2018 in Film Part 2: The Best and Worst

Well my main thoughts on 2018 in Film are done and now the time has come to reveal my main lists of my favorite and least favorite films of 2018 and well what better way to start with the worst of the year, those 5 films that took 2 hours out of our lives that we’ll never get back and I always enjoy writing these lists because you get to do one more shot at these films and do them all slowly.

5. Deadpool 2

Now this will be a surprising choice for many but I decided to put it here as I hated watching this sequel in cinemas back in May and I was a fan of the first Deadpool film with Ryan Reynolds and directed by Tim Miller though this time David Leitch of Atomic Blonde takes the directorial reins.

I hated this movie because I felt its storyline was a mess, juggling a couple of plotlines in terms of this little boy played by Julian Dennison, the introduction of X-Force and a continuiation of Deadpool and Wade Wilson’s character and if the first Deadpool reminded me of the first Robocop film albeit not as good in my eyes then this one reminded me in bad ways of Robocop 2.

And that film like this one brought in all these storylines that didn’t really work, it went for a more serious tone that it didn’t earn as I wasn’t really that invested in it, the little boy annoyed me an awful lot and Ryan Reynolds who Miller knew when to let him off the leash but also rein him in here just sounded like a goddamn parrot talking endlessly in nearly every single scene and after a while I just thought to myself “Will you Please Shut Up, you sound like a fucking Parrot.”

Hopefully next year’s Detective Pikachu will use Reynolds’s vocal riffs a lot better but we’ll have to wait and see.

4. Mute

Mute was a Netflix production directed by Duncan Jones who’s last film was Warcraft and concerned an Amish private eye played by Alexander Skarsgard as he went searching for his missing girlfriend.

And boy oh boy was this a fucking bore to sit through for 2 reasons firstly the whole look of the film not only looked really cheap like shot digitally cheap but it was such a riff on Blade Runner with its neon signs everywhere, flying transport, dark skies and funky nightclubs and robots around the place that it feels old hat now to do this kind of homage especially when this came only a few months after Blade Runner 2049 hit cinemas.

And also Alexander Skarsgard who was not yet won me over like his father Stellan Skarsgard has and it isn’t helped that his performance is the kind of expressionless blank performance that stoic performers like Ryan Gosling can do although that has grown tiresome now given the weak performance of First Man in cinemas but the central mystery he’s trying to solve isn’t really that interesting and after a while I got really bored of it.

3. Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Now I quite liked the first Sicario directed by Denis Villenuve, it had a good script, Emily Blunt was great as this Clarice Starling esque character going into Mexico and it had a great supporting performance by Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin almighty Thanos, Blunt didn’t return but Brolin and Del Toro did.

And boy oh boy is this movie a mess for one very clear reason: The script, this thing feels like 2 separate movies one being Brolin’s character and his attempts to work with US officials and the other being Del Toro trying to get this young girl to the border as if he was in a rip off of Logan.

And neither one of these plotlines feels like they mesh together as one coherent film a lot of the time I felt like I was watching 2 separate films spliced together to make it one film and even the presence of Josh Brolin who was pretty much the main reason I saw this movie couldn’t do anything to save it.

2. The Happytime Murders

Boy oh boy oh boy was this a pure and utter stinker of a movie for three reasons.

The first was that the central mystery simply didn’t work, it was one of those where it was blindly obvious who the killer was and at one point one of the Muppets does a homage to Basic Instinct which was really really bad and even the reveal of the killer just felt very silly.

This leads me to my second issue the tone is all over the place on the one hand it wants to be a Roger Rabbit type world with the Muppets and Humans living together and this hard boiled detective trying to solve a mystery yet on the other hand it tries to go for that MA15 style comedy with sex jokes, bonking in the office and really really obnoxious humour that Melissa McCarthy just shouts a lot of the time and I’m a big fan of hers.

And the comedy is my third issue this movie isn’t funny it tries to go for these big laughs that films so rarely in my experience capture as they only really work when you see the film with a big audience but rarely did I ever laugh and I like a good comedy but this just went down like a deflating Muppet that’s lost its stuffing.

But as bad as those films were those weren’t as bad as my worst of 2018 which is:

The Predator.

Now I was very excited for this movie as I had rewatched the original film directed by John McTiernan in 4K which was great and Shane Black who was actually in the original film playing Hawkins was co-writing and directing this new film and I thought “This could work.”

Alas it did not and the more I thought about the film the more it broke my heart and that feeling was very prelevant in my mind when I walked out of the film for as great as the MA action violence in the film was this new Predator failed at the very things that McTiernan’s original made work.

The first of those was the characters not once did I really give a flying fuck about any of them all they ever seemed to talk in was script language where every line coming out of their mouth was a cheap attempt at a one liner or a cool phrase and it really didn’t work and the film even goes so far to almost make light of Tourette’s Syndrome a very serious condition and Autism a condition many people live with today and doesn’t get talked about anywhere near as much as it should do.

And secondly the story was very very weak a new Predator comes to Earth and then a whole bunch of other Predators come and after a while it just turns into a repeat of the original where their in a Jungle environment and hunting the creature and I wish that had been the case in the first place put a bunch of guys somewhere, have a Predator come and then KABLAMO you have your movie but No we got a whole bunch of other storylines and stereotypes that really weren’t needed one little bit.

Ah now I can breathe a sign of relief as the Turkey’s have been thrown out and writing that is making me think of Selina’s Turkey sound she used to play on the Radio show so I’ll just pretend that’s here.

Now comes the best films of the year and it was a struggle to get it 5 as there were 4 that I loved and 2 or 3 others that I really liked but in the end I’ve gone with 5a and 5b so without further ado here we go:

5b. First Man

Damien Chazelle’s follow up project to his Oscar winning film La La Land was a biopic of Neil Armstrong that also showed the perilous journey of US Astronauts to the Moon.

And this was also a movie that I really got into even though I could see some of the problems people had with the film in terms of the lack of emotional resonance but the main thing I really liked about it was the showing of that journey to the moon, all of the trail and error and the lives that were lost along the way.

Also the film was a visual treat with its grainy 60s look and many closeups and the sound design was very impressive from the sound of the engines to the silence of space plus there were great performances particularly by Claire Foy and Kyle Chandler, it might not have worked for some but it definitely worked for me.

5a. Bohemian Rhapsody

Yes the story of the late great Freddie Mercury and the band Queen which was directed by Bryan Singer with additional filming by Dexter Fletcher who finished the filming when Singer was fired in late 2017 was uneven at times but when it works it is electrifying, delivering an emotional charge to every sense I could ever have be it sadness, smiling, laughter and SINGING and those empty Drink Bottles made for great pretend microphones.

One reason is simply Rami Malek’s extraordinary performance as Freddie and there were times looking at him in the movie from certain angles I thought I was looking at the real Freddie reincarnated as he captures not only the extraordinary showmanship that had crowds in his hands like glue but also the loneliness and the directness of the private man plus most of the actors deliver great performances in particular Gwilym Lee who looks a lot like Brian May that he must have done the mind time travel trick from Days of Future Past to send his younger self to be in the film and Lucy Bonyton as Mary Austin who does a great job as Freddie’s long time companion and friend.

But also this movie’s concert scenes are exhilarating and sounded great on a big cinema screen with the booming sound system the Live Aid recreation in particular has been the single best scene I’ve seen in any movie this year as it was such a charge of electricity to my heart that I was walking around the Warnambool Plaza still with a huge buzz inside, I can’t wait to do it all again in a sing along session one day with a packed crowd.

4. A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place was director John Krasinki’s Sci-Fi Horror film that was simply terrific to watch, this was a world where everyone had to be very quiet (shhhhhhhh) otherwise the creatures that have invaded Earth would hear them, hunt them down and kill them and as someone who has not been a big horror fan I really enjoyed that.

This was a horror film that was also built on a great idea and it was the kind of horror idea that made you go “How would I act in this situation?” and a lot of horror films for me don’t really have that kind of strong idea driving it too often there’s a reliance on blood and body parts and jump scares to terrify its audience and very very very rarely does that work as all ti does is either bore the audience and leave them feeling disgusted.

This film also had some great performances by Emily Blunt who is really one of her generation’s finest actresses (the scene in the bathtub still gives me the willies when I think about it.) and Millicent Simmonds who is a young deaf girl whose entire world is sign language and silence and it helps to add to the films terrific sound design, editing and mixing and I really hope it sweeps the sound Oscars in 2019.

3. Mission Impossible: Fallout

Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie re teamed for their second Mission Impossible film after 2015’s Rogue Nation and it was well worth the wait when I got to see it as I was very hotly anticipating this movie.

And this film purely as an action film is the kind of adrenaline rush thrill ride that we so rarely see in today’s action films, everything you see for the most part is done for real with Tom once again putting his mind, body and soul on the line for all of those amazing stunt set pieces even breaking his ankle during filming and learning to fly a helicopter for the films climactic chase and all of those scenes were fantastic.

But also Christopher McQuarrie proves that he is becoming a good director in his own right along with his gifts as a screenwriter and though this story could’ve easily fallen apart it’s a testament to those writing gifts of his that he keeps the story going and gives each character a moment to shine even though the story is about Ethan Hunt and his purpose as a hero, it was great to see Rebecca Ferguson again after Rogue Nation and both Simon Pegg and Alec Baldwin also made welcome returns along with Ving Rhames.

This movie also had a great performance by Henry Cavill as well who I feel is a worthy successor to Christopher Reeve as Superman and watching him and Tom go at it was so much fun as was Sean Harris as Solomon Lane and if the James Bond series ever recasts Blofeld he would be a great choice.

