Monkey Man (2024)

This is a more in depth review. The trailers made this film look like the Bollywood John Wick. I think that this film is Bollywood John Wick but that isn’t a bad thing. The plot sees Dev Patel plays Kid who loses his mother who is killed by an army guy who wants to turn the land that Kid and his mother are on into some holy ground which is basically a scam as its really more of a cult. 

The film sees Kid take part in fights wearing a monkey mask. The thing that works for John Wick are th fight scenes and this film manages the fight scenes really well. I would say that the fight scenes are on par with what i saw in ‘The Iron Claw’. I also like that Kid isn’t the perfect fighter from the very beginning, he starts off ok but as the film progresses his skills get better and he becomes a better fighter so come the final scene you feel he’s earned the right to be that good. It’s good character development which a lot of characters in movies don’t seem to go through. 

This is a classic example of Army of One where its Kid against the people responsible for his mother’s death. I don’t think that Kid says that much in the film but then he doesnt need to. His fighting does the talking and Patel is believable as a tough guy. I hadn’t seen Patel in a film since ‘The Personal History of David Copperfield’ and that is a very different performance but shows that he can do very different characters very well. 

The film isn’t perfect and one problem there is with the film is perhaps the most important. The shaky cam shots are distracting and there was at least two instances where it was shaking so much that I actually could see what was going on. Shaky cam has its purpose but if you can’t see what’s going on then how are you suppose to be emotionally connected with what’s happening. Another issue that the close ups are bad. Literally the first shot of the film is of Kid’s mother and all we see are her eyes, nose and face. It was too close and there more instances where the camera work let the film down. I’m not sure whether this was because they didn’t have time to set things up better or whether they chose to do it like this but i think this was definitely in the minus column. 

Monkey Man is a good film that’s only let down by technical issues. I think the performances are all really good and it clear from start to finish that Dev Patel cares about the film and also about the story. Hopefully he continues to direct because I think that he has a good eye for this sort of thing. He just needs to control the shaky cam shots and learn that cameras have zooms on them.

Civil War (2024)

Civil War is set in the near future where the U.S is at war with itself and some of the states have seceded from the union. Kirsten Dunst plays Lee who is a war photographer who along with Joel (Wagner Moura), Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) try to go to the White House to interview the President and that’s the plot with the characters encountering people along the way. 

I like these type of stories. I’m not sure when they are done well then they work really well and you end up feeling like you know these characters which is a really weird thing to write but bearing in mind connecting with characters is part of the point of films, it perhaps shouldn’t feel weird writing it. There is something weary about Lee as she feels like she has seen too much of it and almost looks at Jessie with envy and jealousy at the same time. I always get distracted when Wagner Moura is on screen because when I see him he reminds me of Narcos when he played Pablo Escobar (brilliantly I might add) but that’s not really his fault and Joel is perhaps the nice character that Lee needs in her life. Cailee Spaeny does well with what is a rather flat character. I think she has her moments but I always found the dynamic between Lee and Joel to be more interesting even though there was a passing of the torch thing going on with Lee and Jessie. Stephen McKinley Henderson is as dependable as ever and his death scene was sad to watch. It did seem like mobility was an issue as all his scenes involved him sitting down or standing still.

Jesse Plemons did steal the show even though he was only in it for about 10 minutes. He’s such a good actor that he only needs 10 minutes to show how good he is. That scene was probably the best in the movie and was by far the most dramatic and tense. According to trivia I have read, Plemons’ involvement was last minute as another actually had to pull out and being married to Dunst meant that he was able to jump in at the last minute and deliver a film stealing performance.

The final 10-15 minutes let this film down badly. It feels extremely rushed and when Lee is killed, there is zero time given for her death. We have just spent over an hour with her and got to know what she is like and dare I say it, care for her and yet she is treated like she is a background extra who doesnt matter to the story. 

Also the showdown with the President is thrown away like it didn’t matter even though it's the motivation for the entire movie. I usually over play what the scene might be like in my head but there can’t be anyone who thought that this was how the final scene was going to end. It felt like a waste of time.

Despite Alex Garland not sure how he was going to end his own film. I still enjoy everything up until the White House stuff. I thought that the film was tense and despite it being essentially a road trip movie, the characters all feel genuine and the whole feel of the film feels real especially with the chaos the world seems to be in at the moment. I think that Civil War is definitely worth seeing but don’t go in with hopes of a satisfying resolution.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

I have been a fan of the Monsterverse movies since ‘Godzilla’ in 2014. I thought ‘Kong: Skull Island’ was an enjoyable departure for normal monster movies. ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ was a bit of a mis-step but had some good visuals and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ was a highly enjoyable movie. This is the second time in just a few months that I have seen Godzilla in a cinema and that's a great line to write.

