Film Review - Fall (2022)

Fall is a new survival thriller movie and stars Virginia Gardner and Grace Currey as Hunter and Becky respectively, 2 keen climbers who decide to take a road trip to rural America and climb an old TV Tower 2,000 meters tall but during the climb they become trapped up high and must find a way to get back down to the ground and back home.

 

Fall is a good survival thriller that I wish had come out in October for if you have a fear of heights  you will not like this movie as there are several moments of the 2 girls climbing that tower that made me as someone who isn’t too bad when it comes to heights just be responsible sweating a little in my seat in terms of hands and face and heart beating a little faster than normal and it feels more scary at times than most Horror films nowadays.

 

Also both Gardner and Currey are a great pair and work really well together in their scenes and because of that you want them both to survive and get off that tower alive, Jeffery Dean Morgan also shows up briefly as Becky’s father but he doesn’t have a lot to do in the film as a whole.

 

And so that was Fall and it’s a good survival thriller with great climbing scenes and chemistry between its leads, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Amsterdam (2022)

Amsterdam is the new film by David O’Russell and stars Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie as a trio of friends who in the case of Bale’s doctor character and JD Washington’s lawyer character first met during World War 1 and they first meet Robbie’s nurse character after the war and the 3 make a pact to look out for each other and be friends as they live together in Amsterdam but the doctor character goes back to the US to see his wife (Andrea Riseborough) and then he and his lawyer friend are accused of a crime they didn’t commit and when trying to clear their names uncover a sinister plot.

 

Amsterdam is very much a movie of 2 halves for me and the second half of which is the one I preferred by a mile as at the heart of it lies a fascinating historical story involving a plan to overthrow the American president and install a dictator ala events in Germany that were happening at that time (this movie takes place in large part in 1933 before World War 2) and it has some resonance for recent events of the last year or 2 and I was really compelled by this half of the film especially when you read about in history books how quarters of high society back then really admired that way of doing things seeing it as a strength when it was nothing more than a darkness that the world had no choice but to fight and defeat.

 

The rest of this movie feels so cartoonish that at times I thought I was watching a murder mystery sketch comedy as it bounces around from one scene to the next and one big name actor after another it honestly feels like they may as well be on the Late Show where its “Ladies and Gentleman, Anya Taylor-Joy, up next Rami Malek, later on Myke Myers and Michael Shannon and so on” and not only did it feel so cartoonish in terms of O’Russell’s direction and execution of it but I didn’t laugh or care all that much frankly.

 

And as for this huge star studded cast Bale is fun at times but its because he seems to understand that he’s in a cartoon comedy film that he at least doesn’t feel out of place, John David Washington is every inch a movie star but here he feels dull and lifeless, Margot Robbie feels way out of place, Taylor-Joy and Malek feel like their in a totally different film while Robert De Niro becomes the central figure of that part of the film I did like and sorely wish had been the core focus of this movie instead of the murder mystery sketch show act.

 

Before I wrap up however Star Trek Deep Space Nine fans are going to enjoy who shows up in this movie in a small role.

 

And so that was Amsterdam and it’s a clown car of a movie that really needed to be rewritten from the top by another writer as this movie when it finds its footing has a fascinating historical story at its core that is stuck in an unfunny and cartoonish sketch show that I didn’t care for very much at all, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Don't Worry Darling (2022)

Don’t Worry Darling is the new film directed by Olivia Wilde and she has a small role in the film and stars Harry Styles as Jack Chambers and Florence Pugh as his wife Alice in an idyllic 1950s esque town called Victory where the husbands go to work on something called the Victory Project just outside of town and the wives stay home, go shopping and drink martinis and gossip all day and then cook for their husbands at night but Alice soon begins to suspect things aren’t what they seem to be when she sees a plane crash in the desert outside of town and this makes everyone around her angry.

 

I have been really looking forward to this movie for two reasons, firstly Olivia Wilde showed a lot of promise I felt in the directors chair with Booksmart, it was funny, heartfelt, had 2 great leads in Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as well as a terrific supporting performance by Billie Lourd plus the trailers for this movie looked sexy, psychotic and unsettling and I was fully on board but all this promise couldn’t possibly fail right.

 

Well sadly it did and when I walked out of this movie my immediate thought when looking at the poster for it was to go “Olivia I’m VERY disappointed” in the tone of the Old Man from Robocop when he chastises Dick Jones over the ED-209 failure in the board meeting as this movie was a big big big disappointment for me.

 

And the main reason for that is that very early on in this movie you begin to twitch in your head that things aren’t what they seem to be and begin to suspect that all of this is a kind of illusion and almost the entire rest of the film up until its climax takes all that time to get to the point that you have already gotten to and your just sitting there waiting for it to play bloody catch up.

 

And given the 1950s esque setting I thought “Okay this could be interesting” in terms of perhaps all of this being tied to a potential Nuclear War and the desert outside the boundary is irradiated due to radioactive fallout and the whole idea of the Victory Project is to do with Radiation harnessing and Uranium mining for a War effort that may or may not exist like War with Eurasia in 1984 (the novel of which was written just before the 50s) but instead when it reveals itself I just went “What the Fuck” in my cinema seat and it just felt so fucking unsatisfying.

 

And secondly I really really wished that this movie had really gone for it in terms of its psychosis and unsettling tone that the previews for it seemed to promise and had been perhaps more incisive in terms of its commentary, bolder with its psychotic moments, darker with its sex scenes and more unsettling that it ultimately is, there is a truly terrific MA15+/R18+ rated movie here that is stuck in a dull and unsatisfying M rated movie and it is badly hurt as a result.

 

So yeah that was Don’t Worry Darling and it is quite possibly my biggest movie heartbreak of this year, what could and should have been a terrific psychotic thriller is stuck in a dull, unsatisfying and fairly tame one and I wish that Olivia had done another script draft or 2 to let that MA15/R18 version come to the surface as that would’ve fulfilled that promise I so wanted from her after Booksmart, 1 out of 5.