2024 in Film Part 2: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Now that the first part looking at the Studios is done, its time once again to talk about the favourites and turkeys of the movie year that was 2024.

And what better way to start than by taking out the rubbish and serving up some turkeys and there were a few doozies that will roast nicely this time around but before that list here are some dishonourable mentions after all it isn’t a turkey meal without some delicious sides:

Moana 2: A mess of a film that didn’t give fans the follow up they deserved and was clearly designed to be a streaming series before being retrofitted into being a film and boy does it show at times.

If Disney is going to reclaim the family entertainment crown it once held for so long it has to realise that they aren’t the major game in town anymore with this stuff, the Sonic trilogy, the Despicable Me films, the Paddington films and the TV series Bluey are the dominant family entertainment franchises right now and Disney needs to step up its game instead of serving up this kind of lazy sequel.

Kraven the Hunter: When the nicest thing you can say about it is “it’s not terrible” well something has gone very wrong.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson does his best but this movie is terrible to look at, dull to sit through and is Columbia’s desperate attempt number 510 to replicate the surprise success of the Venom trilogy and for the CEO of Columbia to say what he said in recent days well it reminds me of a recent quote from James Bond figurehead Barbara Broccoli: “These people are fucking idiots” and boy does it feel like that at times.

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire: I didn’t hate this movie but like Columbia’s Spider-Verse experiment, its time for this series to rest in peace once and for all.

The original film by Ivan Reitman was a work of genius and ideally that should’ve been it, a classic one and done but alas Columbia was desperate for a hit and we got the second film and then the 2016 film by Paul Feig and now the 2 recent films with Jason Reitman at the helm and while Afterlife was fine, this was a bit of a mess to sit through with very little humour or scares to go with it and after seeing this movie my feeling that I’ve had most of this year about the movies feeling old as a medium began to crystalize in my mind.

And now with those out of the way let’s cook some turkeys and number 5 is a real letdown for me:

Civil War:

I wanted to love this movie so much, it was about a charged political situation, it had journalists in a heroic role, it had tense action and an intriguing story.

But alas this movie was not anywhere near as good as I wanted it to be and I left the cinema feeling disappointed, the political situation is not well explained and the use of the journalist characters felt like a letdown, here was a golden opportunity for them to not only prove themselves as genuinely heroic (especially when so many journos put their lives on the line to report from dangerous situations like Ukraine and the Middle East in recent times) but also use their natural skills as question askers to ask the questions of the characters that the audience watching the film might have.

How did this all begin?

How do people feel about the world their currently in?

How can we fix things so that this fracturing never happens again?

Did the President do enough to stop this from happening?

And so and so forth but instead it focuses on photo journalism and doesn’t do it all that interestingly and it makes these characters played by good actors like Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny feel passive like their observing things from the distance of a camera lens as they photograph the events in front of them.

There is however one scene where it feels like this premise fufills the promise it held and that is the interrogation scene with Jesse Plemons who is both amusing with his pink sunglasses that wouldn’t be out of place at an Elton John concert and terrifying at the same as he wields a machine gun and shoots you dead if you don’t answer his questions correctly and it puts the journo leads in genuine danger and I wish the film had more of that in it, thankfully Kate Winslet’s Lee would come out a few months later and fufill my wants that this movie failed to deliver.

4. Alien Romulus:

The Alien franchise is an interesting beast, on the one hand it has two of the most iconic and celebrated sci-fi films ever made in the original Alien by Ridley Scott and the sequel Aliens by James Cameron who wisely figured out that the horror style of the original film couldn’t be done again as the audience would be ahead of you waiting for the thrills to start so he decided to do an action film with strong Vietnam undertones and it worked beautifully thrilling audiences and critics alike and becoming a celebrated sequel and equal to the original.

But everything after it, oh boy its either gone one of two ways, the first being this quasi religious storyline where the Alien is synonymous with the devil and those it preys on are in some kind of purgatory hell or its just hit the same old beats over and over again until the franchise falls apart under the endless piles of acid for blood.

And Romulus does both of these, it tries to have the religious angle with the Cain and Able undertones while also serving up doses of fan service so obvious and out of place that I just sat there cringing in my cinema seat and the characters in this movie are mainly dullards that you keep waiting to get killed off.

But the really offensive thing this movie did was to use digital technology to replicate the late Ian Holms character Ash albeit with a different name from the first film and every single time that thing came on screen I was immediately pulled out of the film and I began to think after a while “Wait a minute isn’t he dead?” and sadly he passed away in 2020 and I cannot tell you how utterly fucking sick I am of this shit being done regarding actors who have passed on.

Then again this shit started with the replication of Peter Cushing as Governor Tarkin in Rogue One in 2016 and that still looks creepy like he’s been transplanted from a video game and only a small group of film fans kicked up a fuss about this at the time and once again nerds either not caring because they’ve got their beloved characters back on screen or demanding that certain characters be sold to somewhere else has created another bad precedent, hopefully the actors guilds will start to put their foot down and say “enough is enough” with all of this because it has to stop as this too is making the movies as a medium feel old and too wedded to the past to move forward.

Okay that’s off my chest here’s number 3:

Madame Web:

Her web connected us all alright, into a bad joke.

Now I didn’t hate this movie as much as others did but it is so utterly emblematic of the laziness that has infected the movie business like a cancer in the last 5-10 years, the storytelling in this movie is a mess, half of the dialogue sounds like it as re-recorded in post production because the initial cut was such a disaster those in charge tried to wave that editorial magic to try and fix it when the problem was the fucking script to start with.

And then there is the cast, Dakota Johnson looks and sounds bored out of her brain and would much rather be anywhere else (this attitude was clear as day on her press tour for this thing), Sydney Sweeney a rising star is probably thankful she doesn’t have to do this anymore since Anyone But You became a big hit and gave her proper negotiating power over future projects while the other actors are just boring especially the villain who is one of the very worst of any Marvel comics adjacent film and trust me there have been some real duds in this department.

And then there is the ties to the Spider-Man lore which are so predictable and obvious it feels like the movie is hitting you over the head with them be it Uncle Ben being in the film and talking about “someone serious” in his life to the Baby Parker Shower doing a guessing game about the baby boy’s name and you sit there screaming in your head “IT’S PETER” to the ending joke about Uncle Ben and a “oh that could happen” wink.

Give me a fucking break then again this comes from the same studio who’s CEO thought he could blame the fans and critics for this mess and sorry Bucko YOUR IN CHARGE, THIS IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AND THE BUCK STOPS WITH YOU!!!!!!

No wonder Barbara got frustrated regarding Bond and MGM/Amazon recently, dealing with such buffoons must be endlessly frustrating and yet with this kind of “it’s only content WHO CARES IF IT WORKED OR NOT” Dick Jones mentality at the studio executive wing is it any wonder the movies aren’t as culturally relevant as they once were and to see my list of remedies for how this can change go back and read Part 1 of my look back.

2. Argylle:

Now there was a time when Matthew Vaughn was one of my favourite emerging directors, he had made Layer Cake (which helped make Daniel Craig James Bond), Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men First Class and Kingsman the Secret Service a really good run of films across a range of genres.

But ever since Kingsman 10 years ago it feels like Vaughn has been doing the same thing over and over again ever since and with increasingly worse results be it a mess of a Kingsman sequel, a fine but nothing special Kingsman prequel with Ralph Fiennes and now this movie.

And this movie is a real spaghetti bowl of a mess to sit through with so many twists and turns they wouldn’t look out of place in a bowl of spaghetti with sauce all over them, a waste of a great cast where their given so little to do it feels like a waste (Ariana DeBose and Henry Cavill come to mind) or their just playing themselves in a different variation (Katherine O’Hara, Samuel L Jackson and Bryan Cranston come to mind.)

