Professor Marston & the Wonder Women (2017)

 A little contrived in places, but overall touching, funny, sexy and inspiring. Strong honest performances and warmly directed (though the use of handheld is occasionally a little intrusive).

Rating: Very Good.

Europa Report (2013)

SPOILERS BELOW

90 minutes of astronauts without discernible personalities getting picked off by technical difficulties and unstable terrain. It tries to inject some depth by messing around with narrative time jumps and bookends, but these only end up draining off any small potential tension or characterisation and give away the ending structural twist.

Rating: Bad.

My Days of Mercy (2017)

 Touching, tender drama. Very well written and acted.

Rating: Very Good.

Halloween (2018)

SPOILERS BELOW

By retconning most of the franchise, and having one character clunkily monologue about how Myers just killed a few people then got caught and isn't that impressive "by today's standards", this movie seems to be trying to pull a 'maybe he's not supernatural' thing, which is a waste of time because a) we saw the first film and b) in this one it's also immediately clear that he is. Or perhaps they're trying for 'so you think these movies are cheesy and old-fashioned, eh? Well, get this modern take!' Unfortunately this doesn't work either because this film is just another clumsy, cheesy 80s slasher flick, despite the occasional shakycam extreme close-up. Characters spouting exposition, tired scenes where parents disapprove of boyfriends or teens banter like they're panel show regulars, characters over-reacting to everything or making mind-numbingly idiotic decisions, jump scares from off-frame that don't make sense, unconvincing fake-out pranks.

It doesn't do anything new with the franchise either - H20 has already done this stuff, and the 'sequel where final girl has gone nuts and traumatised their kid by teaching them survivalism' schtick is straight out of T2 (although in that film, she was shacking up with gun runners and telling him he was the messiah; in this unimaginative drivel, Laurie built a panic room and took her kid hunting). It doesn't even have the balls to kill Michael or Laurie. At least Rob Zombie tried something slightly new.

If they'd called this Halloween 9, it would be unsurprisingly mediocre. With such pretentious framing, this is embarrassingly shit.

Rating: Awful.

Enola Holmes (2020)

 Millie Bob Brown is good in this, with a convincing Bonham-Cartery accent. She's about the only thing that is, though, and I gave up on it after about an hour.

It's a mess narratively (a bunch of different storylines that it alternates between rather than entwining together, characters that drop out of the story for long periods, stopping for a three minute lecture on white male privilege) and stylistically (full of unecessary, excessive business like intercutting with flashbacks of her training, or Fleabagging to camera).

The detecting is rubbish, too - she either solves simple anagrams or by pure coincidence happens to be in the same room as key pieces of various mysteries, and often misses staggeringly obvious clues or points of basic logic.

Purports to have a feminist spin but almost immediately gives her a bland pretty boy to argue with for two minutes before falling for. Judging from elements like this boy crush and dress-up montage it's aimed at young teenage girls, but it underestimates them - they'd be much better off reading the original Sherlock Holmes stories or at least watching something smarter.

(Some minor nitpicks: Mycroft is reimagined from 'indolent yet brilliant' to 'stupid misogynist arsehole', which perhaps makes him less redundant but also less interesting; they use the Greenwich Naval College location over and over, as well as a 'experimental motor car' scene, both of which always show up in Holmesian London movies; Bonham-Carter joins Cruise, Cage, Cusack etc in the ranks of actors in their 50s who refuse to allow a grey hair on their heads, especially glaring here as she plays a range of 15 years or so.)

Rating: Bad.

Bad Samaritan (2018)

 Insultingly bad. Unimaginative 'genius serial killer' flick fuelled by stupid decisions, contrivances and a cartoonish villain with Bond villain schemes and Michael Myers powers. Sheehan is convincing, and Tenant is okay though I found the American accent too distracting to properly judge his performance.

Rating: Awful.

Trees Lounge (1996)

Great ensemble playing a well-observed character drama, which doesn't really go anywhere beyond 'look at these sadsacks'.

