When we talk about those great trilogies of films, we tend to go back at least 10-15 years—you think of film series like the original Star Wars trilogy, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Lord of The Rings. But, in my opinion, in my lifetime we’ve had 3 excellent trilogies. They all were made by very different studios for very different audiences but they all came out around the same time. So, for this week, I decided to go into why I think these 3 film series made excellent trilogies which were near perfect. All three of them achieved one major thing that a lot of film series don’t get right, especially nowadays, those factors being that all of their individual films were self-contained enough to each feel like a chapter of an ongoing story without having to be constantly foreshadowing sequels, and they all told an excellent story when placed together.

• The Captain America trilogy,
  encompassing Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Captain America: Civil War

When it comes to the Marvel films we already know that I’ve been a very big fan of them, but the Captain America films I feel are some of the best films of that franchise. And you can’t really say that of all the Marvel film franchises that have gone on to become trilogies or have at least one sequel that all the films are perfect or all are really good. (We’ll wait until Guardians of The Galaxy 3 comes out before we put a pin in that statement.) But when it comes to the Captain America films, they all have done an excellent job, the major reason being the excellent choice in casting of Chris Evans in the lead role. He does a very good job playing the WW2 hero but an even better job being the ‘Man Out of Time’. He’s had probably some of the best character arcs across those movies, and the Captain America films have certainly built up some excellent points towards the Avengers films.

Winter Soldier is often considered by many people to be the best Marvel film for the confrontations with the Winter Soldier as its rather poignant and very timely take on the US government’s surveillance, which is something we’re still kind of living in the aftermath of are seeing more and more intrusive measures coming into our lifetime, with the rise of facial recognition software being used by rather unsavoury organisations. Civil War, however, is in my opinion the best of the trilogy because it’s a film without really having a “bad guy”. Civil War is essentially a battle of ideals where you can completely see why each person believes in what they believe in and neither of them are entirely right or wrong which is why, when the clash does inevitably happen, it’s even more of a gut-punch. And what’s more, it has some of the best action scenes. The airport scene is probably by far the best action scene in the Marvel franchise up to that point. Now, the character arc they tell, Steve Rogers would not reach its climax until Avengers: Endgame. But if it wasn’t for that, I would say you do have a complete character arc for Steve across these films. And these films really do an excellent job humanizing Captain America and asking the question: How do you bring a character like Captain America into the rather jaded 2010s? However, I think that between the directing teams that helmed these three films, they did an excellent job.

• The Planet of The Apes trilogy

The Planet of The Apes trilogy is the main reason I’m really glad Matt Reeves got the job directing the new Batman film because if you saw the work he did on this trilogy, you knew that he can do some really great directing. I know that most people know Andy Serkis for playing Gollum but I think his performance as Caesar across these three films is actually his best performance to date and probably should have earned him a Best Actor nomination, which he sadly didn’t get. The three films in question are, of course, Dawn of The Planet of The Apes, Rise of The Planet of The Apes and War for The Planet of The Apes. And what I find amazing is, despite the fact these were billed as prequels, we never get to Planet of The Apes. There’s certainly foreshadowing for a lot of Planet of The Apes but it’s not entirely clear by the end of the franchise just how much of these circumstances that were at the beginning of that film are still in place. But what astounds me is that it does what any good prequel does: it sets the groundwork for the story its building to, and in this case it does an excellent job.

For lack of a better term, they did an excellent job humanizing the apes; their struggle feels very, very real, and it’s very hard to get you on a level where you’re kind of supporting the destruction of humanity. But, at the end of the day, The Planet of The Apes films are also, once again, not really with “good guys” or “bad guys” per se. The human aren’t all “bad guys”; the majority of the humans are good people for the first two films but there is a lot of bad influence there, and by the time we get to the second film it’s very clear that there are also some apes that want to escalate the conflict further. The franchise is ultimately kind of about the idea of how a situation—in the wrong hands—can escalate, and the circumstances that lead to inevitable but ultimately unnecessary conflict. And while these films are all kind of a gut-punch on some level or another, there’s a level of nuance that you wouldn’t expect going into these films, and while all of them individually are excellent stories, as a whole they tell an excellent overall arching story. Honestly, if they wanted to do a TV series or expand on it, I wouldn’t mind watching… Though I also think it’s maybe time to leave the franchise where it is.

• The Kung Fu Panda trilogy

You’ve probably heard me talk to death about it but I really love the Kung Fu Panda trilogy. I stand by this as Jack Black’s best performance to date and his best character, and all the films have an excellent voice cast. It does a great job balancing the comedy with the story and the animation is brilliant; I stand by that this is one of the best-looking DreamWorks Animation projects ever. It has some great villains, in the first two films at least—I wasn’t as big a fan of Kai in the third film but he’s alright, but I definitely liked Lord Shen in the second film and Tai Lung in the first. And the films have excellent messages about where unexpected potential can come from, the idea that what makes you you is the most special quality you have to give, and, of course, the idea of being able to conquer oneself before you can conquer others.

All the films really tie into one another. It would have been very easy for the writers to have Po be kind of clumsy all over again, and his skills having to be re-learnt for the other films. But no, he actually does improve throughout all these films and by the end of the third one we see his skills fully actualised as he has to train others. What’s more, I think the action scenes are great! Seriously, the people who animated this really understood martial arts and how to design characters to make those fight moves look really great. It’s no surprise that the Furious Five are animals chosen based on the fact that they are kung-fu stances: the tiger, the snake, the monkey, the mantis, and the crane. And while I’m at it, I actually think Tigress is my favourite Angelina Jolie performance, and I do not say that ironically.

I’ve actually had debates with my friends because I’m one of the people who thinks the second film is the best one, but as a whole I think this is a damn near-perfect trilogy. I commented at the time that I thought the third one was the weakest film, but even then, it’s the weakest of a great bunch and it serves as an excellent cap-off to the series. There had been several animated shorts that had filled in the middle ground, though they also kind of confused the timeline a little bit, the most major one being The Secrets of The Scroll. I much prefer the one that last I checked was available on Netflix, The Secret of The Five, which told the origin stories of all five members of the Furious Five, and it put to work some excellent 2D animation.

It’s fair to say that most of my reviews tend to line up with most of the critical opinion as well as the public opinion of films. However, everyone seems to have these really unpopular opinions that they don’t share with a lot of people. And I’ve often thought about making this list so honestly it was kind of good to come up with some. I actually had to dartball around a few of my opinions to see if people around me disagreed with them, and I was surprised I genuinely don’t have that many unpopular ones. However, I did find a few for this list.

So here’s 5—technically 6, which will get explained why later—unpopular movie opinions that I hold. I might do another one of these.

• Star Trek Generations is actually good

There seems to have been a rule with the Star Trek films pre reboot that all the odd-numbered films were the bad ones and all the even-numbered films were the good ones. And while I think that is true for most of the series, I’d say the exception to the rule is the 7^th movie, Star Trek Generations. I think as a start-up for The Next Generation it works quite well: the cast is all pretty good and there are some excellent character moments, including some brilliant acting by Patrick Stewart. The only thing I don’t really like about Star Trek Generations is how it kind of reverses one of the few good things from Star Trek V. Spoiler alert for both Star Trek V and Generations (skip ahead to the next one if you don’t want to find that one out): basically, in Star Trek V, Captain Kirk is of the opinion that the villain’s ability to take away a person’s pain is actually something that shouldn’t happen because you need your pain to grow as a person and it’s no good hiding something where it’s best to overcome something. In Star Trek VII he just sort of confines himself to the ultimate reality of the Nexus; he’s basically just said, “Yeah, screw my regret; I might as well just live out here where I have a perfect life.” Admittedly he snaps out of it but it’s weird. And the whole plot point of the Nexus is a bit of a weird plot point to bring together Kirk and Picard, but as a whole I actually think Star Trek Generations works. I kind of like the villain, I think the plot is pretty cool all things considered, and if it’s guilty of anything it’s that it’s thematically a bit all over the place. But as a whole I think it works quite well. Side note: The other thing I would say—so if I do another one of these, I don’t have to go back to Star Trek again—is that Star Trek V is not the worst Star Trek film; Star Trek Insurrection is way worse for just how dull and annoying of a film it is. You can have that one for free.

• Hotel Transylvania doesn’t deserve the hate it gets

This is something I’ve seen across all three movies and I’d say, with the exception of the third one which wasn’t very good, I really do not understand the hate for Hotel Transylvania or at least the sheer loathing it got from some critics. I’ve seen these films described as “rock bottom”. I’m sorry, I’ve seen Foodfight!; I’ve seen Rhapsody Street Kids: Believe in Santa—I’ve seen animation rock bottom and Hotel Transylvania is not there. The first two films are just nice family films, and I feel like most of the hate came from the fact the lead roles were taken up by Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Kevin James and David Spade. We’ve got such an instant predilection to not like these actors because of the films that they’ve been in previously, which I think is unfair—if these actors appear in a good film, I’m going to say it’s a good film. And I actually quite like the Hotel Transylvania films—they seem like a nice send-up to the Universal Monsters, all things considered. They even have some moments where they make fun of the fact that they’ve received a lot of fandom. So yeah, Hotel Transylvania films are not that bad and they do not deserve that level of hate.

