Film Reviews by TB

Reading through the multiple reviews that hate this film, I found myself laughing. Often, I will not like or even loathe films which are given rave reviews by pretty much everybody else, whether they are a professional critic or another movie watcher. Two examples of this are Everything Everywhere All At Once & Baby Driver. With those 2 movies, I sat literally just waiting for them to end & getting more annoyed by the second at their attempts to seem relevant or try to wow the audience, whereas for me I just wanted them to be over so that I could get on with my life.

But I loved this film, in pretty much every way.

It has an excellent soundtrack, zesty & spiky direction, beautiful cinematography/colour palette & an age old story that felt fresh. Emma Stone & Ryan Gosling, who had worked together twice before so have an excellent & easy chemistry, were brilliant as the two lovers both trying to make it in Hollywood, set both in the 40's/50's & the present day.

But I will give the multiple haters of this film this one thing: the many plot holes & stupid situations (penniless musicians & actors being able to live a life which would be impossible without serious money,) would annoy me as well if this film had rubbed me up the wrong way. However, I fully bought into this fantasy world, loved being in it & was sad when it ended, so didn't care about the clear elements which weren't realistic.

A real treat

Having got to know Rory Stewart after becoming a fan of The Rest is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell, I was interested to see this, particularly when Stewart himself mentioned it during one of the episodes.

The pair of documentaries shows the history of Afghanistan, primarily the obsession that various countries had with attempting to conquer it, with all of them spectacularly failing sooner or later. Stewart is an excellent and welcoming presenter, clearly having a passionate love for the history & people of this country, as well as it being one of the countries he memorably walked across over 2 years in 2000-2002.

However, whilst there is much to like in this programmes, for me they were also at times poorly directed & edited. The narrative jumps all over the place, going from Afghanistan to the UK to other locations, and at times leaving you confused & a little annoyed. Whilst a linear narrative can be seen as a little unoriginal, it is also much more viewer-friendly, especially when detailed situations are being explained to you as the viewer.

A good watch but could have been so much better.

The story of Aileen Wuornos is one which varies depending on who tells it. To some, she is a total & remorseless monster, evil to her very core & those individuals cheered when she was executed. To others, she was almost a hero-figure: a prostitute who turned the tables on the men who exploited her for sex. And for many, including me, she was the product of one of the most horrific, evil & upsetting upbringings/childhoods you could possibly imagine, resulting in her becoming the mentally scarred & exploited woman who killed at first in self-defence, but then took out her anger on the men who used her.

Following on from the critically acclaimed & impactful Nick Broomfield documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, Patty Jenkins contacted Wuornos & wrote her life story. In another stroke of genius casting, Charlize Theron was chosen to become Wuornos, become literally being the case. What they have created is a film so visceral & powerful, it literally grabs you by the throat & drags you into this world of hell.

Theron is absolutely sensational. Roger Ebert called her performance "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema." This is a Daniel Day-Lewis level performance, Theron not only physically transforming herself with prostheses, but also immersing herself in every detail of Wuornos's life. When you look at Theron & Wuornos side by side, you simply cannot tell the difference. That is the level we are at. Few actors ever reach this level, and her performance left me in awe.

But don't for a second think that Christina Ricci is sidelined as Wuornos's lover Selby Wall. Ricci has imbued Wall with a childlike naivety & mischief, which also hides a highly damaged & scared woman. And the tragedy that unfolds in their lives is all the more sad because in some small way, you do feel that constant feeling of "If only..." If only the pair of them could drag themselves out of this situation, get some stability in their lives & find peace, they could be happy. But of course, you also know that that will never happen.

The other massive praise I give this film is in its total "take the gloves off & get honest" approach, none more so than the scene where Aileen is attacked by a John, starting off the devastating spiral of violence. The level of sexual violence is unbearable, so much so that I actually cannot watch it without wincing. No punches are pulled: this is the life & risks that every prostitute has to deal with every time they get into a car with a stranger. This is no Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman callgirl scenario, this is real & graphic.

The script is excellent, as is the direction. Wuornos is never sensationalised & the film also makes clear that as her violence spirals, the killings never provide enjoyment for her, more a brief moment of feeling that she has fought back for one second against a world which has done nothing but abuse & exploit her.

