Awoken (2020)

I decided to watch Awoken purely because of the synopsis which sees Karla who is a medical student who is trying to find a cure for her brother who is suffering from Fatal Familial Insomnia which it turns out is a real thing. If you haven’t slept for 18 days or something like that then its terminal and you die. Karla is given the opportunity by a teacher but it turns out that her brother is possessed by the devil and things start to happen. This film is directed by Daniel J. Phillips who has made a few short films but this is his first feature length film and it’s a good solid first feature for him.

The film has a strange opening which seems to be set in a foster home and one of the children appears to have been sexually assaulted by an adult and when another child appears to be about to suffer the same fate the camera moves behind the door and that scene ends. It’s not until the end of the film when we learn that the child that was assaulted was Robert (Karla’s teacher) and he made a deal with the devil. This was the part where a huge amount of exposition was dumped on us because up until this point we got very little in the way of plot exposition. We do learn that her father was trying to cure her mother of the same condition but was able to.

The idea that people suffering from a sleeping disorder being possessed by the devil or a demonic soul is a good one because it can be used to good effect. It’s not explored as much as I would have liked but I suppose there is only so much you can do in a 90 minute movie set in a bunker.

Normally there is a point in a horror film where all common sense well and truly gets thrown out of the window and they reached this point and were on the verge of leaving before a broken lift stops them and they decide to use the time they have left to conduct more tests and this is when things go really bad for Karla.

On the plus side, I think that the setting is quite good. There is no easy way to escape and there is a nice claustrophobic feel to it and Phillips uses it well. Also there weren’t that many (if any) jump scares. I thought that this sort of setting and plot would have been rife in a Paranormal Activity film. I although thought it was amusing that they were watching something on a VHS tape instead of coming up with some line about converting the VHS tapes over to digital. The issue I have with the film was that I thought the characters weren’t that well thought out. They all have enough characteristics to get them through the film but I just didn’t really connect to any of them apart from Karla.

Overall I thought Awoken was a perfectly fine horror film. It had a sound idea and was executed rather well. I have seen worse films that have taken a similarly interesting premise and managed to squander it. I think that the feel and pacing of the film was good enough so that I would be interested to see what this director has planned in the future.

Scoob! (2020)

Was the world really crying out for another Scooby Doo film? Well it looks like were getting one anyway. This was another film that was due to get a cinematic release because I remember seeing trailers for it before seeing a few films back in February and March just before Lockdown. The film starts off with us seeing the Scooby gang as kids and learning how Scooby and Shaggy first met (well that’s something off life’s big question list). They also meet Fred, Daphne & Velma and this leads into the theme tune which does make it feel like this film was going to be a extended TV episode.

The plot of the film is that Dick Dastardly is after Scoob because he is a key but in order to keep the Scooby gang separated and this split was caused by Simon Cowell. Quite why Simon Cowell has such a significant role is unclear. He looks more like a CGI character in real life today than he did here. There are things that you would expect from a Scooby Doo film and they make an appearance in this film. The ‘I would have got away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids’ line gets used early on (even if its cut short). The theme tune also gets used and the montage highlighting their adventures.

At the 24 minute mark I found myself saying ‘What?’ several times. This is because Dick Dastardly turns up.  Dick Dastardly is voiced by ‘Hello to’ Jason Isaacs and a huge problem with this film is that there isnt enough Mutley. I can live without Scrappy Doo but Mutley was a deal breaker. Captain Caveman pops in the film as well and I started to wonder if they were trying to do the Hanna-Barbera cinematic universe. I went onto the trivia page on IMDB and it does in fact state that this is what they are aiming to do.

Despite this being aimed at kids, I found myself enjoying this and chuckling at lot at the jokes. You can’t review this film in the same way that you would review 1917 or Parasite. I think that kids will enjoy this and there is enough to keep adults entertained. It’s the Shrek effect which seems to have fallen out of popularity in the 2010s but means that more people can enjoy a film. I was honestly expecting to really dislike this film and I cant say that I did. I thought the story was standard Scooby Doo and the animation was pretty good. Normally modern versions of classic animated shows/films tend to look bad but this one was handled rather well. If there was a second one I wouldn’t be against it.

