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.