Rating: Fine.

Mignonnes (2020)

SPOILERS BELOW

A smart, touching lament against the societal pressures that young girls face as they approach womanhood.

The film smartly subverts the male gaze, transferring the camera moves and choreography of the typical lascivious music video to a realist setting, to reveal its tawdriness. While the young female characters work hard to sexualise themselves, the film works just as hard to achieve the opposite, using natural lighting, pointing unflattering HD at the girls' faces sans make-up, surrounding them with similarly aged siblings and classmates, revealing their much-touted glitzy talent contest to be a small, sad affair, and constantly portraying them as naive, giggling, gross little kids. The film only (with one happy exception) strays from this realist treatment to treat the actual reality of puberty as a horror movie monster. "You're a woman now," Amy's mother tells her, with a delivery that sounds more like a portent of doom than happy maternal bonding.

It's not just hyper-sexualisation that is under fire here; the presumed destiny of housewife is another face of the patriarchy on show. Amy's great-aunt tells her "I'll show you what a woman is" and promptly shoves in a kitchen to peel vegetables all day. Meanwhile Amy's mother cries through phone calls feigning happiness that her ever-absent husband has decided to take a second wife.

It also features as impressively large and accomplished a child ensemble as School Of Rock, supported with strong adult performances.

The film has seen a fair amount of controversy, thanks at least in part to Netflix's typically thoughtless, misrepresentative marketing imagery, which indulged in all the queasy sexualisation that the film itself so nimbly avoids.

Rating: Great.

The Hunt (2012)

SPOILERS BELOW

Really well shot and paced, with a host of smartly underplayed performances, including a couple of child actors.

Crucially, the film does not centre on children making false accusations, but rather adults who are quick to misinterpret their ambiguous statements, deal with the situation informally and amateurishly, and oblige or encourage the children to commit to the narrative the adults have created.  (Some small blame can be apportioned to Lucas as well - he is as lackadaisical with rules as the rest of the school staff, he doesn't report Klara's inappropriate behaviour, and when the accusation is first mentioned to him, he acts as if it will all blow over.) The film is not about child abuse, but rather mob mentality - the same mentality that led people to kill the Ingrams' dog, or attack the house of a paediatrician. The way that evidence becomes irrelevant and it is all about the hunt.

Rating: Very good.

Get Him to the Greek (2010)

 A lazy collection of modern man-child comedy cliches (drug/drink blow-out, crazy fight, a guy begrudgingly or unwillingly having stuff put in his arse, injury where the bone pokes out, guy wards off horny intoxicated woman, someone gets hit by a car, etc etc) with some rushed, nonsensical attempts at character arcs and some kind of ending in the last ten minutes.

Hill is dull, Brand and Coombs give their usual adequate but dead-eyed performances and everyone else is underused.

Rating: Awful.

Black Book (2006)

Beautifully made, with some great performances, and a script that deftly portrays the complexities and horrors of war while never falling into despair porn. It does take a turn for the pulpy, which feels a little dissonant with the more sober first half, but it always keeps its eye on the ethical and spiritual stakes.

Rating: Very good.

Inanimate aka Harbinger Down (2015)

 A mash-up of Alien and The Thing (something acknowledged by the numerous sneaky references to both), that consists wholly of creaky old monster movie cliches executed poorly. Disappointingly for a film directed by special effects veteran Alec Gillis, the effects in this are dreadful cheap looking things and are (much like the rest of the film) shot ineffectively. It's under 78 minutes long, and you don't get to see anything vaguely monstery for the first 30 minutes. By the 50 minute mark I gave up and just scrubbed through for the rest of the special effects.

Rating: Bad.

7500 (2019)

SPOILERS BELOW

The cockpit-only setting means that this is tense and realistic but also limited in what it can pull off. Gordon-Levitt and Memar both bring a lot of empathy to their roles, lending strength to this otherwise relatively standard hijack thriller.

Rating: Good.

Grizzly Man (2005)

 A haunting documentary that weaves themes of nature and celebrity into a fascinating character study.

