One Battle After Another: Left Wing Hollywood Is Radicalizing People

Leo joins Antifa.

Who thought this was a good idea in the current landscape? Charlie Kirk has just been killed in front of his family in broad day light, and you have a narrative about a group of left wing radicals bombing immigration centres to free the immigrants, with these being presented as heroic actions. You couldn’t make it up.

Not only are the characters detestable, but it makes you question Paul Thomas Anderson as a director and what he is trying to say here, as one could argue it falls into the category of inciting hatred.

On a lighter note we have the fulfilment of the left wing vision for how reality should be, wherein we have a heavily pregnant woman of colour running into a gun fight with the white man and acting like she is not only not at a huge physical disadvantage but also somehow winning. This is what the kids call delulu.

What this film feels like to me is the last gasps of the progressives in Hollywood trying to resist the cultural shift, they will nominate it for awards and call it stunning and brave, but no one will watch it and ultimately it will be studied in years to come as a what not to do in making something that dates itself and comes across as hating most of the cinema going audience.

0/5

Pros.

There are none

Cons.

It is hateful

It should have been pushed back and reshot

You are laughing at it and not with it

The message is horrible

It is badly paced and never seems to want to end

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The Surfer: Eat The Rat

Summary

A man, Nicolas Cage, wants to buy a house.

So this was a trippy film that made you lose the plot somewhere along the way on purpose. There are times in this film where even if you have been avidly paying attention the whole time you will be a bit lost, and not really understand what is going on and that is the fun of it.

If you enjoy Cage’s broader strangeness and want to get lost in a liminal space that resembles an Australian beach than you will likely enjoy this. However, if you find Cage’s shtick grating then you will not enjoy this film, really it is that simple.

In terms of Cage strangeness this is probably more of a subtle performance for him, there is less screaming and shouting, and he actually plays a man losing his mind in a more toned down way.

4/5

Eat the rat

The weirdness

Cage

There is fun to be had

Cons.

It is badly paced

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Squid Game The Final Season Overview: The Netflix Effect

Summary

Can this make-up for a disappointing second season?

The answer is no.

This never should have been broken up into two seasons, it should have been one long second season. The break creates a need for the first episode of this new season to explain what happened last time, which it doesn’t do very well.

Moreover, as you approach the ending of the series the writing seems to get a lot dumber and make a lot less sense, why wouldn’t they just take the baby, why would they make it a contestant, why would Lee Jung-Jae’s character leave the baby behind and sacrifice himself not knowing what would happen to it, why would you spend the whole series building up to the mercenaries finding the island and the battle therein only to have them mostly slaughtered by two fishing boat captains? All of these are good questions the writing doesn’t account for.

That is also without mentioning the Netflix of it all, with them needing to set up a spin-off show in the final episodes final minutes, with a gender flipped recruiter because why not inject in a girl boss. This leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth as the credits role and asks another very good question, why are they playing Korean games in America, why aren’t the American Squid Games playing American games?

Overall, just a massive disappointment.

1.5/5

Pros.

Some of the games are cool

There are interesting ideas

Cons.

The spin-off set up

The terrible writing particularly towards the end

The questionable character decisions

The pacing

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Humane: A True COVID Commentary

Summary

The idea of social conformity is put under pressure.

Whilst I admire Caitlyn Cronenberg for what she is trying to do here, I think she may be laying it on just a bit too thick. The idea is that the population is too large and people are volunteering to die, and when two people in this rich family volunteer and then one runs away they need to find someone else to kill otherwise they all die. Whilst this idea of state overreach and ridiculous responses to problems, a nod to covid, is interesting I find things quickly devolve into a cartoon.

The idea that the whole family turns on one member because they are a drug addict and not really part anyway, and then tries to kill him themselves so they can all go free makes them all intensely unlikeable. If the film had them all die then it would not be such a sticking point for me but it allows a number of them to live. We return to the notion of the cartoon.

Moreover, in the central scenario itself there are a number of ways in which they could try and escape it and get away, and yet they never seem to think to do that. Dumb writing at its extreme, I don’t mind dumb characters but when it gets to a point where you are sat there physically saying aloud why are you doing that you know something is wrong.

