Silent Night (2023) Film Review

Sometimes in life you just have to feel sorry for Joel Kinneman. I mean the man has a knack for picking projects that sound good and safe on paper but just don’t work on the planet Earth. I mean this poor sod has been in the robocop remake (2014), both Suicide Squad films (2016 and 2021) as well as Chil 44 (2015) That one starred Tom Hardy and was based on a really good, really solid book.
Check it out if you need a detective thriller to read one holiday.
It’s set in Stalins Russia.
And today this poor unfortunate soul has agreed to be in Silent Night. Which whilst plot wise is basically your bog standard Punisher origin story movie that you’ve seen a million times before – dead kid, dad swears revenge, becomes badass, police are useless and or corrupt, big firefight at the end with evil drugs gang – Except it completely screws it up.
All right so the first interesting idea is that this film has virtually no spoken dialogue. Which I find interesting but there’s nothing really done with it beyond demonstrate that this type of film so is basic that it doesn’t NEED dialogue for everyone to understand what’s going on.
Or it’s that the characters or so thin that you could shine a light through them with a 2 watt lightbulb but that’s neither here nor there.
No, I have a spurious unresearched feeling that what attracted poor sweet Joel to this film was the director.
John Woo.
Now for any energy drink addicted, Tik-Tokking, vaping Fortnight playing 12 year olds currently scratching their heads in confusion, John Woo made films before the dark times, before Iron Man in 2008. Films like Face/off, Broken Arrow and Mission Impossible 2 amongst others.
Films with panache, style, doves!- Ask your dad if you don’t get that one.
And then there’s also the fact that our Punisher wannabe learns all of his bad assness not from being a former Ranger, Seal, Marine etc.
He gets it all from YouTube.
So… you see where my head was at, right?
A fairly solid actor with a decent grounding in action films with comedic leanings, a director who made erm… interesting action films back in the day, a basic, tried-and-true story structure full of one dimensional characters..
I mean the freaking John Wick films were partially based upon his work and here he comes back to show why he’s the master!!!!
Except at some point in the last few years he’s had a bash on the head and forgotten everything or been replaced by his evil twin or he was replaced by an alien clone or ….
Because this went down faster than my script editors lead balloon juggling “cancel me if you dare” stand up comedy routine on the titanic.
Let’s start with the basics – The pacing sucks. There’s only one major fight scene towards the end by then most people have checked out. It takes way too long to get going, there’s normally a fight scene at the mid-point to show everyone that now everything’s getting going but there isn’t, the fact that there’s no spoken dialogue means that by default you don’t really care about anyone, the villains are just cartoonishly evil, there’s only really one fight scene in the entire film, our lead learns to fight via YouTube videos and there’s only one major if very dull fight scene.
And speaking of our ‘badass via YouTube’ lead, he’s established early on to be an engineer of some description (no dialogue means no exposition. Or the terrible Marvel quips that are ruining cinema.) So I was wondering if he was ging to come up with some kind of budget gadgets- smoke bombs and the like but no. We get one tripwire and that’s your lot. Oh, sorry, you wanted something fun, exciting and interesting to happen in this film one fight scene? No. Just frowny faced people very seriously shooting each other in silence.
Oh, and this film is also very depressing to look at and somehow left a nasty taste in my mouth.
But my main issue with this film is simply that… It plays it all straight.
I mean all the ingredients are here for a really cool, dark satire of the standard Punisher origin story, no dialogue because we know it all by heart, our lead is a no-one who learns all his skills online- our villains are an evil drug gang who know the local train timetable by heart.
Now imagine what someone with a twinkle in their eye and their tongue in their cheek could do with that. Hell, imagine what the JOHN WOO of 15 years ago could have done with that! Instead it’s just this dark, miserable little film where it’s dialogue-free gimmick quickly becomes tiresome because the soundtrack isn’t very good, the fight scenes show no marital arts, swords (which I’m 100% certain a dingus who got all his training online would defiantly have done.) Gadgets, or anything but guns, which quickly becomes tiresome. Even the final battle was a snoozefest.
So yeah, Silent Night is an amazing idea for a dark satire which plays it completely straight whilst at the same time being dull, uninteresting, slow and mean spirited film being made by a director who seems to have regressed to being a straight-to-streaming hack for hire.
Just watch Violent Night instead (2022)
And please, if you see Joel Kinneman in a bar, buy him a pint. Poor sods earned it. And needs to fire his agent.