The characters that feature in this film are all from the previous film although there is no Millie Bobby Brown  which is actually a good thing as I didn’t think she worked as a character and did some irritating things in ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’. I wasn't keen on Brian Tyree Henry’s performance in ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ as it felt like a caricature and not a real person. Thankfully the character seems a lot more tolerable and it allows Henry to show him comedy skills which were drowned out by his character. I also thought that Dan Stevens’ Trapper was a good character. He could so easily have been annoying but whilst he did seem like he was going to be irritating he reigns it into just the right level of quirky. I do think that Kaylee Hottle deserves a lot of praise because her character has been central to this and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ and yet she has hogged the story to make herself look good. She has has show empathy with Kong and to have a lovely relationship with what is essentially a CGI character shows that Hottle is far better than she is given credit for and hopefully she has a long career ahead of her. Rebecca Hall i think does her best with what she is given which is fine and serves a purpose for the film but I would be lying if I said that it was spectacular. 

If I had issues then there are really nitpicks. Firstly I think that Godzilla is a side character for large chunks of this movie. I’m more of a Godzilla fan than Kong so this is perhaps not such a surprising nitpick but i would have liked to see more of Godzilla. Also the film suffers from coming just a few months after the brilliant ‘Godzilla Minus One’ which perhaps a lot of people didn’t see which is a shame as its brilliant. 

Godzilla x Kong shows that there is plenty of life left in both monsters and I would be surprised if we didn’t get more in the future but with a bit more Godzilla than Kong.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters is an interesting franchise. The 1984 original is a classic and always fun to watch and the second one has some charm to it but didn’t quite hit the heights of the first. Then there is the 2016 version which isn’t as bad as most people make out although it suffers from just not being funny. Then we had the 2021 Afterlife film which was good as a soft reboot of the franchise and tried perhaps a little too hard to try and wipe the 2016 version from our memories.  I enjoyed the last one and because most people seemed to like it as well we get a sequel which is directed by the same guy who did the ‘Poltergeist’ remake in 2015. 

The action has moved to the firehouse and a large portion of the film takes place here which might seem like a good idea in theory but sadly in practise it make the film feel a bit cheap. I know the action does move out of the firehouse from time to time but the firehouse did feel like a bit of overused nostalgia.  The new characters introduced in ‘Afterlife’ were fleshed out a bit more and some worked better than others. I thought that Mckenna Grace wasn't as much fun to watch in this as she was in the first. She did seem somewhat more teenagery (if that’s a word) than she didn't in the last one. The subplot with Melody (played well by Emily Alyn Lind) didn’t really add anything to the overall story and could easily have been cut out. The negative thing it did was reduce Phoebe’s IQ by about half because she does stupid things that her character wouldn’t have done in the last film. Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon did seem to be enjoying the married couple quite well and Rudd is always dependable. Finn Wolfhard continues to struggle to break away from the Stranger Things image and like Afterlife doesn't really contribute anything. Celeste O’Connor does seem to have had a bit more added to her character so she does seem a bit more of an action type. Podcast did seem to have taken a bit out of his character but that helped because there was a bit more to him and I thought Logan Kim did a good job. 

There is one thing that i like about this film and it might feel like a back handed compliment and that is the special effects are really impressive. Normally it's quite hard to make a frozen world look effective but they managed to make it work in this film. 

There are two notable comedians in this film. James Acaster and Kumail Nanjiani. One is good and one isn’t. Sadly a Brit, James Acaster is the weaker one. It does feel like his casting is a bit of stunt casting because they think having a familiar British comedian/actor in a big Hollywood film would pull in the audience but I think that as funny as can be, he doesn't feel like a believable character in this. Patton Oswalt is in this film, give him the Lars Pinfield character and give Acaster the Wartzki role as that is only a few minutes of screen time. Kumail Nanjiani is someone that I usually don’t like. I don’t think he’s particularly funny and not very likeable. He wasn't the worst part of ‘The Eternals’ but he didn’t help the cause.  In this he was one of the best parts of the film. The almost deadpan tone that he adopts worked perfectly for his character and this film would really have suffered had he not been cast in the film.

The ultimate problem with Frozen Empire is that it got the nostalgia balance wrong. In Afterlife, it got it right by having new characters but supported by established characters that didn’t take the spotlight from the newbies. This time the newbies get swamped by the original ghostbusters. By the time the plot kicks in we are about two thirds into the movie by which point the whole thing feels a bit underwhelming because we are supposed to root for our heroes against a villain that hasn’t been properly established.  I don’t want to make it sound like Frozen Empire is a bad film because it isn’t and I would rank it above ‘Ghostbusters 2016’.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Having not read the book, I wasn't sure how this film was going to end. I was also not aware that there were more books in the series so whilst I went in thinking this was film two of two, by the end of the 167 minutes it was clear this was part two of ???. This part immediately follows the first one and in between seeing part one and part two I saw the 1984 David Lynch version and so had a rough idea where the plot was heading. 

