“FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA”

Furiosa has been kicking around in development since Mad Max: Fury Road came out in 2015. The project has been on the constant move, considering it was unclear whether Charlize Theron was going to reprise her role. Finally, the film is out, with Anya Taylor-Joy cast in the titular role, as a younger version of Furiosa.

This film does quite well as a prequel! It basically goes from Furiosa’s childhood all the way up until Mad Max: Fury Road, the credits even showing the start of Fury Road to add to the film’s connection.

That being said, the film doesn’t spend all of its time figuring out how to get to Fury Road, it spends most of its time building up Furiosa’s character. George Miller is the director and it’s very clear how deeply he understands the character.

While this film definitely is going for a more serious tone than the previous, it certainly has some of those hard-hitting emotional moments- which I think a character like Furiosa is good for, especially since now we have a better insight into her backstory.

The film also intends to expand on the politics of the Citadel that was in Fury Road, and as such, most of the cast of the first movie do return to reprise their roles.

The newest face to this film is Chris Hemsworth, who is playing the villain Dementus (the Mad Max films were never known for their subtlety), and I actually think he does a pretty good job playing the villain! I think people who are used to him playing Thor will be taken aback by this turnabout.

Rather similar to Fury Road, the film lets the action tell the story, and there are a lot of times where the film relies on expressions for the actors to get across what is happening. While the action might not be as well-crafted as the previous movie, that’s not to say there aren’t some amazing sequences in this. George Miller is a master of this, and the stunt coordinator and stunt people really deserve a pat on the back, because the sequences are fantastic.

That being said, one thing it does have down against Fury Road is that it’s not as quotable of a movie. There’s no ‘What a lovely day’, ‘Witness me’, or any lines like that, but that’s not the worst thing in the world- not every great film needs to have tons of quotable lines.

I heard some people say that they don’t really like the vehicle design in this one, but I disagree, I really liked them! They have been really well constructed in my opinion.

I’ve been darting around the plot line of this one because I don’t want to give away too much of what happens, other than it’s a build up to why Furiosa is the way she is and the events that led up to Fury Road. I think there’s actually a lot of surprises along the way, and in some senses, I think this film is kind of like watching a documentary about a disaster- you know certain things aren’t going to work out because they have to lead into the next turn of events, but you’re almost begging for it to not be the case.

“KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES”

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is now the fourth movie in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series, which started with the previous films of Rise, Dawn, and War of the Planet of the Apes. Personally, I thought all of those films were excellent- I actually reviewed War of the Planet of the Apes and put it in my Best Films list that year.

Though, by the end of that movie, I felt that things were so circular that the only real way to go was to do a full-on remake of the original Planet of the Apes movie within this timeline. However, we’re not getting that in this film. We’re also not getting director Matt Reeves back, because he’s currently working on his Batman movies, so in his place for this movie we have director Wes Ball, who directed the Maze Runner movies. It was rather surprising considering there was such a gap between those movies and this one- he hasn’t directed anything since 2018!

I wanted to know what his direction is like now because of his upcoming projects, particularly his film adaptation of the Mouse Guard which has been kicking around Hollywood for ages, as well as the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie. Zelda fans, I will say that this film suggests he might do well on a leash. You could say that the Maze Runner movies aren’t very good, and he was leashed from adapting the books, but then you could say that those are really boring books with some of the most predictable plot twists you’ll ever see in your life.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a sequel to the previous three films, but no characters return for this one. The film starts with a time skip from an unspecified amount of time, I’ve been told it was 300 years, but the film isn’t specific about that, it just says, ‘many generations later’.

The trailer leaves out a lot of the context of what will be happening in the movie, and in that sense, I’ll be avoiding plot synopsis for this review. To simply state it, this film is about warring factions between multiple ape groups, with one side being the young Noa (played by Owen Teague) and the villainous Proximus Cesar (Kevin Durand).

What this film does well is that it does have themes that relate back to the original Planet of the Apes, most notably, of how religious dogma is twisted, to decide who is worthy of life and death and equal rights. In that sense, the film is very successful. It’s probably the most basic film of the bunch, it’s a very by-the-numbers hero’s journey- and I think that’s where my issues lie. It’s not as interesting as any of the movies in the Cesar trilogy, especially considering that in the end of the last three movies, there aren’t that many human actors to work with who aren’t in motion capture suits (but the CGI effects are still excellent, but no-one is able to work motion capture as well as Andy Serkis was, which is a real shame!).

This film goes in some interesting directions on one hand, but on the other, I think it overwrites one of the big overriding factors of the last movie, and it ends up raising more questions than answers. Granted, that could be answered in a sequel, and the film is definitely gearing itself up for a sequel, with the team talking about this becoming a new trilogy. But let’s say that this film doesn’t do well in the box office- the reason I don’t like sequel-baiting is because a sequel is never guaranteed, and it would leave a lot of unanswered questions.

