Tag: 4

Cinderella (2021)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: 1hr 50m
Synopsis: Fairy tale musical
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: dynamic, beautiful, funny, the talent, costumes, choreography, it’s very gay
What I don’t like about it: some weak jukebox numbers, overplays its strengths

Review:
Camila Cabello showcases her enviable talents in the lead role of this non-Disney fairy tale adaptation; colourful, hyperactive fluff with a charming level of effort. The voiceover narration (Billy Porter as the Fabulous Godmother) introduces us to Ella – for ‘Cinderella’ is an unwanted nickname = who lives in the cellar of her wicked stepmother (Idina Menzel) and spoiled stepsisters. Ella makes dresses and wants to sell them but is informed that women are not allowed to conduct business in this particular fantasy kingdom.

The setting is also introduced during the first number, a reworking of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation, as a land where everyone follows tradition without question and also sing and dance a lot, providing a plausible and very silly reason for all the choreographed pop hits. There are lots of them; also appearing are the songs Somebody to Love, Material Girl and a mash-up of Whatta Man with Seven Nation Army. I was in a go-with-it mood but this film is probably torture if you don’t like musicals. Far and away the best number is the villain song, Dream Girl, a bitter and wistful reflection on the traditional place of women in society written and performed by Menzel.

Currently holding a 4.3/10 on IMDb, I will die on the hill that this is a good movie and everyone involved deserves to be proud of their efforts. Kay Cannon’s writing and directing is funny and dynamic, even if the reliance on gags, numbers and hyperactive editing gets a little tiring. The costumes and choreography are delightful and visually stimulating. There are also great turns from Pierce Brosnan (whose infamous singing ability is lampooned) and Minnie Driver as the King and Queen, and a particular comic highlight in their daughter, the ambitious liberal Princess Gwen who is ignored in favour of primogeniture. If – and only if – you like spectacle, camp and fluff, you’ll find this an enjoyable diversion.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): James Corden

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Where to find it: Rent or buy on Amazon
Length: two and a half hours
Synopsis: A luxury megayacht is the setting for an angry metaphor
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: clever, funny, great images
What I don’t like about it: slow in parts, very gross in parts, long (though not overlong)

Review:
Ruben Östlund’s (The Square) English-language debut is inconsistent and disjointed but full of brilliant satire and further showcases his gift for visual symbolism and metaphor, while pacier than his previous European work. It opens with a modelling audition and smoothly dunks on many fashion targets before focusing on Carl, whose career has hit the skids, and girlfriend Yaya, who is doing just fine as a model/influencer and “finds it unsexy to talk about money”. They argue over dinner (providing Östlund’s signature intellectual cringe comedy) but soon reconcile and ship off for a luxury cruise on a megayacht.

Onboard, the crew is split between obsequious customer-facing staff hoping for a big tip and blue-collar boatmen hoping they don’t get noticed. Everything is luxurious and artificial and it seems to please the passengers, including Carl and Yaya – whose follower count has got them here as a freebie -, a post-Soviet oligarch, elderly English weapons manufacturers and a Swedish game developer who bears a striking resemblance to Minecraft’s notorious founder. On top of furnishing the absurd requests of their passengers, the crew are also dealing with an absentee captain, Woody Harrelson, whose alcoholism and devout Marxism bring about an encounter with the oligarch which was the funniest scene in the movie for me.

The highlight is the act two finale, when the boat is wracked by stormy seas and everyone tries to keep things ‘business as usual’ in a potent metaphor for climate change under capitalism. Unfortunately, this coincides with a highly graphic bout with seasickness and food poisoning – both brought about by poor priorities on the part of those who run the ship, further enhancing the metaphor. The final hour of the movie drags as the ship is destroyed and the survivors cope with a new social order but it ends well (an early line points out that the start and the end are the most important parts of a cruise as well as a movie, I found that cute).

