Wonka (2023) - Movie Review

Even for a year where filmmakers have been trying extra hard to swing for the fences, this is arguably one of the biggest ones. And honestly, if it were made by literally anyone else, any and all conversation surrounding it would be dominated by the age-old question of “Why is this a thing?”. Ignoring the previous attempt to revivify Roald Dahl’s classic story with Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (and whatever the hell that Tom & Jerry movie was supposed to do), the 1971 film is such an ingrained nostalgic classic that it’s basically untouchable. A film announcing itself as the origin story for pop culture’s most famous chocolatier, on its face, feels like a doomed idea.

But as I wrote above, it would be if it were made by anyone else. In this case, it’s the director and writers behind the Paddington movies, two little confections that defied all preconceptions on first release and have garnered (arguably) a similar untouchable status in modern cinema. They are such pure creations, full of wonder and whimsy and yet perfectly palatable, that they represent an ideal when it comes to making family films that… well, hits at my heart of hearts. That it is possible to tap into that same sense of delight that the best kinds of children’s films bestow on their audience, but as an adult, and without any of the cultural framing that one is ‘too old’ to enjoy things anymore.

Leo (2023) - Movie Review

Well, here’s a combination that feels like it was pulled out of an Angry Critic’s nightmares: A Happy Madison animated movie about talking animals. Or maybe just this Angry Critic’s nightmares, since both talking animal movies and Happy Madison productions have been regular targets since this blog started. But for as much shit as I give the both of them when they’re bad, that’s mainly because I still have fond memories of when they were both good. As I got into when I looked at Hubie Halloween, Adam Sandler was part of my childhood and was something of an oddball inspiration as his stock character of the quick-to-anger outsider was a lot like me back then. And talking animal movies exist for a reason, as they make telling stories to kids about characters going through more adult issues easier to deal with, since cute animals are a lot easier to relate to than those old people with their rules and bedtime mandates (in a child’s mind, at least).

Spirited (2022) - Movie Review

Up until just a few years ago, writer/director Sean Anders seemingly did all he could to push mainstream edgelord comedy to its breaking point. Hot Tub Time Machine, That’s My Boy, We’re The Millers, Horrible Bosses 2, Dumb And Dumber To, both Daddy’s Home movies; I don’t even outright hate all of these, but they are all grown out of the same cynical view of us as a species. We’re all shit, the world is shit, so just turn it all into an even sicker joke than it already is; not exactly the kind of perspective I can get behind.

But then Instant Family happened. I reviewed it for FilmInk and was genuinely surprised by it because… well, it saw Anders turn over a new leaf. While it still carried some of his tendencies as far as comedic timing, it was also way more wholesome at its core and was made not because he wanted to point out the worst of us, but highlight the good we can do through the foster care system. I’ve mentioned before that I love redemption stories like these, and Anders’ might be one of my favourites in recent memory. It’s why I ultimately decided to give his latest a chance, and it’s also why I really, really enjoyed myself with it.

Entergalactic (2022) - Movie Review

Put this one next to Bo Burnham’s Inside for borderline “does this count as a movie?” picks for reviews. Whatever; it’s a feature-length production on Netflix, and I counted Crazed Gender Twisters From Planet X, which was as much of a series as this is, so yeah, this is a movie review. It’s one I got curious about when it first popped up as, while I’ve never rated Kid Cudi that highly as a rapper (Kids See Ghosts slaps tho), he’s been showing up in movies that I’ve really liked in recent years like Bill & Ted Face The Music, X from earlier this year, and even making for the best (as in the only good) part of Don’t Look Up alongside Ariana Grande. And I’m on a bit of a musical kick at the moment, so let’s see what he’s cooked up here.

Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical (2022) - Movie Review

Matilda, both the Roald Dahl book and the Danny Devito-directed film version, were foundational texts for me as a kid. One of my first real exposures to autism-coding in storytelling, Matilda was something of a hero of mine growing up. A child brilliant beyond her years, struggling to grow against apathetic parents and a cruel headmistress, at the center of a story all about the evil that is letting children down. Add to that the iconic depictions offered by the film, between Mara Wilson as the ultimate ND avatar in Matilda and Pam Ferris as the stuff of nightmares in Miss Trunchbull, and you’ve got a story that has a sizeable place in my heart. I figured a musical version of that same story would be decent, but only decent. Not something that could wrestle control away from both of those foundations to become… well, my new favourite version of the story.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (2022) - Movie Review

Y’know, if you’re going to insist on having a singer be a lead character in a film, and they aren’t exactly well-known or even all that capable of acting, having them play a character who literally only sings seems like a da-doy moment for musical movies as a whole. I mean, when the alternatives are trying to get the likes of Adam Levine to be in any convincing as an actor, or saddling actual actors with painfully-obvious dubbing, it’s a wonder why more productions don’t aim for this.

Neptune Frost (2022) - Movie Review

Well, this is going to be a challenge. A film that seems specifically engineered to defy easy descriptions or classifications, made by a Hip Hop artist who has made an entire career out of making such things. Saul Williams is one of the culture’s true original and unique talents, as it’s difficult even fathoming anyone else attempting half the shit he pulls on record. Like fellow slam poet and MC Sage Francis, he doesn’t so much engage in wordplay as he does word-bullying, deconstructing and then reconstructing the English language over the course of a few lines, let alone a verse. On top of that, his choice of production blends old-school Hip Hop, rock, electronica, industrial, and about a skrillion other things to create a sonic whirlwind that is as verbose as it is fascinating to engage with. And now he’s made a movie.

RRR (2022) - Movie Review

It has been way, way, way too long since I reviewed a Indian film. Over five years, from what I can tell, from a time when I used to look at them fairly frequently. I don’t really have a reason for why, as my local cinema shows plenty of Hindi-, Tamil-, and Telugu-language cinema; I guess I have just taken to prioritising English-language cinema. And as much as I could fluff a reason for why that is, to do with difficulties in reading other people’s emotions and language barriers and other such things… yeah. Maybe I just need to reintroduce them back into my regular media diet. Especially if the region is capable of something like this.

Pinocchio (2022) - Movie Review

While Snow White And The Seven Dwarves may have been where Disney’s animated film history started, along with their canon of Disney Princesses, their 1940 film version of Pinocchio is arguably where Disney as an artistic aesthetic began. The iconic soundtrack, to the point where When You Wish Upon A Star has essentially become the official anthem for Disney, the elegant use of metaphor in its depiction of a child self-actualising, the timeless animation, that horrifying donkey transformation scene (which likely gave birth to an entire generation of Cronenberg fans); it’s a well-deserved classic.

And it is also the latest film to get pulped and sifted in the modern Disney remake machine, and between the icy reception it’s garnered already and me losing all hope in these things being good anymore after Aladdin and The Lion King, I was fully expecting to hate this. Guess I’ve found my big dissenting opinion for the year, because I actually quite liked this.

Bo Burnham: The Inside Outtakes (2022) - Movie Review

Well, it looks like leftovers of already-reviewed movies are still on the table, after looking at Jackass 4.5 earlier this year, as Bo Burnham has released an outtakes reel for his (in my not-so-quiet opinion) genius production Inside onto his YouTube channel. Seems like a fitting place for this to turn up, given his internet content roots along with the emphatically homespun production values of the special itself. But while this could easily be written off as just a behind-the-scenes scrapbook of the main event, I’d argue that this shows Burnham finding more ways to be creative even in this capacity.

Elvis (2022) - Movie Review

Baz Luhrmann. The Aussie king of camp. The Man from Showy River.

I don’t like Baz Luhrmann’s films.

His woeful adaptation of The Great Gatsby marks the first time I ever left a cinema actually angry at having wasted my time and money on a particular film. Romeo + Juliet was the first time a specific adaptation choice (the whole ‘Sword-branded guns’ thing) actively annoyed me. Australia was the first time I discovered how much test screenings can interfere with the creative process in rather peculiar ways (i.e. The Drover was originally meant to die, but test audiences didn’t want to see that happen to Hugh Jackman, so… that changed).