Visually, the film is excellent and the script, while not as engaging as the other films, is fine. I certainly found this film entertaining in many parts! But at the same time, I kind of came out of this one having a sense that this was going down the Marvel route of things, by planning the route of things before getting a good idea off the ground. That’s not to say this film was all about future movies, it concludes nicely, but there aren’t too many lingering character arcs left to do- but you could have said that about the other three movies, and they ended well.

“THE FALL GUY”

This movie is based off a TV series that ran from 1981 to 1986 that was about a movie stuntman who moonlighted as a bounty hunter when work dried up. This new adaptation comes to us from David Leitch, a producer on films like Hobbs & Shaw, and he also directed the recent Bullet Train. I liked both of those movies on some level, and The Fall Guy is an interesting film. I suspect fans of the TV series won’t be too happy that for the most part this film just took the very base premise of the fact that the guy is a stuntman.

Colt Seavers (played by Ryan Gosling) disappears on his aspiring director girlfriend, Jodie (Emily Blunt), and is then called back to a set in Australia to aid in her latest film production and attempts to get the main character of that movie (played by Aaron Taylor Johnson) to finish filming. I think that the trailer actually undersold how insane this movie is.

First and foremost, The Fall Guy is a love letter to stuntmen. Virtually the entire film is dedicated to showing the behind the scenes work and what goes into a good stunt shoot, but also the serious risks that the stuntmen take in the process. It really makes you wonder why there isn’t a Best Stunt Performance category at The Oscars.

Despite the fact that this is an insane role, Ryan Gosling is completely selling it.

If anything, though, I kind of think that the film has a few issues. It’s a very predictable story. There are a few plot twists that I guessed ahead of time, but I’ve stated on several occasions that knowing a twist ahead of time doesn’t make it bad, in fact, some of the worst plot twists are so bad because they come out of nowhere.

That being said, I would say another weakness of the film is that the characters aren’t exactly three dimensional. Though, they don’t need to be. This film is good popcorn entertainment. As much as I love a good think piece, I will always appreciate a movie where you can switch off your brain, and I would say that The Fall Guy falls into that category well.

The action scenes are well shot and well-choreographed, as you’d expect, and I was surprised at how they made me feel the weight behind certain dangerous sequences, backed up by how much the film tells you about the safety precautions behind such scenes.

I did think the film was pushing its luck a bit with the two-hour run time; I think ten or fifteen minutes could have been shaved off.

I wouldn’t say that The Fall Guy was an extraordinary movie, but I would say it is a well-made movie and I had a lot of fun watching it. The action scenes are well shot, the acting is very hammy but good, and overall, it’s well worth your time. Fans of the TV show might be disappointed with how many liberties this movie takes, but I don’t think it’s to the detriment of the final product. It’s worth a watch, and I would actually say it’s worth seeing this one in the cinema, because large portions of the film look great!

“SPY X FAMILY: CODE WHITE”

I’m under the assumption that most people reading this are familiar with the Spy X Family anime, and if you’re not, it comes highly recommended. It was one of my favourite anime’s of the year, it came out and I got so addicted to it that it was one of the major reasons that I bought the Shonen Jump subscription service and read every new chapter as it comes out.

If you haven’t seen it and you want to catch up before watching this movie, it’s limited run in UK cinemas, and by the time this review goes up you may have already missed it- so now is a good time to catch up on the series in anticipation for its UK Blu-Ray release. Season One is currently on Netflix at time of writing, and both seasons are also available on Crunchyroll.

To sum up where we’re going with this one, this film is not an adaptation of any of the storylines from the manga. It’s essentially what a lot of the Dragonborn movies were- or for a more recent example, the My Hero movies. Sort of a ‘what if?’ scenario, that if it’s popular enough can be weaved into the canon of the anime series which I believe My Hero Academia actually did with the first movie.

It’s basically about Anya trying to get through a cooking class that she’s taking, and Loid and Yor take her to a snowy city where the principal’s favourite dessert comes from, (since he’ll be judging the contest) and through accidentally eating a chocolate that she shouldn’t have on the train ride over, Anya inadvertently has something that the military in that region wants. 

I’ll be honest, I don’t really care for the non-canon movies, particularly when it’s from a series that I like. Because if I like it, then there’s only some chance that it will be put in the canon, and even then, it can feel like a bit of a waste of time, because it can’t affect the storyline that was pre-written by the manga author.

So as a result, I always go through these movies thinking that they feel rather pointless, and I would say that this feels rather similar. I find it bizarre that the intro to the movie actually has an introduction to the entire premise of Spy X Family- the fact that Loid, the father, is an agent, Yor, the mother, is an assassin, Anya is a telepath, and the dog can have premonitions of the future, and they’re all keeping these secrets from each other. The reason I find it bizarre is because anyone who sees this is most likely up to date with Spy X Family.

