Rhys Reviews

Rhys Reviews: Filmic Analysis

Welcome to my portfolio of film reviews and analytical discussion around cinema and television. Below are my pieces in order

  • Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review

    The Marvel brand is not the same juggernaut it was when Tom Holland’s previous Spider-Man film released in cinemas in 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home was a massive success, and could be credited as the saviour of cinemas during the initial COVID-19 pandemic. Last year’s Marvel releases did not fair amazingly at the box office, with Captain America: Brave New World, The Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four: First Steps proving the days of Marvel making big cash with every movie is out the door. 5 years later from the previous big screen Spider-Man release, and only less than a week after release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has already become the highest-grossing film of the year, and looks on track to potentially hit the 2 billion target. Named franchises are what makes money these days, and Spider-Man seems to be a loved franchise, and it helps that this fourth Holland-starring movie is a fantastic one.

    Set five years after the events of the previous adventure for Peter Parker, which left Peter forced to remove everyone’s memory of him across the world, the hero has never been more alone. Protecting the city as his masked hero, but refusing to live his life outside of the mask, the choice comes with mutated consequences. Alongside this new life change, a mystery of a mind-controlling new villain leads Peter to cross paths with the vigilante known as The Punisher, the Avenger’s The Hulk and his former girlfriend and best friend.

    One of the best things that this film has done is how much they have changed from the previous MCU Spider-Man features. The previous films had a feel of fakeness to them, down to the overabundant use of green-screen and special effects, to the point that the suit itself was hardly ever real. The constant use of green screen also led to the movie looking both artificial and drab in its cinematography, lacking a vibrant colour palette. The movies were also incredibly concerned with connecting themselves to the wider Marvel mythology, and attempting new ground-breaking things. Spider-Man was in adventures that you would not expect him to take part in, and outside of Spider-Man: Homecoming, the movies lacked the human charm that the character and Raimi’s initial trilogy excelled at. The strongest decision in the creation of this film was a change in director, with former trilogy director Jon Watts being swapped out for Shang Chi-director, Destin Daniel Cretton. Cretton has a keen eye for making a superhero film pop, the costume is real, the film uses real sets and on-location shooting, and the colour palette is warm and engaging. The film returns to that former charm of the Raimi features, Spider-Man is swinging across the city, and the film focuses heavily on Peter’s impact on the city and his interactions with civilians.

    The film definitely still feels like a important part of the Marvel universe, but handles those connections and cameo characters in a pure comic-booky way that feels more natural compared to the prior films. Mark Ruffalo’s The Hulk appears in some small sequences and a major action sequence which is the highlight of the film, but never outstays his welcome. Jon Bernthal, who has played The Punisher across both Daredevil and Daredevil: Born Again, and his own self-titled show, makes his big-screen debut as the character and really rules every scene he is in. He is essentially the film’s main secondary character, and they play up a great buddy-cop dynamic with Spider-Man, with Bernthal and Holland sharing great chemistry in various scenes where they bicker. There is a level of toning down of the character to fit the more mainstream appeal of these movies, compared to the more R-focused television projects, but if a viewer can allow themselves to embrace this change, it is a fun character for sure.

    The bravest choice for the film comes from both how small-scaled it is and how character-focused it is. There are a notable amount of less over-blown action sequences, and the film only really features around four major action moments. The movie instead seeks to explore the isolation and loneliness of its main character, as he loses control over his powers in one of his lowest moments yet. Tom Holland puts in a incredible performance as the character, a film where you can finally say the character is truly Holland’s own. He plays Spider-Man with a pure everyman kindness, added with a lot of maturity that makes his interactions notably different than his prior three movies. The movie makes some very mature story-telling decisions that follow-up the ending of the previous film, but does not tie everything up in a neat bow. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon have very minimal screen-time compared to their roles in the prior films, but their scenes are used effectively to make the film as powerfully heart-breaking as it can be. The film’s exploration into loneliness and isolation, and how that can make you become the worse version of yourself is a very mature theme for these summer blockbusters to cover, and it is a theme that connects all characters.

    The way Peter’s story connects with the villain is one of pure genius, and comes from a script that was seemingly written and rewritten until perfect, based on the villain only coming on board when Cretton did as well. One of the biggest mysteries from the trailers has been who the villain is, and the mystery of who Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink is playing in the film. No spoilers featured here, but this character’s identity is easy to guess based on the immediate internet reaction to the casting, and this character’s inclusion causes the film to struggle slightly in the third act. The film becomes a backdoor pilot for a separate team of Marvel characters who will soon return to the big screen, and the film manages to keep Spider-Man relevant as much as he can be. Sink is excellent in the role, playing the character in a way she has never been seen before, and the way the movie mirrors her trauma, grief and isolation with Peters’ is incredibly heart-breaking. Tramell Tillman’s character, who is heavily used for set up for this upcoming spin-off, is wasted in a cartoonish role that doesn’t seem to fit in a Spider-Man movie. The movie peppers in various obscure Spider-Man villains throughout to make up for a largely Spider-Man-less focused main villain, with The Hand featuring in a epic fight sequence, and the welcome return of Michael Mando finally playing the Scorpion.

    Spider-Man: Brand New Day is easily the best Spider-Man film to come out during Holland’s reign as the character. There is something so down-to-earth and human about the script that finally places Peter Parker back into the driving seat, rather than his costumed alter-ego. The film captures the comic book crossover of a hero operating in a hero-centric New York more authentically than any Marvel movie before, with the Punisher and The Hulk not overshadowing the lead but having memorable roles. Tackling mature themes, and with a film direction that feels real and palpable, it is a memorable return to the feel that made the original Raimi trilogy so great. The film may stumble near the finish line with a set-up heavy finale, but it manages to hold steady well enough that it closes out for a promising future for this character.

  • Moana and the State of Disney’s Live Action Remakes

    Catherine Laga’aia in Moana

    While Disney is currently winning at the box office with the overwhelming success of the 5th entry in Pixar’s Toy Story franchise, they are also taking a major hit in the continued slippery slope of their live action remakes. Moana has released in cinemas, a live action remake of a film only ten years old, and is immediately being seen as a disaster at the box office. Holding a massive 250 million dollar budget, the film fumbled in its opening weekend, and has only grossed 115 million so far, with Deadline reporting that the film could lose Disney between 100-125 million in the end. Live action movies under Disney used to be a certified cash cow, standing alongside their biggest hits in crowded years like 2019. 2019 was a massive year for the company, holding 7 out of the 10 highest grossing movies of the year, with Aladdin and The Lion King hitting one billion each. This would truly be the highest point for their live action endeavours, and would be what they have clearly been striving to recreate in the years since.

    Disney have made live action remakes of their classics for years, most notably the Glenn Close-starring 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians from 1996 and 2000 respectively. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and the villain-centric update of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, would move the concept into the 2010s, and would not take off completely until Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book in 2016. The Jungle Book was the first monumental success of this trend, grossing nearly a billion dollars and receiving excellent reviews, and the following year featuring the billion-dollar grossing, The Beauty and The Beast made this a money-making scheme. Disney could see that this could be a ticket to success, there is no need to risk money on original ideas, when the company can repackage their old classics in a new lens, they already have the blueprints right there. That is what these remakes boil down to, Disney’s beloved classics reheated like a microwave meal, with the same plot beats but feeling like a mirror image, where something is deeply off.

