And so that was She Said and it is a very good film if a tough watch given the nature of its story and some of its details but everyone involved deserves big kudos for handling this material with great care and putting the focus in the right place as it easily could not have in the wrong hands, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Strange World (2022)

 Strange World is the newest Disney Animation film and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Searcher Clade, the son of a famous explorer (Dennis Quaid) who went missing 25 years ago but when his farm which harnesses a plant that is the power supply of his home Pando is under threat due to an infection of the crops he must venture down to the source of the roots and solve the problem so he can save his farm and home.

 

Strange World was a movie that I had high hopes for, I love Disney Animation (it was my first real gateway drug into loving movies as a whole) and the first trailer for this movie was fantastic promising this wonderous adventure to a strange new world, to boldy go where few had gone before, hopefully this would soar unlike Pixar’s Lightyear which was a debacle.

 

Well it is better than Lightyear but not by much I’m sorry to say and the main reason for that is so much of this movie is dull and flat to watch, there is no real wonder or sense of awe or moments where you want to go “WOW That is something” like Top Gun Maverick did or the previews for Avatar: The Way of Water do where you sit there in your cinema seat and are astounded at what your watching.

 

And part of that firstly is the animation, it’s the same dull, dreary lifelike look that Pixar has done for some of their recent films and it looks terrible, the people look like blobs, the colours feel muted and drab and there aren’t those moments where the movie pulls back to let you see this whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, taking you wonder by wonder on this mission and that this is not here really hurts this movie.

 

What also hurts it is the characters, again their dull, dreary and feel very predictable to watch in terms of here’s where they are and here’s where they will end up, Gyllenhaal is solid as always but he feels partially out of place as the lead of this type of movie while Dennis Quaid is good fun as his explorer father even if he can’t quite save this movie.

 

And I miss the grand old days of Disney Animation, the beautiful drawing styles, the noble heroes, the grand villains (Disney has a rogues gallery that any studio would kill to have), the music that becomes part of your world and that sense of here is what animation can do as a medium that the real world can’t capture and I sorely sorely wish that Jennifer Lee as the head of Disney Animation had balanced the family dramas with that tradition of Disney Animation and if this movie’s failure a the box office sees her go in that role I won’t be sad if it happens.

 

And so that was Strange World and it’s a bit of a disappointment for me sad to say, I had high hopes and they weren’t met and I hope that Disney Animation can return to greatness soon, 1 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - The Menu (2022)

 The Menu stars Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy as a young couple who get invited to a secluded island named Hawthorne which has a very exclusive restaurant led by a mysterious chef known to his cooks as Chef (Ralph Fiennes) who has planned a very special course of meals for his guests tonight.

 

The Menu is a lot of fun and the first reason for that is how the film embraces its dark comedy tone very well, the longer the night goes on the more that the Menu reflects the guests that are there, there’s a famous movie star and his partner, a group of bankers, a restaurant critic and her husband and some others and the way the meals and the guests reflect each other I found to be really interesting and the punishments a lot of fun.

 

Also this film has some really good performances, Anya Taylor-Joy is great here and has a really expressive face that can say a lot emotions, John Leguizamo is very good here as well as the movie star while Ralph Fiennes is simply terrific here as the almost demented chef.

 

If there is one setback however its Nicholas Hoult, don’t get me wrong he’s not terrible in this film but I didn’t think his performance here was all that good he just fell kind of flat and it hurt the movie after a while.

 

And so that was the Menu and it is a lot of fun with some delicious moments, its one meal I will happily have again, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - On the Line (2022)

On the Line stars Mel Gibson as Elvis, a late night radio host in Los Angeles who talks to all kinds of people on the air but one night while doing a show it is interrupted by a caller named Gary who is holding his wife and daughter hostage and makes Elvis go through all kinds of hoops in order to save them.

