I almost didn’t have anything to review today. For some reason, I never got around to watching a film this weekend. I guess I just spent too long trying to get through that bloody Murder, She Wrote book. I didn’t realise until Monday that I’d forgotten. So, I had the choice to write something else for today or watch something and review it in the same night. I had thought about weighing in on the Johnny Depp/Fantastic Beasts news but I didn’t know if that would go against my ban of the writer who must not be named. In the end, I picked the quickest new release on Netflix that I could find. I didn’t know anything about it but someone I follow on Instagram had watched it recently. What did I have to lose?
Jumanji: The Next Level film might be the third film to include Jumanji in the title but it is actually the fourth film in the whole franchise. It’s easy to forget that Zathura: A Space Adventure is part of the same universe. Mostly because both the writer of the original books, Chris Van Allsburg, and director, Jon Favreau, wanted to distance it from the Robin Williams film. Favreau, in particular, didn’t like the film at all and wanted to make sure that people knew it. Yet, the studio was keen to show that both films were connected and Zathura is officially the second film in the Jumanji franchise. I’d never actually seen it, though, as I was 17 when it came out. It definitely wasn’t the kind of film the 17-year-old me would have been comfortable admitting to wanting to watch. So, I decided it was finally time. After all, it got a much better critical reaction than the first Jumanji film even if it didn’t do incredibly well at the box office. The opposite of Robin Williams’ film. Was the space adventure actually better or was this another time when the critics were way off in their assessment?
I watched Ad Astra a few weeks ago but I put off writing my review. I decided that I needed a bit of time to really get to grips with my feelings about it. I mean I’m still getting over the fact that this film appears to have been named after my go-to Pizza Express order minus the chicken. And the fact that Brad Pitt, yes Meeting Joe Black Brad Pitt, was making huge waves with his two performances this year. It’s not that I think Pitt is a bad actor but he’s spent a lot of years sorting of staying under the radar. There have been a few films that have grabbed people’s attention but, for the most part, he hasn’t exactly been doing award-worthy things of late. But then Once Upon A Time in… Hollywood showed us that Brad was here to play. His role in Tarantino’s Hollywood fairy story was magnificent enough to stand-up to the powerhouse that is Leonardo DiCaprio. So, when everyone started claiming Ad Astra offered one of his best-ever performances, I wasn’t as full of disbelief as I once would have been.