And then there is Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell who try (Howard in particular tries) but just are dull leads and the use of the Cat was equally unforgivable, there is not one single scene where the Cat interrupts Bryce’s book writing wanting some company nor does it get a single cuddle or fuss or pat instead its just lugged around in a goddamn backpack and at times it looks like the Cat is a CGI cat as it sometimes shows that digital smoothness in its movement.

By contrast A Quiet Place Day One used real cats (named Nico and Schnitzel) and the filmmakers there let Frodo get cuddles and fusses and pats and you sit there as a Cat person hoping like hell the Cat survives (even the studio got in on the fun setting up a hotline you could call if you were in the US to find out if it survives before seeing the film.)

And lastly Matthew Vaughn’s direction feels tired and lazy like he’s going through the motions and doesn’t care anymore to do this type of film as he’s done it so often now in the last 10 years he could probably do it in his sleep (and it feels like that at times with this movie) hopefully his next project is something different as he really needs a change of pace.

But now we get to number 1, the biggest movie turkey of 2024 and for a long time that was Argylle and I thought to myself “if there are 5 films worse than Argylle this year then it’s been a BAAAAAD year for film” but thankfully it was Good year for film and there was only one film worse than Argylle.

Joker Folie a Deux:

Oh boy oh boy where to start,

Now I was someone who didn’t rave about the original Joker film in 2019 but I enjoyed it fine enough, it was well made, had good performances, used Gotham really well and had some interesting ideas regarding mental health services and how people who rely on them can fall through the cracks when its taken away from them and they decide to lash out at those they feel were responsible.

But this movie doesn’t have any of that at all and feels like a cock up that gives Wonder Woman 1984 and Highlander II a run for their money in terms of a creative team making a surprise success with the first film and then totally fucking it up on every level when they get to do a sequel.

And the first way it does this is by having this movie for some strange reason be a musical and it isn’t even a musical where Arthur Fleck has a song where he goes “Look at that sun, isn’t it neat, wouldn’t you think my trial is nearing, wouldn’t you think I’m the man, the man who pleads innocent,

I wanna be where the people are,
I wanna see,
Wanna see em lined up,
Outside the Court,
Out of the Streets,
Out where they watch all this on TV,
Wandering free,
Where they can be,
In that free worrrlllddd,

What would I give if I could live out of this prison,
What would I give to spend a day,
Warm on the beach,

WHEN’S IT MY TURN,
WOULDN’T I LOVE,
LOVE TO EXPLORE THOSE STREETS OUT OF HERE,

Out of this prison,
Where I can be,
In that free worrrlllddd”

But no we get another jukebox musical where a bunch of old songs are plugged into the soundtrack and grind the film to a fucking halt and every single time those numbers came up on screen I went to myself “What the Fuck” every time and it got worse and worse as the film went on to the point where the 2 people sitting behind me in my session got up and left and needless to say I don’t blame them.

And look I’m all for a director taking a swing up at bat, I don’t recoil from it like some fans do nowadays where they only seem to want the exact same thing over and over again like a broken record and the franchise that record is on breaks for good but sometimes the ball the pitcher throws hits you right in the nuts like it does here and OUCH did it hurt.

And then there is the second big problem this movie had which is properly interrogating the themes and ideas of that first film and whether people were right to support Arthur in his actions or whether he was wrong to lash out the way that he did causing untold property damage and loss of life and instead there is so little of it and what little there is feels unsatisfying because Arthur as a character feels like a bystander IN HIS OWN FUCKING MOVIE and may I remind you all for the record that Joaquin Phoenix won an Academy Award playing this role the last time around which makes this decision feel 100,000 volts worse than it already does.

And this movie deserves to sit on the same rotten shelf that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker currently sits on and both of these films should also serve as warning signs when you try to please certain online narratives be they “Rian Johnson changed too much and that’s not my Luke and he made the men look like idiots while the women are superior and have purple hair” or “Tood Phillips was wrong to idolise this person, he’s a terrible incel white man who will inspire murder sprees among other white men.”

And the result of all of this is a movie for very very few at best and nobody at most, it doesn’t work as a musical and it doesn’t work in examining the themes and ideas of the first film just as the Rise of Skywalker was a film for no one as well, hopefully this shit stops because I’m sick of it up to my back teeth.

But lastly I have to talk about Lady Gaga’s role in all this because once again the Joker/Harley Quinn relationship is sanewashed because god forbid those in charge get cold feet about doing this relationship properly for the SECOND TIME IN A ROW (the first being the 2016 Suicide Squad film) and all this creative team had to do (along with Margot Robbie and David Ayer respectively) was look at the Mad Love storyline from the New Batman Adventures where Harley Quinn was a doctor at Arkham Asylum attracted to the glamour of the super criminals of Gotham and them the Joker twists her mind and their relationship turns abusive.

That is gold sitting right there especially when we as a society are only now starting to grapple with the problem of domestic abuse and how we can try and put a stop to it once and for all but alas we don’t get any of that just a boring love story that also serves no purpose at all.

That felt good now we can feast on the good of this year in film and like with the turkeys we have some honourable mentions to talk about first:

Wicked: A delightful surprise for me, going into it I wasn’t sure how I would respond to it as the trailers felt like it was hiding that it was a musical and I’ve had mixed feelings about Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

Well I was very happy to be proven wrong as both are simply wonderful in this movie, Erivo should be in the conversation for Best Actress at the Academy Awards she is that good while Grande proves herself to be a great comedienne with her physical humour and comic timing, a shame that Disney didn’t make Snow White after this movie with her in the role, no disrespect to Rachel Zegler she too is very talented but Grande would’ve been a better choice.

As for the film itself I got a big X-Men vibe watching Glinda and Elphaba in this movie as they reminded me a lot of Professor Xavier and Magneto, two friends who drift apart because of their outlook on life and how the world perceives them for who they are, I hope Wicked for Good the second part of this film adaptation is as good.

The Wild Robot: A very moving and charming animated film about a found family excellently directed by Chris Sanders.

The film first and foremost has great animation combining traditional hand drawn animation with digital animation in a lovely blend, at times I thought I was watching both but it’s a great testament to Sanders’s firm hand on the directors chair, the film also has a lovely story about how a family can come from the most surprising of circumstances and how families can learn from each other in different ways, Lupita Nyong’o is particularly good as the shipwrecked robot who comes to care for a geese and the rest of the cast is good as well.

Furiosa a Mad Max Saga: After nearly a decade director/creator George Miller returns to the wasteland of the Mad Max series with a prequel about the breakout character from 2015’s Fury Road Furiosa this time played by Anya-Taylor Joy.

And what a fun ride this was as Miller’s direction is as confident and assured as ever, building on the lore of this world with new characters, chase scenes and a great villain played by Chris Hemsworth channelling his inner Ocker to play Dr Dementus and it is clear he is having a blast doing so though poor Furiosa while only 10 already has 2 mortal enemies.

The film also has more of a story to it than I felt Fury Road did which I did not love as much as others did (it was more of a 2 hour chase scene than an actual story with chases on top which the first 2 films did masterfully) and it did that while also delivering the chase scenes the series is famous for, one with a truck is particularly good.

Transformers One: Between this movie, Rise of the Beasts and Bumblebee the Transformers film series is going from strength to strength.

But sadly each of these films hasn’t found much of an audience at the box office and sadly I think this is due to Michael Bay overstaying his welcome with the franchise after Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction and I can’t help but think that had Bay departed after either of those films the series would be having a much better time at the box office.

But Transformers One also with Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax/Optimus Prime is a great look at how he and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry in excellent form) would later go from friends to enemies and how that would lead to the war that would destroy Cybertron and cause both the Autobots and Decepticons to seek refuge on Earth.

