Don't believe the haters. Enormous fun from start to finish (that's season one, folks. We need a season 2 please, Disney+). It might start with a bit of a slow burn, but then the quest kicks in and it really picks up speed. With this set of characters played by such a hugely engaging, charismatic cast, the journey goes from set piece to set piece, but you never quite know if things are going to pan out, not with so many threats and monstrous encounters along the way. It's a traditional fantastical, magical adventure, albeit with plenty of laughs and imaginative tangents - I think my favourite is the Shattered Sea, a mudscape so vast it literally stretches to the edge of the world. Except, that's not the end of the world, oh no. Watch it and see.
Reviews
15 Reviews
The Lost Daughter
(2021)
A Disappointment - Not The Triumph Mainstream Media Would Have You Believe
2 January 2022
This film is reaching for richly textured, reflective European-styled ambiguity, a portrait of different states and dynamics of a modern female and motherhood. Instead it's a meandering exercise in "Look how clever I am." The most intriguing scene comes early and shows an entitled American family trying to take over a beach, after which you really hope it's going somewhere, but that's the high point. The rest asks you to appreciate the director's artfulness and subtlety, but why? For what? There's nothing fascinating or psychologically involving about any of these depthless, selfish characters. Olivia Colman is always great (as are all the players here - it's a superb cast) but what waste asking them to portray a group of people not worth telling a story about. Frustrating and disappointing.
The Matrix Resurrections
(I) (2021)
The Matrix Regurgitations
27 December 2021
Starts well with some overt meta-observations of the Hollywood machine's tendency / necessity to make sequels no-one wants. That lasts maybe 20 minutes, after which it abandons any such audacity or self-aware capitalist commentary and descends into a reheated, deflated blancmange of remixed moments from the earlier three films. Sure, it looks cool, but there's absolutely nothing new on offer and it only succeeds in making everyone involved look foolish. Neil Patrick Harris is a terrible villain, too. This doesn't diminish the original film's status as a classic, but what a shame it wasn't suprising in any way and just proved the point the first few scenes make.
The Last Nazi
(I) (2019)
Quite Unbelievably Terrible and Not in a So-Bad-It's-Good Way
27 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This might be the WORST. FILM. I'VE. EVER. SEEN. At first my wife and I thought that it had to be a vanity project of some kind, because we thought there was no way a film studio would ever greenlight a movie as poor as this. That said, it has a great premise - and an excellent trailer - that enticed us to part with money to watch it on a streaming service - but please, unwary film lover, don't be fooled like we were.
The basis of the story is that Grandma is an unrepentant Nazi, a "true German" who worked as a nurse at Auschwitz and now unburdens herself, at the age of 92 upon her grandchildren and extended family who have always thought they were Jewish. (She faked an identity as a Jewish refugee while fleeing Europe after WW2.) They take their religion and traditions extremely seriously, to the point of smugness, so when of course "Nana" very suddenly and without any sense of build or tension whatsoever begins to take apart their sense of identity and worldview, you'd think there'd be drama. The most extraordinary thing about this film is that there is no drama. It's structured as a series of very heavy-handed diatribes strung together in lengthy scene after very lengthy scene - of people talking. Just talking. And, more talking - articulate though much of it is, none of it is credible in terms of characters' emotional reactions, none of it psychologically enthralling in the way you might expect such apocalyptic disclosures to be. It's boring.
Grandma's confessions should be revelatory, but they're not even banal (in the sense of all evil being so), they're just dull. They should elicit some kind of soul-searching in her great-grandchildren, but these characters are so stiff they look at best mildly perturbed as they postulate and outline ways they might integrate this new information about their background(s) into their lives. Rebecca Shull as Nana radiates a kind of gleeful malignance in her performance and perhaps if the film were structured better or edited with some verve or sense of timing, it might've given it more of a kick. Unfortunately, good as she is, the film's reliance on Shull as dramatic motor just doesn't work.
The ideas the story attempts to express might've worked far better as a short story or novella; as a movie script it's clumsy and moribund (at best) and is not helped by shallow characterisation, amateurish, lifeless direction and editing that has nowhere to go except linger on this sorry bunch of tedious conversationalists. This film lacks even the basic rudiments of good dramatic storytelling.
Perhaps that's not the point - I suspect it thinks it's making no concessions to its audience - but therein lies its artlessness. You can't rely on your audience's moral persuasions to make a movie work and besides, any director worth their salt should take steps to keep their audience engaged and awake. Don't give this movie your money, and if you find it somewhere for free, please remember you'll never get the valuable minutes of your life back that you spend watching it. There is no earthshaking theatre or battle of morals or wills here. This film is just dreary, and rendering the potential of a story like this to pointlessness is the only war crime you'll find here.