The ending also gives no easy answers: sure, Aileen is arrested & sentenced to multiple death penalties. But as I finished the film, I just felt an overwhelming sadness that a woman who, from a very young age was sexually & physically abused by almost everyone who should have been protecting her, was effectively turned into this "monster" who more than anything was just angry at the hell she was born into.

And it is only by sheer luck that we as the viewer were not thrown into that sort of life...

I remember vividly going to see Kick-Ass at the cinema. Coming 2 years after the monumental Dark Knight & when the traction of superhero films was just picking up, it promised to be a fresh & realistic take on the genre, flipping a lot of the expectations on their head. It had also generated considerable coverage/controversy from across the media landscape over its content, in particular the Hit-Girl character's use of profanity & violence. But for me the driving factor seeing it was that I had absolutely loved Layer Cake & would watch anything Matthew Vaughan was involved in.

So I went into the cinema... then came out at the end wishing I hadn't bothered & wanting my money back.

It starts well and asks some genuinely legitimate questions about the fascination people have with superheroes, as well as people who want to imitate them, either to actually help people or just for notoriety. But despite Taylor (now Taylor-Johnson) being an affable, likeable Everyman, very quickly the film becomes what it always wanted to be: a sleazy & in this case quite revolting movie.

Whilst I will talk about Hit-Girl in a second, I have as much a problem with the overall tone as I do with that character. And by tone, I mean that everything seems to have been designed to make you go yuck & wonder what the hell the people in this world are doing. So you have one of the characters putting his daughter in a bulletproof vest & repeatedly shooting her, then being delighted when she asks for guns & knives as birthday presents (this was horrible at the time & rancid today considering how many school shootings there are, alongside the explosion in young people committing violence, whether it is with firearms in the USA or knives in the UK,) and a really lairy, creepy obsession with sex which instead of coming across like The Inbetweeners is more like a dirty old man.

That would be problematic by itself, but then when you put a 12 year old girl as one of the main characters, who commits the lion's share of graphic violence & repeatedly swears, it's a whole new level of repugnance. And the film just keeps pushing & pushing this, as if every time it takes it too far, it's a groundbreaking achievement. At one point, she references a graphic sexual situation as her calling card, as casually as if she is talking about what she had for dinner that evening. And none of it is funny or groundbreaking, it's just disgusting.

And the film just goes on and on like that. There are some well-shot action scenes, hence the 2 star rating, and Nicolas Cage is clearly having the time of his life unashamedly living out his boyhood fantasies. But, by the end you just look at it with the same contempt you would someone who exposed their 12 year old child to graphic sex & had taught them to slaughter multiple people.

Amusingly, there was a high profile fallout from the sequel, when Jim Carrey refused to have anything to do with promoting the film after seeing it's violent content coupled with multiple school shootings. Kinda makes you think, doesn't it...

After American Psycho, I would watch anything Mary Harron directed/wrote/produced. Her latest effort, Daliland, should be right up her street: extremely idiosyncratic & difficult artistic genius, who was known as much for his highly unconventional personal life as for the masterpieces he came up with. But despite this rich vault of cinematic potential, the main feeling I had whilst watching it was boredom.

For example, I don't remember seeing another film which showed excesses of drugs, parties & debauchery being so dull. A threesome so uninspired, you wonder what the onlooking Dali found so exciting about it. Whilst there has been many films made about the put-upon assistant to the difficult/demanding protagonist, these can often descend into naval-gazing.

There is some good set designs & costumes, plus the production department does an incredible job of turning Liverpool into an authentic & believable stand-in for 70's New York City. I also liked the way it was shot, with a soft focus & colour palette.

As for the performances, Christopher Briney does his best, channelling blue-eyed innocence with a subtle iron-will to immerse himself in the orbit of Dali & his entourage, but he never manages to be anything more than mediocre. Ben Kingsley, a powerhouse actor and capable of sledgehammer-impactful performances (Sexy Beast,) here plays Dali as a narcissistic & incredibly difficult artistic genius filled with various ticks & idiosyncrasies.

And whilst I have no doubt that that was probably what Dali was like, watching it without a good story behind it is just tiresome. If I wanted to watch a spoilt brat being fawned over by various acolytes, I can just put Trump's name into YouTube...

I have been a fan of, as well as going to see live, Kevin Bridges ever since he first exploded onto the comedy scene. But whilst he is never less than engaging, his quality of material has gone up & down over the years.

