Reviews

I didn't dislike this movie, let me be clear. I had a good time with it, especially when talking about the villains, and while I felt more could've been done with the Quantum Realm itself, this was a fun and creative space opera world to explore. But Quantumania is a story riddled with holes (unlike one of its best side characters) and inconsistencies, and doesn't particularly add to the MCU as a whole either. For a movie deemed the most important for the next phase of the movies, it didn't have any long-lasting effects at all. It's nowhere near as fun as its predecessors (Luis is sorely missed), and too many of the characters are annoying or frustrating to watch (or barely present at all). And then there's the CG world that lacks any frame of reference, and some really bizarre editing decisions. I give Quantumania an enjoyable yet flawed entry into the MCU canon; 7/10. But yeah, it's the villains that save this movie.

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Maverick's hype is well earned. I'm glad I watched the original first, despite really not enjoying it, because otherwise so much of Maverick's nods would've been completely lost on me, but Maverick stands in its own right as a solid action movie. This is some of the best dogfighting ever caught on camera. The authenticity of every shot is through the roof and goes a long way to really selling the intensity. Top Gun sought to put the audience in the cockpit with the pilots, Maverick actually does while also capturing some breathtaking stuntwork at the same time. They could've built a mock cockpit in a studio in front of a green screen and filmed the actors normally and CGI'd the planes in the sky, but then they'd be missing the real effect of those Gs on the actors faces, they'd be missing the palpability of flight at those speeds, they'd be missing all the little imperfections impossible to recreate. Tom Cruise deserves all the praise for this movie's monumental success, financially, critically, and artistically. He offers that which action movies have been sorely lacking for decades - authenticity. While I'm not quite at the point where I'd put it on the same pedestal as Fallout or Fury Road, it definitely has a strong claim. I give Top Gun: Maverick an edge-of-your-seat 8/10. This is definitely a movie I could see myself rewatching before the end of the year.

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To say I was left disappointed by Top Gun would be inaccurate. There's a reason why I hadn't checked it out in the last 30 years, and having watched it my reasons were only reinforced. I can understand why it was such a cultural milestone in 80s cinema though. It pushed the boundaries and became a trend-setter for decades to come, both culturally and in action cinema. But at the end of the day they employed a director for commercials to make a feature-length commercial for the Navy, and that's exactly what they got. Top Gun is a movie that looks cool and makes you want to be a part of it, but doesn't actually offer anything of substance. The action is frenetic and hard to follow, the story is paper thin, the romance is inconsequential and cringeworthy, the soundtrack is goddamn awful. I guarantee you the only reason people still like Top Gun today is pure nostalgia. Nostalgia I don't have. I give Top Gun a genuinely bad 4/10, but at least we had a good laugh at it.

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The Whale is another successful notch in Aronofsky's belt and goes further to proving that he's one of the greatest art directors of our generation. Brendan Fraser pulls in a triumphant return to big screen acting in one of the most emotionally demanding roles I've seen in a long time. He really was the perfect choice for this kind of character; loveable, forever positive, vulnerable, and capable. And also Hong Chau who seems to be the only cast member that can keep pace with the sheer depth Fraser can bring. Not a lot actually happens in The Whale, and yet the themes it touches upon and the characters it explores culminate in an overwhelming experience that's hard to describe. This isn't my favourite Aronofsky movie, far from it, but it's definitely his most emotionally complex. I need to see it again to properly process my feelings, but at the same time I'm scared of living that experience again. Just like mother!, I find myself in deep praise of The Whale, yet at the same time resistant to ever going back to it. I give it a high 8/10, tickling the underbelly of true greatness, really only let down by its miniscule scope, resulting in it feeling like just a filming of the play it's based on, rather than a movie in its own right. But the emotions are still raw and I'm still in a state of processing.