2. Avengers Infinity War

This was easily my most anticipated movie of 2018 as it was not only the culmination of 10 years of Marvel Studios and the coming together of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy but also finally the coming of Thanos as played by Josh Brolin.

And boy oh boy was I not disappointed in the slightest as this was everything I had hoped it would be and dreamed it would be but not in a way that I ever expected but more importantly it was special again like the first Avengers film was and it also highlighted how bitterly disappointing Age of Ultron was.

But why was it special again?

Firstly the storytelling here was very sound and it takes full advantage of not only the 149 minute runtime barely wasting a minute of it but also wrangling the huge number of characters the film has both sets of Avengers plus the Guardians get ample amounts of screen time and play the parts the script needs them to do very well and it also helps that we’ve had 10 years and many movies of these characters so their use is well served by that long journey.

But this movie for me is really Thanos’s movie and Josh Brolin did an excellent job playing him, the cold calm demeanour he always portrays as he seeks to eradicate half the universe makes him all the more effective as a villain as he barely raises his voice and with the power of the Infinity Stones lays the smackdown on our heroes and using him as the spine of the storytelling structure was what helped to wrangle such a large case, I wish X-Men Apocalypse had done a similar thing with En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse himself his name was the title of the film and he should’ve been much more centre stage in his own film.

But now we come to my number 1 film of 2018 and not one movie has come within cooee of this movie when I saw it all the way back in January (yes it was that long ago) and it is:

The Post

Yes folks, Steven Spielberg’s The Post is my number 1 film of 2018 even though it opened only 2 weeks into the year but why has no other film come close to it on my list well there are 2 reasons.

The first is that I really got to rethinking my feelings about Spielberg as a filmmaker as when I was 22 back in 2008 I was very sniffy about him and a lot of his movies feeling that they were too sentimental, to sweet and too sugary for my taste I preferred the harder edge and the bite of people like John McTiernan, George Miller, James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven among others but after watching this movie I got inspired to revisit several of his back catalogue movies and I now think of him as one of the grand masters of movie making.

And secondly this movie came out in Australian cinemas not that long after I got given the marching orders from the Radio station and watching this movie made me think of all those wonderful friends I had made during my time there and seeing people like them doing what they did on the big screen was a very moving experience for me and there was even one shot of Tom Hanks with his back to camera that instantly made me think of Stuart from that Office.

So yes this was that film like Dunkirk or the Accountant where my Head and my Heart were in perfect sync as compared to the other 4 films where my Head or my Heart were the dominant feelings that justified their presence.

And so that was my list of the best and worst of 2018 and with that the year is done even though I still have a couple of films left to see but the end of this year has been crazy and its left me behind the 8 ball on new releases even more than usual.

And now we come to 2019 the year of Blade Runner no less and January has my top 2 most anticipated films of the year in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass and Dragon Ball Super: Broly a new Dragon Ball movie on the big screen which I have to see the moment it’s out.

There’s also Avengers: Endgame and the Secret Life of Pets 2 and Detective Pikachu and Godzilla: King of the Monsters to look forward to as well but Glass and Broly are my top 2 most anticipated of 2019 and whether they deliver the goods only time will tell but I can’t wait to find out.

Film Review - Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)

Ralph Breaks the Internet is the sequel to 2012’s Wreck it Ralph and this time Ralph (John C Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) log onto the Internet when Vanellope’s racing game breaks and a new steering wheel part must be found but when you come from the Net your format as Game Sprites could see you lost on the Net.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is an okay sequel that I found to be a bit forgettable that doesn’t make it a bad film just one that I didn’t really get into but before I delve more into that I loved the world building on display here and like 2016’s Zootopia also co directed by Simpsons director Rich Moore there are plenty of visual details to see such as how people are represented, how they get around and how they use the various sites us users use every day in the real world.

There are also some fantastic references to Disney itself and the various properties it owns including some very memorable moments with the Disney Princesses who for decades served as a cornerstone of the Disney brand before Marvel and Lucasfilm came into their midsts.

As for the overall storytelling I wasn’t as fond of it as it felt like the typical friend wants to move on but other friend doesn’t want them to go story and I thought it was okay for the most part as some of us do feel that way in our own lives even though it is for the best but outside of that I never really got into that much and again it doesn’t make it bad but just not for me.

And so that was my review of Ralph Breaks the Internet and it’s a fine animation that will do well in the holidays but I found it pretty forgettable, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Aquaman (2018)

Aquaman is the newest entry in the DC film universe and concerns Arthur Curry aka the Aquaman (Jason Momoa) as he seeks the power of the King of Atlantis’s Trident as the current ruler King Orm (Patrick Wilson) seeks to unite the Seven Seas in a war against the Surface World though Mera and the Grand Vizor Volko (Willem Dafoe) are convinced the power of the Trident can unite both the Ocean and Surface Worlds.

Aquaman comes at a time where I have been endlessly frustrated with DC on film and that frustration goes all the way back to the very beginning with Richard Donner’s Superman the Movie in 1978 where Donner was fired from the franchise and then Tim Burton’s Batman movies pretty much ended up the same way as this current DC incarnation where Warner Brothers has panic attacks over a dark film, orders a change of direction and then gets so light that the bottom falls out of the franchise and it crashes at the box office does Aquaman sink to the bottom of the sea or does it swim to the top like 2017’s Wonder Woman.

Well it does a bit of both as I am very much in the middle on this movie firstly director James Wan’s eye for spectacle and visual effects is on full display as this movie looks fantastic on a big cinema screen as there is lots of variety to the various kingdoms of the Seven Seas and the way Mr Wan realises these and the huge underwater battle scenes is great and I was never bored watching those scenes.

Where I was bored was in the overall storytelling as it feels like a very generic semi origin story where the hero must prove his worth and go on the quest and save the kingdom from complete doom and it isn’t helped in these moments that both Wan’s direction can’t seem to nail any kind of menaningful emotional response and that Jason Momoa’s overall performance has the same snarky tone that so many lead performances in these big superhero films I mean you could swap him for Robert Downey Jr or Chris Pratt and you would barely notice any difference.

I did however in the performance front like Amber Heard as Mera even if at times it feels like she is mimicking Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow and Nicole Kidman as the Queen of Atlantis her story arc was probably my favorite of the entire film as it reminded me a lot of a show I loved called ReBoot and when its lead character Bob was lost in the Web.

As for the villains well the Black Manta was really cool though badly underused while Wilson was kind of foppish as Orm and that character is a great one in the Aquaman 2 part episode of the Justice League animated series but here I thought Momoa would squash him lickety split.

And so that was Aquaman and it’s a middle of the road entry for DC there’s still a long way back for them in my eyes and with Wonder Woman 2 now coming in 2020 I won’t hold my breath for Shazam or Joker next year, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Bumblebee (2018)

Bumblebee is the first Transformers spin off and also the first not directed by Michael Bay this time Travis Knight the head of Laika Animation takes the helm and this story is set in 1987 when Bumblebee crashes to Earth from Cybertron and is found by Charley (Hailee Steinfeld) in an auto yard, little does she know that there is more to her new Beetle car than meets the eye.

As a long time Transformers fan I was so so happy to finally see a good Transformers movie and not having Bay in charge makes a big difference for these reasons:

- Firstly there is an awful lot of heart in this movie as writers Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig really do a lot to develop the relationship between Bumblebee and Charley and it harkens back to the boy and his car motif that Steven Spielberg tried to bring to the first live action Transformers movie in 2007 before Bay took charge with his own style but this movie takes that idea and does a much better job with it as it feels front and centre as opposed to an idea that kicks off a film that felt tone deaf in so many ways.

- Secondly the film has a far smaller scale to it than the previous Bay movies and sure there is plenty of Transformers action in the film but it all feels smaller, more personal, more connected to the characters and the storytelling and their also shot wider so you can actually see what the heck is going on and on top of all that the Autobots are not completely useless robuts who constantly get their butts kicked but I’ll stop there about those points this is a simpler story that allows the characters to come back to the focus and I am very grateful for that.

- And lastly the Transformers fan service here is fantastic, the opening scene set on Cybertron was terrific and I thought to myself “There’s Soundwave, There’s Shockwave and Starscream and Thundercracker and Skywarp” and then Ravage came out of Soundwave’s Chest and Optimus was being his noble badass self and I was a very very happy boy though if Megatron had made a cameo in the film I would’ve lost my mind (There was a scene with him in the film but it was very wisely cut.)

And also the way the Cybetron War scenes are used throughout the film it is a little reminiscent of the Future War scenes in the first Terminator film.

However if I have one complaint and its really only a minor one its John Cena and his role as Agent Burns of Sector 7 he does a good job in the role but the way the character is written it feels like a bad knockoff of the Bay style from the previous films and a lot of the scenes feel like a shaggy sideplot but hey when the rest of the film is as good as it is I won’t complain much.

And so that was my review of Bumblebee and it is about fucking time we had a great Transformers movie this has been a long time coming and I hope people go see it, 4 out of 5.

2018 in Film Part 1

Well its that time again boys and girls, another year in movies has pretty much come and gone and the time has come to write about it and reveal my lists of the best and worst of the year.

But all of that fun is for later as for right now it is time to write about my thoughts overall on the movie year as a whole and it was an interesting one for me to start off with as this was the first full year of movie going for me since 2013 where I wasn’t doing my Radio show with Selina on ABC South East SA that having come to an end in December of 2017 sadly.