My Score- Skip It

Ghosted Film Review

Every now and then someone in Hollywood twigs that action films and romance films have very similar beats and figure that if they can somehow blend both together then they can get money from two different audiences as opposed to just the one genres money pool.

When this sort of works you get films like Mr and Mrs. Smith but more often than not it just doesn’t work. I’m talking about dross like Day and Knight and The Spy Who Left Me as examples off the top of my head.

And Ghosted is no Mr and Mrs Smith. If you can plough through the first twenty minutes (and I only did so with the help of my friends Mr. Gin and Mr. Tonic) you’ll find a fairly uninspired generic find the McGuffin action film.

Which is a shame because I like a lot of the things in this films favour. Ana Di Arnas was arguably the most beloved part of No Time To Die, Captain America can be fun and talented when someone knows what to do with him, I love spy films and the genre lends itself to the dying art of live action stunts.

And to be honest, it would be nice to see a spy film where the hero is still allowed to have a romantic interest.

Which I did sort of get.

It’s just that the film as a whole just doesn’t work.

Like I said, it’s a generic McGuffin hunt, which can be fun and is generally the easiest thing to build a spy film around. Hell, Mission Impossible 3 never even told us what the McGuffin actually was! But here, the McGuffin is well defined, the plot beats are generic and the action is pretty obvious CGI where someone like Tom Cruise would have done it for real in his spy franchise. It also didn’t help that for the first twenty minutes I swear by James Bond that the two leads were never in the same shot at the same time. Or that the villain sucks, or that the plot is so predictable that had I dozed off for some reason I would have known what was going on within seconds of waking up.

Plus, if you have to keep having side character’s literally say “The sexual chemistry here is off the charts” so many times that I could have created a much-needed drinking game. I mean I personally thought they had less sexual chemistry than I do with the lizard people in HR the last time I was told to attend an unexpected meeting.   

 But just because the film as a whole doesn’t work that doesn’t mean it has nothing good about it. There’s a fun scene in a market and, erm…. Well there’s a fun scene in a market.

I also liked the idea that And Di Arnas was the super spy and Chris Evans was the civilian. That’s a nice twist on the formula. It would have helped if Evans wasn’t basically a stalker but nobody’s perfect.  

I also liked that erm…. Did I mention the scene in the market? I did? Blast.

I mean, once the film gets going it’s harmless enough but the trick is just getting there. And even once it does get going, there’s nothing you haven’t seen before, just because the two leads are very attractive that doesn’t mean that their going to spark off of each other.

And the thing is, this idea could work. Ana seems to be having fun, Chris is there, there’s a fun location for the final fight scene that was underdeveloped but still worked, and I did enjoy this films cameos.

But Ghosted is just more proof that spy films and rom-coms just don’t work together. It takes too long for things to start going bang because we’re trying to set up our leads meet cute and the fish out of water element long ago stopped being fun in spy films.

So yeah, this film is a mess and I didn’t enjoy watching it. You could have had the Chris Evans character be a former lover of Anas character who comes back into her life as she tracks down the deadly McGuffin and she has to navigate her feelings versus the mission and it would have been better. Or make him a lover turned foe. But whatever, I’ve seen it, I won’t see it again and I don’t think you should go near it with a ten-foot barge pole.

My Score- Skip It

John Wick 4 Film Review

And so we return to ongoing adventures of John Wick, arguably the most lethal character in cinematic history who, as far as I can tell, is basically in trouble for coming back off of gardening leave.

Now, I think my reaction to this franchise is the same as most peoples, I was blown away by the first, loved the second and felt that the third was overlong, baggy, full of story beats that could be cut and way, way too many McGuffins and Doodads.

So, when I saw that this film was a Lord of the Rings long, my initial response was that it was going to be more of the same, with widgets and fidgets, an unstoppable protagonist and a screenplay that could have easily been half an hour shorter.

I’ll say I was half right

Thankfully, all the McGuffins have been dialled back to a more tolerable level. There are still several story beats that could have been taken out, sadly one involving a really interesting and fun side character could have been removed completely and the pace picked up a bit because a film like this does not need to be a Lord of the Rings long. Lord of the Rings didn’t need to be a Lord of the Rings long. Cut out a story beat or two, pick up the pace a little and this could have been a tight two, two fifteen which I think is a much better runtime for this sort of film.

I mean yes, this film still looks gorgeous, every single character is fun and interesting, the fights, though overlong are still exciting and varied. But Wick is still overpowered, to the extent where, at one point in the film where Wick is doing an amazing impersonation of a human slinky, my audience almost to a person, just burst out laughing.