I found the film okay, but there were a few things that didn’t quite work for me. For example, the whole Loid suspecting Yor of infidelity subplot was a bit of a waste, and I found it weird that it was because of a weird look she got, of Fiona not recognising her- because at this point in the storyline I’m fairly sure those two know each other. And yeah, that would lead to some insecurities, but we already did this plot, one in the series and it had a similar outcome! If anything, this one felt like ‘well, that didn’t amount to anything more than it did in the anime!’.

What’s more, I get a sense that this might have had a production delay down the line. It’s clear that the nation that they are visiting is covered in snow (hence the name Code White), but there’s also a lot of Christmas scenery in this one, in fact a large portion of the second half of the movie takes place at what looks like a Christmas Market. That isn’t too surprising, since Spy X Family takes inspiration from Germanic architecture, and the whole series covers tensions surrounding an Eastern and Western block, but it is one of those weird things you get with anime now, where they seem to have Christmas themed stuff at random points of the year. That’s usually due to how it coincides with manga releases, but in this case, they didn’t have to do that, since everything was in their control.

The Colonel character does some things that I think Spy x Family has kind of failed at, at the point that the anime has stopped- which is trying to actually give a consistent villain that seems like a threat. In fact, he does actually beat Loid at some point, which isn’t something that we have seen previously. The problem is that he doesn’t really have great motivations- he just wants to start a war just because. They don’t go into any detail about why. Does he miss the battlefield? Does he have psychological issues that means he doesn’t do well in peacetimes? If they gave the villain better motivations I would have liked him more, because it’s kind of what Spy x Family needs. Although, I guess this means that the movie is true to the show.

That being said, I’ve spoken about a lot of negatives, but there are a lot of positives, too. It keeps the sense of humour up as usual; the fight scenes are some of the best ever, especially one in the third act, and the characters are still really good. 

But I think if you’re a fan of the show, it feels a bit inconsequential. That being said, I do hope that whatever finale the manga is going to have is similar to one aspect of the ending of this movie. It does seem a bit weird having that ending and still maintaining the status quo of the plot.

“KUNG-FU PANDA 4”

Kung-Fu Panda 4 is the fourth entry in the series and this time has a new direction from Mike Mitchell, who previously directed Shrek: Forever After, alongside Stephanie Stein in her feature-length debut, having previously directed for the Netflix She-Ra series.

This is the fourth entry, but it has so far been received poorly compared to the previous three films, it already hit a lot on Twitter when it was revealed that the Furious Five won’t be featured characters this time around, despite the fact that the long-time creatives of the Kung-Fu Panda series insisted they should play a part. I will say it now, their absence is sorely felt…

When I reviewed Kung-Fu Panda 3, I thought that the series ended on a decent note and there wasn’t much space to expand. I’ll give the team credit; they gave it a good go here. It is about Po fighting a shapeshifter that takes on the roles of its previous enemies, though not many of them can speak since Ian McShane was the only one of the previous actors they could get to reprise their role. Alongside this, Po is also trying to train up the new Dragon Warrior, and he has chosen a fox that tried to steal from the Jade Temple named Zhen (played by Awkwafina) who is aware that the villain they are seeking is a chameleon named Viola Davies.

It was weird that the Furious Five wasn’t here, and I thought that that was maybe because of budgetary reasons, but it’s not as if this isn’t teaming with A-listers. Bryan Cranston is back as Li and Dustin Hoffman is back and hasn’t been recast despite his scandals for some reason. And again, Viola Davies and Ian McShane are here. I suppose there would be budgetary issues if you also tried to get Gary Oldman and JK Simmons back to reprise their roles. I didn’t understand it for a plot reason, you didn’t really need these characters to come back since they finished their arcs in the previous movies, and especially in the case of Tai Lung’s return, I felt that it was a regression.

As for Chameleon, I liked Viola Davies in the role, but she has one of the weakest motivations in the whole series. The new character Zhen is fine, I quite like the rapport she has with Po, but the main thing I was noticing was that Awkwafina is starting to become VERY overexposed, especially in voice acting roles. I think it’s a shame because she’s okay for the most part and does a fine enough job in this film. 

As for everything else, the fight scenes are fine and are animated very well, but it did feel like whatever the budget was for this film, not much of it was allocated for animation. 

I’m not sure why some characters were here, Mr Ping and Li should have just been cameos, since their role in the whole film wasn’t really worth it, as they just go through the things they did in the last movie, just not as well.

That being said, the philosophy is there, and some of the jokes work, even though one of them involves a weird cameo with Mr Beast… I felt like some of the writing was made with the previous films in mind, but this was the first time I felt like there was less of a creative vision compared to the other films, for some reason I can’t say that I didn’t like it. It’s probably due to the fact that I’m a fan of the franchise and I’ve become blind to some of these issues, but it still maintains some of its charm, though I think a lot of that is due to Jack Black still being great in this role. This is the first time I found myself nitpicking some of the decisions in this film, and having not done that before, it feels weird.

“GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE”

Frozen Empire is the sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and if you’ve seen that movie, you’ll want to check this one out. I personally liked Afterlife, and even though it wasn’t an amazing movie, I thought that it had some good ideas, it’s also one of the few times that using CGI to resurrect a dead celebrity didn’t feel completely creepy or invasive. 

Frozen Empire does move out of the Oklahoma setting of Afterlife and brings the story back to New York, it also brings back virtually every surviving cast member from the original films, and adds a few new ones as well, like Kumail Nanjiani and British comedian James Acaster. 

It’s a basic plot which mainly centres around an artefact that will release an extremely powerful spirit that intends to freeze over New York. If you are coming into this film to witness iced-out New York, that takes an incredibly long time to actually happen, so it’s weird that the actual Frozen Empire isn’t a big part of the movie…

I’ll stress that much like Afterlife; this one definitely feels like it’s kept the spirit of the original movie. There are some genuinely funny moments in it, the cast does very well for the most part, but it surprised me that Bill Murray is barely in this movie- he’s one of the original Ghostbusters that gets the least amount of screen time! I don’t know if it was a scheduling conflict or if he simply didn’t want to be a big part of it, but it surprised me since Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd play a big part. 

I liked the fact that this kept the aesthetic of classic Ghostbusters by moving it back into New York, but the Stranger Things influence is still there in the tone and with the actual Stranger Things cast members in it. 

There are some funny lines in the film, but that being said, I don’t think that Frozen Empire is an extraordinary movie, it’s very by the numbers. I’ll even say it feels quite condensed. That’s not to suggest that there was much left on the cutting room floor, but it certainly felt like a lot of plot points just happened, with not an incredible amount of build-up to them.

If I’m honest, I realised while watching a similar thing I felt when I watched the newest Men In Black movie: there’s not much to get out of this franchise. I noticed a lot of repeating plot points in this film, so that’s why I feel like if this was the last Ghostbusters movie, the series would at least be going out on a high.

“DRIVE AWAY DOLLS”

Drive Away Dolls is the first solo theatre film released by Ethan Cohen of the Cohen Brothers, and he co-wrote the screenplay with his wife. The story takes place in 1999 and is centred around two women, Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), the former of whom is running away from a very bad breakup with her girlfriend, and the latter is trying to meet up with some family members in Florida who agree to do a sort-of road trip.

During the trip, they discover that they have accidentally intercepted a car from a criminal gang that has some special cargo, and only after discovering this do they realise they have to work to save themselves.

Okay. So, if you’ve seen the trailer for this film, the only thing you haven’t seen is the contents of the case. That trailer is basically the whole movie- this film is phenomenally short, only coming up at an hour and twenty-five minutes. It doesn’t seem that interested in its own plot, and it felt like it was really rushing to get everything done. I really couldn’t tell that one of the Cohen Brothers was directing this, because it didn’t feel like it.

Some people said that this was a Tarantino wannabe film, and I have to agree.

Be aware that this film has a 15 rating here and an R-rating in America for a reason. There are lots of hardcore nudity and sex references in this movie, and the original trailer undersold that.

There were some funny moments, but as a whole, Drive Away Dolls is a film that’s just there. I have no strong feelings for it one way or the other. I’ve seen plenty of films like this that don’t have LGBTQ+ themes, so I’m glad there’s a film out there for that audience, but this film could have been so much better. It wastes the two big actors that were heavily advertised for this, Pedro Pascal was hardly in this, and Matt Damon is kind of the same.

What’s more, it’s not edited that well. It’s kind of all over the place. There were loads of segments that made no sense, for example, they have these psychedelic shots that don’t seem to mean anything, especially since this is set in 1999, not in the 60’s. Mind you, the 1999 setting doesn’t really do much of anything. I suppose it kind of makes sense for one plot element because of the presidential election that happens in the next year, but other than that, it’s only really because the women can’t be contacted so easily because of the technology back then.

“IMAGINARY”

Imaginary is the latest horror film from Blumhouse Productions, and they’ve brought in the director of Truth or Dare for this one, so in theory you know not to go in with high expectations.

Blumhouse are starting to dominate the genre, so I’ve become used to seeing their name on most horror films. They’ve been getting a couple of wins here and there, but they seem to be making many by-the-number horror films.

This one isn’t terrible with the concept alone, there have been several cases of children having malevolent imaginary friends that scare them, so basing a horror film around that was a good idea. That’s basically the general plot, it centres around the stepmother of a family played by DeWanda Wise who has to deal with her new stepchildren, including the youngest daughter who has developed an imaginary friend after they moved back into their old family home. The imaginary friend is called Chauncey, mostly represented by a little stuffed bear that the girl carries around.