Speaking of Cyberton this movie treats it like how the best Batman films treat Gotham City: As a character in and of itself and like Gotham in its pre Batman days this movie shows the inherent rot at the heart of Cybertron and how that came to corrupt that world and the people living in it and how that corruption led to its ultimate destruction and how those at the centre have to choose between either freedom or tyranny in the vein hope that Cybertron will be great again.

And with those out of the way, let’s dive into the favourites and number 5 was a late addition but hey sometimes the best can be saved for last:

Sonic the Hedgehog 3:

This was a delightful surprise to be sure as I had been a fan of the first 2 Sonic films but third time around I was mightily impressed.

Mainly because this movie took the best elements of the previous 2 films (the tight storytelling and Jim Carrey comedy of the first and the character expansion and lore of the second) and melded them together into a tight story that balances heart, humour, emotion and action very well.

And it is a credit to this creative team (Jeff Fowler the director and Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Wittington the writers) that they are able to build on their successes and top themselves with each film in this series and that guiding hand is felt throughout this movie and in an era where so many big movies don’t have that sense of direction or vision of a creative team that knows what it’s doing to the point where the studio backs off is very refreshing and we need more of it.

What this movie also does well is explore darker themes of grief and loss and how we respond to those when they happen at a young age can help shape us as we grow up while also combining it with high energy action and fun comedy, a tricky blend to get right but this movie does it well and you get both Keanu Reeves as Shadow and 2 Jim Carrey performances and what is not to like on both fronts.

4. My Old Ass:

Another delightful surprise with another tricky blend of different ideas and tones.

This time those are heart, comedy and time travel but writer/director Megan Park manages to pull that off really well as I really loved how the time travel segments worked as well as laughing quite a bit at the humour which is very foul mouthed for sure but that didn’t bother me.

The film also has 2 great performances by Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza who play the current and future versions of the same character and they have very good chemistry together with Plaza really coming into her own as an actress with this roles and some others the last few years, the film also has some great moments of “what if” in them in terms of what if you could change things but also like Doc Brown in Back to the Future being careful to not know learn too much about your future.

3. The Substance:

Initially I was reluctant to see this movie as it had so much hype surrounding it and looking at the brief clips I saw of it before seeing it I thought it didn’t have much appeal to me but an opportunity to see it came up and I decided “sure it’s worth a $10 ticket.”

And boy am I glad I did as Coralie Fargeat has crafted a fantastic film here, one of the best in the horror genre that I’ve seen in recent years and first the film has some great body horror/makeup effects that at times reminded me of Paul Verhoeven’s work especially Kuato in Total Recall plus there’s plenty of nice gooey blood on show as well.

Secondly the film has 3 great performances in it, Demi Moore has rarely been better than she is here and I suspect that some of the films commentary about being an aeging woman in an industry like movies and television rung true for her, Margaret Qualley is also good as Sue the “better version” of Moore’s character that comes out of her when she takes the Substance while Dennis Quaid is fantastic as the slimy TV executive who in one scene takes shrimp eating to highs that should earn an Oscar nomination.

And lastly the storytelling here is very good, combining the body horror aspects with the aeging commentary very well and Fargeat’s direction keeps a firm hand on the wheel to stop the whole thing from going off a cliff and hopefully she lands a Best Director nomination at the Oscars for her work.

2. Super/Man the Christopher Reeve Story:

You’ll believe a grown man can cry.

Watching this documentary was a very emotional experience as for so many of us of a certain age Christopher Reeve didn’t just play Superman he was one in the years after his equestrian accident in 1995 which left him paralysed from the neck down (I was talking about this accident with a friend of mine and he said something I’ve never forgotten since and that was if you fall off a horse try and tuck your head into your chest as then you’ll do a roll and land on your back instead of your neck.)

And while this documentary touches on that it also isn’t afraid to delve into other sides of Reeve’s life be they his frustration to escape the shadow of the Superman role and his early attempts at advocacy for those with conditions like his and how that required a change to the current Today’s Care, Tomorrow’s Cure mantra his foundation carries now.

Also part of the emotion watching this documentary is seeing the late great Robin Williams as the 2 were close friends since their days at Juilliard Drama School and he too is no longer with us and oh boy did it add to the many many emotions I felt watching this doco.

But what this documentary also did was reaffirm why I feel as strongly as I do that whoever plays Superman on film after Reeve doesn’t just have to be good they have to prove themselves to be worthy of that mantle because of what it represented when Reeve held it both on film and in life, Brandon Routh failed while Henry Cavill did prove himself to be worthy and so far David Corenswet shows promise, I hope he too is proven to be worthy of playing Superman.

And now we come to number 1 and it is no surprise what it is as it has been in the top spot ever since I saw it back at the end of February and it is:

DUNE PART TWO:

Yes, Dune Part Two exceeded every expectation I had for it and those were very high as the first part in 2021 was very good and did a fantastic job bringing the world of Arrakis to film courtesy of director Denis Villeneuve.

And like Dune Part One every aspect of the filmmaking process is operating the highest level it can possibly be, the direction/performances/storytelling/music/editing/sound/cinematography it rarely gets better than it does here.

Plus this movie has truly fantastic villains in the Harkonnens and the arena scene with Feyd-Rautha is truly amazing and watching it the first time on a big cinema screen I was grinning from ear to ear so much that my cheeks began to hurt and hearing that chant of “FEYD-RAUTHA, FEYD-RAUTHA, FEYD-RAUTHA” only added to my smile.

Also Villeneuve’s storytelling here is so on point that like Part One it brings you back into this world so effortlessly and with such ease that it doesn’t feel alienating or jarring to watch the cast mouth long sections of dialogue which was sometimes the case with the Lord of the Rings films as good as those are, here everything feels crisp, tight, to the point with no fat on the bone and it is simply awe inspiring.

Also this movie has incredible battle scenes and character moments that are captivating to watch, the battles are enormous in scope and I so wish I got to see this in IMAX (it was planned but life got in the way and I don’t regret that) while the characters here are wonderfully thought out and those scenes are equally as good.

And lastly I really do not envy Villeneuve having to try and top this with Dune Messiah the next book in the series and the last to focus on Paul Atreides, these two films along with Avatar the Way of Water are big studio filmmaking at their finest and they are proof that big films don’t have to feel like a hit and miss Maccas burger but can be something very special that inspires young ones to want to love movies and want to maybe make movies someday as we need that now more than we ever have.

And so that is my look back at 2024 in film, hopefully 2025 is a good year as well but as they say in the classics, we wait we see.

2024 in Film Part 1: The State of the Studios

Hard to believe it is that time again,

Time to look back and reflect on another movie year that seems to come and gone like it was Sonic the Hedgehog going fast right along side of you but here we are and in this first part of my look back I’m going to do my State of the Studios roundup which I started doing in 2022 and was a lot of fun to do.

Last year Universal was the winner with Warner Brothers taking silver and Columbia, Paramount and Disney all stumbling to the finish line but how have their fortunes changed in 12 months well let’s start with number 5 and oh boy is this group a perfect example of how fortunes can change in just one year:

Warner Brothers:

Last year for them was so good but this year, YIKES!

And they got off to such a strong start too with Dune Part Two and the collab Godzilla X Kong the New Empire doing very well at the box office but afterwards only M Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice posting decent box office returns.

But WB has had 3 high-profile Box-Office failures this year and that is why they are at the bottom of this ranking: Furiosa a Mad Max Saga, Joker Folie a Deux and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim all following up beloved films and all of them becoming high profile financial failures for the studio.