Rating: Very good.

The Way Of The Gun (2000)

 A couple of very cool extended action sequences aside, this never gets out of second gear. Along with the detached script that cares as little about its collection of sociopathic characters (and whether they live or die) as they do, this makes it hard to get invested. Feels more like a technical exercise than a movie.

Rating: Fine.

The Contender (2000)

SPOILERS BELOW

I'm with Gary Oldman on this one - the ladling of didactic syrupy orchestral score (as well as Oldman being made up to look like some kind of evil Narnian turtle, holding meetings in dark rooms where creepy men lean out of the shadows and talk about the best way to stab someone) really does highlight the goody vs baddy nature of it. Not that the Republican Party isn't actually this awful, it's just that there's very little complexity here - the Republicans do crappy stuff and the Democrats hold the high moral ground until everything works out. It's an interesting set-up and a bunch of good actors, delivered with all the subtlety of Prince Caspian.

Rating: Fine.

Bombshell (2019)

 A large ensemble of strong performances, incredible make-up, a Sorkin-y script and great pacing all work together to create a finely-tuned balance of righteous anger, triumph and frustration.

Rating: Great.

They Came Together (2014)

Well-observed spoofing of romcoms, though it sometimes abandons subtlety and even just straight up devolves into silly sight gags. But it's charming, often clever, and had a high hit to miss ratio.

Rating: Good.

(Watched 28 Aug, 2020)

Almost Famous (2000)

Intoxicatingly charming, to the point where the sleazy and preening sides of the lifestyle don't hit very hard. Immersive and well-written but ultimately a puff piece.

Rating: Good.

The Gentlemen (2019)

SPOILERS BELOW

Guy Ritchie tries for a Tarantino-esque weaving tale of urbane gangsters, but doesn't have the wit or style to pull it off. The discussions of grammar (Get Shorty), pop culture references (Reservoir Dogs), post-modern visual nods to the celluloid medium (Fight Club), an enforcer menacing three druggies in their flat with monologues while helping himself to their treats (Pulp Fiction), pig-fucking-video blackmail (Black Mirror) are not only stale but done without panache. The whole thing ends up feeling shallow and stagey, not helped by an abundance of wobbly accents. The story doesn't hold up either, with heavily signposted twists (Who revealed the location of the secret weed farm? The only person they ever told. Who is the real agitator? It's the dad of the dead druggie who has been a prominent yet otherwise completely irrelevant plot thread.) and a series of deus ex machinas for an ending (Hunnam outsmarts Grant by... being "better than" him. McConnaughey escapes death because... the youth gang decide to shoot up his car at that moment but don't check if he's dead or even still in the car.) Worst of all, the characters are mostly archetypes, and neither endearing nor charming. I was rooting most of all for the weaselly blackmailing pap, purely because of a typically sterling Hugh Grant performance.

It has a few nice moments, like the council estate chase or the fight porn, but overall it's less Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, more Swordfish.

Rating: Bad.

Life (2017)

SPOILERS BELOW

Aims somewhere halfway between Gravity and Alien, but isn't nearly as good as either. It's not even as good as Event Horizon, frankly.

There's the occasional effective moment where the alien reveals its calm, probing, underestimated intelligence. But the possibility space and stakes are regularly unclear and the human characters seem more like androids with everything dialled down to 50% - emotions, individuality, common sense, protocol observance etc. By the halfway mark I was rooting for the alien but even that wasn't much fun as it never becomes anything more interesting than a space shark. Direction and cinematography is competent, though the geography of the space station is hazy and there's too much (unconvincing) CGI.

Rating: Bad.

(Watched 29 Aug, 2020)

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

SPOILERS BELOW

Terrible.