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The Menu surprised me in how much I enjoyed it. There's a surprising amount of food for thought in the various themes it touches upon, most obvious of which being the divide between the wealthy and not-so-wealthy, as well as the relationship between artists and the critics and fans that consume their work. It's all told with a veneer of satirical dark humour, offering more than a few uncomfortable laughs, from Ralph Fiennes riffing on particular famous chefs, to Nicholas Hoult's oblivious nature to the events going on around him, to Hong Chau's deadpan delivery. I give The Menu an 8/10 for keeping me laughing, cringing, guessing, and consuming for its entire runtime, without a single dull moment.

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White Noise is an oxymoron of a film. It's pretentious and self-important while deliberately offering little of meaning or significance. Its middle section around the Airborne Toxic Event is the film at its strongest, offering a worthwhile plot to explore its themes of death and the distraction of consumerism and misinformation in American society. But it bookends it with a meandering pointlessness. An intentional pointlessness, satirising things we would otherwise deem important and reducing them to background distractions. It's a film too clever for its own good, weighed down by its own nihilism. But I will admit that it is clever. I give White Noise an experimentally questionable 6/10. Whether it works or not is up to each individual viewer.

In all Pale Blue Eye was an enjoyable passing of time, but it's not one that'll particularly be remembered in the long run. The sense of atmosphere is palpable, especially for gothic horror fans, and the acting talent - especially of Bale and Melling - is noteworthy, but the story is underwhelming. Beyond the eleventh hour plot-twist that begs for repeat viewings, the story has little else to offer. The pace is slow and plodding, but without any justification for why it should be so slow and plodding. There's almost a solid hour of movie in the middle that I can barely recall because nothing of note really happened. I give Pale Blue Eye a flawed but bursting with potential 7/10. There's a genuinely great movie buried in here somewhere; all the ingredients are there, but the generic editing and script condemns it to being lost to eternity.

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Enemy at the Gates started out strong, with a concept absolutely brimming with potential for a truly great war movie. New perspectives and the in-built tension of a sniper duel ensured I was all the way in for a wild ride. Instead I got a Saving Private Ryan rip-off with tropey love triangle and a metric truckload worth of suspension of disbelief hanging over it. It was so over-Hollywoodised it was laughable, as in I was actually laughing at moments that were meant to be serious because I couldn't believe what I was watching. Is this movie just such a product of its time that it hasn't aged well? Because it hasn't. It's exactly what you'd expect from a middle-of-the-road Hollywood war movie from the early 00s. And this is all without mentioning the questionable editing that cut away halfway through tense scenes. I give Enemy at the Gates a better-luck-next-time 5/10. The only things saving it from a more damning rating being the long-distance interchanges between Jude Law and Ed Harris as they attempted to outwit each other. That element of the movie was pure gold. It's just a shame about literally everything else.

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At the end of the day I think I actually preferred Glass Onion to Knives Out, keeping in mind I felt the latter is a little overhyped. I have my criticisms of Glass Onion for sure, like how cringily topical it is, and how insanely long it takes to set everything up, but once it all comes together it starts to make perfect sense. My criticisms become less things I would want to change, and more features I understand had to happen to get the points across succinctly enough. Of course there's bounds of humour here as well, and the acting from the ensemble cast is pretty good, although not likely to win any awards. I laud Rian Johnson for once again subverting our expectations after Knives Out and giving us a whole new beast that is nothing like it. I'm curious to see what he manages to do with the third film and whether he can keep it fresh once again. I give Glass Onion the lower end of an 8/10.

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I don't think Banshees holds a candle up to In Bruges or even Three Billboards, on either the comedic front or the emotional front, but it definitely feels like a more intellectual and allegorical piece than anything McDonagh has done (or maybe it's just more obvious here than in his other works). As I mentioned, it was great seeing McDonagh, Farrell and Gleeson teaming up again and I sincerely hope it's not the last we see of them together. Banshees has some definite awards contenders for acting and writing, but as a movie as a whole it didn't wow me as much as I had hoped. I'm sure multiple viewings would help elevate it for me, but it's also not a movie I'm in a particular rush to go back and revisit. I give Banshees a solid 8/10.