• There are only 2 bad Saw films

Yeah, I’m going to go and say it: I really like the Saw movies. Yes, I know they’re plot-hole ridden; yes, I know they’re not high art. But as thrillers go they keep you on the edge of your seat and it does feel like the plot is at least somewhat thought-out. You get a sense that the writers and directors knew what the twists were going to be in the next film so they had to prepare for them in these films. Hell, there’s one twist that gets set up in the fourth movie and we don’t find out what it was until the sixth movie. And I can’t say hand on heart that I think most of the Saw films are bad films. The only ones I can say I think are bad and don’t really have much good in them at all are Saw: The Final Chapter and Jigsaw, the former of which had a really weird ending in the fact there seemed to be a lot more violence against women in the film than necessary in a borderline misogynistic way, and the latter for having one of the most predictable plot twists in the entire series which they even repeated from a previous film! And as a result, it’s an uninspired movie, but other than that I really like this franchise; I don’t get the level of hate for it. I know it did kind of bring about the whole torture-porn craze but I think the reason why we don’t like those films is because so many films did a terrible job imitating what Saw did. If you actually go back and watch some of those early films there’s actually way more happening in your mind than you actually see on screen most of the time, and most of the big torture-porn aspects of the films were more done by public demand. So yeah, it’s your own fault that this is where the horror films kind of went for a while.

• The Incredible Hulk is the weakest MCU film.

Whenever I hear, “What is the weakest Marvel film?” there is always talk of Iron Man 2 and 3, or 4: The Dark World. But I don’t hear The Incredible Hulk get brought up and I think that’s the wrong decision—in my mind, The Incredible Hulk is the worst Marvel film. And it’s not just from the fact that in hindsight it’s utterly meaningless since, well, Edward Morton wouldn’t remain as Bruce Banner after Mark Ruffalo’s casting, but nothing really important happens in the film as is. It’s a rather bland and boring film and it’s incredibly forgettable. And here’s a challenge for you: tell me something you remember about the film, because really not much happens in it. It’s got one of the worst and most forgettable villains in any of the Marvel films, and the plotline might be a simple three-act structure but it doesn’t really have a lot of the heart or humour that the other Marvel films have had. And it just, to me, feels blander and more forgettable. Like, say what you like about the Iron Man sequels or the second Thor movie as they do have a lot technically wrong with them but they’re way more memorable than The Incredible Hulk is. And I saved the doozy for last…

• Grease is really, really bad

I do not like Grease in any sense of the word: I don’t like the songs, I don’t like the plotline, I don’t like the pacing of the film. I think it’s a really boring film. And even if you ignore the fact that it’s really sexist in hindsight, it doesn’t change the fact that I find the film so, so boring. Yes, lots of people like Grease but it’s to me one of the dullest musicals ever made. ‘Summer Loving’ is lyrically terrible, and ‘Grease Lightning’ is genuinely terribly shot which is messing up some decent choreography. And really, despite the fact this is a musical, there are a lot of moments in this film where nothing is happening. And I hate the ending of the ending of the film; I genuinely find the ending despicable. Yes, Grease was a product of its time and you can make that defence all you want but art does not exist in a vacuum, and I can’t get over the fact I don’t like Grease. If you like the film that’s all well and good, but I can’t say I do.

“THE STAR WARS PREQUELS VS THE HOBBIT TRILOGY”

So, a thought jumped into my head the other day about these two film series that are very important to their initial fan base, which then got prequel trilogies which were largely lambasted by their fan bases at the same time, these being the Star Wars prequels that were released from the late 90s to the mid-2000s and The Hobbit trilogy that released in consecutive years in the mid-2010s. Now, I’ve never really talked about The Hobbit films. Hell, I wasn’t really reviewing them when they came out because I don’t really like the idea of sitting in a cinema for 3 ½ hours. I also wasn’t a big Lord of The Rings fan back then. I have now subsequently seen pretty much all the Star Wars films, though I still haven’t caught The Mandalorian so please don’t spoil that for me. And I have now seen all six of The Lord of The Rings films that Peter Jackson directed. But I wanted to compare them and contrast them. Both of these are considered at the best not very good, and at the worst disastrous by a lot of people, but I wanted to look that the positives and the negatives of both of these franchises. I’ve separated them into five categories, and whoever wins the most categories is the winner and was the more successful film series. Let’s begin.

Category 1: Soundtracks

We’ll start with the soundtracks. Now, soundtrack-wise, these films have both got excellent composers working on them. Both of them also bring back many themes of their previous series. The Lord of The Rings score is in The Hobbit films and a lot of the Star Wars score is in the Star Wars prequels. Now, comparing The Lord of The Rings and the Star Wars score is almost impossible, though if I was to compare the main series of both of these it would have been a win for The Lord of The Rings. I know that’s weird coming from a big Star Wars fan but you can’t beat the music in The Lord of The Rings series; it is one of the finest film scores ever made.

Now, The Hobbit and Star Wars both introduced some brand-new big songs into each of their film series. In the case of The Hobbit, they actually brought back a bunch of the songs that Tolkien wrote for The Hobbit and inserted them in, most notably ‘That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates’, the song about the dwarves breaking the dishes, and the ‘Misty Mountains’ song. And Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Episode 1) gave us a song ‘Duel of the Fates’ which wisely has not been overplayed. Let’s face it, that fight scene in the first movie with Darth Maul is mostly made by the fact ‘Duel of the Fates’ is the song they used. I’m tempted to give this one to The Lord of The Rings because I actually really enjoy the new versions of ‘Misty Mountains’ and the Bilbo Baggins song. But if they were going to do that, they really shouldn’t have cut out a couple of the other songs. For example, Bilbo has a song wandering back to the shire that’s cut, though it was recycled for Bilbo leaving the shire in the original The Fellowship Of The Ring film. And also, I wasn’t really a fan of the Ed Sheeran song, and some of the other changes made with the soundtrack in The Hobbit films don’t entirely work. If there’s one thing that was really consistent between all the Star Wars films it was that they had great scores and the stuff they introduced stuck more. On that basis, Star Wars wins this one.

Category 2: The action scenes

Now, I’ve commented that I think the best action scenes in most of the Star Wars films are in the prequels. Even with the new trilogy, it didn’t feel like as much effort had been put into the fight scenes, particularly the light saber fights. Now, you might think that The Hobbit would have the advantage here since we obviously have the big battles that The Lord of The Rings is famous for but they had some issue going in because—let’s face it—The Hobbit as a story is not really known for its big battles. Hell, there’s really only one battle in the entire story, which obviously takes place in the final film, The Battle of The Five Armies, and they had a lot of leg-room to work with. The battles had only been described to Bilbo in second hand. Bilbo’s the narrator of the story and he’s unconscious for most of the conflict. I actually think, all things considered, they did pretty well. And I say that completely genuinely; there’s a lot of great effort put into making it work. And really, there are some great fight scenes. They might have had to extend a lot of the book to get the fight scenes but there are some really awesome ones in there. Some of the confrontations with Azog are great and I really enjoyed some of the scenes, like getting away from the spiders, and despite the fact it was really bolted on, I did enjoy the dwarves’ encounter with Smaug during The Desolation of Smaug. The problem is there are also some ridiculous scenes in The Hobbit films. I’d like to point to the river-rafting scene which I’m amazed anyone had a straight face whilst filming; it was just a case of ‘Wow, what the hell are you doing?’

Now, on that basis, you’d think Star Wars has it won but it also has a rather pointless scene: the pod-racing scene goes on way, way too long. You could have cut this thing in half and it wouldn’t have made a difference in Episode 1. We all think of Episode 2 as having those brilliant scenes of the fight with Count Dooku, particularly Yoda’s fight with him which I’m amazed they managed to keep quiet about—they didn’t show Yoda using a light saber in any of the marketing. But man, I remember that film being really boring; they needed a lot more action in that film than they ended up having. It’s why I’ve always said Attack of The Clones is the most boring Star Wars film. The only reason we really remember it is because it actually has a brilliant climax. Now, Episode 3 does have a brilliant fight scene and they kind of mean more as a whole, and it’s a really hard call overall. But for all those ridiculous moments that happen in Star Wars, they at least feel like they mean a little more. The Hobbit films seem to have taken all the ridiculous stuff that Legolas did in The Lord of The Rings films and amplified them, to such an extent that I wasn’t taking a lot of it seriously. Point goes to Star Wars.

Category 3: The acting

The Hobbit wins. Look, this isn’t even a contest—The Hobbit has much better performances. Martin Freeman is perfect as Bilbo; I really thought that Benedict Cumberbatch does well as Smaug; Andy Serkis is at some of his best with his performance as Gollum this time around. And even some of the more minor performances are really up there. I really liked, for example, Sylvester McCoy’s performance as Radagast. And really, overall, The Hobbit films have much better performances as a whole. The Star Wars prequels have become notorious for some bad line delivery and some quite wonky performances. I don’t blame actors like Hayden Christensen completely—I have to agree with some recent defenders of his that he was just given some quite bad direction. And let’s face it, the writing is really bad in some scenes; no actor is going to be able to deliver a decent performance with some of these lines. The big standout from Star Wars prequels is Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan—he brings enough of his own flair to it but he definitely feels like he is playing a younger version of the character we have come to know. Point goes to The Hobbit.