 

On the Line works best when it embraces the early 90s “Die Hard in a” part of its story as you see after Die Hard became a smash hit in 1988 every other studio wanted their own version of it the most famous of those were Cliffhanger with Stallone and Under Siege with Steven Seagal and this movie works great when it goes in that direction there’s a problem that Elvis has to solve but if he leaves the station then his family dies and I really dug this part of the film.

 

But the other part of it which is how this movie ends and I won’t say too much more didn’t work as well for me as it tried to be too clever and twisty turny for its own good and when it was all over I sat there thinking “what was that” to a certain extent.

 

And also as much I love watching Mel Gibson especially his back catalogue the character he played here, this kind of late night shock jock type of character started to bother me after a while mainly due to the rather significant baggage Gibson now carries in his own life that led to his downfall and disgrace and it felt like I thought the movie would blur the 2 now thankfully it doesn’t but there were parts where I thought it would and it bothered me.

 

And so that was On the Line and it’s a mixed bag, a good thriller that gets too twisty and turny for its own good and doesn’t quite make that landing a smooth one but its still a fun thriller, 2 and a half out of 5.

Marvel's Phase 4: A Retrospective

 Well folks the 4^th Phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to a close with the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and now that it is all done and dusted how did this phase go, could it continue well after Avengers Endgame made such a good case for being the end of the MCU as a whole even though that would never happen or did this near invincible franchise finally start to hit the rocks after many years of success.

 

Well frankly it is very strongly a case of the latter as my main thought when it came to the end of Phase 4 of this series was “Good Riddance” but before I delve why I feel that way I want to write about my 2 favourite and 2 least favourite parts of this phase.

 

My 2 favourite projects from Phase 4 are Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and the Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series, the former does a brilliant job paying tribute to the late great Chadwick Boseman and his legacy as King T’Challa even if like the characters who knew him best in the movie you miss his presence at the centre of the film.

 

While the latter was a series I was looking forward to each instalment of each week as it was a fun action adventure series even though sadly it did not stick the landing in terms of its ending which could’ve been fixed if it had done a 7^th episode to properly wrap up its storylines.

 

My 2 least favourite projects from Phase 4 are both from the movie side and the first of those is last November’s The Eternals which I hated as a movie and was the first inkling for me that Marvel as a whole was starting to lose its way because the film had a group of heroes that were ponderous bores to watch, the dialogue was equally pompous and up itself, the action scenes looked very dark, the villains were badly rendered CGI splotches and the film completely and utterly botches the introduction of the Celestials who are a huge part of the Marvel Comics lore.

 

The second is Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which came out in early May in cinemas and was for me a real disappointment as the film’s script felt like a separate Dr Strange script and a separate Wanda script smashed together in a blender, Wanda’s character arc felt like it either ignored or contradicted the events of the TV series WandaVision and the use of Professor Charles Xavier was heartbreaking.

 

And had that cameo been done better then this movie probably wouldn’t be here but instead it is, firstly Stewart was way too old to be doing this cameo and it showed in his voice, the Gold wheelchair from the X-Men animated series looked ridiculous in live action and its not helped that it looks like a bed to put old man Sir Patrick in so he can watch the sunset with the glass of water with his teeth in it on the table next to the gold wheelchair and the character doesn’t even put up much of a fight or try to reach out to Wanda’s better instincts and that was the tipping point for this movie being a disappointment for me.

 

But now that all that is done why am I bidding Good Riddance to Phase 4 as a whole instead of going “Aw that was well done” like the end of Phase 3 well I feel that on the whole the quality of the MCU began to sink with this phase in these ways.

 

- Firstly the quality of the stories as a whole began to sink, there was no real sense of direction with this phase, no real sense of “here is where we are going with all of this” like we got with Phase 1 and no real sense of who the new big bad will be and when you go back to the Infinity Saga which consists of the first 3 phases of this franchise you got all of that, you got the assembling of the Avengers in Phase 1, the establishment of Thanos, the Infinity Stones and the wider Cosmic Realm in Phase 2 and then the final confrontation for the fate of the universe in Phase 3 a great 3 act structure that despite some potholes along the road felt very satisfying when it was done.

