The Monkey (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

A too self-conscious Final Destination/Wishmaster mash-up.

It applies zaniness unilaterally, which just dampens the effect overall - if you have a toy monkey killing people in bizarre ways and a guy who starts worshipping it, you don't also need to make the local priest really insensitive at funeral speeches and the adoptive parents swingers (they mention this in a single line of dialogue, it doesn't come into play at all) and the new partner of the lead's ex a weirdo self-help guide writer played by Elijah Wood (especially when he's only in the movie for two minutes).

The story doesn't really kick in until very late on (basically when we learn what the bad twin has been up to) and there are some holes there too. Like, why did the aunt die if the brother hadn't retrieved the monkey yet but still had the key? Did the monkey just decide to show back up again and did it have one more bang of the drum left to use? Do the rules, which the movie seems to care a lot about, not actually matter? The movie simultaneously wants to be meticulously constructed and gonzo, and the two instincts clash.

It reminds me of a Chris Carter-penned comedy X Files episode, where he's trying to emulate Darin Morgan but doesn't have the comedic restraint and tonal control.

Rating: Kind of fun but a bit of a mess.

Flow (2024)

While it's a really chill watch full of strong animation, nice visuals, cool moments and adorable animals, there's not really any plot and it ends up feeling like watching someone play an incredibly impressive 80 minute videogame 'tram ride'. Also, while the world is intriguing - I wanted to go visit that windmill, work out what that key was for etc - it didn't feel hugely imaginative, it was pretty much South America jungle/temple setting with a +10% fantasy bump. So I would recommend it but I think it got a more enthusiastic response than it perhaps deserved, at least online, due to being not just  another Dreamworks snarkfest and to centring around a cat.

Rating: lovely but shallow

Love Hurts (2025)

Doesn't hit 80 minutes before credits roll and it's still too long.
The script is just one huge convoluted backstory being endlessly exposed via terrible clunky dialogue. There's so much of it that the film is covered in jarring ADR.

The fight scenes are technically impressive but overly choreographed and sterile with the actors doing a lot of the melee work but at the cost of seeming to have most of their focus on counting through the beats, barely making eye contact never mind actual facial expressions. There's no emotion or impact to it, so the viewer is left counting the beats too - a few melee moves, cut to stunt performer for wirework, cut to actor for ill-matched reaction close-up, Jackie Chan comedy moment, repeat.

I have a lot of goodwill for Ke Huy Quan, and maybe with a good script he would have shone, but he shows limited range here and this dud may well mark an end to his recent career blow-up. To be fair, no one gives a particular good performance, so it's likely not his fault.

Rating: terrible

Another Simple Favor (2025)

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Probably a little bit worse than the first one, as it throws more pointless stuff into the mix.

Otherwise it pretty much has the same issues. Firstly, the twists are obvious. Mention that stillborn triplet Charity was burned dropped into the conversation apropos of nothing? Clearly still alive, and we see a photo ostensibly of her sister scheming with the aunt but can't see her face so obviously that's actually Charity and she and the aunt are working together. (This is particularly weird, as they are identical and so hiding her face is completely pointless.) The rival mob boss of equal age and sexiness to his counterpart cries when the latter is killed? Clearly they're secret gay lovers. (This never has any effect on the story?) The kid is flying a drone with a camera around the whole time? Clearly that's going to be revealed to have recorded some evidence at some point, livestreamed a confession or whatever... well no, actually, they don't do anything that integrated with it, it just flies into someone's face during a fight scene. And that's about it for the twists through the whole story - turns out it wasn't the serial murderer doing the murders this time, it was her identical twin. Though this doesn't really make any functional difference either except to allow for the thriller-y second half to happen. Maybe one of these pointless extra details will get used in the next movie (which they awkwardly line up in a final scene), as the mention of a dead triplet in the first one did here (according to Feig the detail was not an intentional set-up and it took them a few drafts of the sequel before realising they should use it - it's a smart move, though one ruined by the loud signposting), like the FBI agent who is utterly useless and about whom the detective tries to tell Stephanie something but gets cut off and then is promptly killed having added nothing to the story.
And yes, that is the second repeated issue - the mystery is essentially tied up halfway through the movie.

The third issue, Kendrick being a dull lead, is one they try to fix by saying that she's toughened up now, but it is painfully awkward watching her aim for a Kristen Bell level of sass and landing on third-rate mean girl. The only time it ever works is when Stephanie is given sodium pentothal - perhaps they should have had her high through the whole movie. But sadly they don't commit to it so she spends the movie moving between original milquetoast mode and vague Karen energy. And as in the first movie, the nicey-nice /straitlaced protagonist concept isn't done in an interesting funny way as with, say, Hot Fuzz or Elsbeth.  I don't think most of this is Kendrick's fault, she's given bad dialogue to work with, but she isn't able to somehow spin gold out of it. And once again, the film has a bunch of good actors given fun characters but very little to do with them. At first I thought that having everyone on a small island this time would allow them to get more time and to intermingle, to interact with the plot, but no.

