"John Wick: Chapter 4"

Months after crossing "The High Table" of criminals, John Wick (himself) must face off against-
Oh who fucking cares?!

You're here either as a fan, or for some carnage and bloodshed because you've heard that these movies are fun.
This gives us everything we want in spades.
If you're a fan, this is more akin to the first: there is a lot more build up to the chaos, and extended action set pieces which evolve and escalate over the course of their body count, without relying too heavily on in jokes and repetition like Chapter 2, but still manages to do something different: we are introduced to other characters in the periphery of John Wick, watching their lives and machinations in this world, and how this spectre of mayhem will change them for the worse... Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina Sawayama (continuing this series' tradition of batshit mental casting decisions which make total sense) make a wonderful impact as Joji and Akira, the Manager and Concierge of the Continental in Osaka, whilst Donnie Yen's blind assassin "Caine" is set to become a fan favourite. It remembers to have fun with it, to have this world be creative and wild, and is genuinely fucking hilarious as a result if you get on board with it. A character has to deliver some exposition, so for absolutely no reason thay have him be an elderly, heavily-pierced tattooed German man whose only lines are "I AM KLAUS". It's that, combined with excellent attention to detail, like the Yokai masks on the Osaka kill-squad or the hand on "The Harbinger"... It comes together to reward new and old viewers alike: the former get kicks out of the world building, whilst the latter get some eccentric, memorable characters and moments.
But let's not forget what we're here for.
Tactical doorbell murder.
Rina Sawayama wears all-leather and a kimono and brings a bow and arrow to a gunfight (I'm glad she got a fair bit to do!)
Hiroyuki Sanada has a katana duel with armoured machine-gun wielding hit squads.
Scott Adkins plays a fat asthmatic card cheat who has a kung-fu battle in his waterfall casino, aided by Germans armed solely with hatchets.
The Arc de Triumph plays host to a 3-time driveby and a 10 minute game of whack-a-mole with cars which ALWAYS made me wince.
Bill Skarsgard wears a glittering suit and sports an atrociously camp French accent (being the best villain in the series for a while, and certainly tied for 1st place). He fits in right as rain here.
Clancy Brown, whom I am surprised it has taken so long to have in this series, plays a man called "The Harbinger", which is the most Clancy Brown name, character, and job title he has ever had.
A man wields a dog.
There is a SPECTACULAR overhead firefight (which for me is the highlight of the film, and my favourite centrepiece.)
John Wick is thrown through multiple cabinets of weapons, including guns, and skips all of them to go for the nunchuks.
Immediately after grabbing nunchucks, we cut to Donnie Yen dressed as Bruce Lee.
Laurence Fishbourne is back in his finest role as "The Bowery King" and chews enough scenery to almost catch up to Scott Adkins.
We get to see Keanu Reeves fight Donnie Yen.
We get to see Scott Adkins fight Donnie Yen.
We get to see Keanue Reeves AND Donnie Yen in movies.
Looney Tunes stairs.
I had the stupidest, widest grin on my face for this entire movie, and it was absolutely exhausting to watch. It felt like I'd only watched half an hour, but was a continent-sprawling epic, which brings action movies higher and higher in terms of quality, still finding way to keep it fresh and FUCKING ESCALATE with every installment.
It earns its "Warriors" extended throwback (even if they missed an opportunity by having neither Charlie come back, or casting James Remar...) and humiliates other lesser action films by just showing us how it's fucking done.

"A Good Person" - Review

Allison (Florence Pugh) has a perfect life, but when all that crashes around her, and she finds herself seemingly at her lowest point, she forms an unlikely relationship with retired ex-cop Daniel (Morgan Freeman) and others...