I’ll start by saying some positives- the acting isn’t too bad, it’s a decent idea for a film, some of the special effects aren’t too bad, and some of the imagery is really well done, it must have cost a lot to make it or at least took up a large portion of the budget. There are a few good moments with some tension, but this is a prime example of taking a good concept and watering it down. This especially is the case towards the end of the movie, where it goes totally off the rails.

The biggest problem I have with this is that, for a horror movie, it is kind of toothless. There are large portions of this film where not much happens at all, and without giving away the total number of kills, Chauncey is one of the least effective horror movie villains ever! That certainly robs him of a lot of his pathos.

There are also a couple of plot twists, one of which is predictable beyond belief, and the other is so insane and out of nowhere that  I had to do a double take!

I think they wanted to remind you of films like Nightmare on Elm Street, but it more reminded me of the South Park episode of Imaginationland- in fact I’m sure that’s where a lot of their ideas came from. It seems like they took a lot of the parts of that episode and turned it into a horror film.

I didn’t come out of this film thinking it was horrible, I’ve seen way worse horror movies than this one, and I do like the fact that we’re getting a movie about stepparents where they seem to actually be decent care takers.

I will say, the way they do the ending was actually pretty good. That kind of got my attention in a way that I wasn’t expecting, though it’s rather undercut by another idea, and rather ironically for the subject matter, it feels like it’s lacking in terms of ideas. You have a concept where you could design whatever you wanted, but you don’t really do that much with it…

“WICKED LITTLE LETTERS”

‘Wicked Little Letters’ is directed by Thea Sharrock, who previously directed the film ‘Me Before You’, which I personally didn’t like for several reasons. But this film caught my attention for its excellent cast and the fact that it was based on a story that was largely lost to history- a story that if it was made in modern times was essentially about online trolling.

If you haven’t seen the trailers for it, this takes place after the First World War, in the small village of Little Hampton. Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman) begins to receive several obscene letters and immediately suspicion falls on her neighbour, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), due to a falling out that they had previously.

New police recruit Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) believes that Rose has been wrongfully accused and sets out to do an investigation of her own.

The film starts out by saying it is truer than you would expect- and from what I gathered, based on some articles that I’ve checked out, it does seem that the film was very well researched, especially considering what I said before; that the story was largely lost to history. The home secretary at the time was even commenting on the story as it happened, and the national newspapers were documenting it, too! This leads to a funny joke in the film where the door gets slammed in the face of a Daily Mail reporter… I could watch that on a loop for a while!

If you have a problem with swearing, this isn’t the movie for you. The film has an R rating in America, and that’s pretty much entirely down to the language. I’ll stress that I thought this film was hilarious in several parts, and I thought that the central performances were all excellent, particularly Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley.

This is also potentially a breakout role for Anjana Vasan, who delivers a great performance mostly through her facial expressions! I’ve never seen an actor convey how much she wanted to smack her superior just through facial expressions before! I also thought Timothy Spall performed well in this movie, but then again, he is very good at playing despicable people. He’s in the role of Edith’s controlling father- and the oppression of women is very forefront of this film, even the Suffragette movement has a few background moments too.

Gladys is constantly having to follow the rules by having to introduce herself as a female police officer, in a very degrading fashion. Of course, as the film goes on, not only is Rose suspected because of her tendency to act out of turn and think for herself, but there are also other subtle jabs that you’ll notice. It’s an interesting thread for the film which I don’t think the trailers conveyed very well, but I also think that was to the film’s benefit.

The story obviously must follow a certain structure, and I would suspect that things have to be separated from fact, to follow a classic three-act structure, but this isn’t to the detriment of the story! It’s still rather engaging. I did, however, think that there were some portions of the film that felt padded, there were a couple of slightly unnecessary sequences. I wonder how much this will remain in the popular consciousness… One of the big issues I had with the film was that the foul language is one of the few jokes that it has and tends to rely on, it does get a little weaker towards the end since you’re so desensitised at that point.

“MADAME WEB”

Sony has been hoping to keep the license to Spider-Man films by creating films centred around the side characters of the franchise. We’ve previously had the two Venom movies and Morbius, showcasing varied success in their departments. I personally can’t stand any of the movies, I think the Venom movies aren’t very good for a variety of reasons, and Morbius, even though it has the reputation of the fun kind of bad movie, I view it quite cynically and struggle to get through it.

Madame Web is one of the strangest choices to make a film out of. Anyone born after the 1990’s, who actually remembers this character? She’s barely in any of the Spider-Man comics! The only reason I knew this character existed was because of the ’90s Spider-Man cartoons, which is way more accessible now because of Disney Plus, but it’s still a really obscure character. This is clearly a character that was floating around the production office during the time the Aunt May Secret Agent movie was proposed (thankfully, that one never got off the ground).