Category 4: Writing and direction

Now, this is really a two-film category. Writing and direction have tied in so well together so I think they should have a category together. Let’s look at them. Well, when it comes to direction these are very different films. Directing duties were really difficult for The Hobbit because Peter Jackson was only meant to be a producer, with the director’s job meant to have gone to Guillermo del Toro, though from what I gather Warner Bros were not really on board with del Toro’s direction. And, from what we can gather, he was going to be even closer to the books than the film actually turned out to be, so Jackson was brought on board and you can genuinely tell throughout most of the film series that there’s a real reluctance to his involvement in the project. Jackson is obviously very passionate about Middle Earth and The Lord of The Rings mythology and stories; you can really tell through the direction he brought to The Lord of The Rings, but The Hobbit films don’t have the same level. The Star Wars prequels, on the other hand, were done by a very excited George Lucas. It was the only time, I believe, he completely directed all three films, and he was majorly overseeing the project. Now, the thing is that Lucas’s direction is a bit off in the first film to say the least but he would get better as the films went on. I actually think Revenge of The Sith is not only the best film of the prequel trilogy but it’s also kind of good in many ways.

That being said, you have a look at the writing. On an individual basis, I’d say The Hobbit films are better written movies: they have more interesting character motivations, they do a better job building up the setting of the world, and give some very interesting character dynamics. The way in which Star Wars does better in the writing is in the fact that it does something way better than what The Hobbit does: ties into the original trilogy. Look, you can tie The Hobbit into The Lord of The Rings trilogy—it is connected—but you’ve got to remember, that wasn’t how it was originally written. It wasn’t written to be the big start of these inciting events that would lead to the most major clash Middle Earth had ever known. The One Ring only became that later down the line. That’s the only moment that connects The Hobbit to The Lord of The Rings: the riddle battle with Gollum and Bilbo’s acquisition of the One Ring which, at this point, obviously he doesn’t know. However, the film so wants you to remember The Lord of The Rings that they put in tons of moments that are unnecessary; they want to keep reminding you of The Lord of The Rings every chance they get. But I have to refer back to Lindsey Ellis’s video on the subject of The Hobbit films which got me started on this paper overall: The events of the Star Wars prequels do tie to the events of the main Star Wars trilogy—they are directly linked, and the central conflict in the prequels does tie in to the central conflict of Star Wars. The central conflict of The Hobbit does not tie into the events of The Lord of The Rings, and as a result they had to bolt on so much to The Hobbit to get it to work.

But here’s the thing: I think as a whole, if you take them together, the prequels trilogy makes more writing and direction gas than The Hobbit films. The Hobbit films have glimmers of something that could have really worked, but with the Star Wars prequels you really have had to change a lot more to make them work. And that’s not to say that I don’t think there’s any good stuff in the Star Wars prequels—I think some of the scenes are well-written and I do get a sense that they could have easily been better if they had a few script re-writes, but they really went overboard with some of the jargon, particularly in the first film. And they introduced a bunch of elements to the Star Wars cannon that were not really required, like midi-chlorians. I don’t need a method of measurement of the Force! And I think George Lucas realised how badly he mishandled that considering the fact that they were never mentioned again after that point and the current Star Wars writers and directors have basically been trying to ignore it. But it’s like Pandora’s Box: once you’ve opened it, you can’t close it. Point goes to The Hobbit.

Category 5: The legacy

Well, it’s two a piece so now it’s down to how the legacy of these have gone. Well, obviously, neither of these killed off their franchises. The Lord of The Rings is still going very, very strong with more videogames on the way and, of course, the talks into the Amazon series are still ongoing. And when has there ever been a time when there haven’t been tons of Star Wars merch? So therefore, I’ve got to now look at the impact of both of these film series on their franchises. I won’t look into the global impact too much since, well, I wouldn’t do a very good job talking about how The Hobbit films kind of led to major labour violations in New Zealand. Again, watch Lindsey Ellis’s video for that one—she’ll do a way better job than I could ever do on that.

But let’s talk about the legacy on each of their individual franchises. Star Wars and Lord of The Rings were both really damaged by their prequel series; there wasn’t a lot of talk for the stories to go on. Let’s face it, how long did we go in Star Wars before we actually got anymore bridge-gap storylines? Yeah, there were a few comics here and there but nothing major, and it was more like side-stories; there wasn’t a major storyline to build them together. And they weren’t going back to the cinema anytime soon. In fact, before the sequel trilogy came out I think the biggest Star Wars project was The Force Unleashed. That one at least feels like Episode 3.5, and before it was removed from the continuity entirely (‘Thank you for that, Disney,’ he says sarcastically) it was a really great bridge-gap between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. It even tied into that stupid prophecy that was unnecessary in the first one. Now, how The Hobbit is going to affect future Lord of The Rings projects is yet to be seen—there hasn’t been another major Lord of The Rings project since The Hobbit trilogy wrapped up. The Amazon series is currently going through development issues and I don’t imagine they’re going to get much better given the current global situation. And if we go for another two more years we probably have as much of a gap between The Hobbit and that series compared to Disney buying Star Wars and doing the huge explosion of content.

But with the time to really rest and think through what people want from Star Wars going forwards, we’ve had tons of excellent stuff come out. We’ve had the excellent Star Wars Rebel series. I’ve not seen The Mandalorian but it’s great from what I’ve heard. We’ve had some great comics. But it hasn’t all been great. While personally I actually quite like Solo: A Star Wars Story—I know it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea—the videogames have been a real mixed bag where you’ve got Jedi: Fallen Order doing yet another brilliant bridge-gap game between the prequels and the original trilogy, but the sequel trilogy is the real talking point and that’s been a very mixed bag for a lot of people. Here’s where I’m interested in it: The sequel trilogy does feel like it’s curtailing to fans and they are so scared of upsetting people that they’re not willing to try much new with it. And whenever they were trying something new it didn’t really work out. Look at Episode 8 and how much got abandoned by the time Episode 9 came around; it was almost like that film was completely unimportant. There’s a great video Mitch Benn did entitled ‘Why I’m Proud To Be A Dr Who Fan Right Now’ which actually gives an interesting perspective on this.

So, I have to now look at the legacy of both of these films at the time and which one I think did more damage to their overall stock. And while I think neither of them were really hurt financially—they did alright with their merch—I have to look at how people felt about them, and I think people were much angrier with the Star Wars prequels, whereas with The Hobbit films I feel like people felt more depressed. And here’s the thing, I don’t think either of these trilogies made people retroactively think maybe the original movies weren’t so good in the first place. Instead, I get a sense that people were feeling similarly to myself going out of The Hobbit films thinking that The Lord of The Rings was much better than they thought; they recognised that those filmmakers had that sense of great direction to deliver this almost perfect original trilogy. I think most of us, myself included, really appreciated The Lord of The Rings a lot more post-Hobbit films because we’d now seen what Lord of The Rings films that weren’t that good kind of looked like.

Well, with cinemas back to being closed thanks to another national lockdown, I’m having to fill a lot more time than I anticipated. So, I have to come up with a bunch of these listicles and I thought, you know what? It’s January — I want a good rant. And since there’s no Oscar ceremony this year, now is a more perfect time than ever to rant about some of the worst decisions that the Academy has made over the years.

Now, to be fair, a lot of these dumb wins or dumb nominations that the Oscars list, people often act like they’re the worst thing ever and they’re not always, and they often also are based on so much hindsight. And to be fair, hindsight—as the saying goes—is always 20/20. So, for this list, I decided I wanted to try and avoid this: “in hindsight that film was a terrible idea,” and mainly on decisions that were dumb at the time, and even then, I wasn’t able to completely avoid it as a couple of examples will prove. And it was very hard to rank these, so as a result I decided they won’t get ranked; this is just simply a complete list of dumb decisions. I also had to combine a few things together in order to illustrate points. Believe me, it was really tough.

I also didn’t want to go for some of the obvious ones that people talked about, so no, you won’t see Crash winning Best Picture, which is one of the most obvious beating sticks for any critic to make now. Yes, Crash was a very undeserving Best Picture winner and it’s only gotten worse as time has gone on. But really, by now it’s so obvious and I wanted to highlight some other ones. I also went in to check in regard to some choices why certain films weren’t nominated. For example, I was really astounded that The Rainmaker wasn’t nominated for any Oscars in its respective year. But then you realise, well, Matt Damon was already getting tons of nominations for Good Will Hunting, including a Best Actor nomination, and really there wasn’t room for two big films starring Matt Damon even if Francis Ford Coppola was directing one of them. And, if I had to choose, as much as I like The Rainmaker, I’m going to say Good Will Hunting probably deserved the nomination more.

Another thing to remember is how the Academy works: you don’t get nominated unless you do a very good ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign. And some studios will spend a lot—millions of dollars—on these campaigns. To such an extent, the Oscars has almost entirely become a massive bribery contest just to get those nominations. Nevertheless, they’re purporting that this is based on quality so I’m going to take their word for it…

In no particular order, here are 10 dumb Oscar decisions:

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut loses to Tarzan

Let’s get started with an Original Song category. Believe me, we’re going back to Disney at some point but I wanted to start with this one. At the Oscars in the year 2000, South Park got its only Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for ‘Blame Canada’ which was performed on the night by Robin Williams. However, they would not be walking out of the Oscars with the award because they lose to Tarzan, with Phil Collins’s song, ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’. Okay, put aside that South Park absolutely deserved that win, not only did they lose but they lost to one of the worst songs from the film. Seriously, I’m not someone who hates on the Tarzan soundtrack—I actually think it’s really good, but I would not have nominated ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’. I would’ve much rather nominated ‘Son of Man’ or ‘Strangers Like Me’. And, in any sense of the word, you can’t compare the soundtracks of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut with the soundtrack of Tarzan. South Park simply dominated this category and they somehow still lost. Mind you, it’s probably a good thing in some regards that they didn’t win given that they probably wouldn’t have been able to give an acceptance speech—Matt Stone and Trey Parker freely admitted they turned up at the ceremony higher than Mary Poppins’s kite on acid.

Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy robs Spike Lee twice

Let’s go back to 1990, the year I was born. I was really curious what film won Best Picture on my birth year and was genuinely surprised that it was Driving Miss Daisy of all things. Spike Lee by now absolutely deserves to be raining in Oscars—he’s an excellent filmmaker. And both times that he’s made some of the best films of his career he has received credit from the Academy. However, both times he was completely robbed.

Let’s start with 1990: Spike Lee does probably his best work ever with Do The Right Thing, an absolutely astounding film that I absolutely recommend as it’s surprisingly and shockingly still relevant to this day, and just saying that is rather saddening. And it was not just the fact that he didn’t win on the night even though a couple of nominations were brought out, Do The Right Thing wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture, when Driving Miss Daisy—a very easy and inoffensive film about racism—not only was nominated but won. Flash forward to 2019 and the Oscars now has a chance to rectify this. Now, to be fair, Spike Lee’s brilliant film BlacKkKlansman did get nominated in several categories, and Spike Lee finally got his Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. But even then, unlike what I wanted, he didn’t end the night with the Best Picture Oscar because that went to Green Book, yet another cookie-cutter film that was designed to win Oscars and presented a very easily digestible take on racism in America, which once again did not take into account the systemic nature of racism in not just America but the Western world.

Now, Spike Lee does have an Oscar now and he did win it for BlacKkKlansman, but I think in 2019 it was even more egregious. BlacKkKlansman released a year after the Charlottesville rally to the day. It was Spike Lee’s point of message that white supremacy was not only alive and well but it was thriving and in the White House, and he used our past to show us our future that has come to pass. But in both years where this case was made the Academy chose the easy answer; they suggested that racism could be solved by people “coming together”, a nice sentiment but it’s frankly too easy and was not confrontational enough. And, in one case, at a time when it was desperately needed.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the biggest winner on the night

Okay, we’re back to the 2019 Oscars! And who allowed this? Okay, Bohemian Rhapsody was the big winner on the night and it absolutely deserved one of its 4 Oscar nomination, Best Actor for Rami Malik who did an excellent performance as Freddy Mercury. However, its three other wins were all in technical categories, including Best Sound Editing, which is absolutely its worst category. There were brilliant films nominated for that with brilliant editing such as First Man; I even commented in my review how I thought the sound editing was great in that film. And Searching—a film where the editing is the star of it—wasn’t even nominated. It wasn’t just the fact that a rather mediocre film won so many Oscars, it’s that it won for what for what is its worst quality.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close gets nominated for Best Picture

If you ever look up Best Picture nominees you’d be very surprised to find that Crash is not the lowest scoring on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The reason I say Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is one of the worse decisions for the Oscars is the fact that it’s a film that really feels designed to get Oscar nominations more than any other, and I mean particularly Oscar nominations—this film wasn’t nominated at the Baftas or the Golden Globes. And the quality in it is not great if I’m honest; this is really a bizarre and weak film in my opinion. I’ve heard some people really like this film but I’ve never gotten what they see in it. To me, it’s just kind of a very bland, bizarre, cookie-cutter film that doesn’t really have much to say about its chosen subject; it just throws a whole bunch of Academy tropes at the wall. And voila! Very good ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign and it gets nominated.

The Lego Movie is not nominated for Best Animated Feature

Moving forwards to the 2015 Oscars and the Best Animated Feature category. Now, I will say, the 2015 Oscars got a lot right. I would say a few of them were slightly weird choices but, overall, a pretty good selection. But the one thing that bothered me the most was Best Animated Feature. Now, Big Hero 6 ended up winning that year—not a terrible choice though I wouldn’t have picked it—but the nominations that year were astounding bar one. Big Hero 6 was nominated along with How To Train Your Dragon 2, Song Of The Sea, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, and surprisingly The Box Trolls got a nomination. Look, The Box Trolls is not a bad film but it is not one of Ardman’s best films, and there was a very noticeable absence for The Lego Movie which was excellent. If The Box Trolls had not got the nomination and The Lego Movie had, this would have been the strongest year for that award—all of those movies are outstanding in some form or fashion. There wouldn’t have been a bad one and we could have been happy with any winner. Granted, Big Hero 6 was not a terrible choice, though I would have preferred Song Of The Sea take that Oscar, and The Lego Movie didn’t do too bad from this. It was already a financial success and it did get a song nomination for ‘Everything Is Awesome’ which it lost to ‘Glory’ from the film Selma which, yeah, was the rightful decision. But it should have had a Best Animated Feature nomination.

Mickey Rourke doesn’t win Best Actor for The Wrestler

This one stings for me in so many ways. I’m a big wrestling fan and The Wrestler was a sharp but very true-to-life takedown of the business. And it’s genuinely upsetting but necessary for wrestling fans to watch it as it reminds us that, while these men and women have great entry plans, their exit plans are not so great. And it’s strengthened by a great central performance from Mickey Rourke. He’d won the Golden Globe and Bafta and it looked like the Oscar was in the bag. However, he lost to Sean Penn for the film Milk which, yeah, it’s a worthy performance and he should have been offered a nomination, but Mickey Rourke should have gotten that Oscar. And what stings is a lot of people have speculated that it was Mickey Rourke’s potential involvement in Wrestle Mania that year that actually cost him the Oscar.

See, there was talk for a match between Mickey Rourke and Chris Jericho at that year’s Wrestle Mania, however his agent insisted that Rourke back out because it wouldn’t look good to Academy voters. Though Rourke would attend Wrestle Mania, the match was changed to Jericho facing a group of older legends, and Rourke would then get in the ring and knock Chris Jericho out. Putting aside that it’s really weird that WWE would want anything to do with this film considering that it basically points out the real shortcomings of the business and why wrestlers should unionize, for potential actual wrestling involvement cutting the chances for a film about wrestling doing well at the Oscars and costing a man his nomination is really baffling for me and always one that’s stung.

Pocahontas wins multiple Oscars for its music

I’ve already commented on how I don’t like the music in Pocahontas, and the fact it not only won Best Score against Toy Story, it also beat ‘You Got A Friend In Me’ from that film for that Oscar along with ‘Dead Man Walking’ by Bruce Springsteen for the film that shared the title of the song. And I’ve already commented I think ‘Colors Of The Wind’ is one of the worst songs in the entire film; the only song that’s even worse is ‘Just Beyond The Riverbend’. The fact that that song has an Oscar is so astoundingly annoying for me on multiple levels—it’s a badly written song that hasn’t aged well and it lost to a song which is one of Randy Newman’s only good songs. Yeah, I’m not a big Randy Newman fan. If you want a prime example of that, remember the music he did in James and The Giant Peach?

Ordinary People wins Best Picture

This is for the 1981 Oscars, and this is one that actually stems back to one of the big problems the Oscars have: they can’t see how films are going to be seen in the future. Ordinary People was the directorial debut of Robert Redford and it’s an alright film but man is it not that compelling. And it’s rather telling that, several decades later, no one talks about this film. Now, compare that with two films that were nominated for Best Picture that year, Raging Bull and The Elephant Man, both of which could have easily won Best Picture and are way more interesting to watch now; you could easily put those on now and you’d get an excellent watch. What’s worse, The Shining, which came out the exact same year, didn’t get a single Oscar nomination. Again, what films have had more of an impact on the language of film going forwards? Ordinary People doesn’t stick out at all, and it’s amazing that a rather dull film lost to several films that would change the cinema landscape going forwards.

Scarface isn’t nominated even once

Here’s another film that should have been nominated. This time, it’s the 1984 Oscars. Brian De Palma’s film is fantastic—I know Scarface is now very heavily parodied but if you’ve actually gone and watched the film it’s a really excellent piece of cinema about falling down a rabbit hole, and the fact that it wasn’t even nominated for any category astounds me. Al Pacino wasn’t even nominated for Best Actor. And what makes it even worse is that you have to look at who did get the nominations. Honestly, look up the five films that were nominated for Best Picture in 1984; I guarantee if you’ve heard of any of them other than the one that actually won I’ll be astounded. I’ve never even heard of most of these films! The only films I’ve heard of were The Big Chill and, eventual winner, Terms of Endearment which was directed by—sometimes—Simpsons producer, James Earl Brooks. But I’ve never heard of The Dresser; I’ve never heard of The Right Stuff; I’ve never heard of Tender Mercies. It’s frankly astounding that Scarface didn’t have a place there.

Finally, A Silent Voice and Your Name didn’t get nominated

Now, I’m not sure what year Your Name could have been nominated because there were multiple opportunities for it, but it definitely should have. Your Name is not only an astounding animated film but it could have easily been up for Best Picture; in fact, it was at the London Film Festival when it debuted there. I spent several weeks a few months ago gushing over Your Name so I won’t go into too much detail over it but the fact it doesn’t have an Oscar nomination astounds me to no end. But then you also have A Silent Voice. Now, A Silent Voice is a beautiful film about overcoming your own feelings of inadequacy and suicidal thoughts. It centres around a bully attempting to rehabilitate himself after his life goes downhill and make it up to a deaf girl who he made miserable, and the fact that the two of them come together to try to make something positive in their lives. It’s an excellent and beautiful film directed by Naoko Yamada. Not only should this film have been up for Best Animated Feature, it also could have easily been up for Best Picture and Naoko Yamada could have easily been up for Best Director. Now, I have no idea if that would have even been under consideration, but I’m not too worried about Makoto Shinkai; I think he will get an Oscar nomination somewhere down the line. But it will be rather like other directors where he will get it but just for the wrong film. But I don’t think Naoko Yamada is ever going to get that chance and she deserves it for the contributions she’s made to Kyoto Animation—her work is astounding. And what makes it worse, not only did these films not even get nominated for Best Animated Feature, The Boss Baby did, as well as Ferdinand, starring John Cena as a bull.

