Film Review - Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 is the follow up to 2021’s The Dry and both Writer/Director Robert Connolly and Eric Bana as Aaron Falk return in their roles, this story however takes place in Victoria’s High Country as 5 women (Deborah Lee-Furness, Anna Torv, Robin McLeavy, Sisi Stringer and Lucy Ansell) head up into the high country for a corporate retreat but only 4 return and Alice (Torv) is the one missing and Falk was using her for a high stakes AFP operation so the race is on to find her before a powerful storm system sweeps through the area.

I was very keen for this movie as I really enjoyed the Dry in early 2021 and have rewatched it a couple of times since then, it had a great mystery, a much welcome great role for Bana who had really been struggling since his break out role as Chopper Reed and great use of the drought stricken area it took place in but sadly this movie was the first to fall victim to the dual writers and actors strikes last year and its original August 23rd release date was delayed to February 8th but my main cinema was able to take part in some early screenings over the Australia Day long weekend and I pounced.

And happily most happily this movie has been well worth the wait and if you liked the Dry then you will not be disappointed and in 2 of the 3 fronts that film succeeded well in this one does too:

- The first of those is the location, whereas the first film had this dry desert frontier town feel to it where showers were a luxury and you felt the browns of the drought stricken land and the reds of the nearby fires and clear skied sunsets, this one is full of flowing waterfalls and riverbeds and dense green grassland where it can be easy to get lost and one small mistake can see you going down a mountain to almost certain death and the film makes great use of the high country landscape to full effect and it really shows on a big cinema screen.

- And the second of these is the casting, Bana is as good as ever second time around as Falk but here he has a co-detective to bounce off of in Jacqueline McKenzie and the two play off each other pretty well even though there were times I wished Bana was alone trying to solve the case, Lee-Furness (who previously made a movie set in the High Country called Cool Change with Jon Blake and Lisa Armitage in 1986) is very good here while Richard Roxburgh is good as well in a small role.

Also good are the other returning members of the corporate retreat McLeavy, Stringer and Ansell while Anna Torv who has rapidly emerged as one of my favourite actresses working today delivers her usual very good work as Alice, I can’t wait to see her again in the 3rd Season of the Newsreader later this year.

But there is one area where this movie isn’t as good as the Dry and that is in its central mystery, in the Dry it was easy to follow whereas here it’s firstly not as interesting and secondly at times it feels a little too twisty turny for its own good but that said this movie does NOT In any way fall into the same trap that both Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile or Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel Glass Onion fell into where they were just inferior films full stop when compared to their predecessors.

And so that was Force of Nature: The Dry 2 and this is a sequel that is as good as the first film and I will be keen to see this again when it starts its national run on February 8th, 3 weeks before Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters Will finally come out and what a glorious day that will be, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - The Color Purple (2024)

The Color Purple is not a remake of Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film but instead based on the Broadway Musical of the same name (though Spielberg and Amblin are producers on it as is Oprah Winfrey who along with Whoopi Goldberg came to prominence with the original film) and this time Fantasia Barrio stars as Celie who is forced to marry the abusive and hard driving Mr (Colman Domingo) but one day she meets the Blues singer Shug (Taraji P Henson) and Celie starts to think of better days ahead as well as possibly seeing her Sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) again.

This new version of Color Purple is a good film but its not without problems but before I delve into those I want to talk about what I do like:

- Firstly I did like the films musical numbers, they are well shot and edited and have a real verve to them and when they came on in the cinema I was tapping my feet to them for the most part though as the film goes on they do start to get in the way of the storytelling a little bit.

- And secondly I think this is a solid cast, Barrio steps into some big shoes taking over Goldberg in this role but she does very well here (even if at times she looked a little too much like Goldberg) as does Danielle Brooks who is very good as Sophia and again taking over another icon in Oprah Winfrey who could not be easy but she does very well, Corey Hawkins and Hally Bailey are good in their roles and also the films production design especially of the swamp house is good as well.

But there are two big issues that I had with this movie:

- The first of these is the films length, it goes for 141 minutes but it felt more like 161 minutes at times especially towards the end where you just want the film to not have another song and dance ballad but instead to wrap up its story so I can exercise my bottom and stop it from going numb sitting in my seat and long musicals are hit and miss for me as well, sometimes like Spielberg’s West Side Story which had a 156 minute length worked wonderfully for me but here I was bothered by the length more.

- And secondly the films more serious storytelling moments and the films vibrant musical numbers clashed for me in terms of the overall tone and more than once I kept thinking to myself “I wish I was watching the original instead” and this feeling is heightened by Colman’s performance as Mr because at times especially in the second half I kept thinking he was doing an imitation of Danny Glover who played Mr in the original film (and was cast as Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon afterwards) and Glover has a distinctive voice that it sounded like Colman was doing that instead of making the part more his own and that bothered me as well.

All that aside however the Color Purple is not a bad film at all it’s a good watch if tough at times but I would watch the Spielberg original instead if your not hugely into musicals as this is a musical through and through and it worked well enough for me that I enjoyed myself watching it, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - The Beekeeper (2024)

The Beekeeper is directed by David Ayer who you may remember from such films as Fury in 2014 and the original Suicide Squad film in 2016 and stars Jason Statham as Adam Clay a beekeeper on a nearby farm who notices the farms owner has committed suicide after falling victim to a phising scam on her computer but Andy is more than any ordinary beekeeper and is determined to find the member of the hive responsible and drain them of their honey.