Bad Education (2019)

This film is based on the New York Magazine article ‘The Bad Superintendent and based on a true story which I must admit I wasn’t aware of. So it was nice to not know where the film was going. It starts in 2002 and follows Frank Tassone and Pam Gluckin who steals money from the school they are trying to make the best in the country. It’s not long before the fact that Gluckin has embezzled nearly a quarter of a million dollars and the reaction by Tassone and the board is to hide it. As the film progresses it becomes a series of scenes where people are trying to protect their position in the school but the problems snowball into something that cant be hidden away.

The reason why this film works is down to the performances. It was always going to be interested how Hugh Jackman’s post Wolverine career was going to pan out and his CV has been largely ok. He was great in The Greatest Showman even if the film itself is problematic and The Front Runner is a movie I haven’t seen but here is really good. He plays Frank Tassone who the film spends the first 10 minutes or so making Frank appear to be an round nice guy who cant do any wrong. He remembers students from 15 years before whilst he’s in a bar in Las Vegas. He manages to not make you feel sorry for him because of his fall from grace but not feel as hateful towards him as you would if the role were played by someone who wasn’t as charismatic as Jackman. It could have been so easy to make Frank seem unlikeable but what Hugh Jackman seems to do is make the character seem vulnerable and the persona he plays at school is a front to hide his real self. I don’t think it tries to justify his actions like they tried to do in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. I like Allison Janney in anything she is in. I have been a fan of hers since she played CJ in the West Wing and think that whatever role she plays she is great to watch. She doesn’t seem to have as much compassion about her that Tassone has but there is still something to her character.

The film had me engrossed so much that when the credits rolled saying what happened to Tassone and Gluckin I was amazed that that this was the end of the film as it didn’t seem like 108 minutes had just passed. That’s not something that happens very often. I really liked this film, I thought that the performances were superb and the slow build up is just slow enough to enjoy whats going on and who knew life in an American school could be this interesting. It’s also very well directed. Its not flashy and it doesn’t try to make it something that its not. It did remind of The Social Network where it just lets the story grab your attention instead of flashing editing or camera angles. This is definitely in my top 5 of the year.

Ghosts of War (2020)

Overlord set the standard for World War Two Horror films. The film is directed by Eric Bress who last sat in the director’s chair for The Butterfly Effect back in 2004. A 16 year gap isn’t a good sign, neither is the 11 year gap between writing credits which is the case with The Final Destination that he wrote in 2009. Of course there could be perfectly plausible reasons for the gap so its worth noting purely out of interest as opposed to a statement about the quality of the film. As set ups for films go, this one is pretty simple. A group of American Soldiers are sent to a Chateau in France during the Second World War to guard it until help comes. It’s clear something is wrong as soon as they arrive as the soldiers they are relieving can’t get out quick enough and are sleeping during the day. The film is only 90 minutes long yet feels the need to have a scene where one of the soldiers has a bare knuckle fight with an SS Soldier. They even comment a couple of times in the early stages of the film that they are behind schedule yet they can dawdle. Thankfully once the film gets to the chateau then things do pick up.

The idea that the ghosts are the previous residents and they are doing to the soldiers what the Nazi’s did to them. I quite liked that idea because there is a reason why things are happening. The setting is really good. Full credit has to go to the set designers because they made this chateau look creepy and it looks really nice on the screen. In fact there isnt a single shot that doesn’t look really nice. The film is also directed rather well. There are a couple of shots which looked quite nice and there was a nice long shot early on continuing the trend of films with a long tracking shot which is a movie trend I approve of by the way. At 90 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome although I think the film would have worked even better if the film had started when they arrived at the chateau.

The film takes a weird turn when Billy Zane appears (that’s not why its weird) but the fact the setting seems to have shifted to modern day (or near future). We see that the group of soldiers were in fact in Afghanistan and not 1940’s France. It’s at this point that it feels like a completely different film. The supernatural setting was interesting and visually strong but then a modern day setting is less interesting and undid any good feeling that I had towards this film. The soldiers in Afghan are hiding and the family who own the house the soldiers are in are killed by ISIS soldiers and the soldiers are killed or injured by a bomb.

The question that ran through my mind was why put them in a World War Two setting and the answer was slightly disappointing. The answer was that the soldiers put in the dream scenario worked ‘better’ in the Second World War. This whole portion of the film feels like it was added on at the last minute so that Executive Producer Billy Zane can pop up and then disappear.