Sidenote: The movie's big creative swing, having Lively play two sisters in a scene where one roofies and then molests the other, is technically impressive but a tonal disaster.

Rating: Not good. All the issues of the first one, a little more cluttered, and Lively is less fun.

A Simple Favor (2018)

SPOILERS BELOW

This was just about okay. The performances are good to solid (Lively and Friend stand out) and it looks pleasant enough.

The mystery is mildly intriguing, though I was ahead of it on most stuff to the point where I wasn't sure if these things were supposed to be obvious. If you're going to have a kid in the first scene of the movie say while playing with toys "I'm not dead, I came back to life" with very clear enunciation and audio mixing, I'm going to assume that's happening at some point; if you have the victim receive a weird looking photo of themself with "got to have FAITH" written on it, I'm going to assume they have an identical twin called Faith and that's who the body was and so the 'victim' will come back to life. I'm not great at solving mysteries ahead of time and I mostly don't even try to, so if I'm this far ahead of a mystery then I assume it's too obvious. Plus, identical twins is a pretty cheap move.

The big problem is that it reveals most of this around halfway through the movie and the rest of the time is spent on drip-feeding the few remaining details, and a simplistic cat and mouse game, so it's no longer really a mystery, it's just a very tame thriller. Neither half is helped by the decision to have the protagonist be a milquetoast pushover as the lead. Kendrick is good at this, as always, but she never gets to let loose so there's nothing new for anyone familiar with her and the movie never gets out of third gear. The script gives her a dark backstory, perhaps to compensate, but outside of one momentary slip she's also a sweet little wallflower in those flashbacks, and it has zero bearing on the main story. Perhaps that time could have spent on building up the characters of Rupert Friend, Linda Cardellini or Jean Smart- as it is, they're all rather wasted here and they don't feature enough to help beef up the mystery.

Overall, it feels like it was made by someone with very mild tastes and no understanding of how mysteries work. It simply does not measure up to the likes of the Benoit Blanc mysteries or Poker Face.

Rating: milquetoast mystery.

Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

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What a slog. It is somehow all story and yet barely anything happens. It's just constant catch-up, there was exposition still happening in the last scene! Just to open the movie it has to go through 'hey, here's Sam, he's Cap now, you knew that; but also Ross is recast and has no moustache and is the president now; and also meet Joaquin, he's been training up as the Falcon; and also Celestial Island has adamantium in it and there's an accord being crawn up around it; and also Carl Lumbly is back and has been training Sam'. Then they get to stuff that's actually happening during the story rather than before it, and there's two new villains to introduce, a couple of White House characters, catch-up on Bucky (he's running for congress now, whoops, back to catching you up on inter-movie events again). And you've got Samuel Sterns (we also have to get caught up with his inter-movie stuff but at least we're learning that along with Sam) running a very similar scheme to Zemo in Civil War which is actually pretty simple but busied up with a load of details to make it seem smart and complex. But after all this, the story is basically: Sterns wants to ruin Ross' legacy by making him hulk out; he succeeds. The end. The only wrinkle is that thanks to Sam interfering, he has to turn himself in as part of a Plan B (this doesn't really make sense, incidentally - all he needed to do was release a statement and hack some White House speakers, would have arguably been easier not to turn himself in) and so he's neatly dealt with before the end of the movie. Otherwise we're back to where we started - as we find out in the final scene exposition dump of offscreen events from Sam, Ross isn't president again, everyone else is where they were at the beginning of the movie.

The action is kinda bog-standard Cap/Falcon stuff, it just washed over me. There's only one Hulk sequence (and they cut away for the transformations!) where he smashes up a few choppers, knocks Cap around a bit on an empty street, we've seen it all before with Banner but bigger and better. The writing is mostly dull with some shitty Marvel banter. It looks bland as hell. Mackie doesn't have chemistry with anyone, Ford and Nelson are good but underused. Waiting until the exact moment when Ross is recast to do a movie based around him and big surprising changes happening to him is a dreadful idea, up there with John Connor in Terminator Genesys, as is making plot elements of this so close to Civil War. The whole thing feels like a placeholder to get us to the reacquired from 20th Century Fox characters stage, and is utterly dull.

Rating: terrible.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

Only two minutes in, the writing was clearly terrible, like 'are they making it shit on purpose as a joke?' level terrible. I had to give up half an hour in, it is absolutely awful. Confused clunky writing, hammy acting, and overbearing direction and score that are trying desperately to make every frame scary and failing. The kind of thing those low-rent horror channels pump out a hundred of a year.

And I still don't like his 'regular bloke with red paint on' face.

Rating: Awful.