The 5 Best Movies of 2019 that Star Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage is one the greatest actors working today; a man with a unique and eccentric acting style that leads to performances that are always, at the very least, memorable, and, at the best of times, transcendent. However, ever since some, shall we say, "irresponsible" investments (although I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't also get an actual dinosaur skull or a copy of the first Superman comic if I could) the man has been working as an actor almost non-stop to pay off his debts, acting in at least five films every year for the last few years, and starring in a total of six* in 2019. This has led to him acting in a lot of things that might charitably be called "films".

*Note: Colour Out of Space isn't out in Australia yet and actually looks like an excellent flick, so I can't really talk about it, which is a shame, because it has such a low bar to clear in order to become the best Nicolas Cage film of 2019.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of any of these, it's because they're all straight-to-VOD B-grade schlock, and none of them are particularly good. Often the most these types of films can offer is a memorable enough Cage performance to end up on silly lists like this one, so my reactions here are largely going to be based upon how I measure his presence and type of performance in the film; I call it the Cage Rage Gauge.

5. Running with the Devil

Nicolas Cage I can understand, but they somehow roped Laurence Fishburne in to this as well. Each plays a drug runner, but they are two very different people: Cage plays a fastidious chef who supports his family and treats all of his work professionalism, while Fishburne is a perverted drug addict who neglects every aspect of his life, including his daughter. Both men are hired by their boss to escort the next load of cocaine after the last couple have come in light and cut with other drugs, with Cage given the responsibility of figuring out who's responsible, which, surprise surprise, turns out to be Fishburne. During their trek, Fishburne leaves Cage to die, but Cage survives and has Fishburne hunted down, but Cage gets murdered in the end by a DEA agent fed up with the system that perpetuates the war on drugs just because people like Cage are otherwise respectable citizens. That last part doesn't exactly come out of nowhere, but it's just one of many elements in the film that somehow bloat a movie that's only 100 minutes long; I didn't even mention the subplot involving Clifton Collins Jr. as a small time drug farmer, which is itself just the beginning of the journey the drugs take to get from South America to the US. 

It seems like the film tries to include all of this stuff to give a perspective on the war on drugs that looks at the lives of as many people affected by it as possible, going so far as to show every price point of the drugs at each step it takes towards the US, but despite its attempts to give the whole thing a sense of style, calling every character by a title ("The Agent in Charge", "The Cook", "The Man", etc) and trying to give as much importance as possible to the escalating details about the drugs, the film never seems to become in any way interesting. It's somewhat competent and consistent in its direction, but for every cut-throat betrayal and sickening reveal of corruption, it can't quite coalesce in to a engaging experience, beyond its final moment.

Cage Rage Gauge: Abysmal. Cage is barely in half the movie despite being a headliner, and his performance is the most understated on this list. He gets one scene where you'd think he'd have a chance to really cut loose, but he just hisses a few words through clenched teeth and then tries to look intimidating while walking on crutches. Fishburne is much more entertaining here, although calling anything in a movie I fell asleep watching (twice) "entertaining" is a bit of a stretch. 

4. Primal

Cage plays an exotic animal hunter who's managed to captured an extremely rare white jaguar (ironically, the film is produced by Lionsgate), and intends to sell it to the highest bidder, but his trip home is hampered by the inclusion of several military men aboard the same cargo ship, transporting a government assassin who went rogue (played by Kevin Durand). Obviously, the assassin gets out and lets out all the animals, including the jaguar, so Cage has to work with the soldiers to capture both safely. There's also an awkward romance subplot between Cage and the military doctor (Famke Janssen) sent along to help the assassin with his seizures. The romance coaxes Cage towards ostensibly caring more for the animals he captures, which ties back in to the whole "who's really the beast?" thing the film has going on with the parallel between Durand's assassin and the jaguar. The film is oddly sympathetic to Durand's plight, a man made the way he is by a government that wanted to use him as a tool of destruction, but apart from that, the film is, much like Running with the Devil, frightfully boring. It's overall basically ok (for a cheap and derivative B-movie), but despite the more focused story, the film is never particularly engaging, mostly relying on imitating familiar action story beats in order to pretend something exciting is happening. If I hadn't made this list, I would have forgotten about it as soon as I'd finished it. 

Cage Rage Gauge: Pretty Terrible. He's in most of the movie this time, at least, but apart from a couple of over-enunciated words he doesn't offer the sort of expressive performance you'd hope for. Once again, he's outshone by another member of the cast, this time by Kevin Durand's bouncy psychosis, which is the only fun in the film.

3. Kill Chain

It's a story about a (shocker) chain of kills that lead to Cage's hotel one fateful night. An assassin kills another assassin who's then killed by a corrupt cop who steals the assassin's pay but is killed by a jealous madame after giving the pay to his girlfriend, who winds up hiding in Cage's hotel before another fight and then a shootout ensue. It's a convoluted series of tenuously connected stories that serve as an excuse for Cage to go all noir, serving up cheeky one-liners and generally looking broodingly in every direction while the film occasionally gets sexy around him. A more memorable experience than the previous two, this one at least has the decency to revel a little in it's exploitative, B-grade nature.

Cage Rage Gauge: Actually kind of alright. He isn't in enough of the film, and he doesn't have any outbursts, but the film offers a few fun moments, including a pretty decent scenery-chewing monologue and a couple lines of absurdly hilarious dialogue

2. Grand Isle

This one isn't the best movie on the list, in fact it might be the worst, but it's easily the most memorable. A young husband and father named Buddy tells the story of how he ended up in a police station, bloodied and bruised and with the body of another man in his truck. It involves this man, down on his luck and struggling to make ends meat, working for an afternoon for Nicolas Cage, fixing a fence before a hurricane hits the little old town of Grand Isle. Cage is a former Marine, discharged for an injury, and he respects our Buddy for his own service in the Navy, although a few barbs about their respective differences are thrown back and forth. It all seems relatively ok until Cage's wife gets mad at him for forgetting their anniversary, and takes it out on him by hitting on Buddy and taking advantage of the situation once the hurricane sets in and he has to stay the night with them. A few devious turns later and it turns out that they're keeping people in their basement and breeding them because they could never have children of their own, and the dead man in Buddy's truck was one of the men they'd captured.

This movie throws everything at the wall to what will stick, and in the process it's just kind of an insane mess that's so hilarious to watch unfold that you can't help but appreciate the film for how bad it all turns out. There's even a performance by Kelsey Grammer of all people as the small-town detective trying to get to the bottom of the case, who speaks in a Southern drawl that would put Foghorn Leghorn to shame, but the film doesn't even have the genius to put him next to Cage until the very end, in a hostage situation/shootout that sees Cage in his Marine uniform call-out the "system that doesn't give a sh*t about me or my fellow Marines". The confrontation is really limp compared to the sheer insanity that preceded it, and the military angle is too poorly explored to feel like the culmination to anything. 

Cage Rage Gauge: Insane. Cage gets a few choice lines that are hilarious in both writing and delivery ("when was the you time you had your... uh, cock, um, sucked?") and the confrontations between him and his wife are almost funny enough to distract from how terrible everything else is.  

1. A Score to Settle

Don't get me wrong, this movie is as bad as the rest of them, but this film finally seems to understand exactly why an actor like Cage is appealing. A father fresh out of prison meets his son and tries to make up for lost time, but seems torn between that devotion and his lust for revenge. Cage paces himself through a lot of turmoil here, knowing just how quiet to keep in order to make his outbursts feel that much more expressive. What's more is that the rest of the film has this strange, amateurish passion that I can't quite put my finger on, like this was everyone else's first film and they were just happy to work with him. The son is the personification of this; he's kind of awkward and never feels natural when he speaks, but this sort of works in the movie's favour, the strained relationship of the characters masking the performance. Of course, then the movie has to go ruin itself with a nonsense twist that reveals the son was dead the whole time and that Cage has been hallucinating him. Admittedly, this revelation is well foreshadowed, and it leads to the best scene in the movie, but it's also really dumb; there's a scene where Cage goes and saves his son from a drug den, but who is he saving if his son isn't there? It's not enough to have a relatively intriguing juxtaposition between thirst for revenge and the catharsis found in moving on, no, we have to have some insane twist that essentially forces the film to its conclusion and leaves Cage standing as the only decent thing about the film.

