“JUSTICE LEAGUE VS THE FATAL FIVE”

‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’ was one of those films that came out earlier this year, but I actually failed to capitalise on its opening. I can’t remember exactly what the circumstances were, but this was actually the DC Animated film that came out before the previously reviewed ‘Batman Hush’. In that review, I stated I was considering going back to review it. Well, luckily, I got a slow cinema week, so now’s the time to relook into it. 


The weird thing is, ‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’ is probably the DC Animated film I was the most excited for out of all the four that were announced for this year. Mainly because it was Bruce Timm producing the series, and it was implied to be taking place within the Bruce Timm DC Universe, following on from the Justice League animated series, which is one of my all-time favourite TV shows. 
 
 It even has many of the cast members reprising their roles, including Kevin Conroy as Batman, George Newbern as Superman and Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman. And, once again, Bruce Timm is teaming up with the Batman: The Animated Series collaborator, Alan Burnett, who has a writing credit on this movie. ‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’, though, is a very different sort of movie to the ones we’ve come to expect. Sure, Bruce Timm has been producing films for DC Animated Universe for quite a while, and even some that look like they could be set within the original continuity he set up. But this is one of the ones that is the most blatant. There is some difference here and there which don’t fully set it within that continuity, but I will get to that later. 
 
 The basic plot is that in the 31st century, the legion of Superheroes is on a mission to stop a group known as the Fatal Five. However, Thomas Kallor (aka Starboy) follows them back, temporarily stopping their plans. As a return to the past, Mister Terrific, played by Kevin Michael Richardson, and Superman, played by George Newbern, accidentally unleash the Five, and, with Starboy’s mind in disarray because of his lack of futuristic medication, they have to quickly figure out what the Fatal Five wants and what they’re up to, with the less-than-coherent super-powerful being as their only source of information.

So, ‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’ is a very different team to the animated series. Sure, you have Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, but there’s no Hawk Girl, The Flash, Martian Man Hunter and Green Lantern John Stewart. (Though those two have an equivalence, which I’ll get around to talking about.) Of course, we have Starboy and Mister Terrific, and in place of John Jones, we have Miss Martian, voiced by Danielle Bobadilla. And instead of Green Lantern John Stewart, it’s a relatively new character, Green Lantern Jessica Cruz, played by Diane Guerrero. The inclusion of some of these characters makes some sense – Miss Martian is an interesting choice given her popularity within the Young Justice Animated series, which has recently received a revival, but Jessica Cruz is a bold choice considering how relatively recent she is. She was only introduced about four or five years ago, after an event comic called Forever Evil, and even then, the writers have only really made her come into her own as a character after the 2016 Rebirth of DC. 


That being said, I think all of us were really excited to see what Bruce Timm’s team would do with this character, and that’s where the film’s focus fortunately was. Jessica Cruz is the MVP of the movie; she’s a flat-out driving force of everything that happens, and she’s very active within the plot and has an excellent character arc. Her inclusion also ties to one of the main factors that this film has to it, coping with mental health issues. Starboy, for example, can’t control his powers or his mind, due to the fact that he doesn’t have access to what’s essentially futuristic medication, and Jessica Cruz is held back from fully realising her potential in the League after being given the ring due to crippling anxiety. The comics also had her being an agoraphobic character, but the film doesn’t really touch upon that too much for the most part, or at least never outright states it. The film actually handles the topic rather well, although in Starboy’s case, this can be rather stereotypical of that sort of character. The reason why Cruz has worked so well in the comics is the same reason she works so well in this movie; the whole mantra of the Green Lanterns is no longer that they are without fear, it’s that they have the power to overcome great fear, so in a sense, the Green Lanterns are all about courage. Cruz is one of the first Green Lanterns that’s been created to actively embody that spirit almost entirely. It was almost a stroke of genius on DC’s part at a time when they were rather creatively inept. And her character arc is handled brilliantly in this film. Honestly, it is almost her movie starring the Justice League.

The Justice League themselves actually all get some decent time to shine, particularly Miss Martian comes off pretty well, and they handle Mister Terrific pretty well too, considering he’s a character I don’t really care that much for. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman were always going to be excellent with those three voice actors in the roles. Speaking of which, Elyes Gabel does a pretty good job in the role of Starboy, and Kevin Michael Richardson is good as usual, also reprising his role as Kilowog. Just from me saying that, you’re aware that we’re also going to get tons of DC Easter eggs, including a few Green Lanterns; The Legion of Superheroes obviously are a factor; we even get so call back to Batman: The Animated series, with a fight scene in Arkham, including Bruce Timm in the role of Two Face, who actually does a good impression of Richard Mole’s iconic voice in the role.

In fact, there’s a lot of really excellent voice actors that have very minor roles – Noel Fisher’s in the role of Brainiac Five, and Peter Jessop in the role of Tharok. Tara Strong feels really underutilised, though she does get to play a decent role as Saturn Girl, reprises the role of Harley Quinn, and gives a bit of go of Poison Ivy. One of the strangest ones is Tom Kenny as the voice of Blood Spot as well as Jessica’s Ring. And yes, it is that Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob. My biggest problem with this film though is that it’s such a short movie – it’s 78 minutes in total. And while it’s not telling an amazingly epic story, it does feel like it’s a bit short for its run-time. The villains are the most underutilised in this one. There’s so much focus on the heroes in this movie that it’s at the expense of the villains. Hell, in DC’s case it’s usually the other way around. In this case, 78 minutes is simply not enough time to tell this story; this film could have easily gone on for just 10 minutes longer and it would have made all the difference, and that’s weird, because DC Animated films are usually known to make good use of their shorter running times.

At the end of the day, ‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’ does have its strong points, but what it’s really lacking in is decent villains, and it doesn’t really have a great climax to it. The final fight is really great, but it ultimately feels a bit one-sided given the context of what’s happening. Also, the film doesn’t really have too much of a final moment, it just kind of stops, which is a real shame because the moments that lead to it are pretty good. In terms of pacing, ‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’ is actually fairly decent, it just implies a lot that doesn’t get fulfilled upon, or more so just gets a simple conclusion out of nowhere, including the storyline of Batman training Miss Martian as well as a few other plotlines. 


In terms of animation, it’s trying to replicate the Justice Animated series and it does a very good job of that. I think people aren’t aware of the Bruce Timm Universe’s rather angular and pointy designs, so the characters might be a bit thrown off, but I think for the most part, it’s excellent nostalgia-bait for people like me who grew up with that version of the DC Universe. And it does an excellent job replicating simple things like the colour schemes. It does obviously break continuity in certain elements considering that it’s rather difficult for this is exist in the continuity of that DC Universe, considering that Justice League: The Animated Series already had a legion of superheroes episode, and this kind of contradicts from any elements of that, including what happened to Supergirl at the end of that episode. But that’s another topic for another day.

‘Justice League vs The Fatal Five’ is not an amazing film, but, as I mentioned, is lovely nostalgia-bait for people who have enjoyed the classic DC animation from the 90s and early 2000s, and assembles an excellent voice cast. But ultimately, it feels like a film which has brilliant protagonists but rather lacking antagonists. The film’s greatest strength is Jessica Cruz, and if it creates more buzz for her character, I’m all for it considering how well she was handled. I didn’t even mention some of the excellent moments in this film to avoid spoilers for a 78-minute movie. If you want a simple nostalgia-fest, this one’s actually better than most of those that are coming out right now, and it does feel like an interesting re-visit. As far as DC Animated films go, this one’s pretty good, just not great. As I mentioned before, the DC Animated films will be returning later this year with a Wonder Woman movie, and I do intend to cover that before the year is over.

“IT CHAPTER 2”

This time two years ago, the world was taken by storm when a second adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘It’ was brought to the big screen with a cast of largely unknown actors, excelling at the box office with critics to such an extent that it became the highest grossest R-rated horror film of all time. Now, during the closing credits, it was revealed that ‘It’ was purely the first chapter, and that we would be receiving a sequel two years down the line which would adapt the other half of the book.

The entire cast has returned for this film, including the same writers, directors and production staff, including Bill Skarsgård, reprising his role as Pennywise. The biggest difference this time is that they had to find adult actors to play the roles of the grown-up versions of the kids. The film takes place twenty-seven years after the events of the first movie, so in this film’s timeline, the story takes place in the year 2016 as the first took place in the year 1989.

An older Mike Hanlon, the only member of the Losers’ Club to stay in Derry Maine, played by Isaiah Mustafa, calls back Bev, Bill, Richie, Ben, Eddie and Stanley, played this time by Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Jay Ryan, James Ransone and Andy Bean. After it becomes clear that Pennywise is still around, and is back to his usual tricks, Bill believes there’s a ritual that can end Pennywise once and for all. But to do this, they have to regain some memories that have been lost to them due to some magic about the town and what happens when you leave it… I don’t know; it’s very poorly explained in the film. All I want to say is that I warned people that this story got stupid as soon as we get to the segment about the adult characters, and I was completely right.

‘It Chapter 2’ does not stick the landing of its promising first entry. My thought process was that if anyone could make it work, it was the team behind the first film, who did a very good job of taking what I thought was a pretty average Stephen King story, with some very questionable decisions, and making it work. But this time, they’ve not quite done their job. The biggest problem with this film is that it’s appallingly paced. While it actually starts out pretty well in terms of how it runs its story, something happens around the middle portion of the film whereby it gets turned up to a 10 in terms of its energy, and never comes down. Good God, this is a film that left me feeling exhausted by the end of it. I needed it to slow down at several occasions and it never bloody did. And if anyone says, “well, the book was like that”, this has been translated to a movie; as a different medium, changes have to be made. I know Gary Dauberman wrote the script, but I feel like Stephen King should really have a script-writing credit. I feel like any time he’s involved in the production of a film, it’s almost to certainly say – don’t make any changes – even though some of his storylines really should require changes.

I have a personal belief that when people talk about most of their favourite Stephen King stories, they’re actually talking about the film adaptations they enjoy, and most of those films were drastically altered from their books. ‘The Shining’ is a prime example of this. I think people who’ve seen the film might be very surprised to find how much it strayed from the book. Well, this is obviously going to create a massive catch-22 for the upcoming ‘Dr Sleep’ adaptation, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. ‘It Chapter 2’ is another prime example of this. In fact, I even feel like Stephen had an influence with Bill’s character, since again, Bill is basically a stand-in for Stephen King character. Oh, and by the way, if you’re playing the Stephen King drinking game, now’s your time to take a shot, because one of the characters is a writer. Oh, and take a shot as well for the story being set in Maine. I won’t give you the rest of the rules for this game, but for the love of God, choose your films carefully if you’re actually going to play it because some of these stories will have you dead before the end of the movie if you’re stupid enough to try it.