However, there is much to like in this show, as he debates things getting back to normal after COVID, the change in his own life with a new wife & baby, as well as the toxicity of social media. The best is saved for the encore, with a funny yet extremely powerful takedown of bullies which does what all great comedy should do: push your buttons & make you think whilst you're laughing. And the final tribute to his biggest supporter & fan is genuinely moving.

I will never stop watching Bridges & I also welcome that he is still releasing DVD's, not just giving it to one streaming service to put behind a paywall.

Trainspotting is perfection. It is everything you could ever want from a film, still as relevant today as it was when it exploded onto cinema screens in 1996. It has had a place in my top 10 ever since I started seriously watching films. So there was a lot riding on T2.

But never doubt the brilliance of Danny Boyle, the genius of John Hodge & the magnificence of the original cast. Because T2 is everything you could possibly want from a sequel, but crucially it is also bold enough to go in new directions.

This film continues on the journey of Renton as he returns to Scotland & the fallout from his actions at the end of the last film, including the wrath of his so-called "friends."

Not one thing isn't perfect in this film. It is an unbelievably emotional, moving, funny & profound look at life & how friends navigate through the joys & the horrors.

This is storytelling & filmmaking at its absolute pinnacle. I loved every single second of it, as will you

After the incredible & breathless Mission Impossible Fallout, Tom Cruise returns with another entry in the series. But whilst all the ingredients you would expect are present & correct (stunning locations, ridiculously dangerous action scenes, expert direction,) there is also some real narrative/story issues for me.

Effectively, Ethan Hunt and the team are fighting against a computer algorithm, which knows their every move as well as what they would do to counter that knowledge. But what this translates to in terms of watching experience is basically a bunch of actors playing 4D chess via exposition with the audience.

Alongside that, we are introduced to a new character in the shape of Grace, played by Hayley Atwell, who changes allegiances so often that it becomes stupid. Whilst I am fully aware that the world of the IMF is a place of smoke & mirrors/top level espionage, when you have a character who repeatedly gets Hunt into situations that nearly get him killed & he still goes back/trusts her, it becomes quite unbelievable.

But, there is also lots to like here. The much hyped & talked-about motorbike jump (done by Cruise for real on the first day, in case he got killed & meant the film would be ruined,) is the absolute pinnacle of stunt work. I also have to give huge praise to Christopher McQuarrie in how he shoots these scenes in particular, going out of his way to show that it really is Tom Cruise doing these & not cutting away to a stuntman.

And the other thing I loved was the soundtrack. Lorne Balfe returns after his incredible work scoring Fallout & what he has composed here is even better than his previous effort. His use of strings & brass is magnificent, really enhancing the film.

Whilst this wasn't up there with the previous films, it is still a good watch and I absolutely will be watching the sequel whenever it is released.

Heavily trailed/advertised in the media, mainly due to the presence of David Tennant, this was something I was interested to watch, especially after seeing his performance as Dennis Neilson. But despite some incredible visuals of the beautiful Scottish countryside, everything else is a complete mess.

The tone of this drama is totally misjudged, the narrative all over the place. Characters behave in no logical way at all, whether it is the adults or the children. Everyone appears to be in the wrong programme & the direction/writing is atrocious. After his incredible & nuanced performance as Neilson, here Tennant attempts to play another deeply conflicted man. Except this time all the tics & moody actions just don't fit, it's like watching a checklist of those traits acted out.

Similarly, the other characters are badly written. Jess & her other half are meant to be a couple, but there is almost no love between them, just different trite set-ups leading to arguments. The mother of Tennant's character is badly written as well. There are also at least two plotlines which go nowhere & the characters concerned vanish without explanation.

The main kudos and reason for 2 stars is there is also a welcome focussing on abuse normally are not featured in TV dramas, particularly coercive control & mental bullying. The character of Kate is, whilst also not well written, a representation of what so many women have to deal with in terms of horrific home lives with despicable partners.

But this is a small positive in what is effectively a tonally all over the place & unfocussed drama.

Adam, played by Andrew Scott, is a lonely & delicate writer in his 40's, who has just moved into a new block of flats in central London. So new in fact, that almost nobody else lives there. The block is a metaphor for Adam's life: both in the center of things as well as feeling totally alone & an outsider. One night, he meets an enigmatic & drunk man called Harry (Mescal) who is one of the only other residents of the building. At the same time he also starts to confront the pain that has been inside him, eating him up & destroying him. This takes the form of going back to his childhood home & talking to his parents, who are strangely younger than he is & stuck in time.