Now, I did admit that both Your Name and A Silent Voice were licensed by Funimation and I’m pretty sure this was pre-acquisitioned by Sony, so they might not have had enough money to do a really good ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign in the States, but it does highlight that the Oscars not only lack to really look into great animated films but to look into great foreign animated films. It really does show that it’s a massive Hollywood love fest. There’s a very good reason why the film Mirai is the only Japanese animated film not made by Studio Ghibli to get an Oscar nomination: all the films that did had major Western stars in the dub. Now, the Academy is doing a lot better with how it treats foreign language films, and we saw that last year with the win for Parasite which genuinely shocked me. Saying that, I think they’ve got a long way to go and they need to start acknowledging that great animation can come from other countries. What’s more, I want them to actually nominate an animated film for Best Picture again and have an animated film win Best Picture.

Why A Christmas Carol (1999) Is My Favourite

Well, cinemas have started to re-open, but with the tier system making it harder for a lot of people to get to the cinema I’ve decided I wouldn’t immediately go back to reviewing current releases. So, on that basis, I’ve decided that I’m only going to review one current release this period, Wonder Woman 1984, which will be coming out in UK cinemas on December 16^th, and I will attempt to go back to a more regular schedule of new releases in January. In the meantime, I have to fill some content here so I thought I’d take an opportunity with the lack of releases to talk about the sort of Christmas film that I will put on every year, A Christmas Carol. I make sure to watch at least one adaptation every year because I stand by my belief it is one of the greatest works of fiction every created. A Christmas Carol nails its story, and it’s just as relevant now as it was back when it was first written. And, of course, there have been countless film versions. Tons.

I actually had considered doing another tournament to determine which version I thought was going to win, however in my mind it really only came down to 4 or 5 adaptations which I thought were great. Well, I’m not going to talk about The Muppets Christmas Carol since most people have already talked about that one, but yeah, I’m genuinely not too surprised it turned out as well as it did, and the writing is pretty strong. Honestly, you can do way worse. I even kind of like the 2009 film directed by Robert Zemeckis which used Jim Carey in a motion-capture suit to play both Scrooge and the Ghosts. Give it a watch—it’s surprisingly closer to the book than you’d ever believe in many parts. There’s a 1984 with the brilliant central performance from George C. Scott but they really only took the bare bones of the story and kind of did their own thing around it. It’s still a lot more accurate than a lot of versions; I could have done a whole rant piece about why the BBC production that came out last year was a terrible, terrible film. But frankly, I want to be positive, and I don’t want to contribute to the idiots on Twitter that are asking for the BBC to be defunded. That’s a conversation for another time.

That really only left with one option, which is probably my favourite version of the story. The only other one I could have done a piece on was the 1950s film, but as much as I think Alastair Sim is good as Scrooge and one of the best performers to play the role, the problem I have with that film is that too much is bolted on to the story and it feels like it takes away more than it adds. These things are implied; they did not need to be completely seen. This leaves me with what is my favourite adaptation, the 1999 version starring Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s surprisingly hard to get access to this one—the DVD goes for quite a high price since it’s out of print and not many copies still exist. If you see it for a good price, I’d say bag it. But it does come on television every so often—I caught it on Channel 5 one year which was really lucky, and I’m going to give you several reasons why you should check this one out.

Let’s get some of the negative out of the way first because even though this is my favourite, I will say there are some negatives to this film. The main points of contention are rather minor. Despite the fact it’s a very good adaptation of the book, there are some minor things missing that probably shouldn’t have gone, and the film doesn’t take a whole lot of risks really; it feels like a film playing it safe a lot of the time. Some of the effects have not dated well at all but I think that’s somewhat forgivable for a film that was not on a large budget at the very end of the 90s. I think my biggest complaint is the design of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come: I know they’re trying to go for this idea of him being quite scary being that he’s just a cloak with eyes, but the eyes look more goofy than they do scary and he looks really out of place in any environment he’s in. The only time the design kind of works is during the famous graveyard scene; other than that, it’s just a weird design. I kind of get what they were going for but it’s just bizarre. Well, without further ado, here are 5 reasons why I think A Christmas Carol 1999 is the best version:

• Patrick Stewart’s Performance

If you’re doing A Christmas Carol, you need a strong central performance; a bad one ruins your film. And Patrick Stewart nails this performance. A lot of people forget that he was a really great thespian actor after his role in comedy films in recent memory, and his move to comedy has rather lost its lustre considering that the joke of a thespian actor like himself being in these roles is rather bizarre. However, what people forget is the reason why his performance as a character like Charles Xavier or Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation is that he can bring that brilliant range, and he brings it again in A Christmas Carol. Out of all the live-action actors, he’s probably the most physically like Scrooge is described in the book; the only other actor who looks the part is probably Jim Carey but he was assisted by motion-capture technology. Meanwhile, you have Stewart giving it his all, and he really nails a lot of these scenes. In all honesty, it’s a great performance and it’s one that doesn’t get mentioned a lot when we talk about great Patrick Stewart performances. He doesn’t manage to give a wide gamut of emotions but he can play Scrooge’s miserable, grumpy self at the beginning of the story and throughout all the explorations of his past, present and future, all the way leading up to his good cheer on Christmas morning. It’s honestly a really great performance and was worth the film alone.

• The Casting

I know I’ve already mentioned about Patrick Stewart but it feels like everyone else was really well-cast; everyone is really suited to their role. You have, for example, Ian McNeice who plays a brilliant Mr. Fezziwig; Bernard Lloyd is probably one of the best versions of Marley I’ve ever seen; Dominic West plays Fred, which is really against type for what we know him for now; and also playing against type is Richard E. Grant who, yeah, does suit the role coming from a very similar theme background that Patrick Stewart came from. But again, I’m not used to him playing roles like this. It definitely feels like a film where, yes, they got big names but every one of those big names was a very good choice to play these roles.

• Tone Management

A lot of Christmas Carol films struggle to balance the tone of the story but the 1999 version really nails it from start to finish. The darker moments are dark when they need to be and the bright and cheerful moments are where they need to be. 1984, for example, put way too many dark moments during the Ghost of Christmas Present story segments and they felt out of place; this is the sort of thing you want for the Yet to Come segment, and that means it doesn’t nail the tone in that point in time. The Ghosts’ central performances in the 1999 version are all excellent, and as a result that keeps the tone going well, and I would say they do a brilliant job of really keeping the spirit of the season alive within it. One particular scene that was lifted straight out of the book was the moment when people in very remote parts of the world were still celebrating Christmas just by singing ‘Silent Night’. It weirdly leads into in the Christmas Day truce during WW1, which is kind of bizarre considering that A Christmas Carol takes place several decades before WW1 but there you go. It’s a powerful moment in history, might as well use it.

• It’s Probably One of the Closest Adaptations of the Book

They were really good about adapting the book—you can tell most of the people involved really read the book before the decided they were going to put this to production. There’s a lot of attempts to put in book-accurate dialogue, including what was pointed out very well during Dominic Noble’s look into all the versions of A Christmas Carol, that they put in Charles Dickens’s own conversational pieces with the reader as dialogue between characters. Very early on as well, which is a very nice touch that you don’t get in many versions. Most of the Ghosts are pretty much as described, though obviously I’ve mentioned my issues with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and also the Ghost of Christmas Present isn’t particularly tall when he’s described as a rather large figure in the book. Other than that, there’s not much missing. The Ghost of Christmas Present doesn’t carry an empty scabbard (though really only the 2009 version I saw had that feature). And they had a few more stops along the way to Fred’s house when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning. But if you’ve read the book it’s going to be very, very familiar to you. Side note: the one Ghost I think they really nailed the design of was the Ghost of Christmas Past. Considering that the Ghost is described as being pretty much indescribable in the book, they went for an almost non-angelic and non-human look with the make-up and effects that were available at the time, and I actually think it’s one of the effects that holds up surprisingly well.

• The Ending is Enough of a Feel-Good Moment

I know every version of A Christmas Carol ends in exactly the same way, but because of the fact they got the tone exactly right, I actually think the bolting of extra elements to Scrooge celebrating Christmas in the morning adds to the feel-good element of it. And as a result, out of all of them, when you combine the tone, the excellent book-accurate dialogue, and Patrick Stewart’s great performance it means, more than any other, this film nails the ending. And that’s a really hard task to do in order to make it stand out. So as a result, when you take all of these into account it really is my favourite version of A Christmas Carol.

It’s time for the Animation World Cup Finals, and we’ve gone a long way but it’s time to see if we’re going to end it this week or if we’re going to a Grand Final. Let’s begin.

The Losers’ Final: Chico & Rita vs Loving Vincent

It comes down to Spain vs Poland in this bracket and, well, this feels like the most appropriate match – these are probably the two most experimental animation styles in the entire bracket. You have two excellent films here and I’ve gone over them quite extensively: one’s a love story, the other’s kind of a story about grief and remembrance. But how do I feel these two films stack on each other? Well, I kind of think they’re rather well-matched in a sense; both do exactly what I feel they should do, and they both do it very, very well. But the thing that bothered the most about these films is that they do seem to both render on the side of just slipping into potential pretentiousness with their concepts. But as good animation for adults both films are tremendous successes; both of them could have easily been shot in live-action but they would have both been worse off for it. For example, with Loving Vincent, if you’re going to tell the story of the life of Vincent Van Gogh, why not do it in the style of his beautiful paintings? Or in the case of Chico & Rita, why not express this story in animation? They actually added probably some more dimension to these stories by doing do.

