“STAR WARS: RISE OF SKYWALKER”

So, episode 9 finally came out and after a long break, I finally give my opinion of it. Well, this one has actually had a slightly troubled production. Episode 8 was not too well-received; it’s clear Disney were getting worried about this being a trilogy of flops. So, as a result, part way through production, writer/director Colin Trevorrow who directed Jurassic World was booted off the project and JJ Abrams was brought back in to finish off the trilogy he started, having previously directed The Force Awakens.

I personally thought this was a wise decision since Abrams probably would deliver a good movie. Even so I was slightly apprehensive at points since, well, it’s very hard for lightning to strike twice. Now, for the purposes of this review, this is going to be a non-spoiler talk. I’m also going to be completely going on my opinion since I’m already aware at this point that this film has divided audiences right down the middle. Here are my thoughts though as it goes, and also, to avoid spoilers, I’m also not going to be giving a plot synopsis since I know a lot people haven’t seen the film and it’s really best to go into this film with not too much knowledge.

If anything, I actually think both Star Wars and the recent Avengers trailers have been the right way of advertising a film, and I’m hoping that example’s going to be followed in the future. Rise of Skywalker has to be a conclusion to this trilogy and has to wrap up a lot of story elements, and it does this by almost entirely ignoring The Last Jedi. I mean it, a lot of the plot threads from The Last Jedi really don’t get followed up on. But it’s not as if there’s no good here. Some excellent stuff has come about. There are all sorts of story arcs going on for all the main characters, and in fact, there are actually some excellent action scenes.

One of the things that I appreciate for this film is that by this point in time, the film makers finally have dropped all the crutches of the old cast and really given this film over to the new one. There’s obviously some returning characters – there’s Lando Calrissian once again played by Billy Dee Williams who is revealed in the trailers, and of course, the trailers also gave away that Emperor Palpatine in some capacity in this one. I won’t spoil exactly how he’s back but I’m just glad that Ian McDiarmid is still excellent in this role. If anything, the arc that seems to have really been followed and came to an end is Kylo Ren and Rey’s arc, both of which are somewhat excellent in how they conclude.

Yeah, I actually like Rise of Skywalker. Is it my favourite of the trilogy? No, at this point I’d still say that’s Force Awakens, but Rise of Skywalker feels like an excellent way to conclude the franchise. There are a few turns that I thought I didn’t mind myself, I actually thought they were alright, but Rise of Skywalker really works on quite a few levels. This is certainly going to be a divisive film; I’ve already heard some people don’t like some of the things that I like about the film, which is pretty much as far as I can go whilst being incredibly cryptic. But I’m also kind of aware that some things don’t feel entirely thought out. I know a lot of people say this is just a bunch of set pieces tied together but if you actually go back and look at the original trilogy, that was kind of what happened in those movies. Yeah, I’m sorry to burst your bubble on this one but I think you’re ignoring the fact that all the Star Wars films are kind of a bunch of loose plot threads that somehow tie together by the end. I mean, look at Empire Strikes Back. In that film, you’ve got The Battle of Hoth which then leads to Luke leaving to go and train with Yoda, The Misadventures of The Falcon Crew, and then it all leads up to everyone converging in cloud city. So, it’s not as if this film’s been doing much different that hasn’t been done in previous films.

I actually think some of the best sequences in the film have been involved with some new aspects of The Force that have been introduced. There are some amazing sequences, however, I also get a sense that the film’s kind of rushing for time. The biggest problem with this current trilogy now that we’ve seen this conclusion is that the films are not brilliantly connected to one another. I know this isn’t a problem in the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy, but it feels even worse in this trilogy, which is that the films don’t seem to connect to one another very well. It’s almost like there’s a bunch of gaps. But it feels like now more than ever, that these are going to be filled in by expanded universe novels, comics and video games, which I wouldn’t mind except for the fact that Disney at this point in time doesn’t seem to want to really be bothered to expand this Universe. If you look at most of the spin-off material that’s coming out at the moment, it’s mostly being set prior to the original trilogy or during the events of the original trilogy, and it extends to the most recent video games taking place after the events of Revenge of The Sith, so it seems like the fact that Disney’s writers and directors and most of their staff do not seem too interested at this point in time on expanding on this timeline, however, I’m fairly convinced that at some point, we’re going to get more of an extension.

Rise of Skywalker does still have much of the original cast returning, including some archival footage of Carrie Fisher, who seems to be playing Leia from beyond the grave, that’s how good the special effects are to keep her in the film. However, her untimely death has meant that some of the badass plans for Leia that they had in the movie now kind of have to be put to one side, which is rather unfortunate. I mean, as I said, there are a couple of factors of Rise of Skywalker I didn’t like, but again, it would be complete spoilers to talk about them, so I’ll just say for now there’s a few aspects of this film where I thought they didn’t stick the landing, but overall, this film feels a lot more focused and a lot more like a clear vision has been put in place. The question now really comes down to how we will look back on this trilogy when we’re several years down the line. I also want to point out that for a conclusion, it doesn’t half seem like the door’s open for the franchise to continue. Yeah, don’t be surprised; Disney’s going to milk this thing for all it’s worth considering how much money they’ve spent on it.

Rise of Skywalker is a film that doesn’t quite stick the landing on everything but overall, I actually think it’s a pretty good conclusion. There are some excellent action scenes, it’s a very good, crowd-pleasing movie and it definitely feels like an improvement over Last Jedi. I actually thought Last Jedi was going to get better upon this film’s release, but my opinion’s actually gone downhill considering that this film seems to have really shat all over it. JJ Abrams’s direction really has salvaged the franchise, and I’m interested to see where they will be going down the line. Another sequel trilogy was planned but has been scrapped at this point in time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if an announcement comes out within the year that there’s another film project in the works. We really have not seen the last of Star Wars, get ready for more of this.

“KONOSUBA: LEGEND OF CRIMSON”

So, this is a review that’s really just for someone like me. I really, really like Konosuba. It’s one of the funniest Anime series that have come out in recent memory. Now, I wrote a large portion about it in my book. In fact, it was one of the highlights of writing the book talking about Konosuba. And it’s a shame as well because I couldn’t talk about just how funny it is. For those of you who don’t know, Konosuba is the story of Konosuba, an out-of-work neet who dies and is reincarnated by a goddess named Aqua who makes fun of him upon hearing of how pathetic his death was. Trust me, it’s really funny when you actually see it. When he’s transported to the other world, he can take whatever he wants with him and takes Aqua with him, and hijinks ensue. He’s joined by a wizard named Megumin who can only cast a massive explosion spell once a day before being completely drained of all energy, and a masochist warrior named Darkness who likes to throw herself into dangerous situations.

The series is basically making fun of a boom of light novels coming out in Japan around that time that had gotten insanely popular thanks to the success of Sword Artonline, and as a result, writers were becoming complacent. Konosuba was a breath of fresh air because it was essentially taking the complete piss out of it. We’re now two years since the conclusion of the last season, and a third season seemed unlikely. This is largely down to the fact that Studio Deen, who were animating the series and held the license, had dropped it, however, it has been picked up by JC staff who have commissioned this movie. More on my thoughts on that later, but suffice it to say, JC staff have a bit of a mixed record rather than Studio Deen who might have had a bad record a decade ago but have since reinvented themselves this decade.

The movie was announced to be more of an exploration of Megumin’s character, and that’s definitely the case. It basically involves the party travelling to Megumin’s home village, which is the Crimson Demon village, to deal with a massive threat. And now, this village’s primary hope are four idiots. Hijinks ensue. Once again, I really don’t want to talk too much about the film since it’s ultimately that the best jokes come down to being surprised by it, but basically, the movie’s an extended episode of the show. It almost feels like a short, unofficial third season. And rather like the show itself, it’s also remarkably short. It’s very quick; it doesn’t even hit the hour and a half mark, finishing at 86 minutes, including credits. I actually think this is wise – Konosuba’s not exactly got a lot of pathos, so as a result, you can’t really extend it out like a traditional fantasy universe. You’re pretty much in a position of, well, you’ve now just got to get all the jokes out there. And once again, it does an excellent job. They even keep some of the hilarious scene transitions that the TV show had.

That’s also where it comes to my other point, though. It’s not like it’s much better animated. There are certainly ones where they’ve clearly had a film budget, but it feels like a slight step up from the TV series. Speaking of which, JC staff have done an excellent job recreating the great character design animation that Studio Deen put into Konosuba. It doesn’t look like this has come about from a result of a changing of animation departments, mainly because pretty much all the staff came back to work on this one, including director, Takaomi Kanasaki, who handles the project brilliantly. Now, it has a nice, decent running plot, it somewhat ties back in the TV series, and of course, it’s really, really funny. This is one of the funniest films I’ve seen all year; it’s so hilarious. But really, at this point, this is so far into the story that your enjoyment of this is purely going to be on the basis of, “Did you enjoy the TV series?” If the answer is yes, this is completely up your alley. I think the standout this time is not only in terms of the plotline but also the comedy. This time, scenes between Kazuma and Megumin, the latter of which actually gets some of the funniest moments in the film, and the new side cast that’s been added do actually add a lot more to it. I could definitely have seen this becoming its own TV series, had they chosen to extent out this plotline.

My advice at this point is to really pick up Konosuba and to really binge through the series if you wanted to check this one out because it’s so worth your time. And it’s also remarkably short – each season only has ten episodes. And honestly, after being bored out of my mind last week with The Irishman, to have a film where I just felt comfortable and got to enjoy myself for just an hour and 20 minutes, made it really worth it. Konosuba: Legend of Crimson is really a movie that will be predicated on your enjoyment of the TV series, since it’s essentially an extended episode with a slightly more epic feel. It’s remarkably short but it nails its characters and its comedy. All the staff return, and the Japanese voice cast from the TV series reprise their roles expertedly. I should mention at this point in time, there is no English language version, though an English language version of the TV series exists, so I’m certain that when this receives a DVD release, most of those actors will be reprising their roles, and if that’s the case, good news, because they’re also very good in those roles. If you didn’t get the chance to see it in the cinema or you haven’t seen the TV series yet, check it out. It’s really funny, and it will make seeing this one worth it.