The film is devastating in its portrayal of the pain & hurt as a result of the stigma of being gay in a time when the only things associated with that were AIDS hysteria & being condemned to live a lonely & difficult life. This is coupled with Adam's horrific early losses in his life. What the story does at its most brilliant is to have the conversations which we all wish we had had with our parents (I don't mean specifically about sexuality, I am talking about the massive number of issues that young people growing up face.)

The only thing for me that stops this film getting 5 stars is that the chemistry between Mescal & Scott never fully clicked for me. When you see Jamie Bell & Claire Foy together, they are perfection. But I never felt that with the two leads. They are both good on their own, but together I just wanted that little bit more.

Still, this is a devastating, beautiful & unbearably sad story about confronting the demons of our past.

I haven't seen many "body horror" films, the main one being Crash, which I found compulsively horrible but gripping to watch. Cronenberg's new film, again in the realms of body horror, has some genuinely shocking scenes as well as the sort of far out & provocative ideas which he is known for.

But despite an excellent cast who are fully committed to their roles, by the halfway point the film has started to lose focus & momentum. The world which has been very carefully created then just stalls, with the narrative pretty much collapsing in on itself.

Whilst for many people, they will see ideas & scenes they have never or very rarely have seen, the novelty then starts to wear off. Which is a shame, because with the budget & actors he had, there was much more than I felt Cronenberg could have done.

Worth a watch, but definitely not his best work.

In December 2020, Emerald Fennell wrote & directed Promising Young Woman. It is important to contextualise this film's impact was as much to do with the world's state of mind, being released in the thick of the Covid pandemic, as it was the quality of the film itself. I mention #MeToo deliberately, as there was significant traction pre-pandemic, which then exploded during it, with multiple examples of violence towards women being exacerbated due to lockdowns. My point here is that Promising Young Woman captured that, which was a big reason for it's success. And I gave it 4 stars in my review, despite some reservations I had.

But what Ms Fennell has done to follow this is to make one of the most clichéd, lazy & antagonistic films you could possibly imagine. For me, it was unwatchable, so much so that I switched it off after 30 minutes. Saltburn looks at the class system, also adding LGBTQIA into the mix. But the way that this film has been written is just atrocious.

The best way I can describe it is to use an example from the polar opposite of it's class critique. In Little Britain, there is a character called Vicky Pollard. She is written as an extremely aggressive, unpleasant, lazy & feckless chav. She is literally a satirisation of the most extreme elements of the working class, turned up to 11. But she is also a part of a comedy show that has many other stereotypes, in a comedy series which unashamedly wears it's overblown characters on its sleeve. Nobody, unless they were either stupid or totally disingenuous, would claim that Pollard represented all of the working classes.

Now flip that example around, so that it is looking at the "upper classes," make pretty much every single character that you encounter (within the 30 minutes that I could tolerate it) a walking clichéd stereotype of disgusting wealth, and because subtlety is not something which seems to exist for Ms Fennell, make every single actor mug horribly to accentuate these traits as much as possible.

But what I loathe & despise most about this film is the sheer laziness of the writing. At one point, about 20 minutes in, I paused it when one obnoxious character walked up to the protagonist to say something, then predicted exactly what he was going to say. I then pressed play & around 90% of it was dead-on. Every character says exactly what you'd expect them to say, in exactly the way you'd expect them to say it.

And the level of smugness of the writing just vomits out of the screen. This film not only loves this world it has created, it thinks it is cutting edge & genre-defining. And on the point of laziness, don't for a second think that I hate this film because of it's targeting of the upper classes. I would detest this film just as much if it was the working classes in its crosshairs. What I most object to is the fact that it's idea of satire is to look at a particular group, find the stereotypes & then just exacerbate those to an idiotic degree.

You only have to look at American Psycho for a masterful deconstruction of the privileged, even though that film is set in America. One irony about it, which would be too subtle for Saltburn to notice, is how Patrick Bateman at times actively adopts & mocks the other members of this class that he is trying to fit into, but this is part of the satire of the script, brilliantly written by Mary Harron & Guinevere Turner.

Saltburn is literally unwatchable, unbearable & vapid. It is a film which had a large number of critics falling over themselves to praise & revere. I actively hated & despised it, as much for its smugness as its script.

