Madam Wed Film Review

Sony…

Is this a tax thing?

Or is it like when you made that Fantastic Four movie back in 1994 purely to keep the rights to the characters? I mean at least you had the decency not to release that one.

Or has someone kidnapped one of your executive kids and has threatened to kill them if you don’t keep churning out terrible super-hero films?

I mean, you don’t seem to want to release these things, no-one particularly wants to see them, the actors don’t seem to have enjoyed anything other than the pay check. I mean poor Dakota Johnson – who seems to have wished on a monkeys paw to be a movie star but can only star in unwatchable drokk that comes out around Valentines Day. I mean she allegedly left over this debacle, not 50 shades, Madam Web.

It’s not like you put together a dream team behind the camera either. Director S.J. Clarkson has worked purely in TV – which may explain why this whole thing feels like the first episode of a mid-budget CW show. The writers… The writers the writers the writers…. Somehow four people allegedly wrote this film (shockingly Alan Smithee wasn’t one of them ) and the only two who’s names I could click on Wikipedia were responsible for Dracula Untold, The Last Witch Hunter, Gods of Egypt, Morbius and Madame Web.

Yeah… The signs for this one weren’t good.

But, every film deserves to be seen on its own merits and the fact that this is a standalone film in it’s own universe (I truly hate that I have to specify this but it’s nice to know that you can go in ‘blind’ and not worry about feeling like you’ve missed anything.) Is somewhat refreshing.

Well, I think that covers all the positives, lets get back to business.

Apparently this film has been rewritten and reshot to hell and back which normally results in a film coming in to the 90 -100 minute mark but instead this film comes in at nearly two hours? Why? A film this simple should easily be an hour and a half long. And no longer.

And I do mean simple, essentially, Dakota Web has to save three insufferable brats from a Spider-terminator whilst at the same time dealing with the fact that she’s started to glimpse the future. There’s a few other bits a bobs, a random group of Spider-Cenobites keep turning up to do nothing but repeatedly beat us over the head with the same tedious exposition in a film where the dialogue is seemingly nothing but stilted, repetitive, delivered like I’m in a Shamalan film exposition and references to one character’s un-named nephew.

The guys name is Ben Parker…. Gee, I wonder what his nephew will be called? Oh, he won’t because of… I’m going to guess legal reasons?

Anyway, the saving point of any super-hero film is our villain, our dark Spider…. Ceiling guy. What? Don’t look at me like that, the film calls him Ceiling Guy, why, I couldn’t tell you but I’m just going to assume lawyers again. But he’s got the usual spread of powers, speed, strength, agility and the ability to produce poison from his hands of whatever strength and lethality the script needs at that point in time.    

He’s trying to kill our insufferable leads because at some point in the future, our leads (I think they had names but it doesn’t really matter, Johnson could be protecting 3 pot plants for all they actually do in the film) are going to acquire spider powers and kill him, so he’s going to kill them first. So I’m just going to quote Kung Fu- Panda 2 Panda Harder and move on “One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.” Because I fully support him in his mission.

Also, the three don’t get any powers in this film, they only appear kitted up in dream sequences. Maybe Sony thinks they can make a series out of this and I wish them the best of luck with that. Like I said, this film feels like the beginning of a TV show but it isn’t. It’s a mid budget film with nothing to recommend about it. It’s too dull to become a so-bad-it’s-good film, it doesn’t need to be watched to understand Venom 3: Venom Hard with a Vengeance, it’s just sort of there.

And very shortly it won’t be.

What passes for action scenes are generally very dull, boring car chases, the physical action scenes are terrible, there’s the most obvious product placement for Pepsi I’ve seen since World War Z (2013) and they couldn’t even be bothered to put in any end credits scenes.

I mean, they cut “that” trailer line out of the actual film and we can’t even convince Sony to re-release it again like we did with Morbius.

Am I done?

Yeah, I think I’m done. Whatever Sony thinks it’s playing at, can it please stop because these films are just getting duller and duller. I can’t even call this “The Cats (2019) of super-hero films” like the folks at Rolling Stone did because it’s not even that interesting, and I think that’s because the budget ($80 million) seems too low for what the director wanted to do, or all the reshoots soaked up all the cash and she was forced to do whatever she could with the 83p that was left.  