Okay, let’s talk about some positives about the film. I actually think the casting of the adult actors is done pretty well. One of the highlights for me was an almost unrecognisable Bill Hader in the role of Richie. The SNL actor has certainly come a long way, and I was surprised at just how much he brought to the role. He definitely feels like a grown-up version of the kid, and if anything, delivers some of the funniest lines in the movie. It was definitely a wise choice on the casting department to choose a comedian for that role. The rest of the adult cast are also actually pretty good, especially the performances of Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy, the biggest names in the production. Of course, that’s not taking away at all from Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan or James Ransone. If you’re wondering why I haven’t talked about Andy Bean, he’s not in much of the film and the reasons will become apparent shortly into the movie.

And of course, there’s more to talk about with Bill Skarsgård’s excellent performance as Pennywise. But I’ve seen a few reviews which point out something that I think is kind of accurate – I think they made Pennywise a little too stereotypically scary. I hate to borrow from Doug Walker (considering what we’ve now learnt about Channel Awesome’s practices over the years), but he does bring up a good point, which is that one of the reasons why Tim Curry was so effective in the role was because they made him look like an actual clown, thereby he could very much be a normal-looking figure in his environment. Whereas, this new Pennywise looks perhaps too much like a horror icon. With that being said, it’s obviously having the desired effect, considering that several parent groups in the UK have tried to ban the posters because it’s scaring kids. Arseholes.

If you thought the young cast in the first film were really good, you’ll be very happy to know that they actually do come back for this movie through several flashback sequences. (Seriously, if you’re playing that game, do not take a shot every time there’s a flashback – you will die!) The young cast are actually once again the best part of the movie, a credit to all of their great performances. It definitely feels like the scriptwriter knows how to write for them a lot more than their adult versions.

My biggest problem with this film though is that it takes so much from the novel, however, despite the fact it has a run-time of nearly 3 whole hours (which, I’d like to point out, is way too long), it somehow also leaves a lot that was explained in the book rather unexplained. Thankfully, they took out the very, very questionable moment that was meant to go into the first movie, but there are several aspects of the story that were foreshadowed in the first film that are never touched upon in the second. Granted, many of those were really dumb and actually created more plot holes than actually explained things. Still, it brings up the point: If you weren’t going to bother putting these in the sequel why the hell bother foreshadowing them the first time? 


What’s more, ‘It Chapter 2’ feels like it’s lacking in a personality compared to the first. That’s saying a lot, and is really where my biggest issue lies with the movie. It just feels like a very long film that overstates its welcome, is too loud, too brazen and relies too much on its 80s references. Seriously, there’s a moment directly lifted from John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’, and they’re not even hiding it. And even a reference to ‘The Shining’! I went to see this film with my colleague, and he actually audibly groaned at that moment. In fact, there were a lot of references in the movie whereby we were audibly groaning. Oh, and by the way, if you’re in the couple that were sat near us, you are way too easily scared. I mean, come on, this movie has a few effective creepy scenes but not nearly as many good ones as the first film had. It’s just a lot of loud, big booms that are more startling than they are scary. But at least this film feels like it has more of sense of humour about itself than the first one did.

‘It Chapter 2’ is a massive let down. What should have been an excellent conclusion to a story which I really wasn’t that much of a fan of the first-time round, descends into an over-long, boring mess. It has its good points; I can’t deny that. The acting is great, and some scenes are really well put together. But as a whole, it leaves a bit to be desired. It needed to better pace itself, and also seemed to be full of the duller moments of the story, which had not been streamlined for this movie. As it stands, I didn’t really enjoy this one.

“THE INFORMER”

‘The Informer’ is the latest film to come from the producers of ‘Sicario’, a fact that was advertised quite heavily through the marketing campaign for the film. What’s really surprised me is how low-key the film has turned out to be on that basis. It’s a film that comes to us from director Andrea Di Stefano, who is a prominent writer and actor but, prior to this, has only directed the biopic, ‘Escobar, Paradise Lost’. 
 The film has surprisingly few screenings. I went to see it on opening day and there were only two screenings in the most prominent cinema in Liverpool, and several cinemas weren’t showing the film altogether, surprising considering how often I’ve seen the trailer for it.

‘The Informer’ can best be described as a gritty crime thriller. It’s about a member of a Polish drug cartel in New York called Pete Koslow, played by Joel Kinnaman, who’s planning to inform on his boss, which would result in a massive conviction and safety for his family. However, during the final operation overseen by Erica Wilcox (played by Rosamund Pike), an undercover New York city police officer is killed, and the boss is ticked off, since a dead cop is bad for business. As a result, he makes him a deal. Since it’s happened on his watch, he won’t hurt Koslow’s family, so long as he breaks his parole, goes back to prison and becomes his drug supplier from inside. The FBI believes that this will be the best solution to the problem, since that way he can gain the information and they will then get him out as and when they need to, when the mission is done. However, after people start investigating the cop’s death, an investigation lead by Officer Grens (played by Common), Agent Montgomery (played by Clive Owen) orders that they break the deal after he’s gone back to prison.

‘The Informer’ is based on a novel written by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström but as I haven’t read the novel, I don’t know how accurate this is to the book. 


Let’s just say ‘The Informer’ is a film that is going to feel very familiar for various reasons. It is not a film that’s very similar to many others like it. That’s not necessarily a detriment against it; it’s very hard to be original these days with so many films and other media coming out. But when I was watching it, ‘The Informer’ reminded me a lot of the TV series, ‘The Wire’, mainly in how most of the characters are the good or at least the least bad people caught in the middle, and the only true villains are the higher ups who are just looking for any way to maintain their own self-preservation.

In the cinema, I overheard someone say that they found the plot complicated, but I would have to disagree with them – ‘The Informer’ is not a complicated plot, it’s actually very simple and to the point. There are not too many conflicting plotlines, in fact, there are only really two, three if you stretch the definition. They all are centred around the same incident and same outcome. It’s not like this is a film that’s hard to follow, it just has quite a lot of plot in certain areas.

Now, ‘The Informer’ is a traditional crime drama, but you can definitely tell that some of the minds behind ‘Sicario’ have been involved in this one, since this film is really trying to emulate it, particularly in its camerawork and editing. Even the soundtrack feels very similar to Sicario’s soundtrack; you could almost believe both films took place in the same world. What bothers me most about the film though is that there are not as many grey areas to the characters as I thought. ‘The Wire’ was very good at doing this kind of plot, with rather well-developed and well-rounded characters, but in their defence, this is a movie that comes in at just under two hours, whereas ‘The Wire’ was a TV show that had several seasons to develop its cast and its plot. So, the comparison is not entirely fair.


 But if I’m to compare it with ‘Sicario’, I think that film was just a bit more interesting and a bit more interested in its subject matter. This one feels more like it’s a character piece, which is fortunate considering that Pete is not a character you’re going to hate. It’s boosted as well by Joel Kinnaman giving an excellent performance in the role, and he’s joined by a very talented all-star cast, including the aforementioned Rosamund Pike, Ana De Armas, Clive Owen, Common; there are a lot of excellent actors in this film. 

Where the movie does fall down a bit is the fact that not many of the characters have much to do. This is especially evident when Peter goes to prison. It then goes into a huge element of lots of foreshadowing of events to come, and we all know where this film is heading. It has had way too much of its plot given away in the trailer, and as a result, it feels like everyone’s going to come to this film just for the last portion of it, where the most happens. The one thing the film does very well is emphasising how powerful people at the top are on both sides. The FBI agents, for example, are treated like they could be just as likely to kill Peter to save themselves if the mood struck them, just as much as any of the Polish gangsters. The gangsters do feel like they have a sense of authenticity to them, likely due to the fact that one of the book’s authors was Borge Hellström.

Having said that, ‘The Informer’ doesn’t feel like it’s going to leave an impact like ‘Sicario’ did, rather, it seems like it’s going to be a one and done. I’ve reviewed a lot of thrillers for this website and frankly, this one I think is going to come down as one of the less memorable ones. This is not one of those films that I expect to really remember years from now as one of those films that was a really good day for my job. In fact, at times, it can feel like the film’s just spinning its wheels. In fact, one of the biggest problems I have with the film is that the main crime boss disappears after Pete goes to prison, and his presence doesn’t feel like it’s there in the second half of the film. Most of his actions are performed by underlings after that point. It kind of portrays the FBI agents as the bad guys after that point, and if anything, the drug lord plotline actually feels rather unfulfilled by the end of the movie. Not too much is resolved as a result. 
 ‘The Informer’ is a film that really aims high with its premise, its concept and its cast, and is somewhat engaging in certain parts but doesn’t quite stick the landing in a few areas. As a result, it feels quite hollow in parts, and some plotlines don’t feel fully realised. As a whole it’s an okay film, just don’t expect it to have the same impact as ‘Sicario’ did. What boosted the film was Joel Kinnaman’s performance, but I doubt that was enough to make this a film I’m going to remember years down the line.

“ANGEL HAS FALLEN”

When ‘Angel Has Fallen’ even exists, you know something’s gone wrong with the movie industry. This is the inexplicable third entry in the ‘Has Fallen’ trilogy, a series of action films starring Gerard Butler, the first being a sort of Die-Hard-in-the-White-House scenario. The second one was some weird action film that was completely soulless. ‘London Has Fallen’ was in fact so bad, I not only gave it an appalling review, but it was considered one of my worst films of 2016. So, to see a third entry in this series is baffling because the film has no reason to exist.

The only big difference this time is the new director, Ric Roman Waugh, a former stunt choreographer, working on such projects as ‘Gone in Sixty Seconds’ and ‘Universal Soldier’ and even ‘Total Recall’. He’s since moved into writing credits, with such films as ‘In the Shadows’ and ‘Snitch’, both of which he directed, but this is his most high-profile direction job to date. Suffice it to say I did not go into ‘Angel Has Fallen’ with much high hopes, and I think I was justified in that.

