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

Five Nights at Freddy’s

So, after The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) reached the astounding heights (for a video game film) of being basically ok, the bar has been raised for Five Nights at Freddy’s.

A bar which it sorta, kinda mostly of cleared.

Because it’s mostly ok. I won’t watch it again because Willy’s Wonderland (2021) exists and watching Nicholas Cage Cage out on possessed killer robots beats watching Josh Hutcherson Hutcherson out on killer robots.

Full disclosure before we properly get going – I’ve never played any of the Five Nights at Freddys games, I’ve never seen a let’s play or even so far as watched a trailer so any nods or easter eggs would have gone straight over my head.

However, strictly as a film I found it slightly confused as to what it wants to be, constrained by its age rating with a soggy mid-section and somehow strangely bland despite having very interesting ideas. It’s also not scary. Which is kind of an issue for a so-called horror film.

On paper the plots fairly simple –   A troubled security guard begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and soon realises that things may not be as they appear. He’s also dealing with the fact that he’s trying to raise a younger sister and keep her out of the clutches of his money-grubbing aunt and trying to climb inside his head so that he can try to solve the mystery of who kidnapped his brother when he was a child because he thinks he may have forgotten a key detail which can lead to justice.

Does that sound like a lot for a film about hiding from killer animatronics?

Because it’s a lot.

I mean they do try to weave them together but they don’t really gel and the payoff seems kind of “We have twenty minutes until this script needs to be submitted so wrap it up quickly!” Either that or they realised that the ninety minutes mark had been passed and they needed to get this over with because they were eighty-nine and a half minutes past the tik-tok generations attention span.

Plus the casting isn’t great.

I know that’s not the main draw of a film based on a video game but the lump of playdough trying it’s hardest to convince us that it’s a traumatised young man who can barely hold down a minimum wage job in order to keep a roof over his and his sister’s head. I mean I can see it working with a better actor but if wishes were horses, then fools would ride.

Also, the age rating constrains what this film feels like it wants to do with itself. Rated 12a this film feels constrained by that. Not that a 12a rated film can’t be scary – Jaws is rated PG as is Watership Down – it got upgraded from a U for reasons that I can’t even begin to understand.  But here? It feels like there’s a directors cut out there with roughly 90 seconds of extra footage that wouldn’t look out of place in a Saw movie.

There’s some other bits and bob’s that I didn’t quite get on with as well. I wasn’t quite sure how fast or how stealthy the robots were supposed to be and whilst I get that the clues in the title, maybe three nights at Freddys would have been enough to get the films point across.

It’s not all bad though, the robots are practical which I liked and there were some moments where thought “This is it, now were getting going.” Only it never quite happens.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with Five Nights at Freddys, but there’s not much right with it either. It’s baby’s first horror movie which can work in some circumstances but once it gets out into the world, I can’t see it having much of a shelf life.

If you want something tepid to keep your eight-year-old happy which won’t do much harm to you then yeah, this will do.

But that’s all it is.

Horror as this will do.

Just go watch Willys Wonderland.

My Score- If Nothing Else

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        

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Well, I guess it’s that time again,

Where I have to try to explain

The not really shocking revelation

That a film made by illumination

You know, that minion company?

The one with a licence to make currency

Has released another product!

Because the manner of business that they conduct

I just cannot call art,

Because to even try do so hurts my heart.

All they do is try to sell toys

To others, girls and even boys

And as you’ve probably guessed

Talking about them in rhyme is how I manage best

Because otherwise I simply find nothing interesting to say.

It’s here will and will entertain your kids whilst you go about your day!

Is my opinion of all that they have made

And my opinion hasn’t changed with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, I’m afraid.

It was on and made me smile,

But after a small while

I won’t remember a single frame

And I certainly can’t say that will be a shame.

Because, is it better than what came before?

Well, yes but that was no great chore,

Because the Mario Brother film from 1993?

