Film Review: Angel Has Fallen

"Mike Banning, You’re Being Charged For The Attempted Murder Of The President Of The United States..."

Declaring himself with a beaming smile as the world's worst actor come the conclusion of 2016, a year in which film fans across the world were "treated" to the double delight of both Gods of Egypt and London Has Fallen, two films which will forever remain as prime examples of cinematic garbage at its' most wretched and unbearable, the Scottish cash-grab that is Gerard Butler once again returns to the big screen with yet another entry into the "Has Fallen" film series with Angel Has Fallen, an equally poor attempt at furthering the saga of Butler's super secret agent, Mike Banning, as we see the raggedy Bruce Willis wannabee framed for the attempted assassination of Morgan Freeman's (The Dark Knight) peace-loving President of the United States, even after saving the world twice and being declared as a national hero. Plot holes aside, Angel Has Fallen sees Snitch director, Ric Roman Waugh, being handed the reigns for a movie which bears all the worst attributes you would expect from a recent Gerard Butler vehicle, albeit Den of Thieves which was actually very good, as it incinerates, massacres, stabs and blows its' way through a rather generic action plot with enough brute force to leave you with quite a nasty, elongated headache. We soldier on...

With London Has Fallen not only being a genuinely terrible excuse for a big-screen action movie as it succumbed to a jaw-dropping level of xenophobia and racism I had previously not overly noticed from a blockbuster shoot-a-thon, it does comes as a warm relief to report that Angel Has Fallen stays well clear from such levels of bad taste and instead holds out more so for the utter ridiculous. With the movie executives suddenly realising that Butler himself is no longer the fresh runner bean he may have been in the past, Angel Has Fallen does sort of start in semi-interesting fashion as we come face to face with the inevitable movie baddy in the first ten minutes alongside a focus on Banning himself, whose years of war and murder seem to have finally taken a toll on both his physical and mental capacity. As soon as the explosions occur however, all level of depth is completely dropped in favour of poorly CGI'd destruction, endless, pointless cannon fodder death and a central Taken meets Shooter plot line which doesn't make any sense whatsoever but still ends in exactly the same way you would expect from a film attempting to reach as wide an audience as possible. Add into the mix a strange cameo role from Jada Pinkett Smith (The Matrix Reloaded) and a laughably bad Nick Nolte (Warrior) and Angel Has Fallen is exactly the type of movie you suckers made possible by paying to see London Has Fallen, albeit one which actually does manage to improve on its' predecessor ever so slightly. 

Overall Score: 4/10

Film Review: Good Boys

 "Tonight Is Our First Middle School Party. There’s Going To Be Girls There. You Know What That Means..?"

With 2019 undoubtedly the year where the coming of age movie has become the weekly norm, this week sees the release of Good Boys, an American teen comedy brought to the big screen by both Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg through their production company, Point Grey Pictures, a film studio responsible most recently for the rather excellent, The Disaster Artist, and the mildly entertaining, Long Shot, from earlier on this year. Directed by Ukrainian-born filmmaker, Gene Stupnitsky, in his big-screen debut, Good Boys sees Stupnitsky team up with long-term writing collaborator, Lee Eisenberg, after their extensive work together on the American, and much much better, version of The Office, for a movie which takes the very well-worn and cliched tale of youth and young manhood and spices it up with a impressively hilarious comedic script which results in one of the most surprising and rewarding American comedies in recent history. 

Wholly focusing on the trials and tribulations of the self-proclaimed "bean bag boys", Good Boys sees Brady Noon, Keith L. Williams and the ever improving, Jacob Tremblay (Room, Wonder) as Thor, Lucas and Max respectively, three awkward inbetweeners who upon taking the big step from fifth to sixth grade, are invited to a house party ran by their school's most popular kid, one who promises the chance for our leading lads to partake in the horrifying encounter they all aren't prepared for; kissing a girl. As per the difficulty when it comes to this type of story, the tale of teens angst and rife anti-social behaviour isn't exactly anything original, with the likes of Booksmart this year alone offering a very similar plot, if being a tad more adult and certainly better made on an aesthetic level, but where Good Boys falls down on a basis of freshness and a slight cheap sensibility, it more than makes up for in terms of comedic output, with the razor sharp script offering numerous hilarious set piece, one of which actually made me giggle so much, tears began streaming from my eyes, an effect of which I haven't experienced from an American comedy in donkeys, and when a comedy works its' magic to the extent that bodily fluids extract themselves from your body, it's fair to say that such a movie does its' job pretty damn well.  