    This seemed like it could be a scheme that could last forever, but they have been unable to recapture the success of the three-line hit of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. The COVID-19 pandemic led to their reimagined and critically panned Mulan remake hitting streaming instead of cinemas, and the same case with Emma Stone’s starring feature, Cruella. Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio remake and David Lowery’s Wendy focused remake of Peter Pan were never even planned for the big screen, and made their home immediately on Disney+. Streaming has been a curse to many franchises, and even genres, accommodating audiences to expect and wait for films to hit streaming rather than experiencing the theatrical experience. Their next remake would suffer because of this, The Little Mermaid would be admis with controversy over its African-American lead, and would suffer at the box office, only to become a hit on streaming. 2024’s Mufasa, a prequel to their Lion King remake would walk to the finish line in slowly becoming profitable, but paling in comparison to its predecessor. Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot starred next in Sam Raimi’s Snow White remake, which faced a increasing amount of internet conversation, but still managed to lose the studio 170 million in the end.

    The predecessor to this newest Disney live action remake is the one that shocked the system, and presumably made Disney confident that Moana could be a success. The billion dollar gross of Lilo and Stitch was a obvious success, it is a Gen Z focused property and has a more clear nostalgia factor compared to more earlier Disney animated features like Snow White and The Little Mermaid. Moana’s live action remake seems to have been fast-tracked mainly because of star Dwayne Johnson, being formely announced only seven years after the original film’s release. Even if the original animated feautre is immensely popular, and is consistently the most watched film on Disney’s streaming service, the film is still too recent to be able to bank on nostalgia. The biggest successes from these live action endeavours comes from the fact that the original films are old enough to be nostalgic, but not old enough that parents will have not been born either when they released. Moana lacks a nostalgic angle, no one who saw the movie in 2016 will be returning to watch the newest feature with any new members of a newer generation. Still, Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon remake was massively popular last year, which came only 15 years after the original animated film. However, this franchise had breathing room, with six years in between the ending of the animated series and the beginning of the live action.

    The live-action take on Moana is also following-up the sequel to the animated film that only came out two years prior. Moana 2, which was a reworked pilot for a Moana television series, released into cinemas and made a billion dollars quickly, even after receiving mixed reviews from critics. With a 3rd Moana film in development, it could easily be construed that a fatigue has set in for the franchise, and the close proximity of a follow-up and a re-tread of the original would lead to one falling behind. With a mixture of the current streaming expectation, the fatigue from Moana and live action adaptations, and the lack of nostalgia facing the movie, it was bound to become a box office flop. It is also however, just a massive showcase of the weakness of these live action redo’s.

    What is the point of watching these reimagining’s of classic movies when you can just watch the original? They never add anything massively different from the original, not even bothering to provide a reason for their existence, and crafting a product that feels inferior to the original. 2026’s take on Moana is a fine movie, down to it essentially being the same script as the original, but it is a mess visually. The reason these movies were originally so beloved is because of how visually impressive they were, the animation complemented the incredible scripts, and fleshed out characterisation with vivid character animation. These are lost in these live action remakes, Lion King loses any emotion from its characters from making them realistic and makes it visually more like a nature documentary. However, also when remaking a film like Moana, which is set mostly at sea, it is trading in one animation for another. The entire film is layered in visual effects, that can range in quality throughout, with Dwayne Johnson and newcomer Catherine Laga’aia interacting in a void of green screen effects that can look gaudy on screen. A lot of the stylised character designs from the original look very different in live action, and lose some of their visual connection to the audience. It is even worse with the musical sequences, the vocals and the song-writing is there, but the sequences are visually lazy and disjointed compared to the vast superior lyrics and performances.

    Dwayne Johnson in Moana

    Johnson, who serves as producer on the project, feels like he has aged out the role that was designed for him. Sporting a muscle body suit and a wig that makes the film look like a SNL skit, Johnson looks old and tired in every sequence, with not a inch of the fluidity or liveliness that was present in the animated depiction of Maui. Catherine Laga’aia is the one shining light, with a genuinely authentic performance that brings out the child-like wonder of the original character, feeling like the character brought to life. There is something distinctively different at least to a new actor acting out lines made for another, compared to the constant actors reprising their roles and reading the same lines out again. Jermaine Clement reprises his role as Tamatoa, brought to life as a visual effects character, and his performance, which should have been the same, feels restrained and tired, going through the motions as he reads out the same lines again.

    There is a confusing question of why would they pick this movie to remake out of all the possible options? It comes out as a live action remake that is still mostly animated through its visual effects, filling a world that is colourful, lively and brimming with personality into a grey and realistic world which is brimming with anything but personality. Lilo and Stitch was a happy fluke across this dying trend, audiences seem to have become aware of the middling quality of these movies, with no remake getting good reviews since the peak of these movies in 2019. Moana just continues to show that these movies are no longer profitable, and that Disney is not in the place they were 7 years ago when every movie they released could crack a billion. Various live action projects have been shelved in the last couple of years, from a sequel to Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin to a sequel to The Jungle Book. A live action take on the Aristocrats was announced to be cancelled last year, alongside the cancellations of live action takes on Bambi, Robin Hood and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Currently only a Hercules film from Guy Ritchie, a sequel to billion-dollar grossing Lilo and Stitch and Tangled are slated for release.

    Tangled is the true showing of if this brand can continue to stick. The original film will be 18 years old on release, and should be far enough removed from the original to allow true nostalgia and to be a hit with Gen Z audiences like Lilo and Stitch. Either way, the heights of this trend has long since gone, and if Disney wants to keep it alive, they need to pick their projects more carefully on what stays with audiences the most. The box office has changed since the pandemic, and now audiences are accustomed to staying at home and waiting for streaming. Watching a movie that has already released in animated form, and is available at home on streaming is a more cost-free method than paying money to watch a inferior version of that very film on the big screen. Moana is not a terrible film, but it is just the continued status of the laziest trend in Hollywood.

  • Supergirl Review

    Milly Alcock in Supergirl

    It has been a year since the beginning of James Gunn’s rebooted take on the DC Universe, with the release of his successful Superman reboot. The week of the release of that film, the marketing began for the follow-up feature, Supergirl, following the titular character after her cameo appearance in Superman. The character has had a tricky time in live action, outside of her successful six season tenure on TV on the CW, but her big screen appearances have been far from popular. 1984’s Supergirl, starring Helen Slater, is held up as one of the worst superhero movies, and a forgotten child of the Christopher Reeves-era of Superman features. Set in the same universe, but with Reeves refusing to appear in the film, with the characters only sharing the screen eventually in the CG-heavy Flash Movie. Sashe Calle would play a new version of the character for that movie, and was meant to become a new star for the former DCEU, but after a regime change at DC and the movie bombing, another Supergirl was left in the dust. This newest film has been marketed as a direct adaptation of the Tom King-written comic, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, with the film originally even sharing that title. Both the comic and film follow the lead character, Kara Zor El, who is dealing with her trauma from seeing her home destroyed on Krypton. She becomes involved in a revenge plot when young girl Ruthye recruits her to avenge her family and kill the murderous Krem of the Yellow Hills.

    One of the most bizarre things about this second DCU feature is how much it deviates from the original comic, when it was marketed as a straightforward adaptation. There has been various headlines talking about director Craig Gillespie refusing to read the comic when creating the film, but the truth is that the director based his idea of the film off the screenplay, and then read the comic once he had already formed an idea for the visual language of the film. This shows completely in how visually bland the movie is, the movie is very clearly inspired by Star Wars and Blade Runner, and attempts to emulate the grimey and dark visual palette of those films. However, it is based on a comic which is so colourful and brimming with style, and to replace that with a film that looks just like any other comic book movie made these days is a let down. There is no attempt to deviate the visual style based on planets, the film retains its grey style throughout. It is a real shame after how colourful Gunn’s Superman was, setting up a clear visual style for this universe. As the first DCU project not created by Gunn, it sets a worrying standard for projects outside of the set style.

