Film Review - The Bikeriders (2024)

The Bikeriders is the new film by Jeff Nichols and stars Jodie Comer as Kathy who is being interviewed by a young reporter (Mike Faist) about her time being married to Benny (Austin Butler) who was a member of the Vandals Motorcycle Gang in Chicago in the mid to late 1960’s, the gang is led by Johnny (Tom Hardy) and the gang rides around the area, plays pool and drinks and smokes a lot.

The Bikeriders isn’t a bad film but it’s also one that has been done much much better elsewhere but that said this is firstly a well made film by Nichols who is an underrated director these days, at times you can smell the beer and sweat and cigarette smoke through the camera lens a great credit to him and Adam Stone the cinematographer who also does a good job on the film especially in the nighttime scenes.

The film also has a number of good performances, Hardy is as good as ever and he makes for a good leader of this sometimes wayward group of people, Austin Butler is one of the best young actors working today and that is no exception here even if most of the time I kept thinking “That’s FEYD-RAUTHA” from Dune Part Two while Faist, Comer and Michael Shannon are good as well.

But for much of this movie’s running time I kept thinking back to that much much better film than this one and that is Stone an pioneering Ozploitation film from 1974 that also concerned a motorcycle gang and was so much better than this one it isn’t funny, it has the gang comraderie for sure but it also had much better storytelling, higher stakes and great filmmaking with one stunt in particular being one of the very best I’ve seen any person do on film.

And to be honest I would rent Stone instead of this movie which is okay but nothing much despite it being well made and with good performances, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line (2024)

Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is a new documentary about the history of the Band with interviews from the likes of Peter Garrett and other members of the band as they recount their beginnings, the changing band members and their place in the Australian music and cultural scene.

Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is a good documentary with well done interviews with Peter and the other band members and I really liked the archival footage particularly one segment that covers their trip to an Indigenous encampment in 1987 and taking their music to the locals, I also really liked the archival news footage from the 80s and 90s and 2000’s that covered the band’s main time together.

But I have to say it felt very weird after a while to be watching this documentary on a big cinema screen, don’t get me wrong it’s great to hear those songs in a cinema with the sound system but the medium of documentary is a very intimate one and because of that it doesn’t quite feel right to be watching one in a cinema which by it’s very nature a public space (and one that look a long time to reopen in the dark times) and a documentary is someone telling you their story and to see that in a cinema feels like your intruding on a private conversation someone is having with someone else and it feels wrong.

That said this is a good doco and if you’re a fan of the band then you’ll really enjoy yourself but you didn’t need to watch this in a cinema, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)

Deadpool and Wolverine is the newest Marvel Studios film and the first to properly feature characters from the X-Men now that Marvel Studios has gotten the rights to those characters back after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, this story concerns Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) being tasked by the TVA and it’s lead time officer Paradox (Matthew Macfayden) to either join the Earth 616 universe or die with his now that it has lost it’s anchor character in Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) but Deadpool decides not to cooperate and travels the multiverse to find another Wolverine to help him.

Deadpool and Wolverine is something of a mixed bag for me movie wise, I can see why people are having a great time at this movie but I can also see why others have not,

Firstly the best thing about this movie and when it works the best is when Reynolds and Jackman are simply allowed to riff with each other, trade barbs and insults and try to kill each other, the two men have great chemistry together and it’s easy to see why Reynolds was the only person that could get Jackman to play the character again after he bid farewell to it in James Mangold’s Logan in 2017, both men are as good as ever in their roles and the film works best when their on it.

Also really good is Emma Corrin best known as the young Princess Diana in the Crown, they bring a lot of dark energy to their role and I really believed that they and James McAvoy who played Professor Xavier in the previous 20th Century Fox trilogy of X-Men films are related, the MCU has lacked memorable villains in a lot of their films but this one is an exception.

And lastly there are some good action and comedy moments that definitely had me smiling and laughing when they were on screen.

But what really drags this movie into the bog is the multiverse side plot, I am so fucking fed up with this shit now I couldn’t tell you but I will this time because all the multiverse really ends up meaning is that there are no consequences, no stakes in the action and no one really dies and if they do then instead of using the Dragon Balls to bring them back the characters can just hop into the multiverse, find a variant of that character who died and then there they are as if nothing ever happened.

