film review

Film Review – The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I know that nearly everyone is obsessed with Pedro Pascal right but I am obsessed with Pedro Pascal right now. Everything I hear about him or watch him in just makes me love him more. He even made me consider going back to give the game The Last of Us another chance. Recently I’ve seen that clip of him and Nicolas Cage so many times on TikTok and Instagram. It feels like it was a sign to actually watch it. I love both actors and it looked like fun. More than enough opportunity for Cage to poke fun at himself and his nouveau shamanism method of acting. I don’t know what stopped me from watching it earlier but I guess I was worried it was too good to be true. It was finally time to find out for sure.

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Film Review – Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Last weekend was the Oscars and a lot of people have a lot of thoughts about it. Mostly about how much film and cast of Everything Everywhere All At Once deserved/didn’t deserve their various awards. It’s not something I really want to get into right now because it is inevitably linked to the Asian American experience and things will get heavy quickly. What I will say is that I don’t understand anyone who says it’s a Best Picture winner that nobody will still be watching in 5 years. I couldn’t disagree more. Considering the Best Picture winners of the past decade, EEAAO surely has one of the highest potentials for rewatching. I mean fucking Green Book? Who the hell is watching that in 5 years time? The Daniels managed do something very few films have ever done and that is be massively entertaining and Oscar worthy. Something that the latest Top Gun movie also did. Tom Cruise might not have bothered to attend the awards show but I felt it only fair to finally watch the sequel to one of the greatest films of the 80s. And y greatest, I mean silliest and most homoerotic. Hopefully, we’d get more of the same in the sequel.

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Film Review – Shotgun Wedding (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

I was honestly planning on watching something decent this week. Maybe even something especially for awards season. It was all meant to be so good and easy. Then I woke up feeling like death and I couldn’t bring myself to watch a film longer than 90 minutes long. Thankfully, there’d been a film I’d been eyeing up for a while that I knew wouldn’t be too long or too taxing. A film that appeared on the side of every bus that drove past my work for the first part of 2023. I never expected it to be any good but I certainly thought it would be fun. Or, at the very least, a distraction from the sorry state I was in. Watching Jennifer Lopez running around and shooting people wearing a wedding dress? It sounded exactly what I was looking for.

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Film Review – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

The first Black Panther film was a runaway success that breathed new life into the MCU. It gave more depth to the fantastic character first introduced in Civil War and gave Chadwick Boseman a chance to really make an impression in the Marvel franchise. T’Challa was set to become one of the strongest and most loved characters that these films have produced. You can see how much he meant to people by the reaction to his death in 2020. Marvel film fans mourned his passing to colon cancer. As it was Hollywood, talk quickly turned to what would happen with Black Panther in the future. Some suggested that they could simply recast. There was also talk of digitally recreating Boseman. The most obvious choice was to move Shuri, T’Challa’s sister into the spotlight as she did in the comics. But would this film ever get beyond the sadness of losing its lead actor? I had to find out.

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Film Review – Brian and Charles (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5.

It was the BAFTAs last weekend and there was a lot to take away from the ceremony. For one thing, all of the winners were white which seems ridiculous given the diversity among the nominees. For another, Colin Farrell didn’t win Best Actor for his role in The Banshees of Inisherin. One of the few things that we can say that BAFTA got right was nominating Brian and Charles for Outstanding British Film. It wasn’t exactly going to win because it was up against some stiff competition. However, I was happy to see it getting recognised. Even though I hadn’t actually seen it at that point. It was a film that I had been eyeing up for ages because it just sounded like my kind of thing. A quirky British film about a lonely weirdo. I loved the idea of it. The award ceremony on Sunday gave me the perfect excuse to finally watch it.

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Film Review – Strange World (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Do you remember how Disney finally released an animated film with an openly gay character? You might not because there was basically no marketing campaign for it. Did Strange World purposefully get buried? Did they do it so they could prove that nobody wants “wokeness” in their family films? Probably. The film was quickly labelled a box office bomb and had one of the lowest Disney openings in recent years. I didn’t really know anything about the film when I came to watch it this week because I barely knew it existed. I honestly don’t remember seeing anything about this film and I don’t understand why. I mean, it boasts a cast including the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Lucy Lui. You’d think they’d want to make more noise about it. So, were they really hiding it because of the LGBTQ+ representation or is the film just not that good?

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Film Review – Bank of Dave (2023)

films, reviews

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Yet again, I’m writing a review of a film I wasn’t expecting to watch this week. I was supposed to be watching Wakanda Forever but didn’t give myself enough time. So, I ended up going for this. I was probably going to watch it anyway though. Mostly because of Rory Kinnear. He’s one of our greatest stage actors but I’ve never seen him in a film role worthy of his talent. It doesn’t help that I refuse to watch Men because I think he’d creep me out too much. I don’t want it to put me off him. I didn’t really think that Bank of Dave would be the role he was looking for but I figured it would be a feel-good story. Something that I needed after a busy and stressful week.

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Film Review – Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5.

I had great plans to see this when it was out in the cinema but it was around the time when I still wasn’t ready to go back to the cinema. Covid memories were still in my head so I missed it. When it came to Prime, I was ready to watch it but, yet again, it didn’t happen. Last week I had decided it was finally time but then I went and watched the live-action Pinocchio. After that went terribly, this felt like my reward. I don’t know what I really expected from this film but it certainly wasn’t that I’d come out of it with a bit of a thing for Data from The Goonies. Not something I considered for my 2023 bingo card but here we are. But, unexpected crushes aside, was this film worth the wait?

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Film Review – Pinocchio (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 2 out of 5.

In my review of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, I criticised the 2022 Disney version. I haven’t actually watched it. I felt bad enough about it that I actually did this week. I’d originally been planning to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once. I guess that can wait for another week. Instead, I’ll watch Tom Hanks talking to a CGI wooden boy. Even though I know there’s no way that it’ll be as good as del Toro’s version. How could it be?

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Film Review – Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

films, reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The Netflix film debate is a weird thing. Not only is it ridiculous that certain people seem to be gatekeeping cinema but it refuses to accept that the way people consume media has changed. Why should it matter whether people watch films on a massive screen with a bunch of strangers or at home with their loved ones? Yes, I agree that going to the cinema is a joy but I’m also well aware that I haven’t really been to the cinema much since Covid. We also have to question why, if streaming services are ruining the film industry, so many famous directors are releasing films on it? Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho and now Guillermo del Toro are just a few of the great filmmakers who are now Netflix official. If films should only be watched at a cinema then why are they so willing to take their money?

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