    Milly Alcock and Eve Ridley in Supergirl

    The deviations continue in the film’s narrative, as the film collapses the episodic and adventure-focused narrative of the comic into a more streamlined under-two-hour film. Removing so much of the narrative leads to many of the narrative swings feeling rushed and underdeveloped. The adventure allows Supergirl and Ruthye to rub off on each other, as Supergirl loses her faith and Ruthye finds a home in kindness and loses her need for revenge. Their relationship develops from the adventure of tracking down Krem, and the movie’s development between the two feels underdeveloped. Kara seems to be annoyed by her the entire movie, and suddenly during the third act comes to care for her. Eve Ridley is doing her best in a very stilted and underdeveloped shift, which has boiled down her character, Ruthye, into screaming the same lines about revenge and thats it. The addition of Jason Mamoa’s Lobo, who is absent from the original comic, feels like a waste of a role. Mamoa is great to watch on screen as the fan-favourite character, but the character is superfluous to the entire story, and leaves the plot changing nothing.

    Matthias Schoenaerts in Supergirl

    Krem of the Yellow Hills, the main villain of the comic and film, is retained fairly faithfully from the comic, outside of a design change. The character is easily the weakest part of the comic, serving as a fairly generic antagonist for our heroes to invoke their anger on. He remains the same here, a very boring and generic villain, and one that the film does not attempt to breathe any life into at all. The strongest part of the film is Supergirl herself, lead actress Milly Alcock delivers a very multi-layered performance as the character. It is not a simple character to pull off, she is a fearless warrior who is rude and a mess, dealing with her grief without truly confronting it, but still attempting to be kind and heroic. Her journey does have hiccups, but Alcock’s performance grounds this aspect of the film and allows it to have some level of emotion. The flashbacks to the destruction of Krypton is one of the most brutal aspects of the film, a section of the film that should have been expanded upon greatly. The effects, outside of some unremarkable green screen work, is well done and the action is entertaining. The movie manages to make Supergirl’s action feel distinctively different to Superman’s, even with the same power-set.

    Supergirl is the fourth entry in Gunn’s new universe, and the first project not to be helmed by Gunn. The animated series, Creature Commandos, and Peacemaker’s second season served as the other two projects, removed from just Superman. As the first project without Gunn behind the creative chair, it shows a worrying chance that this universe will not be able to float without Gunn. It is also shows that Gunn needs to work hard as a leader, and not just a director. Gunn praised this script as one of his favourites, and has hired Ana Nogueira to work again on the scripts for their upcoming Wonder Woman and Teen Titans features. There needs to be a level of creative control behind the scenes to make sure a film this sloppy does not release again from the studio. Supergirl is not terrible, it has a enjoyable energy to it, and a great central performance, but it misunderstands its source material and makes all the wrong decisions in trying to adapt it. It is a disappointment for a universe that started off so strong

    Jason Mamoa in Supergirl

  • Quick Fire Review: Backrooms

    Chiwetel Ejiofor in Backrooms

    A24 seemed to have immense confidence with young filmmaker Kane Parsons when announcing that his YouTube web series, known as the Backrooms, would be adapted into a big-screen film. The original concept was formed on 4chan threads and Reddit posts, forming a liminal space where an alternate reality resembles empty office buildings, a forever growing and moving maze which would become more developed when people like Parsons would craft web series around the concept. Parsons’ series, which consists currently of 24 episodes, starting in 2022, expanded the world of the concept, introducing worldbuilding, entities that called the liminal space home and new locations outside of the regular, yellow-tinted office spaces. It is unusual for a big studio like A24 to take such a popular concept like the Backrooms and hand full creative control to one of its creators, Sony never gave any creative control to Eric Knudsen when transferring his creation, Slender Man to the big screen in 2018, so this is a very surprising move. Parsons, who was only twenty years old on release of this film, was given the reigns to direct the film, work with screenwriter Will Soodik on the screenplay and work with composer Edo Van Breemen on the score. This level of control over the film shows a great deal of confidence the studio had in this new filmmaker, and how much they believed in the concept, and this confidence really pays off in a creatively impressive feature.

    The film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve as Clark and Mary, two people dealing with their own separate trauma while Mary works as a psychiatrist and Clark as her patient. Clark, who owns a furniture store, finds the Backrooms dimension through his store’s basement, which brings the two together in a fight for survival. The first thing to note really with the movie is how wonderful these two central performances are. Soodik’s script is very barebones on characterisation, seemingly on purpose to allow the dream-like nature of the film to take shape. Much of the characterisation comes from imagery, or the performances. Some character changes may come unnaturally but the performances handle that uncertainty well, Ejiofor does a lot of heavy lifting as the Backrooms takes a handle on his mind, but he delivers it well. There is a lot to read about the characters from their actions, and from what is not specifically shown on screen, it is a subtle approach conveyed from the script. It is certainly not your traditional Hollywood horror feature, its symbolism and character growth can come off unnatural or confusing to a general audience, but if it gels with an audience, it really works. Reinsve herself, who has just come off an academy award nomination as best actress for Sentimental Value, is perfect as a therapist who is holding so much resentment and inner turmoil deep down. Her character journey, as subtle as it is, is handled very well.

    It has been a long time since a director has been able to convey the dream-like nature of a David Lynch film, but Parsons nails it perfectly. The setting is conveyed in such a bizarre way, a bright and warm location that is still so eerie and claustrophobic, and one so bright that when the movie enters any dark locations, the horror hits even deeper. The unsung hero of this film is easily the crew behind the set design, they have nailed the location, and the exploration angle of the film is easily one of its best, the second act could have went forever and no one would have minded. Each location feels so alive and different, Parson’s expansion of the location into various other designs and colours allows the film to feel different from act to act, without the location ever feeling samey. Parsons has also just got an incredible grasp behind the camera, the film looks wonderful throughout, with beautiful cinematography from Jeremy Cox. There are some incredible shots in here from a big-budget first time director, he has an excellent handle on angles and there’s a great amount of transition shots here. There is an excellent use of found footage here as well, which harkens back to the YouTube series that started this, and works as the highlight of the film, both creatively and in a horror sense.

    Renate Reinsve in Backrooms

    The shared score between Parsons and Breemen really sells the dreamy nature of the film and helps the transition between dream and nightmare. The horror comes from the uncanny, and the eventual monster that chases our protagonists is easily going to be divisive for some audiences, but it works on a thematic angle, and its booming footsteps work for wonderful sound design. There could maybe be one or two jumpscares rooted out from the film, but the film has enough genuine intense sequences that a couple of lazy scares can easily be let off. The ending is where the film draws a line that very clearly sets up for a sequel, it is an abrupt and explains a little too much for a film that worked so well on uncertainty.

    There could have been a better way to tie up some dangling threads and connect it back to the original web series, but what we get, while sloppy, still feels better than nothing. Mark Duplass’ character feels superfluous to the entire plot and could easily have been stripped from the movie to make room for a larger second act, with more character exploration and location exploration that seems to be saved for a sequel. Backrooms promises more and promises that Parsons can only improve from here. It is a confident debut feature, that feels like a proof of concept of where this Lynch-inspired filmmaker can go. It is intense, scary and imaginative in its filmmaking, and truly a much watch in this new modern horror landscape.

  • Rapid Fire Reviews: Passenger and Scary Movie

    Horror is currently ruling the box office, with the genre having one of its most explosive years to date. The seventh Scream was received negatively but gained big at the box office, and two films directed by creators on YouTube have taken the world by storm. Obsession and Backrooms have proven that original properties that can still make money, and there is room to invest in new talent that come from the modern day of online storytelling. With all the conversation about these films, I wanted to highlight and talk about two films made by long-running horror creators, by looking at Passenger and Scary Movie, mixing a conversation about an original property and the return to a legacy franchise. Scary Movie will easily be a big movie this summer, even with its low-critic score, but Passenger has truly fell under the radar, and maybe for good reason.

