Review: The Machine

The Machine
Cert: 15 / 112 mins / Dir. Peter Atencio / Trailer

So wait, are we back to just taking the piss out of the Russians, now? Honestly, I can’t keep up. The Machine is American comedian Bert Kreischer, playing a heightened fictionalised version of himself in a tale that expands on his 2016 true-story*¹ standup routine of the same name, about the time he visited Russia through college and ended up with the mafia robbing a train. The film is set a decade after this, with mobsters tracking Bert down in the US to recover an antique watch which was stolen with the hoard. WIth his family in jeopardy, Bert has to travel to Russia and locate faces from his past to save him from gangsters of the present, so that he can have a future.

The first ten minutes of this film are essentially Bert Kreischer telling you how great Bert Kreischer is, before the other characters come on to spend the majority of the film telling you otherwise. I know who I believe.

FAVOUR

Mark Hamill (yes, that one) is along for the ride as Bert’s father Albert like he’s repaying a favour, a swathe of Eastern European performers fill out Russian Mafia roles with accents culturally insensitive enough to rival Black Widow, and Bert himself basically yells his way through the script like a competition-winner who can’t believe he’s on a film set, describing visual jokes after they’ve just occurred and using fuck-bombs to end scenes where writers Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes*² couldn’t come up with a punchline.

And fair play to Jimmy Tatro who plays young-Bert in the flashback segments, because his comic timing is even worse than his older counterpart’s.

UNDER FIRE

There’s the seed in here of a story about societal expectations, male bravado and toxic masculinity, and how they often combine in a digital age where people feel they have to be constantly in performance-mode, the curators of their own existence in a quest for the dopamine of adulation. That seed is not watered, though. Instead, it must have been a slow Friday in the Sony offices when they decided to bankroll what is essentially a mashup of a shit Melissa McCarthy comedy from ten years ago, and a shit Liam Neeson thriller from ten years ago.

A handful of decent gags (the majority of which are slapstick anyway) can’t make up for distractingly quirky subtitles, incoherent storytelling*³ and an artless screenplay.
The Machine is broken.

*¹ The general rule with standup of course is that when a comic tells you something is a true story, it almost certainly isn’t. They are devising, exaggerating and embellishing for comic effect. That’s okay, it’s their job. It only becomes a problem when they repeatedly insist that it’s all true. So let’s just file this one accordingly before it’s even begun.
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*² That’s right, Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes are the only credited writers in this. Not Bert Kreischer. If The Machine had been his story - his true story - Bert Kreischer would have got a writing credit. But he didn’t. Because this didn’t happen. Bert Kreischer is lying. For money. That’s what his job is.
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*³ Even if this was true (and remember, it’s not), The Machine would effectively be Bert Kreischer making a feature-length therapy-session roleplay to publicly absolve himself of his appalling behaviour in both the past and the recent-present, while only ‘succeeding’ in the nuts-and-bolts plot of the film by doubling down on his poor reputation rather than growing as a character. Precisely the sort of thing you’d expect in an Adam Sandler movie. Bert Kreischer is a shit Adam Sandler. There. Put that on the poster.
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DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.

Are You There, God?
It's Me, Margaret.
Cert: PG / 106 mins / Dir. Kelly Fremon Craig / Trailer

Slipping quietly into UK cinemas before the full onslaught of Silly Season™ takes up all the screens, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig’s rendition of Judy Blume’s much loved 1970 coming-of-age novel. The book itself has a far greater cultural footprint in its native America, but its message and themes know no such boundaries – as this film proves...

Abby Ryder Fortson plays the eponymous lead (Margaret, that is – not God), with Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie as her parents Barbara and Herb, and Kathy Bates as per paternal-grandmother Sylvia. The story follows Margaret in a new school as an 11yr old, as her family have moved from New York to New Jersey. A tricky age for us all, and an awkward situation to navigate at any. Tensions with friends, family and of course growing-up all jostle for the heroine’s attention, intertwined through her informal prayers to the Almighty.

CHEMISTRY

The good news is that the central performances here are superb in a way that’s thoroughly underplayed; open without being needy and sincere without mawkishness. The chemistry between Margaret, Barbara and Sylvia is a delight to watch, not least because the inevitable moments of drama never feel the need to escalate into over-earnestness. We’re able to share the highs and empathise with all of their differing concerns without taking sides between them.

The supporting cast mostly stick to this ethos (although some characters are by necessity more brash than the rest), but are firmly relegated to the sidelines. That said, with only 106 minutes to transcribe the best part of a year, it’s as well for the director to keep the focus on the central relationship dynamics.