The film is about an aging Mike Banning, played once again by Gerard Butler, who, during an exercise for the Secret Service, is ambushed by a rogue unit of drones which wipes out his whole team and nearly wipes out President Trumbell, played by Morgan Freeman. Leader of the mercenaries who is revealed to be his old friend and private military contract leader, Wade Jennings, played by Danny Huston, who seems to be working to his own goals in assassinating the President, however, after a failed attempt, Banning is set up to be the guilty party. It’s through sheer force of will that Banning is broken out and goes on the run in the hopes of finding the actual perpetrator. If that sounds familiar to you, then congratulations, you also saw ‘The Fugitive’, one of many films that this one will constantly borrow from. While I admit ‘Angels Fallen’ is probably one of the better films in this franchise since it’s not nearly as cynical and inept as ‘London’s Fallen’, it is not a good movie. My God, ‘Angel Has Fallen’ is a piece of crap, just like the entire trilogy.

The film sets out to be written with an interesting idea, one of an action star getting older, now relying on painkillers, his back giving out and him potentially suffering from some brain damage. It basically comes up with the idea that if someone would go on that long, their body could end up broken. But the fact of the matter is, the film never sticks with it. It’s actually kind of forgotten by about the 13-minute mark. As soon as the action starts, it’s a non-factor. The film is so inept in carrying out the plot that it really fails to warrant caring at all. There are a few scenes where Wade reconnects with his father, played by Nick Nolte, who’s a weird half-comedic, half-tragic character, and they never manage to strike a good balance in it. I’m not sure what direction Nick Nolte was given, but he seems to be trying his best at whatever the director wants him to do but the director has no idea what he wants out of him. Nolte might be playing up a comedic character but really should not have been, considering that his character has supposedly been traumatized by the Vietnam War which led him to walk out from his family. 
 Oh, and by the way, pretty much nothing I’m saying is spoilers – all of this is in the trailer. This is yet another film where the trailer gave away way too much of the movie. And for the love of God, if you want your villain to be a surprise, don’t cast Danny Huston! This film tries so many different tropes, but it doesn’t understand what made those tropes work in the first place. For example, the rivalry between Banning and Jennings has been done so many times, but it doesn’t get that you have to actually care about the characters to give you the sense of why two best friends trying to kill each other is tragic. And this film doesn’t bother building up any emotional connect in its characters, especially considering that Jennings is a new entity that has just been added into this film. They also added an extra “surprise” villain who, if you don’t guess who it is before it’s revealed, you’re really not trying as it’s never left ambiguous in any way. The film tries some weird take on current American politics, but it only feels out of place and will obviously date the movie horribly, even though it’s tying into what will most likely be something that we will be talking about for quite some time. It also leads to one of the most insane shots I have ever seen in my life. Really, the person who did that shot at the end of the movie, I hope they got paid a lot because the fact they were asked to do that in the first place means that they’ve suffered enough.

Despite the fact that it’s the third entry, the only actors to reprise their roles are Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman, though they’re not really much in character from those prior films so you’re unlikely to be able to connect them to those roles. In fact, I actually didn’t know that Banning’s wife had been recast between films until after the fact (thank you Matthew Buck for pointing that one out). And this film is one of the most wasted casts I’ve seen, including Tim Blake Nelson in the role as the Vice President, and a very thankless Jada Pinkett-Smith who really doesn’t get to do anything. What a waste of a talented actress who was also being set up to be a big part of the film. Not to mention everyone looks like they’re bored out of their skulls; this film really feels has a lack of enthusiasm going on throughout it.

But the worst part about ‘Angel Has Fallen’ is the action. Credit where credit’s due, it looks like a lot of effort was going into some practical stunts and practical effects -minus some of the terrible digital effects that were used- but good God, there are two things that drag this film down, the editing and the lighting. The editing is some of the worst editing I have seen in an action film in recent memory, so much so that I am staggered they were allowed to get away with this. There are so many quick cuts, so many close-ups and so many camera cheat tricks. This is stuff you could only get away with 10 years ago, and we were still complaining about it back then. What’s worse, it looks like some real effort went into some of the stunts for this film, but the editing completely wastes it. Oh, and by the way, this is one of the darkest films I’ve seen in a long time, and I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense, I mean it in a literal sense. So much of this film is shot at night with barely any light, and it’s unbelievable how bad it is. I could barely see anything that was happening, let alone the action, and I’m not exaggerating – I had to squint at moments to tell what was going on! This film gave the last ‘Fantastic Four’ movie a run for its money in how dire the lighting was. The whole time I was watching I was begging, pleading for at least part of the film to take place in the daytime or somewhere where there was some light. By the time that does happen, it’s too little too late, and continues to be edited appallingly. 


‘Angel Has Fallen’ is an earnest attempt to try to improve the franchise but it squanders through some of the most appallingly shot action I have seen in a long time. This level of ineptitude deserves Razzie nominations, it’s that bad. If you’ve been invested in the ‘Has Fallen’ films and you still haven’t given up at this point then more power to you, please go and see what you can of this disaster. I think even the small amount of fans that actually exist for this inexplicable franchise are getting sick of this and will likely not be able to connect since, if it wasn’t Gerard Butler playing the lead role, you would barely be able to connect this with the other two films. Every cast member is wasted, every performance is underdone and undersold and the script is baffling in how much is ripping off much better works with no flare of its own. This hopefully is the end of the ‘Has Fallen’ franchise, and if it is, goodbye and good riddance.

“BATMAN HUSH”

Yes, I know, I apologise, it was meant to be ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’, but a last-minute scheduling conflict meant that in order to attend an event in Birmingham, I had to give up reviewing the film. I fortunately have been given the chance to review the latest in the DC Animated Universe. Grant you, I did not get around to reviewing the last one, however, in both cases, I fully intend to watch both films before the end of the year and will potentially be giving my thoughts on them.

‘Batman Hush’ is an interesting movie. It is once again in this shared DC Animated Universe, the last film of which I reviewed was ‘Reign of The Supermen’. Rather like last time, this is yet another storyline that’s being set in this universe, which was meant to reflect DC’s reboot from 2011, nicknamed ‘The New 52’, but was published and takes place prior to said reboot. I was complaining a while back that I felt DC animated films were becoming a bit stale, since it seemed like every single one was either Justice League or Batman. Though fortunately, with the announcements of several of the projects in the works, including the upcoming ‘Wonder Woman’ film, it seems like they’re definitely diversifying what characters which be eligible for this film series. Another Batman film therefore actually seemed like it would be rather welcome considering it’s probably the set of characters we’ve been following the most since the beginning.

‘Batman Hush’ is an excellent storyline, and it was a real turning point for the character in the comic, so to see a film adaptation was genuinely interesting. I was expecting the returning director Sam Liu to reprise his role, but instead we have the directorial debut of Justin Copeland, who previously worked in the art department for all these films. The screenplay has been written by Ernie Altbacker, another regular in the making of the DC animated films, who wrote the previously reviewed, ‘Teen Titans: The Judas Contract’ and ‘Justice League Dark’. He has a really tough task to do since one of the big reasons I read ‘Batman Hush’ was because it was written by Jeph Loeb, one of my favourite comic writers given that he does an amazing job with almost any character he’s given. (I highly recommend reading his book, ‘Batman: The Long Halloween’, which he does a tremendous job on.) The thing is though, ‘Batman Hush’ was a very long, complicated storyline, and was trying to be more of a turning point for the character, so how does this film achieve that? 
 Now unlike ‘The Death of Superman, this is not a film that would really require two movies to achieve its goal; Batman Hush is a storyline that can easily be done in one film, though the hour and 20-minute runtime meant some things had to be cut. The storyline of ‘Batman Hush’ is very similar to the comic. It takes place a few months after the events of ‘Reign of The Supermen’, with Batman played once again by Jason O’Mara, trying to settle into a more reflective state. He’s trying to reconnect with his friend and renowned brain surgeon, Thomas Elliott, voiced by Maury Sterling, and also is beginning a proper full-blown relationship with Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, voiced by Jennifer Morrison. Meanwhile, there’s a new villain named Hush who’s been coercing various other Gotham City supervillains into very elaborate schemes in order to send a particular message to Batman, almost as if to break him. 


Now I actually watched this film with three of my friends, and we all kind of had the same complaint – there are way, way too many characters in this movie. This is particularly noticeable with the villains; I think there are very few Batman villains who don’t appear in this film. Even the Penguin appears in a single still shot. You’ve got the Joker, Scarecrow, Bane, Lady Shiva, while not many of these characters were that involved in Hush, the comic. Look, if you want to adapt the Hush storyline, you have to have Poison Ivy, since she plays one of the most pivotal roles in it. But good God, they didn’t need half of these guys. Not to mention the cast also feels rather bloated as a trip to Metropolis means we have the returning Lex Luther, voiced once again by Rainn Wilson. Harley Quinn is added into the mix too. There are an awful lot of people stuffed in here. Though, of course, obviously some of that was based on the comic.

As a result, we obviously get one of the more famous confrontations between Superman and Batman, and once again, this film gives another example of how to do a Superman and Batman confrontation much better than ‘Batman v Superman’ ever did. That being said, despite the sheer number of villains who appeared, I do object to my friends’ comments that it was worse than ‘Spiderman 3’ in that regard. In ‘Spiderman 3’ – and I think Amazing Spiderman 2 shares this distinction as well – they try to give too much character relevance to the plot with these villains, and as a result, they’re all juggling and wrestling for screen time when any one of them would have done. So in the case of ‘Spiderman 3’, you’ve got Harry Osborn’s revenge plot, then also the Sandman and his connection to Peter Parker, and then you’ve also got Venom, who they have to introduce about 30 minutes before the film’s over and as a result, it all ends up being a bit of a cluster. 
 ‘Batman Hush’ is fortunately rather stable in that regard – the villains are only ever shot by one or two scenes, the focus primarily on the film’s main villain, Hush himself, who was surprisingly brought in from the comics rather well. The first third of the film does a really good job with Hush. The thing is though, fans of the comic are going to get the biggest bait and switch in recent memory, since they’ve actually changed Hush’s origin story for this film, and I did not really care for the new one. See, Hush is one of the most personal Batman villains; he knows everything about Batman and he’s out to use that against him. Some of the very best Batman villains share that quality. Because they’ve actually changed a lot about Hush and his origin story, he went from someone who’s been a big part of the life of Bruce Wayne to someone who just happens to know about Batman and his entire life because of a plot device.

