Film Review - Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (2024)

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is the new installment in Warner Bros/Legendary’s Monsterverse series and this time Kong is in Hollow Earth trying to find other members of his kind while Godzilla has been hunting Titans on Earth but when new trouble emerges these once deadly rivals will now have to work together to save their worlds.

Godzilla X Kong is not that different to how I felt about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in that it’s not a bad movie but its only an okay but I liked this one a little more than I did Ghostbusters because when the monsters were fighting I had a smile on my face even though at times I kept thinking “I bet people lived in those buildings that are being flattened like pancakes” as buildings and populated areas are being flattened like it’s nothing in this movie and sometimes that can be fun to watch but sometimes you watch that type of mass destruction and think “Um people might live there.” And this was one of those times.

As for the action scenes well their fun for the most part but after a while feel a bit video gamey as more often than not your looking at digital monsters fighting it out and hearing very loud noises and deep bass in the sound mix especially if you watch it in a theatre with a loud sound system like I did and I wish there was more of a sense of stakes or peril with those big battle scenes that felt more real instead of digital and the human eye is often pretty good at telling what is real and what isn’t.

As for the human characters well their okay but not the reason you’re watching it, Rebecca Hall is such a good actress but this role is doing little to nothing for her save for putting a roof over her head (those bills aren’t cheap nowadays), Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry are having some fun though I did get a bit annoyed with the needle drops during key action moments (seriously guys can we PLEASE stop doing this it’s getting very annoying.) while it was nice to see Rachel House a New Zealand actress from Thor: Ragnarok and Hunt for the Wilderpeople in a small supporting role.

And so that was Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire and it’s fun for the most part but again it doesn’t help that this has come out in the shadow of Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters and that film has really shown up the laziness in this industry the last 10-15 years hopefully with streaming and Disney’s dominance starting to abate the other studios will start to lift their game, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Wicked Little Letters (2024)

Wicked Little Letters stars Olivia Coleman as Edith, a woman who lives at home with her conservative father (Timothy Spall) and who has been receiving wicked letters with profane language in them and she suspects her next door neighbour Rose (Jesse Buckley) who is unmarried and likes to go to bars and behave suspiciously but there is more to this than one sees.

Wicked Little Letters is good fun and I laughed quite a bit watching it but the film earns it’s MA15+ rating here in Australia as it has a lot of fowl language and if that kind of thing bothers you a fair bit then I won’t recommend this movie but if it doesn’t it’s good fun.

And firstly I have to mention Jesse Buckley in this movie as she is really one of the best actresses around right now and she is so much fun to watch here in both her rowdy pub scenes, her standing up for herself moments or even in the quieter moments where she is fighting for her innocence and ever since Wild Rose in 2018 she has been a real fan favourite of movie goers and here is no exception.

Olivia Coleman on the other hand who has rarely given a bad performance in a film well I struggled with her performance in this movie at times mainly because I struggled to buy her in this role as a straight laced God fearing woman and she has this devilish sense of humour be it in Hot Fuzz or Wonka and here I just thought “I’m not quite buying it here” now that isn’t to say she is bad on the whole as she gets better as the film goes on but in the opening parts of it I struggled with her performance.

And so that was Wicked Little Letters and it is good fun if your not bothered by fowl language, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire is the follow up to 2021’s Ghostbusters Afterlife and this time Gil Kenan takes the directorial chair instead of Jason Reitman who directed Afterlife and is the son of the late genius Ivan Reitman, this story sees the Spengler family (Mackenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd and Finn Wolfhard) living and working as Ghostbusters in New York City when Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) comes into possession of a mysterious orb that contains a powerful ice goddess who if unleashed could bring about a new ice age in a New York Summer.

Frozen Empire isn’t a bad movie per se but it is also a movie that in all honestly isn’t really much of anything either and in the very small group I saw this in the cinema with all it raised was a chuckle at best and that was mainly at the “look who’s shown up” variety as well which isn’t great for a Ghostbusters movie on either front.

The main problem this movie has is in its scripting, it takes far too long to get it’s main plot into motion and when it does it doesn’t have any of the stakes or horror or comedy or scale that it really should and what the original Ghostbusters movie which celebrates it’s 40th anniversary this year had, it had great laughs, it had great horror moments, it had great visual effects, a comedy cast on top form and an iconic movie monster but then again Ivan Reitman was a genius for the most part so that was no real surprise.

It also doesn’t help that this movie is also the first big movie to be released after Dune Part Two 3 and a half weeks ago and that movie showed what movies really could be when you had a passionate creative team and a willing and able cast working their hardest to deliver something special for audiences whereas here the cast does what they can but no one really gets a chance to shine.

William Atherton from the original is basically a “remember him” fan service cameo, Patton Oswalt only gets one scene which feels like a waste as he fits right in with this universe, the OG Ghostbusters are either exposition dumps on legs or fan service cameos or in the case of Bill Murray here to cash an easy cheque because he was in lockdown for 2 years and wants some easy money plus due to COVID he missed out on being in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last year and as for the Spengler family their okay and Coon and Rudd have some good chemistry but they don’t really get to show it, Wolfhard really only exists to have an excuse for Slimer coming back and Grace well she does get a subplot of her own but it doesn’t really add much to the greater storytelling.

And so that was Ghostbusters Frozen Empire and once more Columbia Pictures a studio celebrating 100 years this year has delivered another lazy blockbuster, in my State of the Studios roundup last year I said that they really needed to both lift their game and stop relying on Spider-Man to save them and with this and now Madame Web being lazy hangabouts in cinemas that feeling is stronger than ever, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - The Great Escaper (2024)

The Great Escaper stars Michael Caine as Bernie Jordan, a World War 2 veteran who now lives in an England rest home with his wife Irene (Glenda Jackson) and when he is unable to go to an event celebrating 70 years of the D-Day landing he makes his own way to France and comes to learn about the place he helped to liberate all those years before.

The Great Escaper is a very good film and one of the bright spots of this early period of 2024 as a movie year and it does this by telling a good story and telling it rather well for the most part.

The first way it does this is it feels like this movie pays tribute to that particular generation who went and fought the great war of that time in World War II and the scars those who survived and came home would live with, at one point Irene says in the movie that the War was their business and we see the effect it had on her not long afterwards and there is also a moving scene in a bar with Bernie and some German officers (one of which is played by Wolf Kahler from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and you see the bridges that some try to mend all those decades on.

And secondly this movie feels like as much a tribute to Michael Caine as an actor as this has been stated that this is to be his final film role and watching him in this movie it is easy to see why as he looks frail and not as energetic as he normally is in a lot of his earlier roles and watching him play a man who needs a walker to get around was a little saddening to a certain degree but he has picked a great way to end his long and storied career.

And so that was the Great Escaper and it is a good story told well for the most part with some moving moments and a great final role for Michael Caine, 3 out of 5.