The Beekeeper is terrific fun and multiple times while watching it I had a big smile on my face and at times I event went “Yaaaayyyy” as Jason does his Stath thing and kills a whole bunch of people but thankfully this time the action is fun to watch and not borderline boring which it has been in some of the Stath’s recent films like Operation Fortune and Expendables 4 though at times Ayer cuts the action scenes a little too tightly and it takes you out of the film at times.

Also the film has a fun story of tech bros as the villains which Josh Hutcherson (he of Peeta Mallark from the Hunger Games) does pretty well and I enjoyed seeing Jeremy Irons and Minnie Driver in small roles and the film clips along at a nice brisk pace and even has some story turns I didn’t expect and were nicely surprising.

And so that was the Beekeeper and its fun to watch and definitely a welcome step up in quality for the Stath who I often found myself wishing was making better films and now he has hopefully this continues, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Ferrari (2024)

Ferrari is the new film by Michael Mann and stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari who in 1957 is facing a crisis within his company Ferrari and in his personal life as his now ex-wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) still maintains an interest in the company while his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) looks after their young son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese) but when a dangerous 1,000 mile race comes on the horizon Enzo decides to bet it all on winning that race.

Ferrari is very much a middle of the road Michael Mann film for me, it is not a dumpster fire like 2009’s Public Enemies or 2015’s Blackhat were for me but nor is it up there with his best films like 1986’s Manhunter or 1993’s The Last of the Mohicans.

For starters both Driver and Cruz are good in this movie both in their individual scenes and especially in their scenes together and it was those scenes that I felt the film really come alive as it felt like Mann had 2 great actors ready to go at each other and he was waiting to press record and get it on film and their chemistry works really well, Cruz in particular was my favourite part of this film from her sadness to anger and ultimately heartbreak at what has happened to Enzo and her life with him now that they are no longer together and sometimes Cruz says this with her eyes and its great to see.

Plus the films racing scenes are pretty good even if at times its all too obvious that CGI has been used in some of the films car crash scenes as it looked a bit janky in spots.

But this movie has 2 big problems:

- The first of those is that this movie lacks a good race car driver character like we got with Christian Bale’s Ken Miles in Ford V Ferrari which James Mangold directed and Mann executive produced and not only was Bale great in that film with his accent and yelling at everyone and swearing his head off but he also served as a pivotal anchor point to that films car racing scenes in terms of giving you a character to really get behind and hope that they win.

Here that is absent and although Patrick Dempsey and his silver hair try their best he’s in too little of the film to really make that key difference that Bale did in FvF.

- And second Shailene Woodley is really bad in this film and her casting is almost as misplaced as Chris Hemsworth’s was in Blackhat where that film has the government people going “we need a great computer person” and then it cuts to Chris in prison doing what looks like his workout for Thor: Ragnarok and that film was fatally undermined by his casting and Woodley’s casting almost does similar damage as she just comes across as dull, lifeless, flat and boring in her scenes and she has not only no real chemistry with Driver but I just do not believe Driver’s character would leave someone as beautiful as Cruz’s Laura for someone like her and also at times she just looks bored to be there and that also bothered me.

All that said however Ferrari is a good enough film that’s worth a watch down the line mainly for Driver and Cruz, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Next Goal Wins (2024)

Next Goal Wins is the new film by Taika Waititi and is based off of the American Samoa Soccer Team who in 2001 suffered a humiliating 31-0 defeat at the hands of the Socceroos, now 10 years later Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) is sent there after losing his job to help whip this team into shape before the World Cup Qualifiers but it will not be easy.

Next Goal Wins is not a bad movie from Waititi (those would be Thor: Love and Thunder which got far too silly and Jojo Rabbit which made me so disgusted with its frivolousness in the beginning of that film I nearly walked out of the cinema) but it is not one of his better films either (those would be Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok.)

The main reason it didn’t really do it for me is that I’m starting to get a little bit over Waititi’s style of comedy, it was a lot of fun in Wilderpeople and even in Ragnarok at times but here I didn’t really find myself laughing all that much (though I did chuckle a few times) and I also felt that its attempts at comedy felt like everyone involved was trying too hard to generate those big cinema crowd laughs and when that doesn’t happen I feel a little embarrassed for all involved.

But that said there is some good to be had here, Fassbender is good as Rongen even though I liked him more in David Fincher’s The Killer last year and a lot of the pacific island actors are good as well, I particularly liked Oscar Kightley the head of the American Samoa Football Club and Kaimana as Jaiyah a trans soccer player plus Rachel House fresh from Foundation Season 2, Will Arnett, Angus Sampson and Luke Hemsworth have fun small roles as well plus when the film plays itself as more sincere it did make me smile.

But alas Waititi is starting to become one of those filmmakers like George Lucas or M Night Shyamalan where they can become their own worst enemy and they have to play things a certain way when they sometimes need to just let a good story play out on its own and not feel the need to inject themselves so much into it and that happens here sadly, I hope Waititi changes course soon as I do feel he is a talented guy who is letting his ego run rampant.

And so that was Next Goal Wins and its fun for the most part but it didn’t really work all that well for me as I felt its laughs were too forced and I’m a little over Waititi and his style at the moment, 2 out of 5.

2023 in Film Part 2: Favourites and Turkeys

And now we come to Part 2 of my 2023 retrospective in film and this covers my Turkeys of the year and my Favourites of the year movie wise and lets get the rubbish out of the way first shall we and cook some Turkeys that in some cases deserved to be thoroughly roasted.