    Passenger

    Passenger was marketed easily by the word of mouth coming from its excellent trailer shown in front of various horror films in the last couple of months. The trailer treated itself as a short film, following two friends driving home as one stop and after leaving the car, loses the other. It is a fight for survival as the remaining driver attempts to drive home but runs into a supernatural entity, which ends with a dramatic jumpscare. Once the trailer hit the internet, it could be seen that there was more to the film, with that opening only being half of the full-length trailer. The rest of the trailer showcased what the film was, a drama between a soon-to-be married couple as they are chased by a supernatural creature which inhabits their car. The dramatic and intense prior sequence is only the opening of the film and is easily the best moment of the entire film. It is ruined slightly by the fact that the entire sequence was the trailer, there is nothing else added that was cut around in the trailers, but it’s the only time the film feels tense, or that it has any weight.

    The film is directed by Andre Ovredal, a talented horror director who has given such tension-filled films such as Scary Stories to tell in the Dark, found footage feature Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe. The Norwegian director is talented and makes the use of creatures so perfectly, but all that passion seems lost here. The film, as punny as it sounds, seems like it moves on autopilot, with aimless story which is connected by various jumpscares from a demon who looks like a wish version of Sinister villain Bughuul. There is no sense of danger when the demon is also only attached to our main character, this is an escalation of films like Paranormal Activity. Once demons were contained in homes, and now they are attached to cars and highways, and instead of doing anything interesting with this concept, the film just plays the moments you would expect from a haunting movie like this. The body count is low, and is essentially completely bloodless, with the film lacking any sort of tense sequence, none of the film is remotely memorable. The direction is also just incredibly murky and dark, the modern colour grading problem for horror features is all over this film, and when most of the film takes place at night, that is a true problem.

    It is a shame when your film peaks in its very opening sequence, but the film can never match the pure adrenaline thrill the film opens with. The two leads are capable, and Jacob Scipo and Lou Llobell do share some solid chemistry, but their marital spout seems unnecessary when it is not fleshed out at all. There is an exploration seemingly into co-dependency, as Llobell’s character feels like her life has been upended by her fiancee’s decision to live life on the road, but the conversation only comes up once the horror begins, and is dropped soon after, it is not real drama. The movie cannot even get its own rules right for its main villain, a villain who is confined to many limitations to keep our characters alive, but when it comes to any characters outside of the core couple, the villain breaks his rules easily. Cliches really bring down this film, and how sloppy the screenwriting is, as it relies on falling back on those tropes to create a simple and unmemorable film, rather than delivering the scares you would want. Problems like this is easily showing the reason why this horror slipped through the cracks, and has been overshined by Obsession, the film that released the same week as it. At the end of the day, you will just forget seeing this a day after watching.

    Scary Movie

    The news that the Wayans brothers were returning to craft another Scary Movie, after leaving the franchise after the second entry, was big for fans of horror. The initial Scary Movie duology is beloved as a horror-comedy, spoofing on various horror properties, with the initial film being a spoof of both Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. 25 years after the second film, the sixth film in the franchise returns to its root, as a spoof of legacy sequels and specifically Scream 5 and 6, with Anna Farris and Regina Hall returning to the franchise alongside the returning Wayans also playing their characters from the first film. This newest entry has been marketed mainly for its offensive humour and its focus on spoofing your favourite modern horror properties, but the film is easily the tamest movie in the franchise. There are a couple of jokes presented against a transgender and a homosexual character, but nothing particularly bad that you would have assumed from the trailers. Many of the material shown in the trailers have also just been completely stripped from the film, cutting the film down to a lean 90-minutes.

    It has been revealed by the Wayans themselves that they were still shooting material for reshoots earlier this year to keep up to date with the movies they were spoofing. This has led to sequences involving K Pop Demon Hunters, One Battle After Another and Michael Jackson, various sequences that do not fit the overall film but do prove to be memorable sequences. One of the biggest problems with the entire film is that many of the jokes do not feel like jokes, many jokes are just recreating sequences from other films, like a sequence where they recreate Weapons, or recreate Terrifer, bur where is the joke when the whole thing is just a reference. Outside of these the jokes have a common ratio of good to bad, with the Wayans shooting so many jokes at the screen at once that you are bound to get one golden gem after every couple wasted attempts. Some of the jokes also feel incredibly outdated already, making jokes about January 6th and COVID-19 still makes this film feel like it will run out of its timeless quality that the other films had on release.

    It is strange how much the film plays it safe with its narrative structure, essentially playing the hits of a legacy sequel more than making fun of them. Scream 5 acts as the base and it just plays those scenes out one by one itself, with some cutaways to other film spoofs. The ending is when the film truly comes alive, with a comedically charged Ghostface reveal which plays into the legacy sequel conversation better than the most recent Scream entry. The new cast introduced in the film are mostly a dud, especially when the marketing has hinged solely on the returning actors that made the first two features so memorable. Anna Farris, Regina Hall and Shawn Wayans get very little to do across this film, with Farris herself, who should have been the protagonist, disappearing from the movie in the second act. Marlon Wayans is the one who gets the most to do across the film, and his character is going to test some audiences love of the character. There is a little too much of his character, Shawty, in the movie, a character who was conveyed as the comedic relief in the first movie and updating him to lead does no wonders. This is a movie designed to appeal to fans of the original and the franchise overall, nothing here will make you a fan if you were not already, it is more of the same. It is a lot more toned down, and sloppier in its comedy and in its depiction as a spoof, but fans of the franchise will probably still get a kick out of this one.

  • The Boys Series Finale Review

    In an age where the superhero blockbuster was truly the top dog of the box office world, and every studio was trying to catch up with the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Amazon Prime’s The Boys was a case of fresh air for the superhero genre. On release in 2019, DC’s attempt at a cinematic universe was still trucking along as it moved past the loss of Zack Snyder, The Fox X-Men franchise came to an end with Disney purchasing the company, and Sony were beginning their attempts at a new Spider-Man less cinematic venture after Venom. The Boys launched all its first season episodes on one day and showed an interesting satire that seemed to ground the superhero tropes into the real world, turning these icons into flawed humans who serve as the show’s antagonists. Based on Garth Ennis’ comic of the same name, the comic was initially set for a film trilogy from director Adam McKay attached to direct when entering development in 2008 but was eventually reworked with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg initially attached to direct a pilot episode.

    The show we eventually got was formed by showrunner Eric Kripke, as he set out a five-season plan which has finally come to an end this week. The show released to massive acclaim, and with the movement to weekly episodes in the second season, became an internet phenomenon. Endings can always be a tricky topic when crafting a show, and the show’s fifth season has become a media frenzy of mixed opinions, with some fans even comparing it to finales like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things. Though the show never reaches the levels of those finales, the final season is truly a mixed bag in how it ends its various characters’ stories, and worth a thorough discussion into why it both works and does not.

    The Boys exists in a world where superheroes are public idols, run by a company known as Vought International, where heroes’ superpowered adventures are staged and commercialised, and the company allows them to get away with misdeeds. Led by Homelander, the most powerful superhero, The Seven serves as the most popular superhero team and the focus of a group of vigilantes who are attempting to stop them. Billy Butcher, a former CIA operative who has a personal vendetta against Homelander, serves as the leader of the group which shares the name with the series, as they attempt to bring down every superpowered individual. By the fifth season, the world has changed as Homelander takes control over Vought himself and has gained enough power to take control of the President. The Boys have been betrayed by Butcher, who had gone mad with a new superpowered tumour, and now see themselves having to face Homelander in a final battle. The biggest thing that has changed in the years between the five seasons, is the expansion of the show into a franchise. An animated spin-off anthology series released in 2022, mere months before the season 3 premiere, known as The Boys Presents: Diabolical. The first live-action spinoff series aired the following year, known as Gen V, with its first season bridging the gap between the main show’s third and fourth season, and the second season bridging the gap between the fourth and fifth seasons. Marketed as necessary to complete the story of the main show, and featuring various cameos from characters from The Boys, it opened the door for The Boys to become what it was critiquing.