There is a fundamental problem with all of these films, and this film made it more prevalent than ever.

The question then goes, Why does this movie exist? Well, in my opinion, it’s just to keep the license. I don’t get why, it’s not as if Sony needed a Spider-Man movie this year since Beyond the Spider-Verse is coming out in a few months!

The writing and directing team don’t have much pedigree. It’s directed by S.J. Clarkson, and thank you, Angry Joe, for your video review, because I had no clue who this was when I saw the name, apparently, she directed a few episodes of Ugly Betty and she also directed a pilot for a Game of Thrones series, which once HBO saw it, they immediately shelved- that’s how bad it was! HBO said no thanks!

As for the writing team, there’s Claire Parker, as well as Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. Who are those guys? Well, they’re the writing team behind such bombs as Morbius, Dracula Untold (which sunk the Universal Monsters Universe before it ever got off the ground), the cinematic abomination that was Gods of Egypt, and the 2017 Power Rangers movie, which I didn’t hate as much as everyone else, but that isn’t saying much.

Man, have they all excelled themselves with this one. This film is a dumpster fire. Despite all of those films mentioned, it rivals even Gods of Egypt for the worst film these people have ever worked on. I could talk about the plot of this film, but if the writers didn’t even care about it, I don’t see why I should.

Basically, it centres around Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) who is trying to save the new group of Spider-Women with her newly found powers. Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) face up against villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim). If you didn’t recognise that villain’s name, don’t worry I didn’t either- he’s another pretty obscure Spider-Man character. Before you look up anything about him, just know that they brought pretty much nothing from his comic counterpart into this story. Some of these retcons are terrible, and it goes back to the fundamental point that I mentioned earlier, these characters aren’t interesting without Spider-Man. There are a few that can work by themselves, like I could see Spider-Gwen having a good movie, and Jessica Drew as Spider-Woman has obtained her own identity and character arcs which would make a decent movie with the right team.

The point is the characters don’t work. Madame Web in particular isn’t interesting by herself, and Venom isn’t interesting without Spider-Man. He’s good as a foil or being a side character but that’s about it, and I’m really getting bored of Marvel trying to push him, and Sony is making it worse. These stories are all fundamentally flawed since they want to remind us about Spider-Man without actually including him. This film is set even before he was born, and Miles Morales is decades off even being conceived! There’s a whole subplot around Mary Parker in this movie, which is when the penny drops that Adam Scott is Uncle Ben. I like him as an actor, but he is really miscast in this.

Every single change that they make in this movie regarding the lore actually dilutes Spider-Man. There are a lot of things that are introduced in this movie but by the time Spider-Man comes along, he won’t be unique or interesting, he’s just another person in a line of Spider-people that came before him.

There’s an Amazonian tribe that worships spiders that seem to get powers, similar to Spider-Man and even wear vines similar to his costume. By the way, Cassandra Webb gets her powers in this one due to a rare spider bite from a spider that her mother was planning to use to cure diseases, which will probably be the same spider that will be used to give Peter Parker his powers- and it really overcomplicates the wider lore for no reason.

Considering the Rotten Tomato score, you won’t need to take note of this lore, since it definitely won’t be showing up in any of the comics.

The dialogue in this film is appalling. Apart from the terrible dialogue, I think that the direction is terrible. They’re not given anything to work with! For one thing, no one talks like a human being, there’s just constant exposition, and no one really has much motivation. Dakota Johnson is desperately trying to give Cassandra Webb some character development centred around something to do with motherhood, but it comes out of nowhere and isn’t conveyed very well. It just feels really tacked on.

The villain’s motivations are even weaker. He wants the spider powers because he’s been downtrodden in his home country, but they don’t really go further on that, and then he just wants to kill the other three because they’re going to kill him in the future… that’s all there is to it. He’s a terrible villain. I really have to ask the question, why is he in an evil Spider-Man costume? He doesn’t even have a costume in the comics, it was needlessly added for the costume department to work on, and it doesn’t even look good! If anything, it makes him blend in too much to some of the environments.

This film has some of the worst shot footage I’ve ever seen, by the way. I don’t know who wanted the film done with this many quick cuts, but it was a bad decision, I couldn’t tell what was happening at all.

Before you go to see this film out of some morbid curiosity, this isn’t a ‘fun but bad’ movie, it’s just a bad movie because you know it only exists as a product. It’s not a piece of art, it’s a product, It’s designed to keep Spider-Man in Sony. I’ve seen a couple of reviews describe this as a filler episode of the ongoing universe. For all that is holy, please stop now! Give it back to Disney, this isn’t working. The Spider-Verse movies were the one good thing out of this, and if you keep pushing this, it will lower the stock of a lot of good side characters.