5. The Flash:

Now initially when I saw this movie, I was of a more mixed mind on it but as I began to think about this list more and more I felt that it deserved to be here despite the films fun Batman action in a few scenes.

And the reason this is here is because the films third act is simply atrocious, first of all it looks like director Andy Muschietti who made the 2 IT films in 2017 and 2019 respectively has gotten to the last level in a video game and has to fight the final boss (in this instance Michael Shannon returning as General Zod from 2013’s Man of Steel and looking completely lost the entire time) only to get his ass kicked over and over like it was Shao Khan from Mortal Kombat 2 and 3.

And in all the worst ways it feels like a director hogging the controller as they endlessly try to finish this last level and complete the game but they keep failing either the main objective or fail to save all of the characters in that level and it just becomes so monotonous to sit through that it loses any and all character impact in the emotional moments it desperately tries to hit.

But this climax also gets so bogged down in timey wimey multiversal gobbledygook that I just sat there in my seat going “Oh What” more often than not and the CGI of the Flash running through the time circle thingy just looked like a fucking hamster on a wheel going around and around and around and the legs look like their made of industrial grade rubber instead of flesh, blood and bone.

And speaking of the CGI in this film it is at times really bad and the opening scene of the film with the Flash saving a group of people from a hospital collapsing I just had playing in my head “If I could save Time in a Bottle” from X-Men Days of Future Past and sure enough there is a YouTube fan edit of that scene with that song playing, I guess great minds think alike sometimes.

But now onto Number 4 and its another Superhero film with:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania:

Wowsers, this was really bad.

And first off the films treatment of Ant-Man is where I have to start, now I like Paul Rudd and he has been fun in this role but he’s not smegging Captain America or Iron Man or Dr Strange or Spider-Man, the kind of marquee character you use to headline an important film which this was billed to be as, he is not that character he’s the fun goofy character who has smaller scale stories not one where he goes into strange new worlds to build up the new Thanos in Kang or give us a proper look at the Quantum Realm.

Speaking of the Quantum Realm it looked fucking terrible in this movie and more often than not I kept thinking to myself “My Eyes Hurt” as your just looking at this artificial environment in the vast majority of the film and it just looks like the actors were just standing on the Volume stage created for the Mandalorian series and none of it looks real or believable or tangible and this movie came out just 2 months after Avatar the Way of Water which is even more baffling.

And as for Kang well Jonathan Majors tried his best but this movie did that character dirty not only with not really building him up all that well as a genuine replacement for Thanos but also Ant-Man beats him in a one on one fight at the end of this movie.

Again let me repeat.

THIS WAS MEANT TO BE THE NEW BIG BAD AND HE LOSES IN HIS FIRST MOVIE!!

Sorry to go over the top like that but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a new villain for the Avengers (what’s left of them) to fight and have him lose to the one character he shouldn’t lose to under ANY circumstances and then they do these pointless teases of what was to come but that fell flat too, the sooner the MCU either gets away from this pointless villain or better yet calls it a day the better.

3. The Fabelmans:

Sometimes an artist’s great story is best left untold.

Now I was looking forward to this movie as I am a Spielberg fan and this was him telling the story of his life and the divorce of his parents and the trailer was good and got me emotional and I went into this keen to see it.

Boy did this leave me cold emotionally and feeling pretty much next to nothing when it was all over and there are 2 main reasons for this.

The first is that Spielberg has touched on so many of these ideas and themes in so many of his previous films that by the time he has gotten around to making it the core focus of a film it feels both too little and too late at the same time.

- The cold and sometimes aloof father figure well that was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Hook and Close Encounters

- The separated parents was a big part of ET and in fact Spielberg’s initial conception for that film is basically this one but with the Alien element added in

- The young man determined to go and make his mark on the world well that was done in the Amblin produced Back to the Future (a story Spielberg believed in the moment he heard it) and Gremlins as well as Empire of the Sun to a lesser extent

- The young group of friends on their bikes going off on an adventure was another Amblin production the Goonies

And lastly the war film that Sammy Fabelman makes feels like a group of 12 or 13 year olds seeing the opening of Saving Private Ryan and having their minds blown and then deciding to make their version of it the first chance they could.

And all of those other films I mentioned above can be watched by anyone, anywhere in the world and they will have a proper emotional reaction to it whereas here I felt nothing by the time it was over and the cameo at the end had me thinking “that was nice but I wish it was this other person who was far more important to the young Spielberg instead.”

And now the bottom 2 and boy does this Turkey deserve an almighty roasting:

Expend4bles:

A COVID Movie in all the worst ways.

First off the Expendables series had more or less come to a close with 2014’s 3rd entry which in and of itself wasn’t that great mainly because it went for an M rating instead of the MA rating the 2 previous films had and this one is also MA rated but it may as well not even have mattered as the action here is really bad with lots of quick cuts and shaky camera work and no real energy or verve to it.

Secondly the cast just goes through the motions, Megan Fox runs around in tight clothing and has no real chemistry with the Stath who really needs to be trying harder as he’s a fun actor to watch and should be making far better films, Andy Garcia just seems to be here so he can make some money again after being in lockdown for 2 years while the returning Expendables cast members just don’t seem to want to do anything other than the bare minimum.

But the worst part of this movie is the second half as the Expendables get onto a boat to find the bad guy and the device he’s stolen to wreak havoc and I thought to myself “okay this is the second act stop before the big finale” but NOOOOO we spend the entire back half of this movie on this damn boat where it feels like everyone who works on it has also been trained in the deadly arts I mean imagine going for a job on this boat.