I’m being rather negative about the film, but actually where the film has its greatest positive is in Batman’s character arc, and more specifically, the relationship between him and Catwoman. A lot of writers really don’t nail this that well but Ernie Altbacker’s script really understood what Jeph Loeb was going for in the comic with the relationship between these two characters. I’m not normally a fan of the writing as it never felt like Catwoman was as much of a match for Batman as Talia Al Ghul, so there was more sense of synergy, but Altbacker understands what can make it work, and it translates into one of the better storylines involving the pair. This honestly feels like there’s a sense of salvation for Batman in this version, and the pair do have excellent dialogue amongst each other.

The voice cast once again is excellent. Jason O’Mara is really coming into his own as Batman throughout these movies, and I really thought Jennifer Morrison gave an excellent performance as Catwoman. Much of the rest of the cast are pretty much the same as I’ve talked about in previous films, and I did appreciate newcomer Maury Sterling. 
 If there’s one voice that stuck out for me, it was Jason Spisak as the Joker. He is a really excellent voice actor, having voiced several of the DC characters throughout various projects, including Kid Flash in ‘Young Justice’, as well as Hal Jordan in ‘Green Lantern’, even a few more obscure characters, and is even the current voice of Loki in the new Marvel Ultimate Alliance video game. But I’ve got to say, I’m really not a fan of his performance as the Joker – he just doesn’t quite feel right in the role, and it’s a real shame as most of his other voice acting performances have him well cast. I’ve already talked about the animation in previous films but to give more of an update for people who haven’t heard about it, I do like the animation in these movies. I think the action scenes as usual are shot very well, although not too many of them stand out this time like they did with say, the Superman vs Doomsday fight in ‘The Death of Superman’. 
 However, I still stand by that they do a good job replicating Jim Lee’s art style. This is even more apparent in ‘Batman Hush’ being that Jim Lee actually did the art for the comic this is based on. If there’s one gripe I had about it, I think the editing sometimes does quite highlight that there were some budgetary constraints when making these films, but it’s not so noticeable that it’s unwatchable, and it does use it to the best of its ability.

Batman Hush is not a game-changing film for the DC Animated Universe, but it is a good movie overall. It’s a bit of a bloated film with a lot of plot points and it definitely feels like it goes on longer than it actually does, but as a whole, it’s pretty good, and a pretty good translation of the comic. They do a decent job translating the comic’s storyline into this current DC Animated Universe. There don’t appear to be many more plans for more from this version of Batman and this cast, so who knows when we’re going to be revisiting them. Still, it’s another good film within this series. The next film in the line-up is going to be a Wonder Woman movie, which I’m actually genuinely interested to see given how much I liked DC’s last Wonder Woman film. Hopefully we won’t get them dropping the ball this time around.

“FAST AND FURIOUS: HOBBS AND SHAW”

The idea of a Fast and Furious spin-off has been kicked around for quite some time, especially with the success of franchises like the Marvel cinematic universe. One that was really seriously considered was for Dwayne Johnson’s character, Luke Hobbs, who has been a popular fan favourite since his first appearance in Fast 5.

Now anyone who’s read my reviews for quite some time will know that I’m not the biggest Fast and Furious fan. I get what the appeal of it is, but I’ve always said that there’s a difference between suspension of disbelief and insulting my intelligence. I just find it baffling how far the franchise has veered off its original course, going from being an LA thriller about street-racing, to a sort of round-the-world heist, to now, secret agents saving the world? I would say it’s jumped the shark but, let’s be honest, we did that ages ago.

You’ll also know that I didn’t give a very good review to the last film, The Fate of The Furious. One of the things I enjoyed most about that movie was the back-and-forth between Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. Clearly someone else thought that was the case too since it was announced that the spin-off film would be a double act between the two. And oh dear, was I in two minds about this one. On the one hand, I quite liked the idea of the film, but I questioned what they could do with the setup. And especially since they started making this around the same time the production of Fast and Furious 9 has been going on, it makes it unlikely that either character will be appearing in the next movie.

And yes, Fast and Furious 9 is indeed in production. Hobbs and Shaw is hoping for some success as well considering the bad press right now, with the production holding on Fast and Furious 9 after a stuntman died. A poor reception for this film in combination with that news could result in a production failure, and there have already been serious questions asked about the safety procedures on film productions like this as a result.

Hobbs and Shaw’s plot is that the pair have been basically coerced into working together by the CIA to get a virus back from Hobbs’ sister Hattie (played by Vanessa Kirby), which aimed to be used by a rather secretive organisation being fronted by enhanced super-soldier, Brixton (played by Idris Elba). From there, you get the usual Fast and Furious formula if you’re familiar with the franchise by now. For a spin-off to the series, this doesn’t exactly feel like much of one. There’s nothing really different; the only thing that feels dissimilar this time is that most of the rest of the usual cast is absent.

Oh yes, and it’s amazing how far we’ve come in terms of how ridiculous the plots have gotten. Since I don’t think back in the day we would have even considered the idea of a sort of mechanically enhanced super-soldier who refers to himself as “Black Superman”. Even by Fast and Furious standards, this is getting ridiculous.

The film seems to divide its character development into a sort of two-thirds. Most of the film is mostly about Jason Statham’s character more than anyone else, and I already mentioned in my last review how I didn’t like how much they’re trying to redeem his character, since he was the villain in the seventh movie. But man, they tried to recton virtually everything about his character in this movie. He’s gone from being a villain who really challenged the crew to being portrayed as a guy who’s been wrongfully done in the past, and that’s why he became a villain. It doesn’t lower his badass quality, but I think the film writers seem to think that he’s been redeemed much more than he actually has. I’m actually someone who really likes the whole idea of a storyline about a ‘villain going good’ – when it’s written well it can be a very interesting arc, but they haven’t taken the time to really write it that brilliantly with Shaw. As a result, Hobbs often feels like he’s just along for the ride. Most of his character development doesn’t come until about the final third of the film when we’re reintroduced to his family, mostly played by actors from New Zealand and of Pacific Island descent. Honestly, the cast playing the Rock’s family in this film is one of the best parts about it. I really wish more of the film was about them.

And there’s some excellent casting. Cliff Curtis is definitely good as playing Hobbs’ brother, and Lori Pelenise Tuisano will definitely go down as one of the unsung performances of this film. It’s also been very heavily advertised that Leati Joseph Anoaʻi – aka the WWE wrestler Roman Reigns – is in the film, and oh God do they want to remind you of that fact every other second as the camera seems to be pointing towards him at almost all times. I swear Vince McMahon must have bribed the cameraman or editor at some point. Though his casting is definitely one of the weirder choices and his role is just to do some action, only some of it resembling his wrestling career, his entire role is non-speaking, which is very odd for someone that was so advertised. Mind you, much as I’ll defend Roman Reigns as a wrestler, his microphone skills have always been a bit hit-and-miss, so maybe that was a blessing in disguise.

Another weird thing about the cast is that there seems to be a barrage of cameos. The only one to really be expected is Helen Mirren who reprises her role from the last movie. But there are also some other ones, including John Dulaney, oddly in this film for only a few scenes, and for some strange reason, Ryan Reynolds features too. I suspect it was part of a favour to Deadpool 2 director, David Leitch, who’s also directing this film. While there are a few others which I will keep to myself, there’s one that’s actually incredibly funny which you can look forward to.

Now, here’s the thing. Hobbs and Shaw’s back-and-forth is still really quite good in this film, and its honestly one of the better parts of the film; Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson do have excellent on-screen chemistry, but I really think there should have been some point where David Leitch just cut a scene briefly. Some of the scenes go on far too long, and it can be very distracting how out-there the film can get. There are some scenes where you’re once again reminded that there’s suspension of belief and there’s calling me a moron.

One of the particular ones is a chase scene later on in the film involving a helicopter which was really frustrating in how illogical it was, because in terms of cinematography and actually what’s happening on screen, it’s probably one of the best things in the movie. Speaking of which, the film’s effects are actually fairly good, and the cinematography is as usual, quite good for these films. David Leach seems to be very good at directing action scenes involving cars, which is a must if you’re to be making a Fast and Furious film.

But of course, the product placements are everywhere. I saw a few scenes that looked so much like advertisements, they gave Man Of Steel a run for its money. It’s also kind of a juxtaposition when you go from seeing signs for things like Armani and Lamborghini… to Greggs. I’m not even joking, they genuinely drive past a Greggs at one point, making sure you see the sign as much as possible.

What’s more, this film is sequel-baiting like no one’s business by the end of the movie. They’re really counting on making this a spin-off franchise to go alongside the Fast and Furious franchise. I will say, for all the sequel-baiting they do, they at least wrap up all the character arcs from this movie, rather than completely spending most of their time worrying about material for the sequel, which I have to give them credit for.

Hobbs and Shaw is a dumb, fun movie, which, if you’re used to the Fast and Furious films, isn’t going to change your mind either way. If you like them, you’ll like this one. If you didn’t like them, this won’t change your mind. While I’ll admit the pairing of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham still works very well, and Idris Elba makes a very enjoyable villain, the script-writing isn’t great and I’m frankly just getting tired of Fast and Furious now. Including this one, we are now 9 movies into the franchise. And more are on the horizon? Jeez, I’m feeling very burnt out for something I didn’t care about much in the first place (and in fact, some of the films I even downright hated).

If there’s more Hobbs and Shaw, I’ll probably go to see it – I think I enjoyed this film more than the last two Fast and Furious ones but man, am I bored. If we don’t see these characters for a few more years, I’m certainly not going to be too upset, though I think if they’re not in Fast and Furious 9, it’s going to be a serious disadvantage.

“THE LION KING (2019)”

The Lion King is the third and final Disney remake to come out in 2019, the other two being the previously reviewed Aladdin and Dumbo. And for the first time since these Disney remakes began we have a returning director in Jon Favreau, who previously directed The Jungle Book remake, of which I also reviewed. Now, I did actually re-watch the original Lion King in preparation for seeing this new version and to be honest, as much as my opinion is that the old film is a little bit overrated, I think it still holds up on a lot of levels – the animation is still excellent; some of the voice acting is great; it’s generally quite a good film.

The Lion King doesn’t exactly warrant the idea of a live-action adaptation but alas, Disney’s strategy to remake as many classics as possible is clearly going well, and it’s a good business strategy considering that they are obviously making a boatload off this. I would give you a plot synopsis but let’s be fair, you all know the plot of The Lion King by now; there’s no point going over it. Besides, it’s exactly the same movie and I mean exactly. This new movie is really not interested in doing anything remotely different. Which makes it all the weirder that this exists in the first place.