    The focus of the show was on political satire, from Homelander being a clear Donald Trump parody to superheroes standing in for celebrities and rabid fans focused on them, but it was also a parody on the superhero genre. From a scene which made fun of The Snyder Cut of Justice League, a drawn-out sequence where they made fun of women power sequences in films like Avengers Endgame, to then making fun of franchise announcement presentations that Kevin Fiege would make for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The original comic was a spoof, written by a person who very clearly wanted to critique Marvel and DC comic characters, and turn them into the most extreme versions he could. The core members of the Seven are spoofs of DC Comics’ Justice League, there is a school of superheroes like Marvel’s X-Men, and Soldier Boy was Ennis’ version of Captain America. Superhero parody is built into the very bones of the show, but the movement between seasons has shown the show slowly becoming what it is spoofing. The sequence making fun of the franchise panels does not work in hindsight when The Boys itself has become a cinematic universe. Two follow-ups are planned now that the main show has concluded, namely Vought Rising and The Boys Mexico. Mexico has been confirmed to take place after the events of the finale, and has minimal set up, but one of the biggest problems that hurts The Boys’ final season is the focus on setting up Vought Rising.

    Vought Rising will serve as a prequel series, exploring the founding of Vought and revealing Soldier Boy’s origins, and a ridiculous amount of time is spent in the final season setting up this show. Out of an eight-episode season, four are spent on providing set-up for that series, to the point that the show stops in the sixth episode to feature a fight between a character we have never seen before and Soldier Boy, where they reference events that will not make sense until the prequel airs. Soldier Boy’s fate is even left up in the air in the finale, he is frozen in episode seven and then is never brought up again, clearly to set up some sort of closure in Vought Rising. This leaves this final season not actually feeling like the end, there is not much closure with many characters because of how rushed the entire thing is.

    One of the strangest decisions with the season also comes from how superfluous the entire two seasons of Gen V is, a show that was marketed as an important part of the story and crucial to understanding the final season. The show’s characters appear in one scene in the finale, and two in the prior episode, with the main characters ordering them to leave when they have only just appeared. For a show that is moving into a franchise, it feels like a bit of a spit in the face for people invested in the story and the expansion of that very story. A lot of the season is very unsatisfying for how they wrap up things, from episode 5 onwards there is a death every episode, and some of those deaths feel immensely unsatisfying. The deaths of Firecracker and Black Noir feel disordered with the rest of the season, with very little expansion for either character after their introduction in the previous season, making their deaths feel meaningless. Homelander’s relationship with Soldier Boy also suffers from this, their bonding comes out of nowhere and is not consistent episode to episode, where they go from arguing to loving each other from the flip of a hat.

    Homelander’s religious plot also feels underbaked, and outside of some great comedic bits, it feels unneeded when so little time is spent developing characters like Ryan, Mother’s Milk or Annie before their characters end. Butcher is also a character who feels underbaked this season, a character who has always been a highlight, but after the incredible final episode of season four, where Butcher turns bad, this season walks that back instantly. Then, for the finale, he breaks bad once again, and it feels like we wasted half a season to get back to the point he was at prior. His obsession with killing every superhero has been a constant in the show, but his immediate change after Homelander’s defeat feels rushed and lacking serious emotional beats with character interactions outside of Hughie.

    The actors have always been the highlight of this series, with actors like Erin Moriarty, Jack Quaid and Laz Alonso always pulling in solid performances as the emotional core characters. Karl Urban was the big name for the marketing, and he has always been great as Butcher, there is a certain gravitas to every line and a level of sincerity where you cannot help but love him after every awful thing he does. Anthony Starr is the one who is given all the praise as Homelander, and he deserves it truly. Homelander is easily the highlight of every episode, and Starr pulls in a multi-layered performance as a character who is so truly evil, but also pathetic and sad at the same time. The character is a monster yet is so wanting of acceptance and for a family, and Starr rides the line perfectly without ever making the character genuinely human. Jessie T. Usher has only one episode appearance this season, but it is truly a highlight. The show struck gold with deciding to redeem his character across the five seasons, and his death is emotionally satisfying. Chace Crawford is always the highlight of the comedic sections of the show as Aquaman-spoof The Deep, and the show loves to revel in how pitiful the character is, and the decision to never redeem the character is perfect. Daveed Diggs is a new highlight of this final season as new character Oh Father, a central new superhero for the religious arc of the season, it would have been even better if the show had set up the character in the previous season.

    The Boys final season is nothing terrible, it is engaging television, which hits as much as it does not. Though you cannot help but be disappointed by various aspects of the final season after how much set up has went into the final battle between Butcher and Homelander, and the ‘scorched earth’ promise made in season three. The actual final fight takes place in the white house, contained to one room where chairs get destroyed. There is something inherently cheap about this season, from the lack of flashy powers in fight scenes, with most fights just being fist fights, even if they have powers outside of strength, to the over abundance of contained sets. Very little sequences take place outdoors, with every episode revolving around the characters being stuck in a couple of rooms, it almost feels like the entire season was made during the coronavirus pandemic, and not now. This leaves the final fight to be very underwhelming, even if the actual death of Homelander is perfect. The final season feels like the showrunners had various ideas for where they wanted the story to go, but a lack of knowledge of how to get to those points or how to connect various character arcs with those moments. Everything feels very underbaked, and a big departure from the smart writing of the first season, where the show truly peaked.

  • Michael Review

    The 2010s was the home of the superhero film, and now in this post COVID-19 world, the filmmaking world has seemed to shift to the art of videogame movies and the biopic. Biopics have been around for decades, consistently being a moneymaking machine, but off the back of films like 2022’s Elvis and 2024’s A Complete Unknown, they have become all the rage of Hollywood. There are four different biopics focused on each of the Beatles soon releasing, all directed by Sam Mendes, which will be a certified box office hit. This certified chance of making money is why these biopics come out so consistently, an established singer will bring their fans into the cinema to watch their life story, and to listen to their music once again. It is no surprise then that a Michael Jackson biopic was fast-tracked along this current trend, a film based on easily the most popular artist of all time is a no brainer. Development on the film began in 2019, with Lionsgate formally announcing the film in 2022.

    The following year was when news began more frequent, as Antoine Fuqua was announced as director, who had previously directed films like the Equalizer trilogy and 2001’s Training Day, and Michael’s own nephew, Jaafar Jackson, was announced to be portraying Michael. After a delay in production because of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA Strike and major reshoots changed the third act late into production, the film is finally out. The film follows Michael’s rise to stardom, starting with his time as a member of the Jackson Five and culminating during the release of the artist’s third album, Bad. The film juxtaposes his rise to power with the abusive and controlling relationship Michael has with his father, Joseph Jackson, played by Colman Domingo, as he attempts to sneak out from under his father’s thumb.