PS We complained to the streaming service that the trailer was completely unrepresentative of the film we saw and they refunded us.
The basis of the story is that Grandma is an unrepentant Nazi, a "true German" who worked as a nurse at Auschwitz and now unburdens herself, at the age of 92 upon her grandchildren and extended family who have always thought they were Jewish. (She faked an identity as a Jewish refugee while fleeing Europe after WW2.) They take their religion and traditions extremely seriously, to the point of smugness, so when of course "Nana" very suddenly and without any sense of build or tension whatsoever begins to take apart their sense of identity and worldview, you'd think there'd be drama. The most extraordinary thing about this film is that there is no drama. It's structured as a series of very heavy-handed diatribes strung together in lengthy scene after very lengthy scene - of people talking. Just talking. And, more talking - articulate though much of it is, none of it is credible in terms of characters' emotional reactions, none of it psychologically enthralling in the way you might expect such apocalyptic disclosures to be. It's boring.
Grandma's confessions should be revelatory, but they're not even banal (in the sense of all evil being so), they're just dull. They should elicit some kind of soul-searching in her great-grandchildren, but these characters are so stiff they look at best mildly perturbed as they postulate and outline ways they might integrate this new information about their background(s) into their lives. Rebecca Shull as Nana radiates a kind of gleeful malignance in her performance and perhaps if the film were structured better or edited with some verve or sense of timing, it might've given it more of a kick. Unfortunately, good as she is, the film's reliance on Shull as dramatic motor just doesn't work.
The ideas the story attempts to express might've worked far better as a short story or novella; as a movie script it's clumsy and moribund (at best) and is not helped by shallow characterisation, amateurish, lifeless direction and editing that has nowhere to go except linger on this sorry bunch of tedious conversationalists. This film lacks even the basic rudiments of good dramatic storytelling.
Perhaps that's not the point - I suspect it thinks it's making no concessions to its audience - but therein lies its artlessness. You can't rely on your audience's moral persuasions to make a movie work and besides, any director worth their salt should take steps to keep their audience engaged and awake. Don't give this movie your money, and if you find it somewhere for free, please remember you'll never get the valuable minutes of your life back that you spend watching it. There is no earthshaking theatre or battle of morals or wills here. This film is just dreary, and rendering the potential of a story like this to pointlessness is the only war crime you'll find here.
PS We complained to the streaming service that the trailer was completely unrepresentative of the film we saw and they refunded us.
Six Minutes to Midnight
(2020)
Avoid!
10 May 2021
Inept pseudo spy thriller - or coming-of-age melodrama for sweet Nazi girls? Starts well but runs into some serious narrative problems too early and never recovers. Unintentionally hilarious chase scenes and clunky editing contribute to the sense of it all going off the rails, not helped by a weirdly airless performance from a (usually great) Eddie Izzard. Izzard is wildly miscast in the lead role here - evidence, perhaps, that it's a vanity project. Beautiful cinematography, great production design and big names like Dench and Broadbent can't save this misshapen mess.
I'm Your Woman
(2020)
Stylish, Nuanced Character Drama-cum-Thriller
19 December 2020
The negative reviews here indicate that some viewers were perhaps expecting an action movie or straight crime thriller. This film isn't that (not until the final act, anyway). It's a nuanced character piece that begins in the guise of a genre flick and evolves into something more, and it's that sleight-of-hand and refusal to do the usual thing that makes it so compelling for an open-minded viewer. Much happens "offstage" - we're as in the dark as our lead character, Rachel Brosnahan's expressively confused Jean, from whose POV the story advances. Marsha Stephanie Blake is superb as her counterpart-cum-mentor Teri, as is Arinze Kene as the stoic, enigmatic Cal. The cast as a whole is absolutely terrific, the direction and cinematography supremely stylish. Not a shoot-'em-up then; much more of a slow-burn that develops into an unfolding portrait of two women navigating a world they're both far too good for.
Misbehaviour
(2020)
Hugely Enjoyable
7 September 2020
Genuinely funny, wry, smart and charming comedy/drama about a significant moment in the UK women's lib movement, when feminists stormed the stage of the 1970 Miss World competition. The resulting media fallout put the feminist movement on the map and while I'm not quite old enough to remember that incident, I do remember watching this beauty pageant later in the 70s, which was shown on primetime TV with nary a morsel of self-awareness as to the "standards" it promoted. That's the backdrop - it's not dissected as such; just set up to convey a broad sense of what life was like for British women fighting for society's enlightenment (and lasting thank yous to them for doing so - it's an ongoing battle, as the film itself notes). There are also glimpses into the lives of the international contestants, a group headed by Gugu Mbatha-Raw who once again proves she's an actor of subtlety, charisma and great grace. Jessie Buckley and Kiera Knightly create characters grounded in different strata of the class system - as unalike each other as it was possible to be back then, and totally believable in their small frictions, uncertain friendship and eventual unity. I haven't even mentioned the Bob Hope subplot (Greg Kinnear capturing grotesque smarm by the bucketload; Lesley Manville playing his long-suffering wife)... the cast are uniformly excellent.