It feels really flat and cheap, it's not funny *at all*, it's an unimaginative collection of reheated stuff from the first two movies, none of the actors can remember how to play these characters, all the new characters are annoying as fuck, there are too many things going on, they re-cast the princesses to be 12-15 years younger than B&T which feels really weird, it weakens the ending of Bogus Journey, and none of it really makes sense. And I don't mean that last bit in an 'it's not scientifically accurate' way or even a 'the rules don't have internal logic' way - the first two movies had time loops and paradoxes galore, it didn't really matter. But they had a narrative logic you could follow and they paid off the stuff they set up - here, stuff just happens because it does, suddenly there are prophecies, things get forgotten. It all feels lazy by mistake rather than lazy on purpose. I had set my expectations quite low, but I hoped at least for a moderately good comedy that I might come to like more with repeat viewings. I doubt I will ever watch this movie again.

Rating: Awful.

(Watched 29 Aug, 2020)

Bad Ass 2: Bad Asses (2014)

Still has the stilted script and performances of the first one (even Glover has zero energy for most of this, despite Trejo giving it 100%), and the new romantic interest is still decades younger than Trejo, but the film-making is more amateurish (e.g. the studio clearly visible in Glover's mirror shades as he's doing greenscreen driving scenes), the action is a lot less convincing and there are now college girls swooning over the doddering old leads. It also has neither the sense of identity the first film drew from the original viral video, nor the common sense to ramp up towards the end with something like its predecessor's wacky bus chase (instead dribbling to a halt with a brief fist-fight on a countryside road).

Rating: Awful.

(Watched 30 Aug, 2020)

Project Power (2020)

A mess. Too many protagonists, too many villains (with some fluffed twists about who is which), unclear and inconsistent rules, hard-to-follow action scenes. Also, the now-standard 'unresolved plot thread which betrays the filmmakers' focus on a theoretical sequel rather than the film they're actually working on'.

Rating: Bad

The New Mutants (2020)

SPOILERS BELOW

Competently made - looks fine, the performances are mostly solid (though Taylor-Joy struggles a little, whether it's the accent or the broad strokes of the character I'm not sure) - but a mess of ideas with a wonky structure and misjudged effects. The big issues:

1) The twists are incredibly obvious and are revealed an hour too late, which keeps the film in its first act for most of the runtime

2) The 'new mutants in a school with their fears come to life' set-up is ill-defined and uninteresting, especially when a ROTPOTA-style 'new mutants escape from an evil lab/prison/school' was right there.

3) Horror doesn't work when your beasties are unconvincing CGI, and your heroes have incredible powers that can tear through them (sometimes anyway).

Rating: Bad.

(Watched Aug 31, 2020)

Honey Boy (2019)

Powerful performances in a very effective if one-note drama.

Rating: Good.

(Watched 31 Aug, 2020)

Debt Collectors (2020)

The storytelling is still a little rough in places, and the final shootout is perfunctory at best, but otherwise this is a far superior sequel. The fight scenes are belting, and it's great fun watching Adkins go up against boxers and parkourers, the narrative generally has more drive and feels like a second part in the story rather than a repeat, and the chemistry between the two leads is even stronger, smoothly moving between gruff banter, conflict and open emotional bonding. Best of all, Johnson has left the film school nonsense behind in favour of a confident mix of cinematic influences.

Rating: Very Good.

(Watched Sep 01, 2020)

Short Term 12 (2013)

Touching drama about trauma and caring. Well directed, paced, written, and full of great low-key performances. The whole thing is low-key to the point of feeling a little slight, though.

Rating: Good

Watched 09 Sep, 2020

The Mercenary (2019)

A predictable, barely existent story, hackneyed dialogue, and dull action scenes.

Rating: Awful.

(Watched 12 Sep, 2020)

The Little Hours (2017)

Gentle, sweet and funny. It draws most of its humour from the juxtaposition of naturalistic modern dialogue and realistic medieval setting (though there's some light farce too) and somehow, carried on the ensemble's charisma, it is enough. It's also nicely shot and paced.