The screenplay’s been written by Jeff Nathanson, a Bafta-nominated screenwriter whose credits include Rush Hour 2 and 3, and Catch Me If You Can. If you’re thinking that’s a good sign, I’d like to also remind you that he developed a story for Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as well as writing the screenplay for the last Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, and lest we forget Speed 2: Cruise Control so, patchy career to say the least. And I’m seriously not sure he deserves a writing credit considering he only wrote parts of this film – so much of the script is copied and pasted. In fact, I’d even say it’s more of a carbon copy shot-for-shot remake than Beauty and The Beast was. Some of these scenes are line-for-line, dialogue-for-dialogue, action-for-action one to one, except all the performances are incredibly inferior to their original counterparts. It’s a thinly veiled redo of the first one. Dear God.

Nonetheless, the casting in this film is surprisingly good. Yes, there’s a decent cast but man are they not given much to work with. I like Chiwetel Ejiofor and he’s a good choice to play Scar but he simply isn’t given the room to cultivate that same eccentric nature that Jeremy Irons gave to the role. I know a lot of people say they found his Scar more menacing than Jeremy’s but I just don’t see it. His performance really doesn’t sell that. Then you’ve also got James Earl Jones reprising his role as Mufasa, and oh man, how weird must this be for him to be re-speaking the same lines 25 years later. When you listen to James Earl Jones now, it becomes all the more evident that there’s definitely been a 25-year gap between the films. I don’t think it’s anything to do with James Earl Jones getting older – he has reprised his role as Darth Vader for several productions in Disney’s currently expanding Star Wars projects and has been doing a very good job of getting back into that role. But his Mufasa sounds so bored and tired.

Still, as I said, some of the casting is very fair – Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen make a good Timone and Pumba respectively. The hyenas are well casted, in particular Florence Kasumba as Shenzi, as well as the pretty decent pairing of Keegan-Michael Key and Eric Andre as the other two main hyenas (though that being said, they’re only given one joke to work with). The actors playing young Nala and Simba work very well. Donald Glover tries his best as adult Simba but I’m not feeling it when compared to the original’s Matthew Broderick, and Beyoncé’s casting as Nala feels like a marketing stunt more than it does a decent choice. (Oh, and by the way, points off for having Can You Feel The Love Tonight? taking place during the daytime.) 


The only other major casting decision to discuss is John Oliver as Zazu. Now, I really like John Oliver but his casting is a bit of a reference to a self-deprecating joke he’s made during his late-night programme for years that he looks a bit like Zazu. They probably insisted on getting a well-known British actor in the role considering Rowan Atkinson played it in the 1994 movie. But John Oliver plays Zazu like a really neurotic worry-wart, which works in and of itself, but unfortunately it just comes across as John Oliver himself in the recording booth, not him embodying the character of Zazu. Hell, the obvious joke I was hoping they were going to make they didn’t even do. Remember in the first film when Zazu sang It’s A Small World After All to annoy Scar? I thought they were going to replace that with Let It Go.

The whole film is of inferior quality because everything feels like it’s not quite delivered the same or right way. The actors are trying their best but the technology is screwing them over. While the technology that’s been used is simply astounding, the 3D CGI that’s been made for the film does make the animals look incredibly realistic, it’s come at a price. You see, the problem is that by making the animals look so realistic, the actors can give the performances they want but the animals have no expression to manifest them. If you look at the original movie, the animation really does a good job of creating the movements and mannerisms of each of the animals in question, and blending that with cartoony expressive faces, which allow them to deliver their performance – you see the full range of emotion which the actors were giving to the roles. In this film, there’s no expression behind the animals, so the actors performances don’t hack it. 
 There are so many scenes to point out where this is the case, and of course they’ve gotten rid of a lot of slapstick so as result you don’t get as many interesting moments, including Rafiki’s lecture to Simba about facing the past. Rafiki doesn’t even use his walking stick for most of the film, though I will say the casting of Black Panther’s John Kani was a genius idea, though I wish he’d been allowed to play the more playful side of Rafiki.

The whole film overall is rather paint by numbers but also in an effort to make everything more realistic. One of the prime examples of this is the sequence for I Just Can’t Wait To Be King. The original film is an explosion of colour with the animation going nuts, and it provides one of the most memorable sequences of the film. This one can’t do that because it’s aiming for “realism”. Yeah, realism in a film about a talking, singing lion cub. Go figure. And that’s the film in a nutshell.

If I want to speak about the songs, they’re all pretty well-done for the most part. There are a few exceptions to the rule, however. See, the biggest issue by far is one that I knew about beforehand. To make sure they got Beyoncé in the film, it was announced that they would be taking out the villain song Be Prepared, which annoyed a lot of people as it’s commonly regarded as one of Disney’s best villain songs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the backlash meant that they backtracked themselves, as they did put the song back in the movie, albeit cut shorter than the original track. And man, it is terrible. Chiwetel Ejifor has to just talk-sing his way through about a quarter of the song, and it loses that amazing visual effect that was there. Good God, way to take one of the best scenes in the original and totally ruin it.

I’m not the biggest fan of the original Lion King soundtrack (I think out of all the Disney renaissance films I wouldn’t put it too near the top – I much prefer the Aladdin soundtrack, for example) but man, did this feel like a let-down. And there’re a lot like it. That being said, when the songs do well, they’re actually alright. But the thing is, Be Prepared was taken out for Beyoncé’s new song Spirit, which takes place after Simba’s realisation. And man, do I hate it. This song, rather like Speechless from Aladdin and Evermore from Beauty and the Beast, it feels crowbarred in. And what’s worse is that it replaces what was a really good piece of music from the original.


Here’s something I’ve noticed about the film when I started watching it and really paying attention: there’s almost too much music in this movie. The Lion King 1994 has an amazing music score – if you go back and listen to it, the score in that movie is really damn good, but it also knew how to build moments by having less music or even no music at all, like in the early confrontation between Mufasa and Scar. This film seems to not only want to play music constantly in scenes where it should have been silent (silence in order to build and heighten the tension in particular scenes), it also has the issue of taking several parts of the score from later portions of the film and adding them in earlier when they don’t belong there. That music should have been developed to go with that scene only; it’s meant to be associated with that moment. The only other thing to mention music-wise is that Elton John has a new song in the closing credits, but honestly I was so checked out by that point that I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention.

The Lion King is an inferior tread-for-tread remake of the original film. It actually comes in at 30 minutes longer and I really don’t see what they’ve added to make up that extra time, as it seems like the movie speeds carelessly through plot points. The actors can’t deliver the performances they need to because they’ve been screwed by the technology, and the lines are simply not delivered to the same extent. It’s further proof that they should have gone a different direction and done something more original this time around. I wouldn’t be surprised if John Favreau comes out to say there was some major studio interference.

Still, it’s obviously struck a chord with original fans. I’ve seen so many positive testimonies on twitter of people stating that they’ve really enjoyed this film and I just don’t get it! Why would you want to see the exact same movie but with barely expressive performances and mediocre renditions of long-cherished songs? The film is a mess, pure and simple, and yet I still don’t think it’s as bad as either Dumbo or Beauty and The Beast. With Beauty and The Beast, granted it was another shot for shot remake, the things they added actually made the film worse. Hey, at least they tried to do something new. This time they couldn’t even be bothered to do that. But maybe the laziness worked in their favour as I don’t feel like it takes away from the original concept as much as Beauty and Beast did. 


Overall, this really is one to skip, in my opinion. It’s not like Aladdin where I just had a general sense of apathy and felt that the film was okay. This one I actually felt was bad, and I stand by that opinion.

“THE DEAD DON’T DIE”

I recently made it abundantly clear that I’m a big fan of horror movies. So, when I heard that there was going to be a new horror movie made by indie director Jim Jarmusch featuring an all-star cast, I actually thought it could be an interesting lambast of the genre. Jarmusch is most famous for making the 1984 film, Stranger Than Paradise, and with this new film The Dead Don’t Die, he brings together an impressive cast including Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Danny Glover and Selena Gomez. It’s a hell of a cast list to be sure.
 Now, I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m in love with the George Romero films which this obviously takes several instances from, and I’ll discuss that in more depth later. I could dive right into everything including a plot synopsis but ultimately, this is a zombie movie – you know what to expect. A town gets slowly infested by zombies and surely enough, the whole thing turns into a massive epidemic over time. The only major difference is that they suspect that the cause of the zombie apocalypse is to do with the fact that the moon is glowing and corporations are fracking. The planet is now misaligned, off its axis and that has caused the dead to rise. Trust me, I have no more clue than you when it comes to how that works. Believe me, if there’s one way to describe this film it is: absolutely insane, but only for a third of its run-time. 


Don’t go into The Dead Don’t Die expecting much in terms of a fast pace – this is a really, really slow movie. Despite it only running for an hour and 45 minutes, it feels like it’s going on for two and a half. There’s arguably far too much build-up, meaning the actual zombie apocalypse doesn’t really go into much effect until there’s only about 30 or 40 minutes left to go. But when it does, it goes from zero to one hundred. I really have to question what everyone was on when they made this film. This is without a doubt one of the most unbelievable scripts I’ve ever seen in my life.

Here’s a little reference which many people won’t get, have you ever played Silent Hill and got the comedic ending which felt wildly out of tone with the rest of the game? Well, that’s this film in a nutshell. Everyone plays their character dead-pan at the beginning – and yes, I’m fully aware of that pun – and there are some really weird moments. The two main characters are two cops played by Bill Murray and Adam Driver, the latter of whom (although they’re both guilty) breaks the fourth wall constantly. Even Deadpool wasn’t doing it this much – and that’s half of his character. And that’s not the only baffling part of this film – Tilda Swinton’s character is particularly indicative of its bizarreness, as she plays a mortician who carries a Samurai sword and speaks with a Scottish accent. True, she’s probably the most badass character in the entire film but it’s just insane such a combination came about. 
 And believe me, that’s not the end of it. There are a few bits and bobs that horror fans will quite like such as one character constantly referencing horror films and wearing a Nosferatu shirt. There are some references to the George Romero films; there’s a zombie played by Iggy Pop constantly looking for coffee because… don’t ask why, I don’t have a clue either. And the whole film ultimately comes across as a clusterfuck of jumbled ideas – I seriously couldn’t believe what I was witnessing on screen.

