Weapons: Putting Naruto Running To Shame

A group of school children go missing and a concerned and blamed teacher, Julia Garner, sets out to find the answers.

I would advise you to go in blind to this, the less you know the better. This review will spoil things, I’ll keep the reveal near the bottom of the page so it is unlikely you will immediately see it, and I am letting you know so you can look away and come back later.

I think stylistically this is a strong film and in terms of originality this is one of the few films this year that does feel like something new. However, there are tonal problems, perhaps this was by design, or perhaps not. There are moments of the film where things are very clearly scary and supposed to be, and then there are other moments where things almost become a comedy and these two states of being do clash.

I enjoyed the cross over story path and how the film is subdivided into different sections based on different characters with each providing context to what you had seen before or would soon see. There was one key character that did not get a chapter even though I think she really should have, and I think this lack of backstory made the film have a few plot holes as a result.

The reveal of the witch at the end of the film and her magical powers came out of nowhere, the film does not present for the most part as a supernatural film and when it does go in that direction it works and makes sense. It also provides some good scares, however, the ending wherein she is entirely removed from being this fearsome villain and is chased through houses by a pack of feral kids is definitely not the right note to end on as it reduces her into being almost a comedy villain.

Overall, a good if imperfect film, the tonal issues and plot holes stop it from being the film of the summer.

4/5

Pros.

It is scary

It has a great sense of style

It feels original

It is inventive

Cons.

The ending breaks the tone of the film

There are too many loose ends and plot holes

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A Working Man: Jason Statham Takes On The Deep State

Summary

Jason Statham fights human traffickers.

So I am a fan of mindless action films but I have to say that this had a lot less joy than something like the Beekeeper wherein there was some comedy to proceedings. Not only that but the film isn’t as grisly or intense as would behove the other end of the action film spectrum so you get a film that has promise but that just feels a little boring.

Couple this with the fact that the film casts David Harbour as Jason Statham’s characters best friend and then just does nothing with him. They give him a few short scenes and allows him to arm Statham for his hunt but other than that he really has no role in the film at all.

Even the action leaves a lot to be desired as nothing crazy or intense really happens, it is mostly just scenes of characters going into rooms and getting into very stationary gun fights, they try and give Statham some fighting scenes to try and mix it up a bit more but it lacks any real visceral punch.

Overall, an action film destined to be forgotten about.

2.5/5

Pros.

It has promise

There are a few okay action set pieces

It is relatively well paced

Cons.

The action misses the edge it needs

It isn’t sure whether it wants to be comedic or serious in tone

It wastes the 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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A Simple Favour Two: Blake Lively Runs Damage Control

Summary

The internet’s favourite bogeywoman Blake Lively, Amber Heard has run off into obscurity and Rachel Zegler is a bit played out, makes her film comeback in what might be the most chillingly telling performance of her career.

For those unaware, in the first film, we were introduced to Emily, Lively, a character who fakes her own death and then tries to blame it on someone else, Kendrick, and who has a child admitted to killing her father along with her sister. Therein lies my half joke half speculative theory, how far does life imitate art? Could it not be that Lively was drawn to the character for her own cold and bitter ways, both seek to incriminate someone else for something they did not do in order to punish them.

Moving off Lively for a moment the question with this film becomes why? Why wait well over 5 years to make this sequel and who was demanding for it to continue. Was it the director who has not had much success in recent years, Lively in an attempt to rehabilitate her image that was soured long before her most recent scandal who’s to say.

I think this film knows it doesn’t really have a purpose and so just repeats a lot of the plot beats from the first film just with a few characters swapped around for good measure.

Overall, this was doomed to cost Amazon money.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is hilariously telling

Cons.

It is unnecessary

It is boring

It is a rehash

Lively

It has pacing issues

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September 5th: Required Viewing For Anyone With A Pro Palestine Flag In The Bio

Summary

A film recounting the experiences of a live TV crew during the Munich Olympics hostage crisis.

So this film hits hard in relation to events currently going on in the world and the feeling by some people towards Jewish but more specifically Israeli people. Released in a contemporary setting this film serves as a reminder for what happens when you allow antisemitism to march unchecked through the streets, a lesson a lot of European governments need to here now more than ever.

However, as far as historical thrillers go there isn’t much to set this film apart from a number of other similar films. That is the issue with doing something based on a true story though you cannot really innovate in any meaningful way. Whilst I found the film engaging I wouldn’t say it was edge of your seat viewing in the way something like Argo was.

The cast were all serviceable but not particularly memorable.

3/5

Pros.

It is timely

It shows genuine heartbreak and strife

It is very engaging

Cons.

It feels too familiar

None of the performances are stand out

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G20: The Fantasy World Wherein Old Ladies Can Beat Up Men Twice There Size

Summary

A geriatric woman, Viola Davis, beats up men half her age in a film that is the director’s direct response to mean comments they’ve had online. 20

Thank God Jennifer Salke is out at Amazon, in decades past this film would have been played as a comedy, the idea of an old woman being an action hero is inherently hilarious, however here they play it straight. God knows why.

This film feels responsive in all the wrong ways, it is a fragile left wing person’s response to YouTube channels they don’t like. Not only do they did pick these evil youtubers as bigoted but also position them as terrorists, it speaks to an incredibly fragile person as the creative force behind this film.