Content notes (may contain spoilers): nudity, sex (coercion), vomit, defecation, corpse

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: 2 hours 20 minutes
Synopsis: The worst character from the first movie returns!
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: fun, funny, good targets, acting
What I don’t like about it: doesn’t deliver on murder mystery or live up to its predecessor

Review:
I didn’t relish the thought of a Knives Out sequel, the first being a near-perfect genre movie with artistic ambitions and themes, any sequel was sure to fall short. Going into this with those low expectations, I found it to be an enjoyable outing with the same kind of big characters and visual flair. However it definitely fell short in both the genre thrills and the themes – the plot being so different as to not really be a murder mystery and the main theme, aside from a retread of the first film’s clinging-to-privilege beats, is “tech billionaires are not geniuses, they’re egotistical, greedy and stupid” which probably was a less obvious statement when this film started development a few years ago.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, suicide, fire

Get Duked! (2020)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: 87 minutes
Synopsis: Four teens find a horror comedy when they take the Duke of Edinburgh Award
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, politics, acting, editing
What I don’t like about it: the title (renamed from Boyz in the Wood) and the music

Review:
A group of teens undertake the orienteering challenge the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the Scottish Highlands. One of them, Ian, is here because the award looks good on a university application. The other three – Dean, Duncan and DJ Beatroot – have been ‘volunteered’ due to their part in a prank gone wrong. While Ian tries to bring the team together and the other three goof off, they are being stalked by a hunter who takes them for prey.

Has good jokes – especially towards the end when callbacks kick in – and a fun classist framework, a healthy disrespect for the police and tolerable lad-banter. Impressive editing and lots of beautiful highland footage makes up for its occasional weaknesses, making it less forgettable than most entries in the genre.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, dissociative VFX, scat, fur, violence (often sudden)

Wendell and Wild (2022)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: 105 minutes
Synopsis: Orphan girl seeks to raise her dead parents, gets conned by slacker demons
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: great characters, very left-wing, lovingly crafted, imaginative and cool
What I don’t like about it: story isn’t great, ending kinda fizzles

Review:
Henry Selick is a beloved stop-motion animator whose previous classics include The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline. Since the latter in 2009, Selick has had several projects disappear on him and relationships with many of the larger Hollywood studios sour but with the help and patience of Netflix and Key & Peele, we get to see another great film from a master of visual imagination.

Kat is a punky orphan who runs afoul of authorities and is sent from care home to juvenile detention centre to discipline-heavy Catholic private school. There, she meets the school’s perky Greek chorus and a quiet, capable and artistic trans boy named Raúl. Alongside this, we’re introduced to a pair of demons, the eponymous Wendell & Wild (Key & Peele) who live on a bigger demon and are responsible for replacing his thinning hairline. Together they resurrect the dead and fight against property developers trying to turn their post-industrial town into a private prison.

It’s very strange and honestly, confusing and hard to connect with at times but the imagination and fun pervading the whole movie – along with the dedication and craft involved in its creation = makes it easy to overlook the weaknesses and just be awed as it moves at a consistent fast pace and shows off some great visuals and ideas. Suitable for gothy older kids and teens.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, drugs and alcohol, grief and trauma

Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry (2021)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: 2 hours and 20 minutes
Synopsis: The making of a Gen Z hero
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the subject, the intimate access
What I don’t like about it: so long they put an intermission in it

Review:
Billie Eilish, walking personification of the state of California, may have escaped your attention if, like me, you’re too old to keep up with Gen Z culture and call all of it ‘TikTok’ but this portrait will make a fan of even the most hardened sceptic. A product of hippy homeschooling, Eilish lives her life with kindness and carefree abandon. She is honest and upfront about her emotions, even when they’re kinda selfish. It’s hard not to love her and the close affectionate bond she shares with her family, they make great company for at least the first hour and a half of this one. We see Billie and brother Finneas writing songs together in their childhood bedrooms, Finneas lovingly nurturing his sister’s talent and attempting to quiet her overactive inner critic. Billie is incredibly cool and adorably neurodivergent throughout, greeting her obsessive fans with genuine appreciation and stopping a performance to make sure a struggling audience member got help.