Yeah, about the whole coffee thing, the zombies in this version seem to have grown out things which they enjoyed in life. Alcohol, Wi-Fi, etc etc. This is supposed to be some sort of subtle commentary on how we have all become zombies. Someone should really tell Jim that George Romero already did that with Dawn of The Dead, and did it way better. Because it was actually – what’s the word I’m looking for – ah yes, subtle. It was subtle. The subtlety levels in this film are so low they make Diary Of The Dead look positively nuanced. (Don’t worry though, that’s not in defence of that car-crash.)

I truly hope you liked the song that plays in the beginning, The Dead Don’t Die by Sturgill Simpson because you are going to hear it a lot. I got bored of it by the third playthrough. How do I put this? Watching this film, you go through several stages: Boring… Boring… Don’t care… OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?!

Now, there were a lot of moments that legitimately made me laugh, including an insane plot twist that was out of nowhere. I was so glad I wasn’t drinking anything as I would have done a spit take. It was at that moment I was convinced that some drinking was involved in the writing department – no sober person would have come up with this. I’ve seen games of Cards Against Humanity which made more sense. Not to mention, the cast feels so wasted in this film – no one’s in it long enough to make much of an impact. What’s the point of casting Steve Buscemi to play a racist farmer only for him to not be in most of it and only get his comeuppance from a distance? And while we’re on the topic of wasted cast members, who the hell’s idea was it to hire Tom Waits to play a hobo providing a sort of DVD commentary over the proceedings from the woods?

Billy Murray’s hilarious as always, but like many roles he’s done in recent memory, he also feels rather wasted; sometimes it almost seems like he’s not in it. This film’s one of many which makes me think he’s not having much fun on screen anymore. And it’s a real shame because after The Jungle Book, I thought Murray was going to have a real resurgence. Maybe he’ll show up in this upcoming Ghostbusters film and get something spectacular to do in that but at this point, I’ll take his career as it comes. Also, despite the previously mentioned dragging pace, it somehow also manages to feel like a hacksaw’s been taken to the editing department. There were several characters who were introduced as though they were going to be a big deal only to have most of their plot cut entirely. One of the characters plotlines doesn’t even have an ending, it just sort of… stops.

The Dead Don’t Die feels like a film that was made on a dare. It’s got some of the most insane choices in scripting, casting and general direction, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the making of this thing. It’s mind boggling how insane it was. Unfortunately, most laughs it gets will be unintentional. Most of the time it attempts genuine humour, it’s a case of, ‘Do you, um, get it?’

If you like traditional zombie movies, this is not the movie for you. What’s worst, The Dead Don’t Die really hasn’t benefitted from coming out after we’ve had several seasons of The Walking Dead (albeit of varying degrees of quality) but also the critically acclaimed video game The Last Of Us preceding it. It feels like a film which had some great ideas but was very much lacking something to keep it all together, as though the people involved were each throwing things at the wall, hoping something would stick. While it’s not actually a terrible movie, and most of the time when there’s a film like this I’d say skip it, I’m going to say the opposite but this time. Go to see this movie just for the final plot twist. You have to. I am never going to reveal what it is before everyone I know has seen it just because of how insane it is. You have to see this movie purely for that alone. Though, be prepared, you’re going to be sitting through a lot of dredge to get to it.

“SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME”

Spider-Man: Far From Home is now the latest film in the MCU. The twenty third movie since the beginning of this cinematic universe and will now close out the third phase of Marvel. Despite the fact that it was originally announced to be the beginning of phase four, which will start now next year. Spider-Man Homecoming was a decent success which prompted Marvel Studios to keep Jon Watts on as Director. If you check out my review for Homecoming, you’ll find that I was a really big fan of Homecoming. I thought it was a pretty good down to earth Spider-Man story. My only issue was that it wasn’t as cinematic as some of the other bigger blockbuster Spider-Man films. It’s got to now be a decent epilogue considering how the conclusion of Avengers End Game fared. Additionally, with last year’s excellent movie Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse and with the brilliant story from the Spider-Man game on PS4, Far From Home has got a lot to live up to.

I’m aware that some people still have not seen End Game and for that reason I’m going to try and avoid spoilers for the end of End Game as much as possible. However, the fact that this movie exists and is not set prior to the events of End Game, should give a bit of a clue as to some of the aspects of this film. But for now, I would say you’re probably better off seeing Avengers End Game before reading his review, but it’s not entirely necessary.

Spider-Man is this time a sort of road-trip movie since it follows Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man (played once again by Tom Holland) on his class school trip around Europe. During a trip to Venice they run into another emerging hero named Quentin Beck a.k.a. Mysterio (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who is fighting a group known as the Four Elementals. He claims to be from another Earth that was ravaged by the Four Elementals. With the help of Nick Fury (played by Samuel L Jackson) they need to team up to fight them back.

Spider-Man far from home will have a few surprises for its audience but once again I would describe this in the same vein as Ant-Man movies or even Dr Strange. They’re kind of filler films, they’re not meant to be the big films in the Marvel universe. Fans of Homecoming will be in for another good treat because it essentially is a very similar film. Much of the returning cast includes Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, John Favreau as Happy Hogan, Zendaye as MJ, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds who I stand by is perfectly cast in this role. In fact, the cast is one of the best parts of this film. They definitely feel as if they fit within a Spider-Man storyline. This one actually feels very similar to what you’d expect a Spider-Man story to be like, with Spider-Man being out of his comfort zone. I also like the fact that once again we’re not re-using the pool of previous villains. Take note Super-Man films, there’s more villains other than ZOD and Lex Luthor.

If you like Homecoming, it’s lot of the same as it doesn’t feel like much has actually changed other than the change in Spider-Man’s character after the events of End Game which is very much addressed within this film. It’s actually kind of a core focal point. It’s kind of about a world recovering from the events of that scenario and what it meant in the greater scheme of things. I think some people might be a bit annoyed that many scenes from the trailers have actually been cut. Including a certain set of sequences that looked very well done. In fact, it feels like a lot of this film might have been cut. I wouldn’t be surprised if down the line we’re going to get an extended edition on DVD.

Now really this comes back to my thoughts on what I think about Mysterio as a Spider-Man villain. Well, he doesn’t feel as personal as a villain like The Vulture or the Green Goblin did which I think is a shame considering that the best Spider-Man villains are the ones that feel rather personal but at the same time they do a really good job with Mysterio overall. Don’t act surprised, everyone knows where this one’s going. This new take on Mysterio is actually genuinely quite interesting. They actually work Mysterio’s gimmick into the movie quite well. Mysterio as a character is not very interesting. I didn’t really enjoy him that much in the 90’s Spider-Man animated series, in fact he seems like an odd choice considering that I’m fairly certain he doesn’t really appear in pop culture much at all. In fact, I don’t recall him showing up in any of the other Spider-Man animated series. He’s not even really been in the comics all that much.

If we talk about action sequences, there’s a couple of real stand outs in this one that really take advantage of all the characters powers. The globetrotting aspect also adds a new element to the film since it adds an extra sense of levity to the scenario. But it also does come off as a bit of a ‘This is an excuse to have the cast go on holiday and for it to be a massive advert for European tourists boards”. Location shots are actually genuinely very good, and they actually find good ways to use the various environments to their advantage. This is particularly the case with Venice which has actions scenes that use the canals to brilliant effect.

Other than being a sort of recovery film from End Game it doesn’t really tie in much with the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point, though given how End Game ended and with Phase Four not even being announced at the time of writing, the direction of where the the MCU is going is not exactly clear. So, I think a low-key filler film was probably the right film at this time. But once again I’d say rather like Spider-Man Homecoming, this one doesn’t exactly feel as cinematic as a film like Spider-Man 2 or Into The Spider-Verse. I stand by Tom Holland as being one of the best actors to play Spider-Man since he nails a lot of different sides of the character. With a character like Peter Parker, you really have to nail that.

If I were to rank this film, I would say it would probably come 4th in my estimation of Spider-Man films. My top 3 being Spider-Man 2, Homecoming and Into The Spider-Verse. As a whole, I still like it a lot more than many other Spider-man films. On a technical level, this is one really good Spider-Man film. Even if it does feel like it re-treads a lot of Homecoming, it still does an excellent job with it. Some of the places they go with this film feel absolutely right. Spider-Man Far From Home is not the perfect Spider-Man film but as a whole it’s really good. Tom Holland once again excels in the role and the cast really make the film. The dialogue’s a little awkward at times. People going for a more traditional Spider-Man experience won’t get what they want. However, on a lot of levels it doesn’t really matter because the film’s really good, really fun and has some excellent sequences. As far a Marvel Films go, it’s a bit better than Captain Marvel but quite behind Avengers End Game.

I think fans of Into The Spider-Verse might not be as happy with this film this time around. But as a whole, Spider-Man Far From Home is another excellent Spider-Man film and another excellent Marvel Film. Oh, and if you’re going to see this film, do NOT leave the cinema when the credits start. You have to see the mid and end credits, particularly the mid credit scene which is one of the best in Marvel to date. The mid credit scene ensures we’re getting more from Spider-Man in Phase Four and the final credit scene doesn’t really setup Phase Four but it definitely proves that something is going on in the Marvel Universe at this point.

“YESTERDAY”

Yesterday’s a film I’m really not the biggest fan of reviewing because I’m not the biggest Beatles fan in the world. When I saw the trailer for this film, I genuinely thought it was a joke. I genuinely thought no one has come up with a film this ridiculous, but it’s definitely actually happened. But it gets even worse when you realise that the screen play’s been written by Richard Curtis and has been directed by Danny Boyle of all people. This is their first time working on a feature film, having previously worked together on the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

The story itself comes from Jack Barth, a television screen writer who’s been kicking around this story for years hoping someone would pick it up. It maybe should have occurred to him that there were a reason people weren’t picking it up. That being said, I’ve done a bit of research into it and his ideas might have been a little more interesting than what we got but I’ll get into detail about that later.

So in case you haven’t seen the trailer for this film, it’s about a musician named Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel, who gets into an accident during a massive black out across the entire planet and when he wakes up he discovers that The Beatles never existed in this universe and he’s the only one who remembers them. With that being in mind and himself being a struggling musician, he decides he’s going to re-record all The Beatles’ songs and get all their songs out there as if he wrote them.