Cage Rage Gauge: Perfect. Cage gets to express a full range of emotions here, and does so with a gusto that's so cartoonish it loops right back around to being believable, even despite the film's ridiculous twist. You'll never hear the word "beef" the same again.

So, what did I learn?

I suppose there are some unifying themes between all these movies; each one seems fed up with the system, expressing this through a character that represents a group that's used by it (a DEA agent, an assassin, a Marine, etc.). I was also reminded that you can't cage Cage, you have to let him be free to express himself in the way that feels the most "Cage-y", otherwise his performances are as flat and boring as anyone willing to sell their name for a paycheck. Seriously, if your movie's going to be an otherwise inept or completely forgettable experience, you may as well try to get the most out of what Nicolas Cage can do. A Score to Settle wasn't the best film on this list because it was the most well-made, it was the best because, despite everything else about the movie, Cage was allowed to be Cage.

Review - Ford v Ferrari (2019)

Directed by: James Mangold
Written by: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Jason Keller
Starring: Matt Damon, Christian Bale
IMDb Link

There's a reason the "Classic Underdog Story" is a Classic.

Carroll Shelby (Damon) and Ken Miles (Bale) are two men who don't want to change. Shelby's a former racer whose hypertension means his early retirement in to sales and management. Miles is an extraordinarily talented racer who self-describes as "difficult" with people and whose financial trouble means that he has to give up his passion. Fortunately for them, when Ford needs people to build and race a car that can beat Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Man endurance race, Shelby's clout gets them both noticed and quickly working with a blank check to do what they do best and hope that it's enough. The story also layers in colourful human drama, as every corporate suit with an opinion tries to force the men to compromise their work; they may be good men with a passion for racing, but they are unambiguously working for bad men who want to sell cars, caring more about corporate imagery.

For the most part, the story is exactly as expected at every turn; each twist and turn a staple of the sort of story this movie is trying to tell, from the perfectly timed complications with the vehicle, to the moments when Miles' aforementioned "difficulty" creates problems for him with the suits, while Shelby tries to balance appeasing them and working with Miles' pure racing ideals. Thankfully, this movie is also fantastically put together, so it gets away with playing each and every story beat as it does because it knows why these stories work and why they're worth telling, and it makes the few moments that aren't expected (such as Miles' wife being just as mad as he is in the best way) feel earned and meaningful, like the they couldn't quite fit in to the molds of the tropes so they were left  in because they were genuine. The human drama both on and off the track is so thoroughly well told that it hardly matters if you can see each turn a mile off, and a lot of that has to do with the performances.

Damon is a perfect fit for Shelby, giving a very human performance as he navigates the his own morals through the amorality of the corporate world, and he's just cheeky enough to not be a total straight man. Bale is a bit more animated than Damon, offering a small but noticeable contrast that's reminiscent of some of his best work, a single-minded person expressed through his eccentricities and the bonds he shares with the people he loves: the best scenes are his, from his introduction to quiet moments with his son, to the sheer elation he shares with only himself in the car as he tries to navigate and understand his own emotions. Other characters are one-note but effectively performed, particularly Josh Lucas as Leo Beebe, a smarmy executive who acts as a constant thorn in the sides of Shelby and Miles. the embodiment of the corporate pressure our heroes face, one dimensional but too infuriating to be forgotten.

What's really memorable about the film, between all the human drama that propels the story, is the racing. There's an immersion to it, the way the engines roar electrifies the body and the camera's constant weaving between cars as it tracks Miles' every step towards victory glue the eyes to the screen, searching as Miles does for each opening, feeling the heart skip a beat as the brakes screech as he tears around each corner or dodges another pile up. It's incredibly well directed action, and more importantly it ties back in to the investment in Miles as a character, these scenes not just banking on the stakes it sets up but also allowing us a few moments to understand a man who seems to have trouble understanding himself.

The Short Version: It's as excellently crafted as it is comfortable, telling a familiar story of men triumphing in the face of the impossible, backed by understated performances, incredibly immersive racing sequences, and an incredibly wholesome bond between men who can't change. It's the perfect movie to take your dad to see.

Rating: 8/10

Review - Knives Out (2019)

Directed by: Rian Johnson
Written by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans
IMDb Link

Just as Rian Johnson's first film, Brick, celebrated the noir genre through a near-perfect reconstruction with a modern twist, Knives Out is a reminder of what makes mystery stories so fun and engaging, while updating the genre fare with a couple of brilliant and quirky ideas.

A rich murder mystery writer has slit his throat, but an anonymous client seems to think that there's more to this than suicide, and the eccentric detective (Craig) they've hired seems to agree, especially since every member of this man's avaricious family could be a suspect. To say more would be to give away too much of the story, and as it's a mystery that ruins the fun, but I do want to talk about a couple of things that may enter spoiler territory, so if you want to go in to the story unfettered by more, just skip to my summary and know that I absolutely recommend this film as one of the best of the year.

What makes Knives Out so utterly engaging is its choice of perspective: both whose we view the movie from and how such things can change. On its own, such a story would only be genre-savvy, but we see the story outside the perspective of the detective: the audience surrogate seems also the perpetrator, and such a decision elevates the film to new heights as it plays such a revelation both for tension and for humour in Johnson's own delightfully off-kilter way. But this idea of perspective shifting the meaning of the story gets taken even further in some of the film's more subtle touches. I love the way each family member, when telling the story of their father's birthday, imagine themselves by their father's side as the cake is placed in front of him, how treating his nurse as "one of the family" to some is little more than using them as an example as they postulate some racist tirade, to how nobody seems to be clear on where said nurse is even from, or who actually voted to not let her attend the funeral. The stories are so deliberately inconsistent, and while it can sometimes feel like very clever window dressing, it all ultimately plays back in to the key themes of the story.

All of this is of course helped immensely by the hammy, archetypal performances of the colourful cast. Everyone here commits to the slightly ridiculous and yet inalienable humanity of their characters; the family is filled with terrible people who behave excessively, but they're always strangely believable. I'd be here all day if I talked about every one of them, so know that each of them is worth talking about while I get in to a couple of my favourites. Jamie Lee Curtis is a highlight here as the eldest daughter, a delight to watch in the most extra of pink power suits, at once the apotheosis of all the greed and power-mongering that runs in the family, and yet the most clearly stricken by the death of her father. Her son, played by Chris Evans, is the most vindictive, uncaring, brutally sarcastic dickhead, and he definitely seems to be having the most fun in what is the second-most entertaining performance in the film. The only one that bests him is Craig's detective, Benoit Blanc, whose hilariously silly caricature of an accent is the mere icing on the doughnut of a man who simply cannot stop talking them by film's end; his is the purest form of puzzling joy that this movie goes for. That said, Ana de Armas is the heart and soul of this movie, her performance the closest to real to keep the audience in her head-space, with the clever juxtaposition of the flaws and strengths of her character reinforcing her most important moments: her caring and her inability to lie seen as weakness by the rest, the perfect foil to keep people on her side and yet perfectly inept to deal with this situation, and Armas handles each challenge excellently.

The Short Version: Cleverly written and masterfully framed, Knives Out supports a colourful cast of characters with a rollicking mystery story whose originality lies in its style of telling, twisting as much with its use of perspective as it does with its dizzying plot.

