6 stars

dir: David Leitch

2024

If you’ve ever read any of my reviews, you would occasionally see me ask the question “who is this for” or “what is the intended audience for this flick?” Sometimes it’s rhetorical, because I can’t figure it out. Other times I’m making the statement to shame the filmmakers for pandering to a particular imagined section of society.

And if you haven’t read any of my reviews, you wouldn’t have noticed that, and you’re not reading this now, or ever, so, yes, I am talking to myself again.

Other times I ask myself the question while watching a film, and then I figure it out as a painful realisation dawns upon me.

Why you would be using fifty year old KISS songs on a soundtrack, why you would have multiple references to the Miami Vice tv show, why you would even resurrect a tv show from the 80s that this arises from, that starred Lee Majors, why you would then have visual and auditory call backs to The Six Million Dollar Man, which also starred Majors, why you would even be talking about the mechanics of filmmaking and the logistics of stuntwork, and then have an abundance of other references to the ancient times of yore?

And then it hit me, and I felt a deep, deep shame. The audience, imagined or otherwise, was me, specifically me, and other fat movie nerds of my exact vintage.

Much younger people than I, like, my kid’s age, don’t care about movies and don’t know, or get, any references earlier than the late 2000s. People older than me routinely yell “EH?” and cup their hand over one of their ears because they didn’t quite hear what you just said, or they didn’t understand most of the words you used in a sentence. You would say “it was a tv show in the 80s with Lee Majors”, and then they’d think you were talking about Lee Marvin, and start talking about how great he was in Cat Ballou and what a lovely singing voice he had in Paint Your Wagon.

dir: Adam Wingard

2024

I thought it would be “funny” to review Godzilla Minus One, a ‘serious’ throwback take on the genre that reviewers treated like it was Important and Meaningful, and then Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which no-one thought was important and meaningful, but does have no Japanese people in it and giant creatures fighting each other which totally don’t exist as a metaphor about scientific hubris or humanity’s place in the universe or anything, for that matter

I set myself these pointless little tasks because it amuses me, and it just makes my life harder for no good reason, but I stick to my pointless and arbitrary tasks, because someone has to…

So having watched the Toho - Japanese retro version, I am now set to review the ‘American’ version, which is from the Chinese film production company Legendary Films.

They could not be more different. I am sure such statements shock and confound the reader. This has far more scenes of giant creatures trashing and thrashing each other, killing probably hundreds of thousands of people, but that’s not a big deal anymore? In this world that they’ve put together, which initially mimicked the progression of the Japanese monster flicks by having Godzilla fight more and more monsters, instead has conjured a world where, yes, many of these so called Titans exist, but there’s also this supra-government entity called Monarch that tries to control or nudge the Titans depending on what they’re doing.

You might think their main task would be saving people’s lives but that wouldn’t look as interesting on the big screen, I guess.

And I didn’t really mind, to be honest. These Godzilla versus or Kong times etc flicks have zero regard for human life except for whoever the filmmakers put forward as the representatives of humanity, because tonnes of faceless people die, since the major punch ups always happen in populated areas, but it’s accepted as like the cost of doing business.

If all you want is to watch CGI Godzilla fight CGI King Kong, and then CGI other giant creatures, why would you care about the humans at all? Humans are like puny ants at the feet of these gods.

dir: Bryce McGuire

2024

This is a thoroughly unremarkable family focussed horror flick, though competently done. The camera doesn’t fall over, the boom mic doesn’t leer into shot constantly, not too many actors accidentally put stuff in their mouths that they shouldn’t, while the cameras are rolling, at least.

But there was plenty that amused me about the flick, though I don’t know how much of it was intentional.

The opening sequence is confronting enough, yet it kind of ends up being a reworked, pool-based version of the opening sequence from the first It film, by which I mean Part 1 rather than the first time they tried to make it. I’m confusing myself. Whatever it is, it works, I guess, because a child is gone. Gone!

We don’t like to see that. No-one likes it when kids get eaten / captured / drowned, unless they’re absolute sickos. But if we’re going to keep watching a horror flick, and, let’s face it, if you voluntarily started watching the horror flick in question, then, yes, you are some version of a sicko, we’re going to need something more to sustain us.

We might wonder: What got the kid? Was it…something in the pool? Or was it the pool itself?

Is it a haunted demonic pool? Wait, what? An evil pool? That’s the fucking dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Tell me more.

Pretty early on, yes, now is the moment where I completely diverge from talking about a film into some other absolute nonsense, I couldn’t help but think of something from many, many years ago.

dir: Ridley Scott

2023

It’s not like this guy is an unknown; a neglected personage in human history. It almost seems like a hubristic cliché to be one of the most successful directors, commercially and critically in the medium of film, and to then decide in your 80s that you’re going to do a Napoleon biopic.

Like you’ve finally earned that honour. But the thing is, film nerd though I might be, I cannot actually remember there being any other decent films about the Corsican dictator.

I remember chintzy television mini-series from when I was a kid and a prestige mini-series was a Big Deal, for some reason. I remember one clearly with Armand Assante playing the little corporal, and maybe Jacqueline Bisset as Josephine?

I don’t remember if it was good, I just remember that it existed. And that it was more entertaining than this.

And I remember a film with Ian Holm about the last years of the tinpot despot’s life in exile on St Helena, turned into a sweet and mawkish what if? speculative fictional story, which was all right(ish).

And I remember that the Napoleon in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure really enjoyed the water slides at the San Dimas water park.

Like, he *really* enjoyed the heck out of those slides.

Ridley Scott got however much money he got from Apple TV, got Joaquin Phoenix, a fairly accomplished and acclaimed actor he’s worked with before, got access to all sorts of fancy regal places and palaces, and put together a film…

The point of this film… I am not sure, but after 2 hours and nearly 40 minutes, I think the point of the flick is that Napoleon maybe was great on the battlefield (half of the time), but sucked in almost every other measurable way as a person and as a man?