Overall Score: 7/10

Film Review: Pain and Glory

"If You Don't Write Or Film, What Will You Do..?"

Written and directed by critically acclaimed Spanish filmmaker, Pedro Almodóvar, a director responsible for the likes of Julietta and The Skin I Live In most recently, films which although may have made waves in Festival and critics circles, failed to ignite any sense of worldwide recognition, particularly to a lay audience who still seem baffled and alarmed at the thought of sitting through a film with subtitles, Pain and Glory comes to cinemas this week with a particularly enthusiastic expanded release across the U.K after making its' debut at this year's Cannes festival where the movie was selected for the Palme d'Or, albeit eventually losing out to Bong Joon-ho's comedic thriller, Parasite. Reuniting once again with long-term collaborators, Antonio Banderas (The Mask of Zorro and Penélope Cruz (Murder on the Orient Express), Almodóvar's latest is a bittersweet, expertly acted tale of regret and redemption with a staggeringly good central performance from Banderas, and whilst there is indeed much to admire about Almodóvar latest, and arguably most personal, work to date, Pain and Glory does undoubtedly suffer heavily from an annoyingly jumbled narrative and a baffling, almost cheap looking aesthetic which makes the film on a visual level seem amateurishly televisual. 

With a narrative structure which comes fairly close to exhibiting the storyline traits of a portmanteau movie, Pain and Glory focuses primarily on Banderas' Salvador Mallo, a retired, hermit-esque filmmaker who upon discovering that one of his early critically acclaimed movies has become the subject of a hotly anticipated restoration, begins to contemplate the years which have preceded him, leading up to the present day where numerous medical issues are preventing him from making the most of his talent and gifts. With Mallo's story jumping from time period to time period, the flashbacks focusing on his childhood allow the movie to introduce Penélope Cruz as his overbearing and incredibly Spanish mother figure, one who sees the brightness at the heart of her son's abilities but is reluctant to allow him to discover his own path as a young Mallo soon becomes obsessed with the escapist pastime of art, cinema and before he is ready for it, the notion of true love. Whilst the editing of this narrative journey fails to be as elegant and streamlined as I would have wanted, the power of the primary performers at the heart of the tale does push aside such issues for a time, but with clear pacing issues and not enough comedic quips to fully engage my brain for the entire runtime, Pain and Glory is a moderately successful vehicle for a absolutely stupendous central performance form Banderas and a movie with such a brilliant final shot that I almost felt the need to stand up and clap.  

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

"In This Town, It Can All Change, Like That..."

After a summer of truly awful summer blockbusters, with only the likes of Midsommar and reissues of Jaws, The Matrix and Apocalypse Now the very few cinematic releases to keep my sanity intact and preventing me from ending my relationship with film forevermore, thank the baby jesus for the return of Quentin Tarantino, one of the select few of talented filmmakers currently working in the world of film who is always guaranteed to expel greatness upon the big screen, with the critically acclaimed American returning to cinemas for the first time since 2016's excellent, The Hateful Eight, with the hotly anticipated and star-studded, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Hyped with a typically tantalising word of mouth after its' debut at this year's Cannes Festival, Hollywood sees Tarantino once again at the top of his filmmaking craft, with his so-called "ninth" picture (with the big man himself seeing both chapters of Kill Bill as a single entity) his most mature work since Jackie Brown all the way back in 1997, and whilst Hollywood by no means manages to surpass Pulp Fiction, a film which remains to this day Tarantino's undisputed magnum opus, Tarantino's latest is the closest the American has come in ages to creating a full-blown masterpiece.   