In fact Furiosa was such a failure that many became convinced that theatrical movie going was dying which wasn’t true otherwise Dune and the collab wouldn’t have done well and cinemas that had the Star Wars films for May the 4th also reported good attendance figures.

But here is what they need to do next: Hold their Nerve, I know many film fans don’t like David Zaslav the head of the studio for some of the actions he has made during his time so far running the studio (and the criticism has been warranted) but there has been to a certain extent a method to his madness as Batgirl probably would’ve done Birds of Prey numbers at a minimum, Coyote vs Acme would’ve appealed to adult Looney Tunes fans but not kids while Juror No 2 (said to be Clint Eastwood’s final film) is a type of film that sadly audiences haven’t been going to see in the cinema anymore, they either went to streaming or became TV shows during the peak TV period.

But with Donald Trump returning to the White House I fear Zaslav and Co will take an easy sale of the studio and leave it in the hands of Comcast/Universal creating another mega monstrosity like when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019 and enough time has passed to see what a hole that has left in the industry and for it to happen again will only make things worse especially when there will be those who will probably cheer it on if it means either Zaslav is no longer running things and/or the new ownership might finally fix “The DC Problem.”

And I think this would be a dreadful, short sighted mistake on Zaslav’s part as I do feel that he has done a halfway decent job and made some very good hires be it James Gunn and Peter Safran to oversee DC and Pam Abdi and Michael De Luca from MGM to run the overall film division.

What I also hope happens is that Warner Brothers will bring Village Roadshow Pictures back into the fold as a co-financier (and here in Australia as their primary distributor like they were before the end of 2020) as they desperately need one now that Legendary is at Sony/Columbia now and WB only has them around for the Dune films and the Monsterverse films as they cannot afford to have any more high profile failures like they had this year where they predominantly footed the bill as more of those will see the financial situation which is already precarious get worse.

4. Universal:

Oh dear oh dear,

Universal in all the time I’ve been doing this roundup has been like that great sport team that has a golden run, they kick goal after goal, get win after win and their fans are waving their jackets in the air in jubilant celebration as if their Kevin Sheedy.

But like all good sports teams before them they hit a rough patch and Universal had one this year.

Sure they had great success with Despicable Me 4 which again showed strong numbers despite being one of the weaker entries in the series but internationally Wicked wasn’t anywhere near as strong as it has been in the US, The Fall Guy was a big disappointment financially despite being a fun movie and Abigail from the Radio Silence team was a big box office underperformer especially with Melissa Barrera in it and so many horror fans expressing bitter unhappiness at her firing from Scream 7 and not showing up to support her at the box office.

But they did have one big victory this year and that is keeping Christopher Nolan in the fold after getting him the prize he long sought: The Best Director Oscar for Oppenheimer and WB has to see that as another failure as that was his home for so many years but Nolan was rightly outraged at the Project Popcorn strategy WB did in 2021 and has been at Universal ever since.

As for what they need to do next: Honestly not much, Uni has been the one major studio to not lose their nerve all that much learning the lessons of the failure of the Mummy in 2017 and avoiding the shared universe ever since has put them in better stead than their competitors and all sports teams have an off season, provided they bounce back well in 2025 let’s just chock up 2024 as a minor setback.

3. Columbia:

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy 100th Lady Columbia,
Happy Birthday to you

And unlike WB and Disney, Columbia had a great reason to celebrate their 100th anniversary this year with a number of diverse hits that became profitable due to their responsible budgeting something their competitors desperately need to do going forward.

Bad Boys Ride or Die, Garfield, Venom the Last Dance and It Ends with Us were all very successful films at the box office off of at most 120-million-dollar budgets and for the most part were also fairly well received.

But Kraven the Hunter, Madame Web and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire had no such luck as they became either big underperformers or humiliating failures which sure puts a wee bit of a damper on your centenary celebration doesn’t it.

But hey here’s what Columbia has to do next:

- First is to both let Ghostbusters die as a franchise, the original Ghostbusters from 1984 by Ivan Reitman (a genius) was a great one and done, balancing comedy and horror, full of great performances and some terrific visual effects culminating in one of the best movie monsters ever in the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Every attempt to replicate it since then has either been a mediocre rip off or so repulsed the core fanbase they tore it down before anyone got a chance to see it based off of some bad trailers and no matter how good that 2016 film turned out to be (it was okay) it was fighting an uphill battle from the get go and when Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman came in with Afterlife and Frozen Empire they didn’t do much to help either, its high time Columbia gave up on this series and let it Rest in Peace once and for all.

- Second is let this stupid idea of a Spider-Verse without a Spider-Man die as well, I get it you got a surprise when Venom hit big in 2018 and that trilogy of films was fun but those were a fluke because audiences like Tom Hardy as Venom and vibe with his dual performance as both the title character and Eddie Brock but that is over now with the Last Dance which like Deadpool and Wolverine feels like the dying breaths of a genre that once dominated cinema screens but now has become just another series audiences have increasingly lost interest in.

- Third is to get this mess of a situation regarding It Ends with Us sorted out, recently it emerged that Blake Lively and director/star Justin Baldoni (who is also said to hold the film rights to the books) clashed heavily during production and the fallout has been felt ever since on the films promotional circuit (though Lively didn’t help matters when she tried to talk about the film as if it was a light and fluffy chick flick when the film deals with domestic violence, an issue that for far too long has been in the shadows of our society.)

That said however, Baldoni’s behaviour on set is unacceptable and as the director of the film he should have been much more respectful towards Lively and you cannot have a situation where on a film like this the director isn’t on speaking terms with their star especially when said star is also a producer on the film as well, hopefully Columbia can get the rights to this film series off of Baldoni for a price sometime soon as I’m certain they are going to want the next book It Begins with Us made into a film as soon as possible.

- And lastly I hope that Columbia’s fiscal responsibility leads it to green lighting more dramas, comedies, thrillers and one off films that I feel need to make a comeback in the cinema space, spending huge amounts of money on a small group of tentpoles is fast becoming unsustainable especially when their tied to franchises that audiences feel has either outstayed its welcome or they have lost interest in and are sceptical of any new entries from the outset.

2. Walt Disney/20th Century Studios:

Last year they were cock of nothing, this year they’ve won the Silver.

And that is primarily because they had a few big hits with Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Moana 2, Alien Romulus and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes which leveraged almost all of their divisions that led to the rather uncomfortable dominance of the studio in the second half of the 2010s.

And although their ending the year with Mufasa, Barry Jenkins’s prequel to the 2019 Lion King remake and the First Omen back in April wasn’t a big money maker despite positive word of mouth that group of 5 above made more than enough at the box office to offset the losses.

But as the fates said in Hercules “A Word of Caution to this Tale”:

- Firstly Disney is relying far too much on what I would call “short term sugar hits” to get them out of the rut they’ve been in the last couple of years and what I mean by that is it feels like they are just focusing so much on more and more sequels to their popular films like Inside Out, Deadpool, Moana and the Lion King instead of doing the long term work they and other studios need to do in terms of creating new properties for the new audience.

And because their not doing that their doing themselves and the industry as a whole no favors as that sequel strategy will only work for so long before audiences roll their eyes and go “Pass” towards it and its also helping to make the movies as a medium feel old, relying on old stories, old characters, old heroes and old villains and that’s just not how this industry has worked, it was in the past moving forward creating new stories for the current generation of moviegoers to get behind but Disney isn’t the only one guilty of doing this but they bear the brunt of that guilt and it has to stop before that feeling of movies being an old medium sticks with younger audiences.

- Secondly there is Lucasfilm and as 3PO would say “Oh dear oh dear” this company is in a total total total mess right now and it has gotten so bad with the debacle that was the sequel trilogy, the merry go round of movie projects announced and then scrapped, the streaming shows losing more and more viewers and the poisoning of the well in regards to Kathleen Kennedy’s stewardship overall that Disney should frankly put it up for sale.