Pressures soon pile up for Billie and Finneas as they are lured in by the anglerfish of fame and sign a record deal with Interscope, having to deal with the worldwide arena tours, overproduced music festivals and endless press junkets that go along with that. On top of pushing through a rapidly expanding career at the age of 17, Billie is also dealing with regular teenage challenges such as depression, passing her driving test and having a scrub for a first boyfriend, along with a unique set of challenges coming from her hypermobility, Tourette’s and other neurological issues. It honestly becomes hard to watch because even though Billie is still largely enjoying herself, she’s under a lot of strain in doing so and dissociates on camera a lot. I remain hopeful that she finds a fulfilling career without destroying her mental and physical health to keep up with the demands of being a pop icon.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Cunk on Earth (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Five 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: More brilliant satire from Charlie Brooker and Diane Morgan
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: hilarious, occasionally informative, Morgan is funny in everything
What I don’t like about it: 1989 Belgian techno anthem Pump Up The Jam

Review:
Diane Morgan plays recurring character Philomena Cunk as she tries to get to grips with concepts far beyond her frame of reference. Academics attempt to deadpan their way through her hyperbolic, tangential questioning. Some brilliant satirical lines which show how the world got quite so messed up – “[the industrial revolution] ushered in an age of convenience but also threatened all life on Earth. So, swings and roundabouts really.” – and parody of the cheap flashiness of BBC documentaries.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 80 minutes
Synopsis: Hyper-empathy horror play
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: themes, dialogue, acting, ending
What I don’t like about it: sometimes cartoonish villains

Review:
Salma Hayek plays Beatriz, a Mexican-American immigrant and alternative medicine practitioner, who finds herself stuck at her rich client’s mansion during a business dinner. Beatriz feels empathy very deeply, her best friend is a goat who has recently been senselessly murdered. The people she is stuck at dinner with barely feel anything at all. It plays out very tense as we watch Beatriz’s feelings get hurt dozens of times, only occasionally giving voice to her opinions. Of course it builds to a large argument in which Beatriz is ‘hysterical’ and the rich people continue with their disgusting lives.

Mike White, one of my most favourite creatives, wrote this dialogue-heavy play which is an absolute horror movie to those of us who share Beatriz’s hyperempathy. I am very appreciative to have media which I feel explains something ineffable about myself and the ending was sadly very realistic. It means a lot to me.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, animal rights / meat, suicide

This is Going to Hurt (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Seven 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: The NHS is broken and it breaks the people trying to hold it together
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, good drama and acting, compelling medical action scenes
What I don’t like about it: bleak and bloody

Review:
Adam Kay adapts his best-selling memoir very well and allows his character, a great fit for actor Ben Whishaw, to be complex and very flawed. Kay is a junior obstetrician who, by and large, feels compassion for his patients and therefore is doomed to crash out of his chosen profession during a mental breakdown. He takes his stress out on his house officer Shruti and his lovely boyfriend Harry, who deserves better. It’s a compilation of all the ways that the National Health Service is fucked, strung along by fourth wall-breaking wisecracks and gruesome, tense moments of surgery. Super grim and tough to get through but it carries strong messages.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): blood, medical procedures, genitals, childbirth, vomit, death, sex

Thoroughbreds (2017)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: 92 minutes
Synopsis: Anti-social young woman makes a friend and they plan a murder
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the acting, the ending, the best depiction of antisocial personality disorder in film
What I don’t like about it: grim and slow

Review:
Amanda (the wonderful Olivia Cooke) is a teenage loner who doesn’t feel emotions. Her mother pays another young woman, Lily (the brilliant Anya Taylor-Joy), to socialise with Amanda under the guise of tutoring sessions. Lily is abused by her stepfather and Amanda, who has experience killing a horse, has a suggestion how they can deal with that. Together they rope in drug dealer Tim (the late, magnificent Anton Yelchin) to get rid of him.

The ending of this one really distinguishes it as, far and away, the best thriller I’ve ever seen featuring a ‘psychopath’ – and there are so many. It raises many questions about empathy and feeling and lying to oneself, becoming the quintessential film on ASPD, in my opinion.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): blood, gun, drugs, implied abuse, haunting end, personality disorder