 Yes, this film is less interesting than Cats (2019) I mean, that WILL generate a cult-following in time. You mark my words. This won’t though. This is just going to be fodder for listicles of “Worst Superhero films ever” forever and ever amen.

I just hope everyone got paid and Dakota Johnson finds a way to break her curse soon.

My Score- Bomb

Fast X Film Review

Sometimes I wonder who would break first, a physicist asked to analyse a Fast and Furious film or a historian asked to review Churchill: The Hollywood Years. That’s the one where Christian Slater plays Winston Churchill as a US Marine trying to stop Hitler from marrying the queen.

I don’t recommend it.

Anyway, interesting thought experiments aside, I always find it amusing that a series which I swear started off as… “inspired” by Point Break whereupon a police office is sent undercover with a group of extreme sports enthusiasts and winds up joining their ‘family’. Also, they were stealing TV VHS players. If you don’t know what that is, then ask your parents.

Back in 2023 and the ‘family’ is now… I don’t know what they are now. Secret agents? The Avengers? Rich people in need of a hobby? Anyway, our hero’s are forced to do battle against… The Joker!

Hmm?

Aquaman isn’t playing the Joker? But instead the son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes? You remember, from the 5^th one? No, not the one with the runway, or the submarine, the one with Brazil? The safe? Whatever, just accept in this universe Jason Momoa can be sired by Joaquim de Almeida, possibly because his entirely offscreen mum was related Hagrid.

I swear, the first time we same them onscreen together, my wife burst out laughing and stated to me that she could no longer take this film seriously.

I was impressed she lasted that long.

As for the film itself, it’s an odd beast. For my money the best action sequence is in the first third, to call the cast overstuffed is an understatement – why is Brie Larson there? She could very easily have been replaced or removed, but I guess she’ll come into play in Fast and Furious 11 – Fastraker.

Yeah, the overstuffed cast is a major problem as all 837 of them need something to do and as a result the back half of the movie basically consists of them all trying to get from point A to point B and I started to get a bit fidgety.

I mean a film with an alleged budget of 380 million dollars (in the same way that my alleged budget for my last night out was £30) Shouldn’t really feel like a collection of people wondering around various sets when I paid for vroom vroom boom boom!

I mean, there is vroom vroom boom boom but just not enough for me. I’m just going to assume that most of the budget went to the cast. Or were spent on rebuilding every single set after every, single take featuring Ronon Dex off of Stargate Atlantis because the last time an actor was having this much fun on set, they were Jeremy Irons on the set of Dungeons and Dragons. The terrible one. Not the one starring Chris Pine that you already forgot existed.

It was pretty good for a Guardians of the Galaxy clone wearing Dungeons and Dragons clothing.

But as for The Cars Who Loved Me, my main issue with it, is that this is clearly the biggest part one since that exercise in cinematic nihilism “Avengers Infinity War” I swear if it had finished with a musical sting and the phrase To Be Continued showing up onscreen, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

I mean it does seem to have dialled things back a hair after the last one just dialled the silliness up to eleven which to my mind can only e a good thing but there’s just a whiff of the checklist/ production line about the whole affair.

 Let’s face it, were it not for Conan (Skip his version and watch Arnies instead) having the time of his life, this whole film would feel a little flat. It’s very similar to the terrifyingly over-rated Dark Knight, whenever there’s a non-villain scene the whole thing drags slightly and everyone’s mumbling their lines because everything’s VERY VERY IMPORTANT.

And you’ve also got the usual grumbles, everyone’s taken their invulnerability pills this morning, it’s too long, the plots ludicrously simple yet at the same time overly complicated, and like I said there are way too many characters with basically the same objective- putting the band back together- and look, it’s a fast and furious film. If you’ve liked them before, then you’ll like this one and if you didn’t like the last one then this won’t change your mind.

I’m just waiting for Jeremy Clarkson to turn up in the next one.

My Score- If Nothing Else        

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Film Review

Well, I don’t know what I expected.

A little backstory, at midnight on the 31 of December 2021, AA Milne’s legendary character Winnie-the-Pooh went out of copyright and naturally enough the first thing that someone thought to do with  it was to make a cheap and I mean cheap slasher movie out of the poor thing.