Kennedy’s leadership is now in a position that is not only untenable but has become such a poisoned apple that anyone that steps up to take over from here will not last long after their first bite from said apple, both Star Wars and Indiana Jones were once two of the biggest most iconic brands in all of show business but George Lucas and Steven Spielberg didn’t know when to leave well enough alone and with the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the fourth Indiana Jones film the Plastic Prop-sorry-Crystal Skull getting negative receptions which sadly didn’t help Kennedy when she was handed the reins from Lucas himself in 2012 and that became very clear when the Last Jedi came out in 2017.

But nobody in their right mind is rightfully going to volunteer to do that job and I wouldn’t blame them, the streaming shows are losing viewers more and more, the movies and TV shows that do come out have no idea who they are even for and if they are for someone it’s such a small group that spending a principal’s ransom on it budget wise isn’t worth it and in an attempt to bring in new fans the older fans were left out in the cold for better or worse.

Ideally Bob Iger’s successor will see of all this and decide “this isn’t worth it” and sell it because that is now the only hope for this once groundbreaking company.

- Speaking of selling things, Disney should ideally put 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures up for sale as well.

It’s been the better part of 5 years since the merger of Walt Disney Pictures and 20th Century Fox was finalised and it is now very clear to see what a disaster this has been as it has created a hole in the very foundation of the industry itself which for many decades was built on said foundation of the big 6 movie studios (Disney, Fox, Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers and Columbia.)

But since Fox was assimilated into the Disney collective that foundation has felt wobbly and those that have come in to fill that hole have been streaming services be it Netflix, Amazon through their purchase of MGM and Apple and while these companies have done good work they have also I felt encouraged a degree of laziness within the broader industry.

And this laziness stems from this mindset that the streamers brought with them as “movies and television are just content, WHO CARES IF IT WORKED OR NOT” to quote Dick Jones from Robocop and the legacy studios have followed this hoping to find the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the streaming rainbow but instead we’re seeing a repeat of the dot com boom of the early 2000’s where it felt like finally we would have the boom that would last a lifetime only for it to go bust badly.

And also 20th Century Fox more than any other of the legacy studios were the ones that gave you that surprise hit that captures the audience at the right time be it Planet of the Apes, Butch Cassidy, Star Wars, Alien, Die Hard, Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire, Independence Day, Titanic, X-Men and Avatar to name a few and now that is gone and if the industry is ever going to get back to where it used to be before Disney dominated to such a degree that Fox surrendered, WB stumbled and Paramount and Columbia were pounded into submission then Fox needs to be reinstated as its own independent studio once again.

And if Disney wants to make the kind of films its been using the 20th Century/Searchlight banners to make then it could just as easily revive Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures which were former Disney divisions in the 80s and 90s and those would be much easier to manage under the Disney umbrella and it would not only make Disney a better studio but would help the industry as a whole as well.

But that leaves a surprise winner which is:

1. Paramount:

Phew climbing that mountain can sure reap some good rewards.

Paramount has won this year primarily because they put out a slew of quality films (A Quiet Place Day One, Sonic 3, IF, Transformers One to name a few) while also managing to downplay their losses (Gladiator II and IF) and also they got the year off to a solid start box office wise with Bob Marley One Love being a surprise hit in February.

And also this year they got new leadership in a former co-financier of theirs Skydance which after a lengthy bidding process won control of the studio (thank the maker Ms Redstone was able to keep Paramount from ending up like 20th Century Fox, what a disaster that would have been, hopefully WB doesn’t end up that way) and they will give the studio not only a new leadership team but also new hope for the long term.

As Paramount prior to 2022 had had a rough time at the box office with few and far between hits to their name but now they’ve rebounded strongly and with Skydance helping to steer the ship (a group that those in charge are familiar with and felt comfortable enough to hand them the reins) I look at them now with a sense of hope.

But before I leave it I want to talk about what the industry as a whole has to do going forward:

- First and foremost is GET THESE BUDGETS DOWN!!! I cannot stress this enough, it is grossly irresponsible that so many of these big films be it Joker 2, Red One, Gladiator II and the upcoming Captain America Brave New World and Mission Impossible the Final Reckoning to name bit a few have production budgets that make me want to pull my hair out like I’m Homer Simpson learning Marge is pregnant with Bart and Lisa.

I mean seriously 190 million for Joker 2, A QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS for Red One, Gladiator II’s budget ballooning from 165 million to 310 million this is just ridiculous and irresponsible.

A movie like Dune Part Two having a 190 million dollar budget I can understand, James Cameron getting the budgetary equivalent of the United States Federal Reserve to make his Avatar sequels that I also understand as those are films that were hits at the box office, respected by the industry and had positive audience and critic responses but those films listed above no way especially with audiences viewing habits and tastes now changing, to quote Kevin Rudd “This Sort of Reckless Spending Must Stop.”

- And lastly studios need to start scouting for talent again, yes AI is a new shiny tool to have but that’s all it is, a tool, it won’t magically do everything for you in the way you want it to.

The Human eye is very good at knowing when something is real and something is fake and AI is inherently fake the fans, audiences and critics can tell when AI has been used and they increasingly don’t like it especially with the huge demands on power that it is creating.

And also Art and Humanity are inherently linked like a symbiosis, Star Wars came out of George Lucas’s love of adventure serials/Kurosawa films and WW2 films not to mention his desire to make a Flash Gordon film, Dragon Ball came out of Akira Toriyama’s love of Martial Arts movies and being inspired by fantasy works like Journey to the West, James Bond came out of Ian Fleming’s time in Naval Intelligence during WW2 and wanting to write the spy novel to end all spy novels and Mad Max came out of Dr George Miller’s time as a resident in St Vincents Hospital and seeing the effect of car crashes on his victims and people he knew in rural Queensland growing up.

And those are but a small handful of countless examples, all the AI tools can do is replicate that, it can’t create that inherent spark of human creativity only people can and these new studio chiefs and their production heads need to understand this like those that came before them did as it’s the only way the industry is going to have a future long term, relying on old franchises may give you a short term sugar hit win but that will only last for so long.

And that was Part 1 of my 2024 look back, Part 2 will reveal my favourite and Turkey films of the year.

Film Review - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the third film series and once again directed by Jeff Fowler who directed the first two films and Ben Schwartz, Collenn O’Shaughnessy and Idris Elba voice Sonic, Tails and Knuckles as they head to Tokyo to confront the recently escaped Shadow (Keanu Reeves) and not one but TWO Dr Robotniks both played by Jim Carrey and when its double your villains it can be double trouble.

Sonic 3 was the movie I was keen to go and see the most in a cinema since Dune Part Two back at the end of February as I am a big fan of the first two films which like the Paddington and Despicable Me films are the top film franchises for families right now, they both have heart, good natured humour, exciting action and fun villains, the kind of family entertainment that Disney has seriously dropped the ball in delivering recently but the third film in a series is more often than not the worst and even having the same creative team involved doesn’t guarantee a bucking of that trend (see X-Men Apocalypse, Spider-Man 3 and the Dark Knight Rises.)

But Sonic 3 avoids this and does indeed buck that trend as I was very impressed with this movie and a lot of that credit has to go to Fowler and his writing team in Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Wittington who also wrote the second film in 2022 and this time it feels like they are working together better as a team as this film avoids the exposition dumps that bogged down Sonic 2 at times as well as balancing the heart, humour, action and emotion and third time around this movie feels like a great amalgamation of the best elements of the first 2 films:

- The tight storytelling and Jim Carrey flailing his limbs around of the first film
- The character/story/world expansion and high-speed action of the second film

And that really shines here as it clips along at a good pace while keeping the exposition dumps to a minimum and this creative team is now a much more well honed machine that it can do this without having the storytelling feel like a bunch of stuff strung together by action scenes and the action here is very good as it was in the last film and in a very very refreshing way the action here is properly lit and edited and doesn’t feel like it was all done on a green screen stage or shot through a fog filter on the camera as that has gotten so so so tiresome to see over and over and over again.

