Night Bitch: Amy Adams Grows A Tail

A film about a mother, Amy Adams, who can transform into a dog.

So this film isn’t bad, but I do question who it was for? It is not a fantasy film, nor is it a horror film and I certainly wouldn’t call it a comedy, it is an odd sort of a film that will find it hard to find an audience. It is a drama film about a stay at home mother who is so bored and trapped that to escape from her tedium she transforms into a dog at night to be free. It is full of the angst of being a mother that is now present in a lot of films on the topic, as the mother character wallows in their lack of freedom and how their life was better before they had the kid, mixed with relationship drama and sniping.

Scoot McNairy is quicky building himself a reputation as the weedy sort of husband that is a pushover and basically a man child, he is the source of a lot of the conflict in the film as he is not a great father. The final realisation of his character being that he needs to do more and take over more parenting responsibilities is such an obvious one you question why he didn’t already know it at the start of the film as it is basic information any adult should know.

I would argue that Adams natural charisma is the only thing holding this film together and that with a weaker actor it would fall apart.

Overall, this is an odd film and not what a lot of people would want or expect, Adams is strong but the films platitudes on life and motherhood are all a good few years out of date.

2.5/5

Pros.

Adams

It has a few laughs

It is paced reasonably well

Cons.

It has nothing fresh to say about motherhood

It is not the genre it is sold as, this is a drama film and nothing else

The relationship drama is overplayed

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Monster House: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

Summary

A possessed house is eating people.

So this is a classic of yesteryear often appearing on a lot of most underrated animated films lists. For me growing up this was a regular staple, I watched this film a lot, and watching it now I still think it holds up.

Whilst the animation is quite ugly it never strays too far into the uncanny valley, so unlike something like the Jim Carry Christmas Carol you are never left feeling disconcerted. I would also argue that despite this animation issue the film manages to be quite deep and effecting.

The love story at the heart of the film, I won’t spoil anything, is well done and quite a novel take on that sort of storyline. It helps you to empathise with the house and to feel a lot of emotion at the end of the film. I wouldn’t say it is an emotional gut punch in the way some animated films are, but I would say there is more than enough to get you a little misty eyed.

Overall, an animated classic that you really should check out if you haven’t already.

3.5/5

Pros.

It has a beautiful love story

It is well written

It has engaging characters

The ending is bittersweet

Cons.

The animation is a little rough

The sidekick kid can be annoying

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The Heretic: Soft and Bumbling Until He Locks You In A Cage

Summary

Hugh Grant is a religious fanatic.

I don’t believe this film would be even half what it is without Hugh Grant. His performance is pitch perfect, he goes from silly to downright sinister in seconds and the flip is chilling. Even when he is being evil he is still incredibly charming and has his little mannerisms that make it a bit hammy and over the top in the best way. If you are familiar with Grant’s filmography you’ll know what I mean.

As for the film itself I hesitate to call it a horror film, it really isn’t , despite how it might have been marketed it is a thriller film. In terms of thrillers it is not something that you haven’t seen before, it has a lot of very familiar elements in it, it is just with Grant’s performance you cannot really notice it.

I would argue that this film is Sophie Thatcher’s first real misstep in terms of her early career, as she is totally outshone here by Chloe East who gives the much wider and more likeable performance. Thatcher’s character never really demonstrates a wide range of emotions whereas East has to act a lot of different emotions at once sometimes.

Overall, definitely one to check out for Grant alone, however, don’t go in expecting too much originality.

3/5

Pros.

Grant

East

It is watchable

Cons.

It is not very scary

It has been done before

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Lord Of The Rings The War Of The Rohirrim: The Death Of The Girl Boss

Summary

A footnote from an appendix gets a film made about them, as that helps fight the patriarchy.

So in a world where The Rings Of Power season two can be called ‘the best tv show of the year’, which even though I liked it more than some is simply wrong, we have this film. Hera, voiced by Gaia Wise, is not an overlooked character in the wider works, she simply isn’t a character she’s a throwaway line and that’s fine. The facts of the matter are twofold firstly, this film was only made for rights issues, and secondly that the only reason it focuses on Hera rather than Helm, Brian Cox, you know an actually important character is because of modern day girl boss identity politics.