“THE IRISHMAN”

Okay, I’m going to put my raging bias of my opinion of Martin Scorsese in light of his comments on Marvel movies to one side because all in all, I think it’s a bit unfair and unreasonable for the most part. I do however have to say, my opinion of Martin Scorsese is that I’m rather mixed on his films. He has some really good films in his bunch. Taxi Driver is a film I enjoy watching, and I do enjoy his remake of Cape Fear.

However, I seem to find myself enjoying a lot of his lesser known films. As much as I’m a fan of The King of Comedy, the films in the last few years that have really drawn me to Scorsese have been 2010’s Shutter Island and 2011’s Hugo. And yes, I know a lot of people didn’t like that film, but I personally was a fan of that one. It seemed like a really nice homage to early cinema and silent film, probably even more so than The Artist, which came out in the exact same year.

One of the problems I have with Scorsese is his films tend to be way too long; he often doesn’t know when to stop. However, when he gets it right, he really does get it right. Sure, I’ve watched The Wolf of Wall Street, which is a film I really don’t care for, and I really wasn’t a fan of the last film he did, Silence, of which anyone who has a problem with Saw being torture-porn and doesn’t have a go at that movie for the exact same thing, you are lying to yourself. It’s the exact same goddamn thing. The only difference is that the director is claiming it’s more artsy than that.

The Irishman has been presented as a really big deal, however. Not only has Scorsese reunited with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, as well as several other actors he’s made famous, including actors like Harvey Keitel and Ray Romano, but he’s also brought on board Steven Zaillian to write the screenplay, nominated four times for Oscars and won the Oscar for the best adapted screenplay for Schindler’s List. So, it’s really, “How do you talk about this film a lot?” Well, you could talk a lot about this film in several regards. For one thing, you’re not going to spoil the movie all that much – this film once again runs into the Scorsese category of really, really long. In fact, it’s even longer than The Wolf of Wall Street, coming in at a total of 3 and a half hours. This is genuinely one of the longest things I’ve had to sit through in a long time.

Now, this film did have a limited run in cinemas when it first came out in the UK, but it’s now been confined to Netflix, which is definitely better as its home. Netflix definitely see this as their big move into prestige cinema, and as a result they’ve been pushing it like hell. I suspect they’re also in hopes that their campaign will result in an Oscar nomination, and The Irishman definitely has potential to be the first film that Netflix had a big part in that will receive the Oscar nomination, which would be a massive coup. And if it were to win, it could be a very different transition for the cinema industry. Let’s face it, how’s it going to look when a film that won best picture had barely any time in cinemas and made most of its success on a streaming service?

Before you celebrate too much however, I’m really not a fan of The Irishman. This comes to my category of why I’m not a huge fan of gangster movies; I just feel like most gangster films are generally about very horrible people that make lots of people very miserable, and while I’m fully in favour of films like that, I feel like gangster films don’t often call out the main character as awful or that these are a group of people who are, by their very nature, intending to cause great harm. You can dress it up with loyalty and all that stuff but at the end of the day, many of these people are essentially monsters. The Irishman has a very, very similar effect to that. It’s actually a story that’s told throughout several time periods, including the 50s, 60s, all the way up to the 2000s. It’s about a top mob hit-man, Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran who’s played by Robert De Niro, and also surrounds the very famous disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino.

Now, you don’t need to be a massive historian to know that Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in the 80s, and from what I’ve heard, in terms of historical accuracy, this is rather close. It was based on a biography chronicling many of the events however, again, the fact that this is based on an unsolved mystery leaves screenplay writer Steven Zaillian with a golden opportunity. He can pretty much interpret things whatever way he wants. But good God, I just thought this film dragged. Now, I did not go to see the film during its limited cinema run, I saw the film when it came on Netflix, which it’s currently on. Normally I would say with a film like this, if you’ve got some time on Netflix this is one you can check out, but even then, I think it’s hard. If you can get through this film in one sitting, you’re doing a better job than me because I really struggled to get through this thing in one sitting. And I don’t always struggle with very long movies; I’ve sat through The Lord of The Rings, for example, and those films go on just as long, especially the extended cuts.

But I found myself just saying this entire time, and doing this is very typical of a lot of gangster films and Scorsese films, I’m just watching horrible people being horrible and not much else. You can dress it up all you want but that is really what it boils down to, and if you compare it to a film like say, Joker, which has recently come out and has been compared to Scorsese in quite several ways. Joker is a film that is also about a horrible person doing horrible things, but it dives into his motivation and thus turns it into a character piece. The Irishman goes for a very similar aspect to it, but because it’s got such a long run-time, it feels like those moments are few and far between. If anything, it actually feels like a rather padded film. A lot of people talked about cutting about 15 to 30 minutes of this film, but I think you could go further. I think you could cut an hour of this movie and wouldn’t have to change much.

I’m really getting sick of this idea that filmmakers have that longer movies equal better movies. It’s not the case. We’ve seen that rather recently with Disney’s live action remakes which have artificially extended the runtime and added tons of padding and weird changes to make up that runtime, not acknowledging that the reason those plotlines went on that long was because the scriptwriters knew the film was long enough that the point had been hammered home enough. I felt a very similar situation on this one; I just did not get why this film needed to be this long. In fact, my housemate even tried to watch the film himself and couldn’t get through it, and like me, he found it profoundly boring.

There are so many moments where not much is actually happening, and I don’t mean that in terms of, “Well, these are character development – it doesn’t need much dialogue.” No, it really feels like nothing at all is happening, and I know that is a bit weird coming from me considering that a lot of my favourite Studio Ghibli films are the ones where it’s slice-of-life stories and just about the characters going about their daily business. I keep telling people, if you’re going to do a film like that, you need to have likeable characters. I don’t like anyone in this movie. It’s just a case of “you’re all horrible people, I don’t feel comfortable in your presence”. And once again, rather like many gangster films, I don’t think this film really calls out its subject matter. Now, fortunately, not many people are going to make any money off this film, but I’m getting kind of sick of these films. This does feel like a classic Scorsese film which if you’re a fan of that, you’re going to love this movie. It’s pretty much everything that made the man famous in the first place. But oh God, this just felt like it was a real hard task to get through at times. I know it’s just a me thing; plenty of people have reviewed this film really well but I personally don’t really like it.

Now one of the things that’s been talked about a lot has been the de-aging effects that have been used for the actors. I actually thought that some of these effects have been really good. It doesn’t feel as intrusive as bringing actors back from the dead like in Rogue 1 or recent other films, but the effects have been actually really damn good. Some of the scenes don’t work out so well and one of the common complaints that I’ve seen in a lot of news has been that while the faces are perfectly timed, you can still tell that the movement is coming from someone in their 60s. I’ll have to echo that one; you definitely notice it. But there are a lot of time where it does feel like they’ve brought back Robert Dr Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci into their prime. But I’d be lying if I said I thought that this film was completely unscathed as a result of that. As for the other actors, well, as you’d expect from a cast this star-studded, there’s not really a bad performance in the bunch. This is an excellent cast. Al Pacino is doing an excellent job as Jimmy Hoffa, he’s almost unrecognizable at some points. Robert De Niro seems like he’s finally learned his lesson and started going back into the films that he sort of belongs in. And he gives a very good performance, I just wish he was in a film that I could really properly stand to watch for that long.

A lot of controversy has surrounded Anna Paquin, the fact that she had so few lines in the movie in a script that’s been written by a man and a film that’s been directed by a man. While I think there’s potentially a conversation, I think I have to echo Mark Kermode’s review of the matter and saw that I think in this instance, there’s actually an artistic reason for why that has been done, and this is an occasion where this doesn’t feel like blatant sexism.

Now I got that mini rant out the way, I’ll just say that I’m really not a fan of The Irishman. I really waffled around in this review, but I struggle to have much of an opinion on it. This should be the sort of film that I really praise coming out, but it really made me realize why Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel really hit me. It ignores the fact that films like that are enjoyable, but they also can have great moments and great characters and great actors giving great performances, and when you reserve that distinction to films like this, you cheapen the medium of cinema. And that’s kind of how I felt when I was watching The Irishman. Frankly, it feels snobby.

This film does not need to be three and a half hours long and I think it doesn’t spend enough time calling out its subject matter. It’s got amazing effects, and some good central performances, especially actors like Robert De Niro, Anna Paquin, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, however, this film really dragged for me. At one point, I was shaking my watch only to realize I had an hour and a half left to go. You will not get through this film in one sitting. If you love Scorsese films, this one is right up your alley as it is everything that we quintessentially associate with the director. But I think we ended up getting way more of the bad than the good. However, I know a lot of people disagree with me, so I would actually say in this instance, take my review with a pinch of salt.

“PROMARE”

Promare is the feature length debut for Studio Trigger, one of my favourite animation studios out of Japan. And it also is the feature length debut of Hiroyuki Imaishi, who’s directed excellent television series, including Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill and Space Patrol Luluco, and even worked as an art director on the one of the most popular Anime of all time, Evangelion. Rather like that, this is his feature length debut for a film that’s going to be appearing in cinemas.

I released my book, ‘The Nerd Consultant’s Guide to Anime’, and in it I talk a lot about one of the reasons why Imaishi is one of my favoruite directors. And I was very lucky that when I went to this special screening organized by Eventbrite and the festival organizers, I was able to attend a Q and A with several of the staff. So, I have heard a lot about the creativity that went into this movie and what has made up a lot of the production.

The basic plot of Promare is that it’s set in a rather futuristic world where, after a massive fire storm thirty years prior, a terrorist organisation known as the Mad Burnish, who are fire-wielding creatures, have begun to attack human populations, leading to the Burnish becoming hunted by futuristic firefighters in giant mech suits. Led by Lio Fotia, played by Taichi Saotome in the Japanese version and Johnny Yong Bosch in the English dub. They attack human structures, however, they are stopped by one particular company that begins to investigate the scenario, including the heroic Galo Thymos, played by Kenichi Matsuyama in the Japanese version and Billy Kametz in the English language dub. However, after several plans have been thwarted and Galo begins to notice some things are wrong and there may be more than the Burnish first thought.

Okay, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. If you’re familiar with Studio Trigger, you know that they do some really high concept ideas in their projects, and most of them are completely out there and insane, even by Anime standards. Promare to a certain extent is no exception, but I just feel like the studio have reeled things in a little bit for their first feature-length film. Though, that being said, you can absolutely tell that Gurren Lagann’s director has been the director of this project. I’m not going to lie, this is absolutely an insane explosion of action and colour and simple insanity! If you’re a fan of a lot of the creative staff’s previous work, you’re going to love this film. There are excellent giant robot battles all round, and tons of references to their previous works, especially Kill la Kill, Gurren Lagann and a few others, but they will not come in ways you exactly expect.