And on one level I get it, I really do. You want to be the first out of the gate to capitalise on… well, being the first to do something with the newly sort-of free to use characters and what’s quicker, easier and cheaper to make than a slasher movie?

A cheap, terrible, awful, no good slasher movie.

So, here’s the thing. I have no inherent peal clutching “Think of the children” reaction to seeing Pooh turned into a killer. Nor do I have an issue with it being bloody, violent and full of characters who deserve to die.

I don’t have an issue with it being dark, if your going to do something like this, go big or go home.

I do have an issue with this film being shockingly bad. That I have an issue with. Let’s start with…. Everything. Everywhere. All at once.

First, the plot.

This film has the wrong plot.

You see in this world, Pooh, Piglet et all are monsters who get abandoned by Christopher Robin, go feral and then start killing every human who crosses their path.

Fine.

Nothing wrong with that plot outline. It even explains why Eeyore doesn’t turn up. But where are Kanga? Roo? Owl? If you want to show them being a feral pack, then show them being a feral pack, show Roo having died from starvation, Owl being the one who locates the human prey, then Pooh and Kanga hunting them down before Piglet cooks the meat. Instead, Kanga, Roo and Owl are MIA.

Also, the victims are wrong. In a film like this, you should have the victims being linked somehow to the animals. Perhaps a group of wannabe writers or a group of English students making a pilgrimage to the hundred acre woods before getting picked off by the very creatures they’ve come to be inspired by.

Instead, we get the redshirts from a much better, more interesting, if still generic film.

Because our redshirts are in fact a group of friends who have come for a weekend in the country to help one of their number recover from a terrifying stalker. Which, why not make that film instead? A group of friends, trying to help a friend recover form a stalker by having a weekend at an isolated country house instead discover that the stalker has followed them and will stop at nothing to be reunited with his ‘love.’

Like I said, generic but it works.    

And it’s thematically consistent. Instead, here, they just sort of appear in the narrative about twenty minutes in and immediately start to get rid of all those pesky limbs via a series of very disappointing kills.

Ans speaking of the kills, there are no real kills here that lean into the idea of feral human animal hybrids. I know that your Winne-The-Pooh looks like a tall guy in a cheap mask with his human eyes showing whilst wearing some yellow washing-up gloves and Piglet doesn’t look much better but could you not have done something with the idea of a bear? Just one person being disembowelled with a swipe of Pooh’s paws, that’s all I’m asking.

Instead, you could swap out Pooh and Piglet for Michael Myers, or just some random killer and nothing would change. Pooh has taken a vow of silence (probably for legal reasons) which means he doesn’t even get to say “Oh’ Bother” Nor does he don his famous red top or use the cork firing shotgun that the Americans lumbered him with. No, really, they did that.

And on top of the confused plot, terrible, interchangeable monsters, you also have the requisite terrible acting and there’s just something off about the dialogue as well.

I mean it’s terrible, but if you go to a cheap slasher expecting amazing dialogue and well developed character’s, then I’ll have what your having. Instead, it sounds off. Like the actors were only shown the script ten minutes before shooting started and haven’t quite memorized their lines and blocking yet which results in the whole thing sounding strange. And also, it sounds like the entire cast was taking some downers before shooting started. Possibly to help them cope with the fact that they were making a film called “Pooh: Blood and Honey.”      

There’s also something mean spirited about it. I was expecting the film to have a mischievous “I can’t believe I’m getting to make this and the lawyers can’t stop me” kind of feel. Instead, it just feels mean. Couple that with the film being shot nearly completely at night- probably to hide just how terrible the make-up actually is- and It’s just unpleasant to watch.

Look, I was expecting something terrible because this film was made on a shoestring and quickly but I’ve seen great horror films made cheaply and quickly. Colin was allegedly made for £50 and that’s a solid zombie flick. Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween were also cheap but they made it work for them.

Instead, the scariest thing about this film is not the confirmed sequel, that much was obvious and hopefully the increased budget will allow for masks that actually look realistic and actually move when the monster is eating, licking it’s lips or just breathing. If at the end, Pooh was demasked like a Scooby-Doo villain I wouldn’t have been surprised. Instead, the scariest thing to discover is that the ‘director’ wants to create a Copywrite Exempt Cinematic Universe (CECU) featuring Bambi and Peter Pan to start with. And who’s going to stop him? He’s copying the Blumhouse model of low cost high return for people drawn in hoping it’s going to be awful (It is but not in a fun way. I found the whole thing rather dull and padded even when I could see what was happening on screen.)