Now, as I’ve said, I think both of these films have great characters and great moments, though I feel like Chico & Rita has slightly more interesting characters. But that being said, in Loving Vincent the characters are not the focus; it’s more the situation. It feels like it’s more about the impact of one person and practically is just a movie version of the song ‘Vincent’ aka ‘Starry, Starry Night’, which is appropriate considering that a cover of the song plays in the credits. Now, if we go by soundtracks however, Chico & Rita really excels; it’s a brilliant jazz soundtrack. But then I come back to everything else, and if there’s a film it does kind of remind me of in its later part its Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – they actually are rather similar in multiple ways. On that basis, I’ve probably got a whole bunch of you to see this film more than I already have.

Chico & Rita also does have a slightly longer running time as well, coming in at an hour and 35 minutes. And I instantly thought that it was long but Loving Vincent has almost the exact same run-time; there’s only a couple minutes separating them. My thoughts on this were that the pacing in Chico & Rita kind of makes the feels like it lasts a bit too long for what it does; they possibly could have cut this film by about 5-10 minutes and it probably would have benefited. If I go by the performances, well, as good as the performances are in Chico & Rita, I think Loving Vincent just has slightly better performances. And here’s the thing – Chico & Rita is a really good film and really stands out, but Loving Vincent is in a camp of its own on this one; the sheer beauty of bringing an oil painting to life is unbelievable. This is a project that was years in the making and it really shows. I’ve got to give this point to Loving Vincent and I think it has to win this one.

Winner: Loving Vincent

Winners’ Final: Song Of The Sea vs Your Name

Time for Ireland vs Japan. And I’d stated on several occasions these are two of my all-time favourite animated films, but which one do I think is better? Well, that’s a real hard one for me. Soundtrack-wise, these are two of my favourite soundtracks for animated films – they are both perfectly well-done; animation-wise, they are both incredible; both of them do brilliant jobs showing off the landscapes of their countries in different ways, and it makes you want to visit these places. The big difference is in how they convey their two settings since they both have urban and rural settings. Song Of The Sea does have part of its story set on an island of the coast of Ireland, and does a great job showing off the countryside and the beauty of the ocean surrounding that area. Japan’s countryside and more rural areas are well shown off in parts of Your Name but it also does a brilliant job of making Tokyo look really stunning. This is where the big difference comes in: Song Of The Sea’s urban setting are made to look very dank and lifeless, only injected by some life from one area of the city where there’s a minor amount of magic on display, which incidentally leads to one of my favourite scenes of the film, involving the Dúlamán’s song being played.

It’s also interesting to see the differences between the two stories: Your Name is of course a body-swap story and involves two people that have never met one another trying to come into contact with one another after their swapping stops, whereas Song Of The Sea is more of a story of connecting a brother and sister that don’t really get along very well at all, and is mainly a family drama about coming to terms with your family members and doing what’s best by both you and them. Both of these films have excellent characters.

It’s also very clear that these films have very different directions: Tom Moore is a very different than Makoto Shinkai. For example, Shinkai does the entire process of both writing and directing for Your Name, whereas Tom Moore, while he did develop the story, did hand over the screenwriting duties to his friend Will Collins. And I think his collaborative effort is one of the reasons it really benefitted. Shinkai does have an issue with the handing over control in his films which is evident by his previous films like 5 Centimeters Per Second, which I know a lot of people really like; I’m not a fan of that fan. But when you compare the stories of Ben and Saoirse to that of the story of Taki and Mitsuha, you know that something is definitely different about the two, one of the major factors being that while they both are interesting stories about the lengths someone goes to care for another, they’re both from a very different perspective.

Also, both endings nail their stories. Both Your Name and Song Of The Sea have great final acts that really boost these films. And if we’re going by animation, well, I have to look at their stand-out sequences. The stand-out sequences for me in Your Name—without going into spoilers—it is the scene where you’re willing a particular character to get to a certain place in time, whereas in Song Of The Sea it’s the early-on sequence of Saoirse discovering her origins of being part-selkie and discovering the ocean.

This honestly is the hardest decision to make all-round – these are two of the best animation productions of the last decade. Both are excellent in terms of their feeling; both are excellent in terms of their animation; both are excellent in terms of their writing and direction; both have very clear visions and have excelled their individual directors to stardom, and both directors have had excellent follow-ups as a result. I love certain aspects of both of them. So, my question then becomes: what pushes a film over the edge? And I would say impact. On that basis, Your Name’s going to win because both personally and, I’d say, overall, it’s had more impact than Song Of The Sea, which does more feel like a small, independent production. Personally, it didn’t impact me the say way Your Name did. While I remember both the cinemas I was in when I first saw these films, I really am never going to forget my first time seeing Your Name. And on that basis, I’m going to give it to Your Name.

Winner: Your Name

The Animation World Cup: Winners’ Semi Finals

And now it’s time for the Winners’ Semi-Finals, and man is this one going to be tough. So, let’s get straight down to it.

Match 1: My Life As A Courgette vs Chicken Run vs Song of The Sea

It’s Switzerland vs the UK vs Ireland for this match, and it’s going to be a very interesting one. We have very traditional hand-drawn animation taking on two stop-motion films, so if we’re talking animation, we have to immediately talk about the stop-motion effects in both Chicken Run and in My Life As A Courgette. Well, while there is a large gap between both films of over a decade, they are surprisingly comparable. This is probably due to the fact that Ardman Animation received a good budget around that time for a feature-length film when compared with My Life As A Courgette which was a more independently-funded project. However, in terms of making the most of your budget, MLAAC does a really good job – the stop-motion effects are excellent, in spite of the fact they go with some very weird character designs. The characters are also very expressive; I actually think they do an amazing job with them, especially considering that the film tackles very dark subjects surrounding abandonment and abuse towards children. It’s actually proof that you can use the art of animation to tell these tough subjects.

Song Of The Sea, on the other hand, is hand-drawn and very, very proud of it. They’re so proud of the animation they actually put the process in the credits. Some of these sequences are amazing, particularly the sequence involving Saoirse becoming a selkie for the first time. It’s also, out of Tom Moore’s films, the most overtly thematic of Moore’s homeland – Irish myth and legend is at the forefront of most of his films, but Song Of The Sea is the one that wears it the most proudly, using the myths of selkies as well of the stories of the living islands and many others that get brought to life through beautiful animation. The use of colour is also excellent, and once again they have very expressive characters. This is particularly in the case for Saoirse who is a character that doesn’t speak throughout most of the film, so her facial expressions are important. And if there’s one area where Song Of The Sea really wins, it’s its soundtrack. Chicken Run has a very good score and in a lot of match-ups it could have won, however it’s nowhere near the fantastic score that’s been used and songs that were made for Song Of The Sea; it’s actually a soundtrack you really should consider owning. That’s not to say Chicken Run isn’t exactly a dark film; it actually has some quite dark jokes in it as well as some dark moments, but it is a very good family romp film and it obviously is probably one of the most fun films of the bunch.

Each of these films have been severely elevated by their casts, though the number of big names is relatively small. There are no A-lists in MLAAC, Mel Gibson, as mentioned before, is the biggest star in Chicken Run, and Brendan Gleeson is the most recognisable name in Song Of The Sea. Here’s the thing, I like all three of these movies a lot – this is not a case where I’m going to put one to the side. Initially I was considering putting Chicken Run to the side since it’s not doing all that much different than many other animated films that have come before and after it, but it has definitely stuck with people. There’s a reason why it’s big news that Netflix have approached Ardman Animations to make a sequel which, from what I can tell, has been commissioned. But the question really is: why do a sequel? Chicken Run has a very definitive ending, and I think the one thing that all of us have to do is be more comfortable with the idea of endings… but that’s a subject for another day.

So, if it comes down to animation, Chicken Run is definitely the weakest film – I was more impressed by Song Of The Sea and My Life As A Courgette. But if it comes down to story, MLAAC and Song Of The Sea are very, very close; they’re both excellent stories: one deals with themes of loss, grief and making your own family, while family and learning to accept loss also play a big part in Song Of The Sea, where Chicken Run is, at the end of the day, a parody of The Great Escape but a very good one. If we’re going by fun, Chicken Run has endlessly quotable lines. How many times have we heard, “I don’t want to be a pie – I don’t like gravy,” for crying out loud? But I had to look at all of these films as a whole, and all three of these films to me suggest the idea of animation as an expression brilliantly, so I had to ultimately side with which film stuck the most with me. This one could have gone either way; this is probably the closest match that I’ve had here, but I’m going to put Chicken Run to one side. It is an excellent film but the other two just are slightly better at having animation as an expression, and just have a little more thematic weight to me.

