5 stars

dir: Todd Phillips

2024

It seems like no-one was meant to enjoy this flick. That would seem to be a strange thing to say about any flick, generally, but this flick seems so deliberately intended to undo whatever the first flick did that it seems bizarre that executives would have agreed to spend $200mill to make it and then another $100mill to market it to the world. There are few bus shelters right now in Melbourne that don’t have that film’s poster on them. They paid some sell-out muralist to cover a whole side of a building with an image of Joaquin and Gaga on it, several storeys high in the CBD.

But then, what about the film they made? I don’t know, as in I can’t pretend to have any secret knowledge of why they did what they did with this film, but I have to assume that this is exactly the film Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix wanted to make. The first one made over a billion dollars. Joaquin got a shiny golden award for Best Actor for that film.

It feels like whatever they wanted people to think about Joaquin and the character in the first flick had to be the opposite of what they get here in this anti-sequel.

Allow me to reiterate that I loathed that first film that was very successful. I did not loathe it for its success, but because I thought it was a facile and ludicrous rendering of a character (one that I don’t really care for anyway, regardless of which version is portrayed).

dir: M. Night Shyamalan

2024

We can’t, at this stage, pretend we don’t know what we’re in for by voluntarily choosing to watch a film by M. Night Shyamalan. He’s not the problem anymore – we are. People like me – people who hatewatch his films just to have something to complain about. Inadvertently, we create the thing we loathe by still making it look like he is a profitable director.

It’s a sickness, an addiction, if you will. So please understand that this review genuinely comes from a place of bad faith.

A dad called Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes along his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert at a stadium. The pop star putting on the concert? Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). Is she the Beyoncé / Taylor Swift of this world, which is always Philadelphia if it’s a Shyamalan movie, even though it was shot in Canada? Eh. She’s more a sub-tier Camila Cabello / Olivia Rodrigo, but without any songs anywhere near as catchy. For once in his life Shyamalan has done something more realistic, in that believing his daughter could play an international popstar would be unbelievable even for him.

The dad makes dad jokes, alternates between riling his daughter up and saying how great this will all be, and also trying to reassure her that her recent problems with school friends won’t matter in the scheme of things. And he also tries to get her snacks and merch and such, which is fine. You even sense that she would probably have preferred to have gone to the concert with those friends she’s on the outs with, but it’s still nice of her dad to have bought the tickets and come along with her.

A lot of dads would probably not want to subject themselves to something like this, or they’d be busy with something else, or they’d be too self-conscious to be seen at such a place with their teenage daughter. Not our hero here, Cooper. No, he lives to make his precious little princess happy.

dir: Joanna Arnow

2024

Occasionally, a film comes along, and you think maybe you’ve accidentally seen a parody trailer for something so outlandish that it can’t be real. And then you watch it, and you find out that’s it’s not a parody, and it’s something of a horrifying shock. It slowly dawns on you that what you thought was a sketch taking the piss out of arthouse flicks is a full length film, and it’s a comedy that you’re meant to take seriously and laugh at. And that’s when the depression kicks in.

The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is the second longest title for a movie that I think I’ve ever seen or reviewed, at least this year. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World beats it by one scant word. But while the latter Romanian film was nearly three hours long, and profoundly nuts, that was a breeze to enjoy compared to this 87 minute film that was agonising to get through. I hate watching videos of actual surgeries, and this film was like watching an 87 minute surgery video, except the patient / victim was / is me.

Excruciating doesn’t even get close to covering the cringing experience I had watching this. Maybe I’m lacking in sufficient maturity. Maybe I’m too squeamish when it comes to the depiction of ‘mature’ sexual relationships between practitioners of consensual BDSM. Maybe my expectation that scenes that start and end should have something happen in between to justify their presence in a film is unreasonable.

Maybe I’m just not on the filmmaker’s wavelength. It’s not that I don’t want to be; I really wish I understood where she was coming from. I’ve read a couple of interviews with her, and what she was going for, but the idea that this, as billed, is an actual comedy, utterly perplexes me.

Maybe if I watched this at an open air cinema on the top of a tenement building in Brooklyn with a bunch of film students or arts poseurs, I might have seen the level upon which this works. As it is, though, I watched it far from Brooklyn, alone, probably with an involuntary look of bemusement on my face.

The director plays the main character here too. That is her right. If she’s going to make a movie, she can cast herself as herself. From beginning to end she delivers almost all of her dialogue in a flat, emotionless monotone that Daria herself would have envied. She is also naked for much of the movie. She’s the only one naked throughout the movie. It’s an almost aggressive level of vulnerability.

dir: Richard Linklater

2024

I don’t always find myself wondering why a plethora of critics fall over themselves praising a particular movie, because I can usually see the reason. It might be lazy, simplistic reasoning, but I can usually grasp it.

The incredible reviews for this flick, being Hit Man, leave me somewhat perplexed, but in a way that shouldn’t indicate I care that much. I don’t think it really matters, and in a few months no-one will even remember this film unless someone involved goes on an actual kill crazy rampage (which, these people being in the States, is not an impossibility, in fact it’s constitutionally required).

The main statement I’ve seen about this flick is that it heralds leading man Glen Powell with his arrival at some sort of apex level of success or stardom, and, honestly, why do people continue to talk like this? That kind of promotional bullshit should have died a long time ago, long before covid, long before OJ killed his ex-wife and her partner. These people are not our friends.

These relentless shitbags are in it for money and fame. Praising someone to the heavens so that he can become the next Tom Cruise is not something worth doing, unless you get rid of the previous one.

If he were a major acting talent, maybe you could justify all that bullshit, but, I’ve seen him in two films thus far, and as far as I can tell he read his lines well and doesn’t appear drunk on set. That’s not a justification for crowning him the next King of Moomba or anything.