The idea of a killer Winne The Pooh is a solid one. But everything else is a lost cause. The victims need to be completely done away with -both onscreen and rewritten,- The tone needs to be changed, the monsters made less interchangeable, the kills less generic, the actors need time to rehearse their lines, blocking and to be kept off the downers.

It’s not the worst slasher I’ve ever seen- Death Rink still holds that dubious award because at least the blood doesn’t look like strawberry jam. It doesn’t look like blood,  as that would require someone on this shoot to be competent but it doesn’t look like strawberry jam, which is something at least.

So go make your Copywrite Exempt Cinematic Universe Mr. Rhys Frake-Waterfield, go make your films that you write, direct, produce and edit yourself. What you’ve done is an achievement in and of itself.  

But, you could have made something so much better if you’d just taken some time, put in more effort, gone further with the idea which could have worked. If you’d just put in the legwork and not been so desperate to be the first.

Because it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.

MY SCORE – BOMB  

Creed 3 Film Review

So, I think we’ve all agreed that sports movies peaked with 1993’s Cool Runnings, with 2019’s Ford v Ferrari a close second, right? And ever since then, sports movies have kind of stagnated for me. As a general rule, I find them very enjoyable, very formulaic and they work on me… carry the four…. Roughly 100% of the time, I laugh when I’m meant to, cry when I’m meant to and cheer when I’m meant to.

And I’ve enjoyed the Creed franchise a lot. Never been a fan of boxing but even I can understand that man punch man until man fall down is a solid idea to base a sport around. And it makes for some cracking fight scenes.

But even the Creed franchise and the Rocky franchise before it has been formulaic to the point of almost being a Saturday morning cartoon. New threat arises, our hero trains and then punches it until it either goes away or we learn our lesson of the lesson of the week. Usually something to do with family or picking your own battles. Whatever, it’s been focused tested and it works.

And, because of backstage ‘shenanigans’ Rocky Balboa doesn’t appear in this film allowing Creed 3: Creed Hard With A Vengeance to finally step out of his franchises shadow and become it’s own thing.

Which I’m supportive of. Michael B Jordan is a formidable force and this is an amazing directorial debut, with something happening in the last fifteen minutes which I thought was almost as cool as Sam Jackson in an icebox. Jonathon Majors – shrugging of whatever the film the MCU thinks it’s playing at – is truly a force of nature as Damian, the blast from the past who upends Creeds comfortable life pulling him back in just when he thought he had gotten out. I just wish they’d gotten more out of Tessa Thompsons storyline as a musician who has been forced to give up her one true love – performing live- in a bid to protect what remains of her hearing whilst Jordan gets to do what he loves for as long as wants to. I feel like that was a bit of a missed opportunity.

Not as big as the missed opportunity that was Jonathon Majors. And I know that I said back in the last paragraph was a force of nature – he is- but he’s also not really given a lot to work with- we’re lead to believe that he’s this hyper focused chess playing force who knows all your weaknesses and does whatever it takes to win but that’s all established in the first twenty to thirty minutes and then he just kind of vanishes for the back half of the film.

Which means that he’s never really given a chance to develop beyond the blast from the past villain, a piece or two of his game plan went by so quickly that I didn’t realise they’d happened until I read the Wikipedia entry for this review. And I’m not sure if this is meant to encourage rewatching or an inexperienced director not knowing what to highlight and when. Much like with Tessa Thompson, there’s a missed opportunity to develop this character.

Look, the fight scenes are amazing with a lot of influences from anime and the film passes its two hours well enough, but I just didn’t feel that it did enough. If it had spent ten minutes developing its villain, then instead of watching these fights we could feel these fights. If we knew more about their past, their failed attempts to become friends again before the past came between them then it would have been so much better, deeper, more effective.

But like I’ve said, it’s a sports movie and much like last years Star Wars remake – The Top Gun Strikes Back- it stick pretty close to a tried, true and effective formula.

If it just could have been so much more if it had taken fifteen minutes to develop two very important characters.