Ok, here’s the thing. If you’re going into this film with the idea that this is going to be some genuinely interesting work with some real interesting consequences of what a world that didn’t have The Beatles would be like, strike that from your head! This film has no business with that. There are a bunch of other things that go missing, for example Coca-Cola never existed and now there’s only Pepsi (though I don’t see how that’s a butterfly effect from The Beatles not existing). In fact, our idea of the Beatles never existing and the butterfly effect from that really has not been considered a factor. The biggest difference is that there’s no Oasis in this universe. Which fortunately means we never have to hear terrible karaoke versions of Wonder Wall, anymore, thank God!

The best way to describe this film is if you thought that the Olympic Opening Ceremony was good, I’d say this is the reverse of the Olympic Opening Ceremony. When you watch the ceremony, you can see a lot of Danny Boyle but not as much of Richard Curtis. This film’s the other way around. I see all of Richard Curtis and I barely see anything of Danny Boyle. I don’t see anything of his style, his direction. I’m a big fan of Danny Boyle and I know he changes his style quite a bit and all of his films are very different to one another and he’s very versatile but even with all those films you can see a bit of Danny Boyle.

Look at his catalogue, Slum Dog Millionaire, 28 Days Later and Trainspotting are all very different films, but you get a sense of Danny Boyle meticulousness to it. Richard Curtis is not a writer and director I’ve gone on about much since he’s pretty much stopped directing movies for the time being. As a result of which, I haven’t really reviewed many films that he’s been making over the last few years. Personally, I’m not a big Richard Curtis fan. My problems with his films are generally that he writes scripts without consequences for his characters and his endings are way too perfect. Something that this film has a real sense of.

Whether you like The Beatles or not, they were, at the end of the day, a cultural phenomenon. They made some of the music that defined the 60’s. Take for example Peter Gabriel, in a world where Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band doesn’t exist, is his level of experimentation going to become a factor? Sergeant Pepper also could be linked to prog rock. You’re living in a world potentially with no heavy metal because Ozzy Osbourne doesn’t get inspired to join Black Sabbath, as Ozzy Osbourne was directly inspired by the fact the Beatles had success out of Liverpool so why would a kid out of Birmingham have a chance at success? There are all sorts of questions like this. And it’s not to mention all the solo projects and what those meant. What John Lennon did in his solo career.

That’s what I mean when I say there’s not enough care and effort put into the script. You have this premise on your hands which could potentially be interesting, and it’s basically used to make a typical rom com. This feels like it could be set in the same universe as Love Actually.

Now that being said, we have to talk about the covers of The Beatles. The songs covered are actually done pretty well and all things considered I really think they were done pretty well. Himesh Patel, as it turns out, actually does have some musical talent. In fact, he’s actually one of the better parts of this film. He does have some good lines and some good laughs occasionally and gives a good performance. I’d say that as long as everyone else in this one has the typical over the top Richard Curtis style to them, this is also the moment we realise that Richard Curtis has never met a record executive in his life and came out with the biggest stereotypes he could possible. If you’re not the biggest fan of The Beatles you’re going to be really annoyed by the amount of eulogisation they get in this film. The cast are trying really well but half the time they’re not given interesting characters to play. Lily James, who’s a very talented actress, has a character that’s written so bland that there’s nothing that she can add to the role and that’s a shame because I really like her performances in many films, particularly her performance in Cinderella.

You also get a few smaller roles for actors like Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal as well as Vincent Franklin and Joel Fry, who basically plays the typical romantic comedy best friend character. You might recognise him in his role as Hizdahr from Game of Thrones. There are also a few real-life cameos including Ed Sheeran who I don’t think learned from Game of Thrones and Bridget Jones’ Baby that we didn’t want to see him act. As well as James Cordon who is in way too much right now and, of course, your suspicions are correct there is a sort of Beatles cameo and its one of the strangest things I have ever seen in my life. Really just to see the sheer absurdity of it is worth a watch alone. I was amazed about how insane it was.

Yesterday is a film that does a good cover of The Beatles as an interesting idea, but it ultimately does not execute it very well. It seems very flawed and a very by the numbers rom com that’s very typical of its writer and feels like it’s not ambitious enough for its admittedly ambitious director. It’s plot line left me wanting more and it didn’t really make me feel hateful, it just made me feel rather annoyed. Especially considering that, for a Richard Curtis script, nothing has any consequce to it what so ever and it feels like we’re getting into a stage of ‘ How British can we make this?’

If you like The Beatles this will probably be one for you. Danny Boyle fans will probably find this to not be up to the standards of his previous works, but Richard Curtis will definitely get a load out of this. It’s the kind of film I’d expect to see on around Christmas time. And I think if you like films like Four Weddings and a Funeral or Love Actually it’s going to dictate how much enjoyment you’ll get out this film.

“TOY STORY 4”

You know you’re getting old when the first film in the franchise comes out when you’re five years old and you’re now going to see the fourth entry to the series at the cinema, one year and couple months off from turning thirty!

Development of the Toy Story films have probably been Pixar’s biggest success. They’ve been rather tame when it comes to making sequels. With Toy Story 3 and 4 each having a near ten-year gap between one another when compared to their previous entry.

Real respect for John Lasseter creation, however this time, there’s once again a new writer/director Josh Cooley. He’s just been finding his feet in Pixar, doing a couple of their shorts. Most recently the Inside Out short Riley’s First Date. He’s also spent most of his time providing extra voices in Pixar works. You might recognise his voice from Inside Out. He was Jangles the clown.

The fact this film exists in the first place seems rather bizarre to me since Toy Story 3 felt like the perfect conclusion to this franchise. It wrapped up everything very nicely. But that being said if anyone could continue the franchise in a meaningful way it would be Andrew Stanton. He’s a long time Pixar writer who’s now retired. He wrote the screenplay for the first two Toy Story films as well as Finding Nemo, Wall-E and Finding Dory. We’ll ignore the fact that he wrote the screenplay for A Bug’s Life and John Carter.

Toy Story 4 picks up after the events of Toy Story 3 with Bonnie, played once again by Madeleine McGraw going into kindergarten where she literally makes a friend out of a fork named Forky, voiced by Tony Hale. Now unfortunately, Forky wants to throw himself in the trash because he believes he’s not really a toy. So, it’s now up to Woody (once again voiced by Tom Hanks) to make sure nothing happens to him, which is a shame because when the family goes on vacation, he jumps out the back of their van. Not to mention that after getting Forky back, they run into an antique shop which Woody believes may be home to the missing Bo Peep (voiced once again by Annie Potts).

Oh boy, where to start with this one?

Toy Story 4, by its nature is inherently the weakest film in the franchise so far for a number of reasons and yet I still don’t think it’s a bad film. It’s just that in its current state, it’s not exactly what you’d expect. The fact of the matter is, that if you’ve grown up with these films, so much of the cast is missing this time round. You don’t get as much from Rex, Slinky or Mr Potato Head, which again are a real waste of the voice talents of Wallace Shawn, Don Rickles & Blake Clark. In fact, this one seems to want to give way to just Woody and most of the new cast. Even Buzz (once again voiced brilliantly by Tim Allen) feels like he’s kind of on the side lines.

This film definitely doesn’t feel that it has had the same level of focus on its plot that Toy Stories 1 – 3 had. With Andy no longer in the picture it definitely came up with a bit of an issue for me. While I feel this film is doing a lot of good ideas, I felt rather disconnected from it. As a result, I was noticing a lot more of the flaws. For example, the film introduces a sort of 1950’s doll called Gabby Gabby (voiced by Christina Hendricks) into the plot line who wants to take Woody’s voice box so that she can be a toy for a child. More specifically, the owner of the antiques shop’s granddaughter.

Now the thing is, she makes a decent villain except they kind of give up on her half way through the movie. There’re long portions of the film where she’s not really allowed to be a factor. What’s more, the returning of Bo Beep definitely feels like a bit of an interesting choice since she probably contributes the most out of any other toy in the film. It seems like the writers in the film really like Bo Beep and wanted to give her something substantial to do. But man does it feel like her character has changed quite significantly between films. Also, they’ve retconned her backstory saying she was Molly’s toy and not Andy’s. And maybe it’s just me but I don’t recall her being made of china. I thought she was just a regular doll. Maybe I’ve not been paying enough attention to these films.

Some of the new editions are quite cool choices. I really liked the Canadian stunt man toy Duke Caboom, who’s voiced hilariously by Keanu Reeves and is one of the funniest things about the film. His inclusion seems cool. With his backstory, he feels like an inclusion made for the adults in the audience, which is more than can be said for the aspiring carnival toys Ducky and Bunny, considering that they are voiced by the incredible double act Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. These two seem to have been given the right to improvise their way through this film akin to Robin Williams in Aladdin, though not nearly on the same scale. They make a nice edition but there are portions of it which definitely feel like they’re more aimed at the younger members of the audience than the older ones.

Now all the Toy Story animations are great but this one feels like we’ve come a very long way. I’m willing to cut the original Toy Story some slack considering it came out in 1995 and was the first fully animated film with a feature length duration. But man, is Toy Story 4’s animation great! If you ever want proof of how far feature length animations have come, look at the Toy Story films. That being said, Toy Story 4 has some cool ideas and some heart felt moments, but it never feels like it executes any of them properly and I think that’s the conclusion I came to at the end of it. The reason why I was noticing more of the flaws and more of the weakness’ isn’t just the fact that I do personally feel that this is the weakest film in the bunch and that the writing doesn’t quite succeed on the same level as Toy Story 1 – 3 but more because it feels that this is a Toy Story film made for another generation.

At the end of Toy Story 3, when Andy gave his toys to Bonnie, it definitely felt like the passing of the torch and I feel like I’ve come into a film that was aimed more at the next generation than it was at mine. That being said, I’m so glad I didn’t come away from this film feeling like it was a complete cash grab because this is still miles better than some of the really bad animated films that’ve come out this year. While Toy Story 4 is not my favourite film of this year and I don’t hate it, it’s still very well animated, very well acted and the new cast members do deliver some decent parts to the film. However, considering this might be the final film with these characters, I really wish that more had been done with the original cast and I kind of think the film needed a little more focus. That being said, if you’ve got kids then this is a good one to go to, but I feel like old school Toy Story fans might not take as much away from this as the newer ones. Though that being said, I’ve also heard plenty of reviews from old school Toy Story fans that really praise this film. So, take my comments with a pinch of salt.

Well next week will either be strongly worded, or a mildly uninteresting review as I have rather mixed feelings on how this film could turn out. But I’m kind of interested to see how it does. Next week I review The Beatles based musical comedy directed by Danny Boyle ‘Yesterday’

“MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL”

Men in Black: International is one of the quietest big releases I’ve seen all year. I had no idea this film was coming out for ages. Now MIB is in theory a franchise that could really work. I say in theory because in practice it seems it hasn’t really worked. We had MIB II which was terrible, MIB III which was ‘meh’ and an animated series which I bet you all forgot even existed in the first place!?