I'm not sure that I can ever accept anybody's assertions that Marvel movies are jarring in their tone, whiplash and constant quips. At least, not whilst this hipster bullshit exists. Zacharus Braffacus has created not a film, but an amalgamation of the worst impulses of shoe-gazing, indie-adjacent sanitised nonsense; bloated and RUTHLESS with its running time, whilst simultaneously having nothing of importance to say or offer to the world. Like a Jake Bugg album made manifest: its emptiness is matched only by its pretentious swings at things of importance, and the delusions that it is "important" or even noteworthy, he thinks he's the next Jim Jarmusch with a political bent, but in actual fact is more like Vincent Gallo with a budget.
We follow the wrong character, Florence Pugh's drug addicted, survivor's guilt ridden Pharmaceutical Sales Rep (we get it, Zack, you were in "Scrubs", how cute a gag) not as a character or a harrowing portrait of addiction, but a fetishistic view of a hip cool, indie girl he REALLY wants to fuck (she wears Nick Cave t-shirts and has fun quippy facts to spout off whilst being self-deprecating. I'm pretty sure he thinks that "Juno" is a documentary), and who is broken but able to be fixed if the right thing comes along! It's like misery-porn, but he pussies out and can't even do that right: his attempts at swinging at the very real opioid epidemic in America are weak, limp and run out of steam halfway through, he lacks the stomach, clarity and basic fucking knowledge to pull it off. In something like, say, "Animals" (a fantastic effort by David Dastmalchian) we see the suffering, horror, grimness, grime, and yet genuine humanity through it all. Braff resorts to hysterical flushings of pills and weak, pathetic insults from a crack smoking school acquaintance played by Alex Wolff, who is admittedly welcome.
Where those he tries to emulate (Jim Jarmusch, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Kelly Reichardt, David Gordon Green) will happily make an engaging film of vignettes and "days in the life" of characters told through little moments or odd encounters and make it enthralling and be in the service of an arc or plot; Zachariah Braffariah has missed the memo, and resorts to mumbling, shoegazing and a BLOATED middle act. His worst impulses and tendencies come out in the dialogue, which schizophrenically flickers between excerpts from "Juno", quippy one liners, faux-philosophical fortune-cookie poetry, and attempts to get the scene moving. The beginning (wherein our heroine plays piano and sings at her own engagement party) has particularly cringe-worthy exposition and clunky first-draft film student poetry; but is preceded by a 30 second Morgan Freeman narration about how model trains are different to real life in that you can control it all; and is then followed by vaguely sketched, bareley registered sitcom-level dialogue in the car. It continues this whiplash all the way through, and despite a dedicated (I wouldn't say good) performance from Pugh, the script is atrocious. Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman: you hire him, you get him, but again, we follow the wrong character in these proceedings, and there was a moment when I thought: "If they make him a magical old black man who changes her, I'm walking", and to be fair I almost walked out after the train monologue at the start.
And if you think his dialogue is bad, his plotting and editing are worse. My particular favourite was her in the bar, speaking with the junkies, getting high, feeling bad, and the camera cutting to a pinball machine reading: "I Am Invincible".
Transcendental, next level shit from Zachigan Braffigan. The Truffaut of our time.
As a positive, Celeste O'Connor is in this, and I like them as an actor.
Cannot recommend, unless you have a party and need the guests to leave, in which case put this on and they will IMMEDIATELY evacuate the building.

"Pearl (An X-traordinary Origin Story)" - Review

In the year 1918, at the height of the Spanish Flu, a family try to make ends meet. Ruth (Tandi Wright) tries to keep the family together with an iron glove, and her husband (Matthew Sunderland) confined to a wheelchair, but her daughter Pearl (Mia Goth) is a strange one: she wants to go to Hollywood and become a star, and her mind wanders away from her; as well as having... proclivities. With her husband away at war, Pearl finds herself falling for a projectionist (David Corenswet), and deeper into her own serpentine mind...

This movie is another swing for the fences from Ti West.
An exploration of madness, mayhem, Hollywood and obsession - but with that unique spin and fresh, delightful love letter to classic cinema. The Technicolour shots, the editing choices, the credits cards, even the blood (spoiler) mark it as a remarkably different kind of horror movie, and a refreshing, VERY Ti West venture. The performances are excellent (Mia Goth is, naturally, fantastic particularly in the ending monologue), with Tandi Wright a particular standout, and it manages to feel fresh and different despite the usual beats. You're trapped in this woman's mind, and she'll make the best of it...