My Score- If Nothing Else

Cocaine Bear Film Review

Cocaine Bear is a film in which a bear takes a lot of cocaine.

Brilliant.

It’s allegedly based on a true story but where that bear probably died alone, in pain and probably with a vision of a long dead cub crawling towards it, this bear just seems happy enough helping itself to this film’s way, way too large human cast.

Yep, not since the heady days of Snakes on a Plane has there been a creature feature with such a fun and exciting premise. And whilst Cocaine Bear doesn’t have anything along the line of Samual L. Jacksons legendary line “”I’ve had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday through Friday plane”. It doesn’t seem to have the vague air of embarrassment and bad CGI that SOAP had throughout its runtime.

No, what cocaine bear has is a human cast that is way, way too big, way too varied in what they want to achieve and take up way too much of the runtime remaining stubbornly attached to their limbs and intestines.

I mean, you could have given us a scout troop, a bunch of highschoolers with a broken down bus, a bunch of prisoners on a broken down bus… Something, anything other than the smorgasboard of…. (deep breath)

The inevitable kids, the kids mum trying to get them back, a ranger assisting the mum along with the ranger’s crush, some paramedics, three local toughies. two drug dealers trying to get the drugs back except one of them just lost their wife to cancer which led to a dodgy tattoo, their boss, and that’s not forgetting Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub …..

I think there may have been a few others but you get the gist. All of which leads to a slow, overlong and bearless first twenty minutes as I tried to work out why everyone was talking like they were out of a sup-par Tarantino knock-off. I mean I know that most of the people in a film like this are there to die, but I’m fairly certain that their death is supposed to affect me in a negative way and not in a come on Winneh! You can Pooh it! Kind of way.

I mean the bear itself is brilliant. Apparently the director tried to make it as accurate as possible with what it can do except with the whole, you know, Cocaine thing which must have been a fun phone call to ZSL London Zoo.

Which basically sums up the film in a nutshell. Bear=fun, bear killing people= more fun. People interacting with other people in their sub Tarantino, Lock Stock era Guy Ritchie way? Not fun. Not fun at all. Nope, nope, nope.

Which on another level is fine. Anyone who goes to a film called Cocaine Bear for the humans, probably needs their head looking at. I’m here for the bear.

And once the film gets going it’s a fun romp. I mean what passes for plot twist would be obvious to a small child but again, the film is called Cocaine Bear. If you want to be floored by a cinematic plot twist, go and watch The Empire Strikes Back or something. But the action scenes are fun, varied, and make the most of a bear full of Cocaine alternating between being a badass and actually rather funny and sometimes cute. The CGI is never too obvious and several of the death scenes were cool, unique and inventive.

They just needed to trim down and unify the human cast into… I don’t know a bunch of low rent drug dealers being sent into the forest to get the drugs back or else instead of the smorgasboard we got lumbered with here.

But yeah, grab a few mates, grab a few beers, fast forward through the first twenty minutes and you’ve got yourself a fun old time. I mean this is by far the best bear on a killing spree movie of 2023, right?

Right?

My Score- If Nothing Else

Morbius Film Review

So, I’m trying to think of a worse vampire film than Morbius and I’m having to reach all the way back to 2009’s Lesbian Vampire Killers firstly, mostly because I haven’t seen those sparkly vampire films. Also I’ve got a soft spot for that terrible Gerard Butler one where it turns out that Count Dracula was actually Judas Escariot.

But what makes it so bad? Not bad in the fun kind of way like a Batman and Robin but just simply a bad film. It doesn’t have anything to say, or revolutionary storytelling tricks up its sleeve, the narrative is simple yet muddled, it’s full of unnecessary characters and it’s 104 minutes long when it should simply be 90 and done allowing me to get to the pub quicker.

And why it has a 15 rating simply baffles me. It’s so bloodless and tame that I would quite happily show it to 12-year-olds. I mean it’s so darkly shot that even if it was gory, they wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.

But to set the scene, Morbius is a film from the Sony venom-verse (I think) but the director has hinted that it takes place in Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man verse, but it wants to be in the MCU, so bad it hurts however at the end of the day none of it matters. This is your bog-standard person gets powers, person tries to figure out powers whilst dealing with evil twisted version of themselves with near identical powers and probably some sort of personal connection between them. You’ve seen it done before and you’ve seen it done so much better. The first Iron Man for example.