The best way to see this film is to be surrounded with people who also get the references. The audience I saw this film with were all well in the know and were absolutely loving every second of it. The animation quality is top notch; this is one of the best-looking animated films to come out in 2019. The use of abstract drawing and the way they simply draw the lines really makes things stand out. Yes, it is a bit obvious that they’ve recycled a few of the character design ideas – Galo bears a very striking similarity to Kaneda from Gurren Lagann, for example, and there’s a few others sprinkled in here and there. Though, when I was at the Q and A, this was apparently very deliberate. It almost feels like this film is a full-on celebration of all these projects that have come before it. This is not surprising considering one of the most recent television projects from this studio was a complete Ready Player One style TV series, in which characters travelled to several worlds of their previous work. This one is a little less on the nose. Certain aspects do feel like they’re carried over, but at the same time, this film definitely has a distinct identity all of its own. Not to mention, this film’s hilarious. There were so many moments where I was laughing my ass off watching the movie.

Now, in terms of performances, I haven’t seen the English language dub of this movie. This is simply because I couldn’t get out in time to see any of the English language versions, but I’m pretty sure it’s absolutely fantastic, and I’m dead set on seeing it in the English language version at some point, especially considering it’s practically a who’s who of some of the best English dub voice actors that have worked in the industry. This is practically like an all-star team, including Billy Kametz, Johnny Yong Bosch, Mike Pollock, Steve Bloom, Matt Mercer, Crispin Freeman, Kari Wahlgren, Yuri Lowenthal, the list goes on and on. I am dead certain I want to see this film in the English dub at some point, that being said, I would be very doubtful that they could match the energy of the Japanese who are also really a highlight, and once again, are also a bit of a who’s who of excellent actors, including Kenchi Matsuyama, Ayane Sukura, Taichi Saotome and of course, Masota Sakai. These performances are great across the board. I think the standout for me though is Taichi Saotome as Leo. He does an absolute stand out performance in this film. Giant robot fans will be also really happy with this film. This action is nailed perfectly. The designs are great, and it feels like every scene has been thought out. If I had to be a bit negative, the plot gets a little convoluted at the end and it feels like they tried to pack in a little too much. But at the same time, it does wrap up the film in a nice little bow. And let’s talk about that soundtrack. The soundtrack’s been produced this time by Hiroyuki Sawano, and if you’ve watched any popular Anime in the last few years, chances are you’ve heard his soundtracks. He’s done the music for several pieces of work, including a lot of the recent Gundam series, Attack on Titan, Seven Deadly Sins, Blue Exorcist and his work with Studio trigger with Kill la Kill. Those soundtracks were all excellent. All those works are pretty seminal, but here’s the thing: this might be his best one to date. I haven’t been able to get this soundtrack out of my head since I’ve hearing it. There are so many amazing songs on this soundtrack. Solano, you’ve done a great service. The film should really be nominated at the Oscars for best original score. The only soundtrack that’s really come close to challenging it in the category is Weathering With You, but I’ll have to wait until that film properly comes up before I review that. Also, the song Inferno must be nominated for best original song, it’s just one highlight in an excellent soundtrack.

Not gonna lie, I could gush about this film all day – it’s a wonderful, splendid piece of action. It can feel a bit style over substance and if you’re not used to high energy, high octane Anime, this won’t do anything to change your mind, but this as a film feels excellent to watch. And it feels great to finally talk about it after a couple of rather disappointing weeks. The film has an interesting plot that examines some interesting themes and has some excellent giant robot battles to boot. The animation is an explosion of colour, I really dug the world and the cast deliver excellent performances. This one’s getting some additional screenings in December following its rather successful early screenings, so I would recommend if you get a chance, check it out. And if you don’t like reading subtitles, I’m fairly certain that some of the English language dub will be at some of those screenings. Just check your local cinema. I really want people to go to see this film because the cinema screen is the exact place you need to see it.

“FROZEN 2”

So Frozen 2 was obviously going to happen. The original film really brought back Disney to the big time and has been a critical and major financial success. This time round, once again, we have directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee in the director’s chair, with Jennifer Lee directing the screenplay, and the entire cast has returned to reprise their roles. I think many people have also been rather surprised by the fact that Frozen 2 hasn’t gone for a Christmas release, though Disney’s also been rather smart in this as to not cannibalize their profits around the time Star Wars is coming out.

Okay, let’s be honest with each other. I am not a fan of Frozen. I dislike pretty much most aspects of it, not just because I’m obviously not the target audience for this film, but also the fact that I have a bit of a personal grudge against it since it beat The Wind Rising, which was one of my favourite Studio Ghibli films, for an Oscar in the same category. I’m sorry, I’m don’t care how much you like Frozen, The Wind Rising deserved the Oscar.

But I promised to not go into this film review with too much of a bias and to review the film objectively. It didn’t help my opinion. Now, one thing I will say is that while this would be a point I would not go into detail about the plot of film. Disney has actually done a very good job this time round not going over too much in the trailers and giving away too much of the plot. Honestly, I think if you see the trailer, you’re not seeing a large portion of the film, in fact, you’re probably at most seeing 25% of the movie. As a result, I won’t be going over too much plot details in this review, since, for the target audience, I do want to keep that level of mystique and mystery there to discover. To put it briefly, there appears to be some sort of foreign crisis involving an enchanted wood, which creates a mission to solve it in order to save Arendelle that’s taken up by Anna, Elsa, Olaf and Christof, played once again by Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad and Jonathon Groff.

The thing is though, another reason to not really go into the plot details is it’s actually kind of the worst thing about the film. The fact of the matter is, this film I swear feels like it goes on way too long. Frozen 2 comes in at a total run time of 1hr 43m, almost the exact same run-time as the original film bar a one-minute separation. Yet, this film feels way more padded. Frozen 2 is an 1hr 43m-long movie that you could probably cut 30 to 40 minutes off and you wouldn’t be missing much. This film’s no deeper or more richly fulfilling than any of the Disney DVD sequels, and some of them were better. Disney once again has really gone back into their habit of remaking sequels to their animated films where there is no need for a sequel to exist and making them just as lifeless and soulless as before. This was very evident with Wreck It Ralph 2, which was another film that left me feeling rather disappointed. The only big difference between now and when they were doing this in the mid-2000s is that there are not as many of them being chucked out as back then, and they’re actually going to cinemas now.

I do get a sense that some effort was put into the writing of this movie, but it really feels very thin. There is so little actually happening in the movie when you really think about it and half the characters don’t really have a reason to be there and have to have some sort of justification. Olaf, for example, has gone from being a semi-pointless comic relief who was teetering on the edge of being annoying to a really annoying comic relief who has absolutely no reason to be in here. There’s a couple of subplots that are thrown in as well to act as padding. It’s no surprise then that a large majority of the characters have spent large sections of the film where they’re written out. It also seems to be that a lot of characters have kind of regressed from their character growth in the first film, something I imagine is going to annoy many people who saw the first one.

If you actually want nostalgia, there’s actually like a minute segment in this film where they comedically recap the entire first film. Guys, it’s Frozen 2, good chances are I saw the first one. I think I summed it up best when I got home after seeing the film in a conversation I had which was my first initial thoughts on the film, whereas the first one feels like the songs are there to facilitate the plot. This time it feels like the film is there to facilitate the songs. This definitely has the feel of “sell the soundtrack” and a lot of the songs are very comparable to the ones that are the in the first one. Don’t go to this film expecting much; no matter what you think of Frozen, these songs are not going to get stuck in your head.

I think ‘Into The Unknown’ will get nominated for best original song, so God help us if it actually wins. There’s also a very, very clear attempt to recreate ‘Let It Go’; this definitely feels like a studio mandate and Disney demanded another ‘Let It Go’. As a result, the film tries it twice and both times, feel soulless. This is an even more stupid decision than putting that song in Kingdom Hearts 3. At least in that one, it actually showed off the technology of the in-game graphics that a PlayStation 4 was able to recreate something similar to one of the Disney’s most iconic scenes. This time, it feels just drab and soulless. There’s even one moment in the film where they have a slight snippet of it. We get it guys, that song’s been played to death. I’m not buying the soundtrack.

Now, if I want to talk about the film’s strongest points, it’s the animation – the animation once again is actually really excellent. Here is something that feels like it’s really worked out very well. There is an excellent use of animation, 3D colour and the environment that they’ve taken advantage of. As far as a film goes on a technical level, it works really well. The film this time goes for a more autumnal theme for its environment, rather than the previous one going for winter. But there’s certainly an aspect of winter obviously; we’re going to have to get this thing to play over Christmastime. The character animation is also excellent, and I really have nothing to scoff about in that department. It’s actually a very well-animated film. It actually does a pretty good job incorporating new technology that’s come about in the time period between Frozen 1 and 2, which you would hope considering there’s been a six-year gap between movies. The acting is pretty much somewhat solid; no one’s turning in a half-arsed performance, I will give them that. There are a few new cast members this time around as well, including Sterling K Brown, Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina and Jason Ritter. I definitely will not knock anyone’s performance in this movie. Everyone does a decent job.

I’m not going to lie, Frozen 2 actually made me really genuinely annoyed, not because it’s not a movie made for me because the fact of the matter is, I find this film on a technical level is a failure to its target audience. There’s a really great film-rating podcast episode in which Matthew talks with a couple of other fellow film critics in regard to the live-action Lion King which came out earlier this year, which I’ve previously reviewed, and in it, they were talking about Disney making films which actors’ brands deposit for easy money-makers that are based on previously established properties that will allow them to make the film they actually want to make next, and this is very much what Frozen 2 is existing to be. Though God knows what film is actually going to come about from its inevitable success. The fact of the matter is though, this film is definitely the practice of what Disney has been going for recently, and rather like all the others, it feels soulless, shameless and overly capitalistic in an almost narcissistic fashion.