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Avatar: The Way of Water is meant to be a triumphant return for James Cameron, and proof that Avatar can be the cultural milestone it promises to be, but it doesn't change anything. Other than some intriguing subplots, it's basically the first movie again in a new setting. I have no idea what Cameron spent the last decade of development on these movies doing, because the script is still shallow, the dialogue is still cringey, and the overall quality of the visual effects are somehow a step down from the first film. All that said, Payakan is the G. O. A. T. and his exile is a great injustice. I give The Way of Water a middling 6/10. It's a disappointment for sure, but at the end of the day I don't think Cameron could make a truly bad film if he tried.

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Three Thousand Years of Longing managed to enthral me for much of its runtime. I could've happily strapped in for another couple of hours of Alithea and the Djinn sat in that hotel room telling each other stories. It's a movie about stories, and the stories within are so well-crafted that they draw you in. You want to know more, you want to sit in them for longer, you want more of them. The movie does a fantastic job of making you feel the impact stories can have. But once the stories are told the movie falls apart. It can't keep up with itself, it runs out of ideas, it brute forces its way to a conclusion with no consideration for its own internal logic, it rushes from plot point to plot point in order to reach the credits sooner. It almost feels like a large portion of the film's final act was left on the cutting room floor. I give Three Thousand Years of Longing a 7/10, with high praise for the meat of it, but is ultimately let down by an unsatisfying and lazy conclusion.

Bullet Train was a fantastic experience, and by now I have to consider myself a devoted Leitch fan. I didn't particularly enjoy Hobbs & Shaw, but John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and now this have all been spectacular action movies full of both style and substance. He's also developing a deft hand at merging comedy with action to create movies that are just outright fun. Bullet Train is no exception. This a surprisingly clever movie full of foreshadowing, interconnected storylines, and the pervading theme of fate driving every character, while also giving us exquisite action sequences, meaningful character moments, and some truly laugh-out-loud comedy. If you're looking for a good time at the movies, it doesn't get much better than this. I give Bullet Train an unequivocal 8/10, but honestly I could easily push for a 9. Definitely one of the best movies of the year. Bring on The Fall Guy next, even though I know nothing about it.

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Ambulance is a bad movie by every metric of movie criticism, but every second was pure, high-speed entertainment regardless. From the literal dizzying spinning of Danny trying to persuade Will to join him on the job, to the Heat-inspired bank heist, to the FBI agent revealing he went to college with Danny, this movie just doesn't care about anything but keeping your heart pumping, your smile widening, and your fist pumping. The script is awful, the jokes are corny, the editing is frenetic and nonsensical, the camerawork might literally make you sick, the ending is a farce of American heroism, but man, I just thoroughly enjoyed every second. I give Ambulance a rambunctious 7/10.

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Just like with the first movie, there's a lot about Wakanda Forever that I really, really liked. There's some amazing worldbuilding and powerhouse performances here, the story is enthralling, and the antagonist is about as perfect as you can get in the way he was developed and the role he served. The score by Ludwig Goransson was once again on-point, the realisation of Talokan was fantastic, and every reverence to Chadwick Boseman was respectful and heartbreaking in equal measure. This is a movie that really cared about the legacy of its late star, and was aware of the love and admiration he had earned. But unfortunately, also like the first movie, there was a bunch about Wakanda Forever that I wasn't as much of a fun of. It was too long, filled with too much faff, it was so badly lit certain scenes were almost unwatchable, and they put their bets on the wrong leading actor going ahead. And yet I'm eager to see the effect this movie has on the wider MCU going forward. It did lay the groundwork for a lot of upcoming projects, even if it was to the film's overall detriment. And if you ignore all of that the core elements of the film are essential viewing for any Marvel fan. Wakanda Forever somehow managed to simultaneously be one of the MCU's highest peaks, as well as one of its lowest ditches. And for that I fall on an entertaining 7/10 that remains an improvement on the first film. Huerta and Bassett may be enough on their own to earn an 8 though. I guess time and rewatches may tell.