The response to what I am about to write might be ‘well that’s in the book’ but I thought that Paul because a bit more unlikable as the film progressed and Chani got a bit more sulky as the film reached its conclusion. Admittedly point b was caused by point a but I thought that neither character finished stronger or better than they did at the end of the first one. I still think that Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya absolutely carry this film but their character’s development wasn't as good as it could have been. 

Austin Butler is very good as Feyd-Rautha and I liked the fact that his character was borderline psychotic (or maybe not quite so borderline to someone). His ferociousness was exactly what this second film needed because it didn’t seem like we were going to get it from the Baron or Beast. I thought that Butler did well as Elvis but that was a flawed film and this film showed what he can do and its a lot more than look like the king. I think that Florence Pugh is a really good actor and there is something menacing about the Princess that makes her another effective villain for the film. She works well with Christopher Walken’s Emperor proving that all Emperors in movies are on another level of craziness. 

It would be wrong of me to not mention how beautiful the film looks. I didn’t think it was possible to make a desert look stunning and yet this film manages it over and over again. Denis Villeneuve has always had a way of making things look pretty and normally most people would say that this type of film is style over substance but I think that there is plenty of substance and despite not always understanding what is going on with the different characters. I was never confused or bored and went along with what was happening and that is what makes a great storyteller.

I thought that this was as good as the first one. I will admit I was disappointed not to get the ending that I thought I was going to get but the fact that there are going to be more is not something that I am going to moan about. I like this world that Denis Villeneuve has created and I hope to spend more time in it.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

The Zone of Interest was a film that I was looking forward to since I heard about it. The film follows a family that are living next door to Auschwitz. It's a simple premise that doesnt feel it needs to add emotional moments or anything melodramatic to emotional manipulate you. The film doesn't have any names I recognise except for Sandra Hüller who I recently saw in 'Anatomy of a Fall' and she continues to impress me. She plays someone who is almost oblivious to what's going on beyond the wall and is more concerned about making her house as lovely as possible. The film spends a great of time making her seem like she is a loving housewife but there are moments where the mask slips and she is horrible to her servant. 

The interesting take is that we never see inside Auschwitz. However it is present in a lot of scenes because we hear gunfire and then we hear screams and in a few scenes we see smoke billowing from the chimneys. This is far more effective than if we had seen inside there. This doesn't make it less harrowing and the grimness was pitched just right. 

There are a couple of things that don't quite make sense to me. The first being the infrared shots with the young girl. I'm not sure what the point of this portion was but it wasn't something that made the film bad or poorer. The other part that didn't make sense was the part when Rudolf is looking into the darkness and then the film moves forward in time to a bunch of cleaners at the Auscheitz Museum for a prolonged period before the film returns to Rudolph and then the film ends.

The directing is really good in this film. There aren't any close ups and we see things from a distance. There aren't any shaky cam shots at any point which is quite refreshing. There is a scene where Rudolf is fishing in the lake and he is standing there when the water changes colour slightly and he pulls out a bone and if this had been a different type of film we would have had a close up and dramatic music but the film lets horrors like this happen and come across in its own way. 

I really liked this film despite the grim setting. The acting was brilliant and Sandra Hüller continues to show what a good actress she is. The film is currently my film of the year.

Bob Marley: One Love (2024)

I will admit that I didn’t know too much about Bob Marley and after sitting through this movie, I still don’t think I know Bob Marley. The film follows Bob Marley as he goes from Jamaica to London, all round Europe before arriving at the One Love music show. 

There are two types of biopics, there are those like Rocketman which you feel are giving you a warts and all account of the life of in this film Elton John. It doesn’t try and paint him to be a nice person but a flawed person and then there are those that don’t really do this and paint either a false picture or a vague one. This film is the latter. I think I wanted something a bit more substantial than what we got. The film felt too rushed and could have easily benefited from an extra 30-40 minutes.

The performances are what makes this a four star film for me. Kingsley Ben-Adir gives a superb performance as Bob Marley. He makes the story come alive and made me actually made me care about someone that I don’t really know much about. Lashana Lynch is equally as good as Rita and the heart of the story I think is the dynamic between the two of them. 

Despite my issues with the overall story this is definitely a film that should be seen. It might help if you know a bit about Bob Marley but the performances alone are enough to make this worth watching. Just not sure that it’s worth going to the cinema for.