“Hi I’m here to operate the Radio,”

“Very good, bunk down below and head to the Radio Room and tomorrow at 0930 hours there’s a martial arts course on the deck”

“Woohoo”

“Hi I’m here to be a Deck Hand,”

“Excellent, find a bunk and then get to work and tomorrow at 1030 hours we have advanced weapons training in Cargo Bay one”

“Alright”

“Hi I’m here to be a Ship’s Cook”

“Good, fund a bunk then report to the kitchen and tomorrow at 1100 hours we have knife training in Cargo Bay 3”

“Can I practice with the Knives in the Kitchen?”

“No”

“Ohhh”

Oh and about this feeling like a COVID Movie well there is so much green screen matting in this film that it feels like it was shot during the pandemic in a way where group scenes are at the barest possible minimum, most of the action can be in cars or flying vehicles or small enough groups so we can properly distance everyone and what location work there is was only done for smallest amount of time possible so we don’t flout any rules regarding outside gatherings.

Lionsgate had a good year this year with Hunger Games, John Wick and Saw doing pretty well but this did not and nor did it deserve to.

But there was indeed a worse movie than Expend4bles and it was late to the game but games are sometimes won in the last quarter like the 2018 grand final but this is not the prize you want to win especially when it comes from Walt Disney Animation the one group above all others that helped to foster my love of film.

Wish:

And when I saw this movie there was no doubt this was going to be my worst film of 2023.

And it breaks my heart to say this because whenever a new Disney Animated film comes out I have to see it at once as movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules from the 90s did so much to fuel my love of film and make it feel real and tangible (this year I got a proper Australian cinemas one sheet of Aladdin from 1993 framed) but this movie was simply awful on every level.

Firstly the story here is rough and it feels rough as you watch it as none of it feels organic or thought out or cohesive in any meaningful way, it just goes from one story beat to the next and one character moment to the next with next to no cohesion to it and it just jumps around all over the place and after a while it really starts to show.

Next up the characters are annoying, I love Ariana DeBose but here she tries and fails rather miserably to try and channel the same cute and quirky comedic energy Kristen Bell did as Anna in the Frozen films when she should’ve been more like Elsa in the Frozen films but no we can’t seem to do that nowadays or have her be like Ariel or Belle or Jasmine and want an adventure to go on or to not have their life lived for them or god forbid marry someone for love no we can’t have that it seems they have to be stoking the fires of revolution and/or trying to change the world to better suit them.

And it really really doesn’t work as Asha’s motivations don’t make any sense, she doesn’t get her way so she decides to overthrow the King basically despite the fact that the Kingdom she lives in is full of people who from what we see in the movie seem happy and content and don’t seem to be suffering or living in any kind of tangible poverty but none of that matters because one person doesn’t get what they want and thinks the world should revolve around them, give me a fucking break.

And does she suffer any consequences for her actions like Aladdin did for his lying to Jasmine and the Genie in that film, Nope not one bit but again we can’t have that nowadays can we.

As for the sidekicks well their annoying too and the talking goat in particular does anything but spout the same meaningless platitude that a talented cast had to vomit out of their mouths in 2018’s A Wrinkle in Time and like in that film its just so fucking annoying to listen to over and over and over again.

And then there’s King Magnifico the villain who just turns into a villain what seems like at random and without any meaningful arc that turns him to the dark side and it really doesn’t work at all and neither do the songs or the animation which like the characters and storytelling have a rough feeling to it but there’s a movie to be put out so let’s just feed it through the AI machine we just bought and that’ll do.

And it ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH!!! Again sorry to go over the top again and sound animated but this group of Disney Animation severely needs a kick up the ass for giving their fans this mediocre drivel not once but also last year with Strange World which was so deathly dull to sit through and even Encanto which didn’t really feel as magical as it thought it was.

And to go back to the 90s that group of talent was led by Jeffery Katzenberg who for all his mistakes knew what talented artists he had and wasn’t afraid to make them fight for their ideas, defend their ideas and throw out their ideas if they weren’t good enough nor was he afraid to make them scrap their work and start over again if it wasn’t good enough and he also wasn’t afraid to crack the whip when needed or bend when a good enough argument was made against his suggestions, Disney desperately needs that leadership again otherwise it will go back to the rut it fell into post Walt’s death until he and Michael Eisner took over in 1984.

Ah, that felt good.

Now we can serve the Turkeys on the table and feast on the goodness as here are my 4 favourite films of 2023 and this group of films were the ones that made it without any question and it was a group that I loved as much as I did and wanted to talk about more often than not and wanted to recommend widely to my friends but numbering them was tricky and the ordering changed depending on my mood but this listing is what it will probably be so let’s start with Number 4:

Elemental:

Now I wasn’t overly keen for this movie as it was coming after the debacle that was Lightyear last year which topped my Turkeys list for 2022 and the previews did nothing to help but when I saw it I was surprised at how much I liked it.

But it made this list after I did a rewatch of the film at home on Disney Plus and after that rewatch I came to adore the film for two main reasons:

The first of those being the world of Element City that the film creates, here Earth/Fire/Wind and Water (No Heart sorry so no Powers Combined I am Captain Planet here to be found) live together in as harmonious an environment as possible though the Fire element is sometimes treated with suspicion and doesn’t integrate as well as the other elements do but the way this world is realised was fun to spot on both watches of the film, I particularly got a good laugh out of the way the Water people cry in some scenes it felt like they could create a flood with their tears or help solve a drought.