Frozen 2 is paper-thin when it comes to its plot and characters, and it was a film that fundamentally bored me the entire way through – it was so predictable. It was so unbelievably underwhelming and so bad in just how safe a play it feels on the part of Disney. I really feel that this film will lead to a third movie in order to sell this series as a trilogy, and God help us if they do that because I’m done with these films. The songs are not that great, and despite the fact that it’s very well-animated, it feels like its been made to sell a soundtrack.

If you really need to see it, this is probably one to wait for DVD or Blu-ray, though if you have kids, they likely will have already dragged you to go see it. Oh, and by the way, if you were part of that group that was shining a torch in order to take pictures of your kids in the cinema (in the middle of the movie!), I seriously hope you get banned from a cinema soon enough – you actually interfere with the projector, you selfish bastards.

“LE MANS 66”

Le Mans 66, or as it’s known in America, Ford vs Ferrari, which is also what its listed as on IMDB, is 20th Century Fox finally doing the story of Carrol Shelby and Ken Miles’ historic run at the famous Le Mans 24-hour race. 20th Century Fox has been kicking around with the film for a while but it’s taken James Mangold as the director (last time I spoke about one of his films, I was reviewing Logan), and the final decision was to have Carrol Shelby played by Matt Damon and Ken Miles played by Christian Bale.

When I first heard this film was coming out, I was a bit skeptical at first. But I thought if anyone can make it work, it’s the director of Logan. However, I also had a suspicion that it was only going to be car fans and people that watch Top Gear repeats on Dave and the Grand Tour on Amazon that would get half of what was happening.

Carrol Shelby is not that hugely known of a figure, although the work he did for Ford resulted in some of their most major successes to such an extent that Ford named the last Mustang before he died after him. But that begs the question, how does this film rack up? Well, as expected, the film is a loose biopic of how Ford wanted to buy Ferrari after Ferrari refused an offer to be purchased by Ford and then used that to jack up their price before being sold to Fiat. After feeling the insult of this, Henry Ford II, played in film by Tracy Letts, commissions Carrol Shelby’s company to create a car that can beat Ferrari at its own game at Le Mans. At the time, Ferrari had won four of the previous five Le Mans 24-hour race, and Shelby insists on bringing on racing driver Ken Miles to be the GT-40’s driver.

Despite the fact that this ad campaign has highlighted Carrol Shelby more than Ken Miles, I think of a film about Ken than it is about Shelby. Ken takes off a lot of the focus and a lot of the emotional weight is on him. This is backed up by an excellent performance by Christian Bale in this role. It’s actually a rather interesting movie. It does seem to be a good film that will have a great balance between racing enthusiasts and people who like cars, and your general cinemagoer, since again, this is framed as being a pretty stereotypical sports movie. You don’t go to a film like this and not expect that. But it did get down how clever Carrol Shelby is as a race car designer. He brought in all of his experience before his heart condition forced him out of the game, and he put that love and passion into every single thing he did, truly one of the great car designers of our time, and the film maintains that legacy.

Le Mans 66 also rather ingeniously has great writing and a great repertoire between its entire cast, and the cinematography and sound editing in this film is amazing. You really feel like you are there on the course. I don’t know how much Ford approved of this film considering that they do not come out looking good in this film; that’s something that genuinely surprised me. Obviously, there’s no mention of the fact that Henry Ford I was a vicious anti-semite, but they don’t exactly pull their punches. The ad campaign gives this idea that Ford are going to come off as the good guys, the plucky people that just want to get back at Ferrari and knock them off their pedestal, when in reality, it’s everything that Ken Miles predicts at the beginning of the film, that the film does come to pass. And these bright and talented individuals are being held down by internal bureaucracy.

This is one of the things that I think is a bit of an issue with the film, since there’s so many antagonistic forces. In fact, for a film that’s in America entitled Ford v Ferrari, Ferrari doesn’t actually factor into a large portion of it. If anything, a large majority of the film is kind of Ford v Ford. I think this was a wise decision though because in a sense, as Film Brain pointed out in his review, you can’t portray the largest car manufacturer in America as the underdog. It’s just not gonna fly. And for the most part, I think they struck a middle ground quite well. I think the biggest problem I have is that, for the film that feels very real and very human, only a typical sports film at first, it kind of then gets to a state where you go, ‘Are you sure this happened in real life? I’m starting to have my doubts.’ But I suppose, if you look it up, it was kind of true to an extent. But again, your suspension of disbelief might be a bit tested.

The film actually has an excellent selection of performances, including Jon Bernthal in a role that starts out very prominent but then gets further and further out of the film as it goes on, and Caitriona Balfe and Noah Jupe as Ken’s wife and son who actually have excellent chemistry together and made me believe this is a real genuine family. Josh Lucas plays a pretty excellent overly stuffy bureaucrat for Ford. If you want to watch a film with excellent performances, this is actually a fantastic cast all round. But where this movie truly shines is in its race sequences. The emphasis on speed is amazing and the way it’s shot is excellent. As a result, I seriously got into some of these scenes.

I saw the film in IMAX and it really is the prime way you want to see this if you can; it’s one of those films that’s meant to be seen in that kind of format. However, if you don’t like the sound of revving cars, that’s going to obviously bother you. You might then want to wait ‘til this one comes out on home release because it’s frankly all over the place; this is a loud movie.

Le Mans 66 has been one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen all year. It’s an excellent biopic with an excellent cast headed up by brilliant performances from Matt Damon and Christian Bale, brilliant direction and cinematography and excellent sound and editing design. I really hope the film gets a ton of nominations in the technical categories at the Oscars since on a technical level – it’s one of the best films I’ve seen all year. It doesn’t escape however that the film feels a bit bloated with a 2.5-hour runtime. And some bits of it feel a tad unbelievable, but it’s kind of the path of the course with going to this sort of film. I appreciate the fact that they actually put a lot of effort in to make it more sport accessible (by which I mean you don’t have to be Jeremy Clarkson to enjoy it). If you can seek it out, I really think it’s worth a shot. I reckon this film’s going to be doing a lot on the award circuit and it’s good for context when you’re getting round to watching the Baftas and Oscars. I really hope Christian Bale gets nominated for best supporting actor or best lead actor when the time comes.

“THE AERONAUTS”

The Aeronauts is the latest film from director, Tom Harper, a well-known director who’s been mainly working as an episode director for very famous TV shows, including Peaky Blinders, Misfits, This Is England 86 and, rather recently, the 2016 War and Peace TV mini-series. He has moved into film, but his films have been rather a mixed bag. One of his previous entries was the sequel to The Woman In Black, Angel of Death, which was so bad it killed off that franchise before it ever got the chance to get started 2 films in.

He also directed last year’s film, Wild Rose, about a Glaswegian woman with dreams of becoming a country singer in Nashville. I’ve heard very good things about Wild Rose even though I haven’t actually seen it. So, on the basis that Tom Harper is a director whose work has been rather compromised by studio interference, that’s why The Woman In Black 2 turned out the way it did.

The Aeronauts feels much more like a different sort of project. For one thing, the film’s been developed quite prominently by Amazon Studios, and it’s been shown around the Film Festival circuit, at events like the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival to name a couple. But for whatever reason, Amazon seems to have gotten cold feet around it. I suspect that this is due to the fact that they think this won’t be like Manchester In The Sea and be their big move into the prestige film market, since I think someone at the studio has taken a look at it and gone, “Yeah, this probably isn’t going to win that many Oscars outside the technical categories.” With it having a very small run in the UK, it’s not exactly showing in that many theatres, and the advertising has been really small; I’ve only seen a few posters for this thing. There’s been barely anything on television, which means I suspect this won’t be seen by many people outside of the fanbase of The Graham Norton Show. This is most evident in the fact that it’s going to have barely any presence when it hits America next month. It comes out in America on December 6^th but it’s for a very limited run in cinemas, and it’s almost going directly to Amazon Prime just before Christmas. Considering the budget Amazon has spent on this film, that might be a wise choice. I don’t know how much they get every time someone streams something on an Amazon Prime, but I suspect it’ll have a better chance of making back its money that way than it would with a limited cinema release. Chances of this film making its money back are quite small.

The Aeronauts in itself is a semi-autobiographical story. It’s mainly about the real-life meteorologist, James Glaisher, played by Eddie Redmayne, who wishes to be able to use observations of the clouds in the atmosphere in order to improve weather predictions. He wants to achieve this by breaking the record for the largest ascent in a balloon at the time by going above 23,000 feet. To do this, he hires pilot Amelia Wren, played by Felicity Jones to aid in what will be one hell of a perilous journey. Okay, this film is one of those films where you should really pay attention to the words, ‘inspired by true events’ not ‘based on true events’. Amelia Wren, for example, unlike James Glaciar, is not a historical figure. She’s actually an amalgam of a few people around the time, but they do give a decent amount of character to her. The film starts out with this idea of a very typical double act of: one’s wild and rambunctious, the other one’s a real stuffy, science type, how will they get along? Yadda yadda yadda, you know the rest.

It’s kind of a bit of an interesting film in some sense. It’s essentially kind of a film about trying to live up to one’s potential and trying to silence naysayers, not that we haven’t seen that sort of film before either. But this is a film where there is a real attempt to make that sort of thing work, but it’s nothing you haven’t already seen before. I will say once again, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones have excellent chemistry on screen which really works and is especially good considering it’s essentially those two on screen for almost the entire movie. Most of this film, outside of a few flashbacks and other establishing shots is essentially Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones behind a green screen. And it’s at that point that you really realize, while despite the fact that this film does have some decent character to it, at the end of the day, it’s a spectacle piece. The Bloomflight’s perils are apparently again based on several actual incidents, though probably didn’t actually happen in this historical flight. But essentially, it’s another case of people coping under various challenging situations.

To borrow from Mitch Benn, the way you succeed in a film like this, where you actually know what the outcome is, is to show just how utterly screwed at least one of the participants was. This is where, giving his example, a film like Apollo 13 exceeds. To a certain extent, The Aeronauts really succeeds in this regard. An early storm sequence really puts you on the heightened edge of how bad a situation they’re in. And some of the special effects used are actually mesmerizing. This felt like a Victorian version of Gravity at points, for the fact that, at many times, it based itself purely on the atmosphere and just how dangerous a situation everything has become. But then again, another film that this really heavily reminds me of is the Roberts Zemeckis film, The Walk, as it once again uses height to its advantage and makes you feel like you’re actually there. It helps that I’ve seen both this film and The Walk in IMAX, and considering how much the film takes place in the daytime and how much height is a factor, I really don’t understand why this film was not shot in 3D. This film is perfect for 3D. The special effects and the sequences are, for the most part, really great and really convey the peril. Though it also has a hint of, Oh God, what’s next? One of the genius decisions for the film is that it feels like it’s taking place in real time. The film’s actually really brisk – it only lasts an hour and 14 minutes, though I think this brisk running pace will definitely suit the obvious plans for America where it could become a streaming service item.