Also shining is the cast, the Team Sonic trio play off each other very well be it Schwartz’s humour, Elba’s straight man or O’Shaughnessy’s lovable tech nerd and at times this trinity is tested but you are invested in them same with James Marsden (and watching him here will make you resent all the more how dirty he was done as Cyclops in the X-Men films) and Tika Sumpter as Team Sonic’s parents who are as good as they were in the first 2 films and still have good chemistry together, I also enjoyed seeing Kristen Ritter in a small role as well.

But this movie belongs to two people and the first of those is Reeves as Shadow, this character is a big fan favourite and Reeves delivers very good voice work as a character who’s life mirrors Sonic’s and takes the film into some darker directions which could’ve bogged the film down but thankfully doesn’t.

Then there’s Jim Carrey who plays Dr Robotnik and his grandfather Gerald and he is simply glorious here, one scene in particular was very very funny and like the first two films this team understands the magic of Jim Carrey and how he can make you laugh with nothing more than the frantic flailing of his limbs.

However the more I have thought about this movie since seeing the more I find myself wishing that this was the last Sonic film mainly because this team pulled off the impossible, a trilogy of films where each film built on the last and didn’t drop the ball in terms of the quality as well as taking the story to the highest heights you can go to without it feeling like where Dragon Ball went where the power scaling got so far over the top it made it boring to watch and the only way to go after here is down and I’ve seen that happen too often with many franchises nowadays that I want some to just end and be gone and this is now one of them.

Guys you made a great trilogy of films, why not quit now while your ahead and go out on top, there’s nothing wrong with that.

And so that was Sonic 3 and this trilogy of films has been terrific with great action, villains, characters, humour and emotional moments, I wish all involved had made this the finale and left it at here because it won’t get this good again, 4 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a new animated Lord of the Rings film executive produced by Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings writers Fran Walsh and Phillipia Boyens and concerns king Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox) the king of Rohan in a time before the one ring came into Bilbo’s possession and Theoden assumed the throne as horselord, one night at court King Hammerhand kills the king of a rival Rohan clan and his son Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) vows revenge.

The War of the Rohirrim is actually a pretty good film but then again I was more open to it than others I know who were put off from watching it when I told them it was an animated film and the animation here directed by Kenji Kamiyama is pretty good, it captures the feel of Middle-Earth as we saw it in the Lord of the Rings films pretty well even if at times the anime style felt a little janky to watch and lacking that smoothness you want to see from a well animated film.

Also the use of the Rohan theme from Howard Shore’s score was good as well and I quite liked Brian Cox as King Hammerhand and he is a very different king to the late great Bernard Hill’s Theoden but I could see how he leads to Theoden assuming the throne during the events of the Lord of the Rings films.

But alas this movie like the Hobbit trilogy from 10 years ago just cannot light the beacons the same way that the Lord of the Rings films did, the storytelling is okay but nothing you didn’t see during the battle of Helms Deep in the Two Towers and you just get that feeling while watching this movie that as much as I liked it you would rather just watch the Lord of the Rings movies again.

And if I were David Zaslav the head of Warner Brothers I would take an axe to The Hunt for Gollum which is the next spinoff in the works because we already know what happens, Ian McKellen told Frodo and the audience “I looked everywhere for the creature Gollum but the enemy found him first” there it is in one sentence, there is no need for a 2-2.5 hour film about this one sentence.

And that was the Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim which I enjoyed for the most part but its just more of the same from a franchise that is doomed to repeat the mistakes of Star Wars in that it created a groundbreaking trilogy that defined what movies can be for a generation and then every attempt to follow it up ends in failure, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Kraven the Hunter (2024)

Kraven the Hunter is said to be the last film in the Columbia Pictures Spider-Verse that doesn’t have a Spider-Man in it and is directed by JC Chandor who you might remember from such films as A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier and concerns the aforementioned Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is on the trail of gangsters who have kidnapped his brother (Fred Heichinger) but he also has to contend with his past as the son of a powerful mafia boss (Russell Crowe.)

Kraven the Hunter is not a terrible movie per se but it is another film that feels dull to sit through and lazy in its production and what makes this feel worse is that this has talented people at the helm, Chandor is a good director but here it feels like he was handed a script from the Columbia Committee and told to make the best of it and if you’ve seen A Most Violent Year or Triple Frontier you know this guy is capable of so much better about morally grey characters and exciting action and this film falls very very short in both regards.

And again this comes down to the script, Richard Wenk wrote the Equalizer films and those films got better and better with each entry while Art Markum and Matt Holloway co-wrote Iron Man in 2008 so they can do good work but here it just feels like they went “okay what have we got/let’s do this/okay done” and its so dull, Taylor-Johnson is a good actor and watching him here I could see why he’s been whispered as the new James Bond but all he really does here is spout some lines, stare into the camera, scowl a bit and leap around and punch things real hard.

As for the rest of the cast they’ve been much better elsewhere, I love Ariana DeBose especially in West Side Story but here she just plays the legal ally to Kraven and finds herself caught in his storyline, Alessandro Nivola plays the Rhino and that character just looks stupid in live action (the 2018 PS4 Spider-Man game did a great rendition of this character that so easily could’ve been adapted to here but that would require giving a damn) while Heichinger is okay but only really exists to setup another character.

As for Mr Russell Crowe well I remember when he was a fun actor to watch but instead he’s just doing a smorgasbord of silly accent recently be it a Russian one here, a Romanian one in the Pope’s Exorcist (where I did enjoy him) and Con the Fruiterer in Thor: Love and Thunder and regrettably he doesn’t kill someone with a landline telephone.

And so that is Kraven the Hunter and again it isn’t terrible but when the studio putting it out releases the opening 8 minutes online it screams a lack of confidence and well it ain’t hard to see why they gave up on it, its dull and by the numbers and if these comic book movies are going to continue to justify the existence they’ve enjoyed for the last 15-20 years they need to be much much better than they have been and that includes DC and Marvel Studios, 1.5 out of 5.

Film Review - Super/Man the Christopher Reeve Story (2024)

Super/Man the Christopher Reeve Story is the first film to be released under Warner Brothers’s new DC Studios label now headed up by James Gunn and Peter Safran but this is a documentary about the life of the late great Christopher Reeve who played Superman in 4 movies from 1978 to 1987 then suffered a paralyzing spinal cord injury in 1995 following a horse riding accident and then sadly passed away in 2004 aged only 52.

For so many of us of a certain age, Christopher Reeve didn’t just play Superman on film he was Superman in life especially in the years following his accident as he began to become an advocate for those like him with paralysing disabilities and this documentary captures all of this wonderfully and right from the start I felt very emotional and that continued more than once throughout my watching of this doco.

We also see ample amounts of footage of the late great Robin Williams who was a friend of Chris’s since their time at Juilliard together and he too is now no longer with us and at one point you see an interview of Robin with Oprah Winfrey where he talks about visiting him in the hospital after his accident and I nearly started crying because Robin was so gifted, so quick off the mark and had such a razor sharp mine and a big heart that it reminded me that we lost one of the greats when he passed away 10 years ago.