Hera is automatically fantastic at everything and all of her male counterparts are either stupid or evil, or both. Moreover, the film throws things from the original trilogy at you such as Saruman, voiced by Christopher Lee, but this is little more than nostalgia bait. I will admit I showed up after hearing bad things about the film because of the respect I have for Lee and I wanted to see what the film would do with him, considering he’s been dead for almost a decade. The few lines, and I mean like two or three, are fine it sounds like Lee but sadly it is not impactful and just feels like more member berries.

If WBD could move away from identity politics and accept that the blue hairs on X will never like Tolkien and that’s fine we don’t need them in the fandom and actually started properly adapting things like Unfinished Tales with respectful artistic license then they could have major hits on their hands, but they need to do better than this. It will flop like Furiosa did for them earlier in the year, and the take away lesson for them is this, the girl boss is dead the folks rose up and said no more to the stoic Karens and we now live in a post girl boss age.

Overall, a waste of time and money

1.5/5

Pros.

It shows us some classic book locations

The animation looks nice

Cons.

It is too long

Hera is a bland character

It is a girl boss narrative through and through

Canonically there are problems with it

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Mary: Jesus Who?

Summary

Mary, Noa Cohen, yes that Mary is given the girl boss treatment.

So turns out the Angel Garbriel also came to prophesied the birth of Mary as well, turns out Jesus wasn’t so special after all, and that Mary was probably more important than Jesus because of her female power to birth him. I am woman hear me roar, who cares if Jesus died for our sins and was the Son of God, if you believe in that, he was a male and therefore no longer worth being considered special. His privilege has been checked.

There was just no need for this film, I don’t know who it was for? Religious folks are going to hate it as it is the most bastardised version of the Nativity story I have seen recently, the anti-western, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestine/ pro-Hamas folks don’t like it, as they cast an Israeli in the lead role. General audiences don’t care about a long drawn out biblical epic, look at Exodus. It seems to be more of Netflix looking for a reason to burn money.

Overall, if you want festive religious viewing you would be better served watching almost anything else. This is a bible epic designed to make everyone angry.

0.5/5

Pros.

You get a few chuckles out of how bad it is

Cons.

The girl boss stuff

They feel the need to update a story rather than just do something new and fresh

No one will like it

It is too long

It is poorly acted

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Rare Exports: Refining The Santa Trade

Summary

A Finnish youngster, Onni Tommila, and his father, Jorma Tommila, find wild Santa Clauses and elves after a glacier is drilled and decide to make some money.

So despite the outlandishness of that premise this film is not a comedy, not really, it is more so an action horror film with a silliness to it. I found the film to have a number of scary moments, and I would say the action was strong in the last third of the film, hence I am happy to call it an action horror film. The jokes were few and far between so I wouldn’t say to watch this if you are looking for a laugh.

I found it interesting to see a Christmas film from outside the Anglosphere and to see how they approach it, I am relatively new to Finnish cinema but I must say that they have a way with vistas, between this and the other Finnish film I have seen of Sisu I have to say the Finnish really have an eye for cinematography.

I found the idea of evil Father Christmas/Elves to be refreshingly different and not go in the way I was expecting it too, so that’s a plus as well.

Overall, an interesting and fresh film, with some slight pacing issues.

4/5

Pros.

It is fresh

It has some good scares

The action is also good

The ending sets up interesting prospects for the future

Cons.

Pacing issues

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The Holdovers: Away At Christmas

Summary

Paul Giamatti plays a man obsessed with ancient Rome and who gets stuck watching some private school kids over Christmas.

Honestly I think this film was massively overrated. I saw why it won academy awards it feels like the sort of film that would win them, but should it have? For example, though Da’Vine Joy Randolph won for her role as a grieving mother, the only performance that stirred me towards feelings any kind of emotion was Giamatti. This final scene where his life has basically imploded is far more emotional that Randolph’s character who mopes and occasionally makes a sassy comment.

I think in many ways like a Pixar film this film was trying to manipulate you with its arc into feeling something into caring, all films do this to a degree, but when the kids father was in an asylum it was clear the film wanted to hit you in the feels. The issue with this artificial approach of course is that it feels disingenuous, it doesn’t feel real or authentic and as such it seems shallow within its emotional resonance.

Overall, a sad film and one that is not all that impressive.

2/5

Pros.

Giamatti

The score is fantastic

Cons.

It is emotionally manipulative in an obvious way

It is badly paced

It is overhyped

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Our Little Secret: Hide The Snow Lindsey Lohan Is Around

Summary

The woman who tried to abduct a Syrian child back in 2018 is back, look it up, as Lindsey Lohan continues her ill-fated string of Netflix Christmas releases.