Rating: 8.5/10

Review - Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

Directed by: Ruben Fleischer
Written by: Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
IMDb Link

Zombieland was one of the best pieces of Zombie fiction to come out of that glut of content the subgenre received in the late 2000s-early 2010s; the "Double Tap" became a meme, the actors all went on to have prestige careers. Before all that, though, the film was wickedly funny, and the running trope commentary felt like a breath of fresh air as the content began to pile up around the subgenre like dead bodies.

Unfortunately, it's been ten years; Zombie content has continued to shamble on, the commentary of the first has grown stale, and Zombieland: Double Tap seems content to spend its time remembering how good the first one was rather than doing anything to really move the story or the characters forward.

It's been 10 years in Zombieland as well, and now Tallahassee (Harrelson), Columbus (Eisenberg), Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin) have moved in to the White House. Comfort and close quarters has strained the family, and it's not long before Wichita and Little Rock hit the road again, only for Wichita to return when Little Rock takes off with a hippy poser (Avan Jogia). Meanwhile, Tallahassee and Columbus come across a dumb blonde stereotype named Madison (Zoey Deutch), whose only role in the story seems to be to play to the stereotype and sleep with Columbus to create some easy tension between Columbus and Wichita. The rest is a fairly fun road trip movie that includes a stop-off with Tallahassee's counterpart Nevada (Rosario Dawson) at an Elvis-themed hotel, and a few new types of zombie that only really fill in a couple of gags.

There's nothing here that's particularly bad, but none of it's particularly good either. The laughs aren't as consistent, the new characters aren't anywhere near as funny as the filmmakers seem to think they are, and the theme are basically the same as the first, but replace the word "family" with the word "home" as a roundabout way of getting the characters essentially back to where they started. As the same time, the film is incredibly comfy: references to the first are always welcome and even make for some of the better bits in the movie, and the jokes that aren't funny also aren't aggressively unfunny. The whole experience is very easy to lean back with and somewhat enjoy, and it's rarely less than that, but also never more than that.

The Short Version: Like warmed up leftovers of really nice meal: you know you've had this exact meal but better, and yet there's not much to complain about.

Rating: 6/10

Review - 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

Directed by: Johannes Roberts
Written by: Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
Starring: Sophie Nelisse, Corinne Foxx, Brianne Tju, Sistine Stallone
IMDb Link

I'm pretty indiscriminate when it comes to creature features, especially shark movies, so if you're like me and you're always up for a slightly trashy shark movie that's clearly seen a lot of other shark movies, you'll probably find this somewhat entertaining.

The movie is essentially The Descent, but worse and with sharks. Two step-sisters are having a hard time adjusting to one another in their new home in Mexico, so they escape with a couple of friends to a secret watering hole that has an ancient Mayan temple recently discovered beneath. The girls go to explore the temple, things gets claustrophobic, and one of them accidentally causes a collapse that traps them in the temple, so they have to explore further to find another way out, while discovering that they are in the territory of a breed of Great White Shark that has evolved to use sound over sight.

The story actually 'works' in the sense that it has a very on-the-nose setup and obvious theme: the sisters aren't getting along (each of them very pointedly says "she's not my sister" within the first ten minutes of the movie) so they have to learn to work together to survive. It's also surprisingly coherent with the first movie's focus on sisterhood as an inalienable bond. Unfortunately, little else is developed, with characters so shallow they can't even be called archetypes; even the one that's supposed to be aggressively unlikable due to their selfishness doesn't have any real energy to her. I'm not asking for much, but you'd think a film that so aggressively pulls ideas from The Descent would also try the whole "likable and sympathetic characters" thing a little harder instead of gratuitously using slow-motion to pad out the running time like a Zack Snyder film. But I digress, this is a shark movie, so I'll talk about the horror.

There's exactly one scare in this movie that's absolutely masterful in its craft. Shortly after one of the girls knocks over a large pillar and causes a massive flood of silt in the water, blinding everyone and cutting off their radio connections. We're stuck alone with the main character, who turns about frantically as she looks for her friends and fumbles with her light. As it flashes around in the water, it shines behind her, and for the briefest moment of complete silence, we see the blind shark pass by. It's an absolutely chilling moment that carries with it no fanfare, and just let's you sit with the knowledge of the horror that could be befall her, as she continues to struggle and search. The tension is set and held when she finds a couple of her friends, now she thinks she's safe, and that dissonance with what the audience knows is exactly the sort nail-biting horror that elevates these sort of films, even as the poor writing highlights who's going to die by how little time has actually been spent developing them. This one moment, the follow-up, and the eventual release of the earned jump-scare is better than everything else in the movie by a mile, even the scene that lifts its ideas directly from The Land Before Time V (seriously; I wish I could find the scene to draw a comparison). The rest of the time this movie goes for horror it quickly gets repetitive, to the point that many of the shots feel exactly the same as the girls scramble from one tunnel the shark is too big to swim through to another, and the impact the sounds these girls make have on the sharks become more and more inconsistent.

The Short Version: Uncaged reaches all the way up to the lofty heights of slightly better than the original. It's contrived but functional, cliche but genre-savvy, and its few excellent scares are drowned out by repetition.

Rating: 5/10

Review - Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Directed by: Tim Miller
Written by: David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Billy Ray, James Cameron, Charles H. Eglee
Starring: Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger
IMDb Link

The Terminator movies hadn't really had a good movie since 1991. T3 is a fine action movie that throws away the best story elements of T2; Terminator: Salvation is better than people give it credit for but between the drab colour and poor direction the action never feels particularly engaging; Terminator: Genisys is monumentally bad despite trying something interesting with the time-travel stuff, never actually making sense of any concept it comes up with and messing up almost everything it tries. Needless to say, I was not excited for Dark Fate, which is why I found it all the more surprising that I came out of it ready to recommend it.

The movie opens by literally killing John Connor. It's a ballsy move that failed spectacularly in Genisys, but here it's not done for a cheap twist villain; it reforges Sarah (Linda Hamilton) meaningfully as a character (and conveniently brings Arnie back in to the story) in to a tired, wounded version of the savage mama bear she was in T2. While that brings her back in to the story, the plot itself focuses once again on an old comfort zone: two cyborgs come back in time to kill someone that's important in the future, with the particulars swapped around a bit. The good robot (Mackenzie Davis) is actually an augmented human named Grace, the bad robot (Gabriel Luna) is nanoliquid over an exoskeleton so it can sometimes be two robots and is as generally indestructible as the T-1000 was in T2, and the new target, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), is important a new future that was created when they stopped Skynet at the end of T2 (turns out they go on to make something that's not demonstrably different from Skynet anyway; this time it's called Legion). The differences are a little convoluted and the film has to dedicate a couple of scenes of exposition back-to-back, which drags the pacing down in the middle; the film also makes about as many references to T2 as I just did for everything it sets up. That said, the broad strokes are as familiar as the twists are expected, so while the film does dull its experience at points trying to evoke the same horror at humanity's annihilation as its predecessors, the throughline of exactly what the characters are doing and why is never lost.

What's more is that aside from the exposition dump the film manages to keep its focus on the characters and the action, which are the film's two biggest strengths. Hamilton's performance as Sarah is excellent; she manages to be as much of a stone-cold badass as she ever was, and yet evokes a sad reflection of who she once was, a soldier who fights now because her purpose was taken from her. Seriously, I'll give credit to everyone else in a second, but Sarah as a character is easily the most tragic here, and Hamilton is capable of expressing every single wound in her soul while never forgetting how strong she is. Meanwhile, the best new character in this movie is Davis' Grace; she evokes a single-minded desperation juxtaposed against her powerful frame, her strength and her speed betrayed by her fear, a rabid need to protect that which means the most to her. It's very much in the same vein as Kyle Reese in the original, and when considered alongside her augmentations, she essentially gets to play the role of both sorts of protectors we've seen; an attempt to have a character that can do the action scenes of T2 but play the emotional beats of the original. Dani sometimes feels more like a prop than a character, and Reyes sometimes feels a little wooden in her performance, but these factors are mostly remedied in the final act, where she sort of has an arc and Reyes at least hits the right emotions due her character's climax. Arnie's role as yet another T-800 who grew a conscience (this one's named Carl) is one that I feel I'm not capable of criticising; it's Arnie, he's a hero to me, I'd just end up running in circles trying to explain all the ways in which he's great even though his acting has never been his strong suit. Gabriel Luna is a surprise hit here as the new evil Terminator (a "Rev-9" model): his character blends perfectly, even switching up accents at key points to put people at ease, and at the same time his approach in the action scenes is completely animalistic; he's ferocious, unyielding, and the perfect reminder of why the Terminators are so scary, and yet so robotic in his programming that he'll make mistakes when his target is in sight.