And if I was to have one regret with that ending in the way that it did it is not getting to review Star Wars: The Last Jedi with her as we had been talking about it in the last 2 or 3 shows before its December release date and indeed the day my Radio days ended was the opening day of that film so to not pay that off is very disappointing but alas these things happen and nothing lasts forever.

But getting back on track I will actually say that this year movie wise was actually pretty good and certainly better than 2016 and 2017 were and those years I was on Radio, I thought there was a nice mix of great genre cinema and independent type films and a lot of the times I went to the movies I actually enjoyed being there and maybe part of that is because I wasn’t rushing around so much to have reviews of films done by a certain date so I could do that Radio show review but I digress.

The other big film related thing I did this year was make the leap to 4K Ultra HD and it is fantastic especially with the older films I love such as Rambo, Predator, Die Hard and the Hunt for Red October to name as examples all 4 of those films looked and sounded great and made me feel like I was sitting in a Village or Hoyts or Greater Union cinema back in the time of their original release year and that 35mm print was playing in front of me for the first time.

First Blood in particular felt like I could practically smell the film grain in the print and it makes me want to see more older films make the leap to that format such as Lethal Weapon and Back to the Future but with streaming so dominant right now I won’t hold my breath.

Well that being done that was Part 1 of my look back at 2018 film wise keep an eye out for Part 2 I reveal my best and worst of the year so stay tuned.

Film Review - Mortal Engines (2018)

Mortal Engines is written and produced by Peter Jackson along with Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens who also worked together on the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings movies though Christian Rivers is the director here, the story takes place in a dystopian future where cities are now in wheels in order to survive after a 60 minute War destroyed the world and a man named Valentine (Hugo Weaving) is keen to complete a top secret energy project that may hold the key to defending the future.

Mortal Engines has some terrific visual effects and world building, the world presented here for starters is really good the cities on wheel look great and the tracks they leave behind are like mazes for humans to walk through with the giant walls and the soft ground that is left for people to drink to stave off dying of thurst plus the London city has a history museum of sorts will all kinds of artefacts and it all looks great as is the way with Peter Jackson and his team of Wizards at WETA in New Zealand.

What I wish worked as well was the human characters, Weaving does a good job as Valentine but he’s pretty much doing the standard Hugo Weaving routine by this stage, Robert Sheehan and Hera Hilmarsdottir are given very thin characters to work with and Hera really feels like a stand in for Dakota Johnson, Stephen Lang is okay as Shirke while Leila D’Onofrio was pretty good as Katherine, Valentine’s Daughter but all of them and their story in particular did very little for me and after a while I really got bored of them all despite the impressive visuals.

It also isn’t helped that the film zips along to such an extent that it barely takes anytime to put on the brakes and let its audience take in the world of the film or really develop it in any meaningful capacity which was one of the core strengths of this team’s work on Lord of the Rings where we got to see the world of Middle Earth perfectly realised on film and Jackson and Co took their time to develop that world and let us see the landscapes, environment and regions along with developing its characters whereas here we barely get to do that as its in such a rush to tell its story that a lot of that story and character development just gets passed by like a sign on the road.

And so that was my review of Mortal Engines and its okay with some terrific effects but its overall story and characters felt very thin on the ground and given what this team is capable of with their work on Lord of the Rings it’s a little disappointing, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018)

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse is the newest Spider-Man movie this one however is animated and produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and concerns Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) who like Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes a new Spider-Man but when the Kingpin (Liev Schriber) instigates a science experiment that goes wrong other Spider-Men show up and now the race is on to stop Kingpin and get them all home.

Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse was okay for me but also felt like a typical Spider-Man story but before I delve into those I want to talk about what I do like and firstly the animation style is very good combining digital animation, a comic strip drawing style, a hip hop style that nicely reflects Miles and his world and even some hand drawn style and it makes for a very trippy experience that at times is hard to keep up with but would be an absolute treat in 3D in fact I nearly went to a 3D session last night but decided not to as it would’ve finished late.

And also the voice cast are pretty good, its nice to see Nicolas Cage give a shit for once and not just phone it in for a paycheck in a B grade film, Spider-Ham is a real delight especially if you’ve seen the Simpsons Movie and Hailee Stenfeld is great fun as Spider-Gwen but sadly Lake Bell is wasted as Amanda Fisk as she barely has any lines and as someone who loved her as Chloe the Cat in Secret Life of Pets I was particularly disappointed.

There are also some very fun cameos which I will not give away.

Sadly the storytelling here just felt like a typical Spider-Man story where a loved one dies, Spider-Man throws some quips with his web, there’s a scientific angle to it all, there’s family matters and I personally have seen this all webbed up in all of the other Spider-Man movies and like those ones it was okay but kind of the same after a while and after seeing the character play around with the Avengers in Infinity War earlier this year and also having great fun with the Playstation 4 game a couple of months back I got a bit bored of it all after a while.

And so that was my thoughts on Spiderman into the Spiderverse and its okay it has some great animation and some cool voice acting but I wasn’t as fond of its story, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Roma (2018)

Roma is the new film by Gravity and Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron and is also a new Netflix production and takes place in 1970-71 in Mexico and concerns a maid named Cleo (Yalitza Apiricio) as she cares for a family in that city and her own journey within it.

Roma is very well made which isn’t a huge surprise given Mr Curaron’s skill as a craftsman but as much as I enjoyed the film and I did I would also say that I find myself admiring it more than I love it but there are 2 huge positives going for it:

- The first of those is Curaron’s direction and camera work, yes he does a lot of those signature tracking shots that he used to great effect in Children of Men and Gravity but their always worth a watch and they always take your eye on a journey of all kinds of little details that most edits would probably leave out feeling a need to go from one scene to the next, Curaron served also as cinematographer and he does a great job with the black and white photography as well.

- The second is Ms Apiricio’s performance, she is wonderful in this film and she does so much with just her body language alone with the looks she gives, the way she walks around and the expressions on her face that do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting without needing to say much dialogue and the film works best when the focus is purely on her.

And here is where the film faulters for me I’m afraid and yes I have some well one mainly and that is the use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and look this is a great looking film but there are a lot of times in this movie for me where the 2.35 ratio kept pulling back from the central intimate nature of this story and when you think back on Children of Men which was shot in 1.85:1 the film worked beautifully allowing the human story to shine element admist the dystopic spectacle that film also created.

And also the use of the 2.35 ratio tended to push Cleo to the background and away from the central focus of the film and for me I wanted her to be that central focus as its where the film works best but most of the time she has her scene and then she’s pushed away to focus on the streets and the people and those scenes are good but I didn’t really get into them as much as it felt like the background coming to the foreground to a certain degree.

And so that was Roma and look the film is good and worth watching but I also wish I had gotten to see it before the hype machine got a hold of it as I feel that as much as I like it it did fall short of that hype to a certain degree still it gets a 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - The Old Man and the Gun (2018)

The Old Man and the Gun is written and directed by David Lowery who also made 2016’s Pete Dragon and stars Robert Redford in his final screen role as Forest Tucker an old man who loves to rob banks even if he is very polite about it but a detective named John Hunt (Casey Affleck) is now on his trail.

The Old Man and the Gun is a nice movie and also a fitting tribute to Redford’s presence on screen and his appeal as an actor as his down to earth charm, his no fuss charisma and his ability to do so much with his mere presence on screen is on full display here and Lowery who also directed him in a small role in Pete’s Dragon doesn’t let his direction get in the way of his performance instead focusing on recreating the 1981 look on film with the heavy grain and long takes and it works really well.

Someone else I enjoyed seeing in this movie in a small role was Danny Glover even though all I could think the entire time he was on screen was “I’m too old for this shit” and as for Casey Affleck I thought he was okay but he had a bad tendency to mumble a lot of his lines most of the time and as a result I never really got fully on board with his performance.

But this is very much Redford’s movie and his presence more than carries it though one scene in particular made me think of Grand Theft Auto 5 the game which I still love playing.

And so that was the Old Man and the Gun and it’s a nice movie that serves as a great tribute to Robert Redford and his career and afterwards it will make you want to watch your favorite Redford films I know I wanted to rewatch Sneakers from 1992 after this one, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Creed 2 (2018)

Creed 2 is not directed by Ryan Coogler this time (He left to make Black Panther) instead Steven Caple Jr takes the reins and this time Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) has to fight Viktor Drago (Florian Muntenau) the son of Rocky IV’s Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) who famously killed Apollo Creed in Rocky IV so now the sons will have the same fight their fathers once had 33 years ago.

Creed 2 is an okay Rocky sequel but Coogler’s absence is deeply felt mainly because I felt he was able to do a Rocky sequel in the first Creed film in 2015 while also telling a new story that made it feel fresh and new whereas here and it probably is due to the fact that Stallone is a screenwriter on this new film the old beats of the traditional Rocky sequels are back:

- The new opponent who tears through his competitors
- The loss of the eye of the tiger
- The hero having to deal with family affairs
- The training montage

And then the big fight and well you get the picture and look some of that was in the first Creed film but here it really feels more prevalent and as a result I felt a bit more bored with this sequel and look it isn’t bad but it really makes it feel more like we’ve been here before.

And Tessa Thompson’s character Bianca who was very memorable in the first film as this deaf woman who was still living a very full and productive life is turned into the new Adrian where she worries about her man, gives very concerning looks and sits at the side of the ring worrying about her man and boy does that get old after a while especially when she has a very touching side plot about her baby daughter.