As per the norm when it comes to the back catalogue of Tarantino, Hollywood sees the American have complete and utter control over a release which is seen as his most "personal" to date, a two hour, forty minute drama which essentially follows three separate plot threads for the majority of the runtime, all of which then convene for a final, and highly memorable, concluding act which for those with prior knowledge of the historical basis in which the film is based, is incredibly satisfying in its' revisionist way of distorting true events. Of the three threads, all of which set in the peace-loving, hippie ear of 1969, the primary basis of the plot follows Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) and Brad Pitt (The Big Short) as Rick Dalton, a fading and emotionally crippled actor whose success on the small screen hasn't exactly paid dividends upon the big screen, and Cliff Booth, a war-hero turned stuntman with a particularly ambiguous past, two long-standing partners in the titular land of Hollywood whose careers seem to be dwindling into non-existence. Second to the primary narrative is Margot Robbie's (The Wolf of Wall Street) depiction of Sharon Tate, the beautifully angelic figure of tragedy whose involvement with the Manson Family, the subject of the film's third and final plot thread, supposedly sparked such a dramatic shift in the air of tinseltown that the landscape was changed forevermore, and with Tarantino expertly managing to mould each segment together with a surprisingly low-lew approach at times, the more you take into Hollywood in terms of knowledge about Manson and the events at Cielo Drive on that eventful night, the more you will undoubtedly take from it, particularly on an emotional level, something of which Tarantino's movies more than most tend to lack.

With such a contained yet sprawling narrative, Hollywood is clearly the closest Tarantino has come to recreating the storyline structure of Pulp Fiction since its' release in 1994, and whilst I have seen some reviews which have criticised the movie's storyline as excessive and over-indulgent, the entire point of the movie is to focus on a forgotten era in cinema of which Tarantino is absolutely fascinated with, and with a large majority of the runtime content with following our leading characters as they drive around the sunny, silky streets of a land filled with stars and dreamers, I for one was absolutely transfixed with the direction of the narrative from start to finish and bulked at how quick two hours just seemed to glide by without any issues whatsoever. Of course with such an eye-watering cast, the performances are all typically marvelous, with Pitt slightly outperforming his partner in crime and a standout cameo from Dakota Fanning (Ocean's 8) topping a wholly memorable acting collaboration, but the real winner here is of course Tarantino himself as he directs some of his best set pieces to date, particularly one staggeringly tense extended sequence in which Pitt's Booth is invited to the home of the Manson Family at Spahn's Movie Ranch. As the movie reaches its' climax, Tarantino carefully takes his time as he delicately pulls back the curtain on his perspective of events on the night of August 8th 1969, and as white-knuckle tension goes, the last twenty minutes of the movie are as gripping as anything I've ever seen, capping off what is clearly the best original movie of the year so far and a welcome return for Tarantino who provides his best work in years. Stupendous filmmaking.  

Overall Score: 9/10

Film Review: Crawl

"Grab Your Families, Your Loved Ones, And Get Out. We Won’t Be Able To Come For You..."

With a related trailer which highlights Sam Raimi as a "producer" on Evil Dead and Alexandre Aja as "director" of The Hills Have Eyes, it's fair to say that whilst such claims from the spin merchants of Crawl are indeed factually accurate, it also reinstates how fundamentally messed up the genre of horror has become thanks to the way in which every classic horror movie has been chopped up and churned out thanks to the wonderful notion of remakes and spin-offs in recent years. With Raimi of course being the mastermind and director of the original, and better, The Evil Dead in 1981, and producer on the 2013 Fede Álvarez directed remake, a film of which I can admit to actually enjoying, to say that Aja is best known for his work on the rehash of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006 is generally rather aggravating, when the mighty Wes Craven, director of the 1977 grindhouse original classic, seems to be the subject of a Stalinesque mind-wipe towards younger audiences who may not even be aware of Craven or his impact on the genre of horror. Moan aside, Aja and Raimi this week team up for a rather familiar B-movie creature-feature in the form of Crawl, an overly generic work of nonsense which in some ways is quite enjoyable due to the sheer fact that it's the type of movie which seems to be released at least thirty years too late. 