This speaks to the credit of everyone who worked on the action sequences as well. The scenes with the Rev-9 do an excellent job of showing just how unstoppable he feels, but also how he can be stymied and even defeated. Likewise, Grace is a revelation when she comes up against him; the two are in an ever-escalating arms race with one another, as she constantly weaponises her environment and he uses his abilities to adapt. These fights have a rhythm, a pulse-pounding pace that to some genuinely jaw-dropping moments of pure action. This gets taken a step further when Arnie gets thrown back in to the mix, his own simple brute force contrasted with the fast and fierce fighting styles of the others with sheer weight; he's theoretically outclassed, but hits harder than either of them, and it all builds to a brilliantly choreographed final fight, where Grace and Arnie's strengths are played together with such measured harmony that you briefly forget about all the heavy exposition, all the bad dialogue, the twist so poorly hidden it baffles as to why they tried, or the way this movie feels overcrowded, and just revel in some truly well-done action. That's what makes this movie the only good sequel to T2: the action feels like something out of one of James Cameron's films, and it works so well that the film's shortcomings fall by the wayside in its most important moments. 

The Short Version: "The best Terminator movie since T2" isn't exactly a high bar when you look at every other Terminator movie, but that same look will show you just how much better Dark Fate is. Its action scenes are exhilarating, its characters and performances poignant (if not a little hammy due to dialogue), and its story not nearly as convoluted as it could have been; it never reaches the heights of its classic predecessors, but between these core strengths, the movie is surprisingly and consistently engaging.

Rating: 7/10

Published November 4th, 2019

Film Review: Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Directed by: Michael Dougherty
Written by: Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, Max Borenstein
Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown
IMDb Link

I've been a massive fan of Godzilla ever since I was a kid. I mean, what's not to love about a giant, indestructible dinosaur with atomic fire breath? That said, I feel a bit like a victim of my own hype for this film. In a lot of ways, this is the Godzilla film I've wanted to see for the past five years, but the parts of the film that didn't work for me felt amplified by the standards I held to the parts that did. I'm probably going to be harder on this movie than I should because of this, so just know that I recommend this movie: It's Godzilla, I love him, any and all of his movies should be watched.

Five years after the events of Godzilla (2014), the world is still grappling with the idea that monsters exist, and that the secret government organisation Monarch has been hiding that fact for a long time. Struck by the death of their son amidst the chaos caused by Godzilla and his adversaries, Mark (Chandler) and Emma Russell (Farmiga), key members of Monarch, go their separate ways to deal with their grief, Mark abandoning Monarch altogether and Emma burying deeper in to her work, and bringing her daughter Maddy (Brown) with her. More giant monsters have been discovered slumbering beneath the Earth, labelled "Titans", and their discovery allows Emma to create the Orca, a machine that can communicate with them, which becomes a problem when Eco-Terrorist, Jonah Alan (Charles Dance) wants to use it to awaken the Titans and destroy humanity.

It's an awfully convoluted excuse to get Godzilla to fight more monsters, particularly his biggest classic adversary, King Ghidorah, a three-headed golden dragon that breathes lightning. If that's all you're here for, then you'll get it, but you'll have to do a seemingly inordinate amount of waiting.

It's not that there's a lot going on between the fights, it's just that what's going on between the fights is a bit of a slog to get through because it's slow and messy and unfocused. Character motivations are always vague and don't hold any emotional weight because they largely go unexplored, there's a big spiel made about restoring balance to the planet that rings hollow because it's not what either of the characters fighting for that actually want. It's not like the performers are bad, either, they just don't have much to work with in terms of actual character material. Farmiga and Chandler both play their grief with genuine pathos, each of them doing their best to verbally and emotionally communicate the journeys of their characters, but that's them making the most out of what they're given. Dance's Alan also gets to be a wonderful screen presence that has essentially nothing meaningful to say, dropping a bit of verbal evisceration and then leaving the movie when he's no longer useful.

Then there's a constant tightrope walk between showing the military as incapable and showing them as altruistic; no matter what the situation, the soldiers are shown to be self-sacrificing to a fault, and yet they're also always the butt of many a macabre joke. It feels like the movie is trying to both call back to the classic "military is useless" trope that is so prevalent in the Godzilla series, but can't help find ways to undermine that trope. This itself is more a distillation of one of the film's more pervasive issues, its tonal inconsistency. The film is constantly undercutting its human moments with humour, and while that can work, it's never clever here; when the moment Ghidorah gets named is cut short by someone saying "I think she said 'gonorrhea'", it nibbles away at the film's weight, which is itself predicated on the deification of these big monsters.

Speaking of which, enough complaining; this is a Kaiju movie, any and all misgivings about the film can be ignored if the pure spectacle of giant monsters fighting is appropriately spectacular, and it's not like the human side of the story was a total waste.

The fights in this movie are incredible. The monsters are given such power, such weight, that the act of them clashing causes shockwaves, flying over a city causes its utter destruction, and simply existing causes unparalleled storms. These beings and their wondrous extravaganza are the product of pure imagination, a lifetime of thinking about how these monsters would look and act if given the blockbuster treatment brought to life in the biggest way possible. There's no way to truly express in written word how good the action is here, it's better explained by a kid smashing toys together, that's the only way to understand the utter joy that takes place on screen.

There's also more to the monsters than just their fights, each of them is given real personality that accentuates their actions; they are less monsters and more animals who think they're people, blown up to gargantuan performances. There's Godzilla, of course, whose indestructible exterior belies a soft heart and intelligence; the main character's arc is completed under the premise that he can believe that Godzilla is more than a monster, and it works entirely because of how much effort they put in to anthropomorphising the big lizard. Ghidorah gets three distinct personalities among his heads; the left-most being bullied by the middle head is the sort of little character tick that didn't need to happen for the sake of a fight, but it adds so much to make the big guy feel 'real' despite being something as silly as a three-headed golden dragon. Rodan is similarly realised, his cockiness and side-switching tendencies being the sort of things that make him the Starscream of the Godzilla Monsterverse. Then there's Mothra, the best thing in this movie that isn't named Godzilla. She's such a kind a gracious thing; even when she's being manipulated to hurt people the most she can do is throw them in to soft webbing, and yet she's just as much an absolute ruler as the rest of them going toe to toe with Rodan despite the fact that she's a giant moth and he's a giant pterodactyl made of fire.

The work that went in to making these ridiculously silly creatures work as emotionally engaging characters is a testament to how much the people working on this film love the material. This is just as present in the soundtrack as anywhere else; the music is a modern realisation of so many classic pieces, the original Godzilla themes getting updates that turn them from melancholic orchestral pieces in to triumphant battle cries, and everyone's little leitmotifs getting their place within this overcrowded movie. It's clear that there's a lot of love and passion poured in to this movie, and while that's obvious in the way the monsters move and fight, there is one moment within the film that I think best reflects the respect with which they were trying to approach this story.