Here’s the thing though, once you get around that, there’s not as much to this movie. The flashbacks are rather limited, and the other cast members, while filling a role, feel slightly under-characterized. This is obviously to make way for James Glaisher and Amelia Wren’s characterization, which is actually pretty good, but some of the cast did feel rather underutilized. This includes James’ friend John Trew, played by Himesh Patel, as well as Tim McInnerny, who’s great in just about anything he’s in, and a rather underutilized performance by Tom Courtney playing James’ father who’s suffering from dementia. The central performances of Redmayne and Jones are once again great and they bring a lot of the flair that they brought to The Theory Of Everything, which was the last film they were in together before this, which is rather apt considering it won one of them an Oscar and the other a nomination. But I’m doubtful they’re going to receive those awards for this film anytime soon.

If this film’s going to get any Oscar nominations, it’ll definitely be in the technical categories. The film is really a marvel to see. Really highly recommended, if you can, see it in IMAX. However, when you get down to it, I don’t think there’s as much to this film. If they were going to make this film longer, they probably should have devoted a little bit more to James’ craft and Amelia’s existential crisis around her previous balloon ascent, which played a big factor in her character. But I ultimately think that might have dragged out the film a bit more. I mean, if you really wanted to see that film, you should really get the Hayao Miyazaki film, The Wind Rises, which once again, I highly recommend.

That’s the thing for me, The Aeronauts is a very passable story with some good moments, with the backdrop of excellent effects and stunning sequences. And the fact it is, that’s great, because film is a visual medium, so the idea of show don’t tell should really work. However, I think you can have that with an excellent story, that’s why a film like Gravity kind of worked even though I have my issue with it. As a whole, I think The Aeronauts is a mixed bag. Visually: great. And pretty good in the story department. The Aeronauts really will suit a streamed platform, mainly because it’s a hard film to market and its brisk movie running pace will suit a movie night in with your friends and loved ones. However, from a visual standpoint, it’s made for cinema and pops out in a format like IMAX. I feel very conflicted with this film – there’s moments in it which I think are excellent; there’s moments where I think it’s passable. As a result, I’m kind of straight down the middle when it comes to it. But I would say that’s a sign of a decent film – if you can’t really say that anything in it was outright bad, just kind of underutilized, you can do a hell of a lot worst. And at least I can say the film wasn’t boring. In that one sense, I would say, go see this film in cinemas while it’s available because I think, when it eventually does go to Amazon Prime soon, it might use a lot of its visual magic and might leave the film feeling a bit more exposed. I might actually really consider re-watching this film once its cinema run ends to see how I feel about it then.

“DOCTOR SLEEP”

For the record, I really like The Shining. It’s genuinely one of Stanley Kubrick’s best works, and I will not hear otherwise. Kubrick’s direction in that film is what makes the movie. He knows exactly how to convey the terror of a situation perfectly, and it really shows in the final product. This leads into a bit of a problem as Stephen King has been heavily involved in this film’s production, even more so than he was in The Shining. And Stephen King has a real habit of making sure that the adaptations of his films are close to his books, to such an extent that you almost get the feeling that he doesn’t really care about anything else about the films as long as their close to the book. This has been very apparent this year with this being the third adaptation of one of his books coming out, alongside the remake of Pet Cemetery and the previously reviewed, IT Chapter 2. This definitely presents the problem , well, we’re now adapting this to a film, but we’ve also got to adapt the book, which is drastically different.

How does the film hold up? Well, the film takes place decades after, with a grown-up Danny Torrance (played by Ewan McGregor) trying to bring his life back together after he fell into becoming an alcoholic, since Stephen King can’t seem to write a story unless it has at least one alcoholic character. After getting his life back on track, he realizes his duty is to work at a hospice to comfort people who are about to die, but also aids a particularly powerful girl with The Shining named Abra, played by Kyliegh Curran, who’s being pursued by a group of travelling shining hunters, led by Rose the Hat, played by Rebecca Ferguson.

You know what really sold me on this film before it even came out? It was a combination of things. The film’s been directed by Mike Flanagan, who also wrote the screenplay, who’s recently directed the Netflix hit, The Haunting of Hill House, but has also made excellent horror films like Harsh and Oculus and even made Ouija: Origin of Evil. It takes a talent to rescue a franchise that crap after a first film that was so bad. Second of all was the cast; this cast is excellent. Not just the A-listers of Rebecca Ferguson and Ewan McGregor, we also have an excellent cast with Emily Alyn Lind, Jacob Tremblay, Carel Struycken, Danny Lloyd, Cliff Curtis. There’s a real who’s who of actors that I really enjoy. While we’re on the subject of that, Cliff Curtis seems to have gone from strength to strength since he fired the person who made him be the Firelord in that terrible The Last Airbender movie.

The fact of the matter is though, we have to take a look at this film’s biggest strength, its first two-thirds. There’s actually a fairly decent, well-flowing story for the most part. However, this is also very much where we have two of my biggest problems with Stephen King. For one thing, I’m not the first person to point out the fact that Stephen King has great set-up, but he doesn’t have very good payoffs. You may have a great build-up but you’re not necessarily going to get it to work, and this film is another example. This film’s actually, from what I’ve heard, a fairly good adaptation of the book, which must have been really hard considering the differences between the book and the film of The Shining. For one thing, and I have to give away minor spoilers in terms for the book for this one, Hallorann survives in the book. So, in this film, they have to have him dead, played by Carl Lumbly, who really expertly goes into playing the character. Though considering how talented of a voice actor he is, that’s hardly surprisingly.

The only problem I have is the one thing that doesn’t seem to translate very well from book to film and television. If you want to adapt a Stephen King verbatim, it requires a lot of explanation. King actually has a tendency often to overexplain in his books, which annoyingly seems to turn up a lot in his films. It one of the reasons why I think The Shining is one of the few examples where the film is better than the book, which annoyingly seems to turn up a lot in his films. It’s one of the reasons why I think The Shining is one of the few examples where the film is better than book, since, well, the film does a very good job of implying what’s going on. It keeps you guessing, and that’s what makes it so scary. We know Danny has some sort of powers but is there a genuine haunting going on or has Jack completely lost his mind? Maybe he never had his mind to begin with. It definitely seemed like he was at a point where he could just snap. Granted, in order to get that, you lose a lot of the character development that the book had. But honestly, I actually felt like, in times, that was what dragged down the book. It actually was existing in a bit of a Schrodinger’s Cat scenario. It was both it’s biggest strength and its biggest weakness.

This film is really trying to be its own thing for the most part, but it also suffers from the fact that it’s trying to give a bit too much of an explanation to the actual powers. Once again, I feel it’s an over-explanation. We also had this issue of, well, it’s got to make several homages to the Kubrick movie, and the problem with doing that is that the thing then turns into a bit of a nostalgia trip, and that takes away from a lot of the fear of what these things were in the original film. The old lady in the bathtub, for example, is way overused in this movie. And it’s all sorts of moments like that. In fact, considering how much they go into detail about everything, you’d actually think Mike Flanagan was doing a bit of an apology to Stephen King, since he even starts to put in a few elements from the original book into this movie. And then the third act is where the film completely flops. The third act of this movie is doing so much stuff from The Shining verbatim. It’s not even subtle in how much of a nostalgia trip it is, but I almost don’t care at this point. Some of the lookalikes they’ve hired are really good but some of them are just appalling, including one towards the end where I just went, “Really? That’s the best lookalike you could find?”

Here’s the best way to put it: the real enjoyment of this is going to be on a perpetuation of, “Do you enjoy Stephen King’s books?” If the answer is yes, you’ll probably enjoy this film. If you enjoyed the 1980 Kubrick movie, I’m not guaranteed you will. Mike Flanagan obviously had to put in tons of throwbacks to that film. It was inevitable. The film version has almost transcended its book, to such an extent that most of the things he pays homage to would have been film-original elements. Most of the iconic scary moments in the film were not in the book, including the creepy twins, the blood elevator, “all-work-and-no-play-make-Jack-a-dull-boy”, yeah, those are film-original. I like the fact they tried to recapture the feeling of that film in the third act, and the trailers do kind of give away that it’s going to all go back to the Outlook Hotel, which is a shame considering that I think that would have been a nice surprise. But man, that’s where everything I was really worried about the film goes off.

It’s probably going to sound like I thought Dr Sleep was a bad film, but I think that’s more the fact that I’m not a massive Stephen King fan; I often think most of the best adaptations of his work are the ones which do know when to make changes to suit a new medium, some exceptions, like The Shawshank Redemption, notwithstanding. It’s just that, for the most part, I thought the first two-thirds of this film were very solid, but it does not stick the landing. And the overuse of The Shining in this movie kind of made it feel like a superhero movie at times, with horror elements. I kind of left the film feeling a bit mixed on almost every level; I don’t really dislike Dr Sleep, but I don’t exactly like it altogether, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Dr Sleep has excellent performances from people like Rebecca Ferguson, Ewan McGregor and Kyliegh Curran, as well as an excellent cast, but it ultimately feels like a film that falls down by the fact it tries to merge the tones of both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick, which, despite their relative similarities in certain areas, they’re almost polar opposites in others. As a result, I don’t think the film will appeal completely to people who are fans of either one of them. Because most of the film tries to take Stephen King’s style, that’s the point where it kind of succeeds. When the film tries to be Kubrick, well, Mike Flanagan’s good but he’s no Kubrick. I wouldn’t say the film’s a mess per-say but given what we’ve ended up with, this film could have got a hell of a lot worse. My advice would be, see the movie but be aware that there’s a chance that you might find something that doesn’t completely suit you.