The main problem apart from the sudden shift in setting are the soldiers. They don’t have anything interesting about them. Not one of them has anything beyond a one dimensional character. The only person I recognise from main line up is Theo Rossi who was quite good in Sons of Anarchy but beyond that none of the characters were interesting to me. Even when its revealed that the soldiers were in Afghanistan, I thought that they weren’t very well thought out.

If I had to describe this film in one word then it would be inconsistent. There are some good things that are in this film but for some reason it never gels as well as it could. It’s a film that starts off as a World War Two horror film and then becomes a futuristic sci-fi film. A tonal shifts go, its one of the more interesting but sadly it was a disappointing horror film.

Time to Hunt (2020)

I knew even before I pressed play on Time to Hunt that at best it was going to be the second best South Korean film of 2020. Although this film does share something with Parasite and that is Choi Woo-shik who plays Ki-hoon in this. The film is set in a dystopian version of South Kora where people are living in near financial ruin and a group of friends decide commit a heist but are hunted down by an assassin.

The heist takes place within the first 40 minutes of a 134 minute film which means that there is a lot of time to deal with the fallout. I quite liked the fact that it wasn’t the money that the gangster owners were worried about because apparently that was small change to them but it was the hard drives which have all their money laundering details on. They are being followed by Han and he’s quite an effective villain because he’s effective to just the right amount so that he can show how ruthless he can be and yet not so ruthless that the group aren’t killed off too quickly.

The film suffers a bit of a dip in terms of quality for about 25 minutes and when the assassin gets to the main group that is when the film starts to pick up. Sadly that doesn’t last very long as the film starts to drag and I began to lose interest without about 45 minutes left. This is one of those films that outstays its welcome. I was disappointed with this film to such a degree that I haven’t got much more to write about it. The film lost me at a time when I was gutted when I saw how much more time was left. It has a good premise and some good performances but it struggles to stay interesting. Definitely one of the weakest films of the year and one of the weakest foreign language films of the year.

The Parts You Lose (2019)

The set up of the film is that a deaf boy named Wesley befriends a fugitive criminal. That’s pretty much the plot because there isn’t much to this film. The mom played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead has the typical mother/son relationship whilst Scoot McNairy has the typical father/son broken relationship. It’s partly due to this that leads Wesley to the guy he finds. The guy then teaches Wesley to stand up for himself from the school bully.

I like Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I thought she was really good in Birds of Prey and superb in 10 Cloverfield Lane but I cant for the life of me figure out what was in this role that made her say yes. It’s a largely pedestrian role which is a shame because Winstead can do better. I like Aaron Paul who is perhaps always going to be defined by his role in Breaking Bad and the 2019 Netflix film El Camino. He was perhaps the best thing in this film which isnt saying a great deal. His little speeches that he gives to Wesley are quite good and are the rare moments where I found myself actually interested in what was going on. Scoot McNairy is also someone that I have liked in the past. I first came across him in Monsters and he was really good in that but apart from being slightly difficult with his son, he does really have much to do in this film. Like Winstead, the character isnt as good as the person playing it.

There are some things that I like apart from the fact it has three really good actors. I thought the setting was nice and shot well and the Mary Elizabeth Winstead does sign language really well. I don’t know if she did it before this film but if she didn’t that makes it even more impressive because she made it seem like she’s been doing it for years.

The main problem with the film is that it doesn’t seem like its going anywhere. There is a nice friendship between a kid and a stranger but besides that there is nothing else going on. The goodbye scene between the two was quite nice but beyond that this is a 90 minute film that felt much longer and it’s a shame because when you have three really good movie stars and a kid that does his best, you really should have a film that has more going for it than this. One of the most disappointing films of the year.

The Decline (2020)

The Decline or Jusqu’au déclin to give its original name is French Canadian action thriller which sees a group arrive at a survival training camp in the middle of a snowy nowhere. They all have rather modern reasons why they want to learn how to survive which range from environmental to social and economical. The man who runs the camp is called Alain and he is strange from the get go.

François’ death is quite shocking because even though something went bang just a minute or two before, I didn’t see it coming. It’s the catalyst for the rest of the movie as people decide what to do. Some want to report it to the police, some want to bury the body and say he’s gone missing. In the end, Alain decides to burn the body and the group decide to leave which is unusually smart for this type of situation. The film then becomes the group trying to escape on foot in an environment that they don’t know where a lunatic does.