Rating: Good

(Watched 12 Sep, 2020)

Scott Pilgrim (2004 - 2010)

 I first read the comic in preparation for the movie, and loved them at the time. However, having re-read them in 2020, it doesn't stand up so well. It joins a list of original books, like Jurassic Park for example, shown up by their adaptations' more economical storytelling and other improvements. The comics now feel quite flabby. And worse, politically dated. It finds the mere existence of homosexuality hilarious, and (though I struggle to remember the details, as I wrote them out in a Slack channel a few months ago where they were soon wiped away) women are often slut-shamed and called bitches (though only by each other and gay men - apparently this makes it okay).

Watch the movie instead.

Chewing Gum (2015-2017)

Perhaps it unfairly suffers in comparison to I Will Destroy You, but this is painfully broad for what is ostensibly an adult comedy. It's less sophisticated in its writing and performances than any given episode of Maid Marian And Her Merry Men, yet it spends most of its time giggling about dildos or light BDSM.

Coel's control and range with physical and verbal comedy is already on display, but otherwise this feels like a show made for and by 12 year olds.

Stretch (2014)

Like a Safdie Brothers film with a Smokin' Aces tone, this is really enjoyable throughout if a little loose occasionally in a set-up that needs to be super tight throughout. Also has that Smokin' Aces wind-down ending which is also a bad idea here. But lots of strong performances, style and fun.

Rating: Good

(Watched 13 Sep, 2020)

Unsane (2018)

SPOILERS BELOW

What starts as a convincing Contagion-style 'ripped from the headlines' thriller about medical facilities corrupted by capitalism and the US healthcare insurance system gradually gives way to a contrived stalker flick, where the protagonist continually wastes opportunities to expose her stalker with incontrovertible evidence or to kill him when she has the chance, and the stalker become more and more Michael Myers-like.

Rating: Fine.

(Watched Sep 13, 2020)

Reviews - my motivation and approach

I've long considered keeping a formal web log of my opinions on movies I've seen, mainly for my own reference - I can give a considered, detailed opinion/rant immediately after watching any given film, but I often find that after a week or so all I can remember is whether I thought it was good or bad. I never got round to it, though, thanks to a combination of laziness and the fact that I was often posting these thoughts on forums anyway, which served much the same purpose. Then forums started to die in favour of chatroom communities like Discord and Slack, and suddenly my online review archive didn't seem so permanent. At the same time, though, Letterboxd had gained popularity, so I forced myself into the habit of using that site to review every movie I watched immediately afterwards.

A few factors have finally pushed me to move my reviews over to this blog.
Firstly, Letterboxd doesn't allow for reviewing games or television series, and I especially want somewhere to post my opinions on the former where they won't be piped into an algorithm that directly affects the success of the game and the careers of the developers. (Sites like Metacritic have their scores used by stores and companies to determine how heavily a game is promoted or whether developers get bonuses, for example, but a rant about that shitty practice is a blog post of its own.)
Secondly, Letterboxd just in the last week decided to push its paid no-adverts version by covering the free version with intrusive ads, to the point where it's now actively unpleasant to use.
Thirdly, the social media aspects of the site have driven it towards being a popularity contest, a race to the most snarky least helpful review possible. The community aspect does not provide me with any benefit over posting in silence on here: when I post my review of Citizen Kane, I don't need to see someone else say "fuck media magnates im here for the snowball fights tho" and hundreds of people showing approval of that review.

So yeah, basically it's because I'm old enough that I can't remember my own opinions and I can't stand young people. I do not have any pretensions to being a professional film critic here, and I don't feel obliged to give considered, fair or supported reports (though hopefully that will often be the case). These 'reviews' are the equivalent of me relaying my thoughts on a film to a mate in the pub the next day.

I'll be copying my old reviews from Letterboxd and various forums over onto here, so the writing style may not be too consistent at first. Also, I'll be imprecisely converting my Letterboxd star ratings to words - 'Awful' (0-1 stars), 'Bad'(1.5-2), 'Fine' (2.5), 'Good' (3-3.5), 'Very Good' (4) or 'Great' (4.5-5) - as these match more closely the framing I would use in that hypothetical pub.