    The first thing to address when talking about this film is the big elephant in the room that the film refuses to acknowledge. Michael Jackson has become a scrutinized figure after sexual abuse allegations were thrown at the singer in 1993, claiming he was sexually abusive to 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. After the case was settled the following year, things only became more concerning, and the court of public opinion began to turn on the singer even after his death. The singer was acquitted in a trial in 2005, after another case was raised against him, and after his death in 2009, more accusations have been raised at the singer. The 2019 Leaving Neverland documentary, that aired on HBO, has enlightened people to these allegations. The initial Jordan Chandler case was originally conceived as part of the film, beginning the film as Michael is visited by the police at his home, and then flashing back to see the pop-star’s rise to power. The entire third act was originally meant to involve this case and seemed to be an ambitious look at trying to make Michael into a multi-layered human, not shying away from the parts of his life that showed real trouble. However, those sequences would have to be removed from the film and the entire third act reshot, after a clause was found in the original settlement, forbidding any dramatization of Chandler. What the film became instead then is a typical rise to stardom story, and a deeply formulaic one at that. The biopic genre is incredibly played out in the modern day, and outside of parody films like Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, they are all the exact same.

    Falling back into being your typical genre tropes leaves this film into feeling sanitized, a film which feels afraid to even question its lead star or confront him on anything that is in his control. There are elements that seem to be still in from that earlier version of the draft, Neverland is shown in a very fan-servicey shot, which comes across as a bit sinister, and there is a real attempt to infantize Michael. There is a focus on Michael’s obsession with childhood toys, his dialogue is child-like and his connection to children is a focus of multiple scenes. The original version of the film was very clearly trying to make a connection between the lost childhood he faced because of his father, and the possible sexual abuse that Michael has inflicted on others. Removing the actual outcome from that abuse however leads these scenes to feel like excuses, with the estate and the director attempting to make Michael seem perfect.

    The abuse that he faces by his father is also so sanitized, outside of one opening scene where the character feels intimidating, Colman Domingo plays the character like a cartoon character. Domingo shines when the character gets a chance to be intimidating or evil, but most of the time, the character feels inconsistent and ultimately unconnected to Michael’s rise to power. This is what happens when a biopic of this scale comes out, a film that is attempting to cover so much ground in such a short runtime. The best biopics pick a period to focus on, a big moment in their lives, but when it’s focused on everything, that is where you feel like it focuses on nothing. Every supporting character in this film is so thin and underdeveloped, with many of Michael’s family even not appearing in the film because of the real-world people refusing their likeness, and the Jackson Five feel like window-dressing rather than Michael’s actual siblings.    

    For fans of the artist’s music and his public persona, they will get everything they want out of this film. It is essentially what every other biopic is, a concert movie with a loose plot focused around connecting those musical sequences together. Those musical sequences are the highlight of the film, with Fuqua’s direction being brought to life by one of the most colourful looking cinematography and colour grading of the year, the film pops out the screen in a way not many films have this year. Jafaar Jackson is also perfect as Michael Jackson, he disappears into the role, and you genuinely feel like you are just watching the superstar on screen. The way he emulates his voice, the mannerisms and the physicality is immense, and the singing talent is top notch. It is a shame really that the film does not give him more to chew on for the role, this is a cookie-cutter version of Michael, a Michael that seems to have been crafted by a committee to appear as the best version of himself. It even shies away in the end from even deciding to confront his drug addiction after an accident, with movie Michael refusing to become addicted, feeling like its attempting to say that Michael would never fall for something like that. Michael does not feel like a three-dimensional person, the film doesn’t attempt to show anything bad about him, any struggles outside of the struggles given to him by others. The only character arc he is given comes from his father, which leaves so much to be desired when the movie shies away from even making his father a real character. The movie just consistently tells us that Michael is gifted, talented and sent from God, like it is running PR for a damaged talent.

    Michael is meant to only be part one of a two-part focus on the talented singer, and it can only be hoped that the next film attempts to craft an engaging arc for our real-life character. At some point, this film had a very clear narrative thrust and focused around a very interesting time in the singer’s life, that could have crafted a film which conveyed its star as anything else than just a god. However, what we have now feels less like a movie, and more of an advertisement, a PR stunt to try and save the public image of its pop singer. It is bound to make a big splash at the box office, but besides some great music, a solid direction and a great central performance, it feels empty and hollow of any actual life.

  • Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Review

    Natalie Grace in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

    The Mummy is an outlier in the Universal Monsters brand, with all the monsters being reinvented consistently but usually in the same basic genre conventions. Horror is the common home for these monsters, and only some entries deviate from that genre. However, The Mummy stands as a franchise where each entry completely reinvents the wheel and becomes something incredibly different. The original Universal Monsters era focuses on horror, with gothic backdrops mixing with the archaeology angle, and completely leaving the desert setting by the final entries. Hammer horror brought the franchise back between 1959 and 1971, the only time the reboot matched the original in horror conventions, and by the time they brought the franchise back in 1999, it birthed a new life for itself as an action-adventure franchise. Starring Brendan Fraser, and easily the most popular era in the franchise, the films became Indiana Jones-style swashbuckling adventure films, with minimal horror moments, with three entries mixing out the horror for a focus on special effects, comedy and a central romance. The third film would become a critical dud, and following an animated spin-off series and a spin-off trilogy focused on original character, The Scorpion King, it came time to reinvent again in the 2010s. This saw another massive swing, as Universal rebirthed the franchise as the starter of a Cinematic Universe, the Dark Universe where the classic horror characters would become almost-superheroes. Outside of a successful box-office run-in China, the Tom Cruise-starring special effects blockbuster was a critical and commercial dud and destroyed the Dark Universe before it could even take-off, leading to all follow-ups being cancelled instantly. Now, we have arrived to 2026, and its time for Warner Bros and Blumhouse Productions to attempt another version of The Mummy, this time with director Lee Cronin attached.

    Cronin got his start with the 2019 A24 feature film, The Hole in the Ground, but would gain massive success after directing the newest entry in the Evil Dead franchise, 2023’s Evil Dead Rise. Originally conceived as a streaming exclusive, the film got a larger theatrical release and became a box office success. Approached by producer James Wan, and offered his next project, here we come to Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. The production of this film has been at-times more interesting than the actual movie, from the troubled test screenings, the internet rumour that Warner Bros were looking to bury the film and release it under a new name as The Resurrected, and the choice to include Cronin’s name in the title to differentiate it from the recently announced fourth entry in the Brendan Fraser-starring The Mummy franchise which will hit theatres next year. It is a long-troubled road, but the film is finally on the big screen. The film follows a family who lose their daughter while on a work-trip in Cairo, only to be reunited with the daughter eight years later. Found in a sarcophagus, the mummified daughter comes back changed and wreaks havoc on her family.

    Veronica Falcon in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

    The biggest problem that faces this version of The Mummy, which transforms the franchise into a modern horror gore-fest, is that it’s a hodgepodge of ideas that have done better in other films. It is essentially a remake of the Exorcist and then becomes a full-blown Evil Dead movie in its third act. Cronin turned down making a sequel to his smash-hit Evil Dead Rise to do this film, and what he has essentially done is trade out one Evil Dead film for another. Evil Dead Rise worked because it embraced the franchise’s focus on humour, riding the line perfectly as a horror-comedy, but this film attempts to do the same, but feels more like a parody film. There are some comedic moments, but the film takes itself incredibly seriously and takes all its ridiculous plot beats as emotional moments that it’s hard to judge if the comedic is on purpose.

    The times when the Cronin of Evil Dead Rise shines through is when the film is at its best, the gore effects are intense and exhilarating, and the third act becomes a completely different film which makes the previous two acts feel like a chore for a better film. Cronin’s directing style is also stylish and impressive, he loves slanted angles and long-take pull back shots, he feels like an Evil Dead director. There is a massive Sam Raimi-feel to the entire film, it is just a massive shame that the film’s colour grading is so terrible at times. For a film that looks so cinematic and filled with detail, the colours are moody and grey in a way that even a horror movie should not be, it is hard to see anything, and even the daylight scenes look too moody. It is a modern problem for the entire Hollywood blockbuster, and it plagues this film increasingly. It plagues many films, but when there is an interesting narrative, it is easy to overlook these faults, but here, that’s just not the case.