Look, you can put as many The Warrior references into the film as you like, but at the end of the day, if a film is overlong and the audience are laughing at what I think is meant to be our leads last, desperate attempt to overcome impossible odds then maybe you could tweak it a bit?

To be honest, watching this film feels like watching a movie made from cut scenes from a video game. Wicks goal is X, but first he has to talk to Y, who asks him to do a fetch quest or kill someone else and after a while, I was wondering if this film was a victim of it’s own success. Are there great and inventive moments here? Yes. Are there endless clips and scenes for YouTube to get excited about? Yes. But clips and scenes don’t make a movie.

Look, I had a lot of fun here and it doesn’t technically do anything wrong besides too much good stuff. Too many beautiful fight scenes, too many great shots, too many fun and interesting character’s, after a while I felt full. I wanted the film to get a wiggle on because the actual plot was very, very simple despite of all the side quests that all got resolved very, very quickly. Any two of them could have been removed and replaced with a single line of hand-wave dialogue.

It’s the kind of film where the person next to me could have several ten to fifteen-minute naps, wake up and still understand completely what was going on. Which is either the sign of a film being told perfectly or a film that doesn’t have a lot going on plot-wise despite having more actual non-green screen action than the last dozen MCU films put together.

Look, Is Keanu giving it his all? Yep.

Was I ever truly bored? Nope.

Will I ever watch it again on a lazy Saturday instead of the first two? Nope.

Should this be the last one? Yes. 100% yes.

Because at the end of the day. A single tight 100 minute film is worth countless bloated messes.

My Score- See It

Thor Love and Thunder Film Review

Thor Love and Thunder is the MCU’s latest attempt to work out what the film it’s doing with itself now that Josh Brolin is no longer around and attempting to solve world hunger using his rock collection.

Whilst I did enjoy this film in parts, there were times when it just seemed to be in a rush to be over and done with itself. I mean, there’s enough here to make maybe three films but it’s all just crammed in with no space for each of this films threads to breathe.

I mean it’s fun and all, with any twelve-year-old going to go to this soon to discover their new favourite film, full of bright colours and flashy images with lots of gags, jokes and visual images, but it’s all just visual. Great for the eyes and ears but there were much more interesting ideas here that just weren’t developed.

I mean take Batman for example. No-ones told him that he’s in a fun goofy 80’s style movie, he thinks he’s in one of those 80’s movie where the whole point was to scare the living daylights out of any kidywinks who were somehow able to see it. He’s funny, scary, empathetic, with loads of really cool interesting and suspiciously varied powers which are amazing at moving the plot along and…. In the film for roughly ten minutes.
Which is kind of par for the course in these sort of MCU films, the villains more here to teach our hero’s a lesson rather than actually pose a threat in and of himself. Which is a shame as I feel that given some more screen time he could have been up there with Spider-Man 2’s Doc Oc in legendary villain circles.

Then you have the return of Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster in another thread that could have been a film in and of itself. A rather weighty film as well and you could feel the films gears clunking as it tried to balance it’s fun and goofy side with a completely different type of film which didn’t completely work in my book.

I mean Chris Hemsworth’s still great fun as Thor but it seems like he’s regressed since his last film, back to the goofy role rather than the person trying to find out who he is via a journey of self-discovery that was promised to us at the end of the last Avengers film.

In this film, I would have removed him completely and just had Batman going up against Queen Amidala, him determined to wipe out all the Gods and her, having recently being given the powers of a God, struggling to find her place and trying to work out if she should be a God at all.
But we don’t, all of Natalie’s character development as she adapts to her powers happens off screen.

Actually, a lot of things in this film happen off screen or just get sort of glossed over. But when your so determined to keep your film under the two-hour mark rather than doing a Batman and seriously outstaying it’s welcome by whacking an out of no-where fourth act onto your amazing three act movie, but that’s a rant for another time.
I mean if someone did want to cut something from the film then I’m afraid Maximus Decimus Meridius should fall to the cutting room floor. Not that I wasn’t entertained, it’s just that… you could have removed the entire segment and pretty much nothing would have changed apart from an accent that makes Dick Van Dykes from Mary Poppins sound authentic.
Actually, the person who decided that that accent was ok, can I have what your having? There’s a lot going on in the UK at the moment, what with the Sex Yeti currently squatting in Dowing Street leading a zombie government and whatever you where on was probably amazing.

