Film Review - The Lost City (2022)

 The Lost City stars Sandra Bullock as Loretta Sage an adventure romance novelist who is mourning the loss of her husband while also trying to complete her latest novel, one night after a book launch she is abducted by a wealthy young billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) to help find the lost Crown of Fire on an island about to erupt but her cover model Dash (Channing Tatum) plots a plan to go and rescue her.

 

The Lost City is good fun when it actually tries to be a straightforward adventure film, there’s the group of evil with lots of henchmen, leeches in rivers, erupting volcanoes, caves, secret paths and all of it worked pretty well for me and I had fun, Bullock is sometimes underrated as an actress mainly because she never really worked for me as a sweetheart rom com type but here as a tom boyish type she worked very well as did Radcliffe as the villain.

 

He is clearly having a great time in this role and he was the show stealer for me in this film and even reminded me a little bit of Tom Hiddleston with his voice (the 2 sound a little similar I feel) plus Brad Pitt has a very fun cameo.

 

But when this film tries to be a comedy it falls flat in the mud on the island and boy am I so so so utterly fucking sick of so many modern movies trying to be funny when they either aren’t or don’t FUCKING NEED TO BE!!!! Sorry to lose my lolly like that but it really pisses me off and I can’t help but think that this is a continuation of the Joss Whedon influence on so many modern writers and directors and look he could balance humour and drama pretty well but very few others can and now that Whedon’s career is now in disgrace can we please cut this shit out and start to play most things as a pretty straight bat it will improve many other films.

 

Also Channing Tatum just didn’t work for me as a loveable lunk, he’s too handsome and buff for this type of role and part of me wishes that someone else like Chris Pratt had played this role instead and also his chemistry with Bullock didn’t really click for me whereas you go back to Romancing the Stone which has heavily influenced this movie Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas worked very well as a pair while Danny Devito provided much of the comic relief and maybe that approach would’ve been better here as well.

 

And so that was the Lost City and it wants to be a new Romancing the Stone but it feels more like a new Jewel of the Nile for me but it has its moments, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Fantastic Beasts the Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

 Fantastic Beasts the Secrets of Dumbledore is the third film in the Fantastic Beasts series and stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander once again and this time he is recruited by Dumbledore (Jude Law) to help defeat the evil wizard Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen replacing Johnny Depp from the first two films) from taking over the Wizarding world and inciting a war with the muggles but Dumbledore also has to contend with his own conflicted feelings for Grindelwald and the Blood Pact they made to never fight each other many years ago.

 

Fantastic Beasts 3 is not a good movie I’m sorry to say but before I delve into those elements I want to talk about what I did like and that is the look of this movie, the production design and visual effects are terrific some of the best I’ve seen in any big film in a long time, the 1930s art deco design is rich and detailed and the wizarding duels create some imaginative visual effects work that actually made this worth watching on a big cinema screen unlike most of the Marvel movies outside of the X-Men movies where many of the fight scenes look dull and boring and really just consist of people hitting each other.

 

As for the actors their okay and here is where the problems begin, Law and Mikkelsen are great actors but have little to no chemistry as a pair which isn’t helped by the fact that the script is constantly treading on egg shells regarding their romance like they want to say they love each other but the words just garble out of their mouth as if the nerves have taken over and they can’t bring themselves to say I love you or I loved you like a heterosexual couple might and I can’t help but think that this has been done so it can easily be edited out for release in certain markets and its not good enough either do this properly or don’t do it at all, don’t try to take a bet each way.

 

Speaking of bets each way this has been the fundamental problem with this Fantastic Beasts franchise and like the sequel trilogy for Star Wars recently there has clearly been no roadmap, no plan, no throughline for this series in terms of its overall story arc, its characters and how they all fit together and this has created a group of films that are a tonal mess.

 

For on the one hand you have this more light hearted and whimsical creature film with Newt and his friends that Chris Columbus who directed the first 2 Harry Potter films would’ve done a great job with but on the other hand we’re back in the dark fascist tone of the later Harry Potter films which David Yates directed and has directed these films and their not that interesting and it isn’t helped that the casting changes regarding the chief villain have made a mess of things again stick with one direction in this case Colin Farrell or don’t bother now outside events didn’t help matters here but its so fucking frustrating.

 

And so that was Fantastic Beasts the Secrets of Dumbledore and this series is done and deep down I think Warner Brothers knows it and now with Discovery taking over from top to bottom I won’t be surprised if they pull the plug on the Wizarding World for a few years and hopefully give the Australian distribution rights to their overall WB slate back to Roadshow instead of Universal, 1.5 out of 5.

Film Review - Ambulance (2022)

 Ambulance is the new film by Michael Bay and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny Sharp the son of a former criminal in Los Angeles and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as his adopted brother Will a former soldier who needs money for his wife’s surgery so Danny decides to recruit him to help rob a major bank in LA but when the robbery goes wrong and the police go chasing they hijack an Ambulance with a nurse (Eiza Gonzalez) on board to stop things from going from bad to worse.

 

Ambulance is surprisingly good fun from Bay who has had his ups and downs over his career and this is actually I think one of his better films, though he overdoes the swooping drone shots that I’m sure are designed to make you feel dizzy this doesn’t feel as loud or bombastic as his Transformers sequels did, if anything this feels more like Bay’s early work such as Bad Boys and the Rock and this would sit nicely on that same shelf with those films.

 

Both Gyllenhaal and Mateen II also play off each other very well and have good chemistry as adopted brothers and I also liked Eiza Gonzalez as the Ambulance nurse caught up in the chase and she holds her own very well against the 2 other actors.

 

But sadly this movie is far too long, if this film had been 100 to 110 minutes long it would be one of my favourite films of the year so far as for the most part it clips along, doesn’t have a lot of fat on it in terms of its storytelling and the chase scenes are exciting to watch but at 136 minutes it overstays its welcome and starts to feel more like 150 minutes in terms of its editing and near the end I was checking my watch a few times and wanted it to be over.

 

And so that was Ambulance and this is a good fun movie and one of Bay’s better efforts in the last few years but at 136 minutes it overstays its welcome I’m sorry to say, 2 and a half out of 5.