And secondly this movie had a sweet love story at its core between a fire element in Ember and a water element in Wade and their scenes together were just wonderful from the first meeting to getting to know each other to figuring out whether they could hold hands and/or hold each other to finalising realising their true feelings for each other, this was a great reminder to me that Pixar when it tries still has some of that old magic left in it.

3. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes:

Now the odds were surprising for this film as while I was looking forward to it a part of me was nervous as to how it would translate to film as this was about Snow who was played as the President of Panem in the earlier movies by Donald Sutherland as a young man and reading his lines in the book I read them in Sutherland’s voice.

But this movie managed to pull that off and Tom Blyth deserves all the praise for doing so as he was the make of break of this movie and he made it big time and he had great assistance by Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird who like Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen I just cannot imagine anyone else in that role, she had great twisted chemistry with Blyth, did all of her singing live on set and sounded great and she did a great job with the southern accent and the more serious moments of the film.

Other great performances were Josh Rivera, Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman, Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis and Burn Gorman who did great work with their characters and were never boring to watch plus the world building in this movie is excellent as it has been in the rest of this series with the costumes, sets, music and props all making Panem feel real and believable as a film world you want to immerse yourself in.

And also this movie does a great job with the Games themselves, most of the time I found the Games in the other films not as interesting as the politics or intrigue or character arcs that came before them but here Francis Lawrence returning to direct the film after directing Catching Fire and the 2 Mockingjay films gives them a real savagery that they’ve sometimes lacked and the film is better for it.

2. Air:

I was looking forward to this movie mainly because it was Ben Affleck’s new film and not really it being about the creation of the Nike Air Jordan shoe and I liked what I saw in the preview for it but when I watched it I was riveted from start to finish.

Firstly Affleck’s direction this time around has the same tightness and confidence and sense of ease to it that the Town and Argo had and even with elements of Live By Night but wisely Ben doesn’t take on as many roles on this movie as he did there and to that films detriment, he knows how to let the scenes play out, when to use archival footage and songs from the mid 1980s in a way that makes you feel your in that period and living it and also how to direct his actors in a way that brings out the best in them performance wise.

And this movie is littered with great performances, Matt Damon is terrific here channelling is likeable everyman persona into a corporate suit and it feeling very effective, Viola Davis as Michael Jordan’s mother (a casting choice he himself wanted) is extremely good and along with the Woman King cements her as probably my favourite actress working today, Jason Bateman is a lot of fun as a rival Nike executive while Chris Messina gets to channel Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire in the best way as the sports agent who doesn’t want his client to go to Nike.

And lastly this movie does such a great job of tapping into the myth of Michael Jordan, his face is never seen in the film and the only glimpses you get of him are from behind and it really works well as it makes him feel mythic and larger than life which to a generation of people he was and the Last Dance documentary series very much focused on the man and beautifully this when I rewatched it felt that it focused on the myth and it worked equally as well as many of us liked to dream that he was me and that we could be Like Mike.

And now we come to Number 1 my favourite film of 2023 and once more Christopher Nolan has won with his new film:

Oppenheimer:

This movie was simply a great achievement by Nolan who for me has gone from strength to strength as a director since Interstellar in 2014 which I felt ran away from him in terms of his ambition for that film but with Dunkirk, Tenet and now Oppenheimer it feels like he has learned from the failure of that film and crafted his work in a way that maintains its ambition but doesn’t get the better of him and one key person who has helped make that happen is Jennifer Lame his editor on this film and Tenet and she deserves to win the Editing Oscar for her work here as it is remarkable.

But this movie on the whole is a fascinating one to think about because on the one hand this is a pure character drama, the purest Nolan has made and yet it is still riveting to watch whether it be conversations between Cillian Murphy (brilliantly playing Oppenheimer himself) or Tom Conti’s Albert Einstein which is casting that feels so spot on its ridiculous or Robert Downey Jr’s scheming Senator who feels Oppenheimer represents a national security threat to the country because of his past ties to Communism or the makeshift office scenes with Jason Clarke interrogating his witnesses, its all riveting stuff and Nolan does it like a master never once letting the tempo sink or get too boring to watch.

On the other hand this feels like a physics class as well as you learn about what it really took to invent the Atomic Bomb and the race against the Nazi clock to have one before they do so they can turn the tide of World War 2 in the Allies favour and those scenes again are people in rooms theorising, sharing their results, yelling at people to get them to realise how important this is to the cause of the War and then the devastating aftermath as Oppenheimer realises he has now given the world the power to destroy itself in a matter of moments in Mutually Assured Destruction.

In any other directors hands this movie could’ve been a real mess but the way Nolan crafts it from his scripting to direction to the performances he gets (even if once again the women are let down with pretty nothing roles something that he REALLY needs to fix with his next film) to Lame’s editing to the music score to the sound design (especially during the Trinity Test scene) and cinematography this was simply amazing filmmaking and like James Cameron it makes me wish we had more like him or Nolan or Greta Gerwig making movies.

Because if we did I can’t help but feel that movies, something I’ve loved and have been passionate about since I was a boy and helped to open doors in my life I never thought of and make great friends as a result of that might just get back that certain cultural attaché they’ve had for many decades but has slowly started to become lost in recent years.