But whilst this dull, grey, boring slog of a film has so many issues- I swear to film that the scenes in the first ten minutes were actually out of order- I do have a lingering sort of sympathy for this because it’s been delayed so often. It was originally supposed to come out in July 2020, about a decade after it would have been relevant but then it got pushed back again, and again and again which also means reshoots because having interconnected films means that you have to make sure the references are right, so I guarantee there are roughly nine different versions of this film sat on nine different shelves, none of which are likely to be much better but might be slightly more coherent.

At least Matt Smith’s having a complete and utter blast. Apparently, he had no idea what was going on in the script (despite being able to make sense of scripts of Doctor Who) so instead seems to have decided to just see how much scenery one man can eat. Everyone else is taking this film very, very seriously so it’s easy for him to light up the screen when he’s on it and miss him when he isn’t.

I mean Leto’s doing his best here at portraying a man who’s accidentally turned himself into a vampire but this film is so shallow that I just didn’t feel anything. Also, I wasn’t too sure what his motivation was. Was he trying to cure himself? Learn to deal with his condition? Or was it multiple edits just making things muddled?

Tyrese Gibson turns up as a cop trying to make sense of what’s happening and he might originally have served some purpose in the narrative but here, he could have been cut completely and nothing would change. Same especially goes for his ‘wacky sidekick.’

And I didn’t even get to the terrible unconvincing CGI towards the third half of the movie yet, did I?

The final third of the movie is full of CGI which is overwhelming, unconvincing, so dark that I couldn’t even begin to work out what was going on but since the characterisation was so generic, I just didn’t care and since I didn’t know what each character’s power levels were, I didn’t know if either was actually doing damage to the other.

The ending sucks as well. Not just the end credit scenes which are as bad as their saying, but the film seems to just end when it needed another 5 minutes to tie up the films loose ends.

I mean there are some interesting non Matt Smith related moments, there’s a tense scene on a ship, there’s some interesting ideas here about what someone who found themselves in this situation would do, but nothing is explored, you don’t really care for anyone and the whole thing just feels very… checkbox. Scene of discovering powers? Check. Join me scene? Check. It’s all just so generic when it could have been interesting.

So…yeah, the long delayed Morbius is the same superhero origin flick you’ve gotten bored of long ago with neither the time nor inclination to delve into it’s moral implications or inexplicable 15 rating. Apart from Matt Smith it’s all very dull and serious and I just want to finish this so I can forget it ever existed.

Should take about 5 minutes.

I’ll see you next time.

My Score- Bomb

Skateway Massacre Film Review

Sometimes a single night can change your entire life.

They don’t start off as anything special, it might just be as simple as a few workmates grabbing some drinks after work, chatting, sharing their lives. Allowing the brash idealism of youth to crash into the wisdom and disappointments of those further down this road that we call life. Allowing plans to be created, ideas discussed and debated, dreams inflated or punctured.

The kind of nights that just seem magical once their over.

Skateway Massacre/ Death Rink is a film about such a night

It’s also got the worst slasher film I think I’ve ever seen jammed into it.

Which is annoying

Ok, down to brass tacks, Death Rink- (Skateway Massacre is far too grandiose for something as terrible as this. Plus I feel is should begin with the word The and it simply doesn’t) is a film about a group of people in a skate rink having a few drinks and occasionally being murdered by someone in a mask and jumper that they literally got from the lost and found. For most of the films truly pathetic 73 minute (including credits) runtime our meatsacks don’t seem to realise that their colleagues have shuffled off this mortal coil and don’t seem too distressed when they do notice.

I mean, this is a film where two warring halves are forced to live together in open warfare. On the good you have the aforementioned night that can change everything. On the other, you have people who Doctor Who extras would find suicidal being menaced by a lunatic with a knife that keeps getting covered in jam/ the worst fake blood I think I’ve ever seen and I’ve been in student films.

And I do mean lunatic. When our killer does get unmasked, their reasoning is pathetic even by slasher standard and just made me wince and think that there were ways to achieve their goal that wouldn’t involve messing up someone’s hair, let alone killing several people!

The acting is shocking, this film doesn’t seem to end so much as it simply ends which is sometimes what happens at the end of films like this, but here it just seemed that the director ran out of money and had to release whatever they had.

