Film Review - Ghostbusters Afterlife (2022)

 Ghostbusters Afterlife is directed and co-written by Jason Reitman the son of Ivan Reitman (who is fantastic I think a Genius) and this story takes place in a small Oklahoma town where a single mother (Carrie Coon) and her two children (Mackenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard) inherit an old run down dirt farm but while they start to find their way in this new home strange things start happening and well when that happens, Who You Gonna Call?

 

Ghostbusters Afterlife is an interesting sequel in that it completely ignores the 2016 reboot/sequel that Paul Feig directed and continues on from 1989’s Ghostbusters II only recognising that and the 1984 original film though this new film delayed from 2020 due to the pandemic felt for me a little disjointed.

 

And that disjointment comes down mainly to the storytelling, on one hand it feels like the kind of small family drama Jason Reitman made his name making before he committed to making this movie, one part feels like a Stranger Things episode while another part feels like the long developed and planned Ghostbusters 3 that died along with Harold Ramis when he very sadly passed away in 2014 and two of those parts are more interesting than the one.

 

The two that worked for me was the Family Drama and Ghostbusters 3 segments, those I thought were quite good and held my interest, the Ghostbusters 3 segment was easily the highlight though thanks to the return of the original cast who still have that great comedic chemistry and it makes me wish all the more that they had anchored the entire film as their backstory and scenes made for a far more interesting film than the one I’m writing about here.

 

The family drama segment meanwhile is pretty good and its here I felt Jason Reitman was back in territory he feels most comfortable in finding his own voice instead of channelling his father who is fantastic (and a Genius) but the least interesting segment is what I called the Stranger Things episode segment which is where the kids take centre stage and their not bad I quite like Mackenna Grace and she would make a great Penny from Inspector Gadget as well as Finn Wolfhard but I just didn’t find their storyline segment all that interesting.

 

As for the new Ghosts well their okay but they just feel like a repeat of what had come before and were done better there, the mini Stay Puft men are cute but feel more like Gremlins knockoffs and Muncher a take on the famous ghost Slimer was okay but kind of forgettable.

 

And so that was Ghostbusters Afterlife and its okay but like the Matrix Resurrections recently it only really highlights how both the original Ghostbusters and Matrix films were instant classics when they first came out and broke the mold in technical and storytelling ways only to get mediocre sequels and continuations, just stick with the first film and leave it at that, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - House of Gucci (2022)

 House of Gucci is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani an Italian woman who falls for and marries Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) and becomes part of the famous Gucci fashion designer family despite Maurizios father (Jeremy Irons) disapproving of her feeling she is nothing more than a gold digger though Maurizio’s uncle (Al Pacino) and nephew (Jared Leto) do approve of her.

 

House of Gucci is a weird movie to watch because it should feel like a tonal mess with so many silly Italian accents that border on cartoonish and one performance that feels like its in a totally different film to everyone else yet Ridley Scott manages somehow to make this work and I enjoyed myself watching it even though this feels more like the Ridley Scott that made American Gangster and All the Money in the World.

 

And like those films this one strips back a lot of Ridley’s visual touches and he makes a much more straightforward drama and this one held my interest enough that I liked the film though a lot of this comes down to the cast and firstly Lady Gaga is a bonafide movie star, she has these beautiful magnetic eyes, the camera loves her and for the most part she is very good in the film as she navigates Patrizia’s descent into paranoia and madness as the years of being married to a Gucci go on though at times her Italian accent gets a little wobbly.

 

As for Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino again they are cartoonish but they are fun cartoonish for the most part, Irons feels like he is playing a borderline spoof of his Oscar winning role in 1990’s Reversal of Fortune where he played Klaus Von Bulow and though he doesn’t do much of an Italian accent seeing him in fancy suits and big houses made me think of that earlier role he did, Al Pacino meanwhile is not one for being subtle much of the time but it feels like he’s gone up only to about 10 on the Pacinometer as opposed to his usual TWELVE OR FIFTEEN WHERE HE ALMOST YELLS EVEYR OTHER LINE HE SPEAKS JUST LIKE THESE ALL CAPS WORDING.