Not as amazing as the amount of ambulance chasing lawyers getting work for all of the whiplash that people viewing this are going to get as the film careers from an almost indie film feel, to the bright colours and visuals we got from the last film and then were off into nightmare land for a few minutes because yeah, sure, why not?

Again, multiple threads, all rushed and a lot more that I would like to have seen being developed a lot more.

But, yeah, Thor: Love and Thunder is fun for twelve year olds but feels rushed and is a complete tonal nightmare. Don’t go in expecting some deep think piece on the human condition and everything should be fine and dandy.

My Score- If Nothing Else

Jurassic World Dominion Film Review

What the everloving film is this!?!!?

How did we go from one of the best monster movies of all time to this…. This…. Well, I’m struggling to think of a better word than ‘disaster’.

I mean I can, but I do try not to use fowl language if at all possible.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong in trying to explore and the world that Jurassic Park is set in. I mean how would we react to the news that dinosaurs once again roam the Earth? What would be the moral and ethical issues? Would some charities try to brink back extinct or nearly extinct species and how would that work? Militaries would try to use it to enhance their soldiers or create more aggressive dogs to guard bases or any other countless, interesting, thought-provoking scenarios.

None of which this franchise has utilised to any great, medium or poor effect.

Which is a massive waste of time, effort and insane amount of money.

But for today’s debacle, I present you Jurassic World: The Alleged Final Fogging of a Dead Horse.  

Which I am in no doubt is going to keep the video essayist community in work for a long, long time.

But I do reviews, not essays so I’ll keep this brief.

Jurassic World: World Hard With A Vengeance feels like 2 average movies that have been badly edited together for no real purpose at all with a dollop of Mission Impossible/ Jason Bourne thrown in at the midpoint for no reason that I could figure out. In fact, you could cut out the entire midpoint set piece and lose nothing of any real value.

In fact, whilst we’ve got the scissors out, lets take it to the cast as well. Because I reckon with a quick couple of re-writes I could have completely taken out the legacy cast and nothing really would have changed. Except and here I don my best tinfoil hat- there would have been nothing to put in the trailers to excite people who have very fond memories of the first and not so much of anything that’s followed. So yeah, the legacy cast can go, the new dinosaur umm I think they called it sellalotoftoysasourus but I might be wrong. That can go, one of the plots can go either into another film or into a dustbin and whilst I’m at it, that new score can go as well.

Because why, when this franchise has arguably one of the most famous themes in history, did they not use it? Especially since what we were given was just so bland and non-descript?

Because when we actually discuss both of this films plots, they could have happened in the world of Jurassic Park and both of them could have been interesting to develop. In one corner you have super locusts who are about to cause a global famine but seem to have been bio-engineered to ignore certain types of crop and in the other corner we have the tying up of that cloning plot which came out of no-where in the last film.

Again, both of these could have worked on their own, if someone could recreate an extinct dinosaur, why not clone someone’s child that was taken before their time before getting into the messy ethics of rich people probably wanting to genetically engineer their perfect children.

But this film is so crammed, so rushed, so desperate to keep showing me dinosaurs and explosions and dinosaur explosions that I just grew numb to it all. Without a chance to breathe, process and understand, this film is just noise. Constant unending noise. New monsters are brought in, fought once and then never seen again. Except for the T-Rex. Obviously. And what I think is meant to be the new mega-dinosaur for our heroes to face off against but that’s something else that can go on the chopping block since they haven’t gotten enough time to explore or develop it properly.

Oh, and if this film did allegedly have some practical models, I didn’t spot them. Way too many CGI punches to the head and I’d long switched off before the Morlocs turned up.

I mean yes, Bryce Dallas Howard gives an amazing performance but that’s about as newsworthy as Crisp Rat giving an average one or James Corden a bad one. Oh, and what I think is meant to be the human villain is just in need of a complete re-cast and some rewriting to make them actually menacing and capable of the things that the film asks us to think that their capable of. That person would be out-menaced by a Red Panda with a bit of fruit.

So yeah, Jurassic World: Worldfinger is a complete and utter disaster on almost every level. If you want a film where many things go boom and other things go roar then yeah, this’ll do you. But if you want plots that make sense, character’s in a monster movie to actually be eaten by the!”$!”£!  monsters, effects that are understandable and enjoyable, character’s who are actually people and not one dimensional bits of cardboard that just do things to move the plot along. Take some serious scissors to this and it might have made two passable sequels.