As for the performances both Thompson and Jordan are great together and these 2 are among the best actors of their generation and really do a lot to make their material shine, Stallone is his usual self while it was fun to see Dolph Lundgren again as Ivan Drago and Mr Muntenau looks like a mountain as Viktor even if his dialogue is very minimal at times.

And so that was Creed 2 and its okay but the first Creed was a better film and felt more fresh whereas this feels like a tired Rocky sequel with all the old beats of the punching bag dusted off, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - The Grinch (2018)

The Grinch is based off of the Grinch who Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of the Grinch who every year sees the people of Whoville do many Christmas celebrations and he gets so sick of it that he decides he’s going to steal their Christmas.

I was very very excited as I am a bit of a Christmas Grinch and the trailers for this movie had me thinking that if this movie could deliver the goods it would be my Christmas movie and well it does deliver and it doesn’t.

Firstly Benedict is great as the Grinch and he is clearly having a lot of fun voicing the role many of the laughs I had from watching the film also centre on him but away from him and his dog Max and his scheme to steal Christmas is where the film fell over for me.

The whole Whoville scene with the over the top Christmas decorations did very little for me after a while and there’s a cute little girl called Cindy Lou who wants to help her overworked mum voiced by Rashida Jones and it feels like a lot of that stuff was added to this movie version to make it a proper feature film as both the original Dr. Seuss book and the 1966 animated adaptation aren’t very long in fact the 1966 film is more of a special running 25-30 minutes and I feel that would’ve been better.

And lastly there is a voiceover narration that really got on my nerves after a while and rarely do I find that that kind of narration rarely ever works as all it does is just tell the audience what’s going on when it would be far better and I think this movie would’ve been much better if we got to discover that information for ourselves that way we can build a connection to the character instead we get this leaden voiceover that makes Dr. Seuss’s writing sound like an alien language.

Now the Grinch isn’t bad and I certainly had fun with it but it was also a bit of a disappointment for me in being merely fine but I think these Dr. Seuss adaptations are Illumination’s weakest point in their studio their own stuff like Secret Life of Pets and Despicable Me are much better, 3 out of 5.

Revisiting Rambo 1 and 2

With the recent release of the first 3 Rambo films in the 4K Ultra HD format (a format I’m a big enthusiast of) I became inspired to revisit the first 2 of these films and both of them have actually held up really well First Blood in particular hasn’t aged a day since its release in 1982 while Rambo: First Blood Part 2 has aged a little bit more since its release in 1985 but is still a very exciting action film.

But as I began to think about these 2 movies more and more I began to feel that they represent the way people began to feel about the War in Vietnam which is where the idea for the original First Blood novel came from as David Morrell had based off of some students he knew that had served in Nam and wanted to know more about their experiences both during their tour and what happened when they came home.

And thinking some more fairly recently I began to feel that both of these films reflect 2 sides of the public conscious about the Vietnam War.

First Blood is a reflection of the sobering reality of that conflict and while it is exciting and action packed and full of great characters its about the War at Home and what happened to these people when they came home in terms of they were shunned, cast out from broader society, distrusted to some extent, living from day to day, moving from place to place and taking what odd jobs they could to try and reintegrate back into society.

And all of these feelings come to the forefront during the films climatic moment where pinned against the wall Rambo explodes at Colonel Trautman and says that Nothing is Over, I did what I had to do to win and back there I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can’t even get a job parking cars.

And it works beautifully helping to give the film a real emotional resonance and it became a big hit in 1982 reflecting the growing view in the public that the Vietnam Vets had been treated very shabbily and the sense of guilt that came with as director Ted Kotcheff states on the making of doco which is on the First Blood Blu-Ray/DVD release.

This leads me nicely to Rambo: First Blood Part 2 released in 1985 at the height of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (he won a crushing re election victory the previous November) it takes on much more of a different tone to the first film emphasising much more of the action spectacle feel and a lighter tone.

And whereas First Blood I feel reflected what I call a sobering reality of the War Rambo 2 reflects a fantastical feel to the conflict a burning hunger within the public to avenge the defeat of the US Forces and right the wrong that was committed especially now with a strong father figure type as President who would’ve been decisive and let our boys do their thing and now as Rambo says in the opening of the film “Do We Get to Win this Time?”

And yet while this movie has that more action heavy feel and less somber tone it still nicely continues the theme of First Blood in terms of why the character goes back to Nam its for the Missing in Action soldiers that were said to still be held prisoner even after the end of the war and the audience seeing the film would have this visceral response through the Rambo character that something good would come of all this.

And indeed the film was a smash hit in 85 coming second only to the Juggernaut success of Back to the Future at the US Box Office and having a lengthy run in Australian cinemas even though critical reaction was mixed (Siskel and Ebert gave it the thumbs up as an exciting action film while Fairfax critics here in Aus did not like the film for its jingoistic undertones)

Though I also find myself wondering if James Cameron’s influence on the screenplay (he wrote a draft of this sequel at the same he was making The Terminator and Aliens before Sly came in and did his own script work) is a big reason why I feel the film is still an exciting action film, Cameron can do amazing action as he would prove with Terminator and Aliens and also Aliens would deal with characters that went through trauma going back to the place that caused it to begin with and have a new character in Hudson start to lose his cool when everything goes bad.

I will also say however that this undertone of Vietnam throughout these 2 films is also why Rambo 3 and 4 weren’t as good for me as that character was born out of that specific conflict and reflected to a certain degree how the viewing audience felt about it that to continue on after the second film which while thinking about how it ends gives some sense of closure to the Rambo character it feels stripped of a certain point of its identity and becomes another action character without any of the subtext of the world that created him.

And that is where I will end this particular column as I wanted to get those points out of my head hopefully you all enjoyed reading it as I did writing it.

Film Review - Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald is again written by JK Rowling and directed by David Yates and continues the tale of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who is secretly assigned by Professor Dumbledore (Jude Law) to spy on the powerful wizard Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) who is wanting to make the wizarding world the dominant one even going to evil means to make that a reality.

As someone who is not a Potterhead I thought this film was okay and I want to start with the positives firstly Mr Redmayne continues to be good as Newt Scamander and times his line deliveries very well in terms of when to be funny, when to be sweet and when to show his fascination with the creatures he collects and nutures and also Jude Law is very good as the young Dumbledore though sadly he is given very little to do in the film.

And this leads me to the 2 main problems I have with this movie:

- Firstly Ms Rowling’s screenplay is very fragmented in its structure and while watching I felt like I was watching the draft of a book on film instead of a script, one section in particular which was quite good feels like the chapter of a book where the story stops to develop a few things outside of it that in a book where you have no time limits and restrictions work great but as a screenplay the clock is ticking and anything that feels like a distraction just has to go.

And also there are times where the script struggles to give any meaningful screen time to its large cast of characters, the majority of the characters introduced in the first Fantastic Beasts film find their screen time diminished, some of the new characters don’t feel as developed as they should and Dumbledore just feels like a glorified cameo and doesn’t have anywhere near as much screen time as he should have.

- Secondly Grindelwald is a fucking boring character and it isn’t helped that Depp is just doing the same bloody performance he’s been doing for the past 5 to 10 years where he has the makeup on, he’s got the Jack Sparrow esque voice and he sounds like he’s just goddamn sleep walking through the whole thing until he gets the pay cheque.

And look I know I shouldn’t judge but Grindelwald is the title character and he should be a compelling and menacing villain who wants to shake the order of the world asunder by preying on wizard’s weaknesses and then compelling them to spread his message across the world even if it means resorting to violence but there is none of that because its stuck in this boring performance that has outstayed its welcome, it’s a real shame that Colin Farrell wasn’t able to be the villain for this new Wizarding World series as he would’ve been a much better villain and a good contrast to both Mr Redmayne and Mr Law.

And so that was Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald and look as someone who isn’t a Potterhead I didn’t hate the film but it also did very little for me as its script feels more like a book that’s disjointed and its lead villain is stuck with a boring performance, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - The Girl in the Spiders Web (2018)

The Girl in the Spiders Web is not based off of the late Steig Larsson Millenium books but is based off of the book written after his death and this time Claire Foy replaces Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander who is asked to investigate the disappearance of Project Freefire which could give one person complete control of the US Nuclear Arsenal though as she investigates the case demons from her past also emerge.

The Girl in the Spiders Web is very much familiar to me in that I feel about this movie the same way I felt about Pacific Rim: Uprising back in March in that this film is not terrible or awful in any way but really suffers from the long shadow the 2011 film David Fincher made based off of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book which I absolutely loved.

Ms Foy does a good job as Lisbeth but a lot of the time it feels like she is playing Catwoman/Selina Kyle as a lot of the film just feels very clean for the most part like its only a low ranking MA15+ film when it could so easily have been a high M rated film with some minor tweaking whereas the Fincher movie really felt like a great fit for him as a director it was a dark, nasty crime procedural that also peeked at some of the underbelly of human society something Fincher in films like Fight Club and Seven was no stranger to.

Here it feels like a Catwoman solo film in any other name where something gets stolen and Lisbeth has to get it back but that is only the films first big problem the second is the Blomkvist who was the co lead in the Fincher film and in the Larsson books is very very badly handled here he kind of just drifts into the story, does very little, means very little and then leaves that’s about it and it feels like he was inserted into the story during a script rewrite of an earlier draft that did not feature him in much capacity and yeah that’s that.