Not that I wanted this short to be any longer but at least give me an ending that feels like an ending, not like his friends had had enough and just wanted to get on with their day.

So at the end of the day, this film could -with a bit of polishing- been a bit of an indie darling. Instead, it’s a poorly plotted, acted, written and edited slasher of which I think I can safely say that there’s enough of in the world.

My Score- Bomb

Black Crab Film Review

Generally speaking, I’m not someone who demands that every single villain be a well-developed character with an understandable grudge against the world. I can perfectly happy with a villain who just wants to take over the world/ burn it down/ do whatever it is film villains are want to do.

No issue whatsoever.

But, I do like to get a rough idea of what they want. How they plan to get it and what they’re going to do when they achieve their goals.

But in Black Crab, we simply get The Enemy. Who are they? The Enemy. What do they want? Film if I know, were never told anything about them, they seem to be overwhelming our hero’s team but were told nothing about them either. Both The Enemy and our hero’s team are left blank. Possibly so we can ascribe our own values to both teams?

Which means that in my case Our hero’s are fighting against an enemy who want to make listening to your phones speaker on public transport socially acceptable.

The fiends!

Which is a shame because I loved a lot about this film. It looks gorgeous, it’s got none of that Hollywood gloss that spoils a lot of movies whereupon a group of people are forced to undergo a suicidal mission as a squad… a Suicide Squad if you will. From the first film sadly. I’ll give you a second to try and remember that one.

You done?

Good.

No, don’t forget it…

Fine, so anyway our Suicide Squad (lead by Noomi Rapace doing her usual sterling work) is tasked with taking a McGuffin from point A to point B whereupon her team will win the war and keep public transport a place where Franciscan monks can get away from all the chatter at the monastery.

If they fail, then all hope is lost.

And to be fair, the Squad itself isn’t half bad. Their fairly generic (The Sniper, The heart, the possibly dodgy one etc..) But again, I’m not certain any of them had anything as unique as a name and you could tell from the off who was going to that great tube carriage in the sky.

So, yeah, the main problem with this film is information. By intention!!! I mean, have people I know almost nothing about transporting a widget I know nothing about fighting an enemy I know nothing about –numbers, ideology, tech level, geographical location just off the top of my head, I don’t even know how far their taking the widget and how far along the route they are at any time. Nor do I know anything about the rest of the world in this film.

Is it still standing? Has it been wiped out by The Enemy? Is it ok and just pretending that this war isn’t happening? It’s this lack of information that makes it so hard for me to care about anyone in this film and totally undermines the tension of the third act.

Which is a shame because this film has some great actions and it’s got a somewhat unique idea in that the widget has to be taken to point B over ices that’s to think for a boat but too thin for a vehicle which means that our Suicide Squad has to ice skate.

Which on paper is a great idea! Your squad is exposed at all times, you can have a couple of extras fall through the ice to up the tension which is great. But on the flip… I found it really funny.

Maybe that’s just because my only exposure to ice skating is during previous Winter Olympics but I just found something vaguely funny in the visual of our group of elite soldiers happily skating along some ice whilst the world(?) Apparently burned.

A few other nit-picks, the pace is too slow – This film should have been ninety minutes as opposed to pushing two hours which means the few action scenes this film has are too spaced-out and…

I just had nowhere near enough information to form a picture of what was going on that meant I couldn’t even begin to care what was going on, who it was going on to and why it was going on in the first place.

On the other hand, it does look gorgeous and the acting’s good, with some fun action and a few tense moments, it just needed to speed up a bit, do some character development and give me some !”!”!£ information so I can begin to care.

MY SCORE- SKIP IT

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

Eternals Film Review

Are you like me in finding that Marvel films all feel very similar and formulaic? Too quippy and colourful and no matter how and in what genre the film starts it always degenerates into a big, weightless CGI punch-up in the third act? Well, then Eternals might be for you!

Sort of.

It’s complicated.

Because Eternals is the most DC a Marvel film has ever and probably will ever go which is both refreshing and frustrating in equal measures. One one hand it’s great to see a director being given what looks like quite a free hand to make something so radically different within the MCU umbrella but on the other I’m not really sure this experiment has worked.