Now, Song Of The Sea I did see on a very good cinema screen, whereas MLAAC I saw on a computer screen having bought the film from Amazon Prime, but I don’t think that really affected my opinion of them too much. But man am I glad I saw Song Of The Sea on a cinema screen – you really need to watch it on the best screen possible and the best sound system possible to experience that film. MLAAC, it doesn’t necessarily feel like it needs to belong on a cinema screen; this could have easily not had a single cinema screening and gone straight to Netflix. However, the one thing that holds MLAAC back for me and the reason it took the loss is because it’s too short. It comes in at a very brisk run-time, only 1 hour and 10 minutes. And while it’s a great film with great characters and some lovely stop-motion effects, it’s ultimately very short. It has a ton of heart to it as well but you could say the same about Song Of The Sea, which also felt like it had enough time to tell its story. My Life As A Courgette feels like it’s cut off a little bit, though I do appreciate the fact that it didn’t have exactly a perfect ending because it actually really suited that film. But Song Of The Sea in every sense of the word feels like it tells it story fully and uses its run-time brilliantly, and that was the final clincher for me.

Winner: Song Of The Sea

Match 2: Your Name vs The Lion King vs The Breadwinner

It’s Japan vs the USA vs Canada. Wow, this is an interesting selection. Now, I could talk all day about the pros and cons of all these films, and you might think I’d immediately stretcher The Lion King but no, The Lion King’s staying in for a brief period. It was definitely a good film in every sense of the word, and again, seeing the live-action film really added to my appreciation for the original movie since I realised a lot of what makes it great. For example, the use of colour; the expressiveness of the animation; how Elton John’s songs are translated to the acting, all of which failed miserably in the live-action version. You can really tell there’s a lot of heart and passion to that film, and it’s especially interesting considering that it was the B-team that were doing it; the A-team were working on Pocahontas at the time, believing it to be the more prestigious film that was going to do more for the Disney company as a whole. Way to bet on the wrong horse!

Now, all these films use a mix of hand-drawn animation with some digital effects. Disney around this time was starting to experiment more with computer-generated animation in their films: we saw it Aladdin with effects like the Cave of Wonders and the Magic Carpet. It’s certainly not as prevalent in The Lion King but there’s occasional use of it, the most obvious being the famous stampede sequence which took up some of the largest portions of time and budget. It was back then one of the most expensive animation sequences of all time. Then you’ve got The Breadwinner which is pretty much entirely hand-drawn, and again, Your Name also uses a good mix of digital and hand-drawn animation. It’s been developed by Studio Comics Wave and they have a really distinctive style in my opinion. Yes, it’s completely Anime but their use of colour is excellent. You can definitely see this with sequences involving the meteor shower that the main characters interact with at the beginning of the film. There’s also going to the soundtrack contest, and as much as The Lion King soundtrack is iconic, you’ve got to give it up to the Radwimps for the songs that they produced for Your Name; they feel perfect for the scenes that they are designed for. It’s no wonder that they were called back to do director Makoto Shinkai’s follow-up film, and the film itself has definitely elevated their standing.

However, if we’re going by all these films, well, in terms of being animated, The Lion King and Your Name both kind of have the edge on that one, and we’ve certainly seen that in the case of now we have what is, in a sense, a live-action Lion King film that we’ve seen doesn’t work. We don’t know how that’s going to go for Your Name which is having a live-action film produced by J.J. Abrams down the line. But, as much as I’m apprehensive of the idea of it, I’m open to it. The Breadwinner, however, could easily be a live-action film. The fact that it’s animated is genuinely interesting. I actually think the start is very similar to Song Of The Sea – rather angular, and I would say in some sense it kind of feels rather Picasso in the fact that it seems like Cubism has been on the forefront of the designs of the characters. It’s certainly what I would call a marvellous use of character design, and the fact that they didn’t have to make this film animated but chose to means that I kind of appreciate it more. This is, at times, a hard-to-watch film as it deals with a very tricky subject matter, particularly the treatment of women that were living in areas largely controlled by the Taliban, but it’s also a film that, by the end of it, has a rather uplifting message. I was actually expecting the film to go for a much darker ending than it ended up having. To talk about endings, some people have described Your Name’s ending as being rather ambiguous, but I would argue it’s not. I actually thought Makoto Shinkai was going to take the option that would have made people a bit more depressed, but I think he really nailed the ending; he picked the right ending for what needed to be made.

So, then I go by which of these films’ animation experiences really warrant being seen in the cinema? And, well, that kind of throws The Breadwinner out. Now, for the record, I did go and see The Lion King in a cinema screening when I was young. That film got re-released so often in the 90s it was unbelievable. Any time any studio tried to get any sort of animated film out that could boost their potential, Disney would re-release The Lion King in cinemas just to cut them off, particularly with Jeffery Katzenberg running the animation studio at the time (which is one of the several reasons I’m glad Quibi has been an unmitigated failure). Further to this point, I saw Your Name and The Breadwinner in the exact same pop-up cinema that was used for The London Film Festival that had an IMAX screen, and, well, I’m not sure The Breadwinner needed to be in IMAX is all I’m saying. There’s certainly a lot of loud explosions and some gun fights which do benefit from having the brilliant sound system, but it definitely showed that the animation budget they were working with was not quite on the level of these other two films. Now, what it fortunately does is use its budget to its advantage and uses very good editing. But you compare it to the other two films and they really need to be seen on a cinema screen. If you haven’t seen The Lion King on a cinema screen and you get a chance to, I really recommend it – you get the benefit of a lot of that extra animation effects that were cutting-edge at the time. And Your Name is just phenomenal. I’ve seen it in cinemas twice in IMAX and it really benefits from that IMAX experience; this is another film where you really want to see it on the best possible screen.

So, how do I then chock these films up? Well, if you go by raw emotion these films all have great raw emotion scenes. I don’t want to give away too much about these films, though obviously we know which part of The Lion King since it’s been one of the most talked-about scenes of recent memory. And I’m certain a lot of people have seen Your Name and know a lot of those moments, but man, Your Name has you on the edge of your seat with its final moments, and it leaves a lot of questions. It also works very well early on as an excellent body-swap comedy. It knows that its real strength is its main characters and does a good job building them up so that we want the best for them; it really has got something special in that sense. So, when you chock all these up, I feel like out of these three films, Your Name is the one that has the win, and the reason I say that is because of the ending. It’s a petty reason but I feel like Your Name nails its ending the best. All these films have great use of raw emotion and great character moments, but I feel like Your Name also just excels slightly more on these fronts.

Winner: Your Name

The Animation World Cup: Losers’ Semi-Finals

Welcome back to The Animation World Cup! And it’s time to determine which two films will take on each other for the prize of winning the losers’ bracket. Check out last week to see why all these films lost their individual matches, but here’s how it goes: we’re going to have a three-way fight between 3 films that lost their first matches for them to get their second chance. Remember, one of these films could win the entire thing, so this is not a time to count them out. Without further ado, let’s go through my deliberation. I’ll kick off the first match.

Match 1 Arjun: The Warrior Prince vs Chico & Rita vs Happy Feet

It’s Indian vs Spain vs Australia, and immediately I’m going to have to follow another Madness tradition and stretcher one of these films out of the fight. Sorry, Arjun: The Warrior Prince; you’re a decent film but you’re outclassed here and you’re definitely not winning this fight. Arjun: The Warrior Prince is commendable in what it wants to do. It’s a very interesting story within its own culture, brought to life through animation by people of that culture to tell their story. But it’s clearly not been made with as much of an international audience in mind, which was a criticism I made the last time around, and its animation is also the weakest of these three films. I know one of these is done by Dreamworks so they obviously had a lot more money to work with, but if there’s one thing we’ve seen from Indian films in previous memory it’s that many of them can do a very good job with a minimal budget. Sadly, Arjun doesn’t quite manage that – the frame rate on the animation is definitely an issue in this film and the textures just don’t look that great. Sorry, Arjun; you’re out now.

That leaves us down to Chico & Rita and Happy Feet. It’s a very similar scenario as Chico & Rita’s first challenge: it’s taking on a very happy, family-friendly film made by a very well-established Western studio. However, I don’t think Happy Feet ever comes up when people talk about their favourite Dreamworks Animation pictures. It doesn’t even enter my top list, which includes films like the Kung Fu Panda movies and, of course, the first two Shrek films. But here’s the thing, I somewhat enjoy Happy Feet. It does suffer much of a curse that many Western animated films now seem to have, that being that they’ll put a celebrity in the voice cast just for the sake of their being a celebrity there, without consideration for whether the actor suits the role. Most of the actors do a decent job – I mean, Robin Williams was born to be in animation. And it’s very hard to chock these two films up. Happy Feet at the end of the day is essentially about embracing what you’re good at and embracing what makes you unique. It’s a good message born out of a nice, charming little story about a penguin who can’t sing but learns to dance to find true love. And yes, it’s kind of an inconsequential film but it’s also kind of sweet at the same time. A lot of people think I hate Happy Feet because I don’t really rave about it. I don’t hate it; I just think it’s an alright film. I think it actually does succeed in quite a few areas: Elijiah Wood gives a decent performance in it, it’s probably one of Robin Williams’s best voice acting performances outside the Genie, and I’m still amazed George Miller directed this one. He really proved with this film that he’s a much more versatile director than people given him credit for.

But then you’ve got a film like Chico & Rita, another film about love but this time a more mature take on it, documenting the jazz scene in Cuba and a love story between a singer and a pianist. But, of course, this one is way more mature. And I mean, really mature. This is an animation film with full-on frontal nudity, and I mean in some cases quite explicit frontal nudity. I remember watching it thinking, ‘If this was a live-action film you’d never get away with this!’ And that’s the interesting thing about Chico & Rita for me: there is no reason for this film to be an animation production in a traditional sense, but by using animation they managed to blend in the beauty of the music and give a level of emotion to the characters through pure expressiveness that animation allows you to achieve. In that sense, it is a really beautiful film.