What this documentary also reminded me of is my feelings about those who play Superman on film after Christopher Reeve and that feeling is not that they must just be good in the role but they also have to be worthy of that mantle because of Reeve and the way he embodied that character both on film and in life with his advocacy for those like him and that has been a mixed bag as while Brandon Routh couldn’t do it, Henry Cavill absolutely did and my main feeling watching him as Superman in 2013 was “He is Worthy” and I never thought that would happen but sadly WB didn’t treat him right as he deserved to be.

If I have one complaint about this documentary it is some comments by Superman producer Pierre Spengler and at one point he makes mention of the fact that Superman II was not as good as the first film and boy did that make me a little peeved because he and the Salkinds were responsible for that by firing Richard Donner and his team from II WHEN THEY ALREADY HAD 75% OF IT FILMED.

And reading Tom Mankiewicz’s full script for Superman II left me in no doubt that had Donner been given the leeway he had richly earnt and deserved in 1979 to properly finish Superman II his way I have no doubt Superman II would be sitting alongside the Empire Strikes Back, Godfather Part II, Aliens and Terminator 2 as the gold standard for how to do a sequel to a blockbuster hit.

That aside when this documentary was over and I let my emotions flow through me I knew this was going to be one of my movies of the year and it definitely will be, 4 and a half out of 5.

To read Tom Mankiewicz's full script for Superman II which includes the scenes he and Donner never got to film click on this link: http://superman.rossiters.com/s2_main.html

Film Review - My Old Ass (2024)

My Old Ass is written and directed by Megan Park and stars Maisy Stella as Elliot a young girl celebrating her 18th Birthday and preparing to go to Toronto for College and on her birthday night she gets high on mushrooms and sees her 39 year old future self (Aubrey Plaza) who tells her to be nicer to her family and avoid a man named Chad (Percy Hynes White.)

My Old Ass was a movie I avoided seeing in the cinema mainly because of the title, it was one of those titles that I thought was a little weird and other movies were playing at the same time that I wanted to see more but given this is an MGM/Amazon production it landed on Prime Video and I decided to catch up with it.

And I am very glad I did as I had a really fun time with this movie and began to regret not seeing it on the big screen with a crowd as firstly this movie is very funny and more than once I laughed out loud and those laughs would’ve been great when caught with the infectious laugh of a cinema crowd’s laugh and while there is a lot of coarse language that will bother some viewers it didn’t bother me and the films humour works very well.

What also works very well is the time travel element, Stella is good as Elliot’s young ass while Plaza is as good as her old ass and knows what to reveal and what not to reveal and I thought to myself “She’s following the Doc Brown rule regarding time travel” and that was that you shouldn’t know too much about your own future even though the future is not set and there’s no fate but what we make for ourselves and both Stella and Plaza have very good chemistry together despite doing most of their scenes through speaker phone calls.

And lastly this movie has a surprising amount of heart to it as well, the scenes with Old/Young Stella also have a sense of poignancy to them that Park balances very well with the comedy and the time travel elements of her storytelling, the young ass is about to go and live her life while the old ass has been there and knows what will happen so she passes on a few things for her younger ass to do a little differently and many of us I’m sure would like to be able to do just that at times I’m certain.

And so that was My Old Ass and don’t try to stare at your bum you’ll just hurt yourself trying but do watch this pair of old and young asses in this funny, heartfelt and fun time travel comedy, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Moana 2 (2024)

Moana 2 is the new Disney Animation film (though it was originally going to be a streaming series on Disney Plus before being retooled to become a film) and once again sees Auli Cravalho as Moana once again exploring the seas around her home island and one day she finds out about a cursed island that if freed from its curse could reunite the vast waters of her home and so with a gallant crew she sets sail to break the spell with the help of the Demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson.)

Moana 2 is not a bad movie per se but the more I’ve let it sit in my mind since seeing it it is also one that I wish was so much better than it is, the film has some good animation and action moments especially in the third act climax and Cravalho and Johnson still play off well together as Moana and Maui and there is some good humour in there as well.

But the films storytelling suffers from the change from a streaming series to a feature film as the first half of the film is a mess where it feels like so many scenes and character moments and storyline development is on fast forward as it goes by so quickly it feels like the film is rushing through all of this stuff to cram it all in under a 2 hour runtime and at times it felt like whiplash as the moments are here were clearly meant to be their own streaming episodes before being cut and pasted together in this movie edit version of the story.

Eventually the second half of the film finds its rhythm and pace much better but I also can’t help but feel that the second half probably would’ve been the last episode or 2 of that abandoned Moana streaming series as that feels the most coherent and connected in terms of its storytelling and character work and action climax.

And as someone who loves Disney Animation so much it feels disappointing that fans are served up this when other studios who for a long time I felt were the ones who were not delivering the goods like Disney used to with their films are now setting the standard I mean recently we’ve had:

- Transformers One
- The Wild Robot
- The 2 Sonic films
- The 2 Paddington films
- The Despicable Me series

And all of those listed above have set the standard in my eyes in family entertainment on the big screen and Disney between this movie and Wish and Strange World and Encanto just aren’t measuring up anymore and I can’t help but think that Disney as a studio has become so big that it can’t fail and also so fearful of upsetting anyone that their not taking the swings and the risks that a leaner and more tightly focused studio like Paramount and Universal and StudioCanal are and I know thus movie will probably make a lot of money but sooner or later Disney will no longer be able to play it safe and will have to start taking some risks and swings again.

And it also doesn’t help that this movie is opening only a week after Wicked which like the other family movies I listed above is delivering the kind of musical/family movie magic that Disney used to excel at and that film isn’t afraid to wear its politics on its sleeve, develop a proper villain, have strong musical numbers and work for young and old audiences alike as well as take its time to properly tell its story within a films runtime requirements and this movie just isn’t good enough.

And that is how I feel about Moana 2 it isn’t a bad movie but it’s simply not good enough anymore, CIC (Paramount and Universal’s umbrella holder here in Australia during the 80s and 90s) and StudioCanal are delivering much better in this space and Disney has to shed its bloated size and get back into shape if its going to get back on top again as this kind of “it’s good enough” mentality has to stop especially when movie going is as expensive as it is right now, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Wicked (2024)

Wicked is based off of the long running Broadway musical and is directed by John M. Chu who also directed In the Heights, the story concerns Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) who is born with green skin and frequently the subject of bullying by other kids and scorn by her governor father but one day she finds herself enrolled in Shiv University a prestigious school run by a headmistress (Michelle Yeoh) who recognises her potential as a sorceress and there she meets Glinda (Ariana Grande) and they become friends for the most part.

Wicked was a movie that I didn’t have huge hopes for mainly because I’m not a big musical guy, don’t get me wrong I love Grease, Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis and Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story but those are really about it and the previews for this film seemed to want to advertise it as a straightforward fantasy film rather than a musical.

But to my surprise and delight this movie is really good and thoroughly enjoyable and a very large part of that is down to 3 performances the first of those is Grande as Glinda who is simply wonderful here, she has this nice and sweet persona on the surface but sometimes her inner bitch can come to the surface in the right circumstances and Grande dances both sides of that character very well plus she does some great singing as well and her physical comedy as well is superb, doing hair tosses and pratfalls in a way that makes me hope she gets a good comedy role in the future.

Also Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz is inspired casting and if you know how that character ultimately plays out you can see why Goldblum was a great choice and he does the role very well.

But for me the heart and soul of this movie is Erivo as Elphaba, I’ve always enjoyed seeing her in movies since I first saw her in Bad Times at the El Royale in 2018 but since then I haven’t seen her in as many films but here she finally gets a good role to shine in and boy does she do so not just with her acting where you can see the seeds of what she will ultimately become grow more and more inside of her as the film goes on but also in her singing where she hits some incredible high notes.