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Unbearable is a meta comedy through-and-through (in case that wasn't obvious), with jokes and references looping back on themselves in surprising and clever ways. The most notorious of which being Nick and Javi's ideas for the screenplay ultimately becoming the plot of Unbearable Weight. It's about two men who become friends in a smart, character-driven adult drama about real life. But they need a hook so they come up with a kidnapping for the trailer shot. Unbearable Weight itself starts off as a smart, character-driven adult comedy, but itself devolves into a hokey action thriller about saving the kidnapped girl, turning the entire third act into a meta-joke all its own. Whether you find this hilariously clever or boringly mediocre will depend on your mileage, but either way I found this final act to be inoffensive and enjoyable enough that I don't particularly mind either way. Maybe the movie would've been better with a cleverer ending, but it was meta enough for me that I enjoyed the joke nonetheless.

The real strength of Unbearable Weight comes from its lead stars; Nic Cage as himself, and Pedro Pascal as Javi. They share such an infectious chemistry with one another that watching them interact is an absolute delight. The highlight of the entire movie is when they decide to take LCD and head into town while bouncing ideas for the screenplay off each other. The comedy gold they manage to extract from one another, particularly around the paranoia of a couple of old guys sitting on a nearby bench, is enough to earn this movie's place as a worthwhile comedy.

Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent isn't as clever as some meta comedies, but it remains an enjoyable waste of a couple of hours with two charismatic leads and a heap of references to Nic Cage's filmography, without making them feel like required viewing. This movie simply wouldn't have worked without Nic Cage, but similarly they lucked out with Pedro Pascal giving him such a great co-lead to bounce off. This is both actors at their best. I give Unbearable Weight a hilariously refreshing 8/10.

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All Quiet on the Western Front was not as moving, disturbing, or culturally significant as I had hoped it would be. It offers very little to the conversation of war than other war movies. It's just as upsetting, just as gory, just as intense, with a message just as tired and overdone. The cinematography is amazing, the score is foreboding and heart-pounding, the amount of effort that went into the sets, costumes, and visual effects is overwhelming. And yet it narratively misses the mark on numerous occasions, repeating points it already made, turning predictable for cheap tragedy, skipping over some of the more poignant moments of the book entirely, and forget about historical accuracy. That tank sequence though. I give All Quiet on the Western Front a reasonable 7/10. An enjoyable experience for what it was, but not a revolutionary piece of cinema by any stretch of the imagination.

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I enjoyed my time with X, but I definitely feel it falls victim to mediocrity. There's so many promising flourishes in the film's brooding first and second acts, but then the third act is in too much of a rush to kill everyone off and reach the finish line. Ultimately I felt like even the little I knew about this movie was too much. Maxine was so clearly signposted as the final girl that anytime she was put in danger it lacked any kind of tension. The film's marketing doesn't make any effort to hide the fact it's a slasher, so you spend the entire movie waiting for it only to be disappointed by those elements anyway. If I had gone in blind, the unsettling atmosphere during the day would've amounted to so much more, and the sudden flux of kills would've shocked me and had me guessing right to the end. But X didn't offer me any much more than that to make it feel like a worthy watch, including the last minute twist which felt like a meaningless addition that had no effect on anything before or after. I give X a really well-made, yet mediocre 6/10.

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Freaky follows in the footsteps of Happy Death Day by taking a classic movie trope and adapting it into a horror movie. Where Happy Death Day took Groundhog Day and applied to a girl's fatal birthday again, and again, and again, Freaky takes Freaky Friday and swaps the mother character for a Vorhees/Myers-esque serial killer, leaving a teenage girl in a grown man's body, and a killer offered the perfect cover of a high school outcast. Hilarity ensues, or at least so you'd presume, but in truth Freaky never really does anything particularly interesting with the body swap concept, and certainly doesn't achieve the freshness and charm of its predecessor.