Sets and costumes are of the early 70s era without feeling like cosplay, and Tim Ives' cinematography lends the film the air of a 1980s afternoon TV movie (in no way a bad thing, and probably the only example of it not being a bad thing for many years), and the whole thing carries a thematic simplicity which is impossible to replicate - this can only be organic if it is to work at all.

WOODWORK

If anything, the running time becomes the film’s only significant problem. While I’ll openly admit to not having read the source material*¹, this feels like an adaptation which is skimming chunks to save on minutes. There are no gaps which stop the narrative from functioning, but it often feels like sub-plots aren’t expanded to their full satisfying potential, and there’s little room for the characters (or viewer) to reflect. The introspective scenes which would normally act as decompression spaces in a personal drama don’t really land as the plot hares along chasing the natural ending point.

That said, this is a small price to pay for a genuinely heartfelt film which has no agenda other than relating to all of its audience. There’s an unspoken assumption through marketing and cultural reputation that this is A Girl’s Film; while it certainly can be, it’s really not as limited as that. The movie deserves an audience it probably won't find with a May release.

I’d happily have watched a cut of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret which was half an hour longer, but I’m also very pleased to have watched the version we got.

*¹ No agenda behind that, but I’m a middle-aged man in the UK and this book is pretty much a rite of passage for women in the US. We didn’t cover this in my school, and it was hardly likely to leapfrog in my reading queue over Chocky or The Robots Of Death...
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DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Fast X

Fast X
Cert: 12A / 131 mins / Dir. Louis Leterrier / Trailer

As it hammers the pedal on on the cultural zeitgeist, all those actively engaged on either side of the ongoing WGA strike actions will be further polarised by the revelation that ChatGPT seems to have successfully completed its first full film script. Which is to say, this is technically a script because it's the words the actors are reading aloud, but the content carries an air of indefinable artificiality that cannot be truly recreated by organic beings. Whatever, this jumble of remixed clichés from previous movies is certainly in keeping with the chosen method for its delivery, and it's going to make money from an audience who haven't bought tickets for the wordcraft. Fair.

So, Fast X roars into cinemas at the starting line of Blockbuster Season™ and its sprawling, globe-spanning storyline cannot be coherently summarised in this traditional second paragraph; indeed director Louis Leterrier is unable to do that in two full hours. The main thrust is that Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto (once again using the word "family" as punctuation to the point where you'd think he's the third Mitchell-brother) has fallen out with Jason Momoa's Dante (having the time of his life as a panto-villain effortlessly combining the Joker and Frank-N-Furter). Luckily, they're both psychologically grounded enough to know that the only way to settle this spat is through driving cars and destroying civil engineering infrastructure.

PUNCH

Yes there's races, there's chases and there's punch-in-the-faces. The three credited writers vie to maintain control in a built-up screenplay while the fuel budget and carbon-footprint goes through the roof, dropping leaden hints that the next movie will be the final one (it won't) and struggling to find dialogue that's not just expositing the indescribable. Cinema staff could have paused this at any point and asked who in the audience knew what exactly was going on, and not a single hand would have been raised. Fast X features enough separately filmed sub-plots to ensure that there are huge swathes of this cast who haven't needed to be in the same room this decade.

These strands are of course necessary as a means of showcasing the ever growing cast of A-Listers willing to pout fleetingly for status in a children's film*¹ reworking of Last Of The Summer Wine. Their characters' storylines may have ended in previous installments, but that won't stop them clocking back in for an appearance-fee the next time, a sort of Marvel Cinematic Universe with limited imagination (do bear in mind that Sung Kang's character died in the third entry and was ret-conned back to life in the sixth; it's also worth noting that Paul Walker actually died almost a decade ago and he's still showing up). The fact that the same faces return each time to deliver variations on the same plot with no variation on the formula suggests that the American studio system has finally cracked the essence of the Carry On series...

RICHARD

All of this sounds admittedly harsh for a film that nobody forced me to watch, but I'm old enough to remember Fast & Furious being genuinely good. To its credit, the cinematography, editing, stunt performing and choreography here are everything they need to be and more, and the cast are trying their best (albeit with varying levels of success) with the material they're given. You know that for an audience who loves going to the cinema but hates cinema, this will be ideal.

Fast X is loud, brassy, and seemingly happy to be filled with trite aphorisms while meaning absolutely nothing. It's hard to think of a more apt metaphor for the movie business in the 2020s...