And so that was 2023 in film, hopefully 2024 is a good year as well but given the length of the writers and actors strikes and the shut down of production that caused I fear it will be another slim year movie wise that does little or nothing to bring them back to prominence in culture, I hope most sincerely I am wrong but I fear I will not be and that makes my heart sink a little but we’ll have to wait and see and hope for the best.

2023 in Film Part 1: The State of the Studios

And so another year in film is coming to an end and its been an interesting one to say the least.

It was a year that started off very strongly and then seemed to peak with the Barbenheimer craze in late July and since then it feels like it just spluttered along to the finish line like a bad engine in a car as many films struggled to find a large enough audience (my main cinema at one point scaled back their operating hours and sessions per day because it got so quiet it wasn’t worth opening all day long.)

One big reason for this was the dual strikes that crippled the industry from the beginning of May to mid November a near 7 month long period of stonewalling, drawn out negotiations, underhanded tactics, so called “last best offers” and then a deal being done between the studios and the writers and actors guilds that had to be done and could’ve been done before the American Labor Day weekend in late August/early September.

And while it had impacted the last 3 months of the movie year to some extent in terms of actors not being able to promote their films or productions being shut down or writers not being able to pitch new movies and/or TV shows to streamers and studios but I fear the full impact of the strikes will not be properly felt until sometime in 2024 when there is a near baron wasteland of new films and TV shows due to how long and unnecessarily dragged out the strikes became and the negotiations on new deals.

Which leads me to the State of the Studios, a list that I really enjoyed writing last year and decided to keep going from now on and last year Paramount was the clear winner while Universal and Sony/Columbia/Tristar had good or okay years while Roadshow, Warner Brothers and Disney still looked like they were struggling to bounce back post the Dark Times of the COVID Pandemic.

Well this year Roadshow isn’t on this list as they didn’t really make much of a dent in the marketplace and their one big film Force of Nature: The Dry 2 was the first film to be delayed due to the strikes (one of my other most anticipated films Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters was also delayed due to the strikes) so it didn’t get released and every indication was it would’ve been a huge hit for them which they need as they no longer have the financial pipeline of the Warner Brothers films to help them.

But as for the rest and oh boy the bottom of the pile is a classic case of how things can change in a single year.

5. Paramount:

One year your cock of the walk, the next your cock of nothing.

And that is precisely what has happened to Paramount in 2023 as they suffered from a combination of bad timing release wise and plain simple bad luck and bad management.

And the bad management side of things is on the Scream franchise where after having the biggest box office opening of the entire franchise with Scream 6 and that film showing that it didn’t need Neve Campbell to carry it forward they sat back and let Spyglass stab it to death by essentially firing Melissa Barrera because of views she shared regarding current events in the Middle East to letting Jenna Ortega go as well and Scream 6 really centred them as the leads of the series going forward and they were great.

Plus they had a good choice of director in Chris Landon who made Happy Death Day and Freaky 2 really fun horror films and now he’s gone, Paramount could and should have done more to keep this series afloat and now it lies on the floor with multiple stab wounds and blood on the executive suite floors.

As for bad luck well that befell both Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One 2 films that were pretty good and fun to watch but just got totally swept up in the storm of other films releasing around them, in the case of Dungeons and Dragons it was the one two punch of John Wick Chapter 4 and Super Mario Brothers 2 big hits that just totally caught the attention of the main audience that D&D was aiming for and when you only have so much ticket money to spend those 2 films got the priority.

As for Mission Impossible it not only had to deal with the gathering storm of Barbenheimer but also the strong dislike for Tom Cruise personally among an awful lot of people out there and while they might have bitten their tongue regarding him for Top Gun: Maverick last year they weren’t willing to do it this time and also that film had Christopher McQuarrie on his fourth film in a row in this series which is seeing him end up like his old colleague Bryan Singer when he was on the X-Men series but also it no longer was the lighter and more fun contrast of the darker Daniel Craig James Bond films so it had to stand on its own this time and its box office showed on all of those fronts.

As for bad timing well that goes to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 2 films that its easy to forget that Paramount put them out this year as they got caught up in the wash of a busy release schedule and the fullness of time, I kept forgetting that Transformers came out this year as it came out during a big June that had Spider-Man, The Flash, Elemental and Indiana Jones and was a brand that was clearly not as big as it once was though I had more fun with it than I thought I would.

As for TMNT well it felt like it didn’t really gain much traction and like Transformers posted decent enough numbers at the box office and only cost 70 million to make but I’m certain that Paramount was hoping for much better numbers box office wise for both films but when you’ve been burnt on bad films in a series often enough audences become wary especially when cost of living, inflation and interest rates are biting and biting hard as they are right now.

Hopefully Paramount can bounce back in 2024 but we’ll have to wait and see.

4. Walt Disney Pictures:

Oh how the mighty really have fallen.

Disney had a bad year last year but this year feels like it was zapped by the Emperor’s lightning from Return of the Jedi as they are clearly paying the price for a clear lack of vision across all fronts.

And to do this honestly feels like an autopsy as Disney’s year was that bad so lets done the medical mask, gloves and gown and dive right in.

Lucasfilm: This has to be first off the rank as Lucasfilm put out Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this year a film that many fans were already apprehensive about due to the age of Harrison Ford and the reception to 2008’s Kingdom of the Plastic Prop-sorry-Crystal Skull but boy oh boy it somehow turned out worse then even I thought it would.