Look the Girl in the Spiders Web is not a bad film but its also a very pale shadow of the David Fincher film and like when I saw Pacific Rim: Uprising I just couldn’t help but think of the earlier film it followed which got me into the books after I saw it but the underuse of Blomkvist and it feeling more like a Catwoman film than a Dragon Tattoo story really bothered me, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Bohemian Rhapsody was directed by Bryan Singer (though Dexter Fletcher did finish the final 2 weeks of the shoot) and stars Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury the front man for Queen and the movie chronicles their rise to fame and culminates with their thunderous performance at the Live Aid concert in 1985.

I was very excited to see this movie due to my love of Queen’s music, Bryan Singer’s 4 X-Men films and those amazing trailers for this movie which felt like mini pop videos in their own right but some of the early response also had me nervous about it, would it be another film from this year to bite the dust or would it be one that rocks me.

Well it is actually the latter as I really, really enjoyed this movie and I have to start with Mr Malek as Freddie as he simply IS Mr Mercury on screen, he embodies every aspect of the man so well that he should storm home with the best actor Academy Award early next year as this is the type of performance that that Oscar should embody, a performance that commands the screen, takes the film and runs with it and carries the whole thing on their shoulders.

He effortlessly captures the loneliness, the sense of wanting to belong, the isolation and the temperament of the man as well as the iconic showman that you just cannot take your eyes off him whenever he is on screen and when he is doing the Live Aid recreation it is simply electric and I was definitely buzzing after the film ended.

Speaking of those concert sequences they are terrific fun and look and sound great on a big cinema screen and during those scenes I couldn’t help but want to grab my empty bottle of water and pretend it was a microphone as they have such energy to them that it feels like your in that audience and the Live Aid recreation in particular really shines and I did get a little emotional during that climatic sequence.

But aside from Mr Malek, a lot of the films other performances work as well, Tom Hollander was good as Jim Beach the long time lawyer/manager of the group and a producer on this movie though at times I did think he felt like a stand in for Michael Fassbender who Singer worked with on Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, Lucy Bonython from Sing Street is also really good as Mary Austin Freddie’s long time friend and companion and Ben Hardy, Gwynlym Lee and Joseph Mazzello (the little boy from Jurassic Park) are also quite good as the other band members.

Now comes sadly the issues though these are minor issues for me and that is the script by Anthony McCarten which takes a lot of liberties in terms of the timeline of events as shown in the film as it crams in a lot within a 134 minute runtime and for me it worked well enough but I did think that at times the film dragged on with those events and shuffled around a little too much prior to the 1985 segments but there is one scene in particular and I don’t want to say much more that really got to my heartstrings.

And so that was my review of Bohemian Rhapsody and I really enjoyed this movie despite some issues with the timeline shuffling in the script but musical biopics are tough to make when their based on real life musicians as the real people will have to be involved to get the clearance for the songs and that means sacrifices have to be made unless you do an Eddie and the Cruisers type film but all that aside I do highly recommend this movie, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - Halloween (2018)

Halloween is produced by Jason Blum and John Carpenter returns as executive producer and composes part of the score for this movie and 40 years have passed since the events of the original Halloween film from 1978 but Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) still hasn’t forgotten that night but when Michael Myers escapes from state custody Laurie vows to kill him once and for all.

Halloween is a great continuation of the series and smartly it only follows on from the 1978 original and ignores all of the other sequels that were made over the years so you only have to watch that film and your all set for this new one and there are multiple reasons I feel this new sequel works really well.

- Firstly it is great to hear that proper music for Halloween, Carpenter and his son Cody along with Daniel Davies do a great job of putting new themes while also playing the iconic themes from the original film and when those themes play in the movie it raises you in your seat and really adds to the suspense and tension of the scenes it plays under and I was watching more awarely and tapping my fingers.

- Secondly Michael Myers is menacing again, his shape of pure evil the tale of the Boogeyman personified (though John Wick could’ve killed him as he is the man you send to kill the fucking boogeyman and I did think of that during the film) is so so wonderful to watch as like in the original he feels like an elemental force of pure evil that cannot be bargained with, reasoned with and doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear when he comes for you be afraid, be very afraid.

- And lastly Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic again as Laurie and though the hand of the late Debra Hill isn’t felt with the writing of her character as it was in the original director David Gordon Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley do a good job of honouring the character from the first film and building upon it for this new film but 2 others deserve special mention as well.

And they are Judy Greer and Andi Matichak they really hold their own with Jamie Lee in this movie and it was terrific to see the 3 generations of Strode women fight off Michael Myers.

And also before I finish up there is some great MA15 horror violence in this movie and if you are squeamish I would want to either avoid this movie and take someone with you as there are some brutal deaths on show which I loved every moment of.

And so that was Halloween and it was a really fun movie for me that is also one of my favourites of the year so far, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - A Star is Born (2018)

This is the 4th version of A Star is Born to be made the last one being in 1976 with Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson this time Bradley Cooper stars and directs and co-writes and produces this version and plays Jackson Maine an alcoholic country singer who meets Ally (Lady Gaga) in a bar and discovers her talent for singing and decides to help her launch a career in the music industry.

I have been very torn on this movie since I saw it but after thinking about it a little bit I think that in all honesty it is okay nothing great but nothing overly horrible either and a lot of that comes down to Lady Gaga’s performance she is a genuine star here and owns every scene she’s in and when watching her in this movie it feels like playing this character just comes as easy to her as putting on one of her personas that she developed early on in her career and I hope she does more movie roles in the future.

Where this falls over for me is Bradley Cooper both in his direction and his performance and I’ll start first with the performance side and it really felt like to me that he was emulating Kris Kristofferson from that 1976 version as he has the scruffy beard, the chest hair and the slightly midwestern twinge in his voice and after a while I kinda got sick of watching him drink every kind of alcohol, clash with people on his tour and sing a bunch of songs now this is the material from what I’ve read I haven’t seen the other versions but it kind of wore out its welcome for me after a while.

As for his direction it was okay but there are an awful lot of close ups some of them very close up indeed and some of them of Lady Gaga made me a little uncomfortable to watch especially during some of the romance scenes where Cooper is touching Ms Gaga an awful lot now I’m not prudish in any way but I sat there thinking “Okay can we call cut and not go so close in, it’s a little uncomfortable to watch like this.”

Lastly the script as it focuses more and more on Jackson’s decline it sends the overall film into a decline in its back half and for me I really began to lose interest and I was checking my watch on a few occasions which is a bit of a shame but these things happen.

And so that was A Star is Born and its okay and that’s really due to Lady Gaga’s performance the rest of it really did very little for me I’m afraid, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Bad Times at the El Royale is written and directed by Drew Goddard and concerns a lounge singer (Cynthia Ervio), a priest (Jeff Bridges), two young women (Dakota Johnson and Cailee Spaeny) and a vacuum salesman (Jon Hamm) all come to the El Royale hotel which is a Bi State hotel between Nevada and California but all is not quite what it seems.

I did not like this movie very much I’m afraid and have likened to calling it “Diet Tarantino” as a nod to Diet Coke for this movie so desperately wants to be a Hateful Eight type of movie where a group of strangers come to a secluded place, their stuck there and things get very twisty and turny about why their there and what they want to do.

And Quentin can pull off that kind of film as he is a great screenwriter that can blend jukebox soundtracks, extreme violence and snappy dialogue that balances the tones of being fun and serious and direct those actors in a way that really seems to bring out the best in them in his films Mr Goddard is not that kind of director and it really shows in this film as the extreme violence moments come out of nowhere and land with a thud (and I love MA15 violence) and the jukebox soundtrack and snazzy dialogue just feel very out of place.

And I loved the Martian in 2015 which Mr Goddard wrote but this feels like a major step back, now as for the performances Ms Ervio and Ms Johnson really shine best here as both of them get a lot of meaty screen time and develop their characters well as for Mr Bridges well he kinda just does the Jeff Bridges thing same with Jon Hamm but the biggest waste is Chris Hemsworth now I love this man and wish he would get some of the opportunities Mel Gibson got at the height of his stardom (Hamlet, Maverick, Air America for example) but I thought he was terrible here as this flower child hippie type of character who shows off his abs and I didn’t like him here.

And so that was Bad Times at the El Royale aka Diet Tarantino and in all honesty wait for the Classic Tarantino to come out next year with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - First Man (2018)

First Man is directed by Damien Chazelle and stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong the astronaut who would make history by being the first man on the Moon in July 1969 well this movie tells the tale of how he got to be on that Apollo mission and finally that history making Moonwalk.

First Man is a movie I very much enjoyed mainly due to Mr Chazelle’s craftsmanship which has come a very long way from La La Land last year which I merely thought was okay there is some beautiful visuals here by Linus Sandgren where he combines an old fashioned film feel with deep blacks in space and tight angles when the astronauts are in the various space rockets and capsules and the way he also uses the blacks, reds, yellows and blues in particular was very eye catching.

And also there is some truly brilliant sound design on show here so good that I want this movie to win the Best Sound Design Oscar next year (A Quiet Place should get the other Sound Oscars) there is some great uses of silence when the rockets and capsules are in space and some great rumbling on the mix when the rockets take off or when something goes wrong.

Both of these elements made this very worthwhile in the cinema and will really shine on the new 4K Ultra HD format.

As for the performances well Mr Gosling was fine but he was pretty much his usual self he does a good job for sure but dialogue for me isn’t his strong suit particularly when it comes across as a little clunky at times, Claire Foy is great as Janet Armstrong who is trying to have something of a normal life and raise her family while also having to bear the burden of someone who could become a widow at any time not to mention live with having already lost a loved one and her grace and dignity out front that conceals a private fever, rage and feeling of powerlessness is fantastic to watch.