 

But then there is Jared Leto and dear oh dear if you honestly thought Pacino could be over the top and silly and cartoonish Leto in this movie is all three and then some, his accent is so laughable It borders on being at one time Super Mario and then Joe Dolce, Smeg someone may as well have handed him a guitar so he could start singing “Ah Shaddaup You Face” its that bad and unlike Ben Affleck in the Last Duel who also gave a campy performance managed to do it in a way that worked Leto just goes full on and its funny but in not in a laugh with them kind of a way its much more of a laugh a at you kind of way.

 

Then there is Adam Driver who somehow manages to make his straight laced performance work despite the cartoonishness going on around him and at times it does feel like he is giving a performance from a completely different film but then when the focus of the film turns to him in the second half of the film it actually begins to work and you see how this whole world looks from his eyes.

 

And so that was House of Gucci and its all over the place and its performances for the most part border on parody but I liked it enough to give it a recommendation, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

 The Matrix Resurrections is the fourth film in the Matrix series but this time only Lana Wachowski has returned to direct and co-write the script (her sister Lilly opted not to return) and this time Mr Anderson aka Neo (Keanu Reeves) is now a video game designer with the initial Matrix films now being a series of hit video games he helped make but a new Resistance movement has been looking for Neo and believes he’s still alive after the events of the Matrix Revolutions and it won’t be long before Neo has a choice to make, the Red Pill or the Blue Pill once again.

 

I can’t say that I was all that enthusiastic about this fourth Matrix film, the first film released in 1999 I think is as mythic and iconic as George Lucas’s original Star Wars movie in 1977 and by that I mean both films created a real mythology and world for their respective generations but unlike George following that up with the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Lana and Lilly Wachowski failed to deliver a good Matrix sequel with either Reloaded or Revolutions.

 

And now this fourth film is here without Lilly Wachowksi as well as Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus and Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, only half the band is back in Lana Wachowski, Keanu Reeves as Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity not a good sign of things to come.

 

And well its not a complete loss this sequel, a lot of the meta commentary is kinda neat and certainly better done here than in Space Jam: A New Legacy earlier this year but it doesn’t really sustain itself throughout much of the film and its great to see Carrie-Anne Moss back as Trinity even if she doesn’t have as much screen time as she should in this film.

 

As for the rest of it well you’ve seen it all before, the Red Pill/Blue Pill choice, the Resistance and the Machines, the Jacking In, the big action scenes, the puppet master villain controlling the strings and this time it all feels so bloody repetitive and monotonous and I got a bit bored by it all, I didn’t think it was bad in any way this is a very nice looking film courtesy of cinematographers John Toll and Daniele Massacessi but that’s not really saying much now and a lot of the story beats here I felt were down in the Red Dwarf episode Back to Reality a lot better.

 

As for the rest of the cast, Keanu Reeves looks and sounds Bored throughout this whole film as if he had put Neo behind him but Lana gave him a pitch he couldn’t refuse so he came back but wasn’t really interested so phoned it in, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II an actor I’ve really enjoyed watching recently just isn’t a patch on Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus and feels more like the Cat from Red Dwarf but he’s the Duke of Death instead of the Duke of Dork, Jonathan Groff just doesn’t really have the same fine art of scenery chewing that Hugo Weaving does while Neil Patrick Harris and Jessica Henwick shine the best out of the newcomers but they also can be a bit dull at times.

 

But the worst thing about this movie by some measure is the action scenes and this is so disappointing to say given that Lana directed all of the action scenes herself but the way they are edited is fucking atrocious and I sat there in the cinema thinking “Where is Zack Staenberg when you need him” as this films editor Joseph Jett Sally severely drops the ball here, it all goes by so quickly and so fast and looks so blurry that it hurts your eyes to watch them and that incredible high energy action has been such a highlight of this series and to see this movie drop the ball like this is really really disappointing.

 

And so that was the Matrix Resurrections and look its not awful not in the least for it has its moments and its nice to look at but honestly I wouldn’t bother just watch the first film and leave it at that as there’s very little new here to justify this sequel apart from Lana Wachowski cashing in a long standing IOU from Warner Brothers, 2 out of 5.