With a very basic, genre-literate set-up, Crawl sees Kaya Scodelario (Extremely Wicked...) as Haley, a swimming obsessed student athlete who stupidly returns to her hometown in the heart of Florida in order to check on the welfare of her father after a Category five hurricane begins to make its' way towards the mainland. Upon arriving at her deserted childhood home, Haley finds father Dave, as played by Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan), unconscious within the crawl space of their home for no immediate apparent reason until soon discovering the amidst decaying childhood homes, a ridiculously overblown natural threat and unnecessary daddy issues, ravenous alligators have decided to take over the house and are happy to eat anything that gets in their way. With Aja beginning his career with the enjoyably nonsensical, Switchblade Romance, and making his way into Hollywood with unnecessary remakes, Crawl does seem like an attempt to appease as mass an audience as possible, and whilst the exploitation violence within the movie is highly enjoyable in places, the screenplay isn't exactly one to be desired as it attempts to blend into the carnage meaningless narrative tangents such as reserved family issues without any real point to it whatsoever. When it comes to a film such as Crawl, the violence and the silliness should always be the primary focus and be capped off within a harmless eighty minutes, but with Aja's latest so predictable and lifeless, the lack of threat and lack of bite, pun intended, means Crawl is a glorified bargain bucket B-movie which just happens to be allowed on the big screen for no real apparent reason whatsoever. 

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: Animals

"Sooner Or Later The Party Has To End..."

Less of a coming of age drama and more like a raging alcohol and drug fuelled stupor, South Australian director, Sophie Hyde, brings to life Emma Jane Unsworth's 2014 novel of the same name in the form of Animals, an internationally produced "buddy" movie which sees Holliday Grainger (My Cousin Rachel) and Alia Shawkat (Green Room) as Laura and Tyler, two close friends hitting the tender age of their mid-30's who spend their time frolicking, excessively drinking and partaking in hard drugs in the name of staying young, keeping fresh and shying away from the responsibilities of the "adult" world. Screened to the public at this year's Sundance Film Festival and departing with a overly positive buzz, Hyde's movie is a refreshingly low-key if wildly spirited take on the trials and tribulations of adulthood, one which embraces many of the plot devices and genre conventions evident in previous and better works of a similar ilk, but too a film which works off the strengths of its' leading characters as we follow them through a particular path which audiences of similar age range will undoubtedly understand and sheepishly relate to. 

With 2019 seemingly being the year where the coming of age movie has re-emerged into the cinematic spotlight, Animals follows most closely to the likes of Booksmart in some ways, a film which takes the American Graffiti route of exploring one last childhood hurrah before venturing into the world of growing up, and whilst of course the age ranges of our particular characters in each film differ by a decade or so, the central narrative of Hyde's movie focuses on two friends seemingly reluctant to take that next step into becoming what they fear most; serious adults. With Grainger's Laura then becoming the first to attempt to bridge the gap between child and adult as she falls in love with Fra Free's (Les Misérables) mopey, piano loving straighthead, tensions soon build up between the pair, with each seemingly beginning to resent each other as they slowly drift apart as Laura falls more into the trap of modern-day normalisation involving marriage and family, whilst Tyler continues her life of unemployment, heavy drinking and endless partying. With the film relying on the central double act to basically hold the film together, the performances of both Grainger and Shawkat are good enough to keep you more than interested, aided nicely by some sharp comedic dialogue and snappy sarcastic quips, and whilst Hyde's movie will come and go without leaving much of a lasting impression, Animals is an enjoyable, if slightly wandering, tale of friendship and the ability to drink many, many bottles of white wine. 

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: Hobbs and Shaw

"I’m Dealing With The Future Of The Planet. I’m The Necessary Shock To The System. I Am Human Evolutionary Change..."

After a rather petulant, if supposed, high-profile, on-set fall out, the hotly reported, rather extended and overly silly "feud" between the muscle-headed duo of both Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Vin Diesel results in the release of Hobbs and Shaw this week, a similarly stupid, bloated and mind-numbingly dull spin-off from the jaw-droppingly successful Fast and Furious franchise, a blockbuster series which staggeringly continues to make shed loads of money even when the quality chops and changes more often than the leader of the Conservative party. Whilst the Furious franchise has become less about fast cars and more about fuel-injected explosions over the course of nearly two decades, Hobbs and Shaw is the first to overtly discount any notion of similarity from the set up of the series' first couple of movies and fall more into the bracket of full-on, high-octane, science fiction oriented action, one which sees The Rock and Jason Statham pretty much play themselves as they happily accept bundles of cash in order to reprise the titular roles of Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw respectively in order to prevent a catastrophic, world-ending, overly cliched bad thing from occurring. Whilst I am all for silly, hot-headed nonsense from time to time, Hobbs and Shaw is the type of action movie which is so painfully sterile and cheap, you long for the craftsmanship of 1990's era Michael Bay to come in and at least churn out a decent level of enjoyment, but with excess for the sake of excess and an annoying scent of self-congratulating sprayed upon it, the Furious franchise's first spin-off makes you long for the return of Vin Diesel. 