Ironically, I watched this the same day as Pig Killer, another rancid film (and one which I have also reviewed.) And my friend who I saw both with later pointed out that I enjoyed Pig Killer more. That's the level we are talking about.

Avoid

This film defies every metric you could possibly measure it against. It is so badly made, so atrociously scripted & so poorly acted it almost transcends all criticism. The script probably took longer to read than it did to write. It is full of bad editing, sound & production design. But it just keeps on plumbing ever more rancid depths.

For example, there is a moment of jaw-dropping racism by one female character, commenting about another, despite this woman being in a relationship with a mixed-race man... Also, pretty much every woman featured in this film in a prominent way is either a sex worker or treated as nothing more than a sex object.

Other such delights include the casting of an older porn star to play the mother of the protagonist, who at one point has clearly used Sharon Stone's leg crossing from Basic Instinct as horrible inspiration, but forgetting to actually cross her legs; the close-up view of another character removing & cleaning his tracheotomy pipe before inserting it back in with a horrible squelch; and a man raping a woman whilst wearing the chopped-off carcass of a pig's head... There are also more prosthetic penis's in this film than in the entirety of Lars Von Trier's filmography.

And finally, we come to the performances. And it's no stretch to say that the acting here makes The Room look like Citizen Kane. At one point, an actress delivers a dull, turgid monologue, attempting to muster anger but acting more like she's got bad stomach ache. Then, as she storms out, she walks into the rig & the camera visibly shakes. The lead actor, played by Gary Busey's son, appears to have inherited none of the slim pickings of his father's talent, such is his lack of ability. Whether it's attempting to be threatening or trying to turn on the charm, it all seems to be beyond him.

Unfortunately, this film doesn't even fall into "so bad it's good territory," simply because of how horrible it is to watch, both in performance & production. If you want to watch something along those lines, rent The Greasy Strangler. It has laughs, good jokes and just as much liberal featuring of prosthetics...

Having never watched a Noire thriller before, but instead played LA Noire, a computer game which unashamedly takes many of the themes, I was interested to see what this film would hold. Plus, the fact it was directed by Neil Jordan & starred Liam Neeson was also a strong selling point. 

As a film, I always enjoyed what was on screen, but it was never anything more than a fairly gentle paced story with a few curveballs thrown in. The recreation of LA in the 30’s was perfectly done, which is even more staggering when you consider all the outdoor scenes were shot in Spain. A huge number of the clichés which were associated with the Noire crime drama are present & correct, but are never shoehorned in, sitting instead comfortably within the narrative. The film is also a lot less violent than I was expecting. 

But it was only ever average. The story is a shallow as a kids swimming pool & if you are looking for deep meaning or profound scenes, then you’re watching the wrong film. This is a perfectly serviceable, relatively inoffensive hour 40 of watching different talented actors interact with each other, with some good staging & locations. 

Since the release of the novel in 1929, written by a veteran of the First World War, 3 film adaptations have been produced, each winning critical acclaim & awards. This latest version by Edward Berger & funded by Netflix is another good, if a bit all over the place, look at the horror of war. It is also extremely prescient in terms of the timing of it's release, coming not long after Russia invaded Ukraine, condemning yet another generation of mainly young men to slaughter & maiming.

The film follows Paul Bäumer, an idealistic young German man, from his initial recruitment from school through to the end days of the conflict. We see how he turns from an excitable & lively young man to a battle-scarred & deeply affected shell of a human. The friends from school, as well as the men he meets during training, are either killed or have a similar fate to him.

In terms of production, the vast budget that Netflix has provided has paid dividends & I can see why this film won so many awards. In particular the cinematography, from the beautiful skies to the blood-soaked battlefields, are stunningly lensed. Costumes & sets are also amazing, the making-of on the special features fleshing out the extensive recreation of these literal hell on earth places.

But overall the film was actually quite hard to follow. Even with subtitles & plenty of exposition, the story juddered & jolted all over the place. Plus the events were not always clear. I appreciate that there is the confusion of war factored in, but narrative wise, even towards the end I wasn't sure about certain characters.

This is absolutely a shocking & stark war film and I thought to myself that I would need to watch it again. But I also have to be honest & say that for me, it was not the seminal masterpiece that some have hailed it to be.

Still, a very good effort