The deaths do come as quite a surprise in the way that they are achieved. Sebastian’s death is a noose which he doesn’t see because he’s running in the pitch dark. There’s a nice shot of Alain who does seem quite sad by the fact he has died. Antoine’s death was a surprise because it seemed like him and Rachel would make it to the end but he gets his brains blown out. Rachel becomes a bit of a late addition to the star of the film award because she doesn’t do anything really until she falls through the ice and then she becomes the female Rambo. The shootout between Rachel and Alain was quite good then the fight that takes place in the house is quite tough.

The directing is quite good. There is a moment when Alain and Rachel fight and two shots are fired and you think that one of them is dead but the camera stays back in the hall so we don’t see the entire fight. The fil is directed by Patrice Laliberté who hasn’t directed a feature film before and it’s a great start because despite some of the characters not being as strong as they could have been, he directed it well and also co-wrote a decent script that didn’t try to outreach itself.

I like that the film sets things up in the first act of the film such as the fork tracks where one route is a dead end and that there are sensors which alert him by phone. I also like the fact that when things happen, they are for narrative purposes but they are done in a way which feels like they are natural. The Decline is a fun little action film that has a simple premise and stretches it far as it would go without affecting the quality. I thought that some of the performances were a little weak but the main ones of Antoine and Alain made up for it. If you don’t mind foreign language films then this is worth a watch.

Nobody Knows I'm Here (2020)

Nobody Knows I’m Here is a Netflix film that follows Memo (played by Jorge Garcia). When he was younger we see that he has a great voice but he does the singing while someone who is better looking goes out and mimes to his singing. Things went bad when he injured Angelo and that caused a breakdown in the relationship with his father who pops up for about five minutes.

Memo starts the film as a recluse and living on a sheep farm with just his uncle but when his uncle gets severely injured, he has to take him to the mainland and that is where his friendship starts with Marta. He sings on her phone and soon finds himself on a TV show with the person he injured. There’s a great shot of Memo in a car and an angry mob are whacking the car and spitting on it and you do get the feeling that its an overreaction to a child singer.

The film works in large part because of the relationship between Memo and Marta. She doesn’t get involved because she’s nosy or has an agenda but she just seems like a nice person. I think that Millaray Lobos does a good job of making something of what is a rather clichéd role. Luis Genecco does well with a role that is nothing more than being the father figure that Memo should have had and offers something approaching stability in the form of his sheep farm.

The scene where they meet face to face is so understated because its not on TV but in a dimly lit studio with no audience. Angelo doesn’t blame Memo for destroying his life but wants Memo to be the be the villain on the show which has parallels with their life 25 years before. Even though he is the one that ended up in the wheelchair, its hard to feel sympathy for him after this scene. The film succeeds in how we feel sympathy for Memo even after the events of their lives have been revealed.

The film ends with Memo singing his song and then leaving the studio and then the last shot is of him on his bed with Marita laying beside him. Its perhaps the most understated ending that I have ever seen in a film because it just ends and I didn’t feel cheated by it. I thought that it was a solid ending because he has his final moment in the limelight and then once he’s done he goes back to his life that he seems perfectly fine with and that’s why I like the film because it doesn’t try to change Nemo but just have him thrust back into the limelight and then back to where he started the film.

I think the film works largely because of Jorge Garcia. There has always been a likeably quality to him ever since I first saw him in Lost. I think if I had an issue with the film then it would be that I thought that the relationship between Memo and Marita could have been explored more. In the first half of the film where they have their moments together I thought that this film was going to feature them more and then it didn’t really so I would have had more of them together. Apart from that I enjoyed it this film.

Dolittle (2020)

Dolittle is the most recent version of Doctor Dolittle after the Rex Harrison version in 1967 and the Eddie Murphy versions in 1998 and 2001 with a couple of animated versions in-between. This is the first post-Iron Man movie for Robert Downey Jr and it’s an interesting movie which is directed by Stephen Gaghan who is mainly a writer having contributed to shows like NYPD Blue and wrote the screenplay for films like Syriana.  The setup of the film is that Dolittle is given the task of finding a cure to help the Queen but in the opening animation we learn that his wife has died and he has lived as a recluse in the mansion given to him by the Queen.