Let's start with the stars of the movie themselves. Take The Rock for instance, a dramatically effective action superstar with enormous physicality to boot who when placed in semi-decent, B-movie esque action romps in the ilk of Skyscraper can be thoroughly enjoyable to observe, but for too long now seems to be continually placed in simply awful works of cinema including the likes of San Andreas, Rampage and Jumanji, all of which unsurprisingly then proceed to take millions upon millions of dollars resulting in the cycle of bang-average movies continuing forevermore. In the case of Hobbs and Shaw, the addition of the always likeable Statham and Idris Elba should indeed be a trio made in heaven, but thanks to a quite awful screenplay, one full of genre-literate cliches and dodgy accents, eclectic editing which literally made me cheer inside once a shot held still for more than thirty seconds, and digital effects which take you completely out of the action due to their sheer cheap and tacky sensibility, Hobbs and Shaw is a real cause for concern regarding the way in which summer blockbusters seem to be heading, particularly when you look at the other examples this year alone in the ilk of Godzilla and Men in Black, but with the movie guaranteed to be a box office marvel as it provides certain types of audiences with enough to keep them coming, I for one can only speak the truth, and in the case of Hobbs and Shaw, it really is quite crap. 

Overall Score: 3/10

Film Review: The Current War

"I’m Working On Something Now, Something So New That The World Will Never Be The Same..."

Filmed and completed almost two whole years ago, with the original release date back in 2017 shelved following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal and the subsequent MeToo movement, The Current War finally hits the big screen after being acquired and released by Lantern Entertainment, an American film studio who purchased all assets owned by The Weinstein Company as the disgraced company fell into liquidation following their owner's high profile fall from grace. Directed by Texas-born filmmaker, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, whose previous works include the overly kooky, Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, and directorial credits on both episodes of Glee and American Horror Story, The Current War attempts to dramatise the titular battle fought by both Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse during the latter stages of the nineteenth century, as each attempt to outwit each other and become the leading light of electrical power across the globe. With very little background noise or press following closely behind it, it seems fair to say that The Current War is the kind of movie which Lantern Entertainment feel the need to let loose just for the sake of it, with the main goal of course being to recoup a slender amount of financial reward after the cost to make it, yet much in the same way Billionaire Boys Club came and went like a fart in the wind after the similarly troubling Kevin Spacey allegations, Gomez-Rejon's movie feels rather icky and strangely enough for a film without electrical power, staggeringly lifeless. 

Central to the film's array of issues is its' central narrative, one based upon a screenplay from American playwright, Michael Mitnick, who seems to have been catching up on the back catalogue of Christopher Nolan by producing what can only be described as a monumental bore of a story, a cheap, Nolanized knock-off which attempts to recreate the fast-paced, engaging storytelling Nolan does so well, yet forgetting to include any sort of pace or engaging, meaty plot whatsoever, resulting in the cardinal sin of watch checking only five minutes in. With the film clocking in and just under two hours, it's fair to say that The Current War only works as a medicinal prescription for prolonged sleep deprivation, a laborious, yawn-inducing borefest which wastes good acting talent including the likes of Michael Shannon, Tom Holland and Katherine Waterston, whilst reasserting the notion that Benedict Cumberbatch is quickly becoming the most typecast actor in the acting business today, with another leading role which leans heavy on the intelligent, sarcastic know-it-all characteristic and less on the sympathetic nice guy, akin to other historical figures the Brit has played in the likes of The Fifth Estate and The Imitation Game. Add into the mix woozy, sanctimonious camera work from Chung Chung-hoon who seems to think he's the reincarnation of Kubrick alongside simply awful time-hopping editing and The Current War is the first movie in a good while to be so awfully dull, I began to worry for the future of cinema as we know it. 

Overall Score: 3/10