"Broker" - Review

Ha Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho) is a launderer with an excellent side scheme: he and his buddy Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won) take abandoned babies in the baby drop box at the church where Dong-soo works part time, and sell them on the black market to families who cannot go through the usual channels. When So-young (Lee Jie-eun) drops her baby off, however, she changes her mind and uncovers the scheme. To the surprise of 2 men, she asks to come along with them. Thus begins a road trip to find the right parents for this baby, all the while dogged cop Soo-jin (Bae Doona, queen) is drawing ever closer. Along the way, all 4 characters learn about each other, and the true meaning of family, acceptance and love...

Japanese Director Hirokazu Kore-eda has a history of found families, outcasts, weirdos, the fringes of society and odd dynamics in his works (particularly "Shoplifters", which is bloody brilliant and you should all watch) and transfers his bittersweet eye quite well to Korea, often portrayed as sleek and glitzy and expensive, but here lovingly well done with an eye for the poor, the run down and the forgotten. He's focusing on some downright terrible people, and by the end you're really rooting for them, and there's a lot of emotional depth, complexity and nuance in its unpredictable ponderous, slow-burning road trip of a plot. It's funnier than expected (an attempted sale at a party is a highlight), and at its best whe looking at the little things we take for granted but for whom these abandoned, forgotten people have never cherished (laughter, the silliness of the world, a trip on a Ferris wheel, a journey through a car wash, a game of football), and it proudly carries a sense of melancholy without being overbearing or treacly. It's sweet without being saccharine, and has an ever encroaching threat which has you wondering WHAT will go wrong, as opposed to IF something will go wrong, and Soo-jin has a lovely arc to make her more than just a dogged, ice cold bitch. It's about flawed people wanting love, human connection and what everybdy else has, and don't we all deserve that?

"Cocaine Bear" - Review

In Georgia, the year is 1985. A disparate group of characters enter the woods today, and are in for a big surprise.
Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) is skipping schol so that she and her friend Henry (Christian Convery) can go and paint the waterfalls.
Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr) is taking his recently widowed friend Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) on a job in the great outdoors so that he can begin to heal and move on.
Aging cop Bob (Isaiah Whitlock Jr) decides to take a day off from his new dog, to follow up on a case.
And Sari (Keri Russell), a nurse on her day off, is fuming about having to go into the woods to find her daughter, who has skipped school, and is saddled with a pair of lovesick park rangers (an always welcome and secene-stealing esteemed character actor Margo Martindale, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, unfortunately not related to John Pyper-Ferguson... I think) the whole way.
But soon, they will clash with a bear who has developed a rather finnicky cocaine habit, and they are on its turf...

The title is pure meme fodder, but this film is a good time, you get exactly what it says on the tin. It could be a wacky, weird pisstake of monster movies, or embrace the absurdity of the concept and be a subversive 4th wall breaking joke, but in a refreshing and counter-intuitive kind of way it just plays is straight as an action comedy, so avoids a lot of the smugness and arrogant pretentious folly which could follow.
It's a fun, B-Movie with a Hollywood budget (kind of, it's actually a nice middle number, refreshingly) and it plays to its strengths: the 4 movies of the start (road movie, kids' adventure, renegade cop and wilderness survival) are fun enough to follow on their own merits (particularly Daveed and Eddie: O'Shea Jackson Jr is pretty much always the best thing about whatever he is in, and it's nice to have Ehrenreich in good films again, I like him as a performer) and the jokes land. When the bear enters the picture, director Elizabeth Banks (which is still weird to say) keeps the momentum going with a goofy sense of humour really quite unique to her, and I rather like it.
Standout sequences are a standoff at a gazebo, an ambulance playing "I Just Can't Get Enough", and the two children first finding a parcel of cocaine. Ray Liotta enters the picture as a coke lord, and has some fun with the film largely by playing it straight, and the film's idiocy and bimbling of its characters are where it shines. The soundtrack by Mothersbaugh is fantastic.
Also, just an observation: it's kind of strange seeing no Marvel Cinematic Universe in this.