And first of that was James Mangold the director of the film and a very good director he is too which gave me some optimism he would deliver a fun adventure but instead he went from an asset to a liability as it felt like his more mature and sombre tone didn’t really work and felt like it was more geared towards the very old audience that did actually go and see the film.

And then the film itself gets so bogged down in endless chase scenes that it forgets to tell a good story with a good villain and that was really just Mads Mikkelsen essentially doing the same thing he’s done so often now that it’s becoming boring to watch and sometimes you can tell he isn’t really trying that much and then the finale really didn’t make a lot of sense and in all the worst ways that kind of story can do you just sit there asking questions about how it makes sense when it doesn’t.

Oh and this cost 300 million dollars to make and not once do I believe it cost that much to make as it just looks like it was shot on green screen stages and some sets, why did they even bother?

Marvel Studios: Wowsers talk about a disaster in the making.

First off there was Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania which was one of the worst films I saw this year and it deserved to flop (I’ll talk about why I hated it more in my Turkeys list in Part 2.)

Then there was the Marvels where it felt like all the chickens regarding the MCU came home to roost with this film and while it is unfortunate it happened here it did and increasingly it feels like that 2019 was not only the peak of the MCU as a franchise with Avengers: Endgame but also the peak of the superhero genre itself as with only a few exceptions most of the comic book based films have struggled at the box office.

In hindsight the MCU should have either come to a proper end with Infinity War and Endgame given that those 2 films wrap up the storylines and characters so well that like Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi it makes it very difficult to justify continuing on after those films or had taken a long break while the acquisition of 20th Century Fox was sorted out and the Fantastic Four and the X-Men could be properly integrated in the MCU.

But given how badly the MCU has botched the Kree and the Skrulls in the Captain Marvel films, the Celestials in Eternals and now the Multiverse and Kang I really don’t know how anyone can have faith they will do right by Fantastic Four and Mutants but all those nerds became so adamant that the Rights had to return to Marvel even if it meant destroying nearly a century of movie going tradition so you’ll forgive me if I decide not to shed any tears if the MCU gets those wrong as well.

Then there is the catastrophic failure of both Wish and Haunted Mansion, Wish was a dreadful film that I’ll talk about more in my Turkeys list but Haunted Mansion cost for some baffling reason 155 million dollars to make and it went nowhere at the box office.

And these budgets are insane, 200 million plus for Wish, Ant Man and the Marvels, 250 million dollars for the Little Mermaid a woeful underperformer which I’m certain Disney wanted to hit a billion dollars worldwide just as the live action remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King did while 300 million was spent on Indiana Jones, I’m sorry but given how fractured the movie going audience is now there is little to no justification for this recklessness regarding budgets and spending now and Disney has to change course.

But whether they can is another question as Bob Iger might have been the hero at one point his return to lead Disney at the end of last year has seen him this year live long enough to become the villain and I do not think that he is the man who should be leading Disney going forward and he risks becoming like the CEO of my beloved West Coast Eagles football club Trevor Nisbett where you simply stay too long in a leadership job and its time to move on but nor do I think that Nelson Peltz who has recently been seeking a seat on the board of Disney is the solution either.

No what Disney I feel needs is another Jeffrey Katzenberg who sure made bad decisions like cutting When Love is Gone from the Muppets Christmas Carol which was a colossal mistake but he was also someone that when he was put in charge of Disney Animation in the mid 80s helped to get it out of its rut and put the studio back on top again and he did that by being unafraid to ruffle the feathers of the artists who worked under him and cracking the whip when he needed to and out of that came great films.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom for Disney this year as they had 2 good hits in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Elemental, Guardians was one of the few films this year that I had confidence in to do well regarded James Gunn and Co didn’t wet the bed in delivering a good finale for the series while Elemental was able to overcome a low opening weekend to leg out to nearly 500 million dollars worldwide due to good word of mouth.

Plus the studio celebrated its 100th anniversary wonderfully with the short Once Upon a Studio which as someone who loves Disney Animation made me feel emotional watching it and I can’t watch the end of it without wanting to cry so Disney had some wins this year but they really need to find some new leadership and fast if they want to get back on top.

3. Sony/Columbia/Tristar:

The little studio that could.

And indeed it did for while they didn’t have a great year they didn’t really embarrass themselves all that much either.

And first off the rack has to be Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse which had very good reviews and showed that the years of the first film being on Netflix and finding an audience it didn’t really get in its cinema release in 2018 meant that they came out to the cinema this time for number 2 and it delivered I think a better film as it had not only the great animation but also Miles and Gwen were far better fleshed out as heroes as they got to be the core focus this time instead of the Spider-Gang in the first film and it really made a difference for me.

Also the way that Miles is handled in comparison to the other Spider-Men he meets was well done also as he wants to be the one that decides how HIS story plays out and he doesn’t feel bound by the rules and regulations of the Spider-Men and their backstory was very well realised and I’ll be keen to see where the third film takes this and the Spider-Verse story as a whole and I hope they end it well.

But alas S/C/T has only really had Spider-Man going for it since the early 2000s as a lot of their other films (Equalizer 3, Gran Turismo, Anyone But You, Napoleon, No Hard Feelings and 65.) either did okay numbers at the box office or didn’t do very well at all and they cannot keep relying on the Web Slinger to give them good numbers as their Spider-Verse without a Spider-Man live action films have been very hit and miss at the box office.

And that is unhealthy for a major studio like this one, its good that they haven’t embarrassed themselves but they can’t just keep chugging along in neutral like some sports teams tend to do, if they want to win the premiership and enjoy the fruits of great success they need to step up to the plate like Dom Sheed in the 2018 Grand Final and go for it because if they don’t they’ll end up near or at the bottom and nobody should want that.