But they didn’t.

So it isn’t.

My Score – Bomb  

Everything Everywhere All at Once Film Review

Isn’t it always the way, you wait ages for a multiverse movie and then two come along at once.

Except unlike the lumbering, dull probably committe made and lawyer compromised, Doctor Strange 2, Strange Harder, todays offering has more fun, excitement, ideas and potential crammed into ten minutes than Strange did in its whole runtime.

I mean, everything, everywhere all at once is well named because it draws its inspirations from… well, everywhere. 

Its plot (I think) is your standard superhero tale, random bozo gets superpowers, has to defeat an evil rotter who wants to do something evil. But, I have up on the plot after 15 minutes because this is… this is…

Well, it’s amazing but…

It’s mad as a box of frogs without ever becoming an incoherent mess. It draws humanity and warmth from situations that really shouldn’t have either. I’ve haven’t been so invested in inanimate objects since an ‘experiment’ at university. 

It’s setting is at the same time vast as multiple universes and yet as intimate as any indie family drama about people looking back over their lives thinking ‘was that it?’ Did I do the right thing?’ And the worst question of all, What if I’d done this thing differently, would my life had been different then?

I was laughing fit to burst one minute and then teary eyed the next. 

And the cast is working it with action legend Michelle Youh as our overwhelmed lead who just backed up by the best Goonie, Data!(You know I speak truth.)

I’ll mean yes the third act was a bit baggy and we spent a little too much time in one random universe that should have just been a one off gag but even that became a heartwarming tale. Even If it did put me off hot dogs for life.

It’s got a million references, genres and ideas, it’s insanely fast moving but never poses it’s heart. It’s funny, thrilling, exciting and invites debate. 

I really and truly loved this film and even someone who went in with no interest whatsoever in this film came out loving it. So all I can say is..

My Score- See It Now

The 355 Film Review

And lo, it was written that the month of January is the month of both soaring highs and crushing lows being the month whereupon studios release both films destined for shiny, pointless, irrelevant awards and others to be devoured alive by the arachnid monster.

The 355 is not destined for shiny pointless, irrelevant awards.

I mean to be fair I never expected anything other than a bog standard action flick but thats fine. It’s nice to see mid-tier films getting into cinemas, the types of films that people claim they want to see. It’s not part of an established franchise (and it’s certainley not going to become one if the global box office is to be believed) it’s just a good old fashioned tedious, dull, overlong bit of January lead.

I mean the plots nothing to write home about with your bog standard all-powerful McGuffin growing legs and a team uniting to stop evil rotters from doing evil rotter things with it. Proabably getting James Corden into more films… Or something of that level of evil villany.

Fine, I mean XXX: Return of Xander Cage had a similar plot (and budget) and that was an absolute energy drink of a film that I’ve frequentley enjoyed after a beer or three when nothing else is on TV that evening. I mean I’ll take it over this any day of the week and I won;t be comapring the two again because that’s not fair. I mean The 355 is full of people who couldn’t give a bad performance if their lives depended upon it, but the material kust isn’t there for them to work with.

I mean, if you haven’t worked out the plot beats/ THE BIG Twist in the first ten minutes then I’m just going to assume that you don’t get out much. Secondly, a film like this lives or dies on it’s action scenes and they just weren’t there. I mean, there were scenes that had action in, but they weren’t exciting, scenes that were supposed to be tense weren’t. And it’s not like there weren’t any promising scenes, there’s ont in a fish market where stealth is of the essence and that was cut short before it got going, another one towards the end that was meant to be tense but was too rushed to be so and to be frank, I just didn’t care about any of it.

Because the films main issue is that it’s cast is just too large and there wasn’t time for me to care about any of them. You had your lead team of 5 to establish, your villains, your heros families, what passes for a plot since there’s a bit of globetrotting involved but to my mind the whole budget was spent on getting this frankly amazing cast and then not giving them anything to do. Which brings me to my next point.

The central cast is just too large for a plot this simple.

You don’t need a cast of 5 leads, a villain, a lead goon and then other goons for a plot this simple. You just need the central pair who don’t trust each other, a tech person and your off to the races. You also need twenty minutes cut off the films runtime which you could have done had you cut the number of people in the filming thing!

Because at the end of the day, this film could have worked as a bit of fun but it doesn’t on any level. It’s too long, the action scenes too dull, the plot completely and utterly predictable, there’s too many people in it which leads to the budget being spent not on fight or chase scenes where it should have gone and I’ve had better times with films that have the exact same plots starring both male and female leads.

