Be Excellent To Each Other

Which one? There are loads

11) Conclave

The Pope is dead! Long live…whom? Back stabbing bishops abound in this … “thriller”? I wouldn’t say I was thrilled, mind, but very entertained. Everyone brings their A-game and choosing a pope has never been so…sexy? No. No, it wasn’t. It was great, though.

12) Companion

Pacey from Dawson’s Creed just come out of fucking nowhere and gives a banger of a performance in this…thriller? Yes, it’s a fucking thriller. Sort of. Pacey brings a companion to a mansion in the woods miles from civilisation. She’s super awks, and she might have an alternative motive. There’s a rich Russian here too. Guess who gets offed? A futuristic look at autonomous sex robots and why you probably shouldn’t piss them off after you’ve jail broken one. Also it’s really good.

Ol' Pacey was pretty good in that series about the bad doctor wot dun sum bad stuff (Dr Death).

Turns out it was Jack Quaid!? I’d have bet the house that was Pacey.

12 - Heart Eyes. Valentines-based slasher with a few good moments and fun kills. The comedy doesn't really land and the 'whodunnit' aspect is hampered by the fact that there are like five characters in it. 3/5

13 - The Box. A 2009 Cameron Diaz film that starts with a good premise (if you press this button, somebody dies but you get a million dollars) but wastes that premise by turning the whole thing into a long X-Files episode. 2.5/5

Watched Mickey 17 the other night. Pretty good, Robert Pattinson can fuckin' act, I'll give him that. Pretty seamless looking CGI too, at least as far as the "two Robert Pattinsons in one shot" thing goes.

Hudgens didn't need cgi

13) Mickey 17

It’s good but I wasn’t spaffing myself watching it. Batman does a decent job, but I didn’t like the irritating nerd voice he used for the titular character. I preferred the psychopathic Mickey 18 who had a normal voice. A mild complaint but it annoyed me that I was so annoyed by it, especially after listening to it for 2 hours. There’s some really good performances outside of Batman anyway: for example, Naomi Ackie fucking SMASHES it. Mind you, I had a little problem with the tone of the thing. It’s almost like a black comedy, but there’s a couple of leading stars who are so OTT that they’re cartoonish. Hulk does probably exactly what’s asked of him, but I found it too unsubtle. You’ve got TWD’s Glenn, for example, who does a really good job of being silly without, ironically, being a comic book character. I dunno, I just kinda wanted the cartoonish villain to be a bit less like an actual cartoon.

Anyway, it looks fantastic. It’s witty, it’s funny, it’s interesting, it’s also too long and the final act is a bit disappointing. Not my favourite Bong but a good Bong anyway.

Yeah, that pretty much matches my view.
Decent, but not the greatest.

I rewatched The Accountant last night, in anticipation of the upcoming sequel-that-everyone-was-asking-for-but-that-nobody-needed.

Even the second time around it's a surprisingly compelling and engaging film. It will be intriguing to see how they go with the sequel, as the "hook" of the first movie is obviously spoiled for the sequel.

Yes, completely agree too. I felt like it was over, then they found a load of stuff from the book that they crammed into a flashback, which was too much. But not to say that I didn't enjoy it.

Black Bag
Soderbergh’s latest genre movie, starring Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett and an excellent ensemble cast. It’s an espionage movie, Fassbender plays a mole hunter and there’s a mole.
It’s taut, classy, stylish and a tight 90 mins

14) Anora

The lead in this won best leading actress at the Oscars and it’s easy to see why. This story of a prostitute who marries a Russian oligarchs son is so fucking good, I was properly drawn in by it. It might have been the copious amounts of boobs on show, or how much I wanted to punch this 21 year old kids face in, or the utterly bombastic soundtrack… or maybe all of those, but it was the final scene that utterly cemented the brilliance of the lead actor. Christ, that final scene is filled with this complex mix of emotions that just fucking floored me.

A film I’d recommend to everyone but you’ve really got to be in the mood for it, I suppose. And probably don’t watch it with your mum and dad. This isn’t Pretty Woman. Well, it kinda is but with shitbags. And tits.

14 - The Gorge. The initial premise is interesting and the way the two leads bond is the best part of the film. Which is odd for me as the rest is sci-fi/horror and should have been the stuff that I'd like. But all those aspects are a bit underwhelming and often stupid (and all visualised with pretty thin and ropey CGI). A bit of a waste of the actors too. 2.5/5

15 - Shadow in the Clouds. Oh dear. Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) cons her way onto a WW2 fighter plane and because she's a woman, the all-male crew take an immediate dislike to her. Which distracts them from the fact that this is essentially that Twilight Zone episode where the gremlin is on the plane. The idea had a bit of potential but the film is let down by two things.

The low budget means that for the first half of the film you're mainly hearing what's happening rather than seeing it (they make her sit in the gunner's bit). And then when you do see stuff happen it's all with pretty piss-poor CGI.

The other issue is that this is so heavily dated to 2020. And I'm not being a dick here but this is as girl-bossy a film as you've ever seen. Maude is the best pilot, best gunner, best tactician, best fighter, best everything. Every man is a super-angry sexist who fucks up at the first time of asking. Remember Die Hard 4 (the shitty Timothy Olyphant one where there's a kid who looks like the lead singer of Red Hot Chilli Peppers and it's all about hacking)? Remember how Bruce Willis survives a bunch of things that should kill him? Like he doesn't avoid them, he gets into car crashes, explosions, gets shot and just lives. Well this is more of that but worse.

Big spoilers (for a film you really don't need to watch ever).



1.5/5 - mainly because Chloe is always decent in things, even rubbish things. And I do like films that play out in confined settings. 1.5 might be a bit generous.