Ready Or Not 2: No One Is Looking For This

Summary, Samara Weaving is back to play hide and seek.

This film was incredibly disappointing and not needed. Firstly the film did away with a lot of the humour of the first film, and for the most part was a more serious affair, mistake number 1. There was some humour but it was far more few and far between.

Secondly, the relationship between Weaving’s character and her sister played by Kathryn Newton was irritating. In the middle of being hunted they would stop and have a spat about who left who in the orphanage, it made no sense they would do that. Also the drama between the sisters and the need for them to work through it has been done to death. You’ve seen it in a number of films and done much better than this.

Thirdly there were whole shots wherein you just knew they were doing it so teen girls on Tiktok would go “yaaaas slay queen aesthetics”, these shots didn’t actually do anything to advance the plot but were done to appeal to the former Tumblr these days the blue sky crowd.

Overall, whilst this film slightly expands on the world of the film and you could argue that as a positive in nearly every other way it’s a regressive sequel that harms the first for having been made.

1/5

Pros.

It expands out the world

Cons.

The ending is bad

The humour is toned back

The sister stuff is boring and repetitive

The stuff for aesthetics

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Cinema Issues: The Killing Fields

In this edition of Cinema Issue we are talking about release strategy and how Hollywood cannot seem to get out of its own way. Back a few decades ago films would come out on the same weekend and compete, this became less and less done and studio executives became more and more skittish.

Now you have things like films with very similar premises such as Ready or Not and They Will Kill You coming out a week apart. This is not a return to direct facing off, in that they are coming out on the same weekend, which at least has free market merit, this is release date stupidly. By spacing out the films by a week the latter will suffer at the box office as people are not going to want to see a film very similar to Ready or Not a week later. Ultimately it should have either come out alongside it at the same time, if they have confidence in it, or moved to a different release date.

This is but one example of this trend you can see studios doing things like this all the time sometimes cannibalising their own films. For example next spring/summer Disney are going to release the live action remake of Lilo and Stitch 2 at the end of May and then the third Incredibles film in the middle of June. This gives their own Lilo and Stitch about 2 weeks before it will have its marketshare eaten into by Incredibles 3 and is just stupid. If rival studios want to challenge each other that’s business but if studios are committing acts of self harm to their own release slates that stupidity.

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Mother’s Pride: A Weaker Fisherman’s Friends

Summary, the people behind Fisherman’s Friends attempt to make a new film about the death of the British pub.

Whilst a lot of what this film has to say is spot on, about the deaths of independent British pubs and how only the chains are remaining. The issue with the film is that it lacks the heart of Fisherman’s Friends and feels more emotionally manipulative than earnest.

The dad being arrested came out of nowhere and went nowhere, all the stuff about suicide felt very needless and even the dad having a heart attack felt like something to try and shock the audience. A better script could have made these things feel earnest or made them appear more than cheap gimmicks to shock the audience but it just wasn’t that script.

There is also a really horribly cringe “modern audience” scene wherein a character asks how another identifies and then says she is pansexual. It feels like it is there by some sort of mandate rather than anything else.

Overall, whilst we like to cheer on British cinema this just wasn’t it.

2/5

Pros.

It’s watchable

It has a few cheer worthy moments

Cons.

It feels emotionally manipulative

It is badly paced

The awkward modern audience stuff

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House Of The Long Shadows: Attempting Welsh Accents

Summary, a manor house in Wales sees some horrific goings on.

It was nice to see this love letter to Hammer, however it did waste the talents of the returning cast of legends. None of them were starring or given all that much to do.

The slasher aspect had appeal, as seeing Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee together in a slasher film is a new concept for the three. However the ending of the film ruined that by having a screw the audience flavour.

The ending of the film had two twists firstly all the slasher antics were the actions of the lead’s publisher and then after that the whole story including the publisher twist was all in the lead’s book that he was writing. This removed all the stakes and made it lame.

Overall, it edges a positive score more because of the cast than anything else however, the ending really ruins it’s chances of getting any higher.

3/5

Pros.

The cast

The unique premise

It is well paced

Cons.

The ending

The twists

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Scarlet: Even The Afterlife Can Appreciate J Pop

A Princess from long ago has her quest for vengeance interrupted by a medic from the modem era.

This wasn’t a perfect film by any means there was clear tonal issues and a mismatch in some scenes where the film felt a bit confused, however, it was still far better than anything western animation has put out in years.

This is centrally a two fold issue, firstly Scarlet looks a hell of a lot better than things like Hoppers, the animation style looks sharp and vibrant, whereas Hoppers looks like A.I slop 3D animation, that looks the same as many other films.

Then secondly you have the themes this had themes of love, war and acceptance, it had widely universal themes that many people can connect to, whereas something like Hoppers has left wing messaging seeded into its soul.

Watching this film you get a little angry, not at it, at how good aspects of this film are such as the animation such as the story and themes and it makes you think just how generic and bad western animation has become.

Overall, a film that whilst tonally confused at times has a lot of heart and wonderful animation.

3.5/5

Pros.

The heart

The story

The animation

The pacing

Cons.

The tonal confusion

The bloodless violence

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Project Hail Mary: Grogu 2.0

A school teacher helps his government and then is drugged and forcibly sent on a suicide mission.