Davis is a terrible lead as one would assume her to be, she is not a good action hero she isn’t convincing, her terrible one liners will always make you groan, and frankly I can’t wait for the casting of Viola Davis trend to be over. Here’s hoping the Waller show gets cancelled.

Overall, yet another film from Hollywood where you are the bad guy.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is laughably bad at times

Cons.

It hates the audience

It is the product of a fragile person with hurt feeling

Davis is a terrible action lead

There is nothing empowering about it

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Bring Them Down: Protect The Sheep Of Ireland

Summary

Two shepherding families go to war.

Before you get too excited no this is not an action film, rather a drama/thriller film. It works well in that regard, though it’s not one for everyone’s taste, there is unrelenting bleakness to the film not unlike something Shane Meadows might produce and you have to be prepared for that.

The escalating tension between the two families is well done and the built does feel delivered upon. However, the choice to go backwards in time and reframe things makes the film not only harder to follow but also slows it down, it does this to lead to an ending wherein the main character, played by Christopher Abbott, feels bad about what he has done, which in my mind does not work at all. The ending stunts the film as Abbott has been attacked and harassed since the start of the film he is within his rights to go after the family that killed his sheep and his dog.

Also there is a weird plot line at the beginning of the film wherein Abbott’s character got so angry he drove dangerously and killed his mother, and other than being brought up a few times this doesn’t really tie into anything in a meaningful way, maybe it was done to show he was a psychopath but then the film didn’t really go down that road with it.

Overall, a film with some promise but that is derailed by odd writing choices and a bad ending.

2.5/5

Pros.

The tension

The build

It is interesting

Cons.

The ending

The time stuff

The pacing

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Dirty Angles: Who Needs Men?

Summary

The last gasp of the girlboss

So just when you think Hollywood is learning, when mary sues and girlbosses seem to be on the wane you get this.

The film follows a girl’s school that is taken over during the Afghanistan withdrawal and after a failed attempt by Delta Force to retake it, bah men what can they do, the US government decides to send in a team of women, who easily fix the problem.

My issues with this film is that it doesn’t even try to be anything other than a girlboss film, it feels more like it wants to give a lecture on how capable women can be, something we already knew, rather than be serviceable as either a war or action film. It is curious that the film went this road considering who the main demographic is for these sort of films.

Another thing that haunts the girlboss, dare I call it sub-genre, is the fact that it is always skinny frail looking women that these films expect us to believable can take men three times their size in hand to hand combat it is just silly.

Overall, this is the sort of film Hollywood needs to stop making if they want to make money.

1/5

Pros.

You get a few good laughs out of it

Cons.

It is cringe

The acting is terrible

More girlbosses

It is badly paced

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Emily Perez: Drug Cartels Are Selena Gomez’s People

Summary

Yikes. That sums up the film nicely. Do we really need to say more?

So as many of you know this film has been in the headlines recently for all the wrong reasons, what it should be getting attention for is pushing questionable gender science, having course and vulgar songs that make WAP look like a children’s nursery rhyme and of course softening Mexican drug cartels that kill thousands of people every year.

It is quite funny to see the situation that critics have gotten themselves into on this one, as of course they have to support the film with a trans lead, but now as more and more things about said lead are starting to come out, these left wing critics are starting to have to say things that they may once have said was transphobic.

For me the biggest issues with this film is taste, there are a number of moments and choices in the film that feel in bad taste, simply put. To make a musical about the cartels is simply insensitive and at worst wrong. Worse yet this decision makes the tone of the film feel at times schizophrenic to the subject matter.

Overall, a bad decision all round.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is laughably bad

Cons.

The songs

It pushes bad science

The acting is awful

It has tonal problems

The pace is off

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Baby Girl: Those Nichole Kidman AMC Adverts Have Changed Quite A Bit.

Summary

Hold onto your casserole dishes we get yet another erotic thriller for mothers.

Very much like the Grey films this film seeks to fetishize s and m and puts forward the idea of how hot it is for the boss women to be made to bark like a dog for a younger man. Is this actually titillating for anyone, remember folks when erotic thrillers would just be normal fairly vanilla sex but the passion of it is what gave it the heat, now you have stuff like this done for shock value. I am no prude but I do consider what sort of things are being shown as healthy here, and don’t think they are in fact that.

I find the graphic scenes of Nicole Kidman masturbating to not be shocking, to not be boundary pushing as oh we have never had a scene of a woman masturbating before, glass sealing shattered as we have, but instead rather to be desperate. These sort of scenes are not put in to make some bold comment on female sexuality, this comment has already been more articulately made, they are done for shock value and to be like ‘oh look at how graphic we made it that’s sexy right?’ It isn’t it is just desperate.

If Miss Kidman thinks this will make her anymore relevant or hey even get her some awards love it won’t. It will be forgotten about in about 5 minutes and will only live on in the mind of some old neglected housewife who wants it to happen to her.

Overall, a desperate sad attempt at eroticism.

1/5

Pros.

Old unsatisfied housewives might like it

Cons

It is cringe

It is desperate

It legitimising some morally bad things

Kidman is miscast

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