Late in to the film, Godzilla is gravely injured, and the only way to revive him for one last fight is with a nuke. The man that goes down in to the ocean with the nuke to revive him, Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), ruminates on the need to make peace with the demons that create our wounds. It's an obvious metaphor for Mark to consider as he tries to reconcile playing a part in saving Godzilla when he's spent so much time wanting Godzilla dead, but this goes deeper than that. Godzilla started as a metaphor for the ravages of atomic warfare, the literal embodiment of the pain and horror that so many Japanese people had to experience, and yet his success has turned him in to a pop culture icon in Japan, and a cult icon across the world. The final moments of the very first Godzilla film had a Dr. Serizawa dive down in to the ocean with the intent to kill Godzilla, and 65 years later, we have a Dr. Serizawa dive down in to the ocean to save him. It's a beautiful reflection of how Godzilla has fundamentally changed over time in the cultural consciousness, a love letter to everything he has meant since his inception. This isn't the best Godzilla movie, or his most well told story, but in moments like these, the intent is clear, and it's impossible not to feel the adoration the filmmakers have for the King of the Monsters.

The Short Version: The film is so well visually realised that it demands to be seen on a big screen, and the symbolic weight behind it is a treat for fans, but even some of the film's best moments aren't given their full impact because of a pervasive and uneven human story that never feels as alive as the monsters.

Rating: It's still frickin' GODZILLA /10

Published June 2nd, 2019

Film Review: Shazam! (2019)

Directed by: David F. Sandberg
Written by: Henry Gayden, Darren Lemke
Starring: Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer
IMDb Link

Strike me with lightning if DC hasn't finally made a superhero movie in this era worthy of being called great.

14-year old troubled foster child Billy Batson (Angel) is looking for his birth mother, running from every home he's put in and getting himself in to a lot of trouble along the way. After being taken in by the last family who would, and a brief moment of heroism, he is called upon by an ancient wizard to take up super powers in the body of the ancient champion, Shazam (Levi, and basically Superman but with lightning powers). If that sounds goofy and dumb to you, that's only because it is, and the film revels in this without ever mocking it.

The film takes so much of that which is taken for granted in superhero stories today, the origin story, and imbues it with newfound enthusiasm. It tries its hardest to breeze through the clunky exposition as quickly as possible, and shifts right to the focus on the characters and their reactions to such an event. Billy's new foster brother Freddy is a superhero fanboy, and the two of them work together to figure out exactly what Billy can do, and exploit it in every way you would expect of a teenager that's given super powers and made to look like an adult; drinking beer, pulling pranks on bullies, uploading viral videos, etc. Everything is executed with the exact glee that's needed to make such a rote part of these sorts of stories fun and engaging; there's a real joy to watching this film because of how genuine the reactions of Freddy and Billy are to all that's happening, and the silliness of the mischief they get up to because they're just teens.

Part of this is in Levi's performance, of course, who imitates Angel's Batson seamlessly as Shazam, a constant excitement flowing through him that only adds to the pure happiness that this movie exudes, and it contrasts so well with the film's darker and grittier moments, of which there are a surprising amount. This film is definitely targeted at younger audiences, but it's not afraid to let things get scary when it needs to, while also throwing some hard-hitting emotional punches that I really wasn't sure the movie's gusto would allow it to pull off, but the film lands these moments largely because they flow with the film's narrative and contrast the emotions of superhero conflict with normal human conflict so strongly. Billy is just a kid who wants to find his mum, and even in the midst of superhero conflicts and familial conflicts, this thread is never lost, it feeds in to the other narratives, either explicitly or thematically, and as a result the film can reduce itself down to the quietest of sombre moments before finishing in one of the loudest and most smile-inducing ways possible, and all of it fits together.

That finish is perfect, by the way. I wouldn't dare to spoil it, but everything about the climax is so wonderful that I would need another review to go over it properly. It's not just great, it puts every other superhero finale of the last decade to shame.

The Short Version: Shazam! taps in to what superhero stories are about in a way that's delightfully goofy, heartwarming, and giddy with excitement. It's an outstanding example of how embracing a story meant for kids can make you feel like one again.

Rating: Go watch it right now/10

Published April 7th, 2019

Film Review: Us (2019)

Directed by: Jordan Peele
Written by: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph
IMDb Link

Us will stick with me for a while.


The film follows Adelaide Wilson (Nyong'o) and her family, as they return to Santa Cruz more than thirty years after a traumatic experience where she encountered a doppelganger. Soon after arriving, the entire family is beset by doppelgangers, and then the film spirals in to a series of chaotic yet masterfully clear events that go far beyond what the film initially purports itself to be.

Despite taking clear inspiration from some of the best work in the horror genre, from Hitchcock to Kubrick to Spielberg and even Haneke, Us is a uniquely captivating experience. Each and every moment of horror is first tightly wound and then sharply visceral, but they carry with them the sort of vision Peele made in his first venture, Get Out. It's not any one simple factor, but the amalgam of their interactions, that sets Peele apart from the greats and yet assures that he will probably some day be one of them. Every minute of the film is carefully curated to create the exact balance of horror, comedy, and biting commentary that he's so renowned for. The film seems almost constantly in a state of paranoia, and it plays to that with considerably strength, deftly flipping between moments of high tension and hard comedic cuts, and cleverly muddying the waters with moments that could easily be both to make sure that the tension is never quite so rhythmic as to be boring. Moments before a character could die they're saved by a pratfall, a comedic cutaway is met with cold-blooded murder; the exact mix clicked for me when Adelaide's doppelganger began to speak for the first time, this raspy effort that also attempted to tell her story as if it were a fairy tale, too chilling to be comedic, yet, the realisation of her voice was inter-cut with reactions to it, and when paired with the family processing the situation as a whole, it was too goofy not to be intentional. What matters, though, is that the film remains engaging at all time despite these changes: Peele has recognised the fine line between horror and comedy, and walks it with the skill of a veteran. Above all else, Us is a film that has no shortage of fear or laughter, and absolutely demands measured thought.

Then there's the powerful performances of the lead cast, each of them pulling double duty as both frightened family and die-hard doppelganger; not a single one of them drops a beat, capable in every moment in either role. Nyong'o is definitely the strongest performance, her mood always matching that of the movie perfectly as Adelaide, and the most fascinatingly chilling among the doppelgangers. She's so well emotionally defined, her trauma informing every aspect of her character, including her sometimes manic motherly protection reflected by her doppelganger, and the almost rabid reactions she has to the doppelgangers, laden with notable weight and a duality that so openly yet cleverly plays in to the movie's themes. None of the other characters get enough screen time to develop as well, but they still make the most of what they are given. A special mention must be given to Tim Heidecker, whose doppelganger was easily the funniest thing in the movie, a cartoonishly performative being that never stopped in his monstrous pursuit, by that interaction creating a microcosm of the movie's entire tone. There's also a certain natural chemistry between the cast members, and it helps them seem real enough to push them beyond their archetypes, as if they have lives beyond this film, and at the same time informs the reactions of their characters. Some of this is in the writing: even Adelaide's parents, who only have a few moments of screen time, are still given dialogue that adds context and layers to their few actions, and a deliberate misfiring of 'Chekov's Gun' is a moment informed by some of the few things we know about the characters involved up to this point. That said, many such moments could have failed their landings had the actors not been completely committed to their performances.

As much as I love this movie, I can't help but find certain aspects to be of notable fault, and I imagine some of these things only added to the appeal of others. The film seems conflicted over how much respect it should have for its audience's intelligence; while some details are kept effectively vague and intimidating, others seem to hold the audience's hand unnecessarily. Whatever is unnecessary to the story is smartly kept from discussion, allowing the audience to discuss the meaning behind what we see at great length ourselves, but so much of the story is laid out in a way that makes the film's plot far more predictable than any given moment. At the best of times the film managed to leave me with doubt about a conclusion I thought was obvious from the start, and I can at least say it had a satisfying effect upon me, but when so much else in the film is new and unexpected and often intentionally subversive, the beats of the story being essentially rote came across as dissonant to me in a way that I can't quite bring myself to praise.   