This was a flawed film, in that it could comfortably have been 2 hours, there was no need for it to be as long as it was and a hell of a lot of it was filler scenes.

Rocky is easily the heart of the film and all of the scenes with him make the film, including the emotional payoffs. One would say that Rocky upstages Ryan Gosling across the course of the film repeatedly, and Rocky does at times have that sort of Baby Yoga energy.

In terms of being a hard science fiction film, the Martian is a lot better as it has a tighter focus and is less meandering, Interstellar is better as well. However, there is some appeal in that aspect here, it simply isn’t better than some of the other films in the space.

Overall, a competent film but nothing that will knock your socks off. Rocky will be a fan favourite.

3/5

Pros.

Rocky

The ending

It has appeal as a hard/realistic science fiction film

Cons.

The pacing is bad

It has been done better before

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How To Make A Killing: The Most Generic Film Of 2026

Summary, a man decides to kill off his relatives to inherit some money.

Incredibly generic would be the best way to describe this, this fable of where chasing wealth gets you is one you have seen about 1000 times before and many times done better than here.

Almost every single character in this film is intensely dislikeable, if you’re supposed to root for Powell’s everyman that would be news to us. In many senses it reflects the worst parts of American culture where everyone is just obsessed with money, whether they have it or not it’s seemingly all anyone can ever think about.

It is the sort of film that shouldn’t have made it pass the idea stage, let alone taking up space that could instead be given to other films.

Overall, Margaret Qually deserves better than this.

1/5

Pros.

It’s short.

Cons

You have seen this before

It is dull

It is stale

The ending makes the whole thing pointless

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The Secret Agent: The Most Interesting Academic Ever

Summary, after becoming on a corrupt government minister’s hit list. A university professor must go into hiding.

The biggest compliment for this film is the tone, it could have been a lot bleaker than it was. Whilst it wasn’t happy go lucky, it did manage to balance the grit with a more optimistic tone of displaced people creating a community.

The tension across the course of the film about whether the lead will be caught or not, creates wonderful stakes that carry through the film, making you invested in the ending. Sadly they decide to just have him die off screen which is anti-climatic.

There is also some more absurd stuff that comes out of nowhere and contrasts with the broader tone of the film. This should have been removed from the film, the metaphorical intent is clear but is just feels far too out of the blue.

Overall, an incredibly strong and likable film.

4/5

Pros.

The pace

The tone bar one absurdist scene

The performances

The ending, bar the death.

Cons.T

The absurdist sequence

The death happening off screen

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Cinema Issues: The Oscar Fate Of Sinners

The film got 4/16 nominations, many of which were undeserved. Cinematography, original screenplay and best actor should not have been given to it. After the smear campaign against Timothy Chalamet the ground was being set for the upset and for Jordan’s win but he didn’t deserve it. Playing two characters which are the same as the character he plays in everything else doesn’t mean he deserves the award over people like Ethan Hawke. It was tokenism. They knew Sinners wouldn’t get best director or best picture so they needed to give it something big and so they did. It was an effort to stop the inevitable calls of racism. Too late.

People have already screamed racism as it didn’t win all the awards it was nominated for, no film has ever won that many, they are also calls for black people to boycott the Oscars now and only care about the NAACP awards, therefore creating segregation in the awards circuit. Also the NAACP awards literally gives away awards based on race, so it does away with even the slightest whiff of merit. Screaming racism as a film doesn’t win 16 Oscars just devalues what racism is and makes you look like a baby having a tantrum, racism is people being treated as lesser based on race, suffering violence based on race, have freedoms revoked based on race, not a film only winning 4 Oscars.

To return to awards that this film didn’t deserve let’s talk about best original screenplay. There was so little original about Sinners that as we said, the award should be given to Robert Rodriguez, the film in so many ways is a rip off of From Dusk Till Dawn, that to call it original is baffling. This sets a new low bar for original at the Oscars and has devalued it in the process.

The phrase give someone an inch and they take a mile comes to our writers minds, the Oscars tried to pander and tried to give into tokenism to avoid being called racist and avoid these calls for boycotts and yet despite doing this and damaging their credibility it happened anyway.

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Cinema Issues: Paramount Wins

In today’s edition of cinema issues we talk about the fact that at the moment of writing it seems as though Paramount is going to win in it’s bid for WBD.

Ultimately there was always a chance of this as the current American administration favours them, and could have made things very difficult for Netflix at the regulatory stage.

There are some people who are saying that this is a win for cinemas, as Netflix would have led to them closing down, however, this is not the win they think it is. Two major studios merging means there will be mass layoffs, which will further contract the industry and also likely lead to less things coming out in cinemas overall.

So far Paramount has confirmed they intended to keep a large theatrical output going forward, much higher than what they are currently doing however , the numbers that have been floated likely aren’t realistic.

Moreover, this move seems threatening to other studios, you have to think now that players like Sony and Universal will be thinking about expansion and to buy up independent studios and production companies in order to compete. Really a lot of this started during Disney’s era of expansion, in that sense the Paramount WBD merger appears similar to Disney buying 21st Century Fox.

There is also the Netflix question of it all, and what their next move may be, they had other studios on their list, will they move on to one of those or reflect over the strategy. Could Netflix make a bid for Universal or the film parts of Sony.

One thing is for sure we are in the era of monopolies.

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