And it just feels so fucking lazy especially when both DC and Marvel have dabbled in this crap and all for some cheap fan service and nostalgia baiting and I don’t care anymore, I remember when people like Mangold and Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn gave us X-Men movies that had genuine stakes, exciting action, heartfelt emotion as well as fun comedy and when characters actually died it meant something but now none of it does.

And yes 20th Century Fox as a movie studio made some big big mistakes with their handling of the X-Men and the other Marvel comics characters chief among them their failure to learn the lessons of X-Men 1 and 2 and why those films were as successful as they were in the early 2000’s but when they got it right, they gave you something as a fan or a movie pundit or even just a casual audience member that meant something and could be about something more worthwhile than just one liners, bad comedy, tighty tight and colourful costumes and action scenes that got more and more boring because the villains were so poorly thought out none it mattered.

And Fox as a studio had such a rich movie history as well, those of us like me hear that fanfare and instantly think “Star Wars” and George Lucas wanted to bring that full fanfare back to prominence with the original film in 1977 and along with Disney, Warner Brothers, Columbia, Universal and Paramount were the foundation of the movie business for decades and when Disney acquired Fox primarily because so many Marvel nerds became adamant that they get the X-Men and Fantastic Four to Marvel Studios we lost something fundamental.

And that loss is one that I feel personally when looking at the movie business as it is today and look this movie will make oodles of money and I can see why but given what it was that we lost so this movie could be made as we see it being projected in front of us I wish it was a lot better than it is, don’t get me wrong there is plenty of fun to be had and a good villain is here but the loss of 20th Century Fox as an independent movie studio and the decades of movie going tradition that died with it is one I struggle to overcome but I suspect I’ll be along in feeling this way, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Twisters (2024)

Twisters is a sequel of sorts to the 1996 film Twister and Lee Isaac Chung who directed Minari takes the reins here, this story concerns Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who loses her boyfriend and 2 of her friends while chasing a Tornado in Oklahoma, she moves to New York City and 5 years later she is approached by an old friend (Anthony Ramos) to chase Tornadoes again in her home state for research purposes but while there she also meets Tyler (Glen Powell) a rival Tornado chaser and the wind rush is on.

I hadn’t seen the original Twister film from 96 since it first came out on Video in 1997 but thankfully you don’t have to have seen that first film in order to watch this one as it is completely its own story with no ties at all to the previous film and I think it is better for it as I loved this movie.

The first reason for that is Chung’s direction, it is easy to see the different version of this movie where Chung is overwhelmed with directing a movie of this size after directing a small family drama in Minari but he also has the brains trust at Amblin Entertainment which includes the likes of Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall as well as Joseph Kosinki who directed Top Gun: Maverick and that must have been of great help to him as he does a great job directing the film and doesn’t seem to be fazed by the size of it.

And where this shines the most is in the films quieter character moments, they feel real and tangible and have some real emotional depth to them and that isn’t normally the case in these types of films but it is felt here and it does make a big difference to seeing these characters as people worth investing in or just tornado fodder to be sucked up the vacuum and you sit there going “bye bye.”

The second reason is the sound design, this movie is one you really need to see in a theatre with a great sound system as the howling wind and pouring rain and thunderstorms sound fantastic in one that has that and as someone who hates thunderstorms there were times where this movie scared me a little and had me tense with fear as storms and tornadoes can be deadly and this film shows that very well and it sounds great in a movie theatre, hopefully there is a Best Sound Oscar nomination coming this team’s way next year.

And lastly the 3 leads are very good, I’ve loved Edgar-Jones since seeing her in Where the Crawdad’s Sing in 2022 and she continues to build on that good work here, Ramos is a good young actor and one I’ve liked since In the Heights and he is solid here as well while Glen Powell continues to build on his success from Top Gun Maverick and Anyone But You and is a lot of fun here as Tyler with his midwestern charm, winning smile and charismatic presence you can’t help but love to watch no matter what he’s in.