Overall, a good concept with poor execution.

2.5/5

Pros

The idea

The commentary

The world

Cons.

The dumb writing

The ending

The family themselves

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Penguin Lessons: Penguins Can Make Anyone More Likeable

Summary

A man, Steve Coogan, living in Argentina finds a new lease on life when he adopts a penguin.

So for the most part I enjoyed this film, if the ending had been different I would likely score it higher, but because this is based on a real life account I don’t think they could do anything about it.

Of course the issue with this film is that for two thirds of the run time it is a mostly life affirming experience about the positive impact animals can have on a person’s life, even during moments of strife such as when the police kidnap a young woman off the street and later arrest Coogan’s character the presence of the penguin makes it all less depressing and a little bit happier.

However, at the end as you can likely imagine the penguin dies and the film becomes depressing. I think this sort of pain can be familiar to anyone who has lost a pet, and it does mean the film ends on a down note which takes away from the broader uplift of it at the end. One could argue artistically that a bitter sweet ending is in itself uplifting as it reflects the power one life, in this case a penguin’s life, can have.

Overall, the film gets you to care deeply about the penguin and you feel that death keenly.

3/5

Pros.

Coogen

The bond between man and penguin

The life affirming moments

Cons

The pacing is off

The ending is depressing

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The Last Of Us Season Two Overview: The Flaws Of Bella Ramsey

Summary

We return to the fungal zombie apocalypse.

So as someone who has played the games I knew what was coming and I will give the show props from not shying away from it. The death of Joel, Pedro Pascal, was controversial when the games came out and I knew it would be just the same here. Looking at the shows plunging ratings it is pretty clear that a number of people have checked out but I think if the show had saved it for the end of the season it would only have been worse.

I think the thing that has become glaringly clear in this second season is that Bella Ramsey is not a very strong actress and is struggling to carry the show on her own. They are becoming more and more reliant on Joel flashbacks and will no doubt have him appear as sort of grief induced visions over the third season to keep Pedro around. I think last season Ramsey’s inabilities were not so on view as they are here, but it is becoming ever more clear she was the wrong choice to play the character.

Moreover, I feel the pacing this time around feels slow, in many senses it feels like they are trying to stretch out the second game into three seasons to try and take it for all it is worth. I understand the idea to have one season from each of the girl’s points of view, but it does reek of filler. I wonder what the ratings will be like when it does come back.

Overall, very much like the game it started off well and then fell off a cliff.

2/5

Pros.

A few good scenes

It is interesting to learn more about the world

Cons.

Ramsey

It is using Joel too much as a crutch

The pacing

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Hostages: The Scary Power Of Influencers

Summary

A group of people get stuck in a hotel room.

So I watched this one a little while back in my day job, as a film festival programmer, and normally I don’t cross the streams but I thought that enough time had passed that I would write about it here.

So this is quite a funny comedy film about social media news and the corrupting effects of online fame and how quickly mass hysteria can form. In many sense this film works as it is timely however, I would say that it won’t feel dated as that sense of seeing coverage of something online and freaking yourself out is fairly timeless.

The cast are all strong though I would say that Charlotte Ritchie is probably the star of the show, especially as we see her go darker than she has done in past roles, particularly towards the end of the film. There is a moment where she reminds you just a little bit of Jim Jones or one of the classic cult leaders of the last century.

The humour is not hitting with a joke a minute, but does have a number of good jokes and recurring bits over the course of the film.

Overall, a funny British comedy film

4/5

Pros.

It is funny

Ritchie

The characters are likeable

It is timely but also timeless

Cons.

Not all the jokes land

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Andor Second Season Overview: Rape In Space, ICE, and Unfortunate Comments from Diego Luna

Summary

Andor returns for an incredibly slow second season.

In many ways this entire second season was a step back from the first, there was less action, less character development and even more things left open-ended.

The final arc of the second season wherein we were seeing more of the Partisans on the earlier rebellion should have been the main focus of this season, but instead we got wild weddings, an ICE allegory and far too many scenes of Syril’s mother. The first two arcs were boring filler that really added very little to the overall season. How was seeing Mon Mothma dancing for well over 5 minutes in any way necessary to understand the early rebellion. Gilroy has gone on to say that Kathleen Kennedy fought for him to have his vision but maybe just maybe this is one of those times she should have intervened.