From it both audiences and critics did flee

All though the BBC did put it on during Christmas Day

Which is probably why the licence fee has had to go away.

But this is bright and colourful and fun!

A song from the soundtrack might even be number one!

Except that song is dull and not much fun

When I think what the man from Tenacious D might have done…

The plot is simple, there’s not much to say,

As a group of strangers must unite to save the day!

Although even at a near perfect 92 minutes

I felt the ned for a glass of pinots (noir)

Although I simply must declare

That to my mind it simply isn’t fair

That instead of talented voice actors

The studio decided to use the audience attractor

Of celeb voices!

Of which they made the most obvious dull predictable choices

Lead by the omnipresent overexposed Chris Pratt

I think there’s a law enforcing that.

There has to be in every film made these days

A Chris! And so, on poor defenceless cinema this great weight weighs.

But as for this… product,

It’s a good bit pf business that they conduct,

The first act drags, of that, I’m sure.

That if you were to cut it, nothing of value would be lost, I’m sure.

Instead, we could have simply gotten on with the show

As video game Mario and (Luigi) has no backstory of which I know.

Also, this film simply has no tension!

Although this may have been the film-makers intention

But it makes fights dull and without excitement

Perhaps Mario with a bruise got nixed by management.

But it gives the whole thing a mechanical air.

The whole film is simply going from here to there.

The money it’s made, is more than one billion!

But the whole things… simply reptilian.

It made a billion?

So did Jurassic World: Dominion.

No wonder for the people that made the minion

It simply made sound financial sense

To get ever more dollars and cents

When a huge brand known for simply being there!

Never out of the spotlights unblinking glare

Decided to return to my beloved silver screen

To make a glorified add

Neither good nor bad

It was simply there,

To “entertain” me as I sat in my chair

Some more songs would have been fun so we couldn’t have that,

And as I said the action falls quite flat.

So, bravo Illumination you’ve done it again!

Your tedious catalogue continues to sustain.

But this isn’t full of joy or love or anything so human

As Kryptonite is to Superman, to Illumination it’s passion.

A commercial to sell toys is what they’ve made

To make something with simply a passing grade.

And that they’ve done, well done I say.

You’ve managed to pay the bills for yet another day!

But when I think what you could have done…

Well, that thought alone simply spoils my fun.

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  

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Film Review

Hands up all those who think cinema needs another CGI infested overwritten, quippy franchise based on a decades old IP where the villain doesn’t really pose a threat to so much as is something to be quipped at after several vaguely entertaining CGI infested quippy action sequences?

Well, good news because Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is here for you! And just you. Because I think that there are quite enough CGI infested overwritten, quippy franchises based on a decades old IP where the villain doesn’t really pose a threat to so much as is something to be quipped at after several vaguely entertaining CGI infested quippy action sequences, but that’s just me.

For those unaware, Dungeon and Dragons is a way to summon Satan so that you can pledge your allegiance to him for reasons known only between you and the Prince of Darkness all the while masquerading as a tabletop role playing game.

Now obviously this is not the first D and D (as the cool kids call it) film. There was a ‘film’ (Mazes and Monsters- really not worth it) released in 1982 which is notable only for being Tom Hanks first leading role. Then, there was the 2000 film which was awful in the best possible way, a made for TV trilogy and now we have Dungeons and Dragons Honour Among Thieves – shouldn’t that be amongst? Among just doesn’t seem to sit right with me.

Anyway, Settlers of Catan isn’t based on any of those films and since I’ve never played the games, I can only tell you that it’s fine.

It’s not great, It’s not awful, it’s on, it’s entertaining and then it went away. It’s a perfectly functional product starring perfectly functional actors lead by the most wooden of all the Chris’s – Chris Pine (get it? Wooden – Pine? I’ll get my coat.)

Now, you would think from the adverts that it was a Guardians of the Galaxy style film about a group of losers teaming up to stop a big bad who they accidentally gave some sort of world ending McGuffin to a big bad that they then have to stop. And Hugh Grant is there for some reason.