To start with, Freaky's foundations are seeped in ridiculous high school clichés and stereotypes. Millie is a fairly average, shy teenage girl, bullied by the popular girls for not wearing expensive clothing (lol teenagers), has a crush on the nice jock, and has a chronic trouble with her sense of time. She also follows the Hollywood cliché of being played by an attractive young actress that they just expect us to accept actually looks below average. Whatever. Her friends are "black chick" and "gay best friend" and that's about as far as their personalities go. Her sister is "stoic cop" and her mother is "hopeless alcoholic", with the only dash of family drama being the recently deceased father figure.

The biggest crime here though is that of the serial killer, who's entire personality boils down to being menacingly silent. That fits the Vorhees/Myers approach they're aiming for, but it doesn't make for a particularly interesting body swap. Kathryn Newton is reduced to death glares for the majority of the movie, which is a shame because her pre-swap performance was pretty entertaining. It would've been nice for the killer to be of the more sociopathic kind, to allow both Vaughn and Newton to have a little more fun, rather than just Vaughn gallivanting around as a teenage girl. There was also some interesting missed potential here by having the killer returning to high school where his murderous tastes presumably began. Some kind of flashback or realisation for the killer would've been a tantalising touch. Instead it's just Millie who learns what it's like having a penis and the strength of a grown man. Then there's also the missed potential of the killer attempting to use this body swapping ability to stay forever hidden by swapping bodies constantly, but I guess that would've complicated matters for the simple minded. This body swap is a horrifically lopsided one.

The kills are bloody and some are really quite inventive, including force-feeding someone a bottle of wine until it shatters in their throat, or laying a guy out on a saw bench (ignoring the fact that, especially in a school, those saws have safety mechanisms to prevent loss of fingers). There's stabbings and impalings, and even a moment where a tennis racket is used as a brutal murder weapon. But it thankfully never gets to Saw levels of eurgh, although I admit that would've added a little more teeth to the proceedings.

Unfortunately the light-hearted/comedy aspect of the movie fell flat for me. It was pleasantly entertaining enough, but nothing laugh-out-loud. Millie exploring the flapability of her new cock and balls was endearing, and an awkward teenage kiss in the back of a car is about as much as you get. The rest of the comedic efforts were more like annoyances. The gay kid trying to explain why there was a girl tied up in the dining room felt like it was trying too hard, and any reference to other movies were just cheap shots at eliciting a reaction from the audience.

Freaky was certainly not worth the two-year wait, and certainly didn't live up to Happy Death Day by any stretch of the imagination. It was full of bad clichés, unintentional overacting, and didn't explore it's concept nearly well enough. Bar the body swap it otherwise felt like a super mediocre version of Scream, which is something that has already been done multiple times by now. I give Freaky an underwhelming 5/10.

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Athena was a fantastic, visceral experience. The deeper connotations of hidden agents sowing chaos and discord in order to turn public opinion in their diabolical favour is poignant and topical. But even without acknowledging that deeper subtext, we're offered a gritty, intense look into the anger that fuels riots. There's no good guys in this story, only deeply flawed people acting and reacting to the situations they find themselves in, for good or bad. The constant use of long shots adds not only to the suspense of the film, but also the intimacy with its characters. Yet it also knows when to use more conventional editing in service of the story it needs to tell. Grief and pain hang in the hair thanks to the impactful score, and the acting is commendable especially from a handful of first-time actors. The dialogue is not as strong as it could've been, but that may also have just been a victim of subtitles, and its fundamental message gets lost and confused in the spectacle. In all I give Athena an impressive 8/10 and would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes edge of your seat thrillers and sociopolitical commentaries.