The Short Version: Us expertly walks a tightrope of horror and comedy while leaving its story open enough for interpretation that it almost demands discussion, and it's of such intriguing substance that it deserves to be seen and talked about again and again.

Rating: 8.5/10

Published March 29th, 2019

Good Live-Action Anime? Alita: Battle Angel (2019) Review

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Written by: Robert Rodriguez, James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis
Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson
IMDb Link

Live-action anime movies are generally pretty terrible; from Dragonball Evolution to Fullmetal Alchemist to Death Note, these movies have ranged from utterly painful to almost passable, and never anything more than that. With that in mind, when I say that Alita: Battle Angel, is actually quite good, you understand by what it compares to how monumental a success that it was even good at all.

The story follows Alita, a cyborg woman discovered in a scrap heap and revived, only to find that she has no memory of her past life. In the dystopian slum that is her new home, she must discover who she is amid the cyberpunk bounty hunters, Robocop patrol robots, and fast-paced metal death games that make up her home.

As a piece of pure, unadulterated action, this movie is pulse-poundingly excellent. The action is relentless when it happens; a fight kicks off with a moment of slow motion before launching in to an all-out cyborg brawl that at once tries to illicit the idea of pure chaos and tries to anchor you to moments of comedy and heroism between swaths of pure mechanical violence, and death races are treated as fun past-times where getting your metal body shredded  to pieces is just part of the fun and then juxtaposed between the very real implications of such an event and what it says about the world, as well as complete change of pace and perspective when Alita herself jumps on to the track. Because it's all metal, the film just lets the violence explode on-screen without a need to worry about it feeling real, and as a result the ebb and flow of fights aren't constantly cutting to avoid showing the consequences of the violence. Everything about the action packs a punch.

In terms of story, the thing that makes this worthwhile is the wonderful title character. It's a fairly generic and straightforward plot that seems to pack in as many tropes as it can until it's almost bursting at the seams, rising and falling so many times that the movie feels a little out of breath by the end, but even as interest in the world and other characters begin to falter, Alita remains as an effective through-line for each and every story beat, literally holding the movie together with her insanely strong cyborg heart. For every moment where the movie feels the need to flatly explain the extended details of the world and lore, we get a sweet character moment where Alita wins the hearts of every dog lover in the world, showing her total purity and naivete without someone needing to point it out. Even the moments where this didactic childlike approach to doing right at all times could potentially feel trite ultimately work, largely because the film is self-aware enough to challenge and trial her worldview, and most importantly because of the heart-achingly honest mo-cap performance of Rosa Salazar. I can't imagine this will be the same for everyone, but I found that the the mo-cap animation was relatively seamless (at least for the sake of suspension of disbelief), and that even if it hadn't been, the approach Salazar took to the character made her the source of strength the movie needed her to be. Every line, no matter how cliche or potentially clunky, it delivered with the utmost certainty, selling you on the idea that Alita at least believes in what she says, no matter how ridiculous it might sound, even in-universe. She's passionate, and commanding, and a little bit flippant, and of these aspects are challenged over and over in such a way that no character step feels unearned. As a movie about Alita, Alita is a success.

This extends to much of what is immediately in proximity to Alita. Chrisoph Waltz is appropriately stern yet soft as surrogate father Dr. Ido, and the interplay of their relationship, while fairly predictable, is also filled with such genuine warmth that the lack of originality doesn't matter. A scene where Ido, having learned to let Alita go, tries his best to support her and stifles his own protective nature for her sake, and her newfound understanding of such an action is made sublime by the exchange between the two, the spoken and unspoken words, their expressions, it's all so surprisingly real in this high-octane movie where robots smash each other for spectacle.

That said, not everything else is quite as strong. Alita's love interest Hugo, while occasionally appearing as more than the broad archetype he was set up as, is performed only serviceably by Keean Johnson, never standing out in a way that makes the character particularly interesting and only worthwhile as he stands in relation to Alita; his worth as a character is entirely in how his existence challenges and re-defines how Alita thinks, and that's fine, but nothing more. Likewise, lore and story that don't directly relate to Alita  are relatively uninteresting because they only get delivered through clunky dialogue that feels like its trying to pretend that it's not relevant to the plot even though the only reason it's brought up is because it eventually will be. Again, it's not bad, but it means any scene that doesn't involve a step forward for Alita is just sort of plain. Still, I didn't find it to be enough to detract from the movie so much that I didn't enjoy it, but the good parts were so comparably good that these slower moments that felt like they should have had more poignancy about the world simply didn't, and it stood out against the action and the character moments.

The Short Version: Alita's ambition shines when the film revels in its incredible action scenes or explores the pure nature of its title character, but it isn't exempt from the trappings of a bland romance, clunky dialogue, and structure-warping lore.

Rating: 7/10

Published February 17th, 2019

Vice is Not Nice - 2019 Film Review

Directed by: Adam McKay
Written by: Adam McKay
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell
IMDb Link

Vice has all the wit and timing of Cheney himself. For all its prestige actors and quirky ideas, the film is too often disengaging to the point of boredom, explaining every detail as laboriously as possible, and blaming the audience if they don't find it interesting.

The story follows many of the important beats in the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney (Bale), from his wild college years to constant ladder-climbing to his personal conflict being a Republican with a lesbian daughter, and capping off with his (to put it mildly) controversial work during the Bush administration. All of this is expressed through a particularly idiosyncratic lens by director Adam McKay, who tries to make the jump from a deliberately cliche presentation of his early years as a mixed bag but ultimately positive, even stepping in to full-on parody when it rolls credits over a happy ending half-way through the film, before the call from the Bush administration turns the movie in to an increasingly absurd attempt to remind people of just how cartoonishly evil he could be. It's an essentially noble idea, exposing the worst of a former administration in an effort to suggest why America has what it has now, but the film never goes beyond a very surface-level critique of those problems, bloviating endlessly about them but never offering more than a condemnation of the audience as a solution. The film seems to want to show the endless details in as tired a manner as possible to bore the audience to tears, then have a go at the audience for not paying attention to the political evil that went on, watching mindless action movies instead of "important" movies like Vice.

With that said, I don't buy that the boredom was intentional, even if the condemnation was. The film often delves in to a territory that could broadly be called "comedy", but so much of its schtick is as mind-numbing as its lecturing, and seemingly without point. Cheney orders Guantanamo torture techniques off of a menu in a restaurant, because creating absurdity through contrast is the only string to this movie's bow and it's going to try and play it in as many ways as it can. Any time the film doesn't throw an odd cutaway like this in the middle of a montage in an attempt to use The Big Short's leftovers, it turns obvious satire it never knows when to cut short. We can't know what was actually going through Dick and Lynne's minds as they pondered the offer of Vice-Presidency because people don't expose their thoughts through dialogue like they're in a Shakespearean play, so let's have a scene where Dick and Lynne Cheney expose their thoughts through dialogue like they're in a Shakespearean play, because nothing says "we have contempt for our audience" like turning an idea that would have been funny for about ten seconds in to an agonising minutes-long scene. Stuff like this both downplays the importance of what it's trying to explore and excludes the very audience it seeks to show that same importance to, which in turn clashes with the film's attempts to highlight just how absurdly, disturbingly evil the man's actions could be. The film wants very much for us to understand that Dick Cheney was a terrible person (shocking revelation, I know), but any attempts to explore the roots of what makes that sort of man are ultimately thrown by the wayside in its efforts to make every caricature involves behave increasingly arch.