 

There was none of this in Phase 4 and it showed because as someone who watched the movies and the majority of the TV shows I was waiting for those points, the sense that all of this watching time was going to have a meaningful pay off but it didn’t really come and it all just feels like a giant waste of time despite some good work being done here.

 

- Secondly the quality from a production standpoint also began to sink, during the Infinity Saga Marvel Studios really only focused on 2 or 3 movies a year and that worked great for them, they were able to create that season of television feeling for the films when their runtimes were combined together and as long as you just went to those movies you were okay it wasn’t alienating to try and keep up with the story being told.

 

Well in Phase 4 we saw Disney Plus be launched and with it multiple Marvel streaming shows and that combined with the 3 and soon 4 movies a year its created a scenario where I feel the studio’s overall production resources in terms of Kevin Feige having the time to oversee the various projects in production to the teams assigned to make the movies and shows to the post production work be stretched a lot more thin and its really starting to show.

 

Not just in the now well documented Visual Effects problems and boy have those sunk really badly even in Black Panther 2 parts of it look like CG from the 90s and not in a good way but also so much of this stuff either looks very dark to the point where you cannot see what is happening on screen because of the wall of black over it but also the films and shows having a very cheap look as if no real time or money was put into making this stuff look right and looking like a top of the line production which given this has been the most successful franchise in the history of show business is at the very least we can expect.

 

But enough about Phase 4 what about what’s to come I mean we got an announcement a wile back about the Phase 5 roster, does that give you a sense of hope that despite these wobbles we can get back on track.

 

Well no sadly I didn’t feel that way and for these 4 reasons:

 

- Firstly it just feels like the MCU has essentially decided to double down on this multiple films/TV shows per year approach in a crash or crash through mode and instead of these announcements feeling exciting in terms of a character here or a project there I just felt more of a groan a sense of “great another project I will probably have to watch in order to keep up with the overall story” and its going to get to a point where I don’t care anymore.

 

- Secondly during the Phase 5 roster announcement the main thought that kept running through my head was “How are you going to pace all of these projects?” as throughout Phase 4 there was often a bleeding over of the movies opening in cinemas as a TV show was going through its run and it took away from the excitement a little bit of seeing a new MCU film in the cinema which has often been a fun experience for me due to the crowds that come but when you have it at your fingertips it takes away from the event feel overall.

 

- Thirdly I fear that this new big bad and during that same announcement we got a confirmation of Kang the Conqueror being the new big bad will falter in comparison with Thanos who I felt really did deliver the goods as a villain and I loved watching him in Infinity War and Endgame but when Kang was first introduced in the finale of Loki I was very very underwhelmed mainly because Jonathan Majors talked way too fast and you couldn’t understand what the hell he was saying and it looked like he was treating the whole thing like a lark and with none of the seriousness Josh Brolin brought to Thanos and I really really really want a proper villain again I’m so sick of the misunderstood ones and the jokey ones that seem to dominate so many of these films and I hope here is where I am proven wrong as I will be very happy for that to happen.

 

- And lastly and here is where I will wrap things up I am worried about the lack of a core focus in terms of the heroes, recently I’ve begun to fear that this series is starting to resemble one of the worst aspects of the comics in that you have multiple teams running around (Young Avengers, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, actual Avengers) and each of those have their own runs and their own storylines but what made the first 3 phases so good was that you had just one team in the Avengers and that brought with it a clear central focus and that I fear with this huge expansion is going to make things feel too scattershot and too fractured like they currently do now.

 

And so that was my retrospective on Marvel’s Phase 4 and why I was glad to big Good Riddance to it as well as my concerns going forward from here as we begin Phase 5 next year and look I know its fun to kick these movies and dismiss them as junk but this Phase has proven a lot of the detractors right by going down the path that it has and look if things do improve I’ll be happy to be proven wrong but for the moment I have my doubts but things can change.