“TERMINATOR: DARK FATE”

Well, it’s Tim Miller, so in some respect, that’s what he did instead of Deadpool 2. Personally, I was actually quite excited by the fact that Tim Miller was announced to be directing the film, since Miller has done a very successful job of action films with Deadpool. I was quite interested to see what he would bring to it. Plus, there was also the fact that Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger were returning to the franchise, and this will be the first film they’ve both been in since Terminator 2.

Terminator: Dark Fate is not exactly a reboot but not exactly a sequel either. It’s kind of a halfway sequel/halfway reboot, by which I mean, it’s a film that actually does go back and change some things but by ignoring sequels. In this case, it ignores Terminator 3 and the terrible Terminator Genesis. I’m pretty sure it also ignores Terminator Salvation but either way, you should probably ignore Terminator Salvation; that film was pretty crap. So basically, Terminator 1 and Terminator 2 have happened and that’s it. This film takes place twenty-two years after the events of Terminator 2. Sarah Connor, played once again by Linda Hamilton, is working as a Terminator hunter. Also, sent from the future is enhanced soldier, Grace (Mackenzie Davis) to stop the Terminator known as the Rev 9 (Gabriel Luna) from killing Dani Ramos (Natalie Reyes). Since, now that Skynet is no longer an issue, the supercomputer that’s going to cause the human extinction is now a supercomputer called Legion and Dani’s survival is key. 
 A lot about this film has been heavily advertised, what with Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back. But this really is Mackenzie Davis and Natalie Reyes’ film. In fact, the appearance of the former cast members is more to prop up this new cast, and for the most part, it’s kind of successful but it’s also kind of a flop in that sense. Every Terminator film that’s come after Terminator 2 has been a massive flop. Terminator: Dark Fate on the other hand is not really a flop, it’s purely passable. The plotline is so dragged out with trying to do callbacks to Terminator 1 and 2 that, if it wasn’t for the new cast, it would be a complete retread.

Unlike Genesis, which shamefully brought back the T800 and the T1000 with very little flair of its own, this time we do get a brand-new sort of Terminator, the Rev 9. The big thing this time is it gets an exoskeleton and a liquid endoskeleton. So essentially, he’s kind of a combination of the T800 from Terminator 1 and the T1000 from Terminator 2. They at least get down a lot of the fear factor that the original Terminator has in the fact that it’s almost impossible to stop one, but I’m doubtful Gabriel Luna will have the same effect that someone like Schwarzenegger would have. But again, they also try to add some of Terminator 2’s aesthetic by having him appear most of the time as people in authority, such as police officers, board patrol agents and army officers, which also adds to the atmosphere.

The biggest issue I have with the film is just the fact that there’s not much new flair. It almost plays it safe too much, almost like it’s so worried about getting a backlash that it’s not willing to do anything to compromise that. And it’s not as if this works to its entirety. The action scenes are fairly decent but they’re not incredible, and it appears like they really try to go down the Marvel route in how they perform their action scenes.

Now, there is also a lot that seems to work. Hamilton does come back into her role pretty well and her rather weary look suits the character given the circumstances, and Schwarzenegger actually does try to do a decent performance this time round since he’s in a position where he actually has a meatier role rather than just being the nostalgia comic relief that he was in Terminator Genesis. If you’re trying to keep track of things, it starts out pretty easy, but at this point, Terminator’s timeline is so convoluted it’s starting to actually get out of hand. It doesn’t help that this film does create a few plot holes in regard to the fact that it’s taking place after Terminator 2 and Skynet is no longer a factor. It does make you wonder though how the Terminator design moved to Legion – so there’s this supercomputer that wants to overrule humanity and just happens to come up with a very familiar design to that of what Skynet came up with? You’re definitely pushing the boundaries.


Mackenzie Davis’ character, Grace, is basically the Kyle Reese of this movie, and for the most part, Dani Ramos is basically the Sarah Connor stand-in which is rather weird considering we actually have Sarah Connor in this movie. In fact, I actually think if the film was just about them, it might have been a little bit better, since it would have probably let the film have slightly more of its own identity. We still would have had the issue of the déjà vu, but I think it would have been a bit less prominent. 


I do commend the film crew for having a largely Hispanic cast and setting, as well as having a film franchise mostly propped up by women. In fact, you’ve probably noticed I haven’t been talking much about Schwarzenegger since, well, he doesn’t actually come into the film until about the two thirds mark, which actually kind of makes sense. I think Schwarzenegger now probably should just have an extended part at the end and not be as overexposed as he was in Terminator Genesis. And it’s actually quite cool to see what Mackenzie Davis and Natalie Reyes can bring to the film. Special effects on the other hand, some of them are alright. I quite like the effects they use for the Ray 9, that was pretty cool, and some of the CGI is actually fairly decent. There’s not too much in regard to practical effects but I wouldn’t expect there to be. There are so many de-aging effects for flashback sequences and they are really good, especially given how good some of them have been in other films, some questionable examples notwithstanding. And also, unlike Gemini Man, they’re not overly reliant on the effects.

One thing I don’t understand, however, is just why this film needs to exist. Terminator has so proven over the years that it was basically a one-and-done, maybe-one-sequel movie. The fact that various studios that have a stake in Terminator have tried to turn it into a franchise has really exposed the series as a whole. It’s very clear that there was a clear story are that was done by Terminator 2, and all these projects that have gone on since have become less and less relevant and had less and less to add as a whole. Dark Fate is no exception to this rule, it just happens to one of the least awful examples. I will say Gabriel Luna does a good job in the role of being a Terminator, certainly a lot better than Jason Clarke did in Genesis, but it’s not entirely great as he’s still within the shadow of previous actors within similar roles. If you think you recognize him when you see him on screen, he’s currently in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ghost Rider.

Terminator: Dark Fate is a passable film but the only reason it’s going to stand out is that it’s a passable film in a sea of rubbish. Terminator: Dark Fate is so concerned with doing homages to the original film, it almost lacks its own identity, and it certainly does have a decent new cast, which definitely could be extended out into future movies, but at this point I’m not sure I want to see any more of Terminator. Fans of the old movies might take something from it, but it’s a bit of a “meh” movie. It’s not a film that’s going to do much for many people.

“ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP”

Zombieland: Double Tap is the very belated sequel to 2009’s Zombieland, and reunites the core cast of Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, alongside director Ruben Fleischer. A Zombieland sequel was considered in development for quite some time, but it took a really long time before it was actually going to be greenlit.

And, there’s the first problem going in. It’s been 10 years since Zombieland, and the cast has moved on and done a lot since. Eisenberg and Stone, for example, have both been nominated for Oscars, while Woody Harrelson has been nominated twice. It begs the question, “What’s the point of bringing it back?” The first Zombieland is an alright film but it’s not a film where I go, “I’m in desperate need of a continuation.” Nevertheless, it’s here, so let’s see what they gave us.

Well, Zombieland: Double Tap’s plot is basically that, after a while of living in the White House, Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock, played once again by the same main cast, hit a bump. As a result, Wichita and Little Rock leave. Again. And then Little Rock also leaves her with her new boyfriend named Berkeley, played by Avan Jogia, with the destination being Graceland. Wichita, with nothing else left to do, goes back to meet up with Tallahassee and Columbus in the hopes of asking them to help bring Little Rock back. If you like many people I spoke to thought that Zombieland was going to be a big nostalgia-bait, then congratulations, you’re right. It borrows a ton of plot beats from the previous one. Tallahassee, for example, has gone from idolizing Bill Murray to idolizing Elvis, hence the whole reason that Graceland is mentioned in this film quite a bit.


The biggest difference this time round is the introduction of new character, Maddison, played by Zoey Deutch, as well as Nirvana, played by Rosario Dawson, who I swear is going for the record of trying to appear in as many franchises as possible. The problem with Maddison is that the joke of her being a ditsy girl is quite funny at first but gets old quite fast. I think the director knew that which is why she’s not in as much of the film as you’d expect from the trailer. Nevada, on the other hand, is actually an interesting edition, though again, her role is regulated to be a glorified cameo. Rosario Dawson’s not in this film much either. In fact, the film doesn’t really take much focus away from the main four. 


The banter between the characters is still pretty good for the most part, though once again, it appears almost identical to that of the original. As a result, nothing about this movie feels very enthusiastic; it feels like a film that’s just going through the motions. The script basically foreshadows virtually everything that happens, to such an extent that you will almost certainly know what’s going to happen and when, but it’s not as if this isn’t indicative of a lot of films coming out right now. They also haven’t really expanded much on the film’s universe (for the lack of a better term because, of course, everything is a cinematic universe now, and Marvel’s been the only one to get it right). Admittedly, this time it’s a slightly different species of zombie, which only really makes a difference for about one or two fight scenes as a whole, it doesn’t really make much of a difference overall except that they’re now named either a Homer, a Hawking or a T-800. Oh, and a Ninja as well, but I think they were used for only two scenes at most.

Zombieland: Double Tap frankly overall does remind me quite heavily of a lot of sequels which just redo the first film but change the setting, The Hangover: Part 2 being one of the most infamous offenders in recent memory. But, fortunately, it’s not nearly as lazy as that film was. The scriptwriting is at least still competent, and when the banter’s good, it is pretty good – I did find myself laughing a fair few occasions. And I wasn’t bored; this isn’t a film whereby you’re going to leave the cinema thinking, ‘I’ve wasted my entire time when I could have been doing something way better.’ And the performances of the actors, while a bit toned down compared to the first one, are still pretty good. Woody Harrelson, once again, steals the entire show.

“Well, that was alright but I’m not sure I’d want to see it again.”

“GEMINI MAN”

‘Gemini Man’ is a production that has been floating around in Hollywood since the late 90s. It has been kicked around so much that I think it’s very possible that anyone who had any vision must have left ages ago. It’s not as if this has been a grand story people wanted to tell. The idea has simply been thrown around of, “What if we could make an actor look like they had a double who was a younger version of themselves?” The idea had not got to cinemas simply because the technology hadn’t existed until recently. It’s just that simple.

Now, with technology improving in special effects, the project has tried to be revived, but until now, settling on actors and a director has been a bit of a minefield. Various actors have been pitched including Harrison Ford, Sean Connery and many other recognizable names. Though the production this time seems to have stuck with Will Smith, an interesting choice given that his early 20s were a big time for him, with the actor coming to prominence through his appearance in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’. Similarly, various directors have been suggested for the film, including several big-name directors, you know, the sort you can put on a poster and say, it’s the director of so-and-so. In the end, the director that has been settled on is Ang Lee, who you most likely remember from his film, ‘Life of Pi’.