It gives me hope that she can overcome my doubts about her as Lisbeth Salander in the Girl in the Spiders Web next month and also I enjoyed seeing Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler and Ciaran Hinds in their small roles.

But lastly if I have a complaint and I do its that this movie is too long, at 141 minutes there are times where this movie drags with some sections of the story going on longer than it feels like it does and during those moments I was checking my watch and with a trimming of 5 to 10 minutes it would’ve made for a great film.

And so that was my review of First Man, a film I really liked despite being a little long, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Halloween (1978)

Halloween is directed by John Carpenter and stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Lori Strode a young high school girl who is babysitting on Halloween night while also hanging out with her school friends but an evil presence has descended upon their night in the form of Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is the only one who knows how evil he really is.

Halloween is a very effective horror film that I found very refreshing to watch for three reasons:

- First is John Carpenter’s direction, score and screenplay also co written by Debra Hill the two of them really take the time to both develop the main characters, build up the menace of Michael and the dread of when he will strike and the way the 3 strands of the storytelling play out is well handled by Carpenter in his direction and though it can be a little long before the killing happens it is very well done and all the more shocking when it happens as it isn’t thrown at you in a cheap jump scare like we see so often today.

- Secondly the performances are really good here, Jamie Lee Curtis is effective as Lori both as a young girl in school and as someone who is thrown into this horrifying home invasion while also trying to protect the 2 children under her care, in many ways I was reminded of Linda Hamilton in the first Terminator movie an innocent girl living her life then caught up in a horrifying situation.

Donald Pleasance is also very good here as Dr. Loomis the doctor who tried to bring Michael back to sanity but failed and is now trying to make sure he doesn’t kill anyone else one scene he has with a local sheriff is really effective.

- And lastly Michael Myers is a terrific villain, he has no dialogue, no face save for that mask and yet he is so good at instilling terror and feat wherever he goes that when Carpenter is moving his camera around it instils this sense of dread and tension in regards to when and where he will strike next and this was so refreshing to watch as today he’d be another evil creature with some apparatus that is the subject of endless jump scares, quick cuts and LOUD NOISES ON THE SOUND MIX!

And so that was Halloween a really really good horror film that is highly recommend, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - Venom (2018)

Venom is based off of the villain from the Spider-Man comics and this time Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock an investigative journalist who is living with his girlfriend Annie (Michelle Williams) and is assigned to interview the head of the Life Corporation (Riz Ahmed) but when he pushes on allegations of bad behaviour he is fired from his job but one night a mysterious substance enters his body and unbeknownst to him gives him great power.

Venom was a movie that before I saw it I thought it would be great or it would be horrible and instead it is only ok nothing great but nothing horrible either, the film works best when Tom Hardy who is easy to understand this time after so many movies where no cared who he was unless he put on the mask is playing Eddie Brock the journalist someone who has a bit of a reputation that like in the Spider-Man animated series from the 90s conflicts with his superiors will go to any lengths to get his story, when those scenes were playing I was interested.

But when the Venom symbiote shows up and takes over the movie it becomes very cartoonish and at times it literally feels like a live action cartoon with the Symbiote CG effects having that very animated feel and it also doesn’t help that the storytelling starts to develop this dual identity of going from a serious investigative journalism story with this evil company (and Mr Ahmed is good in his scenes) to a cartoon with people flying everywhere and the predictable action scenes and climax and payback of the early scenes.

And its not that those scenes are bad certainly not but they just feel very disengaging and I just sat there kind of a bit bored by it all but not like with the new Predator movie where I just began to hate what I was watching but just feeling very eh and meh about it all and when you have a film like Split by M. Night Shyamalan from last year that did this kind of anti hero film so well this feels very very bland in comparison.

But hey at least Venom is done and we have Glass to look forward at the end of January next year and frankly watch Split instead of this movie, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Christopher Robin (2018)

Christopher Robin is the newest Disney attempt at doing the Winnie the Pooh story but this time Ewan McGregor plays a grown up Christopher Robin who has long left the 100 acre wood behind and has a wife Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and a daughter Madeleine as well as a job at Wombley Luggage which is having to make some hard cuts in order to survive which means staying behind while his family head away on holiday but when Pooh (Jim Cummings) comes to Christopher to find all of his friends the woods come calling again.

Christopher Robin sadly was very forgettable for me and that doesn’t make it a bad movie but one that didn’t really do very much to keep me interested as it was being projected in front of me but first off it is wonderful to hear Jim Cummings as Pooh’s voice as he brings so much heart and warmth and depth to that character that every time he opened his mouth to talk I was really enjoying his dialogue.

And also a lot of the other voices like Brad Garrett as Eeyore and Peter Calpaldi as Rabbit are great likenesses for the original voices from the Winnie the Pooh animated series where Peter Cullen voiced Eeyore for example and Chris O’Dowd who voices Tigger also really captures Jim Cummings’s Tigger voice very well.

As for the human performers Mr McGregor is good as the older Christopher Robin and Ms Atwell who was wonderful as Peggy in the Captain America films pretty much plays the concerned wife and mother role and she does a good job with it but part of me was wishing she was given something more to do and hopefully in the future she will get a great part to really sink her teeth into.

But alas this story just felt very forgettable for me and it plays out very much in that “What if Christopher Robin grew up” kind of way that I didn’t really find all that interesting I mean if your going to do a live action Winnie the Pooh movie it needs to be colourful and bright and fun to watch for a family audience here the adults might get something out of but younger children which should be an ideal audience for this film will just sit there bored by it all when Pooh and his friends aren’t on screen.

And so that was Christopher Robin a forgettable film for me I’m afraid despite some good performances, 1.5 out of 5.

Film Review - Ladies in Black (2018)

Ladies in Black is based off of the novel Women in Black and is directed by Bruce Beresford and takes place in Sydney 1959 as the department store Goodes has hired some temp hands to deal with the Christmas/New Year sales period one of those is a young girl named Lisa (Angourie Rice) who befriends a European refugee named Magda (Julia Ormond) who also works at the department store, at the same time some of the other girls (Rachael Taylor and Alison McGirr) are going through their own problems and Rudi (Ryan Corr) wants to meet an Australian girlfriend.

Ladies in Black is a nice love letter to Sydney and to Australia of that time period somewhat, 59 was the 10th anniversary of Sir Robert Menzies’s time as Prime Minister and a lot of English and Europeans migrated to Australia to start a new life (one scene made me think of the 1984 film by Ms Sophia Turkiewicz Silver City which starred Steve Bisley) and the production design, costumes and cinematography do a nice job of recreating that period even if at times you can tell that archival footage has been used as it doesn’t quite match up with the photography of the sets.

At one point however and this is a brief aside Let it Snow plays on the soundtrack and all I could think of was Die Hard as to me that song and that movie are inseparable so I’ll move on.

Performance wise Ms Rice who really stole the show in the Nice Guys in 2016 continues to do good work and she really proves herself as a capable young actress and it was very nice to see after seeing her basically do a glorified cameo in Spider-Man: Homecoming last year, Ms Taylor really lights up the screen with her presence here and she reminded me a lot of that 50s starlet and she was good too, Julia Ormond and Noni Hazlehurst were pretty good while Shane Jacobson is his usual affable self and he gets a couple of good laughs.

All in all Ladies in Black is a nice movie with some good visuals and performances even if I wasn’t all that enthralled by it, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - A Simple Favor (2018)

A Simple Favor is the new film by Paul Feig who made Spy and Ghostbusters and stars Anna Kendrick as Stephanie a mummy vlogger who makes friends with a woman named Emily (Blake Lively) and her husband (Henry Golding) but when Emily disappears Stephanie starts to suspect something is wrong so she decides to investigate her disappearance while also comforting her abandoned family.

A Simple Favor works best when Anna Kendrick is allowed to be the private detective so to speak and that element of the story is a lot of fun to watch as we rarely get a well made detective story on film nowadays most often they go to television now and it’s a real shame as a good mystery is always worthwhile on screen as you sit with an audience to discover the clues and guess who the killer is and then watch when all is revealed and you can piece it all together and Kendrick who was also very good in the Accountant in 2016 is good here as well.

As for Ms Lively she simply oozes sex appeal here with her sharp suits and statuesque posture in Mr Feig’s hand and on a couple of occasions she reminded me of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct the beautiful blonde with a mysterious story that keeps our lead guessing for the truth, she also has some really nice suits and a fuck it all attitude that sees Ms Lively really shine as an actress and she has been hit and miss for me but here like in the underrated Age of Adaline in 2015 she was quite good here.

And lastly Mr Golding hot off the success of Crazy Rich Asians is good here as well as the concerned husband who worries about his missing wife and caring for his son Nicky though I will say he does not have as much screen time as Ms Lively and Ms Kendrick do.

Where the film does fall over somewhat is that at times the central mystery gets a little too silly for its own good and while seeing it all come together is very satisfying it does during the course of the storytelling become a little too silly in a way that made me think “Okay how does this make any sense” but again it dances that fine line well enough in the end that I don’t really mind all that much.

And so that was a Simple Favor which is a fun detective story with great performances at the centre of it that make it worth watching, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - The Predator (2018)

The Predator is the newest entry in the Predator franchise and this time Shane Black who played Hawkins in the original movie from 1987 writes and directs this new entry where the Predator once again lands on Earth and murders a group of special forces soldiers but one of them a captain (Boyd Holbrook) is interrogated to find out why but a local scientist (Olivia Munn) may know what it is and it is indeed the Predator.

I was keen to see this new Predator movie due to Mr Black being in the directors chair, this is a man who starred in the original Predator film and saw John McTiernan make it close hand, he wrote the original Lethal Weapon from that same year and just recently directed the Nice Guys with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.