"Summer Time Machine Blues" - Review

A group of friends are part of the "Sci-Fi Club", not because they are fans of science fiction, but because the recreation room has the only working air conditioning unit in the school. After a baseball game, a few strange events occur, culminating in the remote control for the air conditioning unit breaking. Despondent, all seems lost... But when a time machine arrives, accompanied by a strange boy in a bowl haircut, the gang get an idea: they can use this time machine to return to the past, retrieve the remote before it was broken, and resume sitting pretty in an air conditioned room! Unfortunately, time travel has consequences...

It took me way too long to realise that this title was a pun. This movie is delightful. A tight, sharply written adaptation of a stage play, and a sweet ensemble piece about teenagers on a hot day. The time travel is wound like a tight spring, coming to a satisfying ending with a neat bow up on top, and the performances, whilst broad, are good. The always lovely Juri Ueno (from "Swing Girls", side note: please watch "Swing Girls", that's a great movie) is a welcome standout, and lead actor Eita anchors it sweetly. The Professor is a fun character too. It's saturated with the brightness of the sunshine, and simply staged, but its small scale and low stakes plot are endearing. I really rather enjoy this as a light hearted affair, and it's perfectly harmless, witty afternoon viewing.

"7 Days War" - Review

It's summer time, and Mamoru Suzuhara has a confession to make: he is deeply in love with wealthy classmate Aya Chiyono, and has been for a long time. Every year on her birthday, he purchases her a gift, but never has the courage to give it to her. But when he finds out that her father is moving to Tokyo, from their small country town, and that he will never get a chance to see her again: Mamoru throws caution to the wind! He convinces Aya to run away with him for a few days, to camp out at an abandoned factory, and she is elated enough with the idea and agrees! But things don't go quite according to plan - since it's her birthday, Aya decides to bring her friends along: popular, ever-video-streaming Saki; popular confident jock Ogata; the mysterious and quiet Honjo (whom nobody is entirely sure why he is here...); and perky, upbeat, sporty and best girl Kaori; and what Mamoru hoped would be a confession of love between two friends turns into a crowded final farewell between a lot of Aya's friends he doesn't really know... Further complications are hurled into the mix when the gang find a young Thai boy hiding in the abandoned factory, on the run from immigration officials; and with nothing left to lose this Summer, Mamoru and Aya decide to take a stand for this boy. Over the course of this last stand, these mismatched kids inadvertently tap into the zeitgeist and become unlikely heroes, and secrets begin to pour out into the open as this matter becomes more and more complicated...

This movie only got a UK release this year, which is both a shame (as it's quite sweet and fun) but also understandable (as it's rather slight and a bit odd). It's a pretty movie, lots of gorgeous watercolour shots and backgrounds, and the animation is slick and smooth. The character designs are charming and convey the personalities well enough, yet they spring forth out of their shells and grow over the course of the feature. They begin somewhat as archetypes, but reveal depth and rounded layers, particularly Kaori and Honjo. The revelations are earned, and pile onto an ever-escalating plot, where the antics and shenanigans are excellent, yet grounded: rivet guns and mining carts and assorted silliness are deployed in the seige against the adults, in a very "Home Alone" crossed with "Rio Bravo" sort of way. The escalation feels natural.
The movie ends up being about teenage rebellion, fighting the status quo and breaking free of the traditions and exepectations thrust upon us. It tackles it fairly well for the most part, though with a little brute force and blunt trauma in one monologue. The true high point, however, comes in its excellent subversions of the "confession of love" which plagues these sorts of dramas. The twist is absolutely fantastic, and the payoff will have you pumping the air with glee.