“THE IRON CLAW”

The Iron Claw is a movie written and directed by Sean Durkin. It is a very timely movie- the film came out in America several weeks ago and failed to be a large part of the awards season buzz, but its UK release does coincide with another event that could enhance the film.

The film is a wrestling movie about the Von Erich family. This lesser-known family wrestled for several federations in the 80s, most notably the WCCW which would eventually become the WCW. The family also has two former MWA world champions, a federation that attempted a revival recently but is now all online because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to have some wrestlers take cocaine on camera, causing them to lose a TV deal. 

The Von Erich’s story isn’t very well known. The film does a good job at conveying it, it certainly shows how a wrestling dynasty comes about, with the father Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) passing on the business to his son Kevin (Zac Efron) and eventually bringing on David (Harris Dickinson), Kevin (Jeremy Allen White, who you may remember from Shameless), and Mike (Stanley Simmons). It also shows the truth from that time-  they would be bouncing around from federations based on how well you could do with the crowd, in hopes of getting a better spot. If you know the story of how everything went down, then this film will probably satisfy you. It’s relatively as close as a biopic is going to get. 

I think the fact that made this film possible is that none of the Von Erich’s family members are currently employed by the WWE, because then they would struggle to get rights to make the film, since they do own the back catalogue from WCW, having acquired it in 2001. WWE has obviously had some involvement in the film, which makes sense considering this is one of the few films recently where the people don’t come out looking bad- if you’re not aware of what I’m going on about, don’t look up what they’ve been up to recently, there’s a reason why their current CEO is out of the company and in a massive lawsuit… I’ll leave it at that. 

That being said, you’re not getting too much archival footage. There is some briefly in the background, around Von Erich’s time in WWE (or WWF as it was at the time, including his win at the intercontinental championship at the Summer Slam).

The film mostly focuses on Kevin, the one who started in the business and put up with just about anything because he wanted to be with his brothers. It does well early on showing the major thing that held him back was the fact that he wasn’t a great talker. Unless you’ve got a good manager or mouthpiece to back you up when you go to the ring, that’s a death sentence for your hopes of being a main event guy. I will say to Zac Efron’s credit, he plays the role brilliantly. Zac Efron has become one of those actors that surprises me with how good they are. Early on, I thought he was going to peter out, but he has truly proven me wrong and showed me how much range he has to give. I will say I don’t know what training regime he had to go through to make him that jacked for the role!

Talking about this film is hard to do since I don’t want to give away too much for people who aren’t familiar with the Von Erich story, but I will say Fritz Von Erich does not come out of this movie looking very good. I did find out in my research for this review that Kevin Von Erich himself wasn’t too happy with how the movie portrayed his father, which is probably due to some of the biopic concessions that you have to make as a filmmaker. You have to change certain dates and story points to fit in with the narrative you want to tell, and you have to tread a fine line because you have to get the rights to certain wrestlers that the Von Erichs wrestled with for the MWA championship- some of the most notable being Harley Race and Ric Flair. In terms of their mannerisms, they do a pretty good job of reflecting the wrestlers themselves. The actor they got to play Harley Race in particular, really resembled him! But the point is that you now have to get all of those wrestlers and/or their family members to sign onto the project, so it must be difficult to get a project like this off the ground. 

I’ll also add that one thing that may throw people off The Iron Claw is that it’s not entirely as critical of the wrestling business as you may expect it to be. It’s not as praising of the business as Fighting With My Family is, but it doesn’t actively criticise that the business doesn’t have much in the way of an exit or retirement plan for the athletes. It’s sort of middling on this scale. 

While the performances are excellent in this movie, I think that they are slightly undone by the length of the movie in my opinion. I think it could have got the job done in a much shorter time and towards the end of the film I started to notice some of the padding. 

The Iron Claw is a well-put-together movie, but for wrestling fans, I don’t think it’s that insightful into the business and questions have been raised about the authenticity of some of the story points. As a standalone movie, it does a good job of making you care for the characters and overall, I think that it’s an interesting watching experience, and you’ll be able to take something away from it. It’s very timely with WrestleMania 40 around the corner and the fact that the main event is set to be Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, two second-generation wrestlers, and potentially the Rock’s involvement and him bringing in his daughter as a fourth-generation wrestler- so wrestling families are a big focus of the business right now. 

I think it’s a pretty decent movie, but in a few months’ time I may have a different opinion on a rewatch.

I haven’t done one of these since 2019, and that is mainly because of the COVID lockdowns resulting in cinema shutdowns, I hadn’t seen enough movies from 2019-2021 to really justify it, since it really impacted the frequency that I could go to the cinema.

2023, on the other hand, while I had a few setbacks and a few weeks of not seeing films, was the first time I felt I had seen enough to make a comprehensive list comprehensively. Not a top 10, since I didn’t have enough films, and there were a few I left out of this list, but I couldn’t exactly make a top 6..