Instead what you’ve got here is a Guardians of the Galaxy stye film about a group of losers teaming up to stop Hugh Grant from running on with Pine’s daughter. And a big bad who they accidentally gave some sort of world ending McGuffin to is there for some reason.

Yeah, that’s one of the films main issues. In so far as perfectly functional products have issues.

Look, the closest I’ve every gotten to playing Dungeons and Dragons is watching Stranger Things. I have no idea of the lore or character’s, or different classes, I get the feeling that there were a lot of nods to that sort of thing because of the reaction of my audience to certain words and phrases.

Mostly I was just confused.

Because the action was fine, the CGI was fine, the cast was fine, there was too much of the terrible over-written dialogue that infests so many modern blockbusters these days where the scriptwriters either have one eye on going to work in the MCU or have recently left it.

No, instead I was wondering how you can set up at great, length flashback length that in this world there is a group of evil wizards who have a McGuffin that can create a red mist which turns everyone into zombies and have them feel so…. Pointless. I could have removed them completely from the plot and nothing would have issued bar the third act CGI punch up to wrap this whole thing up but surely there’s an orc or something that could have been used as a henchman?

Because I liked the films actual main plot where Pine has to try to save his daughter from Hugh Grant (Still playing the slightly creepy villain from Paddington 2: Paddington Harder/ The Gentleman/ A Very British Scandal) a con-man who’s spent years pouring poison into the daughter’s ears turning her against him. At the same time ruling over the land of Far-Far Away which he became lord of via… plot. I forget why.

You try remembering this thing.

I just feel that you might want to keep the zombie plague group of fashion disasters for a sequel after hinting at them in this film where were getting used to this world or, have them be the main focus? Either or. Either you have the world ending plot or the intimate family plot. Pick a lane.

I mean the middle of the film, where our leads chase after various helmets and medallions of izzy whizzy lets get busy because no-one in this world can think of anything better to do then enchant every random thing they see, seems pretty indifferent to which plot thread it’s helping to wrap up. It’s got some good scenes and funny moments but the one I’m going to remember the longest is pretty much a rip-off of one of the best scenes in Hellboy (2004- the 2019 one had NO good scenes)

So yeah, Settlers of Catan: Paramount Really Needs A New Franchise is a good fun functional franchise opener which just needs to remove a world ending threat in favour of getting rid of Hugh Grant.

 Just don’t expect to remember it the next morning.

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

Halloween Ends Film Review

So that happened.

Ok, so Halloween Ends is the 13^th film in the Halloween franchise which should have been a straight one and done film back in the 70’s about a silent masked killer slaughtering a bunch of teenagers (who suffer from a terrible allergy to clothes) before probably being shot by Earnst Stavro Blofeld.

It’s kept pottering along with varying degrees of quality for the last forty years and has now allegedly finished with Halloween Ends. And if you think it’s going to be the final Halloween film, then I have a bridge that I’d love to sell you.

And it’s definitely a finish of sorts.

It’s not the finish that I would have gone with, but it’s got some interesting ideas. It doesn’t pull any of them off but they are interesting.

We pick up four years after the worst horror film ever theatrically released and Laurie Stroud has decided to become a Stepford wife despite knowing that The Shape is still out there and liable to return at any minute but whatever. There’s also an interesting thread about how the fear of his return has infected the town, making it a place full of anger, fear and violence where every murder is suspected to be by his hand. Where Laurie is held at fault because she ‘encouraged’ and ‘annoyed’ him.

Which is a really, really interesting idea. It just doesn’t really seem to go anywhere beyond Laurie occasionally getting a nasty comment from someone.

As for The Shape themselves, they.. don’t really seem to do anything. They don’t even seem to want to kill people which to me seems a bit off but whatever, given five minutes any competent screenwriter could have removed him completely from the narrative. Which I actually think might have actually served the story better now I think about it. But that’s neither here nor there.