But first a quick mention of the ‘controversies surrounding this film.’ At time of writing, several countries in the Middle East have banned the film and Russia has given it an 18 rating because the film features a happily married gay couple. Which in the year of our Anna Di Arnas 2021 should be about as remarkable and noteworthy as a film featuring James Corden being borderline if not completely unwatchable. That it isn’t, I find terribly sad and hope that more films will show LGBT people and that one day it becomes as unremarkable as… well, a James Corden film being borderline if not completely unwatchable.

Getting off my soapbox, I find Eternals to be a thoroughly confusing beast. On one hand it’s this epic film spanning thousands of years with loads of potentially interesting character’s, moral and ethical dilemmas regarding their actions, some great acting and some utterly beautiful visuals, but on the other hand, the film moves at a glacial pace which is going to make some younger viewers fidgety, the way, way, way too many character’s are fairly flat and in need of being slimmed down, it’s dull to look at when it’s not being almost pitch black in places (surely 200 million dollars could buy you a couple of torches.)

I mean it’s not like the plot is terribly involving. For all it’s grandeur and attempts at scale, it’s pretty much the same plot as the Blues Brothers were dealing with back in 1980. There was a team, it fractured and now you have to put the band back together within a strict time limit in order to stop THE BAD THING from happening. That’s it. Now, it’s not a bad plot as such and a pretty good way to introduce us to all these new people on the run-up to Avengers 5 Avenge Hard With A Vengeance.

It’s just that I think the script needed a few more tweaks. There’s an entire villainous subplot and pretty cool villain that could have been deleted with no real issues whatsoever. Save that guy for the sequel. I mean it’s not like the hero’s are in any danger, they all have standard issue Marvel invulnerability unless their supposed to lose the fight in which case they all appear to be in a competition to see who could have the noblest death. As a result, the fights are rather dull affairs. Our CGI villains appear to be on loan from Gozer the Gozerian and are as threatening as a puppy. Also, if you don’t spot the… I guess big twist, I’m just going to guess you don’t see that many films.

Yet, that’s not to say that I didn’t care about our heroes because I did. A bit. I mean the cast are really, really good and clearly having a lot of fun together but there’s just too many of them to care about individually. Going down to six or so leads would have helped a lot.

Also, what I’m going to assume is the comedic subplot just doesn’t work. It isn’t funny, it doesn’t seem to fit or lead to any massive revelations, it either needed to be reworked, improved or just removed. And I would have liked for it to have been improved because this film is VERY, VERY SERIOUS which, I do feel is not to this films benefit. I mean you have immortal people with basically the same powers as the Justice League beating up terror dogs whilst taking orders from a a giant six eyed thing the size of a planet. You think you might want to crack a smile every once in a while. You can do grounded and serious things but this isn’t a Nolan film.

It’s a Chloé Zhao film, who usually makes small, intimate docudramas and you can tell that that’s where she’s at her happiest as like I said, whenever there is a fight scene, it’s not exactly the most thrilling thing I’ve ever seen. But when the cast are given their moments together the film shines as I believe that these people have a past together and deep affection for each other.

Is that enough to save the film? Sort of. I mean it’s got issues and it’s nowhere near top-tier MCU but this is as close as your going to get an MCU film actually having a deep moral debate about the actions of the hero’s as well as whether they should be more or less involved in the activities of humanity as we to tend to get ourselves into trouble if the day of the week ends in a y.

Although this did lead to one scene about halfway through which seriously put my back up and I think that if you see it then you’ll understand why and it’s a scene that I feel might not have needed to be there. You’ll understand. And I feellike I haven’t yet mentioned the constant, un-ending streams of expostion delivered again and again and again in a way that just seemed exhausting.

I mean I get what they were going for, but I’m not sure that it worked. I admire them for trying something so radically different but it just feels like Marvel trying to do DC and as this is pretty much a stand alone episode of the MCU no-one else shows up despite it making plot sense to either ask for help from The Avengers and I refuse to believe for a second that towards the end either Dr. Strange or Wong wouldn’t have shown up to see what the ever-loving film was going on.

But yeah, Eternals, not the best, not the worst but a nice change of pace from what’s gone before. It probably won’t happen again though. Usual service will be resumed with Arachnid Boy: Sony wants to be attached to a hit film for once.

My Score- Skip It