A hugely enjoyable movie.
A hugely enjoyable movie.
The Etruscan Smile
(2018)
Cox is Great in a Terrible Cliche of a Movie
7 September 2020
I'll watch anything that Brian Cox is in, which is how we came to view this cliched, platitudinous collection of hackneyed scenes that calls itself a film. It's shot well and has a great cast - Thora Birch, Peter Coyote, Rosanna Arquette and numerous others in support of the great man Cox as cantankerous old Scottish crofter Rory; JJ Feild playing his doe-eyed son Ian. Rory is an Outer Hebridean as reimagined by and viewed through a Hollywood lens - gruff and unforgiving, on first impression but soon the whole of San Francisco is in thrall to his magical, twinkly-eyed wisdom and truth telling. There's a smidgeon of enjoyment to be garnered from watching this fine cast do their thing, but the script is just a series of hoary old cliches strung together one after the other, so our chief enjoyment sprang from predicting what the next rose-tinged moment pressed forth from the cookie-cutter plot machine would be. The good cinematography and production values ratchet it up a notch beyond yer average Hallmark TV movie, to which vapid feelgood "family values" genre this movie most definitely belongs. Cox, and the entire cast, are better than this watery, dire, predictable stuff, but we all gotta pay the rent, eh?
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
(2017)
No Clothes
24 May 2020
Mannered, unnaturalistic dialogue which is delivered in a particularly precise style, flat, lighting, a documentarian's approach to the look of the production and editing, an oblique, metaphorical tone, a collection of consummate actors - it all should add up to something, but I came away from this bleak story utterly unmoved.
It's not bombastic or showy, but there's something deeply pretentious about it. Pretentiousness is not a bad thing in and of itself, especially if it's an inclination to reach for new grammar, new ways of telling stories. But the whole effect here is tedium; it's doesn't feel new or bold. I have no real clue or insight into what it was about or why anyone concerned had bothered to make this film and ultimately, watching it felt like a waste of time. A real case of the emperor wearing no clothes - not for the faint-hearted.
It's not bombastic or showy, but there's something deeply pretentious about it. Pretentiousness is not a bad thing in and of itself, especially if it's an inclination to reach for new grammar, new ways of telling stories. But the whole effect here is tedium; it's doesn't feel new or bold. I have no real clue or insight into what it was about or why anyone concerned had bothered to make this film and ultimately, watching it felt like a waste of time. A real case of the emperor wearing no clothes - not for the faint-hearted.
The Competition
(2016)
Unfocused, Rambling, Tedious
9 May 2020
We watched this because it's got a great trailer and promises insight into the processes of how one of the most prestigious film schools in the world picks its students. Unfortunately, what you get is something that's slung together in an editing suite with little-to-no coherence other than a boringly linear track that doesn't follow any one would-be student or staff member, so it's impossible to feel genuinely engaged. This lack of structure or context might be a stylistic choice - I'm all for footage being allowed to tell its own story without any narrative tricksiness - and "raw" it is. However, there's barely any overall through-line, no cutaways or direct interviews to give greater depth to any of the situations or characters involved. Surely the purpose of a documentary is to lift the lid on and illuminate processes that might seem arcane to an outside observer, not make them more opaque? There is a payoff of sorts, if you're not asleep by the end of it, but we were left wondering how it is possible to make a documentary about a French film school so incredibly dull.
The Gentlemen
(2019)
Latest Ritchieflick is half-amusing SHOCK. (We're being generous)
13 April 2020
Watching Matthew McConaughey attempting to keep up with the talent in this latest Ritchieflick (the director who has to have his own sub-genre) is entertaining in itself. McConaughey mistakenly brings his usual earnest acting style to a world that's as real a depiction of the Brit underworld as The Magic Roundabout is of a midsummer's fete in The Wicker Man.
As usual, Guy has bought in top artistes such as Hugh Grant, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Jeremy Strong and similar to convey the deeply wrought characters in his latest Carry-On-Gangsta fairy tale.