Barry Sonnenfeld is not back to direct this film and instead we have F Gary Gray, known for ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and most recently ‘The Fate of The Furious’ (AKA – Fast and Furious 8 for UK audiences). I actually feel like F Gary Gray was a wise choice. I actually thought that at some points of Fast and Furious 8, despite the fact it’s a series at this point which has completely jumped the shark, it’s direction still felt like there was more effort put into it than Fast and Furious 7. I was interested to see what F Gary Gray would take with him to the MIB franchise.

Now I went to MIB international thinking that it was actually a reboot judging by the posters but nope, it’s not. It’s a direct sequel to the events of the previous three movies. The big difference being that the only returning cast member is Emma Thompson as Agent O. For the new cast, we have Agent M played by Tessa Thompson (who discovered that there were aliens when she was a kid and wasn’t neurolised) who wanders into MIB by investigation and presses them enough in order to be recruited. She’s subsequently transferred to the London branch to team up with Agent H played by Chris Hemsworth under the guidance of Agent High T played by Liam Neeson to investigate an alien doomsday weapon that has been left by a prince played by Kayyan Novak and to also look into a potential mole within MIB.

MIB International is one of the weirdest ideas for a Men in Black film. I wouldn’t have looked at a franchise like MIB and said, ‘What this needs to be is a globe-trotting blockbuster’. The reason the original Men in Black films worked is because they felt like rather isolated incidents, that actually leads the credence of the secrecy. Everything blends into the background. The reason why Frank the pug is funny is because he doesn’t look out of place in a New York kiosk. And yes, there is a Frank cameo in this film. We actually get a Frank equivalent with Agent M taking on an alien who disguises as a pawn from a chess board, who goes by the name Pawny, voiced by Kumail Nanjiani who is the funniest part of this film.

If you liked the previous MIB films, I’m not sure if this is really going to be one for you.

While aesthetically it’s still recognisable for the most part as MIB, on a lot of levels, they really don’t feel like they’re the same films. I’m glad that they didn’t try and make this a copy and paste of the other movies, but it still doesn’t exactly fit. The cast seemed to have been pulled in several directions, which means characterisation isn’t entirely there. Tessa Thompson & Chris Hemsworth are trying their best, but they don’t seem to have the same chemistry that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones had in their respective roles. Emma Thompson actually gets some good parts in the film but she’s barely in it to make much of a difference. Frankly though, my biggest problem with MIB International really was that I found it incredibly dull. It’s also very unimaginative. I’m serious, I have no real clear enjoyment watching this film. The film’s run time is just under two hours, but it felt like it went on for at least twenty minutes more than it should have. The film barely uses many of the MIB tropes and just decides it wants to be every blockbuster ever. For example, the neurolisers aren’t used all that much. You know, one of the key staples of MIB. Okay, admittedly I don’t want it abused as much as it was in MIB II, but you know what I mean. And then there’s the fact it just feels like a bunch of sequences and locations tied together.

Location hopping is really bizarre. The film starts out in Paris before we then go to New York and then to London, then to Morocco and then to Italy and then back to Paris. Seriously, pick a location and stick with it. The international tag line does give off the rather unsavoury thought that the film turned out to be a massive working holiday that we’ve now payed the budget for. Also, for the record, I know this is a plot point but there are way too many times that the characters are out of their suits. You know that line from the first film? ‘This is the last suit you’ll ever wear’. Yea, scratch that one.

The writing team for this movie is Art Marcum & Matt Holloway who were the writing team behind the screen play for ‘Iron Man’ but you also have to remember they did write some of the Transformers films and there is a definite hint to the influence in the latter one, granted, not as brainless and mindless as the Transformers films, but certainly the way in which they write characters. In fact, I actually think F Gary Gray’s direction kind of saves the film from being a total disaster.

Now the thing is, unlike X-Men: Dark Phoenix I reviewed last week, this one doesn’t make me angry. I just feel real nothingness while watching the film. It’s basically just there and it exists. It’s frankly a better film than MIB II which I have to stop to explain its plot every 5 minutes at incredibly stupid moments, but man, MIB International is not really what I was after.
What’s more, the special effects are actually quite good, especially with motion capture and the fact they’ve managed to do a decent job adding a third arm to Rebecca Ferguson who plays an alien dealer. God this film is the definition of a mediocre script hiding behind a franchise. MIB International really is a weak film. It’s frankly a film that stringed together a bunch of action scenes without much plot and it does not have the same substance as the first MIB film. Though it doesn’t descend to total disaster like MIB’s first sequel.

If you can’t tell who the mole is, it tries to offer mystery but doesn’t really do a good job hiding the fact the answers are all obvious and you’ll see them coming a mile away. Tessa Thompson & Chris Hemsworth, despite giving good performances, don’t seem to have the right amount of chemistry on screen to make it work. The biggest saving grace is that F Gary Gray seems to do a decent job with his direction and commands of Nijanni, who’s really funny, in his brief role. I’d actually skip MIB International as it feels like it’s a film that is just there. I feel like any plans to restart the franchise are probably going to go up in smoke.

“X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX”

Dark Phoenix might not have been shot to be the end of an era but due to recent events it now transpires that that is going to be the case.

But Disney’s acquisition of the X-Men franchise, along with their purchase of 20th century Fox, it’s been all but confirmed that this will be the final entry in this series of X-Men films.

They have gone on for so long at this point. The first film came out in the year 2000. The Dark Phoenix arc is something that has been talked about amongst X-Men fans for quite some time. It’s one of the most iconic storylines. This isn’t even the first time that this story line has been adapted for the big screen. It was previously also adapted for the movie X-Men: The Last Stand which really did a bad job of trying to merge itself with ‘The Cure’ storyline to minimal effect.

Now, that being said, this time stepping into the director’s chair for his first feature length film, we have Simon Kinberg. His previous directorial credit being an episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone. He’s hardly a non-factor as far as the X-Men Franchise goes. It feels rather appropriate that he’s directing considering just how much he’s been involved with the series. He’s was a script writer on X-Men: The Last Stand, Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse.

If you’re aware of the Dark Phoenix saga and have actually read Chris Claremont storyline, then throw them out the window!! Rather like ‘The Last Stand’, this is not a very good adaptation of Chris Claremont’s’ story. ‘The Last Stand’ this time takes place in the 90’s and during a mission into space that the X-Men were evolved in, Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner) absorbs what they believe at the time to be a solar flare. This starts to overload her powers and many aspects of her past start coming back to haunt her. Meanwhile, there’s also a group of villains led by Vuk (played by Jessica Chastain) that want to harness this power for themselves.

For the love of….You’ve had two chances at the Dark Phoenix arc, and you didn’t get it right either time. If you want a prime example of the Dark Phoenix arc, go watch the 90’s animated series. It’s 9 episodes long but it does a really decent job of translating the Dark Phoenix arc. It’s not just the fact that it’s a bad adaptation that makes Dark Phoenix a bad film in my book, Dark Phoenix is a bad film just on its own merits.

The other X-Men films have toed the line between being adaptations of the storylines that they’ve been running with, while also being their own thing. Many films have done this to varying successes. ‘Days of Future Past’ is a fine example of a film that comes squarely in the middle, whereas ‘Logan’ is an example of where it excels.

Dark Phoenix is really on the lower tier. It is so… dull and depressing. There is at no point in this film where it feels like an X-Men film. Its either way to jovial or way to depressing. And not in the way that make you think, like the really good X-Men films do. The sense of prejudice against the mutants is almost an afterthought. This kind of feels like they’re really trying to imitate the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). This is especially apparent with the villains who are, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst villains in any of the X-Men films.

Look, I still stand by even with this film Origins Wolverine is the worst movie in the franchise, but this is a damn close second to bottom. Oh yea, The Last Stand is a better movie than Dark Phoenix. How’s that for a hot take? But the reason I really don’t like it is because even ‘Origin Wolverine’ and ‘The Last Stand’ had better villains than Dark Phoenix does. I couldn’t tell you a thing about them. The film is so unconcerned with these films that they just turn them into generic alien invaders. I know nothing about these villains! Jessica Chastain is being praised for her part in this film in several other reviews, and she’s trying her hardest, but she has absolutely nothing to work with. Not to mention that the rest of the cast have terrible written parts. What did they do to Beast in this movie?! He acts so out of character throughout most of this movie. And he’s not the only one.

The recent franchise problems have seemed to be that the characters are getting almost rewritten with every movie. This film has even less character consistency. Not to mention there’s tons of retcons and continuity errors for the franchise especially considering how Days of Future Past ended which is now incredibly contradictory of several of the events in this movie. What’s more, Dark Phoenix is this final film in what is now 19 years’ worth of movies, there’s nothing conclusive about it. There’s not even anything feeling very epic about it. It’s just rather…there. It’s not a celebration of the X-Men franchise, it’s not even a very good film all together. Charles Xavier for example is really shot down in this movie. And yea I know he does some dumb shit in the comics but he’s not this dumb. And once again it contradicts stuff that’s been established about the character and oh good god what is up with the script for this film. There’s virtually no character to anything. It just, like, goes, from moment to moment hoping it would all cohesively come together.

The final action scenes actually don’t feel like they should be the final portion of the film. It almost feels as if there was meant to be another scene after it, which then got cut. It’s a fine example of a film that has clearly had its issues messed around with by the studio demanding reshoots. X-Men: Dark Phoenix is an appalling film and a terrible way for the franchise to bow out as plans are already been put in place to potentially be folding the X-Men characters into the MCU with Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. As it stands Dark Phoenix is genuinely one of the worst movies out of the bunch. Its depressingly lazily written and it’s just a damn depressing and boring movie altogether. It’s a terrible adaptation of its comic and storyline and just a terrible movie altogether. Sophie Turners’ Jean Grey saves the film in quite a few regards and though it’s at the expense of the other X-Men, it’s now basically the Jean Grey movie featuring X-Men, with lazily written characters and poor plotting. But that’s the only nice thing I have to say about the film. This one actually kind of made me angry at how poor it was. If there is actually a plan to bring out new mutants, I really have stopped caring at this point. If you’re going to fold the characters into the MCU do it now because no one will care if you kill this franchise now.