And just recently I got to revisit the original Predator in its new 4K release and it still works perfectly so this new movie was in for the Hunt.

And it deserved to be killed off in that Hunt as this movie was very, very, very disappointing for me but before I delve into those reasons I want to start off by talking about what I did like and firstly I did think the film had some fun bloody violence that well earns its MA15 rating and I did enjoy finally seeing some blood be spilt during the Predator kills plus I did think Mr Holbrook and Ms Munn did a good job in their roles.

And lastly Henry Jackman’s score really nicely conveys a similar style and feel to Alan Silvestri’s score for the original movie.

But like I said this movie was a big disappointment for me and its time to dig into why as there are 2 key reasons:

- Firstly Black’s script which he co wrote with Fred Dekker is a tonal mess, trying to juggle the seriousness of the Predator hunt with the laughs he tries to get out of the group of soldiers and it really doesn’t work as the humour the guys go for is very cringe worthy and at times you can see that their going for that big cinema audience laugh along and it just falls completely flat.

And because of that I didn’t really care all that much if the Predator came along and killed every single one of them as after a while their banter really got on my nerves and I didn’t really find them very funny at all.

- Secondly this same script overcomplicates what should have been a simple story with multiple storylines that don’t really mesh together, there’s a story about a young boy played by Jacob Tremblay from Room and Wonder and then there’s the side plot with the other soldiers and then there’s the story about the Predators themselves and I just sat there thinking “Just give me a simple story with a Predator and its prey” and instead it felt like the mistakes of the Prometheus series that tried to tie into the Alien franchise were being repeated somewhat here and like Alien and Aliens simpler is better story wise.

And so that was the Predator the kind of movie disappointment that really stings as I was really keen to see it and the promise of Shane Black directing one of these films and it fails in the very areas John McTiernan got right in the original, its time for this hunter to take his quarry and retire as like Alien it has well and truly had its day, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Crazy Rich Asians is based off of the novel and stars Henry Golding as Nick Young the son of a wealthy real estate owner in Singapore who decides to take his girlfriend Rachel (Constance Wu) home for his friends wedding but that also involves meeting the family and his mother (Michelle Yeoh) which won’t be easy but Nick is sure he’s found the one and is determined to win the family over to her while also acting as Best Man at his friends wedding.

Crazy Rich Asians was okay but very much a traditional rom com, first off Singapore and the surrounding islands look great the city is very bright and colourful at night and the islands during the daytime look very calm and relaxing and it will make you want to go there plus it is such a pleasure to see Michelle Yeoh again in a film as not only does she pull of the contempt look well but has the Martial Arts skills to back it up and Ms Yeoh was indeed a major Martial Arts star in Asia in the past and well I’ve liked her since Tomorrow Never Dies as a kid so there’s that.

Also really good is Ms Akwafina who is far funnier here than she was in Oceans 8 where it felt like she had very little to do apart from some card tricks here she pretty much steals the show and gets the best laughs while Mr Golding and Ms Wu have some nice chemistry together as the young lovers trying to navigate their relationship against the traditions of the East where much like the Big Sick last year the parents grow up in a traditional environment while their children are more exposed to the culture and ideals of the West in their travels and the 2 at times clash with each other.

And so that was Crazy Rich Asians and it’s a fun rom com that I enjoyed watching, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - BlackKklansman (2018)

BlackKklansman is based off a true story and is the newest joint by Spike Lee and takes place in 1972 where a black undercover detective (John David Washington son of Denzel) the first black man to be recruited to the Colorado Springs Police Force decides to investigate the local chapter of the KKK (Klu Klux Klan) and recurits one of his fellow detectives a white man played by Adam Driver to act in his place and it gets very hairy.

BlackKklansman walks a very tight high wire act between being serious and comedic and Spike manages for the most part to walk very well as part of me thought before seeing this movie “This story sounds utterly bizarre” and yet it really happened and it was told very well, John Washington is very much his father’s son as he sounds so much like him and has a lot of his fathers natural charm and charisma, Adam Driver once again shows what a great actor he is as he knocks it out of the park and walks a very fine line of having to be someone else and not give his real identity away while Corey Hawkins does a great speech scene that reminded me of Denzel in Malcolm X.

But in the end and I won’t say too much but you will know it when it happens I found that the very delicate tight rope that had been managed so well came undone and the reason I feel this way is because it feels like its come out of a movie of this story that is a lot more serious in its tone and the way it inserts itself editorially is as a hard cut and I couldn’t help but think that a dissolve would’ve been much better that way you could still enjoy the high wire act and get the impact of that ending whereas here it feels like it comes out of nowhere and for me personally I found myself marking the film down a little bit because of it.

And so that was BlackKklansman a film that Spike Lee pulls off very well for the most part save for the ending and because of that I have very mixed feelings on the film overall, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - The Meg (2018)

The Meg stars Jason Statham as Jonas a former deep sea rescue diver who lives with the guilt of having to let 2 of his friends die on a rescue mission that went wrong but when a deep sea research vessel is trapped 11,000 feet below the surface Jonas is brought back into action to rescue them but what he also finds is Megalodon a giant Shark that has now found its way to surface so the race is on to kill it before it kills hundreds of innocent people.

The Meg was okay, not a bad movie by any stretch but not that great of a one either Mr Statham is pretty good and nicely builds on his work in Spy and the Fate of the Furious, Rainn Wilson and Ruby Rose were a lot of fun as well and the film has some pretty neat shark effects that for once didn’t have me going “Stop showing me the Damn Shark.”

But what this movie lacks is any real bite and by that I mean lots of blood in the ocean floor there’s a little bit of it but not enough for my liking and if your going to make a Shark movie you have to push the boundaries a little bit and not be afraid to let its sink its teeth in and show that for Sharks the Blood is indeed the Life, playing it safe like this really doesn’t cut it anymore.

And so that was the Meg which was okay fun but lacked real bite, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Book Club (2018)

Book Club stars Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen as 4 women who form a Book Club every month and each of them pick a book for the 4 of them to read and one of them picks Fifty Shades of Grey and it gets all of them stimulated for love, life and sex which for some includes finding love again and getting back into the dating game.

Book Club is good fun and worth a watch with a cinema crowd that for me was laughing quite a bit and I definitely laughed a fair bit as well and a lot of that charm comes down to that wonderful cast of ladies who play off each other really well and have great chemistry as well as delivering some great laughs and I have to say I really liked seeing Ms Bergen on screen again.

The 4 ladies also have some fun male actors to play off of as well with Don Johnson he of Heartbeat the song and Miami Vice fame getting a small role, Wallace Shawn (“Inconceivable”) has a really fun cameo as does Richard Dreyfuss but its Andy Garcia once again showing that he has aged really well and pretty much turned into Terry Benedict from the 2001 Oceans Eleven and like in Mamma Mia 2 gets many of the films best moments and I also liked seeing Alicia Silverstone again it felt like an eternity since I last saw her on screen.

Oh and Craig T. Nelson has a fun gag with Mr. Incredible all the way down in his pants.

And so that was Book Club a fun and light hearted romp that I had fun with, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - The Happytime Murders (2018)

The Happytime Murders is directed by Brian Henson son of Muppets creator Jim Henson and stars Melissa McCarthy as a police detective who once had a Puppet partner who now works as a private eye as an incident saw him disgraced from the service but when the cast of a TV show called The Happytime Gang keep winding up dead the two will have to work together to solve the case.

The Happytime Murders is a complete mess that really doesn’t work on almost any front and first off I start with the tone it is all over the place and on the one hand it goes for that Who Framed Roger Rabbit style of puppets and humans co existing much like how toons and humans co exist in the world of that film then on the other hand there’s lot of sex jokes, sexual scenes and swearing now granted this is an MA15 movie and it has some very inventive gun deaths but they just don’t work.

And that leads me to the second problem the comedy it’s dead D-E-A-D Dead none of the jokes work and none of them come from a consistent tone the sexual jokes just come out of nowhere and instead of generating laughs they just land with a complete thud and in the small audience I saw the movie in there was only one laugh, 1 in the whole time I was watching the movie and for a comedy that is dangerous.

And lastly the central mystery doesn’t work either as it becomes blindingly obvious from the get go who the killer is and as a result you get bored with the mystery and Ms McCarthy does some good physical comedy but her verbal gags just pretty much end up being her shouting a lot of her lines and after a while I just got sick of it.

So yeah the Happytime Murders was awful, nothing in it works and it fails to be fun, track down Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Instead as that is a far superior film, 1 out of 5.

Big Trouble for James Bond

So recently the new Mission: Impossible movie Fallout came out in cinemas and I absolutely loved it, it’s a terrific thrill ride with exciting action, a great villain and a story that is about its central hero Ethan Hunt and the kind of hero he is.

What also came to mind is that not only must I try some of those amazing helicopter stunts on GTA Five (It didn’t quite work out as planned but I’ll keep trying) and also that Fallout and Rogue Nation make a great 2 parter but I also thought of the James Bond franchise.

For you see with these 2 films and the 2 Kingsman films the 007 series finds itself on the back foot of the spy genre and risks looking out dated and out of touch to a modern audience and it used to be said of James Bond that Nobody Does It Better and it makes you feel sad for the rest.

Well I certainly am not sad for the rest for much like in the late 80s the competitors of James Bond seem to have finally caught up thanks to the like of Christopher McQuarrie and Matthew Vaughn and allow me to delve more into those 2 groups of films in more detail.