Dull is dull.

My Score- Skip It

Prisoners of the Ghostland Film Review

Prisoners of the Ghostland seems (on paper) to be filling up a checklist that I didn’t even know existed. I mean you’ve got Nicholas Cage -in full Cage mode- wandering around a Mad Max style dystopia which is full of Samurai, Wild West style gangs, some slightly supernatural elements and your usual Fallout nutters who decided that the apocalypse was the key to start gluing every single bit of metal to their bodies and speak through the finest synthesisers that the 80’s can offer. Oh and did I mention that people have a habit of breaking into song? Not in a musical kind of way, more a sort of singing along when someone starts going-
In the jungle, the mighty jungle, The lion sleeps tonight

You’ve also got a director in Sion Sono who’s got a reputation for making… interesting films that you shouldn’t really watch with your mother/kids if you catch my drift.

But my big question is this- Why is a film with all of this going for it… so boring?
I mean this world shouldn’t be boring. It should be a blast in the way that 2015’s Turbo Kid was nor an any of a countless number of films of this genre both high and mostly low budget because this is a popular genre when your budgets not that high, because all you need is a couple of old cars, a few muddy extras a few crossbows and guns, as well as maybe a fight choreographer if your feeling fancy.

But, one thing you cannot do is let the pacing drag. Films like this need to be quick, the plot is generally simple- a usually evil corporation or government has lost a McGuffin in a part of the wilderness they’d rather not go. Someone who doesn’t want to go gets blackmailed or promised something if they get the McGuffin and off we go.
And that is the basic plot here, which is fine because you don’t watch films of this type for the plot. You watch it for the world, the people, the action scenes, hopefully without a naff comic relief character getting dragged along for the ride.

This film also introduces a ticking clock mechanic in the form of an explosive suit which has explosives in his neck for when the timer runs out, explosives in the arms for if he gets violent with the McGuffin, and explosives next to his erm ‘vegetables’ if he gets frisky with the McGuffin (an utterly and completely wasted Sofia Boutella- Kingsman, The Mummy, Atomic Blonde) which does lead to this films one memorable moment but it was way, way, way too late by that point.

I mean within 15 minutes my wife had decided that she was watching ‘art’ and was engrossed in next weeks shopping list. I was just confused because generally speaking this was a gorgeous looking film with some interesting ideas in it’s world but it’s pacing dragged and when there was an action scene, it was over before it even started which just seems to defeat the point of films like this.

Which is just a shame because like I keep saying, the ingredients for an awesomely trashy film are there, I mean our main villain has his own samurai bodyguard for crying out loud! There are so many interesting little ideas that add up to an interesting world that I wanted to spend time in- I mean there’s a cult dedicated to stopping a clock from ticking because that’s stopping time and if time starts again more explosions will come. I mean you could have just smashed up the mechanism, but I guess there’s not a lot to do after the apocalypse and that’s a great little detail. Or you have people that are so traumatised that they literally cover themselves in mannequin parts and act like mannequins. So many awesome little details that you can tell that this world was important to the director but there was nothing holding it together.

Because all the characters are one note, like I said, the plots basically an irrelevance and the pacing is more suited to an arthouse film than a genre that is normally pretty fast paced. Also, some of the scenes just looked cheap. There’s no other way to describe it. Which is weird because in one scene it’s gorgeous and glossy and I’m stroking my chin and looking for my monocle and then twenty minutes later it’s very clear that the budget had run out and they still had a few scenes left to shoot so they just went for it and I’m back in my student filmmaking days. (Acting- not directing. All evidence sadly erm.. lost to time)

And leaving aside the tonal whiplash this is just a boring film. Even Cage only Cages out once or twice and the rest of the time he’s trying but just isn’t quite there. It’s got interesting ideas and moments but what this reminded me of is an old -probably false- story about a Michelin starred chef who decided that he could make McDonalds secret sauce through taste alone because it was so cheap to make and he was so talented. He failed miserably because he just couldn’t get it quite right and that’s what this film feels like. It’s got all the right ingredients, but it can’t quite stick the landing. It needed to be faster paced, develop its character’s more, have some more action scenes find something to do with it’s leading lady or replace her with a wet blanket and lean a little more into it’s weirdness.

I mean it’s a shame but I’ve seen worse in this genre.

Seen a lot better as well.

My Score- If Nothing Else

The Tomorrow War Film Review

Well, that was fun.

