Film Review - Promising Young Woman (2021)

 Promising Young Woman is written and directed by Emerald Fennell and stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie, a once promising Med student who dropped out and now lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown) and works in a coffee shop but the circumstances of her leaving medical school are never far from her mind and she is determined to close that chapter of her life for good.

 

Promising Young Woman is a movie that will rattle some for sure but it was one that I personally really enjoyed and first off Ms Fenell’s script and direction are excellent, there are many times where the storytelling takes a lot of twists and turns and goes from being a fun romantic comedy to a dark revenge thriller and not one time did it feel like a jarring shift in the tone and her direction with its bubble-gum like visuals are beautiful to look at on a nice cinema screen as at times like bubble-gum it is very sweet to look at but that illusion is ready to be burst at any time.

 

Secondly Ms Mulligan is simply the best I’ve ever seen her be in a movie, she is someone I have been hit and miss about over the years but here she delivers in a big big way, she understands Cassie and what drives her down to the bone and the way she is able to transform herself from being this young girl to a determined woman in one scene after another is just fantastic to see and so often its just in her eyes and her face, she will have some tough competition but I would love to see her nominated for this work.

 

Also the casting of the men in this movie is something I want to touch on briefly as Ms Fennell does a very interesting thing with it, she doesn’t cast these big football/baseball playing type of men in those roles they are guys who look more like the man next door, the type that would wave to you every morning or ask how your doing every once in a while and they have very young baby face type faces or are people who sure might have done bad things in university but it was a lifetime ago they’ve moved on and settled down but somethings things can’t just be like that and you move on the sins of the past will always find a way.

 

Lastly the jukebox soundtrack is really good at one point Paris Hilton starts playing and the way its played in the movie makes you want to dance along to it and there are some other songs that play in the film as well that are also very effective.

 

And so that was Promising Young Woman and it was well worth the wait with a truly great performance at the centre of it, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - The Dry (2020)

The Dry is based off of the novel and stars Eric Bana as Aaron Falk a Federal Police detective who returns to his hometown of Kiewarra in Country Victoria for the funeral of his childhood friend Luke who along with his wife and son were murdered in an apparent murder suicide but Aaron has his own demons in the town relating to the apparent suicide of his childhood friend Ellie many years earlier.

 

The Dry I had been keen to see based off of the great trailer and it certainly did not disappoint as a movie as this was a thoroughly enjoyable murder mystery story and first off the cinematography by Stefan Duscio is quite good with its pale browns showing off how much the drought has affected this small country town which is also close to a bushfire area as well.

 

Secondly the mystery itself unfolds in a very neat way with a great use of flashbacks to show Aaron and his friends along with other people in the town when it comes to the murder cases being solved and explored in the film, the flashback scenes have this nice grainy feel to them like 35mm film from that era and it looks great on a big screen while the new scenes have that digital feel but also how much the events of the past and the events of the here and now as Luke and his family are laid to rest come back to haunt the townspeople.

 

And lastly Eric Bana is just so so good here, effortlessly charming and charismatic while also showing a real vulnerability in some scenes it just makes him not only the perfect anchor for this story but also why he hasn’t had as many good roles like this as this is the best I’ve seen him be in a movie in a very very long time and so many of the roles he’s done now feel like a total waste of his talent as he clearly can be a great, charming leading man with a laid back air to him that makes him totally relatable and boy has it been way too long.

 

And so that was the Dry which is a thoroughly enjoyable mystery tale set in drought stricken regional Victoria and one that I cannot recommend highly enough, 4 and a half out of 5.

 

Film Review - Monster Hunter (2020)

 Monster Hunter is directed by Paul WS Anderson and is based off of the game, this movie stars Milla Jovovich as a military captain who along with her unit is sent to a different world through a mysterious portal where giant Monsters roam the land and now the race is on to not only fight the Monsters but also get back home.

 

I didn’t have a large amount of hope for this movie, all I wanted really is for big monsters getting blown up real good on a big cinema screen like in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim in 2013 but this movie is nowhere near that film.

 

Mainly because its just so boring to sit through, the editing for a start is really bad with so many fast cuts and constant zooming in and out it becomes a strain on your eyes after a while, the storytelling is also very messy, and it throws you into this movie without really explaining anything of substance until very late in the film.

 

And if you go back to Pacific Rim Del Toro took his time to explain the history of Kaiju on Earth and the War that for a moment had beaten them back through the Jaeger program in the beginning of that film and by the time the first big battle starts you know the history, the world of the film and what the characters are going to face, and it is what this movie should have done.

 

And lastly there’s no real characters to get behind, now I like Ms Jovovich I do but more and more it seems that she is squandering the goodwill she got with the Fifth Element in 1997 as here she doesn’t really play a character but an archetype that talks in platitudes for the most part, Ron Pearlman also shows up but even his reliable presence can’t help this movie.

 

And that was Monster Hunter and to quote Paul Anka in the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Just Don’t Look, Just Don’t Look as it commits the worst sin of a film of this kind: Its Boring, instead watch Pacific Rim, 1 out of 5.