I like Robert Downey Jr as an actor even though his career pre-2008 was a bit sketchy, he has undergone a renaissance and whilst his performance in this film isn’t terrible. His accent is. I don’t quite know why he feels the need to adopt a welsh accent which is made more noticeable when you consider that he shares a film with Michael Sheen who is Welsh and putting on a good English accent. I think that the Downey Jr would have done better had he just done the film in an American accent. Eddie Murphy did it so why couldn’t Downey Jr?. Michael Sheen is the main villain of the film as Blair Mudfly and he I thought he was the best part of the entire movie. He played it exactly how you would want a villain in a family film to play it. Antonio Banderas pops up as someone who Dolittle annoyed in the past and I think it’s the closest you could get to Jack Sparrow in the Pirates films that it would be possible to get. All the animals are voiced by big names and to be honest I wasn’t sure who was playing the voices until I looked at IMDB and it’s quite an impressive cast list.

The biggest problem that with this film is that the plot seems tremendously plodding. For a film that is an hour and forty minutes, they seem spend a lot of time in locations doing stuff that didn’t really have much impact on the main plot. I often talk about how a film could lose some of its running time and that’s the case with this film. It could have lost about 15 minutes and been a much better film.

There are things to like about this film. I thought the performances from Tommy Stubbins who played Tommy and Carmel Lianiado as Lady Rose were perfectly fine despite the limited plot. Jessie Buckley was cast as the ailing Queen Victoria and I feel like it could have been given to somebody else because it was a nothing version of the monarch. I’m surprised that Helen Mirren didn’t play the part. The biggest success of the film are the animals because not only are they funny but the effects are rather good and that’s important because if they hadn’t been as successful then the plot would be the least of the film’s problems.

It’s clearly aimed at a family audience so its not fair really to be too critical of the movie but I think that it was generally a good movie. There are significant problems and if they decided to do a sequel then the problems could be easily fixed. The world needs Dolittle really because of how miserable the world is and how it feels like there is an oversaturation of Marvel/DC films (which of course Downey Jr is partly responsible for). It’s possible that a sequel could happen because of Robert Downey Jr and the fact it cost $175 million but it only made $223 million worldwide and the general rule of thumb is that a film needs to make twice its budget to ‘break even’ and if you applied that rule to Dolittle then the break-even point is $350 million so the film made a ‘loss’ of $127 million. So a sequel is questionable.

The Old Guard (2020)

The Old Guard is another film that is attempting series of movies based on graphic novels which I confess I haven’t read. The setup of the film is that Andy (played by Charlize Theron) leads a group mercenaries who all have the ability to live for a very long time (sometimes thousands of years), they are hired by Copley (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) to rescue some kidnapped girls in South Sudan. Its an set up and its just so that they can track down this group so that Copley’s boss Merrick (played by Harry Melling) can use their DNA to make a profit in life extending drugs. Meanwhile we are introduced to Nile (played by Kiki Layne) who is killed during an military operation and is brought into the group by Andy.

Charlize Theron has good form when it comes to appearing in action films. She was really good in Mad Max: Fury Road and I thought she was easily the best part of Atomic Blonde and she continues to run here. I thought that Kiki Layne was also good and had the film gone in the way that I thought it was going to and have Andy die then I would have found Nile to be an effective leader.

The film doesn’t bother to explain why only these people can live for hundreds or thousands of years and then suddenly stop but I didn’t mind. I thought that the story was good enough and the performances were interesting enough that these minor plot holes didn’t bother me. I also thought that the whole Quynh plot strand deserved a bit more screen time than it got. I get that its being used for a sequel but if that doesn’t come then this was for nothing which is a shame because it was quite interesting and the backstory was well told and the shot of Quynh’s casket tomb falling to the bottom of the ocean was really good.

The fight scenes are well done especially the one between Theron and Layne in the plane which was quite brutal but a lot of fun and they are directed in a frantic fashion. The directing in this film is quite good and Gina Prince-Bythewood has managed to make a graphic novel story flow rather well.