This time around it follows a couple who broke up as one of them simply couldn’t move to London for a bit, and now they are with new people, and yet they run into each other at Christmas party and realise they are dating siblings in the same family. Hijinks ensue.

A lot of people have made fun of this film for the fact that everyone in it looks like they have been covered in fake tan in much the same way people used to get slimed at the Kids Choice Awards. However, the real issue is that Netflix was so cheap they used Lohan and Ian Harding, the film’s male lead, to play younger versions of themselves rather than hire younger actors and its horribly jarring.

The film lacks the charm of a Princess Switch and instead feels incredibly tame, even by Hallmark standards this film would be looked at as incredibly safe. The central romance feels off as well, chiefly the main thought I had during this film is that Lohan should just retire and enjoy her life like Cameron Diaz, what she is doing isn’t acting it is just her playing a safer and more Christian version of her character from the Parent Trap aged up.

Overall, Netflix has embarrassed themselves again.

1.5/5

Pros.

It is so bad it is funny at times

It is inoffensive

Cons.

It is slow

It is boring

The romance doesn’t work

Lindsey Lohan is miscast

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That Christmas: An Epitaph To The Sorry State Of Modern Britain

Summary

Richard Curtis should retire and Netflix should issue a public apology.

Where to start with That Christmas? There are so many things wrong with it that I honestly don’t know.

First and foremost it doesn’t understand the UK, it was written by an Englishman and yet it depicts a south coastal city in the winter as having knee deep snow and having frozen ponds and bodies of water. For those of you not familiar with UK weather that is incredibly unlikely unless maybe you were at high altitude or it was particularly cold but otherwise it is nonsense.

Then you have all of your horrible and dating ‘modern day tropes’ one of the characters is really into militant veganism and so releases all of the Turkey’s to die or later be recaptured, another goes off on multiple climate change lectures and of course has all the answers despite being a child. Then there is the fetishisation of the NHS, our free public health service here in the UK if you’re unfamiliar, with their being a whole subplot about a single mother, voiced by Jodie Whittaker, being selfless and working on Christmas Day and needing to be treated like a queen when she returns home. It has the sickening and fake over sentimentality of when people were banging pots and pans in Tribute to the NHS during the pandemic. She is doing her job, and arguably being a bad parent, yet we are supposed to give her some applause? Of course every different race imaginable is depicted as it’s a Netflix film and they don’t seem to understand that not every part of every country is the same as what they see on the streets of LA, especially not the monied parts of southern England.

Finally, it struggles as a Christmas film without a message. All good Christmas films have a message as well as being entertaining, but what does this film have to say? Communities should come together? Christmas is about the people and not the presents? Old people caused global warming and so are evil? All of these things have been said before, more intelligently and with more depth, by trying so hard to appeal to a modern audience the film is left saying nothing.

Overall, Netflix spits in your face and tells you it is Christmas snow.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

It doesn’t understand the UK at all

It is horribly dated

It is cringe

It feels the need to lecture

It has nothing new to say

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Mufasa: Disney Are Hunting Their IPs into Extinction

Summary

Disney continues to mine their IPs.

So this is a hard to like film, it has no reason to exist, it is based on a straight to video sequel/prequel that few watched and fewer still like, it has a lead cast solely based on nepotism and of course her dad may have abused an underage girl. All of these things create a negative air surrounding the film and try as you might it is hard to separate the two.

I decided to give the film the benefit of the doubt and attend, and honestly my major emotion with it was boredom. It is more of the same we saw in 2019 with the photo realistic CGI animation that lacks any of the warmth or the charm of the original animated film. I never saw the direct to video sequel/prequel that this film is based off of so I cannot say how well of a translation this is to that.

The new Lioness is of course a girl boss and she has to have no respect for her ancestors in anyway, as they are inherently stupid and male. Blue Ivy Carter, Beyonce and Jay Z’s nepo baby, doesn’t manage anything above a flat tone for her few scenes, but she didn’t get the role based on acting ability.

The actual ‘main’ story following Mufasa is about what you would expect nothing too shocking, and in that rests the issue with this film. It just doesn’t justify its existence.

Overall, a soulless, mirthless, waste of time.

1/5

Pros.

It is over quickly enough

Cons.

It is boring

It is nothing new

It has girl boss elements

It is a rehash and truly feels like an IP being mined

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