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Underwater was a surprise, especially considering the negative reception it has received. It cuts straight to the action and doesn't let up for its entire run time. It's claustrophobic, tense, genuinely terrifying at moments, and they managed to get away with a surprising amount of gore for its rating. I do wish just a little more of the hinted mystery was touched upon at the abandoned base Norah finds herself in, but I didn't feel like it was entirely necessary to understand what was going on. Every actor did a top-notch job, even (or especially) Stewart and Miller, who both took the opportunity to show what they're capable of as actors. Underwater was a solid movie that had an unfairly harsh time with both audiences and critics, and I'm not even sure I understand why (oh no, it's BvS again). This didn't need twenty minutes of character-building, the development's all there nestled in amongst the tension. It's a really good movie, seriously. If you put any stock in my opinions at all, Underwater is worth checking out. I give it a solid 8/10.

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings far surpassed any expectations I had. It's easily the best Marvel movie post-Infinity Saga (I know, that's not exactly saying much), and is very promising for the quality of Marvel's next projects. We have probably the second best villain intimately tied to the origin of a new, entertaining, and capable hero full of potential, in a story that ties the universe together and teases upcoming events in tantalising and unexpected ways. The fight choreography was on point, the dialogue was seeped in cultural significance, the jokes all land, and the CGI is some of the best since Thanos himself. Shang-Chi is an all-out success for Marvel, it seems in multiple ways - both critically and financially. Really its only downfall is that at times this doesn't feel like that much of a movie about Shang-Chi himself purely because his origin is tied so closely to the story of the Ten Rings. Instead it's a Ten Rings movie featuring Shang-Chi, which is fine, but feels a bit weird for his introduction into the MCU. And yes, the Ten Rings are tied up with the Iron Man films perfectly, almost making the whole Aldrich Killian thing better in retrospect. I give Shang-Chi a high 8/10, with promise of moving up with rewatches.

Gladiator deserves every ounce of praise it got at the time (and debatably deserved more), and still gets to this day. It's a stirring story of revenge against the backdrop of Roman glory, with a game played off between the stoicism of Maximus against the cruel envy of Commodus over the people's adoration. It becomes as much about the back-alley politicking and public perceptions as it does the fights within the arena itself. Maximus is the pinnacle of masculinity and heroism against Commodus' despicable antagonist, an underdog against powers greater than himself. And when Maximus gets his revenge and collapses on the floor to meet his wife and son in the afterlife, it hits with the emotional weight it has earned. It's beautiful to look at, gorgeous to listen to, expertly directed and edited. I give Gladiator a resounding 9/10.

No Country For Old Men is by far the best movie the Coen Brothers have ever made. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's one of the best movies ever made. It works on so many levels, from the superficial angle of a modern Western oozing with tension, down to the subatomic level of the existentialism that it inflicts. It's enough to make you question everything you thought you knew about life, dispelling the myth of karma and pointing out how unfair life can be - and not in the way of "that's not fair!", but from the chaotic nature of fate. The universe doesn't care whether you're a good person or not. Things just happen without rhyme or reason. We all have our own choices to make, and there's no such thing as the right choice. Llewelyn goes back to give water to the dying man and it sets him down the path that led to his death by a party he wasn't even anticipating. There's nothing to fault in this movie. Even if you were let down by the anti-climatic ending, I urge you to go back and realise the anti-climax of it all was the point of the whole film. There's no grand showdown between the good guys and bad guys. Things just happen, for better or for worse. I grant No Country For Old Men access to the exclusive 10/10 club.

Part Three was possibly my favourite of the three movies, even if only for that first half which offered the most captivating and truly horrific story of the lot. While 1994 and 1978 were riffing off other movies, 1666 was forced to go in its own direction and explore an era of horror not touched upon enough in movies. The second part of the movie felt a little more formulaic, but it offered as satisfying a conclusion to the trilogy as anyone could hope for. I give Part Three an enjoyable but flawed 7/10. This still isn't an example of horror greatness, but the trilogy as a whole was definitely enjoyable, and had one of the best treatment/use of an LGBT relationship I've seen.