    Cronin’s script is messy in various ways, from the character-writing, the dialogue and especially the way the movie conveys its central mystery. The film was marketed under the mystery of what happened to Katie, and besides the title of the film obviously giving it away, and the film answers this question in its opening couple of minutes. However, the film still treats it as a mystery, and over-explains the mystery in the third act, when the characters finally learn, but the audience already knows and it feels like superfluous information. The film’s characters are also just incredibly irritating; Cronin seems to understand horror tropes more than anyone and is using each of them as a ticking box. Dumb character decisions are a staple of horror cinema, they complained about consistently in audience discourse, but they exist so a story can continue, no horror film would happen without some characters being dumb.

    This film takes it to the next level however, each character feel like they share a single brain cell, and the parent’s over-the-top want to help their daughter and their belief there is nothing wrong with her is laughable throughout. The film mixes the daughter doing the most heinous acts, with the parents insisting to a comedic degree that she is fine, it would feel on purpose on something like Scary Movie, but the movie is attempting to have an emotional crux of its narrative, so it feels laughable in all the wrong ways. It does not help as well that the central characters are not given anything to do, and the very little characterisation they have been given is eyerolling at best. Jack Reynor and Laia Costa give very unconvincing performances as the parents of the family, but the question is really if it is down to themselves or the half-baked script, they have been given. Natalie Grace does a splendid job as the possessed Katie, and Billie Roy is very good as the family’s youngest child, Maud, but the possessed nature of the film just comes across as an attempt to just do the Exorcist again. Cronin has described the film as having an influence by Se7en, and that comes from a side-story featuring May Calamawy as a detective, looking for what really happened to Katie. It is easily the most entertaining part of the film, with a compelling shoot-out sequence, but it feels unnecessary, when the mystery is obvious and it is just conveying information that the audience already knows. It could have easily been extracted from the film to make more time for the family drama, or to develop the emotional ending of the film that never feels earned. The film is way too long, sitting a little over two-hours, without needing to be that long.

    Natalie Grace in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

    The Mummy is a strange case; it is a film that it feels like it barely wants to be what the title is advertising. Any staples of the franchise, from tomb-raiding to an actual mummified corpse, is all thrown out for a generic possession film. It is a poor attempt to mix the possession angle of The Exorcist, the family grief drama of Hereditary, and then becomes a comedy in its finale as a homage to the Evil Dead. It’s a movie where every idea has been done better somewhere else, where it relies on so many generic tropes to tell its story. The characters are unengaging and deliver groan-inducing dialogue in every sequence, making the only rewarding part of the experience the excellent direction and the great gore. The third act is delightfully absurd, but to get there, you must drift through a horrendous first two acts.

  • The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review

    Video game movies seem to be a hot commodity in Hollywood these days, with so many games being translated to the big and small screen, from HBO’S The Last of Us adaptation, Tom Holland starring in Uncharted, to the now trilogy of Sonic the Hedgehog movies. With the clear downtrend in the superhero genre, this seems to be the new trend, and it’s a certified way to make money, with movies like A Minecraft Movie making close to a billion dollars, even with a very lukewarm word of mouth. These movies really seem critic proof, people are fans of these properties and will come out in droves to see them adapted. Nintendo, easily the biggest video game company on the planet, would not be expected to so quickly join this trend, especially with how protective they are of their intellectual property. Nintendo already attempted to go to the big screen in 1993, with a live action take on the Super Mario Brothers, a film which seemed to burn them for a long time about ever putting their properties back on the big screen. The film was a commercial and critical failure, and remains a laughingstock by its cast and crew, becoming a cult classic by the modern day.

    Fans would be surprised then when a new take on the beloved Nintendo property would be announced in 2020, a animated film from Despicable Me creators, Illumination, and would be further surprised when the cast become a major online discussing point, from Chris Pratt as the lead character, to Jack Black as super villain Bowser, to Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong. These casting choices would become memes, and would cause genuine internet discourse, but when the film came to release, these critiques were for nothing, as the film generated over a billion dollars and became the second highest grossing film of the year. A beautifully animated film but one devoid of anything substantial outside of making references to the games themselves, the film seemed created as a reference machine, an easter egg hunt for characters you recognise, leaving behind many typical narrative or characterisation elements that you would need in a film. The success however clearly led to renewed interest in Nintendo crafting big screen content, with a live action Legend of Zelda being in production, and Illumination’s Mario sequel hitting the big screen this week.

    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, based on the game that it shares a title with and its sequel, picks up after the events of the previous film. Mario and Luigi are now protectors of the Mushroom Kingdom, and Bowser is imprisoned and attempting to make amends. However, the two brothers, Princess Peach and Toad must go on a new adventure into outer space to save the intergalactic princess Rosalina. The princess has been imprisoned by Bowser Jr, who seeks to free his father and help him take over the universe. Along the way, the characters will run into various other references that the previous film did not manage to get to.

    In a similar way to the first film, the movie’s focus is the constant iconography it can throw in your face, the unrelenting number of cameos and references to every game in the franchise could be fun for the fans, but for anyone else, it is exhausting. The first film however was an origin story and had the smallest semblance of a narrative going on, with at least a hero’s journey for its title character. This time around, there is a narrative to hinge references on, but no character goes for an arc, there is very little time for any interesting plot, it essentially exists to act as a rollercoaster, travelling from one reference to the next. The characters in this movie do not feel like actual characters, each element feels so committee-managed, and like that Nintendo committee feels scared to even give its most famous characters some sort of flaws. Mario goes through no character arc in this film, he begins and ends the film the same, it is a video game movie at the end of the day, but when translating from one medium to another, you would expect at least plot-less games like the earliest Mario games to be translated into a actual narrative for a big-budget feature.

    The main problem with the narrative comes from how incredibly fast-paced the movie is, at slightly over 90 minutes, the film does not allow its characters or audience to breathe for one second. It feels like a film designed for the TikTok audience age, moving at a blistering pace to keep the audience’s attention, and throwing enough new at the audience in each scene to further keep that attention. This short-runtime and fast pace however leave every character somehow feeling lost in their own film, Mario feels like a secondary character in his own film, you could probably count on two hands the number of lines the character says across the film. There are so many characters running around that there is no focus given to any of them, and attempts at character arcs fall flat because of how fast they are resolved. Bowser attempts to redeem myself, and then falls back into villainy across two scenes, with his turn back to the dark side feel laughable how quickly it happens.

    Casting celebrity voices as these characters was a massive mode of contention when the first film was announced, with mostly all the cast delivering solid performances across that initial feature. Falling back into the cameo-fest notion, the casting of various new characters was the focus of the marketing of this film, with some of these castings really showcasing the marketing machine that Nintendo is. The announcement of Glen Powell portraying Star Fox, a Nintendo character outside of the Mario Universe, felt like a strange announcement when it’s a late-game cameo in the movie. The knowledge however that Nintendo is supposedly creating a new Star Fox game and setting up a shared Nintendo universe, which could lead to a Super Smash Bros movie, makes the film’s choice to stop halfway through to include the character feel incredibly obvious. Powell is good in the role however, but he feels out of place, and feels more like an IP mine in hopes of also getting his own standalone film.