With its long and troubled production, how does Gemini Man work itself out? Well, if you’ve seen the trailers you know the story by now, that of a government assassin, Henry Rogen, played by Will Smith, going into retirement. However, information is passed onto him by an old friend, information which could be very damaging to the US government. As a result, private military leader, Clay Verris, played by Clive Owen, sends a younger clone of Henry, named Junior, played by Will Smith through motion capture technology, to take him down. The tag line of the film is basically, ‘Who will save you from yourself?’

So, here’s where I stand with this movie. It feels very appropriate that Ang Lee is directing this film. Ang Lee seems to really want to push cinema through technology. He’s certainly gone through a development over the years; he’s always had technology kind of on his mind, but he is also known for doing slow, character-driven pieces. These included him directing films such as ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’, the latter of which earned him one of his two Oscars for best director. The other was for ‘Life of Pi’, which truly merged his love of both the use of technology as well as an ability to direct great character-driven stories.

However, he has had a couple of films whereby he hasn’t successfully managed to merge those two together. If you’ve ever seen his version of Hulk, for example, and while I haven’t seen his last film, ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’, I’ve heard a lot of people say that not only was it blatant Oscar-bait, it was definitely pushing for a form of cinema that people didn’t really care to see. As a result, he seems almost perfect to direct ‘Gemini Man’. However, you’ve also got to remember that the story of this film is developed by Darren Lemke, who could be a good choice considering he rose as a scriptwriter on ‘Shazam!’, which I gave a very favourable review to. But the other writer is David Benioff, who’s been one of the main writers on ‘Game of Thrones’, which might explain the pacing in this film. And I can tell that this film’s production has gone back to the 90s – this really feels like the sort of movie that would pop up in the 90s.

One of the things I find bizarre about the film is that it’s two hours long, but it barely feels like anything happens it in. Although it’s a genuinely interesting idea for a film, the idea of cloning someone and facing the ghosts of your past, the problem is, they never truly dive into the subject. In fact, most of those moments feature in the trailer. The whole things feel very video game-y, and I don’t mean a good video game plot like ‘The Last of Us’, I mean a plot video game plot whereby the plot just exists to justify the fact that you’re going to play a game where you play as this character and have to defeat these enemies. I can certainly see this being done as a video game, though in that case, it would have appalling pacing. This film feels rushed from start to finish. (Speaking of video games, Gemini Man’s subject matter reminded me very heavily of Metal Gear Solid. If you want to see this plotline done right, I really would recommend Metal Gear Solid since the plotline of that video game executes these ideas much better).

It once again is a film that feels like it has a lot more to say than it actually does. Frankly, I’ve been rather waffling around, because I’ve not been talking about the major point of the film, the technology. At times, it looks really good – it does at times look like a 23-year-old Will Smith just fresh off finishing the last season of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ has been transported to 2019 and cast in this film alongside his older self. Now, as Angry Joe pointed out in his review, it’s not the same technology that was used to de-age Samuel L Jackson for Captain Marvel. This film uses a combination of a stand-in and motion capture technology, and at times it looks great. At other times, it falls flat. And that’s a real shame because this technology, if refined, could be excellent.

I think the biggest issue I have with the film is that, once you get down to it, when you get that technology out of the way, once you’ve seen that effect, there’s not much to the actual film. It’s just hopping from one action scene to the next; there’s very little else to talk about as there isn’t much plot. As soon as you get around the gimmick, you realise it’s very paper-thin. There’s not much to the characters; you’ve seen them a hundred times. Really, the main gimmick of the film is all it has going for it.

The supporting cast is alright, Mary Elizabeth Winstead does a decent job and Clive Owen’s trying to play a decent villain. But the best part is definitely Benedict Wong, who gets some hilarious lines. (You’ll definitely know him when you see him. He played Wong in the Dr Strange film.)

If I’m talking about the action scenes -which of course, this is an action film- they’re shot… alright. Some of them are decent. The bike chase in Columbia, for example, is almost expertly shot. If there’s one thing Ang Lee can do very well, it’s good shot composition; he knows how to execute single shots and tracking shots. This is definitely true if you’ve seen ‘Life of Pi’ or ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’. But the lighting has kind of screwed him in some of these scenes, and some of them are shot appallingly. I’ve not had an action film in a long time that’s had such a juxtaposition of good action scenes to bad action scenes.

Look, really this is stalling for time. Gemini Man at the end of the day is a decent gimmick but it’s also there to cover the fact that this is a paper-thin plot that’s been kicked around Hollywood more times than a football in Wayne Rooney’s garden, in the hopes that someone would make some success out of it. And now that it’s finally here, it’s rather underwhelming and feels like a waste of the talents of both Will Smith, giving a decent dual performance and director, Ang Lee, who seems to be moving further and further away from his strengths with each passing film. When you get down it, this is something you’ve seen a lot and it really wasn’t that great the first time. Passable popcorn entertainment but not really in a good way, this is the kind of film you watch on Netflix when you have your mates round late at night because, screw it, we’ve seen everything else that’s on the recommended bar.

Ultimately, the gimmick that in a sense could probably elevate this film only ends up driving it down. Once you get past the dual performance of Will Smith, you really realise that the plot is empty, which I think accounts for its low score on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Save your money, there are much better films coming out in the next few months, and Joker is already in cinemas right now and is worth a watch.

“JOKER”

Joker is the latest film to come from DC, although from what I understand it is not going to be part of DC’s extended universe of films. It is, however, still under the banner of Warner Brothers and still apparently is taking place in late 70’s, early 80’s, so it’s entirely possible that Warner Brothers are simply wanting to keep the option available in case the film was a success. The film has been directed and co-written by Todd Phillips, who directed The Hangover trilogy. The co-writer he has collaborated with is Scott Silva, who wrote the screenplay for 8 Mile.

Now, firstly I went to the film with minimal expectations since I’m someone who actually is of the opinion that most of the best aspects of The Joker come from the fact that you know very little about him and his motivations, most of what makes him great, because of his simplicity, but I was fully in favour of where they were going with it. The Joker this time is played by Joaquin Phoenix and the film acts as an origin piece showing the series of events and the slow breakdown that leads the young man named Arthur Fleck into becoming the clown prince of crime.

Now Joker has been very mixed in terms of reviews, although I find many of the people that are giving bad reviews to the Joker’s motivations suspect at best. My personal opinion, I think Joker is a really good movie. Now it is important to say that in regards to the film’ politics, it is important to remember that the film does have a sympathetic view to mental health issues, but it is also important to remember that people with mental health issues are more likely to be the victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators of it. The fact is though, Joker is an excellent take on someone’s slow decline into a very dark place. I actually don’t want to give away too much about the film as it is best to go in with as minimal knowledge as possible in this case. Let’s just say that this film knows exactly what it wants to do and sets out to do it. Most reviews have also made comparisons to the Martin Scorsese film, King of Comedy, which this obviously takes a ton of influence from. This is not surprising seeing that Scorsese was at one point attached to the project, which is even more surprising given what he said about Marvel films recently, the elitist git!

What I really like about the film is Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, he really nails it on several levels, however, if you are going in this film expecting this to be very much a DC Comics film I think you might be sadly mistaken, because I have read all the comics, this film does not exactly pay much tribute to the comics, in fact there’s not much of that in here. While comparisons will obviously be made to the Killing Joke which is one of the few Batman comics to actually delve into the Joker’s origin as it has been largely implied to be the actual origin, it has never been fully confirmed but obviously it’s very different given the fact that this story exists when Bruce Wayne is a young boy, as opposed to the Killing Joke’s origin which takes place after Batman has been doing his work for some time. There is not much emphasis on Batman law, in fact, the most prominent factor is the inclusion of Thomas Wayne, who is played by Brett Cullen who is running a campaign to be mayor of Gotham City. That being said I will say the shots of this film are excellent. This is kind of what I imagine a pre-Batman Gotham would look like. It is certainly a more realistic portrayal of the city. It is certainly the closest we’ve got since Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. The one this I will also say against the film, it definitely feels like a slow burner and that might turn a few people off, but fortunately for everyone, this film did receive the R rating it needed which means everyone calling for it to be banned because it might frighten kids, yeah you got what you deserved, this clearly was not meant for them.

I spoke briefly about Joaquin Phoenix’s performance and title role, but to go into more detail, the dedication put into it is great, simple things like the laugh which in this continuity is part of the condition that he has are excellent, but he also adds some amazing sense of physicality to the performance and it is made even greater when you realise just how much weight Joaquin lost; he looks down to the bone in some shots. There’s just one problem I have though – the fact is, it seems like they’re going for a rather sympathetic portrayal of the Joker at points. I just don’t imagine this is the character that’s going to be incredibly threatening. You definitely see elements of that towards the end of the film, but because the Joker is the title lead, you almost have to do a story where the joker has to come out on top by the end, and that’s a very hard film to root for. We’ve done this whole film shows descent and makes us wish that it hadn’t gone down that route, only for us to then expect to then see him as the villain and that’s very hard to do after that point. In fact that’s the one element of this film that means it’s slightly missed the peak of the mountain but was an inch away from it. That being said, if this was to become part of a DC Extended Universe, I’d really like to see Joaquin reprise the role to see if they can make him a proper villain down the line.

So then we come to the other performances, and that’s where there is some really great performances. There was a really good performance by Brett Cullen, Francis Conway, Zazie Beetz. I think one of the better performances was by Robert De Niro in what is his best role in years, as an obnoxious late-night comedy host names Murray Franklin who Arthur aspires to be a guest of. Honestly, if you felt like De Niro’s career was on a downturn, this is a film for you because this is one of his better performances.

Something else I really think is excellent is the score. This film’s music score is fantastic – I really hope it gets nominated for Best Score at The Oscars next year – it’s been a real stand-out. And the cinematography – wow, they did an excellent job in this film.

Joker is a really good origin story for a character that we all know, told in a rather different way. In spite of the rather mixed messages of the writers and director, it’s not perfect but it does a really cool job and is capped off by an excellent looking Phoenix performance which I think sadly, because of politics, will mean he will likely not receive an Oscar nomination. As a film though, it’s excellent! I genuinely think if you were on the fence about this film you should go and check it out to make up your own mind.