There is more to these scenes thanks to performances from a cast of extremely talented actors. Bale exudes intensity as easily as breathing, which is par for the course with his career but nevertheless impressive, especially under the exceptional make-up work. The man is an inscrutable abyss, an unassuming yet undeniably powerful presence that carries the movie so hard it often leaves him weak of heart. Adams is similarly appropriate as Lynne at the best of times, the powerful woman behind the powerful man that convincingly pushes them to a place of absolute power. The other standout is Carell as Donald Rumsfeld; it's a cartoonish take that some will surely dislike, but he's the one who person who doesn't need "clever" juxtaposition through editing to be offensively funny. He's the one prominent comedic character in this supposed comedy, and his contrast with Bale is exactly the sort of dissonance for the sake of a few laughs that the movie goes for that actually works.

The Short Version: Vice is too caught up in its own self-importance and too critical of its own audience. So much of the film is a slog to get through because it painstakingly lectures the audience on plenty of details that are already common knowledge, without really adding any new insight, and any joke the film attempts to alleviate the boredom is so long-winded that it only adds to it. There's some slick performances and a good core idea on display, but it's not enough to elevate this experience beyond middling at best.

Rating: 5/10

Published February 10th, 2019 

2019 Film Review: Green Book (2018)

Directed by: Peter Farrelly
Written by: Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini
IMDb Link

I'll start posting there exclusively soon, but for now, my review is posted to my new site here.

Sometimes great actors go far beyond the material they are given. Such is the case with Green Book, a film tries and fails to reach further than the scope of its two leading characters, but whose leading men make far more out of their roles than most could.


The story follows Tony "Lip" Vallelonga (Mortensen), an Italian-American self-described "bullshit artist" who in a dry spell of work gets a job driving Dr. Don Shirley (Ali), an African-American piano master, on a two month tour through the Deep South in 1962. Through several charming anecdotes and uncomfortable, racially charged experiences, the two grow to become friends, almost by necessity. It's not exactly the most original story, but Green Book manages to put its strengths front and centre.

If nothing else, the performances from the film's two leads are fantastic. Mortensen embraces every facet of the character to create a trashy yet charming depiction of Vallelonga, the naive but street-smart archetype coming alive in a way that only a master of the craft can handle. It would be so easy for Vallelonga to devolve in to little more than broad stereotype, but Mortensen takes every opportunity he has to add that much more to the role than is first apparent, little immature moments weaved so naturally with his character-building moment, each step forward accompanied by a stumble that only has as much credibility as Mortensen gives it. Ali does just as well, ultimately more impressive for making his character as well-rounded and human with even less screen-time. We so rarely see the story from Shirley's perspective, yet Ali turns each moment we are alone with him in to a quiet realisation of what's going on inside him, saying nothing and yet priming viewers for his inevitable eruption. As strong as the two are on their own, they shine when they are together, their camaraderie despite their differences feeling so genuine despite the film's melodrama, the comedic moments where Vallelonga's naivete brushes up against Shirley's cultured demeanour, or Vallelonga balks at Shirley's lack of street experience, keeping the film going largely due to the work both leading men manage to accomplish together in just the space of a Cadillac.

The soundtrack is particularly noteworthy as well. The film generally rolls around playing jazz to keep the film light and breezy, any moments where things could get charged quickly forgotten as the film saunters to another anecdote with dulcet tones swinging every step. It also creates a strong contrast with Shirley's own classical work, and builds one of the film's primary themes in to the film itself. There's more examination of culture and class differences in the film's soundtrack then there is in the film proper, all the while doing its best to keep the film moving. That said, as much as the soundtrack and the leading performances work together to forge a good movie, it's not enough to make the film a great one.

What's bizarre about the experience is how much everything besides the lead performances and soundtrack weigh this feather-light film down. Several scenes are completely unnecessary for moving the story or characters forward, sometimes accomplishing nothing but re-iterating ideas present in the movie in the most on-the-nose and contrived way possible, without actually elaborating those ideas further. The film never builds to anything beyond the friendship between the two leading men, and any barrier to that is little more than a bump, yet it often attempts to insert conflict where it need not be, and so flaccidly that it comes off as little more than cheap and cheesy melodrama. Any narrative conflict seems to be used as little more than window dressing for more scenes of excellent actors acting excellently, any conversations the film has regarding race or class or social disconnect or sexuality are just another tool in the actor's toolbox. Then there's the framing of the film, which manages to flesh out Mortensen's Vallelonga considerably, because it tells the whole story from his perspective, but in the case of Ali's Shirley, the film had to rely mostly on Ali's magnificent charisma. It's almost like this film was put together using a series of charming anecdotes that Vallelonga told to his son, with no real connective tissue other than the two people involved, and embellished for the sake of seeming more significant than it actually is, before being re-told here by that same son. Almost.

Perhaps that's a little cynical of me to say in a movie that attempts so hard to be heartwarming, and know that I do recommend the film on the basis of its performances and soundtrack alone, but so much else in this film feels limited or shallow in its perspective, and seemingly unable to get away from obvious cliches, and as a result the overall experience too often seems fake. It's a movie that's saved by its performances, by two people too good at their jobs to let a movie be bad when they have so much understanding of good character work, breathing life in to material that otherwise offers such empty expressions of its ideas.

The Short Version: Stellar performances hold up a meandering story that charms when it tries to be funny but lays it on far too thick and with no self-awareness when it tries to tug at heartstrings.

Rating: 6.5/10

Published February 1st, 2019

2019 Film Review: Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)

Directed by: Tatsuya Nagamine
Written by: Akira Toriyama
Starring: Sean Schemmel, Christopher Sabat, Vic Mignogna
IMDb Link

New Blog Link

As a long-time fan of the Dragon Ball franchise, this was everything I wanted it to be and more, with levels of hype and fan indulgence only a show about super-powered alien apes becoming gods by fighting each other can create. That said, if you're not already a fan, I can't see this offering a particularly fulfilling experience, so if you're looking for a jumping off point for the show, this isn't it.

After a Super-Saiyan load of set-up where we learn the retconned details about the backstories of Goku (Schemmel), Vegeta (Sabat), and Broly (Mignogna), the film brings the three Saiyans together via a newly revived Lord Frieza (Christopher Ayres) and has them battle it out because Broly is damaged by his father and neither Goku nor Vegeta are one to turn down a fight. There's some scant themes about legacy and fatherhood amidst the battle, as Broly's complex but antagonistic relationship with his father informs most of the fight's turns, and Goku quickly realises how Broly is being manipulated, but for the most part the film is half build-up, half fight.

While the build-up is sometimes slow or awkward as the film needs to re-explain a dozen or so pieces of lore that most fans of the show are already aware of and that aren't enough to catch up non-fans on their own, the fight is the main event, and it almost never disappoints. The sense of scale is lost a bit as a quick reference to how their energy could destroy the planet if they touched Earth is seemingly forgotten as endless barrages of energy blasts somehow keep their destruction contained to one continent, but the fight's escalation is damn-near perfect, first earning a few points from Vegeta fans as he kicks Broly around effortlessly, before Broly himself begins to tap in to and learn to harness his power, losing all sense of self and becoming a mindless engine of destruction, literally learning techniques on the fly and brutalising the other two Saiyans effortlessly. It all looks breathtaking too, the sort of raw power on display is animated gorgeously as the film swirls around a constantly crumbling landscape, the force behind each fighter's punches and blasts given the extra oomph they need to pop on-screen dazzlingly.

That said, what made the experience for me was the sense of humour. While Dragon Ball has for the longest time had an identity as "that show where muscular men scream for twenty minutes", it's always had a funny side too. The whole conflict begins because both Bulma and Frieza are looking for the eponymous Dragon Balls, not for infinite wealth or immortality, but (for Bulma) to be younger or (for Frieza) to be taller, but not so much younger or taller that it looks unnatural. The once villainous God of Destruction Beerus has to be the one to watch Bulma and Vegeta's baby while they save the world. Goku and Vegeta's failed attempts at fusing are interspersed with Frieza getting the absolute crap beaten out of him. Despite the film's world-ending and hype-building nature, it never lets go of a slightly whimsical tone that makes the whole experience that much more fun. There isn't exactly substance here, but there is a vision for what the collective audience wants, and the film delivers spectacularly.