Now for number 2 the runner up and wowsers once again because these guys were fifth last year, second last having gone through a brutal regime change and a lacklustre slate of films but for the silver medal come on down.

Warner Brothers:

Yes you read that right folks, Warner Brothers is Number 2 this year.

And how can that possibly be, well firstly they had the biggest movie of the year in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie which managed to overcome some messy trailers and questions about who the movie was really for (a question Gerwig herself was asked point blank when in Sydney earlier this year promoting the film.) to become a mammoth hit.

And it deserved to for while I didn’t love it as much as others did mainly because of script issues I had with the film, it was also a movie that was just fun to watch and in this grey and sombre world we live in sometimes light and fluffy pink coated fun is all we need and Barbie delivered that while encouraging us all to wear pink to our session of the film.

Secondly they had 3 solid horror hits in The Meg 2: The Trench, Evil Dead Rise and The Nun II (quiet dark quiet dark NUN II) which didn’t cost a huge amount to make but became very profitable for the studio which Horror has been the last few years for the industry as a whole.

And lastly they are ending the year on a strong note with Wonka and the Color Purple both of which have had good word of mouth and look set to have good legs in cinemas over the December/January period, say what you will about David Zaslav the new head of Warner Brothers but the one promise he made to reprioritise theatrical for movies is starting to pay off and 2024 looks to be another good year for WB with Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, Beetlejuice 2, Joker: Folie A Deux, Godzilla X Kong and Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters showing potential to be huge hits if they deliver the goods.

But it hasn’t been all ham and plaques for Zaslav and WB as they had some bad headlines this year as well.

First of those is delaying Dune Part 2 from its original November 2nd release date to March 1st 2024 instead of using it as a ticking clock to help get the strikes resolved so it could’ve come out this year instead of next but given how well Wonka is doing this could help that film when it finally does come out.

Second the decision to scrap Coyote Vs Acme a Looney Tunes film originally designed for their streaming service HBO Max (now called Max) has justifiably seen a big backlash against Zaslav himself and the studio as a whole even though the last 2 Looney Tunes films (Back in Action from 2003 and 2021’s Space Jam: A New Legacy) bombed at the box office it saw several filmmakers cancel meetings with Warner Brothers and led to an image being formed that WB doesn’t care about making films and will scrap them for tax purposes if they so desire, I get the need to make money but if you just want to do that go and run a hedge fund or a bedding company instead.

And lastly there is DC on Film which has been a complete and utter migraine for the studio this year from Shazam! Fury of the Gods performing badly to the Flash performing much worse than what the studio had hoped it would to Blue Beetle being caught up in all of this mess and now Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom not proving to have the Way of Water in its veins like last years Avatar sequel did.

Part of that was outside events whether it be Ezra Miller or James Gunn and Peter Safran rebooting DC on film from near complete scratch or just the quality of the films themselves not being that great or only being good at best, hopefully Gunn’s Superman: Legacy in 2025 can turn things around but if it doesn’t then WB should simply move on as this genre is rapidly dying out anyway save for a few characters and WB has shown with its successful slate this year that it can do just fine without the Superfriends saving the day.

And now we come to the winner and this was the more I thought about it a no brainer.

Universal:

Yup the CIC group has won 2 years in a row.

And Uni has deserved this win as they had a number of successful films and only a small handful of flops which were mainly their 2 Dracula films Renfield and Voyage of the Demeter and Fast X.

Now Fast X did make money for the most part but mainly in international markets and nowhere near enough to cover the mammoth 340 million dollar budget the film had which like Disney’s reckless spending is insanity especially given how fractured the audience is nowadays, Universal really needs to pull Vin Diesel and Co into line on the next film to keep the cost down big time as this series is starting to lose petrol from its audience especially in the US.

As for the Dracula films well that isn’t any huge surprise as they weren’t that great or I didn’t really want to see it in the case of Renfield and I think it shows that most audiences have little to no interest in any new Dracula films.

Now for the wins well first has to be Super Mario Brothers, the only other film besides Barbie to be a billion dollar plus film worldwide and though I can normally see why a film clicks the way it does I honestly couldn’t with this one as while I didn’t hate it I also didn’t really think it was all that much either but I guess this shows the hunger was there for a proper film version of those characters especially when Nintendo themselves is helping to steer the ship.

Second is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer which was a 3 hour character drama and physics class at the same time and yet showed Nolan’s incredible appeal in cinemas as this made 955 million dollars worldwide and showed that Nolan is very much a brand unto himself nowadays and could virtually go to any studio he wants, get any amount of money he wants and make oodles of it for them back, whether he decides to stay at Universal or head back to his former home of Warner Brothers will be very interesting to watch in the year ahead.

And lastly the studio had some great horror hits in M3gan, Knock at the Cabin and Five Nights at Freddys which were modestly budgeted and made a lot of money for the studio while Cocaine Bear did better than expected in cinemas and all of this is why Universal won top spot on the podium in terms of the studios in 2023.

But who will win in 2024?

Can WB finally take top spot?

Can Universal hold it?

Will Disney bounce back?

Can Paramount even survive?

Will Sony/Columbia/Tristar get their rear horse into gear and use lady Columbia’s torch to light a fire on its backside and get into the ring properly?

We’ll have to wait and see what happens and it will be fascinating to see what does happen.