Well that’s it from me this week. Next week I check out the film directed by Ang Lee produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Will Smith (twice!), it’s Gemini Man.

“READY OR NOT”

(It doesn’t matter how bad meeting your in-laws is or isn’t going to be, it won’t be as bad as this.)

‘Ready or Not’ is the latest film from directing team, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the team that brought you ‘V/H/S’ and that terrible found-footage film, ‘Devil’s Due’. Though, luckily this time, they seem to be staying away from the found-footage genre, instead opting to do their own thing.

It’s kind of a strange film. I certainly saw lots of trailers for this and it does give you a sense of intrigue, but it didn’t look exactly like it was going to be a major deal. However, the casting of Samara Weaving definitely seemed like a good choice for the lead role. 


How does it turn out? Well, if you haven’t seen the trailer, the basic premise of the film is that the lead character is Grace, played by Samara Weaving, who’s marrying Alex, played by Marc O’Brien, of the famous Le Domas clan. A family of them made their fortune through a board game empire. They have a family tradition that when a new member of the family joins, they play a game at midnight. But after Samara draws the card to say the game will be hide and seek, Alex reveals to her that it’s actually a big ritual, and they are convinced they have to kill her for this ritual.

Okay, this is a very thin premise, and if this film took itself seriously, it would’ve collapsed. Thankfully, the writers and directors knew very well this needed to be a dark comedy. Anyone that studies film will tell you that comedy and horror are strangely good together if you can get it right. Ready or Not is a prime example of where that can work. This film is nothing amazing but it’s not forgettable. It’s down to the fact that the cast have been given excellent direction. Not too many recognisable faces in this one, apart from Samara Weaving and Andy McDowell, who plays the matriarch of the family, probably one of the best performances in the film.

The film basically plays a dark idea on the basis that the scariest thing to do is introduce yourself to your in-laws, a theme that’s been covered in several other horror movies, most notably in Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’. ‘Ready or Not’ definitely owes itself to the horror film society, since a constant running theme seems to be the rich don’t live like us. Mark Kermode’s review also pointed out one factor that I agreed with – most horror comedies tend to lose their nerve towards the end of their films and just straight out become horror films, whereas Ready or Not blends its mix of funny and scary right up to the end and is all the better for it; it’s actually a constant tone.

Plus, it’s got some memorable characters in it. For one thing, I appreciated the brotherly bond between Daniel, who’s played by Adam Brody, and Alex. It’s certainly subtly brought up as the film goes on, but it’s not majorly necessary that they have to devote the entire film to it. In several senses of the word, people are going to find this film very weird, though. It’s certainly running to the beat of its own drum. That’s not to say anything in this film is very unique; it’s not like nothing in this film has ever been done before. In fact, it’s actually kind of reliant on tropes, and if you see as many horror films as I do, you’re kind of going to see everything that’s coming. Still, there’s not much in terms of scares, not even that many jump scares which I was actually expecting more of. Once again, this is down to the fact that this film knows exactly what it wants to be and sticks with it.

The biggest issue with the film is that the plot is rather guilty of spinning its wheels. Like many horror films, it has to come up with several excuses for how the main characters haven’t been able to escape the situation or why the film’s still going on. Luckily, it only runs for an hour and 35 minutes, and it pretty much does away with that idea entirely. If anything, it actually kind of finds its focus in the final part.

What is this film’s biggest strength? It’s ridiculously funny. I’m not joking, I laughed a ton watching this film. There are several funny moments in this movie, and the audience that I was seeing the movie with were laughing just as much as me, but also at the same time wincing at the gore. Oh yeah, this film’s got an R-rated in America and an 18 certificate in the UK for a good reason – there is a ton of gore. With the exception of one example, it’s not incredibly vomit-inducing, nor is it incredibly realistic. In fact, there’s very few noticeable practical effects that have been done, most of it seems to have been done through computer effects. That’s not a diss against computer effects artists, but as we’re becoming more and more film savvy, we’re starting to notice them more and more. Luckily, this film is not one which has the excuse of “well-it’s-cheaper-to-make-it-look-more-fake-so-let’s-not-bother”.

That’s the biggest thing about ‘Ready or Not’; it’s got a very good cast, some excellent performances and some genuinely good, intense horror moments, some of which reminded me of the video game, ‘Alien Isolation’, leading me to suspect that this plot could have made an excellent indie horror game.

But’s it’s also not exactly the most memorable film in terms of breaking any new grounds. At the end of the day, it’s just what I would describe as a pretty good film. That’s it. But right now, that was what I really needed. This film was actually a real breath of fresh air after going to the cinema for several weeks to see what turned out to be rather disappointing films that received a ton of advertising. 


‘Ready or Not’ is a simple horror comedy that works to its strengths and doesn’t have too many weaknesses. The family dynamic is really hilarious, and the film goes completely nuts at several moments, including its final scenes. It has a tone and sticks with it. But at the same time, this is not a movie you need to be rushing out to see at the cinema if it isn’t your thing, but horror fans will likely get a real kick out of it. I actually think it’s worth a watch. Considering what’s out in cinemas right now, you can do a hell of a lot worse. I would even say that, for a couple of weeks, this probably will be one of the best things you can go and see in the cinema.

“RAMBO: LAST BLOOD”

Now, I’m not a particularly huge fan of the Rambo franchise, except in one case. I frickin’ love the first movie, ‘First Blood’. ‘First Blood’ is a brilliant action film; it comes highly recommended on my part. Although, the first film’s success might have had something to do with the fact that they largely had to base it on its original book. If you want to know how close it was to the original book, might I recommend watching Dominic Noble’s YouTube video.

This film boasted to be the final movie in the franchise, bringing on new director, Adrian Grunberg, a former second unit and assistant director on several films, including ‘Jack Reacher’, ‘Edge of Darkness’, ‘Legend of Zorro’, ‘Master and Commander’, ‘Apocalypto’; the man’s got his credentials. However, he’s only relatively recently started breaking out on his own as a full-time director, having only directed one feature prior to this movie, ‘Get The Gringo’.

‘Rambo: Last Blood’ has largely been a project that’s been funded through Sylvester Stallone’s production company, Balboa Productions, but it’s also been funded through famous hackhouse, Millenium Pictures. Last time I ended up talking about one of their films, it was ‘Angel Has Fallen’.


 So, does ‘Last Blood’ end the Rambo franchise on a good scale? While, as mentioned previously, I’m not a huge fan of the franchise, but the first two films actually do a really good job. This time the plotline concerns an older Rambo (played once again by Sylvester Stallone) almost in retirement, running a ranch and looking after his niece, Gabrielle, played by Yvette Monreal. She, however, crossed the border one night to look for her father. After the encounter doesn’t go so well, she’s taken into slavery by the Martinez brothers, Victor and Hugo, played by Oscar Jaenada and Sergio Peris-Mencheta. Rambo then crosses the border himself to bring her home. 

Yeah, despite the fact that the trailers have this idea of ‘It’s-a-Rambo-version-of-Logan’, this much more resembles ‘Taken’ – the entire time I was watching it, I was getting so many flashbacks to ‘Taken’, and that’s not really what I think people are expecting going into a Rambo film. That’s not to say it’s completely unrecognisable, but it’s not exactly what you’d expect. It frankly doesn’t feel like there’s been much character growth for Rambo himself, despite the fact that this film is taking place towards the end of his life. With the exception of a few lines at the beginning, you almost wouldn’t believe that Rambo had had that experience of ‘First Blood’. Anyone who remembers the ending of the first movie will tell you that that experience would have changed a man.

The entire first act of ‘Last Blood’ goes on a little too long, the second act is a bit bloated and the third act just feels like a stereotypical revenge movie. In fact, the entire time it feels like you’re going through the motions. This film oozes being one which was meant to go straight to DVD or even straight to Netflix but was just decided at the last minute to receive a theatrical release, not helped by the fact that Millenium Pictures is on the production company’s financing. This is truly evident through the special effects and the way action scenes are shot; while some of these scenes are actually fairly well done, many if not most of them feel overwhelming. Now let’s talk about the effects. The practical effects are actually fairly decent. There’s some real blood-curdling stuff in this movie, an interrogation during the second act being a particular highlight. But then, it’s very clear the film was on a tight budget because the computer effects are not so good. It’s probably one of the reasons why there’s so many camera cuts during many of the action scenes – they’re trying to cover up the lacklustre effects by quick-cutting the scenes and, as a result, the action doesn’t feel like it flows very well. Many of them are shot rather weirdly and, as I mentioned before, don’t have much of a flow to them. Action directors need to remember this because it’s definitely something that’s becoming forgotten.

That being said, Stallone’s performance definitely doesn’t feel like he’s going through the motions – I get the sense that he really wants to cap off the character. This is boosted by the fact that he’s an executive producer on the film and also has a writing credit, both in the story development and the actual screenplay. However, unlike the recent Creed movies, this is not going to revitalise people’s interest in what is arguably his second most famous character. See, the ‘Creed’ movies offer a sense of progression for Rocky in his twilight years. ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ does not offer that to its character. I almost wish they had ripped off Logan; that probably would have been a more interesting film than the one we got.

The side cast is rather underwhelming; there’s not much to really talk about with them. You barely know anything about the Martinez brothers, and they don’t really feel like they have that much of a presence. Compare that to say, Teeg, from First Blood. Teeg is an excellent adversary for Rambo for several reasons, and as a result plays a great foil to Rambo in those scenes. The Martinez brothers are so underwhelming its unbelievable. To use wrestling terms, they do manage to get their heat in, but it feels like cheap heat. What’s more, this film really does leave me in a weird position that I can’t talk much about to avoid spoilers because, well, it’s a very short film. Like, phenomenally short. It barely misses out at being an hour and a half, coming in at an hour and 29 minutes. But, with its terrible pacing, manages to feel like it’s going on for much longer.

‘Rambo: Last Blood’ is probably technically one of the worst films I’ve seen this year but on a personal level, I don’t want to say it’s incredibly awful but just rather dull and underwhelming. What was sold to us as an examination of a classic action hero turns into a rather dull director video-outing which somehow got a theatrical release. Stallone is desperately trying to give a decent send-off to one of the roles that made him famous, but this film comes off as rather unnecessary. I hope they finally just end this franchise once and for all, I don’t need another one showing up ten years from now.