Thing is, there's no such thing as a good or bad Ritchieflick - you can't really compare him to other filmmakers because, as previously noted, he's all his own thing. You can tell he wants to be a Tarantino or Scorsese, but unlike those auteurs, he swims in a rather more shallow pool of human behaviour, that inhabited by a kind of watery species of cliche. There are so, so many, but here's an example: Ritchie graciously takes the time to have Farrell's character mansplain certain racist terms for the viewer, so if you happen to be black and someone calls you a black c***, there's no need to feel offended. Glad that's sorted then. Has anyone told the rest of the world?
Honestly? It's a fun hatewatch, silly without ever being wretched or (god forbid) too serious, but there are so many other filmmakers out there who really do deserve your attention and hard-earned. Taken on its own terms, it's the usual hilariously puerile piece of dog s#!*% - well put together and turned out, like a spotty teen wearing his dad's expensive suit and attempting to fill it out by puffing up his chest. Except this teen will likely never grow up - he'll just carry on making this kind of stunted fare. He thinks it's stylish, and maybe it is, if someone else is doing it. There does indeed come a point Guy, when the young do succeed the old, but you really have to want to grow up first.
As usual, Guy has bought in top artistes such as Hugh Grant, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Jeremy Strong and similar to convey the deeply wrought characters in his latest Carry-On-Gangsta fairy tale.
Thing is, there's no such thing as a good or bad Ritchieflick - you can't really compare him to other filmmakers because, as previously noted, he's all his own thing. You can tell he wants to be a Tarantino or Scorsese, but unlike those auteurs, he swims in a rather more shallow pool of human behaviour, that inhabited by a kind of watery species of cliche. There are so, so many, but here's an example: Ritchie graciously takes the time to have Farrell's character mansplain certain racist terms for the viewer, so if you happen to be black and someone calls you a black c***, there's no need to feel offended. Glad that's sorted then. Has anyone told the rest of the world?
Honestly? It's a fun hatewatch, silly without ever being wretched or (god forbid) too serious, but there are so many other filmmakers out there who really do deserve your attention and hard-earned. Taken on its own terms, it's the usual hilariously puerile piece of dog s#!*% - well put together and turned out, like a spotty teen wearing his dad's expensive suit and attempting to fill it out by puffing up his chest. Except this teen will likely never grow up - he'll just carry on making this kind of stunted fare. He thinks it's stylish, and maybe it is, if someone else is doing it. There does indeed come a point Guy, when the young do succeed the old, but you really have to want to grow up first.
Vivarium
(2019)
Avoid - don't waste your time
12 April 2020
Tries to be something like an old Twilight Zone, Outer Limits or Tales of the Unexpected, with none of the mystery, atmosphere, intelligence or humour of those genuinely brilliant and groundbreaking anthology shows. So bad, you can't even hate-watch it. What made actors as good as Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots get involved with this tediously guessable cul-de-sac of a story? Appalling.
The Kindness of Strangers
(2019)
Underrated and Perhaps MIsunderstood
14 March 2020
The understated quality of this movie might be why it hasn't received better reviews. I don't think it means to be a treatise on homelessness or a precise rendition of the conditions thereof (an assumption I've seen some high profile critics make). That's a fate that befalls one of the characters and her two children, part of an ensemble whose interlinked stories together make a case for empathy and impulsive altruism being among the most admirable aspects of human nature.
Homelessness is one thematic layer to a story that investigates kindness as the social glue that matters most and is possibly also the most underrated of dispositions or inclinations, often being seen as weak or oversensitive. Personally, I found it a lovely film, quite moving in places with its acknowledgment that, without kindness and the generosity of strangers, society would fall apart.
Homelessness is one thematic layer to a story that investigates kindness as the social glue that matters most and is possibly also the most underrated of dispositions or inclinations, often being seen as weak or oversensitive. Personally, I found it a lovely film, quite moving in places with its acknowledgment that, without kindness and the generosity of strangers, society would fall apart.
The Farewell
(I) (2019)
Funny But Heartbreaking
16 February 2020
The Farewell is one of the best movies about family that I've ever seen - especially family and immigration, family stretched over great distances, both geographical and generational. Beautiful performances - nuanced, funny and heartbreaking too.
Sweetheart
(I) (2019)
Mildly Diverting Horror/Castaway Mash-Up
8 February 2020
Warning: Spoilers
I like a bit of schlock, and this film certainly qualifies. It begins well, teasing a threat that takes a while to assume a tangible shape. Then it makes the fatal error of showing too much of the monster - at which point your ability to suspend disbelief begins to fail, so it doesn't manage to sustain the early promise and sense of tension. That said, it's stylishly shot and put together and is a good laugh and an enjoyable way to waste a an hour and twenty minutes. Kiersey Clemons as the titular Sweetheart is extremely good, really selling her character's desparation and fear.
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