Now, comparing these two films back-to-back is quite hard in that sense. If you go by animation, they’re both doing very different things – one is a computer-animated film, the other one’s a hand-drawn animated film; one uses 3D, the other uses 2D, and they also have very different styles. Chico & Rita definitely goes for a similar art style that many cartoonists that drew the jazz scene were aiming for; it reminds me a lot of the art of Al Hirschfeld whose art was used primarily for a lot of the inspiration for the way the Genie was drawn in Aladdin. But you can really tell that a lot of detail has been used to make the characters move fluidly, especially with the music-oriented scenes. If there’s one complaint I kind of have against Chico & Rita it’s that it’s not a long film but it feels like one; the film is only actually 1 hour 35 minutes including credits but its pacing is off a little bit. Some scenes feel like they go on a little too long and it does risk that whole aspect of a film caving under its own pretence, though it luckily pulls back before it can manage that. But one of the things I do appreciate about it is it feels like it tells a complete story. Happy Feet is a film of similar length and is very much a traditional, standard family film; it doesn’t really try to break the mould all that much.

Honestly, it’s a hard call in some senses because I think Happy Feet is a much better film than people give it credit for, but Chico & Rita feels like a once-in-a-lifetime film. Just from the start alone, you’re not going to mistake it for any movie; there is really no other animated film that looks like it. But then I also don’t think it’s as accessible to a large audience, and I could definitely see someone’s thoughts drifting off whilst watching it because it does ask a lot of its audience. But, at the end of the day, there aren’t many films like Chico & Rita, and I’ve got to give it the win on that basis.

Winner: Chico & Rita

Match 2 Loving Vincent vs Big Fish & Begonia vs Long Way North

Poland vs China vs France; let’s see how this one turns out. Now, initially I didn’t think of stretchering any of these films to the side since all of them have some merits in their regard, and there is a lot to say about all these films. Big Fish & Begonia is probably one of the best animation projects to come out of China. I’ve certainly not felt that level of passion I had compared to, say, what Japanese and Korean productions have been bringing out. But Begonia definitely is a closer one, and it certainly is an interesting project to say the least. Loving Vincent is a beautiful film which took years to make, with some of the most experimental animation known to man. And then you have Long Way North – it has a beautiful, unique animation style to it, it does a brilliant job portraying the harshness of the Artic Circle, and tells a really cool story about perseverance.

The question then becomes: should I eliminate any of these films? Well, I didn’t want to eliminate any of them off the bat, however there is one thing that changed my mind. See, with Big Fish & Begonia, I didn’t really remember that story until a re-watch; it had really blanked from my mind quite a bit, and that’s saying a lot considering that it was one of the films I reviewed during my long-extended London Film Festival stay, and I remember a lot about most of those films. But even then, it doesn’t really do much for me. I mentioned last time that Big Fish & Begonia, while it is an interesting story that centres around an interesting environmental message and does some cool ideas with classic mythology around reincarnation, it still to me just feels like a discount Studio Ghibli film, and I don’t know why I would choose it over one of those films. I can’t say there’s much more to it beyond that, so I’m going to stretcher it out.

Now, between Loving Vincent and Long Way North, they’re once again very different films, though not to the extent that Happy Feet and Chico & Rita were. Loving Vincent is really an interesting film about curiosity of an authorial figure as well as kind of being about grief. The film’s title is not entirely accurate; it would make more sense for it to be called ‘Understanding Vincent’ because, at the end of the day, that’s what it is: it’s about people trying to understand the man through trying to deliver a letter to his family after his death. What I love about it is that we actually don’t see Vincent all that much, and when we do, it’s not in the best light. Literally – the scenes involving the past where we see flashbacks to Vincent’s life are all done in very dark colours and very greyed out, whereas the modern scenes reflect his art and the beauty of his art very well; they’re very bright and vibrant. Some of the paintings are recreated almost verbatim, and the amount of effort that was put into this film is astounding on that basis. Not only does it tell this great story about trying to understand a person’s life after they’re gone but it also is the first ever entirely painted animated film. Several artists were brought in to recreate Van Gogh’s art style, with his ever so slight attention to detail. It really feels like you’re being transported into the man’s vision, both the dark and the light.

Long Way North, on the other hand, well, it’s probably one of the most French films I’ve ever seen just going by its animation style alone. You ever pick up a menu or a leaflet or any sort of little book in France and it has that interesting, half-done but also half-abstract drawing style? It’s very similar to that. It’s almost Picasso-like in how its drawn, though it doesn’t go full-on Cubism. This style is actually really good considering that this film is about getting to the Arctic Circle, and it does a brilliant job portraying the harshness of that environment. It also has a brilliant main character in Sasha. Sasha’s character arc is great, even if it isn’t breaking too many new grounds. But she does get some decent character moments, and her quest to find out what happened to her grandfather and to save the reputation of her family is an amazing arc. Both of these films I would say you need to see on the best screen possible; you’re going to get the most out of the sheer amount of effort that was put into the animation, and I did see both of these films in cinema.

But it then comes down to which film I feel more passionately about, and that’s very hard to say. On the one hand, Loving Vincent is everything I want out of an animation. It tells a mature story everyone can get around, it’s ground-breaking in its work, and it didn’t need to be an animated film but was anyway, to its benefit. But you could say the same about Long Way North; the only difference is that I feel the animation helps it greater. However, I decided on this that I’m going to go a bit more objective. Loving Vincent is going to take the win here because, although Long Way North is probably the film where I connected with the story and the characters a little bit more, Loving Vincent is a film that breaks way more new ground, and I think on that basis I have to give it the win.

Winner: Loving Vincent

“BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM”

With cinemas shutting down again it’s definitely going to be a case that we’ll be watching all our movies on streaming services, which is why it’s slightly comforting to know that the latest Borat film went directly to Amazon Prime, though I suspect a planned cinema release was on the cards. The problem for Baron Cohen with this character now is that it’s probably his most recognisable character (with the possible exception being Ali-G); there are very few people who don’t know who Borat is.

So how do you make a mockumentary across America when you’re that recognisable? Well, Baron Cohen has certainly managed that this time, but I’ll go into a bit more detail about this as we go. Now, for the purposes of this review, I am going to follow the rule that was set to reviewers with the promise of not giving away the gags in the film. But if you’ve seen the previous Borat film, you know some of what to expect.

There is once again a minor plot to facilitate the pranks on the unsuspecting people, that being this time that Borat, after disgracing Kazakhstan, once again travels to America to rebuild their image by gifting Vice President Mike Pence the gift of Kazakhstan’s top star, who happens to be an orangutan. However, on the way over, his daughter Tutar (played by Maria Bakalova) sneaks into the box and eats the monkey for sustenance and now, in order to avoid disgrace and execution, Borat promises to gift her to Mike Pence. Yeah, you can kind of guess where this is going.

The gags actually are really hard-hitting in more political sense; this is a way more politically-driven movie than the previous one. And the good news is that the gags have evolved to suit the changing climate of America right now. The first film was made during the Bush administration; this film is being made during the Trump administration and definitely reflects a lot of aspects of the rise of the alt-right, and the put-upon submissive nature of men in power that has been exposed by the #MeToo movement is commented upon in the film, particularly of note during a scene at a debutante ball.

The one thing I find interesting is that the defense that many people are going to use when they turn up in the film is that “the words were put in [their] mouths,” but if you ever notice, Borat never openly asks people to say anything; he most of the time will ask questions. This is what’s great about when Baron Cohen’s writing is on point: he exposes the ugly nature within us and how people are willing to say things when they don’t think they’re going to be called out for it. It’s genuinely a hard-hitting film. Baron Cohen really had this intention because he was insistent that the film go out before the Presidential Election which happened this week, and it obviously was a film that was made up until the last minute since the film also had to comment on the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the gags have been somewhat spoiled, especially with the knowledge that Rudy Giuliani looks very bad coming out of this film. And trust me, I’m not going to spoil the gag but wow, that guy is even more of a slimebag than I thought he was before. But it’s what Baron Cohen does best: he exposes the rather dark nature of our society that is kind of hidden but people are very comfortable with.

Now, some of the gags don’t entirely work. Baron Cohen at his worst just makes cringe comedy for the sake of cringe comedy, and there are a couple of points in this film where I was thinking there was no real need for this. But it does feel like he’s working off the momentum that he brought into his This is America series which, I must be honest, I think did a slightly better job of exposing the ugly side of American politics that exists right now than Borat has done. And I don’t think this film will change anyone’s political motivations.

It’s also one of those films that’s surprisingly very heartfelt. The plotline is minimal in this one but it has a genuinely heartfelt feel to it, mainly because the new character of Borat’s teenage daughter Tutar is excellent. Baron Cohen’s giving his all in this one but Mario Bakalova does an excellent job in her role – she can really play off Sacha’s style, she’s very good at improv, and she gives a genuinely great performance. She’s one of the best parts of this new film.

With regards to the ending, some people are going to be a bit pissed off with it I think, but it’s the kind of thing where I think, ‘If people are pissed off with this ending, I’m kind of glad they’re pissed off with it.’ The one thing I’ll say is to not go into this film expecting it to be completely like the first Borat movie. Obviously, Borat couldn’t be entirely on screen at all times because again the recognition of that character means it would have been damn near impossible to make the film, so there’s a lot of different disguises for Borat to wear in this one. But as a result, we get a ton of excellent moments with the new disguises, one of my favourites being a country singing persona he created. Trust me, you’re going to love the gag.