I feel that I should caveat that with two exceptions.

If you like sci-fi, it’s a watchable romp. If you like Chris Pratt, it’s a watchable romp. If you don’t like sci-fi or Chris Pratt, best give it a miss.

Right, well that was easy. Pub? Those are still open, right?

But I suppose were going to have to talk about something and I can only pretend to care about soccerball apparently coming home for so long so… The Tomorrow War then.

Basically, in the future monsters have arrived and reduced the human population to 500’000 people and so the few survivors have done some wibbly, wobbly, timey wimey stuff and come back to the past to ask their mum’s and dad’s to turn the lights on and make the monsters go away before they get wiped out.

This is not done by abandoning the future, jumping into the past and then building up our technology in the time we have before the match kicks off and we do about as well as Ukraine did in Rome the other day but instead by drafting random people and sending them with virtually no training into the future to fight a war where the death rate is 70%.

Whatever works for you Tomorrow War.

I mean the film ties itself into knots trying to justify it’s time travel aspect and avoiding paradoxes and the like which I sort of understand but it also lead to me asking questions about how this post apocalyptic society which is down to it’s last gasp seems to have no trouble finding fuel, bullets guns etc… (the film only mentions people, not supplies being sent through from the past.) Also, there seems to have been no serious development in technology in the last 30 years? Fine. Whatever. It’s your world, you do what you want with it.

I mean in a lot of ways it works. Most of the questions I had written down in my notebook were answered by the end of the film and it’s a fun little allegedly $200 million film which I could see being enjoyed on a Friday or Saturday night after a beer or two.

I mean, just because a competent scriptwriter could completely remove the time travel aspect and just have it set in the apocalypse with humanity having just one last desperate hope and not really change much beyond saving a few quid on the CGI budget is neither here nor there. This isn’t a deep think piece on the human condition, it’s a film where the man shoots the gun and the alien beasties hopefully fall down dead because of course our lead is a former Army special forces guy because aren’t they always?

I swear, if my neighbor ever turned out to be an ex special-forces guy i’d just move before his house exploded into my house when I’ve just got new windows in.

But back on point and the alien nasties are just that, alien nasties. I mean were told that their so terrifying that no images of them have been sent to the past because out of sheer terror people would refuse to fight. That they emit a sound more terrifying than the phrase “James Corden is the new James Bond. And the new Doctor. And as a result will be moving back to the UK with immediate effect.”

Except the first time we see them, all I could think was… “You have got such a lawsuit from the Deep Rising estate that you won’t know what hit you.” Because all I could see what the monster from that under-rated gem shrunk and somehow given Spiderman like agility and the ability to shoot spikes from it’s tentacles. All in CGI though so my thrill rating took a bit of a hit because it meant very little actual interaction between monster and man. Also, they tend to come in massive waves so the humans never really stood a chance anyway unless they were the lead’s of course.

I mean sometimes the action scenes were fun, when the film did have the odd squad v 1 monster battles but mostly it was just humans, then a wave of monsters, then no more humans. Rinse and repeat.

Also, our lead (played by Chris Pratt) has the modern hero issue of not having any one liners when they did a cool kill or even getting out of an impossible situation. Instead, he’s just earnest and serious and slightly dull. I can get not wanting to play Star Lord in every film, but a quip or two wouldn’t go amiss.

Also it would have given the human characters a bit of depth which meant I might have cared for them or even been vaguely interested as to whether or not they lived or died as the aliens weren’t terribly interesting beyond being a world-ending threat. Swap them out with the zombies from World War Z and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

So yeah… that’s The Tomorrow War. A cool idea which apparently had a lot of thought going into explaining it’s concept, timeline and tying up of lose ends, but no time to develop characters, which would have made us care about it’s impressive but inherently over-reliant on CGI creature based action scenes which would have made this slightly more than the enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable thrill ride I got.

Because… Isn’t ironic, but I’ll probably have forgotten about this by tomorrow.

My Score- If Nothing Else

F9: The Fast Saga Film Review

(Starts playing Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet/ Our Tune from Radio 1)

Oh Fast and Furious franchise, for years I’ve overlooked the fact that you are the epitome of almost everything wrong with modern cinema, your bloated, overstuffed films where the laws of physics don’t matter, the characters though engaging are flat and the word family is used more often than in an episode of EastEnders but it’s always been a blast to spend some time in a superhero film that isn’t in either the MCU or DCEU.

But now the spell is broken, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I… I really and truly don’t know where we go from here.