    The rest of the new cast are very solid, Donald Glover makes noises as Yoshi, and the character will walk away being one of the highlights of the movie. Benny Safdie is surprisingly great as new villain Bowser Jr, a winy and obnoxious performance as a petulant child, it really works. Brie Larson feels wasted as Princess Rosalina, a character central to the narrative but only in the characters attempting to save her. Returning actors Charlie Day and Keegan Michael Key deliver good performances as Luigi and Toad, feeling like the actors who are easily fitted to their roles the most. Jack Black, who walked away with a hilarious song and a memorable performance last time, walks away feeling from this with a very wok-man like performance as Bowser, there is nothing really to say about his performance. Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor Joy are really the weakest parts of the cast, as the main characters Mario and Peach, they feel asleep behind the wheel voice-acting wise and clearly not interested in the material. You cannot help but feel bad for them though, when they are acting out such uninteresting material, where the movie essentially allows them the privilege to not even try.

    It is all a massive shame as well however, because the animation is truly excellent, this is the best-looking Illumination movie ever made, and all the visual noise of references still manages to look pretty. The worlds look fleshed out and nice, and the movie does manage to be fun because of so. It is a film that will entertain its target demographic of children and super-fans of the franchise, but it does not offer much else outside of that. The comedy misses more than it hits, and the best parts of it feel like the bizarre casting choices that led up to its release. The first film was not the best but at least had a barebones plot for a general audience to latch onto, this one is just visual noise designed to mine as much IP as possible from this property. There are certainly worse ways to spend 90 minutes, but god only knows how much worse the next one could possibly get

  • Two-For-One: They Will Kill You and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come Review

    Currently in cinemas are two films that could be easily mistaken for each other, with Radio Silence’s follow-up to their breakout hit Ready Or Not releasing last week, and They Will Kill You starring Zazie Beetz also opening in a close time. Both films follow characters being hunted by rich socialites in a game of sport or a game of life and death, with a supernatural twist, focusing on a working class versus upper class dynamic. The differences come down to setting, but there mix of horror, thriller and comedy makes them feel like sister-films, it is not hard to see They Will Kill You being inspired by Radio Silence’s original Ready or Not. With how similar these films are, it is only appropriate to tackle a review of these films in one article, appraising them for their similarities and differences.

    They Will Kill You

    Starting with the original feature, They Will Kill You follows an ex-convict who starts working as a housekeeper at a mysterious New York high-rise. She soon realises she has applied to a job run by a community of rich socialites who are involved in a series of disappearances. The biggest problem of this film is how derivate it is, after a central twist which was hidden in the marketing, the film falls back into the common conventions of these survival action-horrors, and the narrative becomes incredibly predictable. After this initial supernatural twist, which the marketing hid by showcasing most of the first act as the main footage in those trailers, the film enters a great rhythm that gets slowed down heavily until an utterly bizarre third act. Besides it’s obvious inspiration from Ready or Not, the film very clearly holds its influences from films like Evil Dead, The Raid and John Wick very earnestly, as its bloody action feels stylized in a way that recreates the video-gamey decisions made behind the camera for the newest John Wick feature.

    Inspirations from Tarantino also appear commonly, namely in the very first action sequence which feels very Kill Bill-Esque. The action is easily one of the highlights of the film, playing every action beat so comedically and with so much stylisation behind the camera that you can very easily forgive some of the pitfalls the movie falls through. Director Kirill Sokolov has made a career for making darkly comedic action films, and he clearly knows his way around a camera, there are so many dynamic camera movements here that make the action feel alive and fluid, tracking shots are a highlight of this very feature. There are some visual effects that feel out of place in the carnage, but it strangely gives the film a campy effect, something that makes it feel very rooted in tone to Evil Dead 2. The action is bloody and violent, with some excellent kills, and a great final sequence which is lit by inflamed fire axe, and the film delivers a great balance between serious gore with comedic sequences featuring those kills. The films’ supernatural twist allows for some hilarious moments where the insanity of the plot becomes a goldmine for physical comedy. A great score from Carlos Rafael Rivera and a great use of hip-hop backing track gives the action some great rhythm and movement.

    It is the characters which really hold this film back from being anything other than solid. These horror-action films can really be defined by how memorable its group of characters are, from its protagonist to the group of villains that are designed to either be comedic foils or beyond evil and designed to make you want them to be killed. The villains here are so surface level and undeveloped that an audience will feel nothing when their narrative is wrapped up. They exist to hunt our protagonist and that is it, the only one who is given anything to do is Patricia Arquette’s lead villain. Arquette seems to be playing the same character she plays in Severance, with an inconsistent accent and a backstory which feels like an afterthought with how very little it gets brought up.

    Her connection to another character feels surface-level and shows that such a brisky 90-minute film could have maybe done with an extra ten minutes of runtime to develop some of the background characters. Zazie Beetz is really the star of the film and is holding the entire narrative on her back. She has proven herself as an action star starring as Marvel superhero Domino in Deadpool 2, and she continues to impress as a leading woman here. She is burdened by a superfluous family plot, which feels so tropey for these types of films, that even Ready or Not 2 does the same thing and feels so barebones. Beetz manages to bring out some level of emotion from that plot, but it all feels a little empty when you must look at anything over than the action and gore

    Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

    Moving onto the sequel to the inspiration for They Will Kill You. The original Ready or Not was a surprise hit when it came out in 2019, a fun and refreshing survival film where a woman must survive until dawn while being hunted by her new in-laws on the night of her wedding. The movie skyrocketed the directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and their production company Radio Silence into major success, as they were instantly given the opportunity to make two Scream movies, and their upcoming project is a new sequel to Brendan Fraser’s Mummy franchise. A sequel to their breakout hit would have been the obvious next step along the way, and here we have it. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up instantly after their original feature, as Samara Weaving’s Grace is recovering from surviving the brutal game of hide and seek that led to the death of her entire new family. Surviving the game has triggered a power-play with the elite families that run the games, leading them to use Grace in a new game, where she must protect her sister in a familiar situation.

    That is easily the biggest problem with this sequel, everything feels very familiar. It feels like a typical 80s or 90s sequel, a Ghostbusters 2 or Beverly Hills Cop 2, where they are essentially the same films beat for beat as the original, just with new villains. The only big difference is their attempts to go bigger, and Ready or Not 2 does go bigger. It benefits from the fact that the supernatural elements are out of the bag now, they were a closing twist in the original, but now the film gets to run with that supernatural angle, and it allows for some very compelling visuals and kills. The main way however that the film decides to go bigger is through both the multiple families hunting the protagonists, and through the addition of Grace’s sister, meaning there is two being hunted this time rather than just one.

    The addition of multiple families’ facilities the same plot being laid out, just with more characters now hunting than just one family, but the film does do something that They Will Kill You failed to do, make its villains interesting and compelling. The various families all have interesting quirks and play off each other in compelling ways, all out for themselves, whether it makes them scary or pathetic, leading to tension and comedy. Elijah Wood plays a fun role as the lawyer for each family, a man just concerned with the game and nothing else, and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy deliver great performances as the film’s central antagonists. Hatosy delivers a very chilling performance in the final act, but a performance that isn’t scared to lean into zaniness at the same time.

    Kathryn Newton plays Grace’s sister, Faith, as the film develops Grace more as an estranged sister. Newton and Weaving have great chemistry, but their arguing and cliché family relationship can get tedious after a while. It feels like a plot thread in They Will Kill You, but this film gives more time to develop that relationship, even if does feel incredibly cliché. Weaving continues to shine as a scream-queen, and you cannot help but enjoy her banshee-like scream, and her commitment to being covered in fake blood and taking part in ballsy action sequences. The film is more comedy focused than its predecessor, relying a lot more on the comedic aspects of the bloody action, and the comedic twinge allows it to standout. The editing in this is immaculate, with great comedic timing throughout, and the action is consistent throughout. It loses the claustrophobic nature of the original film’s setting, but that might be a good trade-out for a sequel with double the laughs, a bigger body count, more blood and a bigger cast of characters to work with. It will never hold a candle to the original, but Ready or Not 2 is still a very good time