Showing the Ghorman Massacre was interesting and probably the high point of the season but again this was far too drawn out with about 5 episodes leading up to the actual massacre. The pacing of this show is really what kills it for me in many ways. Likewise I thought the finale arc mainly revolving around Luthen’s assistant was a weird move as it prevented us getting closure with seemingly much more important characters in the narrative.

Overall, it is watchable but the pace is so bad it will send you to sleep.

2/5

Pro.

The Ghorman Massacre

Some of the earlier Rebellion stuff

Cons.

The pacing

The unanswered questions

Too many side characters

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Yellowjackets Season Three Overview: Falling Off

Summary

After a long hiatus the yellowjackets are back.

So by and large this was the worst season of the show. The fundamental question regarding that is why that is, was it because they never really had a clear plan for this show? Was it because the writers strike changed thing? Or are they trying to spin their wheels for as long as they can in order to profit off the show?

Who is to say, however, I will say that the first half of this season is damn near unwatchable with how slowly it is paced. The amount of filler that is being injected into this part of the show, would make even Millie Bobby Brown blush, it is infuriating to watch as you are left with week after week with basically nothing of major importance happening.

You have the season long mystery of who killed Lottie, Simone Kessell, which just feels like it comes out of nowhere, and the revelation of who did it was both obvious and also uninspiring. It just feels like such a missed opportunity, as there was far more ground they could have covered and directions they could have gone in if they had not done that.

Then you have what I think is the biggest flaw of the season Shauna. So Shauna, Melaine Lynskey, has always been shown to be cold blooded, however, in this season she goes off the rails in a cartoonish way trying to feed a woman a piece of her arm, and vowing to go after her husband and daughter who have left her and reclaim her Queenhood, meaning the savage side of her from her time in the Wilderness. This is coupled with the teen timeline where Shauna seemingly becomes even more of a supervillain as she can force other people to do what she wants with a bark and manages to keep well over ten people locked down when they want to leave with a glare. The writing here is absolutely stupid as it makes no logical sense how one small young woman could keep all of these other people at her mercy with one gun, yes she could shoot one of them but the rest would still get away. The writers I assume would explain Shauna’s fall to the dark side in the teen years by trauma resulting from the death of her child, yet even in that context this seems far fetch and simply as bad writing. They have turned Shauna into this almost psychopathic killer when she really wasn’t presenting as that before, they have likely done this to create drama and not for any other reason. It feels like extreme flanderisation.

Overall a step back in almost everyway from the previous two seasons.

2/5

Pros.

It still has some good moments

Hilary Swank

Cons.

The death of Lottie

How they change Shauna’s character

The pacing

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Opus: Yet More Black Girls Seeing Through White Men’s Nonsense

Summary

Yet another film about cults.

Why is Hollywood failing you ask? Well one of the many obvious answers to everyone but them is the fact that they repeat things over and over again until they grind an idea, theme, or even genre of film into the dirt. Enter cults. I understand the popularity of true crime, and as such executives think that films about cults even fictional ones will sell, and whilst that may have been right a few years ago, it is played out now.

Moreover, the on the nose messaging of a cult run by a white man, John Malkovich, with a mostly white power structure being foiled by an opinionated black woman, Ayo Edebiri, is incredibly cringe. This film goes what if Get Out was even more on the nose and we didn’t even try and hide the fact that the white people were in a cult. Yes you have a few non white characters also under the spell of the cult, to try and avoid points like these, but the fact the person leading it was white, the power structure was mainly white and it was a black girl resisting it, the message was clear as day. I have no issue with a well done message in my films, but when it comes to ham-fistedness I draw a line.

Overall, cinema tickets cost a lot of money, you have seen this before if you have ever watched either a film about cults, or a social horror film before.

1.5 /5

Pros.

It has some nice cinematography at times

It is short

Cons

The message is smacking you in the face with its obviousness

It is a rehash of better films

It has pacing issues

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