Yeah, he’s responsible for a lot of personal milestones, and none of them positive. The man’s insistence on absolute bombast constantly gets between him and whatever the hell point he thinks he’s making in his films, and even as someone who enjoys the patently ridiculous, Baz keeps testing my patience in just how loud he plays every aspect of his films.

But even with all of that in mind, one thing I have always maintained, alongside my utter contempt for the bulk of the man’s filmography (Australia and The Great Gatsby are easily on the shortlist for worst films I’ve ever seen, period), is that he is talented. He knows how to put a film together, he’s a properly unique voice in Australian cinema, and for as much as I personally can’t stand his work, I can at least understand why others would. Hell, I’ll even give him credit for Strictly Ballroom, which is a genuinely good film and something of a mission statement for Baz’s entire career to follow: Play to the crowds, don’t worry about the committees. It’s just that, with everything since Strictly Ballroom, that talent has been squandered on increasingly misguided and frequently exasperating storytelling decisions.

Suffice to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to his latest release. I may be growing more and more comfortable with lengthier films, but considering how much I just can’t with this guy to begin with, sitting down for a near-three hour presentation is one of those moments when this job of mine actually feels like work. Or, at least, that’s what I was expecting. In what is raring to be the biggest surprise of 2022 (pleasant ones, at least), this is the first Baz Luhrmann film I’ve genuinely enjoyed since Strictly Ballroom.

Cyrano (2022) - Movie Review

Well, Universal sent me to another preview screening, and even though I have some… uncomfortable history with the director behind this particular feature, I’ll admit that I was actually quite hopeful that this would turn out good. The last three write-ups I’ve done on the works of Joe Wright have been, in a word, disastrous. Pan and The Woman In The Window are so amazingly bad that they almost reach genius from the other side, and Darkest Hour ultimately didn’t pan out because it came out too soon after the similar (and superior, at least to me) feature Churchill.

But over time, I’ve at least made peace with the fact that these films exist, as the bread of that turd sandwich is the result of Joe Wright trying to work outside of the classically-minded, accessibly-presented, ‘ideal for high school classes studying the original text’ framework that made up the bulk of his filmography pre-Pan. They were failed experiments, but experiments nonetheless, and as soon as the trailer for his latest reached my attention, I was hoping he’d make a comeback by reminding audiences why his debut with Pride & Prejudice made as big a splash as it did: The man is talented, if given the right story to work with.

West Side Story (2021) - Movie Review

The 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, let alone musical films. And while I definitely get everything that makes it so memorable (the choreography, the music, the reworking of classic Shakespeare), I wouldn’t say it’s among my favourite musical films out there. Sure, that could just be because I’m so accustomed to how much it’s influenced pop culture since its release that I’m not able to appreciate it as much on its own terms, but in my own defense, both the film and the original stage musical feel like dry runs for things that the creatives involved would end up perfecting later on.

As a grand big-screen musical directed by Robert Wise, it’s good… but it’s no Sound Of Music. As a musical with lyrics from theatre extraordinaire Stephen Sondheim (who tragically passed away earlier this year), it’s good… but it’s no Sweeney Todd or Into The Woods.

So, yeah, I’m already a little bit lukewarm on the original production as is… but I’ll be honest, I can at least understand why someone would try and remake the film today. As much as I can sympathise with how the Hays code really did a number on a lot of productions at the time through executive meddling and general BS to do with non-white romantic leads, having a film all about conflict between different racial cultures, while half of the cast is in full brownface, makes it difficult for that intent to ring through.

As such, remaking it at a time when… well, I won’t say that colorism is no longer a thing within the industry (and not just in Hollywood either), but at least when filmmakers are under less pressure to pull heavy makeup tactics, could help revive it for a new generation. Hell, even though Steven Spielberg somehow hasn’t made a musical before this, he’s done pretty much everything else under the sun, so he’s as good a choice as any to give it a crack. And it’s an attempt that seems to have worked out for the better, as it manages to keep everything that makes the original musical what it is, but with just enough modernisation to help translate it into a post-millennium film market.