And so that was Twisters and this is great fun at the movies but please see it in one that has a good sound system as you will not regret it, it’s thrilling/exciting/a little scary and has characters worth caring about, blockbusters rarely do this well and this one excels at it, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is the newest Beverly Hills Cop film and this time Mark Molloy takes the directors chair and Eddie Murphy is back as Axel Foley who is hot on the heels of some cartel guys when his old friend Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) goes missing but when he gets to Beverly Hills once again trouble stirs from both old friends and new allies one of them being his estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige)

A fourth Beverly Hills Cop film has been rumoured for many years going all the way back to the late 2000’s when Brett Ratner of all people was attached to direct it, now Molloy takes the reins and he has some big shoes to fill after Martin Brest and the late great Tony Scott’s work on the first 2 films and overcoming one of the worst movies ever made ever in John Landis’s Beverly Hills Cop 3 in 1994.

Happily, very happily he does a really good job here as I had a great time watching this movie and it seems like Jerry Bruckheimer of all people has been able to crack the code of how to do a legacy sequel properly with this, Bad Boys for Life and the most recent Ride or Die as well as Top Gun: Maverick in 2022.

And all of those films and this one understand that yes some things do change over time but some things do not, most notably the lead characters themselves, yes they’ll have aged and matured since their hey day in the 80s and 90s but when the time comes they still have their heroic moments and don’t go around constantly miserable about everything and becoming lonely old people where all of their character growth is undone because “we can do it better.”

NO, NO, NO and NO, this group of films is the way and Molloy does a great job balancing the comedy of Brest and the stylish look of Scott, some scenes in this film reminded me of the first film and others reminded me of the second film and when those soundtrack moments came on, I was a very very happy boy.

Next is Eddie himself and while he’s getting on in years, I never thought that he was too old to play Axel again and it feels like he picks up right where he left off after Beverly Hills Cop II in 1987 as he has some great action moments and comedy moments, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also good as a young detective as is Kevin Bacon in a supporting role.

If I do have one complaint it’s that John Ashton as Taggart and Reinhold’s Rosewood don’t get as much to do and it’s a little disappointing as the main reason I loved Cop II was that the three guys were now working together as a group and the chemistry between the actors allowed the comedy to come out naturally in that film whereas here Axel is either with Jane or Gordon-Levitt’s character and I wish we got to see the 3 Beverly Hills Musketeers go all for one and one for all one last time.

That said however fans of the first 2 films will not be disappointed with this film as I certainly wasn’t and I think most fans will enjoy themselves as well, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

A Quiet Place: Day One is the third film in the series but it’s also a prequel and not directed by John Krasinski though he does have a story credit on the film, this time Michael Sarnoski takes the director’s chair and the focus shifts to New York City and a cancer patient named Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) who with her support cat Frodo is caught up in the mayhem and chaos that comes when the creatures invade and kill anyone who makes a noise and now her, Frodo and an Englishman (Joseph Quinn) have to make their way to safety.

I’m a big fan of the first 2 A Quiet Place films, they were great Sci-fi/Horror films that created an interesting world, and they were made in such a way by Krasinki that you wanted to see them in a cinema but without his guiding hand could the series continue to deliver the goods.

Happily, yes as this movie is as good as the first two films and Sarnoski does a good job recreating the tension, dread and horror that the world of these films has in spades as you try to keep quiet for as long as possible to avoid getting killed and the characters in these films don’t always succeed at that and there is one scene here that has a great use of weather.

Also Nyong’o is really good here and she does a lot with just her eyes in much of the film and they are so expressive when it comes to showing fear or happiness or sadness that you don’t really notice that much that she doesn’t have a lot of dialogue.

However my favourite character in this movie is Frodo the Cat played by 2 real life cats, Nico and Schitznel and throughout so much of this movie I kept asking myself “Is the Cat okay?”, “Will the Cat be okay?” and “Please let the Cat be okay” as he has such a beautiful face and I just wanted to give him all of the fusses and cuddles and pats and though at times he runs off thankfully like all good tussie pusses he knows where his owner is.

Also take note filmmakers, THIS IS HOW YOU DO A CAT ON FILM, you don’t do what Matthew Vaughn and his team on Argylle did and treat the cat as nothing more than a CGI prop to be carted around, you use real cats and let them have scenes where they get cuddles, fusses and pats and are integral parts of the film.

But if I have one issue with the film it is Joseph Quinn and his character, his performance is okay for the most part but he comes into the film quite late and because of that I didn’t feel that much of a connection to his character as I did with Sam and Frodo though he has some good scenes in the back half of the film.

And so that was A Quiet Place: Day One and while I wouldn’t last all that long in this world I enjoy going to these movies in a cinema and I was not disappointed, 3 and a half out of 5.