In both Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Fallout you have:

- Tom Cruise defying death to do all of those amazing stunts be it hanging off the side of a plane, holding his breath underwater, doing motorcycle chases with no protection and leaping from one building to the next in a foot chase that would make Quicksilver blush.

- Christopher McQuarrie staging some impressive action set pieces while also crafting espionage stories that are exciting to follow, are driven by character and stimulate your imagination.

- A proper reinvention of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Solomon Lane and a proper reinvention of SPECTRE in the Syndicate/Apostles and like that group they know how his opposite number ticks and is intelligent, resourceful and ruthless in its goals for global chaos and domination.

- And lastly a leading lady in Rebecca Ferguson who could legitimately be a Bond leading lady as she is sexy, beautiful and able to kick ass with the guys.

Now lets swim across the pond to the 2 Kingsman movies:

- Both films have colourful and lavish sets that are eye catching and reminiscent of the sets Sir Ken Adam would design for the Bond films of the 60s and 70s.

- Colin Firth’s Harry/Galahad has properly redefined the gentleman spy with his Manners Maketh Man attitude and sharp suit that fits not only with the period film characters that helped make Firth a successful actor but also brings in a new audience for him that may not have seen his earlier work.

- Villains that like Auric Goldfinger could be petty crooks but see a legitimate grievance in modern society and seek to stamp it out even if it costs millions of lives which as Thanos would say is “A Small Price to Pay for Salvation.”

- And lastly like the Mission Impossible films I talked about above there are some wildly exciting action set pieces that play out like these energetic music clips that would traditionally be the title sequence of a James Bond film.

Now if you were to put those elements together into a handy little list like so:

- The stunt set piece that made you sit up and go WOW!
- The lavish and elaborate sets
- The beautiful women
- The exciting villains
- The espionage plots that threaten the world

And the gentleman spy risking life and limb to win the day and all of those are what you used to go and see a James Bond movie for and increasingly since Casino Royale in 2006 it feels like the Bond series has lost its way a little bit.

And this has happened by the films becoming more and more serious in tone which the Fleming novels and the best of the Bond films balanced well with humour, the navel gazing of “Is Bond still Relevant” which has been going on over and over since Goldeneye in 1995 and the elements of the Bond character that made him so popular such as the overt masculinity to name as one example are coming under increasing scrutiny.

But I still maintain the hope for Bond as one of the great strengths of the film series has been its ability to adapt with the changing times and refit the character to suit them to a certain degree and Danny Boyle is a good director who can bring a real kinetic energy plus Daniel Craig seems keen to end his tenure in the role on a high note hopefully they can deliver the goods and reorient Bond to be back on top and prove once more that Nobody Does it Better despite the comers.

10 Years of Film Reviewing

Well who would’ve thought this would happened when I started this blog 10 years ago back in 2008 that I would’ve made it this far and had some of the success that I’ve had with it in terms of some of the opportunities it opened up so yeah this is a bit of an anniversary column and being a significant one I wanted to write something about it.

So what inspired you to want to do this some of you might ask? Well the impetus of it all actually started in 2007 and I was doing a Multimedia course at the time and just wouldn’t shut up about Hot Fuzz which I saw that March in cinemas and back then I rarely went to the cinemas to see movies sure I went every while or so but not in a huge way I mainly watched films on video when I was young (living regionally you don’t have a lot of that access cinema wise especially if your local was notorious for projector problems.)

With some encouragement I decided to dab my hand in writing reviews so I decided to do so and they weren’t the best when I look back it was an early attempt to find my voice and put down my thoughts on some films like Spider-Man 3 to use as an example but I decided to leave it for a while.

Then in 2008 as I started to go to more movies in the cinema and I would tell people about what I saw and what I thought of it I was encouraged again to start a review blog as that kind of thing was starting to emerge in a big way at that time and after a bit of thinking I decided to give it a go and on Friday August 15th 2008 I officially launched my blog with a review of the double disc DVD of Dirty Harry.

And what a ride it has been yes it has had its ups and downs but so much has happened in that time and firstly I want to start with the many friends and fans I met and made through social media which really made this just something fun for myself into something that I could actually share with others from all over the world not just Australia and really make into something substantial after all if they were going to many movies why couldn’t I and then be able to talk to them about it and whether we agreed or disagreed on said movie.

And secondly came an opportunity in 2014 that I thought would never come and that was to be able to talk on Radio (ABC Radio no less) about these new releases as we very rarely see that sort of thing on traditional Media platforms any more be it Radio or Television or Print sure some of that film reporting/reviewing exists but so much of it felt like it was swallowed whole by the digital disruption of the last 10 to 15 years so to get such an opportunity was for me something that frankly I couldn’t have imagined getting.

As not only did I get to talk about films but also it opened up a potential career path that I had never ever imagined when I left school in 2003 and on top of that I met and made some wonderful friends there that came to mind when I saw the Post back in January and seeing what it is that they do up there on that big cinema screen was very moving for me.

As for what the next 10 years holds well who knows certainly I didn’t think this 10 years would hold as much as it did and open up what it did so like any good roller coaster ride I intend to sit back and enjoy the ride and thank everyone who has come by this page, commented on my reviews, opened up those Radio opportunities and liked my reviews on Twitter and commented there as well.

Here’s to many more.

Film Review - Tea with the Dames (2018)

Tea with the Dames is a documentary film directed by Roger Michell and stars Dames Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins whi on occasion get together to reminisce and laugh about the stories and careers but this time the cameras came with them and they talk about their long careers and their lives.

And all of it is delightful, so much so that I wish it had been 2 hours long instead of just 83 minutes as each of these ladies have so many stories about their lives, their former husbands and the many experiences they’ve had on stage and on film not to mention how they got started in the business and name dropping quite a few names that they’ve worked with and met over the years.

There is also a bit of sadness to it as well as all of them reveal the various health issues they now face be it loss of hearing or eye sight and given how particularly Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith have played these invincible roles like the head of Gryffindor House in the Harry Potter movies or M in the James Bond series where it felt like nothing could stop them and yet in real life their years are beginning to run out was just so sad.

Also at one point a brief clip of Alan Rickman came on and it really tugged at my heartstrings after watching Die Hard in 4K and he is sorely missed.

And so that was Tea with the Dames a delightful doco with 4 wonderful ladies that could’ve easily been 2 hours and I wouldn’t have minded at all, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

The Spy Who Dumped Me is directed and co-written by Susanna Fogel and stars Mila Kunis as Audrey and Kate McKinnon as Morgan two best friends who end up in a world of trouble when Audrey’s boyfriend (Justin Theroux) is revealed to be a spy but when he is killed the two ladies take up the mission and get into something that could spell doom for the world.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is really good fun and I had a big smile on my face through a lot of it as well as laughing a fair bit at most of the jokes but I want to start with Ms Fogel’s direction and it is sure refreshing to see someone not skimp on the blood in their action scenes as there is quite a bit of it and it was so good to see and also she edits her fight scenes in a way that is exciting and easy to follow while also getting a gag out of them, clearly this movie has been directed by someone who loves action cinema and knows not to skimp on the blood if your going to make one.

And also Ms Kunis and Ms McKinnon play off each other really well here Kunis has been someone I could take or leave but here she is great fun to watch but Ms McKinnon is the real star here as she is the funniest I’ve ever seen her be in a movie here so many of the gags and lines and observations play beautifully in her hands and she has some terrific physical and verbal humour and in her scenes with Gillian Anderson you can totally see her freaking out in hysterical joy in her eyes.

And also I really like how Ms Fogel captures their chemistry on film you really believe that these 2 women are friends, best friends even and the intimacy that comes across in that friendly kind of way comes across in a way that no male director could ever capture so authentically as it would feel like it your observing that kind of close friendship from a distance and that’s okay it feels very refreshing to see this type of thing and I hope there’s more of it in the future.

Sadly where this film does fall down is not having a clearly defined villain to help anchor the story instead it tries to go for the Mission Impossible type of double cross and who’s really who and it doesn’t work as well outside of that series if it had that kind of “This is who we’re up against” villain it would’ve helped the film majorly.

And so that was my review of the Spy Who Dumped Me a fun action comedy with well filmed action that actually values blood, two great heroines and some fun gags and humour, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - The Breaker Upperers (2018)

The Breaker Upperers is written, directed and stars Madeleine Sami and Jamie Van Beek as Mel and Jen two women who run a break up agency for partners in New Zealand but when Mel feels that they have crossed the line a little bit with one case a woman named Anna she and Jen start to conflict over the agency and their friendship.

The Breaker Upperers worked best for me when it was just these 2 women running their agency and arranging separations for couples who don’t want to go through all of that messiness for themselves a times they pose as police officers to fake missing persons cases they go to peoples houses and even spy on them in public to try and find a way to break the news and all of it is great fun and Ms Sami and Ms Van Beek have great comedic chemistry that had me laughing quite a bit plus there was a great Kamehameha Wave reference that had me properly laughing out loud in my cinema seat.

But when the film takes on a more serious tone and the duo start to argue and go their separate ways it fell down for me as it felt like a lot of the same stuff I’d seen before the friends argue, one of them goes off and does something else, the other friend starts feeling guilty and they have an awkward reunion before they properly reconcile and I got a bit bored watching all of that stuff as again it didn’t feel fresh like the first half did it just felt familiar and that is a real disappointing thing to say.

And so that was the Breaker Upperers and regrettably it’s a disappointment for me as a really fun and fresh first half makes way for a familiar second half that I just didn’t like as much, 2 and a half out of 5.