Bo Burnham: Inside (2021) - Movie Review

I won’t claim to be the biggest Bo Burnham fan out there; I haven’t watched everything the man has ever done or anything. But with everything I have seen of his (Country Song, Eighth Grade, his performance in Promising Young Woman, his work on Chris Rock’s Tambourine), I’ve always walked away with a sense that this is a dude with talent to burn and a willingness to try different things. And while his latest comedy special might not technically count as a film… well, as I’ll get into, that distinction doesn’t really mean a whole lot, considering the how and why of its creation.

Annette (2021) - Movie Review

So. Now that I’ve gotten a good eyeful of what Sparks tick, let’s take a look at their other big cinematic contribution from this year. Not only have they written the lyrics and music for this musical (yes, 2021 has been a hell of a year for movie musicals), they also wrote what can be considered the book for this musical, all about the turbulent relationship between a stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and an opera singer (Marion Cotillard). It provides another splash of variety to what this year has already had to offer, and it’s also the kind of idiosyncratic and enthralling work that, after watching The Sparks Brothers, I have come to expect from the duo.

Sing 2 (2021) - Movie Review

Well, this year’s been turning out pretty well for movie musicals, and the few talking animal movies I’ve seen this year have been consistently good… sure, let’s take a look at this feature. Although I’m not entirely sure if I need to, since this film’s marketing/trailer might be one of the worst cases of “they put all the best bits in the trailer, didn’t they?” I’ve seen in quite a while. Yes, let’s take the big emotional finale of our nearly-two-hour film, and make it the first thing most audiences will even gander at leading up to its official release; why even release it in the first place if you’re going to pull something like that?

My Little Pony: A New Generation (2021) - Movie Review

A few years ago, I reviewed the then-latest My Little Pony movie. I thought it was pretty good, but I also went into it with only one or two episodes’ worth of background information. Well, over the course of this introvert’s ironic hell that is lockdown, I have now watched every single episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, including those godawful Equestria Girls spin-offs. I would honestly rank it as one of my favourite animated shows, and where I was initially just confused at all the backlash its fandom has faced over the years, I am now even more annoyed at people drinking the Haterade just because people like something worth being invested in. So, as I take a look at this introduction to the newest incarnation of the show, understand that I’m not looking at it as a casual observer this time around.

Vivo (2021) - Movie Review

Okay, I know that I’ve been stanning Lin-Manuel Miranda pretty hard these last few weeks, but in my defence, his isn’t the only name attached to this that made me want to see this particular film. A Sony Pictures animation, in the same year that they crushed it with The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, co-written by Quiara Alegría Hudes who also did In The Heights, production blessing from Wreck-It Ralph director Rich Moore, even a consulting credit from Roger freaking Deakins; that’s gotta equal up to something worthwhile. And yeah, it’s pretty entertaining, but just about every good quality about it comes with a massive “But” after it.

In The Heights (2021) - Movie Review

It’s kind of astounding just how much progress director Jon M. Chu has made in just a few short years. Not that long ago, he was making shit like Jem And The Holograms and adding to the increasingly diminished returns of the Step Up sequels. But then Crazy Rich Asians happened and… something must’ve just clicked in his head. I bring this up because his latest has a fair bit in common with CRA, namely in how it’s drenched in a very specific cultural aesthetic and identity; I’m guessing he’s sticking with what he now knows he can work with. But where it gets really crazy is that he has somehow managed to get past even CRA’s genuine visual splendour, and made an even greater film in the process.

tick, tick... BOOM! (2021) - Movie Review

Well, my last pick turned out to be a total dud, so let’s try this again. Let’s go with a musical film made by someone I have a reasonable amount of faith can actually pull off this kind of production: Lin-Manuel Miranda. I have all manner of respect for what the guy has done already, between giving Daveed Diggs the kind of platform his talents deserve, and just how brilliant Hamilton is all on its own. However, despite some shared DNA, theatre isn’t cinema. And with him stepping into the director’s chair for the first time here, I am definitely rooting for him but I would totally understand if this doesn’t work out as planned. Not that I even need to entertain the thought of that being the case, though.