Because where before I’ve loved you as the film equivalent of a large shaggy dog that demolishes half the room every time it wags it’s tale but you never feel anything bad towards it this film just feels… not quite right.

For a start, this film has 57 different titles which smacks of committee think and a general lack of focus which follows through into the film itself and this is very much a film of two halves and where in most films these two work together to create a whole, here we have a man rediscovering and re-contextualising what he thought he knew about his past whilst at the same time trying to stop the world from being destroyed by a completley wasted Charlize Theron in a role that would barely count as a cameo, let alone worthy of all the poster space she’s gotten. At least she’s gotten a decent haircut this time.

And that not you Fast and Furious, you’ve never been split focus. Ever since you went mad with money at the begnning of Fast 5 and the Order of the Phoenix your plots have been simple but at the same time focused. You’ve never been split before.

I know that allegedly your ending in two films time (barring spin offs, prequels, reboots etc…) but could you not have had these as two of those plots? This one to get rid of Theron whilst setting up the next where the brother is her final act of spite?

And speaking of the brother, I knew his arc from frame 1- you knew his arc from the trailers, my aunt who’s never seen any of these films guessed his arc and it went exactly by the numbers. Was there no other twist you could have pulled? Especially given the overstuffed ending…

Oh the ending, where once this was where THE BIG SET PIECE went, in this film we have two at the same time against a ticking clock but I didn’t care, the adrenaline rush wasn’t there, the smile on my face was missing as my inner eight year old fidgeted and waited for te film to be over so we could go home and watch Hobbes and Shaw again.

In one finale, you had the stunt that was spoiled in all the trailers and was ripped off from that most over-rated of films- The Dark Knight (YOU. HEARD. ME. #AdamWestismyBatMan) and in the other, where it should have worked, it instead felt rushed and tacked on, it created so, so many holes that could have been avoided were this film more focused and not at war with itself. At once a small, intimate film about family, whilst at the same time trying to save the world from a widget that does a bad thing.

And why, why, why, did you have to bring back so many characters? You’ve done so many ret-cons now that what started out as a ‘re-imagining’ of Point Break’ is now an over-complicated mess. Just do the car racing thing, grumble about family and let me have my brief moment of joy is this dark, gloomy world.

Because you are still in there Fast and Furious, I see it in your mad stunts at the start, your attempts to try and keep some practical effects and your use of terrible CGI so I knew when you couldn’t do the mad car stunts. (At least I hope it was intentionally bad CGI. With a budget like yours, it had better be intentionally bad CGI.)

But I never thought I could be bored in one of your films. And I was, I never thought I would care enough about your plots to pick holes in it or about your plot holes enough to be annoyed by them. You were a rush, a blast, an antidote to the bland, safe, predictable AAA releases unleashed upon the world by the Evil Empire/ House of Mouse.

You were my guilty pleasure, my love, my default choice for Saturday afternoons when I couldn’t find a Ray Harrhousen movie on old school TV. But now? Your ingredients are still there, but the end meal is off. The villains weak and barring a fun conversation about Master Yoda, completely forgettable. Your big stunts revealed in the trailers and the ones that weren’t weren’t given enough time to breathe and allow me to soak in the ridiculousness of the situation.

And why, why, why have you had one character try to point out to another all the mad things they’ve survived purely by the grace of plot armor? That’s not how you do this sort of thing and it just smacks of writers patting themselves on the back whilst not doing anything for the audience or immersion in your world.

Your should have either been about a man with a young son coming to terms with their past, with a major decision that they thought was right and might now have cause to look at again via the medium of street racing or be about trying to stop a villain from a Saturday morning cartoon trying to take over the world. (At least I think that’s what they were trying to do, it didn’t make much sense.)

If only you had picked a lane and stuck to it. Trying to do both is just confusing and dull. Towards the end, I wasn’t even sure what country they were supposed to be in, let alone what everyone was trying to do.

Am I still excited for the next one which I can only hope will be called FasTEN your seat-belt in 3d? Yes But not as much as I was. Is there still enjoyment here? Yes. But not as much as there should have been. For so long, Fst and Furious has been both a globe-trotting action-adventure series and a series about a family made not of blood but of love and trust and this is where the cracks started showing, where these two very, very different plates started wobbling.

You were fun Fast and Furious, and let us hope that this is just a mis-step. Because if you falter I fear it would break my (cinematic) heart.

With sorrow…

My Score- If Nothing Else