I also didn’t see that many films that I didn’t review, the only one in recent memory was Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, which I considered to be a middling film compared to his others. I found it rather bizarre that considering Mamoru Hosoda was taken off Howl’s Moving Castle, this felt like a film that he would write and direct.

Many films did come out in 2023, and there is a lot that I didn’t see. Because of train issues, I wasn’t able to get out to see The Marvels, which was the only MCU film I missed this year. In fact, train services did impact me from seeing a lot of films that are getting a lot of Oscar buzz. If you don’t see a film here, that’s probably the reason why I couldn’t see it.

Thankfully, a new cinema has opened up in my hometown so I’ll be less reliant on train services this year, though event movies may require some travel.

2023 saw the release of some excellent movies. A few that didn’t make the list include films like Wonka, which came out fairly recently which I really enjoyed, as well as Elemental, which I thought was a really good throwback with Pixar, but personally, I didn’t feel it was their best. I felt tempted to put Polite Society on the list, but that film goes a bit too bonkers at the end and it pulled me out a little bit. I also did not see enough crap to the point where I was going to make a Worst Of list.

I did see a lot of bad films including The Flash, and The Exorcist Believer, but the worst films I saw in 2023 had a common theme: Pretentiousness! I can’t stand over-pretentious movies, and there were a couple this year. I nearly gave it to Babylon for basically doing a vulgar version of Singing in the Rain whilst getting around it by calling it a homage, which made me wonder why I didn’t just watch Singing in the Rain. It accumulated at the end to something that just felt like Hollywood higher-ups sniffing their own farts.

That only technically came out in 2023, and it also didn’t infuriate me as my worst movie of the year. That goes to Asteroid City, a movie that was so annoying and nonsensical that it made me ask the question: Has Wes Anderson ever been good? Because I really couldn’t stand the style of filmmaking he put into this movie.

As for the actual list, these 5 movies were the ones that filled me with the most happiness or emotion coming out of seeing them. I was trying to keep it to original movies and projects, since you could make a point that sequel bias would play a part, however, this year there were a bunch of very good franchise movies. Only one of the top 5 is an original property, the rest are either sequels or reboots.

THE TOP 5

Number 5 – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

I’ve been growing very tired of the MCU lately, the amount of stuff we were getting from them, not to mention the bad quality of some of them, but Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was a rare exception. It really was fantastic. The film gave us one of the best new villains of the MCU and told us a brilliant story that played off of all the other movies. While I don’t think it quite matches the heights of its previous, 3 is an excellent movie and I’m happy that it managed to unite a lot of the previous Marvel fans that came back to watch this.

Number 4 – Evil Dead Rise

A brilliant return to form for the Evil Dead franchise. This film does what a lot of reboot horror movies don’t do: do something with the spirit of the original but make it different. Instead of being in a cabin in the woods, it was set in a rundown apartment complex that would make escape very difficult. It’s gruesome and gory as you need it to be, and it was surprising just how high of a body count that it went for. It also understands that really great horror comes from fears that people can relate to, which adds to the film’s atmosphere.

Number 3 – Spider-man: Across the Spiderverse

Another excellent entry into this Spider-man timeline. This one pays homage to everything Spider-Man. Sony has looked at what they have and did a brilliant job. Thanks to the excellent writing from Lord and Miller. It tells one of the best Miles Morales stories that directly challenges the toxic members of the fanbase that question his legitimacy as a Spider-man. It’s a very well-done movie with brilliant animation, but I will say that the reason it isn’t higher on the list is because the ending leads into the next movie, which I wasn’t aware of- and I’m getting kind of sick of the Part one and Part two films.

Number 2 – Nimona

The only Netflix entry to make the list. The fact that this wasn’t up for nomination at the Golden Globes is appalling! Nimona is a brilliant look into societal structures that deem who is or isn’t the bad guys, and how they use fear to install an enemy for the people. They manage to do it in a way that isn’t incredibly dour- while it’s incredibly emotional, it’s also really fun! If this is the end of Blue Sky Studios, they’ve gone out on a brilliant note.

Number 1 – Godzilla Minus One

A very late entry into the list, but they’ve made what is probably my favourite Godzilla movie ever. The acting is great, and many of the cast should be up for Oscars in my opinion. The writing is great, it does a brilliant job at making Godzilla terrifying, and it plays on real-world history and Japanese society in a way that is bold and interesting, and it delivers a brilliant, complete story that makes you root for the human characters. Yeah, someone made a Godzilla movie where you care about the humans! Not a good sign for the upcoming Kong movie next year. The use of tension is excellent also. I could review the whole movie for an hour and I would have a great time, but what I will say now is that this is currently my pick for Best Picture at the Oscars, and if it isn’t nominated, then something has gone wrong.