*¹ Listen, Fast X is a 12A. The BBFC have reviewed this death-defying action thriller and decided that its levels of threat and intensity are suitable for children to watch. And if online wags can persist in sneering that the Marvel and Star Wars series are 'kids movies' then I'm more than qualified to point out the same of what is essentially Hot Wheels: The Movie, written by a trio of eight year olds who haven't studied physics at school yet. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Sisu

Sisu
Cert: 15 / 88 mins / Dir. Jalmari Helander / Trailer

Set in 1944, we follow retired Finnish commando turned gold prospector Aatami Korpi (Jormila Tommila) who, having lost his home and family in the conflict, roams Lapland as a gold prospector with his horse and his dog. Upon finding a deposit of the yellow stuff which might return his life to some level of stability, his journey back to civilisation is interrupted when he encounters a beaten and bitter Wermacht platoon passing the other way. When the nazis take Aatami's prize, kill his horse, drive away his dog and leave him hanging from a signpost, they soon find out that this man has something of a reputation for refusing to die. A very persistent and incredibly violent reputation...

So, Jalmari Helander's wartime revenge-romp opens with an achingly cool yellow-on-black title card bearing the name SISU, and explaining that this is a Finnish word which is untranslatable. The exact same title card then proceeds to describe what the word means in English. Therefore translating it. Sisu is a Person Who Doesn't Watch Movies' idea of a cool movie.

CENTRAL

The idea itself is perfectly sound of course, and there are many things to like about this. There just aren't any to love. Jormila Tommila's performance in the central role is incredibly strong, not least because he only has two lines of dialogue in the entire movie so he's doing everything through emoting and physicality. The viewer does feel Aatami's pain and anguish at every turn because of this, and because of the outstanding effects-work when it comes to sound design, pyrotechnics and prosthetics (namely wounds; their infliction and 'repair').

Similarly, Kjell Lagerroos's cinematography is superb, whether it's relaying the vast bleakness of the wartorn landscape without resorting to simple desaturation, or capturing the claustrophobia of close-quarters conspiracy and combat. Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä's score is darkly stirring throughout, even if it tips its hat to Ennio Morricone perhaps too overtly in places.

GRANADA

But in fact, the problem here is that the storyline is linear and its script is dire. There's only one central character but since he doesn't say anything, all non-visual exposition has to be read by beleaguered supporting players imagining they're in a snappier movie. The nazis and their handful of captives are placeholder characters, sketched into the first draft and then never updated.

Despite leaning heavily on Aatami's legendary past, there are no flashbacks - so Tommila acts purely in the present. His backstory therefore, is only fleshed out via the dialogue of everyone else, and that dialogue is so ham-fistedly clichéd as to make this more an implication than any sort of convincing description. It's an award-winning example of why Show, Don't Tell is so important in screenwriting.

It's also, frankly, a pretty lazy setup for an entire movie with only one plot-strand. The audience root for Aatami because he's up against nazis (fair enough, admittedly), but before long the only thing he's trying to keep hold of is the gold. And remember, Aatami's only found that at the beginning of the film. He hasn't actually earned this vast wealth other than digging a hole. Anyone could have dug that hole, it wouldn't automatically make them a hero. And so in order to crowbar this moral juxtaposition even wider, the bad guys have to become cartoon-versions of a thing which was deplorable enough to start with. The screenplay doesn't have the cojones to kill the dog, though*¹.

RADIO RENTALS

In its simplest terms, this is what happens when someone puts Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained into the matter-transporter at the same time and hopes no-one will notice. If 2018's Bad Times At The El Royale was a love-letter to Tarantino, Sisu is blatant, straight-up QT fanfic that takes Style Over Substance to dizzying new levels.

If this was an American production, Liam Neeson would be in it.

The film looks gorgeous and should be fantastic, but ultimately Sisu is one yellow £3 sticker away from being on the Gifts For Father's Day end-of-aisle display in a supermarket next to the John Smith's 12-packs. Where it belongs.

*¹ Okay, I'll bite: How come the dog's back for the final scene, then? The dog which was last seen in a wilderness scrubland literally hundreds of miles and one exploded cargo-plane ago? I know that precisely nothing else in this movie had made practical sense up until that point, but help me out here... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Beau Is Afraid

Beau Is Afraid
Cert: 15 / 178 mins / Dir. Ari Aster / Trailer

Well. It's usually a sign of a good night when you get in from the cinema*¹ and your partner asks how the film was and you realise you can describe in intricate chronological detail what happened, but you have almost no idea what the film was about.

Beau is Afraid then, is production company A24 having an absolute normal one...

BEAU

Ari Aster returns to bring us Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), a middle-aged and deeply-troubled man trying to catch a domestic flight to visit his cold yet over-protective mother on the anniversary of his father's death, when his entire life suddenly falls apart in the most extraordinary sequence of events. What unfolds is a hallucinogenic psychodrama - part therapy-session, part panic attack - filled with guilt, grief, discovery and recrimination. