“A Quiet Place Part II”

When A Quiet Place Part II was removed from the release schedule at the beginning of the pandemic, I had no idea that it would be around 15 months later until I would actually finally get to see it. But see it I have. However, we’re now living in very troubled times, so how is a film which essentially is about humanity collapsing going to go down with this current audience? The first thing to mention is this is entirely the same team that did A Quiet Place returning—John Krasinski returns to both writing and directing duties and pretty much the entire cast returns, and takes place immediately following the events of A Quiet Place. Therefore, I feel it’s necessary to be rather vague in this review since I don’t want to give away too much for people that haven’t seen the first one. But if you haven’t seen the first one, I really recommend it; it’s a very well-executed horror film. It’s the primary function of cinema: show don’t tell, with a very simple concept executed well.

As for this film, it does take place immediately following the last, however I had my apprehension about that. I’ve never looked at the ending of A Quiet Place and thought, ‘I really want to see how this story is going to continue,’ and I did review the first one and I don’t want to repeat myself too much. So, since I don’t really want to give spoilers away, I’ll just talk about the few things I can talk about. First off, Cillian Murphy is cast this time and he actually does a very good job; he certainly takes it a rather unorthodox style for the film that he’s in. Once again, because of course the whole point is that the monsters are basically blind but have excellent hearing, and if you make any sort of noise they’ll know exactly where you are and how to kill you, the film is mostly done through gestures and sign language. And all the good points of the first film are repeated here. The use of sound is excellent; every slight noise adds a level of tension. I don’t think I commented on it last time—this term gets thrown around way too much and I’m completely guilty of that—but A Quiet Place really feels Lovecraftian. There’s never a moment in either film where there’s not a sense of presence surrounding the characters. Nowhere feels safe and any sort of noise could be your death. If anything, this film coming out in a post-pandemic environment feels much more real. Remember how we all had to get used to the idea that just being near another person is potentially lethal? This film really emphasizes the idea that just making any sort of sound is lethal, and I think that means that these films now kind of resonate more.

The acting is once again fantastic and I actually think the music score had improved, though I think that might be because it feels like this film puts a little more emphasis on the score; there’s certainly more of it this time around. John Krasinski also isn’t kept to his comfort zone. The original film took place over just a few locations so they got to use the main set for most of the film. This time there’s a bigger budget so the advantage has become that there are more environments to explore, and the film really translates well to it. As a result, the idea of the film has proven it can translate, so I think there could be a lot more done in this film’s continuity with side stories. That being said, by the end, I was kind of thinking that I’m not sure I want any more of A Quiet Place, but not because I think there’s something wrong with this film. The only weakness I found was that it’s paced in a way that makes it feel a bit longer than it actually is when it’s actually not that long of a film. Neither of them are and neither overstayed their welcome, though there are a couple of moments where it felt like a sequence was being dragged out a little bit, and not just for the sense of creating tension. There’s a moment where we’re cutting between a bunch of environments and it feels like cuts are a little too fast, for example, so a lot of what’s going on doesn’t have time to sink in. But the main reason is that A Quiet Place Part II feels like it’s a complete ending. I’m not sure where a third one would go at this point. If anything, if A Quiet Place would continue, I think the idea of doing spin-offs taking place before the events of the film would be preferable.

“Cruella”

Like many people, I’m asking why this film is here in the first place. I kind of get some of the motivation for making a Cruella film because Maleficent was somewhat of a success, but I kind of still thought it was an unwise idea at best. If anything, I actually would have taken another live-action 101 Dalmatians remake; it’s been a long time since we had the John Hughes film and a lot has changed. For one thing, it wouldn’t have to entirely try to capitalise on Hughes’s own success with Home Alone. And really, when you look back on that film it really is just Home Alone with dogs.

The film has been handed over to director Craig Gillespie whose last film they’d directed which I saw was I, Tonya, and he did a pretty decent job there. That being said though, none of the style he brought to that film seems to be here, bar a few scenes; it’s actually a much more over-the-top film this time, which obviously is not something a Disney production like this would call for. The film also makes an interesting choice in the casting, mainly with Emma Stone being cast in the lead role. Now, she has proven over the years she’s a very versatile actress so I thought if anyone could pull it off it would be her. And I was actually encouraged by interviews I’d heard of her talking about how she’d been looking into several previous versions of Cruella de Vil for the role. I’ll get more into my thoughts on what I thought about her as Cruella later. 

The film is basically a prequel of 101 Dalmatians, with Cruella still living under her real name of Estella, running away to London after her mother dies, and getting into street thievery with her new friends Jasper and Horace. This is up until her later years when she decides to try and break into the fashion business by trying to work with a fashion mogul named The Baroness, played by Emma Thompson, only to find that she has her mother’s necklace. Estella then vows to work with Jasper and Horace to do one more grift to steal it back, and the “Cruella” identity gets formed as part of this grift. Do you know what’s amazing? What I’ve described there is just, I’d say, the first quarter or third of the film; Cruella tries to pack in so much. And my biggest problem with the film? It’s way too long, and it’s not because they didn’t cut anything but because there’s too much stuff in it. Including credits, it’s 2 hours and 15 minutes. It’s one of the longest films in these recent Disney nostalgia-pandering films, and the nostalgia-pandering is a big thing to mention. The majority of this film takes place during London in the 70s, and the 70s nostalgia is in this film a lot. There are a lot of references to the fashion industry around the time and it’s especially noted in the soundtrack, with songs like ‘Sympathy for The Devil’ by The Rolling Stones and, no joke, ‘Now I Want to Be Your Dog’ by Iggy Pop and The Stooges which is one of the most on the nose song choices ever.

The question then becomes, ‘Well, what’s Cruella’s characterisation like?’ Well, at times they kind of do a decent job. The thing is though that they don’t nail that sympathetic-villain-but-who-at-the-end-of-the-day-is-still-a-villain-and-needs-to-be-stopped. For one thing, there’s no progression in a downfall or a change like there is in a film like, say, Joker, which was something I was comparing it to a lot. Whereas Joker was trying to be Taxi Driver and King of Comedy pushed together, Cruella is clearly trying to be Ocean’s Eleven and The Devil Wears Prada pushed together, two films which are very different; this really caused real a tonal dissonance. That being said, some of the set pieces for this film are actually some of the better parts of it. The fact of the matter is though that this film is about Cruella and there’s no real growth of her character. It’s just kind of like a light switch being turned on; Estella and Cruella are almost treated like two separate personalities.

And, I’m sorry, Cruella De Vil does not work as a sympathetic villain. Disney really wrote themselves into a corner with this character—she is one of the most out-and-out awful characters that Disney has ever created. She’s the love-to-hate villain. Fans of the Kingdom Hearts game were begging to fight her when those games were coming out and they still never got that opportunity despite the fact that the Dalmatians were featured in the first game. I would say if there’s one villain I’ve always said is very comparable with Cruella it’s the Penguin, since they’re both mocking representations of high society. Cruella throws in a bit of a mocking representation of the fashion industry also and people that see animals as a means to an end. Now, I’ve never read the book of 101 Dalmatians but from what I’ve heard they never really dived into her back story in the book version, so they had a bit of a blank canvas to work with. But it still doesn’t really work. I had to remind myself that this is Cruella De Vil—she’s going to steal 15 puppies, acquired through various means, and another 84 puppies which she intends to kill, skin, and turn into a coat! I can’t detach that from this. The only way they can do it is to try to make the Baroness inspiration/an even more awful version of her, and the way they pander to that is unbelievable. These are the lengths we’re having to go to not have Cruella be the worst person in the room? 

Emma Thompson plays the role of the Baroness fantastically and Emma Stone is good as Cruella, especially when she’s allowed to really be Cruella. She’s definitely borrowed quite a bit from previous versions but has also put her own little spin on it. In fact, the performances are actually pretty good all round. I like Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser as Jasper and Horace; John McCrea is pretty good as Artie, the fashion designer who Cruella recruits to start her label; and Mark Strong, as minimal as his screen-time is, is pretty good and plays into some of the later twists quite well. They even manage to put Roger and Anita in the whole thing to try and tie it into 101 Dalmatians.

Now, it’s not so much of a stretch with Anita considering that even in the original animated films and the books it’s mentioned that Cruella and Anita were friends from school, so that ties in fine, and Anita’s played this time by Kirby Howell-Baptiste who’s most remembered for being in the cast of Killing Eve. They’ve made a few changes, apart from the obvious fact that this time a black actress is in the role of Anita, and this time she’s not actually working in the fashion industry like she was in the John Hughes film (I don’t think they ever made it clear what Anita’s job was in the animated film). She’s now a high society photographer for a publication, and for some reason they actually called her ‘Anita Darling’ which, again, I haven’t read the book but I’m fairly convinced wasn’t actually her name in the book but just part of Cruella’s greeting—her first line is, “Anita, darling!” I don’t think she’s actually stating her full name.

Roger doesn’t get much to do in this one. He starts out as a lawyer for the Baroness who’s fired partway through the film as he’s basically telling the Baroness that they don’t have much legal action to take against Cruella and what she gets up to throughout most of the film, and they do tie it back briefly to his musician job on the side, but again he doesn’t really do much in the film. We do hear him play the classic song at one point during the film, and I suppose it’s nice to add a bit of extra context on why he doesn’t like Cruella, but Anita out of the original characters from the original film plays more of a role than he does. He’s played by Kayvan Novak from Fonejacker and does fine in the role, but for a guy who can transform himself almost effortlessly I would like to see Disney do a bit more with him in the future if they plan to cast him again.

Okay, now before I tear up this film any more, I would say there is something I like about the film: the costume design. That was one of the things they really had to nail for the film and the staff are doing a phenomenal job. When the next Oscars come around this had better be up for Best Costume Design as well as Best Hair and Makeup. Now to another one of biggest problems with Cruella: it feels very cynical in a sense, or at least it left me with a sense of cynicism. It’s very clearly a corporate cash grab and it completely feels like it. Partway through they kind of abandon this being a Cruella origin film and, as Angry Joe put it in his review—which you completely should watch by the way— by the end it’s almost a different character and they just make token references to what she could become. Even Jasper and Horace feel a little off at points. (That being said, I’m an Arsenal fan so seeing them be Tottenham supporters was a bit cathartic since they’re eventually going to become bad guys. I will not apologise for that low blow; feel free to fire one back.) That was my big problem with Cruella: the film feels very disjointed and it doesn’t feel very interesting in exploring its main character and getting her to the role she will become in a future story. And there is a post-credits scene that suggests that we might be getting a future adaptation of 101 Dalmatians. But they want you to go into that film not believing Cruella is the worst thing imaginable when I absolutely should. They made the biggest mistake trying to make her too sympathetic, and as a result I like the character a lot less.

It doesn’t help the fact that I don’t think Disney even really knew what kind of film they wanted to have and so they just threw every single film in there. As a result, I’d say Cruella is a very poorly executed film. There are parts of it that actually kind of work, hence why I don’t think it’s the worst of these recent Disney live-action films based on their old properties. I’d actually even say it’s probably better than Maleficent since it doesn’t completely drain everything from the characters that we liked like that film did, and it’s certainly not like the Beauty and the Beast and Lion King remakes which both have absolutely no reason to exist. But I can’t say I like this film as it feels confused and doesn’t really nail what it wants to nail. For example, they come up with a motivation for Cruella early on but then almost completely abandon it partway through. The first one has been joked and memed the hell out of since the film hit theatres and Disney Plus, but I don’t think that tells half the story. And by the way, when we said that was going to be Cruella’s motivation when we were talking about the film before the first trailers came out, we were joking! We didn’t actually want you to write that!

“Demon Slayer: Mugen Train”

Demon Slayer has been an Anime series made by Studio Ufotable who are famous for making excelling animation which goes above and beyond what most television broadcast Anime do. Demon Slayer was a big project for them, but it came at an interesting time because they were going through tax troubles, and ultimately it could have easily broken the studio down. This is despite the fact the studio had tremendous success, particularly in their work with the Fate/stay night franchise which had just been concluded with the final Heaven’s Feel film. Demon Slayer, however, was a massive critical success upon its release and even won the Crunchy Roll award for Anime of the Year last year.

Now, the first season did conclude with the announcement that the next portion of the story would be told in a film version, and despite the fact that the world was in a pandemic last year, not only did the film come out, it broke box office records. It’s currently one of the highest grossing Anime films ever and the second highest grossing Anime film in the US at the time of writing, falling short just behind Pokémon. Now, it definitely comes down to the fact that the first season was a tremendously popular product, but the fact that people were this willing to risk it during a pandemic to see this meant I had to go and see it. So, what a great way to get back to cinemas. Now, if you’ve ever watched the Anime Amigos video podcast that I’ve been making over the last few years, my colleagues and I talked a lot about Demon Slayer; we nominated it for Anime of the Year 2019 and it did finish very highly when we were finalising our results. Vinland Saga—available on Amazon Prime—won in the end if you’re curious. You can watch the video podcast on my YouTube channel if you want to get into the reasons why.

If you’d been watching those you’d kind of get a brief synopsis of the premise but, in case you don’t know, the premise of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train centres around a young man named Tanjiro looking after his family after their father dies. However, during a trip to town to sell his wares, his entire family bar one of his little sisters is violently killed by a demon, and his little sister Nezuko is transformed into a demon. Appealing to humanity and convincing a local demon slayer that there’s still some of her humanity in there, he searches for a way to bring back her humanity, train and join the Demon Slayer Corps, and hunt down all the demons responsible for killing his family. Other than that, it’s a pretty typical battle shounen Anime, the main side cast apart from Tanjiro consisting of Nezuko and another two swordsmen that join the Corps: Zenitsu and Inosuke.

Following the conclusion of Season 1, which was kind of a bit of damp rag if I’m honest—they didn’t really end on a climactic fight and there was a long, drawn-out build into this storyline—the second arc is now told through this film. Tanjiro, Inosuke, Zenitsu and Nezuko all travel on a train to the town of Mugen whilst meeting up with one of the masters, Rengoku, who’s investigating several different seemingly demon-related disappearances on this train line. Now, it’s a very basic premise but it is also akin to the belief that you have seen the first season of Demon Slayer. That being said, it doesn’t go into too much lore. There are a few flashbacks occasionally and some of the sequences in the film tie into Tanjiro’s origins but I would ultimately make the judgement that you will get something out of it if you haven’t seen Demon Slayer’s first season, though prior knowledge is definitely a benefit.

Sadly, for some purists within the Anime community, British cinemas I found were not offering to see the film with the original Japanese cast and subtitles, only the English language dub which has been made by Funimation Entertainment. My opinion of the English language cast is that they’re actually pretty good choices. The standout for me is Mark Whitten in the role of Rengoku; he gives an excellent performance this time around. The cast as a whole though is actually pretty damn good for the most part. The narrative is also pretty well done. It does at times feel like several of what would be episodes of a season bolted together, though not in the most obvious way that some terribly cut together Anime films have done in the past. The fact that this is entirely new content, the content they do give is excellent. Demon Slayer is based on a Manga series, but I haven’t read that far ahead in the source material to know whether anything was actually cut for the film. The film has a run-time of two hours which is just short of what you’d expect from ten episodes of a standard series, credits included, so I imagine not much has been cut from this arc, though I’m certain there will be someone who will point out otherwise.

One of the things that I think the Mugen Train does well is it once again makes sure to put Tanjiro as the core focus and really relays his motivations in a way the series had kind of gotten away from. But I was actually surprised how emotional the film was by the end. There were a lot of very heavy moments throughout the story; I keep forgetting just how well-written Demon Slayer is. It does quite well at the beginning balancing this out with some great comedy but it almost that drops entirely to be a brilliant action story by the end. And, my word, the fight scenes are phenomenal; they were great in the TV series but in the film they nailed it. The animation team made the most of the budget and stole the show brilliantly: the addition of digital animation is excellent and there are some real bursts of colour brought to the mix.

The use of colour has always been something very interesting in Demon Slayer as demons can only go out at night, so as a result all the action scenes usually have to be shot in dark environments. There was genius therefore in using very bright primary colours for the protagonists and especially their attacks, which usually consists of some of the classic elements and their bi-products like fire, water, lightning—you catch my drift—and this is used to great effect here as well. And one of the things I was asking before this film came out was how they were going to really use this train as a setting for this story, but they actually do a very good job of it, mainly down to the use of this film’s villain Enmu who I’ve described as a plotting manipulator villain. He’s also another excellent part of the film.

If there’s one thing that lets the film down, despite the fact it has excellent character arcs and nails them completely, I think the ending might not be too satisfying for everyone. This is kind of a middle arc within the story, so while it does have a complete ending, because of its connection to the source material, it does have to set up for future stories. It wouldn’t have been too much of a problem except that season 2 of Demon Slayer has already been confirmed and will follow on from this film, so if you haven’t had a chance to see this film by the time the second season comes out which is aimed to be later this year (Japan’s COVID situation depending, of course), you could be missing some major bits of information down the line. I’m hoping a Blu-Ray release will come in the very near future.

“Army of the Dead”

Army of the Dead is a 2.5-hour Netflix film that’s been written and directed by Zack Snyder and is his first completed work in a long time, not counting his work on the Snyder cut Justice League (which I still haven’t watched by the way). I’ve said a lot of the time that I do not like Zack Snyder’s films for the most part. I can only name 2 films I like: 300 which kind of suits his style even though it’s based on wildly inaccurate takes on what the politics of Sparta and Persia were at the time, and his remake of Dawn of the Dead which I just kind of tolerate for the most part. I’m not really a fan of it, even if it did actually get a lot of people to listen to Disturbed after the fact since their song ‘Down With The Sickness’ was the main theme.

Zack Snyder’s now gone back to the zombie world again to make this new film, which I wasn’t even aware of until I watched a WWE pay-per-view where they inexplicably made a promotion for it, probably due to the fact that the main star is former WWE superstar Dave Bautista. But when I looked into it, this is really a Zack Snyder film full through and through. He’s not only the writer and director but he’s also the producer. So, yeah, this is really him more than anything else. And I get a sense that this was going to Netflix prior to the pandemic. You can definitely tell based on the runtime, the gratuitous amounts of gore, and some large portions of basically gratuitous nudity, aiming to get around having to deal with making a cut for cinemas. Netflix really has become a breeding ground for writers, directors and stars that everyone’s kind of getting tired of and have realised they’re not going to make a big buck out of putting their films in cinemas. There’s a reason why Michael Bay and Adam Sandler have retired there, though that being said Adam Sandler obviously is now starting to make a comeback after doing more dramatic performances which—credit where credit’s due—he’s done a pretty good job with.

The premise of Army of the Dead is very simple: Dave Bautista leads a heist team to go into a relatively recently infected zombie-infested Las Vegas to obtain a bunch of money for the American government, as well as some undisclosed property of theirs. Honestly, the fact they’re hired by the American government is so unnecessary for the plot I think you could cut it and make it a pure heist film and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. And it’s frankly not much more than that. There’s a whole thing around the zombies having this sort of hierarchical system, and there’s a king and queen of the zombies and the zombie tiger which has been heavily put in the advertising. It really doesn’t feel like there’s much change there, however. I don’t honestly get where this film is going in terms of its direction. I suppose Snyder has played the Resident Evil games, but in Resident Evil’s case there’s actually a very good reason why there’s a different variety of monsters around: they’re deliberately genetically designed monsters created through viral research, so it makes sense that manmade bio-weapons would have all these different properties. I don’t know if the main zombie king that’s super intelligent is designed by the American government because they never elaborate on it. How does the hierarchical system work? There’s not too much variety either—there are only two intelligent zombies in this whole thing so it kind of detracts from whatever the film was going for with it.

One of the biggest problems with Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead is he tried to keep a lot of George Romero’s commentary about commercialization and consumerism from the original film but he kind of dumbs it down which I would say is a fair criticism. The best zombie films have subtle commentary, not completely absent or hit-you-over-the-face-with-the-word-commentary-written-on-it, something I describe for the previously reviewed film, The Dead Don’t Die. And like that film, this one’s a slog but it doesn’t have that level of commentary. I frankly think it’s worse than Dawn of the Dead in that sense. There’s some sort of vague commentary against ice and the American government’s treatment of immigration from Latin America, particularly considering this was probably written around the end of the Trump administration. But they never go all out with it; it’s a minor point of the film and none of it’s even really tied in that much with the zombies. The zombies themselves don’t really reflect it in any way, shape or form, and the society hasn’t really been molded much more differently since this is not really an apocalypse, it’s a contained apocalypse. Take, for example, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead which I actually re-watched recently in preparation for this film. It’s a really good watch, seriously worth it. In that film, George Romero does a good job with the whole idea of the zombies mindlessly gathering at a mall knowing that there are survivors inside. It was a nice, subtle take on vapid consumerism, and that was prior to the mall craze hitting the States. George Romero was ahead of his time in this instance.

In the case of Army of the Dead, any sort of commentary is done away with and has virtually nothing to do with the zombies that have invaded Vegas. It’s also undercut, considering that the actual Sean Spicer has a cameo in this one. Yes, Trump’s first very controversial press secretary that appeared on the American version of Strictly Come Dancing has a cameo as a right-wing pundit on a debate show about nuking Vegas. I just felt like pointing that out considering that Netflix is now paying a congenital liar who’s twisted facts, and after the fact wouldn’t denounce false claims of a rigged US election, and he’s brought in for just a joke. What’s more, he’s not really acting in these scenes; he’s just being himself, and he doesn’t realise he’s being made to be a parody so it doesn’t even really work. What did Ben Shapiro see through this role when you offered him the cameo?

Politics aside, the crew that they put together is so dull and uninteresting. You’d think with a 2.5-hour run time you’d have enough time to build up these characters, but I don’t remember any of them by their names and I wrote this a couple of days after seeing it! I just remember there’s the YouTube star; the safe cracker who looks like one of the cast of Trainspotting; the racist security guard who you know is going to die in a terrible manner; the obvious traitor who you also know is going to get killed in the most brutal way possible and you’re just waiting for it to happen; Dave Bautista’s daughter who obviously has plot armor through most of the film (in case anyone’s wondering, plot armor means that you can’t die for a certain portion of the film); the helicopter pilot who’s barely in the movie, and now I’m running out of characters to talk about. No one’s very interesting, and most of them don’t really feel like they bring an extra skill to the table; the only one who really does in the safe cracker. That’s it.

The film is dumb as well. Now, I don’t mind dumb films but this is particularly dumb and really dull. I can’t stress enough that this film is 2.5 hours long and it has absolutely no right to be so. I was thoroughly bored in the first half—it’s as dull as tar. I didn’t really even start paying attention to it until we got to a sequence around sleeping zombies which actually was based on a cool idea but is shot so appallingly that you can’t tell anything that’s happening. And while I’m on the subject, the cinematography is really ropey at times. There are some genuinely very well-done shots but there were some sequences that were so hard to make out that they just looked awful. But if I’m going to talk about anything in particular it’s the gore. There are some genuinely good gore effects in this film, but after a while they start to lose their luster. And that’s a decent metaphor for the film: it’s a decent idea for a film but it’s not well-thought-out enough.

Army of the Dead is a decent Netflix film but I’m glad this wasn’t the first film I went back to cinemas to see as there are much better movies coming in the next couple of weeks that make it even more worth getting that second vaccine. The film is a very slow, dull experience that doesn’t have memorable characters and feels like it’s too long, with a lot of sound and nothing else. There are some decent ideas for a zombie movie here but this definitely needed another rewrite. But I’m at least glad Zack Snyder is back making films. I’ll be honest, I stand by my comments that I’ve not liked any of his DC movies (granted I haven’t seen his cut of Justice League but that’s another matter), and I will freely admit that Sucker Punch is still one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. But he seems like a very decent person who’s never really compromised on what he wants to make, which I can at least respect. And he at least hasn’t actively deceived the public like other directors have. Looking at you, Michael Bay, with Pearl Harbor and your Benghazi movie which was actively used to promote Donald Trump’s election campaign, you wazzock!

Well, last week was the final week of lists. As of this point, I’m only going to post something if I have something to review, particularly in light of the fact that cinemas are coming back in the next couple of weeks. I intend to aim to get a consistent schedule of film reviews out. If necessary, I’ll be filling in the blanks by doing some catch-up reviews of some films that went directly to streaming services rather than their cinema releases.

Mortal Kombat is a fairly recent release; it feels good that this film has finally come out. It feels like forever that a new Mortal Kombat film had been in development hell. The project had been passed around with various individuals involved, James Wan finally getting the go ahead to make this new film as the producer and bringing on director Simon McQuoid. Though, really, Greg Russo is really a big part of this project as well, coming on to write the screenplay and develop the story. Greg Russo is an interesting choice given that he’s not the most experienced of writers but clearly has a love for videogames. He’s even been penned to write the script for the upcoming Space Invaders film.

Now, if you’re familiar with Mortal Kombat, the plot is virtually identical to the videogames: The thunder god Raiden summons a group of champions to defend Earth from the forces of Outworld led by Shang Tsung, who in this version is played by Chin Han, in a tournament known as Mortal Kombat. If Earth loses, Outworld is completely within their rights to invade. The plot is in many ways quite similar to the film from the 90s, the big difference being this one now has an R-rating, Jax has something to do this time, Johnny Cage isn’t in the film unfortunately, and Liu Kang’s role has been rather downgraded. He’s not the main character this time; that role goes to Cole Young played by Lewis Tan, an MMA fighter who’s been invented entirely for the film.

Cole was an interesting character and the choice of his inclusion is a rather interesting one. This film’s done a very good job actually getting actors of the nationalities of their characters, and it’s definitely an issue that Warner Bros got cold feet and didn’t believe that they could sell a multimillion-dollar film on an Asian lead—which is unfortunately still kind of a believed practice for Hollywood—because Lewis Tan is an actor of Chinese descent and he’s also playing an Asian character. So, as a result, on that basis you kind of wonder why you’d invent a character and not give the star role to Liu Kang, who is in this film played by Ludi Lin. But when I actually finished watching the film, I actually thought they made a wise choice. Liu Kang to me has always come off as a rather dull and ancillary character. Some of the games develop him quite well but he’s never been that interesting, whereas Cole has a lot more at stake for his role—he has a family to protect and he builds good connections with his fellow chosen one, Sonya Blade, who’s played by McNamee. Kano is played by Josh Lawson.

If there’s one thing I think this film really does well it’s the back and forth between the characters; I think they nail that. What I also think they nail is the gore. Let’s be honest: the real reason we all wanted a Mortal Kombat reboot is that none of the films up to this point nailed the over-the-top fatalities and the sheer blood and guts that the games give you. The R-rating for this film means they can go all out with it and they absolutely do. There are actually some very good special effects for these sequences which is a bit of an issue when you realise that not all the special effects hold up very well. I’m particularly looking at the computer effects they used to make Reptile: while his fight scene with Kano is really awesome, it definitely didn’t look like a lot of the budget when to rendering him. Some of the effects though are pretty decent. Again, the gore works well and it’s very clear that’s where the budget went.

And, again, there’s a decent selection of characters this time around. Some of the favourites aren’t here—Johnny Cage is missing and he’s probably the biggest absence; Shao Kahn who’s basically the main villain of the entire Mortal Kombat franchise isn’t around, but I wasn’t expecting him to turn up in the first film as Shang Tsung was always going to be the main villain. Kind of also there was Sub-Zero who always fulfills a major villain role this time around, and most of the others are kind of nitpicks that didn’t really make appearances, a lot of characters that could easily turn up in future films like Kitana or Nightwolf, etc. The problem I have with the villains, particularly with Shang Tsung, is that they’re trying to go for a rather menacing villainous plotter with tons of power that’s being built up for a big moment, but he doesn’t really do much in the film. Shang Tsung is supposed to be a very menacing plotter and they definitely get that down but I think the director was not willing to have Shang Tsung emote too much, not something he’s exactly known to do in the games so it’s a rather bizarre choice.

I also think this is a film where its second half is much better than its first half—the first half feels like a bit of a drag at times because it feels like they’ve really slowed down the film to get everyone on board, and I don’t think that was the worst choice but I think it goes on a bit too long. In fact, the climax—which is the best part of the film—feels almost like it’s too soon, and as a result this film feels a lot shorter than it actually is. Including credits, it comes in at an hour and 50 minutes but it feels like it goes by very quickly. They are also definitely building up this film to be the beginning of a franchise. While it is self-contained enough that it’s not a total disaster in this regard, it definitely feels like it’s sequel-baiting a lot. But the fight scenes look cool, they’re very well-choreographed and all the actors can pull them off, and it looks completely like Mortal Kombat; they nailed a lot of the effects very well to make the fighters look distinct. And I actually think the music score is excellent, really putting in moments of that iconic theme. By the way, the updated techno remix that’s been made for this film is awful. That theme was perfect; it did not need whatever the hell was done with this one.

Since I’ve been doing these countdowns to supplement my time away from cinema, Disney and the Oscars seem to have been two things that I’ve been constantly going back to. And, well, I didn’t have to really give my opinion on the Oscars in 2021, but once again Disney had a major presence. It’s no surprise that they are the studio that has won more Oscars that any other, whether through their own studios or affiliate studios. As such, I wanted to look back on all the wins that they achieved over the many, many decades.

So, I looked at every single Oscar winner who got the Oscar by making its film for Disney studios or one of their affiliates. The rules of this list are very simple: If Disney had a hand in it, you can be on this list. Surprisingly, this worked out way more for the ‘Best Of’ list than it did for the ‘Worst Of’ list; this is because Disney is very good at making aggressive For Your Consideration campaigns and tend to pump a lot more money into it than many of the other five big studios. One of those studios obviously now is even a part of Disney so they have less competition.

And it’s probably no surprise that Disney and Disney affiliate studios walked away this year with five Oscars: Best Animated Feature and Score for Soul and Best Picture Director and Actress for Nomadland. (By the way, I haven’t seen Nomadland or Soul so those Oscar wins were not considered for this list.) I was judging these on the basis of what the win meant for the individuals involved and their contribution to film; what the competition was like for the films they ran against—I especially went into detail when I looked up rather egregious Oscar wins—; if the Oscar went to a plainly bad film in the case of the worst; and, most particularly, how the Oscar win looks in hindsight.

So let’s start with the worst, and this was surprisingly easier to find than I thought. Looking at it, they made some pretty bad decisions when it came to some of these films. Now, I want to point out that some of them in this case are actually good films—mainly numbers five and four which are films I like—but I still object to their Oscar wins. There were some other considerations I had, for example, Dick Tracy winning a lot of Oscars in 1991 was a particularly egregious decision considering that that film has really not held up. I also considered Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest winning Best Visual Effects considering that its visual effects are not that great in hindsight, though there are less obvious computer effects being used compared to the first film. And I also considered 2000 Leagues Under the Sea winning Best Visual Effects but, to be fair, at the time that was probably considered very good. I also was seriously considering Pearl Harbor winning in 2002 for Best Sound Editing but, to be fair, the sound editing is not terrible in that film, it’s just everything else about that film that’s terrible.

Without further ado, here are the five worst Disney Oscar wins.

5. Toy Story 4 wins Best Animated Feature in 2020

This is the most recent entry on the list, but at the time this bothered me, probably a lot more than it should have. Toy Story 4 is my least favourite of the Toy Story films; I think it has the least amount to say and doesn’t really feel like much of a progression of what was going on in Toy Story at the time. But the thing that really bothers me as well about it is Toy Story 4 really did not need this Oscar. Pixar didn’t need it for a start, and the other 3 Toy Story films had all won Best Animated Feature in their respective years that they were nominated, with the exception of Toy Story 1 though it did win a few Oscars. (It only didn’t win Best Animated Feature because that award didn’t exist at that point.) Basically, it was a lack of need, and there were a bunch of other animated films nominated that year that could have easily got a win, and even some that didn’t even get nominated. It really was a prime example of money talking ahead of which films really wanted to see get honoured that year.

4. Tarzan wins Best Original Song in 2000

Okay, there are two reasons why I don’t like this win: 1. They picked the worst song in the film to go for: ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’ did not deserve the nomination. I really love Tarzan’s soundtrack; I actually think it’s probably Phil Collin’s best work since leaving Genesis and going solo, but if I was going to pick a song to be nominated for Best Original Song from that album, I would have been much more inclined to pick ‘Strangers Like Me’ or ‘Son of Man’; even ‘Two Worlds’ or ‘Trash in the Camp’ would have made more sense. So, not only have they picked the worst song in the film to give the win to, it was up against ‘Blame Canada’ from South Park. Put it this way: which song are people still listening to over two decades after they came out? No one’s listening to ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’; everyone’s still listening to ‘Blame Canada’. They picked a really bad, schmaltzy song that didn’t really tie into the film very well over a song that ties into the film brilliantly and talks on a social issue that’s still going on to this day of overbearing parents blaming media and art for their children’s bad behaviour, and that didn’t get the win? You even had Robin Williams performing it at the Oscars! How did that not win?!

3. Alice in Wonderland wins Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction in 2011

Okay, Alice in Wonderland (2010) is a really bad film, and by that I mean easily a contender for Tim Burton’s worst movie, horribly miscast, really morose and grimy-looking, and has a plot which is way too complicated for what is an Alice in Wonderland story (you know, a story that’s all about nonsense). Look at the wins it got. Okay, Best Costume Design? Maybe—they did have some out-there costumes, but even then I think there were some better nominations that year. But Best Art Direction? That is genuinely one of the worst qualities of this film. It is really bad in that department. This isn’t something that you could even say in hindsight; at the time people were saying that this film looked terrible. Everything’s way too dark, even by Burton’s standards. And it’s not as if that’s fitting to the Alice in Wonderland aesthetic—traditionally, Alice in Wonderland has always been very bright with primary colours. It’s very hard to do a dark take on Alice in Wonderland. Tim Burton might have been able to pull it off, but the fact that his art department won this Oscar is shocking.

2. Song of the South wins Best Song in 1948

I kind of find it interesting, this one. Okay, to be fair this is incredibly a hindsight thing; you can’t really expect people in 1948 to have the same racial sensitivity that people now have in 2021 but that doesn’t change the fact that this is still a very, very uncomfortable Oscar. And Disney probably wants you to forgot that this Oscar exists. That’s one of the major reasons why Song of the South has never been reprinted for DVD or wide circulation. Trust me, if you got some sort of copy of Song of the South right now, you are sitting on a goldmine on eBay. Just be aware you’re probably selling it to potentially disreputable sources in a moral sense of the word. Look, it’s very easy to say that this is completely a hindsight thing but I would be remiss not to include it and not to say it was one of the worst decisions since it’s not a film we can look back on very well anymore. That being said, number 1 did not have that hindsight excuse.

1. Pocohontas wins Best Original Song in 1996

Okay, Pocohontas picked up two awards: Best Original Score—more on that later—and Best Original Song. Now, at that time all the Disney Renaissance films won those two Oscars. I have shown my displeasure for this song on several occasions; I even put it in another list of bad Oscar decisions. But, man, do I hate this decision! The song that got nominated and won was ‘Colors of the Wind’. Okay, for a start, that’s the second to worst song in the film, the worst being ‘Just Around The Riverbend’. Say what you like about ‘Mine, Mine, Mine’ but at least that song’s kind of catchy. So, once again, you picked one of the worst songs in the film to nominate. Secondly, not only is this a bad song but this is really going into Native American stereotypes that we were really realising were not great at the time, let alone now. And keep in mind this film’s meant to be Disney’s attempt at racial sensitivity to get the big Oscar wins; this is basically what passed for progressiveness in the 1990s. And this was to such an extent that people were leaving The Lion King to work on this film.

Also, ‘Colors Of The Wind’ is lyrically terrible. Look at all those songs that won Best Original Song that came from Disney studios and you would never put ‘Colors of the Wind’ against them. ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’ is a better song than ‘Colors Of The Wind’. The reason I hate ‘Just Beyond The Riverbend’ more is because it has all the same problems as ‘Colors Of The Wind’ and it’s just done to break up part of the film and doesn’t serve any purpose whatsoever; at least ‘Colors Of The Wind’ serves some purpose narratively in the plot, and I guess that people at the time were taken aback by the animation used for the sequence. But, believe me, in hindsight the whole can’t-we-all-just-get-along-and-live-with-nature theming does not hold up brilliantly.

Okay, now onto the best decisions. And believe me, Disney got some well-deserved Oscars over the years. One of the things I found surprising with this one is that the major of these came from Disney affiliations, not Disney themselves. Three out of the two were from Disney affiliated studios, but they were in charge of distribution so this counts to the list. Let’s go.

5. Beauty and the Beast wins Best Score and Best Song

Okay, I mentioned before that Disney at this time was guaranteed these two Oscars ever since The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast was definitely one of them to succeed in that department. I seriously considered giving this to Aladdin but if I took the two together, while I think the score is better, I don’t think the song that was chosen to win was the deserved choice—‘A Whole New World’ won even though it was also nominated against ‘Friend Like Me’ which failed, probably because Robin Williams was still having a very public feud with Disney at the time and refused to perform the song at the Oscars, and that public feud probably didn’t help with the For Your Consideration campaign. (For more information on that, check out Lindsey Ellis’s video on the subject; it’s a fascinating watch.) So, while I did think that Aladdin’s soundtrack is overall slightly better than Beauty and the Beast, I think if you take the two Oscars that were earned, Beauty and the Beast did better. Obviously, Beauty and the Beast has a great score done by Alan Menken and Howard Ashmen who composed all the songs around this time, and I really felt their contribution to Disney meant I had to put one of their wins on the list, and, well, this one definitely is one of the most deserved. They did a brilliant job bringing to life the story and I think they picked the right song. Granted, it’s not my favourite song from the movie as that would go to ‘Kill The Beast’, —there was no way that was getting nominated—and if you take them as a whole, I think it was a good choice. Really, Beauty and the Beast is a brilliant film and I think it’s really underappreciated, well-deserving of the 1992 Oscars.

4. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? wins several technical awards and a Special Achievement Award in 1988

Roger Rabbit walked away with Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. The visual effects in particular seriously deserved that nomination. Honestly, go back and watch Roger Rabbit—it’s very well-integrated with the live-action actors. Also, Roger Rabbit is a seriously well-done film and I’m glad it got the honorary mentions. Disney giving their blessing to have their characters appear with Warner Bros characters for the first time really adds to those scenes. Who can forget the piano battle between Donald and Daffy? It’s also great to go back and watch because some of the original Disney actors were giving their final performances in their iconic roles. Roger Rabbit is always going to be an influential film that were going to look back on fondly and I think these Oscars are very well-deserved.

3. Chicago wins Best Picture in 2003

Chicago won a whole bunch of Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress, Best Sound Mixing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, but, most importantly, it won Best Picture. Chicago is very deserving of that Oscar. Unlike most musicals, it gets around the absurdity of it by having all the musical numbers being non-diegetic (they’re kind of all taking place within the characters’ heads, not actually in the scenes). I’m actually kind of surprised it didn’t win Best Song for ‘He Had It Coming’, and it feels weird that it didn’t succeed for Best Original Score as well. That being said, all its Oscar wins are very well-deserved. Chicago is actually a much better film than I remembered, having watched it during the pandemic as research for a previous list I did. And I think it was absolutely the right decision for it to win.

2. Coco wins Best Original Song in 2018

Okay, there’s a reason why this one topped the list. I talked a lot about the song that shouldn’t have got the nomination getting nominating and winning, but this was the absolute right song to pick. ‘Remember Me’ got the nomination and eventual win and it was well-deserved. It’s the song that is the complete emotional crux of Coco which is already a phenomenal film with one of Disney’s best soundtracks. They could have picked any version of ‘Remember Me’ because it keeps changing throughout the film to match; that’s how good and versatile a song it is. This was absolutely the right decision for the win, and like many Oscars, we’re going to look back and say, “Yes, that was the absolute right decision.”

1. Spirited Away wins Best Animated Feature in 2003

Yes, this counts—Ghibli was a Disney-affiliated studio at the time. Disney distributed the movie in America. Disney kind of shot themselves in the foot with this one. They got three nominations that year because it was up against Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch, which is even more ironic considering that the actress who played Lilo also played Chihiro in the English language dub for this film. It’s not just the fact that it was nominated against two of Disney’s really great films, but it absolutely deserved the win. Spirited Away is one of the greatest movies ever made and the fact it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture is astounding. You can’t even say it won anything at the Baftas that year which really was a bad decision in itself.

Look, I’ll be honest; I’m not perfect. But, most of the time, when I put out a review my opinion does not change on the film. However, for whatever reason there are a whole bunch of reviews that I look back on whenever I occasionally want to re-read what I wrote about some films—which, considering how long I’ve been doing this is getting harder and harder to do—and wish I’d done something differently. Most of the time my opinion doesn’t really change, though occasionally I’ll either soften my opinion of a film or I’ll actually end up thinking the film is a bit worse; usually or possibly on a second viewing because I’m watching it with a friend, or for whatever reason it just happened to be on. However, there are very few times when I think if you read that review you probably wouldn’t get a good idea of my current opinion.

The following six movies are reviews where I really think if you read now you would not get my current opinion of these films. I don’t want to rank these because I think that’s not going to serve much of a purpose since, again, this is a lot more subjective and personal, so I’m simply going to list these in alphabetical order. The rules are simple: These reviews were ones where some aspect of the review really does not reflect my current opinion at the time of writing at the end of April of 2021. It has to be a film I’ve written about, not just one that I’ve seen on multiple occasions and changed my opinion, and it has to be ones where I kind of wish I had a better perspective on my first viewing. So with that, let’s get on with it.

Alien Covenant

I gave Alien Covenant a pretty decent review upon first viewing and I think that’s just because I kind of was desperate for something remotely resembling classic Alien films after Prometheus, which is the film I didn’t enjoy at the time and still don’t enjoy now. Alien Covenant, however, is not the answer. I don’t know what I was on giving this film a good review—Alien Covenant fails in virtually everything it tries to do. It’s not exactly, in a sense, Lovecraftian like the original Alien was, and it’s not badass action either. It’s just a kind of weird mess of trying to bridge the plot elements of Prometheus with the larger canonical aspects of Alien. And if anything, it doesn’t succeed in that at all. (In fact, if you want a storyline that does kind of go back to the roots of the Alien franchise, play the videogame Alien Isolation—it really captures the horror elements of the franchise that’s been missing for quite some time.)

The other big problem is the fact that there are no real defined characters in this film. I couldn’t tell you anything about any of them. I just remember one of them is played by Danny Huston, and Michael Fassbender reprises his role as the Android from Prometheus but now he’s playing dual roles. I really like Michael Fassbender as an actor and he gives one the best performances in this film, but it’s also an incredibly self-indulgent idea on the part of the writers, including one of the weirdest moments I have ever seen on film, which raised much more questions than answers. Bottom line: If I reviewed Alien Covenant today, I think I’d say it’s a step up from Prometheus, but even taking that extra step up, you’re still wading your way through the muck.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I think with this one I was so desperate for it to be good I kind of just tried to see some of the good ideas and pretended to myself that they were pulled off well. Everything about Batman v Superman is a failure. It has no idea what to do with any of the characters or the plotlines and is clearly just set up for future films, now most of which will never come. I’m glad Zack Synder finally got to make his version of Justice League at last because people have really convinced me that it’s good that he got to execute it, and while I haven’t seen his cut of Justice League yet because I really don’t have the patience to watch a 4-hour film, I have heard it’s more coherent so he might have been building to something.

But I think it doesn’t address a lot of the fundamental problems I had with Batman v Superman. Synder I don’t think really gets these characters; I think he still kind of sees them on a surface level which I mentioned when I talked about his adaptation of Watchmen. Though that’s not to say there’s not some good ideas in this one. I still kind of like the fact that Ben Affleck is playing a rather emotionally broken version of Batman that’s even less trusting than usual. but I don’t think it helped that this film came out relatively close to Captain American: Civil War, and I remember I was watching a Mitch Benn video where he summed it up best: In Captain America: Civil War, Steve and Tony come to a real disagreement on principles, neither of which are entirely correct or incorrect, and as a result the film becomes a battle of ideals. That makes the whole inevitable conflict between the two so tragic. In Batman v Superman, not only have we not had time to know these characters since we only had one Superman film prior to this and no Batman films, but they can’t even work on the thing they’re building up which is Batman’s distrust of Superman. The only reason they fight in this is because Lex Luther kidnaps Superman’s mum which leads to the scene that would create a million facepalms.

There are also several moments where Synder really doesn’t make Superman all that powerful. He has great x-ray vision but can’t detect a bomb in a wheelchair? Very embarrassing considering that he could detect six bombs across Las Vegas in the Justice League animated series which had a much more serious tone than this film and gave more respect to the characters. And also, why can’t Superman just get his mum back from a bunch of less powerful guards? Granted, it does lead to one of the best action scenes with Batman in live action but I don’t think it was worth the price. Bottom line: my Batman v Superman review would have been way more negative if I could go back over it.

Hereditary

Hereditary is probably the one I’d need to change the least out of this lot, since if you read that review you would get the most accurate opinion. Hereditary is still a great film. The acting is brilliant, the use of editing to create scares is great, and it understands atmosphere better than most horror films that I’ve seen in recent memory. But if there’s one thing I would change, I think I gave the ending much more credit than it deserved. The ending to Hereditary in my opinion is not so good. While I think it nails the plot twist that is being set up, it’s so balls to the wall and out of tone with the rest of the film that it doesn’t feel right per se. But, as a whole, that’s the only thing I would change about the review; I just kind of think if you read that review you’d think I enjoyed it as a whole and wouldn’t get the sense that I thought the ending was a bit off.

Huntsmen: Winter’s War

Oh, what the hell was I thinking? I was way too easy on this film. It’s unbelievably unremarkable. Seriously, when I was going through this film in my head after seeing it, I couldn’t remember a thing about it. I just remember Chris Hemsworth was in it and they wanted to try to add an extra happy ending on that really bland Snow White film with the girl from Twilight in, and now Chris Hemsworth is here again, and for some reason there’s weird CGI Rob Brydon and Nick Frost giving very cringeworthy performances. And I’m getting this from looking up clips; I seriously don’t remember anything about this film, and the fact I gave it a half-decent review I think was a bad decision. This is just bland and forgettable. I bet most of you don’t even remember this film came out just by my mentioning it. Honestly, I don’t remember the circumstances that led to this review turning out the way it did. Let’s just leave it there.

Moana

This is a bit of a change. I don’t know why I was so down in parts on this film because, honestly, Moana has held up remarkably well. I think the comparisons to Frozen I kept making were very unjust considering the two films are thematically very different. Though I stand by that ‘How Far I’ll Go’ sounds way too close to ‘Let It Go’ for it to be pure coincidence, the soundtrack as a whole I think is better than Frozen’s, many because Lin Manuel Miranda has proven that is a very talented songwriter and what he brings to the film works out well. That’s why the song ‘You’re Welcome’ works out so well in spite of the fact The Rock doesn’t suit that song entirely from a vocal performance perspective.

A lot of people say The Rock can’t sing at all, but that’s not the case. Anyone who watched some of his older gimmicks in his time as a wrestler, particularly his Hollywood gimmick, will know that he can actually sing pretty well, particularly on acoustic guitar and folk music. But the thing is that Moana, especially the song ‘You’re Welcome’, is done in the style of a show tune, something that’s very hard to do. This is a similar problem to why Russell Crowe’s performance is rather stunted in the Les Misérables adaptation, though the difference is that Lin Manuel Miranda works much better with The Rock than the music directors on Les Misérables worked with Russell Crowe. It’s also actually amazing how well Moana works out from plot point to plot point. It actually has a really great story structure and cares a lot about its main protagonist. I seriously think I undersold this film when it came out because Moana’s great. You really should see it if you haven’t already.

Patema Inverted

The final one goes back to very early days. I really liked Patema Inverted when I first saw it. I even said it was the second-best film that came out in 2014, falling short of The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki. But after a re-watch, it would never get that high again. After my real experience with watching a lot more Anime movies, Patema Inverted is just okay. Let me clarify a few things that I still think are great: the animation quality, the concept which is genuinely interesting, and the story between the main characters also works out well. But that’s about where the praises kind of end. As a plot as a whole, it’s kind of a bit all over the place. There’s a lot of unexplained elements that you’re just sort of meant to go along with.

Which Streaming Service is Best?

I decided this week as I didn’t really have a film to review that I wanted to talk not necessarily about particular films but how we actually are now accessing those films. Now, this is hopefully going to be changing in the next couple of months as the current pandemic status suggests that we should be getting back to cinemas within the next few weeks. But, in the meantime, I think we have to consider the possibility that without serious financial backing for cinemas they are going to disappear within the next couple of years.

Now, all of the major studios have been looking for subtle ways to wind down the cinema experience and move people to streaming services; the pandemic more has just given them an excuse to speed up that process, and we’ve certainly seen it happen now. Warner Bros have already said that all their films coming out this year will receive some on-demand streaming access, mainly through HBO Max in the United States, and in the UK most of them are going to Sky Cinema. And Disney have moved a lot of their bigger releases to cost extra on the Disney Plus Service. And, of course, this means that if cinemas go we’re going to be paying a lot more for our films. Netflix, for example, could with the spate of competition charge more for their subscription service; Disney could have several tiers of subscriptions services in order to access new releases, or worse: charge even more. When I bought Mulan for the review I did, I ended up paying £10 more than it would have cost to me to go and see the film by myself in the cinema. Now, you could argue that it’s good value for money in, say, a family household of two parents and two kids whereby you would have probably cut the ticket price in half.

The reason I bring this up is not just to encourage people to go back to cinemas and what damage I think could be done to the film industry if the cinema experience collapses; that’s an entire list for another day and I think I’d rather make it at a time when we have much better immunity to COVID so I don’t feel like shaming people into taking unnecessary risks with their health. It’s more to point out that if we’re going to be spending more money, I feel like I should look at all the streaming services that are on the market and determine which one gives you the best value for money and quality content in a variety of categories. I don’t hold subscriptions to all these services but I have looked at what is available on each. I really wanted to keep this mostly to the aspects of films since that’s what I normally stick to in these documents, but I will broaden my horizons briefly.

Incidentally, Anime-focused streaming services will play less of a factor in this one since they have such niche appeal they probably deserve their own document. And also, the Anime streaming service scene could see a major uptake in the amount of money we spend on them given Sony is in the process of buying Crunchy Roll and has also bought Manga UK, which, when combined with their previous acquisition of Funimation Entertainment means they are practically holding a monopoly on the scene with very minimal competition. So, for each of these categories I’m going to give my top 3 on which I think nail it. And I’ve gone through all these different services: BritBox, Now TV, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. I also briefly also looked into Sky Cinema but that presumes you hold a Sky subscription, so it won’t play too much of a factor since I think I really should stick to just on-demand streaming services. Let’s begin!

Variety

When it comes to variety, I can say a lot of these did have variety but they’ve now kind of all become slightly niche. Even Netflix is starting to lose a lot of its variety: You turn on Netflix nowadays and you are given an abundance of slick true-crime documentaries and appalling teen comedies. Well, either appalling teen comedies or appalling teen dramas that have some of the most awful characters and writing in recent memory. I won’t go into some of them because some in particular that are featured on Netflix has one of their writers send you defamatory emails when you try to criticise them. Look it up if you feel the need to—both the writers handling of criticism and the film itself are incredibly depressing. Disney obviously is the one you would believe would be lacking in this category since it’s entirely laid down to Disney projects, but you have to remember that when you get Disney you get everything they own, and I think people would be surprised how much variety you do get for a Disney Plus subscription, mainly through the more adult-oriented content of getting a Star subscription. And, considering that it’s not much more expensive than Netflix, it’s a good value for money whichever way you cut it. But I’ll come back to that.

Amazon Prime does tend to have that variety but they don’t seem to really be able to compete too much in this category. For one thing, you go through what you get in a Prime subscription; you’d be surprised just how much original content is on there. I think the only reason we don’t notice that is because Amazon does a terrible job marketing most of their projects. The only one I ever see repeatedly marketed to me is The Grand Tour. As for BritBox, well, I really have never seen the point of it—it just basically feels like all the British channels getting together to try to rival Netflix and doing it poorly. If anything, it’s kind of highlighted that this service is pointless. All these channels would have been better off making license deals with another provider and they probably would have made more money that way. I don’t see who’s picking up BritBox subscriptions. Most of the oldest content on there is very easily accessible through DVD collections which go relatively cheap. Seriously, just go to your local secondhand shops and I bet you’ll find half of them for about £5.