In fact watching her and Grande reminded me a lot of when I first saw James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as the young Professor Xavier and Magneto in X-Men First Class in terms of character becoming friends only for their differences in seeing the world and the people in it driving them apart to become enemies and Elphaba in particular reminded me a lot of Magneto from the X-Men movies.

However, there are a couple of issues I had with the film:

- The first of those is that at times the film feels it’s 160-minute length and that mainly came for me with the transitions from the dramatic moments to the musical numbers now don’t get me wrong the songs are very good but the way the film transitions into them felt a little jarring at times as I would get into a dramatic scene and then I would be pulled into a musical number and feel pulled out of the mood I was in during the dramatic moments.

Now great musicals like the ones I mentioned above handle that transition well but here not so much.

- And secondly this movie looked a little too clean visuals wise now that isn’t to say the film looks bad it does not there’s some great production design and costumes on show but it feels like it’s hidden behind the standard digital grey that keeps showing up more and more and more in movies nowadays and I can’t help but feel that if that wasn’t there then this movie would look far more colourful and magical than it does.

But perhaps this speaks to a wider problem within the industry itself and that is you only have a finite number of Visual Effects companies taking on more and more work be it movies and television and streaming shows/movies that they can only roster so much time onto one project before having to quickly move to the next one to get that ready for release and this has to change as 10-15 years ago this problem didn’t really exist and it has to stop because more and more projects are suffering as a result.

And so that was Wicked and it is a really enjoyable time at the movies despite some slight stumbles, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Lee (2024)

Lee is based off of the life of Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) a photographer in France when World War II breaks out and she volunteers to photograph the fighting on the front and the aftermath of the War it had on Europe.

Lee is a pretty solid little film, it doesn’t try to be anything more than it isn’t and I was okay with it for the most part, the film tells its story pretty well though at times it cuts back to Lee as an older woman (including Winslet in old age makeup and Josh O’Connor as a young journalist interviewing her about her time during the war.) and when those cutaways came in they bothered me because I felt like they took me out of the WW2 scenes in the film, it would’ve been better if it had been a voiceover narration so that you could stay in the WW2 moments.

As for the performances they are pretty solid, Winslet is good in the title role even though the old age version of the character didn’t work as well for me, O’Connor is good as well as is Andy Samberg and Alexander Skarsgard and while it is nice to see Marion Cotillard again on screen her screen time is sadly too small, hopefully she takes a bigger role in the future.

And so that was Lee and it’s a good little film that is not the best I’ve seen but far from the worst either, its solid and does its job well, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Gladiator II (2024)

Gladiator II is the highly anticipated sequel to 2000’s Gladiator which helped bring Ridley Scott back to revelance after a period of doldrums in the 1990’s, brought Russell Crowe to international stardom and an Academy Award for Best Actor and won Best Picture at the Academy Awards as well, this time Paul Mescal plays a farmer who’s land is conquered by a Roman General (Pedro Pascal) and he is taken to Rom as a slave for the Gladiator Games where his fight and tenacity catch the attention of a slave trader (Denzel Washington) who sees in him a path towards a much bigger prize.

Gladiator II was a film that I did not have a lot of high hopes for mainly because Ridley Scott’s output over the last 10-15 years has left a lot to be desired as many of those films were either Stodgy (The Counselor), stupid (Prometheus, House of Gucci) or just laughably bad (Exodus: Gods and Kings) and his previous film prior to this one was Napoleon which was shockingly bad with its focus on a man who conquered most of the known world and transformed France being as a petulant manchild rater than a fascist emperor.

But surprisingly Gladiator II is easily Ridley’s best film for me since the Martian in 2015 (2021’s The Last Duel was okay but discomforting to watch at times) and this definitely a film that is worth watching on a big cinema screen as the Gladiator games in this movie are fantastic be it fights with a Rhino, a flooded Roman Colosseum with boats and sharks, fights with Baboons that look like they came off of the Hunger Games set and plenty of hand to hand combat fights that Ridley Scott directs the crap out of and puts many of his contemporaries to shame with his work here.

As for the performances, Paul Mescal is fine but at times he struggles to fill the big hole left behind by Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the first film, Connie Nielsen is solid here but isn’t given a huge amount to do, Pedro Pascal is watchable but like Nielsen doesn’t get a huge amount to do while Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger are fun as the dual emperors of Rome who enjoy all the power and wealth and debauchery at their fingertips.

But this movie belongs to one man and one man alone and that is Mr Denzel Washington who reaffirmed in my mind that he is quite simply the man as he devours every scene he’s in with relish and skill that makes chewing the scenery look like an artform and in his hands it is and every moment he’s on screen you have a big smile on your face as he plots and schemes his way to power while turning on that unmistakable Denzel charm and badassery that makes you can’t help but love him.

As for the films script well at times it’s a bit of mess not unlike Beetlejuice 2 was back in September, there’s at least 2 or 3 separate stories going on here that at times each of them struggles for screen time and one is pretty quickly dealt with while another heads to a somewhat anti climatic finish which is a shame but I wasn’t as bothered with it here like I was in Napoleon last year.

And so that was Gladiator II and it is a fun spectacle with a performance by Denzel that deserves to net him an Oscar, never has one man carried a film on his back so much and make it look easy while also chewing the scenery like it’s an all you can eat buffet, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Red One (2024)

Red One stars Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift the head of Santa’s (JK Simmons) secret security unit known as ELF, one night however Santa is kidnapped by an evil witch (Kiernan Shipka) and he along with Zoe (Lucy Liu) track down a hacker (Chris Evans) who might be able to help save Santa and Christmas.

Red One is definitely a lump of coal of coal in the Christmas stocking and it will also make you want to pull an Alan Rickman from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and say “CALL OFF CHRISTMAS” because this movie is so deathly dull to sit through, it is extraordinary that Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans two actors with charm, likeability and charisma to spare are so boring to watch here.

Johnson looks and sounds like a man who is going through the motions like the failure of Black Adam in 2022 just took all of that winning charm out of him and he’s just been sore about it ever since while Evans once again is trying to say to everyone “SEE I’M NOT CAPTAIN AMERICA ANYMORE, DUMB ASS” as once again he plays a slimy smartass and it really doesn’t work here, it did work in the first Knives Out film in 2019 but that film had Rian Johnson in the directors chair and he knows how to direct actors whereas Jake Kasdan who directed this movie just tells everyone to stand still, hit their marks, say their lines and he’ll put all the winter wonderland scenery in during post.

Speaking of the visual look of this movie, it is so horrible due to that trademark murky digital camera grey that we see more and more and let me remind you all this movie HAD A HIGHER BUDGET THAN DUNE PART TWO and not once did it show on the screen and between this and Joker Folie a Deux having the same budget as Dune Part Two I am getting sick to death of this recklessness in budgetary spending.

A movie like Dune Part Two having a big budget I understand because that film was the follow on to a well liked film that won multiple Academy Awards, made money at the box office despite being available day and date on streaming/piracy and was very well liked by critics and audiences for the most part.

James Cameron getting the budgetary equivalent of the United States Federal Reserve to make his Avatar sequels also makes sense because Cameron has 3 of the top 4 biggest movies of all time worldwide and 2 of those are from a group of films that so many love to say “has no cultural impact” and that budget will be made back in spades.

But what should be a fun lighthearted Christmas family comedy having a 250 million dollar budget is gross recklessness and irresponsibility of the highest order and to quote Kevin Rudd “This Sort of Reckless Spending Must Stop.”

As for the storytelling here well it’s the usual Christmas cheer, broken families, naughty person learning to be nice again and reconciling with his long lost son, fairly standard stuff but it all just bored me after a while because it’s all been done so much better elsewhere.

And so that was Red One and Bah Humbug from me on this one because this is a movie that does not in any way justify its huge budget and it suffers because of it, 1 out of 5.