If I did have issues with the film then it would be with the villain because I thought that he seemed a bit weak. It might be partly because Merrick is played by Harry Melling who was previously Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films but even if I didn’t know that I thought that his performance was lacking something that you would expect a main villain to have. They lay on the fact that he is a villain a bit to thick by having his building bear his name like he is Tony Stark. I think that Chiwetel Ejiofor would have made a better villain as the character was more likely to be a convincing villain as its revealed his wife died and it would have made more sense for him to try and capture the Mercenaries. Another issue is that I would have liked more Charlize Theron beating people up. It’s one of the best things about Atomic Blonde.

I enjoyed The Old Guard a lot more than I thought I would. I couldn’t help but think of Bloodshot and how that pretty much failed at everything it attempted to do and yet this film manages it because it has a likeable protagonist and interesting action scenes. Also have a group of people instead of a charisma-less Vin Diesel was a wise choice although Charlize Theron could have coped on her own. I do hope that there is another film in the Old Guard series because there is potential for some good stories. Just have more Charlize Theron beating people up because that’s always a good thing.

The Banker (2020)

The Banker is ‘inspired by true events’ which mean that the people are real and the major events are real but scenes and less key people may have been created for dramatic purposes. This story follows to African Americans who hire a white man to front their bank so that they can give loans to fellow African Americans so they buy houses they wouldn’t have been able to buy in areas they wouldn’t have been allowed to buy in. The film follows Bernard Garrett (played by Anthony Mackie) and Joe Morris (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and they get Matt Steiner (played by Nicholas Hoult) to be the face of their business.

The character of Bernard is an interesting one. He has a determination which could quite easily have spilled over into arrogance yet due to Mackie it is played just right and as a result I found myself liking his character even more. I also thought that Samuel L. Jackson was really good and seemed to be having the time of his life playing a character that is the exact opposite of Mackie’s. They work well together as a double act. Nicholas Hoult is an actor that I have never seen in a film before even though I know he has been in things but I thought that as Steiner he did a good job of playing someone who has to play at being a banker and a good golfer.

The film has a lot of banking jargon in the early part of the film and I was reminded of ‘The Martian’ where that film has a lot of science stuff in it and yet is still a fun film. This isnt a fun film but the banking jargon is used in such a way that I enjoyed listening to them explain it and talk about it which is the hallmark of a good script. The film progresses well for the first hour and a bit and then like any drama, the good times have to end they start to go wrong when Steiner starts being sloppy with handing out loans and it attracts the attention of the government and by the end of the film they have lost their banks and the properties they owned.

If I had an issue with the film its that I don’t think it has the killer punch that it needs to have when dealing with the subject matter that it is. Yes it addresses the racial injustices but it felt at times like it was doing it as gently as possible. I think that Da 5 Bloods probably has a tougher punch to it than this film but I think that they could have been a bit stronger with dealing with the subject matter of the film.

Overall I enjoyed this film. I thought that the performances worked really well and the look of the film was nice and it’s a film that I would recommend but don’t expect fireworks when watching this film because that’s the thing this film doesn’t have.

The Vast of Night (2019)

I have had mixed experiences with Netflix films so I thought that I would give Amazon a go. I chose The Vast of Night mainly because of the title but also because of the plot synopsis which sees two friends called Fay and Everett in 1950’s America discover a strange sound on the airwaves. Fay works as a switchboard operator and Everett is a cool teenage disc jockey and after hearing a strange sound and problems with the switchboard they ask the residents of Cayuga for help and one person rings in saying they worked for the military and heard the sound before and developed a lung condition and the group he worked in were all African Americans or Mexican because if they said anything then they wouldn’t be believed they then encounter an elderly woman called Mabel who is there to drop the exposition but does it in an enthralling way and then Fay, Everett and a baby end up being abducted.

The thing I really like about this film is the directing. As I said the story is straight forward but I like how most shots last several minutes and that means that the plot has time to breathe and it allows for you to get involved in the atmosphere and if I had to pick up on a fault then I would be that I didn’t engage with the main characters. They worked well together but I never found myself being that interested in them. I found Fay to be slightly tiresome but Everett was a little clichéd because he was trying to be cool with smoking the cigarette and being the popular kid at school.