In this case, I’m going to say third place goes to Disney Plus: While Disney Plus does have a good variety with having the Fox content, the Marvel content, Star Wars, and, of course, Disney’s own productions, it doesn’t change the fact that you are only going to get Disney content on here and there are definitely going to be times where you are going to want to watch something and it won’t be available. Second place goes to Amazon Prime as it does have a very good variety but it’s ultimately weighed down a bit by the fact it doesn’t make that variety very visible and you really have to dig through all the content to find what you’re looking for. The winner in this category though is Netflix: while it is starting to lose its variety in its original content, I cannot deny Netflix does come with the biggest variety of entertainment. For one thing, unlike all the other streaming services, it actually is attempting to have Anime content, even if it is annoying the Anime community by not doing same-day broadcasts unlike its contemporary competition. It also does a better job advertising all the content you can expect in the different categories. There’s a reason why we kind of get stuck in the menus trying to pick something whenever we turn on Netflix.

Niche Appeal

For this category I’m looking for which one of these streaming services can apply some niche appeal. I already mentioned before that Netflix are really trying to get into the Anime game and have a good variety of Anime movies, but Amazon also has some excellent Anime on its service; it just doesn’t seem to be interested in localizing any more of them. For crying out loud, if you liked Game of Thrones, you would love Vinland Saga—while it’s more grounded in history, it has a very similar tone to it. Elliott, Ren, Reece and I also picked it as our Anime of the Year for 2019; we can’t recommend it enough. Now, that is also where Amazon is starting to fall down. It does have some excellent original content, however. Superhero fans I think are much more serviced now by Amazon than they were with Netflix as while Netflix still has access to the Marvel stuff prior to Disney making their own streaming service, so this is a kind of “for now” situation, the superhero content is not really there on Netflix now, especially considering Disney’s dominance on the genre. This means, despite the fact that Amazon has access to The Boys and the recently released Invincible (which I also highly recommend checking out), it’s not really changing the fact that Disney really has the strength over this one with just the fact it has the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe as a back catalogue. Therefore, you’ve got the best set of superhero movies and TV shows off the bat.

So, how does that stand then overall? What other niche appeals are out there? Well, if you like good crime documentaries, Netflix is definitely outright winning. Ever since Making A Murderer was a huge success they have put tons of money behind these sorts of projects and have created several imitators. You’re never going to be short of them, even if they are to a certain extent kind of damaging. I particularly want to bring up the example ‘Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer’ which by the end of the documentary even points out that they’ve basically been incredibly reckless and given the killer in that case exactly what he wanted: infamy and attention. BritBox actually gets back some appeal here since it obviously caters very well to the fans of classic BBC, ITV and Channel 4. But, as I mentioned, it’s giving you access to a lot of things that aren’t that hard to track down. In fact, BBC iPlayer is actually getting much better at maintaining their content. Apple TV I’ve also looked into but it doesn’t really have niche appeal which is one of my big problems with the service; it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anything very interesting at this point in time.

I’m going to say third place goes to BritBox. While I do admit it’s quite easy to get access to these things, I can’t deny that it does succeed in the niche it’s aiming for. Second place is going to go to Netflix: not only do they have a lot of good niches, they’re very good at focusing in on them and using the algorithms to recommend you stuff in those categories. But the winner here is obviously Disney Plus; it’s undeniable that Disney Plus is the best service for niche appeal since its entirely a niche market for who’s going to enjoy this.

Extra charges

This applies to any charges on top of the subscription, so this is where value for money really is going to come into handy. Most of these subscription services are currently around the same price: around £5-7 a month. And for what you get, I think all these things have at least one thing I was really looking into. But I also wanted to look into which service did the best job. Incidentally, I’m not going to count services that had absolutely no extra charges in this one since I believe the list would otherwise be entirely made up of things like Apple TV and BritBox for not charging any extras as far as I could see. Hell, even some of the best stuff on Apple TV does not require an extra charge; it truly does just require a subscription service. So this really then comes down to Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus again, all of which do offer extra charges at certain points.

Disney Plus and Amazon Prime are both for new releases—I had to pay extra to see, say, Godzilla vs. Kong. Disney, all of their films that would have gone to cinema had there been no pandemic all cost about the price of cinema tickets for two people, and Netflix do have some extra charges for receiving content in 4K. Netflix is obviously winning this since their additional charges are pretty much optional and only apply to a select group of people that have access to a certain level of HD content. So, it really comes down to how the charges felt between the services.

Well, Disney’s charges not only feel rather unnecessary since they could easily hold back on a lot more of the releases than they’re doing and wait for cinemas to open to give them a financial boost but they also have a real issue in that these films cost a lot more than Amazon. Put it this way: I spent about the price of one cinema ticket to see Godzilla vs. Kong and that was to get the addition with 4K, but I purchased standard to see Mulan and paid more. Whichever way you look at it, that’s less value for money. And it also implies that Disney are seeing this as a possible permanent option and not a temporary option like Warner Bros and Amazon are seeing it as. Therefore, I have to say that Disney Plus comes third in this one—the extra charges aren’t going to cost much more than they would for larger families, however the smaller group consumers might start seeing their bills go up with the additional content. Second place is Amazon. They are quite pricey but they’re not really awful, and I didn’t actually spend much more than I would have had I actually gone to the cinema in the case that I mentioned. Netflix obviously wins this as their additional charges are much more minimal and only apply to a certain group of consumers.

Exclusivity

This really comes down to what these streaming services have. Many of these have some overlap, however only a few have exclusive content. For one thing, I can watch most of Only Fools and Horses on BritNox, and I have access to Tom Moore’s latest film The Wolf Walkers on Apple TV. Now TV I really couldn’t see a point in owning as it had very minimal exclusive content and not much that was very exciting. Obviously virtually the entire platform of Disney Plus is made up of exclusives, including all the Disney films, several Disney series with the majority of their content currently on there (exceptions notwithstanding—I really don’t like the fact I haven’t been able to see Season 3 of Duck Tales), and they even have some surprising extras like the recent recording of Hamilton which is the first time that a lot of people have been able to see that given how expensive it is to see in the live capacity when we could. And I think it’s a good boost to its service.

Netflix has definitely got some great exclusive content but it’s really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I can’t begin to tell you how many terrible teen movies—which I stand by not disliking because I’m not the target audience but because they’re appalling and their messages terrible—are on Netflix. But they also have terrible horror films, true-crime documentaries that really blur the line between morbid curiosity and genuinely informative, and a lot of bottom-of-the-barrel content that clearly no one else was going to take. However, Netflix does have some very good exclusive content, including the beyond amazing Violet Evergarden which everyone with a Netflix account needs to watch, and I do not say that lightly. There’s also Beastars which is definitely a more adult-oriented version of Zootopia, which I think got a rather negative output when people acted like it definitely only appealed to the furry community. Having watched the entire season, I can definitely tell you that’s entirely inaccurate. And, of course, there’s other non-Anime related content that’s fantastic on Netflix: Daredevil’s great, for example.

Amazon does have some niche appeal; I’ve already talked about Vinland Saga and Invincible which I really enjoyed but I actually quite enjoyed The Man In The High Castle as well. And to see The Grand Tour on there is always a highlight for me. But the thing about an exclusive is it’s supposed to be what draws you to it, and I don’t feel as drawn to Amazon Prime; I mainly got the service to get next-day delivery. It wasn’t until a few projects came on there that I started really taking advantage of the streaming service.

In this instance, I’m going to say third place will go to Amazon Prime. The exclusives on there are really good, there are just not as many. Netflix somehow gets second place as some of the exclusives it gets are amazing but others are the worst of the worst, including Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop series which is so misleading in its health claims I genuinely want to see Netflix get sued for their disregard for public health by airing this. I’m not joking; I genuinely believe it’s that harmful. Don’t even watch it out of morbid curiosity. Top place though goes to Disney Plus, however—it’s got a wealth of exclusive content which you won’t find anywhere else. And it’s not just the Disney films: the Hamilton recording will appeal to a lot of people; The Mandalorian is great even though I haven’t dived that much into it at this point; same goes for the Marvel series that they’ve been slowly uploading. And that’s really bringing the appeal.