It’s the films main thread which I think holds the most promise as we witness the decline of an innocent, who, almost through no fault of their own falls into becoming almost The Shapes apprentice which is an amazing idea and builds upon the themes established in the first two movies, but at the same time somehow manages to fall flatter than a jelly baby after an argument with a steamroller.

Mostly its because the love story he’s given as a sort of hope at redemption I just didn’t buy for a single, solitary second. We see him meet his partner and they fall in love quicker than a Disney couple. If it had been an already established relationship, him already struggling with is dark side then I think that it would have been a much better and deeper story.

But you didn’t come to Halloween Ends to get a hint as to how much better that unwatchable Joker film could have been if had been written by someone with talent and not just some talentless hack trying to remake Taxi Driver. You came here for violence and scares and I’ve got one of those.

Quite nicely, this film takes the time to sort of establish it’s killers victims so we at least understand why they have to die horrible deaths from the point of view of our killer but it’s just not scary in the slightest. There was no dread, no slow build up, this film was in such a mess that there wasn’t any time for that. It was just kill and then back to whatever thread the film felt like following at that moment in time.

And I get why people are mad at this film, we want Halloween to be the film where a Shape for no seeming rhyme or reason kills loads of people in graphically different ways but that’s been done 11 other times and this is at least trying something different. It’s not quite pulling it off, it’s a mess with some good ideas, with some kills that could have been good but there was no tension or dread leading up to it, so it’s all just surface level.

I won’t be watching this again when the unsurpassable original is right there but I can appreciate this film for trying something different than shape gets it’s steps in whilst slaughtering teens. It just didn’t work.

That’s all.

My Score – Skip It

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Film Review

All empires fall. All cinematic universes inevitably crumple under their own weight and I’m wondering if From Strange With Love is where the rot starts to set in.

I mean I already went in with a bad taste in my mouth after our Mouse Overlord has confirmed which 4 “most important” mcu projects you should watch before seeing the filming thing  and even in what order to watch them!

1.) Doctor Strange

2.) WandaVision

3.) What If

4.) Spider-Man No Way Home

Naturally being a rebel without a clue (and up to date already ) I did no such thing and kept box setting the 007 collection on Prime.

And you know what? Even being up to date, I had only the vaguest idea what was going on.  And thanks to the ‘excitable’ berks in the seats next to me I even knew when to swoon and even who everyone was.

I swear, if you come into this having never seen a Marvel film before, you’d have an easier time figuring out Tenet than this thing.

Not that it’s complicated  it’s your basic ‘keep the thing from the bad guy ‘ film but it’s…

A mess.

It’s so fast paced that you never really know what’s happening in each scene or given a chance to absorb each new character before well…

Imagine trying to stop a terminator with a bunch of jelly babies and your pretty much there.

But being so fast paced and jumping from universe to universe means that director Sam Raimi can find lots of new worlds to play in for five minutes a scene before getting bored and jumping universes again.

Oh and this is horror Raimi. If you’ve got an 8 year old, maybe catch  this one at home? I mean being English and therefore raised on Watership Down and Charlie and the Chocholate Factory I was ok, but I could see a lot of upset kids. 

But assuming that doesn’t bother you, and you like the sound of a horror film in MCU clothing then this is a nice film with a perfect runtime, everyone’s got simple enough motivations that you can still vaguely follow along with what’s going along, the visuals look amazing but like all amazing CGI heavy films will age pretty badly.

The council of cameos so heavily spoiled to the films detriment in the trailers could be cut completely and nothing would really change and might even make the film better.

If you see it youll understand, this is a tricky film not to spoil.

Basically, this week’s episode of the MCU is a random horror episode that’s a confusing, fun messy blast of horror with one too many fan boy pleasing cameos for my taste.

Still, at least Sherlocks American accent has gotten a bit better .

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