I was thinking of Monsters when I watched this. The reason I say that is you don’t see the aliens until the very end. So it’s an alien film where the aliens aren’t in it for 95% of the film. This film isn’t about aliens but it’s about the mystery of what the signal is and credit to the director for creating a wonderful atmosphere which made the mystery that much more engaging and the huge advantage of the several minute cuts is that it allows people to deliver their speeches slowly and build up the tension. I also liked the idea that they didn’t cheapen ending by having it just be some cop out ending an have it be a hoax or a convoluted alien invasion that happens in the final 10 minutes. The ending suited the film.

I enjoyed The Vast of Night a lot more than I thought I would. It’s probably a film that’s got more style than substance but when the style is as good as it is in this film then I don’t mind. Whilst I wasn’t wild about the characters, the look and design of the entire was marvellous and I thought the running time was spot on at around 90 minutes which was refreshing. It was a quality film and an unexpected highlight showing Netflix how it should be done.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga tells the story of Lars and Sigrit who end up represent their country at the Eurovision Song Contest. They get the chance to perform for Iceland to go to Eurovision and Demi Lovato is the favourite and is superb but after an explosion where all that is left of her is her hand, Fire Saga get to go. The ‘joke’ of the film is that they are terrible but they know they are terrible and yet they still have a dream of performing at Eurovision.

I hate Eurovision. I liked it when I was growing up but then I clocked on to the fact it’s a 3 or 4 hour show where countries vote which country provided the most outlandish performance and pretend its about the singing. Despite my loathing for this ‘contest’, it wasn’t the worst aspect of the film. In fact I found myself wanting them come around because when they did, it distracted me from Will Ferrell who also co-wrote this script and he’s the biggest problem with this film. I just don’t find him funny had this been played by someone who was actually funny then this film. Also there is a scene where a 52 year old Ferrell (presumably playing someone in their late 30s or early 40’s, manages to bed someone who is probably half his age which especially in the current climate just seems creepy.

Dan Stevens plays the role of Alexander Lemtov with the lack of seriousness that it needed. I thought he was actually the best part of the film. Yes his character was over the top and his involvement was rather predictable but Stevens manages to make something out of this role. Graham Norton is known in the UK for commentating during the Song Contest and he has funnier lines than Ferrell.

Apart from Will Ferrell, the problem with this film is that the script is lazy and I predicted what was going to happen fairly early on and I usually don’t figure things out ahead of time. I don’t know if that’s the point because I think that the music is suppose to be the thing you enjoy about the film. A bit like in Mamma Mia when you are suppose to overlook the flimsy plot and instead enjoy the Abba songs. I couldn’t help but think of the Father Ted episode ‘A Song for Europe’ where Ireland decide to go for Father Ted and Dougal’s song even though its terrible so they wouldn’t host the contest the following year.

I had very low expectations of this film and they were met but what did surprise me was what would bother me. I thought that the music would have been the thing to drive me made but in reality it was Will Ferrell that bothered me the most. I decided to watch this film on a whim and out of morbid curiosity and this is the result. I think that I wont be letting my curiosity get the better of me in future.

The Rhythm Section (2020)

What do the producers of James Bond do when they aren’t making James Bond? Well they do this which is based on a series of novels based on Stephanie Patrick (played by Blake Lively). The Rhythm Section sees Stephanie who has lost her family to a terrorist attack and when we first see her she has a happy life but by the time the titles have finished, it’s revealed she is now working in a brothel.

There are some good moments and they generally involve Blake Lively. The fight scene between Lively and Jude Law was quite brutal and another one with Lively driving a car which appeared to be in one shot and it reminded me a bit of a scene in Extraction which looked just as impressive. Jude Law is quite good in it but like in Captain Marvel, he does feel like he’s there for exposition.

The problem with this film is that it doesn’t really know what it wants to be. On the one hand its wants to be a Bond film which given that its produced by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson makes sense and yet it wants to be a sort of Taken type film but the problem is that it manages to do neither. It never feels like its building to anything and that’s a shame because Blake Lively puts herself through hell in this film and it just feels like she’s doing it for nothing.

It made just £4.8 million at the global box office so the chances of more coming are pretty much dead and buried. I think the main problem is that it just lacks any energy which for a action film isn’t quite what you would expect. I know that as this is the first in a series of proposed films, this was always going to be about building the character and the type of person that she is but its just done so badly that it isn’t effective and ultimately I found this film to be very disappointing. I genuinely had high hopes for this film and this is what happens when you have high hopes for something.