The Short Version: No amount of preamble or clunky, unnecessary dialogue is enough to dilute the raw, unadulterated indulgence this movie offers to fans. The themes are barely explored and the content is so steeped in the lore that only long-time admirers will find it appealing, but I am one, so for me this was nothing short of glorious.

Rating: Gogeta and Broly punch each other so hard that they rip holes in to other dimensions/10

Published January 28th, 2019

2019 Film Review: The Favourite (2018)

Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara
Starring: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz
IMDb Link

As before, I'm putting together a slightly more presentable new website, and you can read the review for The Favourite there as well.

Between The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, this was by far the least weird and most coherent movie I've seen from Yorgos Lanthimos. I'm sure some people will miss the utter absurdity of his work, but personally if he continues to work with people who write movies as fantastic as this then I'll take the compromise.

The story follows Queen Anne (Colman), her best friend Lady Sarah (Weisz), and the newly hired scullery maid Abigail (Stone), as each of them play one another to achieve their goals. Abigail, once noble but now fallen, hired only because Lady Sarah is family, offers a kindness to the Queen that puts her in the position of the Queen's personal servant, allowing Abigail a chance to lie, cheat and manipulate her way to a position of power once more. Lady Sarah, the real influence behind the throne, has her own concerns with keeping the Queen in check, with a war to run and her sights set on greater power, not one to let some upstart take her place so easily. The Queen, stricken and frail with loss, is simply happy to let the other two quarrel over her, less concerned with the power she wields and more satisfied with feeling wanted.

The film's writing is incredible, and the performances of the three leads sells it completely. The characters can't even get half-way through a conversation before someone slips an insult in like poison in to tea, and the power of the words they doll out is juxtaposed cleverly against the appearance of a stiff upper lip, only for such a facade to be broken down over and over and over again. It also contrasts with the approach of the men in the movie, particularly Leader of the Opposition Harley (played with delicious extravagance by Nicolas Hoult), whose failures at maintaining respect are met with instant and hilariously brutal responses (his character has one of the best utterances of the word "c*nt" put to film). There's almost never a dull moment, as the characters build up Machiavellian plans in such a way for the audience to have a sumptuous feast of comedic irony, or meet an expected turn that then jolts with shock humour.

What adds so much to it all is the nuance in the performances, the writing and the tone. Abigail is at first vulnerable, and there's a great sense of triumph at her successes when she's downtrodden, but as the film goes on that triumph turns to guilt. Likewise, Lady Sarah is deceptive enough to always carry a minor hatred beneath her marvelous charm, but despite her actions there's an undeniable sympathy for her at her nadir. Both Stone and Weisz manage to play these complex roles to extraordinary effect, each playing to the writing's strengths and working with one another to create characters that become more interesting with every word spoken between them, but even they are somewhat overshadowed by the prodigious work of Colman. Queen Anne at first appears as little more than naivete, a sickly blank slate for Abigail's and Lady Sarah's plans to bounce off of, yet by the end of the film she is an absolute powerhouse that shows how little all of their work added up to. This transformation doesn't come easy either, it's earned through the rare moments where the film drops its own facade of arch people doing arch things for the sake of absurdity and reminds the audience that the people can still be real and wounded and struggling. The film plays to this slow revelation of the Queen's character in these moments too, the walls blurring and turning, and her face stricken with fear and disorientation. It's a piece the film didn't need in order to be good, yet its inclusion elevates the film to rare heights of excellence, and Colman plays and indelible role in the character's realisation.

The Short Version: The interplay between the three leading ladies is truly magnificent, and its measured combination of wit, irony and shock humour makes The Favourite utterly charming, while the deliberate tonal shifts and moments of distorted perspective help to emphasise the nuance of the commanding performances of the core cast.

Rating: 9/10

Published January 25th, 2019

2019 Film Review: Glass (2019)

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson
IMDb Link

Before I get started, I just want to say that I'm putting together a new site for my reviews, where I have also posted my review for Glass. You can follow the link to my new site here.

Unbreakable was a piece ahead of its time, approaching super hero stories with a grounded and intimate perspective that saw the value in the both the literal and metaphorical value of super heroes. At the best of times, Glass reflects further development of Unbreakable's deconstructionist ideas, even if that development is coming nearly two decades and one super hero renaissance too late; the rest of the time, the film is so awkward and heavy-handed that the execution of those ideas devalues them.

Since Unbreakable, David Dunn (Willis), still super-powered and weak to water, is running his own security service with his son while doing secret super hero work on the side, in the process coming in to conflict with The Horde (McAvoy), all 24 identities of an extreme DID case, fresh off a few killing sprees after Split. The first third of the movie does a really good job of establishing the movie's tone and character motivations, jumping between the sombre heroics of Dunn and the creeping horror of The Horde's cult-like perspective on their superhuman identity, The Beast; the two come together in a way that is somehow both self-serious and unapologetically goofy, a factor that gets amplified when their conflict ultimately gets them thrown in an insane asylum alongside Elijah Price (Jackson), also known as Mr. Glass, under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who seeks to cure them of their collective comic book delusion. Here the movie becomes slow, contemplative, toeing a strange line between things that are somewhat clever and things that are intentionally dumb, sometimes carrying the ideas re-established in the first third and other times beating the audience of their heads with self-aware super hero stuff, all while lacking that same self-awareness when it comes to the mental health stuff. Unfortunately, the film goes off the rails when it tries to ramp things back up again, packing thematically appropriate twists on top of completely mindless twists and never quite finding the clarity of purpose in presenting all of them when some don't mesh at all, getting silly in a bad way towards the final few scenes. None of this is helped by the film's dialogue, which has the same inconsistency, sometimes nauseatingly meta, and other times layered enough to be smart. Still, in this uneven mess there are a few standouts that made experience worthwhile, mostly in the performances.

McAvoy is incredible in his reprisal, shifting between each identity with the slightest adjustments in posture, expression, or tone of voice, creating images of people that are distinct from one another despite all occupying the same body. Similarly, his character is far more well developed in this, positioned with an opportunity to explore the character of Kevin Wendell Crumb, the man behind all of the identities, in a way that actually allows him to have an arc and be more than just a villain with a thematic tie-in to the ideas of the film. These two strengths allow for one incredible moment among several bad ones in the film's finale that makes what was once an object of horror completely sympathetic, and while the noisy nonsense happening around it could potentially drown out the weight of such a moment, McAvoy's performance keeps the film from falling in to disarray completely. There's also Jackson, whose performance is appropriately arch, sometimes little more than a twitch and at other times offering the most hammy of deliveries to make the movie's baffling dialogue digestible, even if Mr. Glass doesn't have the same nuance as he did in Unbreakable, and the most added to his story is a set of twists that do nothing to change the character.

It's the strange thing about Glass; so many aspects clash with one another, too over-the-top to be dull but not focused enough to work effectively most of the time, and yet when things fit together, the movie manages to shine. There's no shortage of intention, either; each step the movie takes, whether misstep or magic, is done with the most deliberate choice, almost trying to find a completely different movie in the movie the audience is looking for. It doesn't make for a particularly entertaining experience outside of the film's best moments, but the movie is still fascinating to behold for not just what it tries to do and succeeds at, but how it fails as well.

The Short Version: While the dialogue is painfully obnoxious at times and so many twists stacked on top of one another flatten the emotional impact of some of the later scenes, Glass manages to get by on a strong set of performances, particularly McAvoy and Jackson, a tone that isn't afraid to be a little goofy at times, and a few thematic punches I was impressed it even attempted to land.

Rating: 6/10

Published January 21st, 2019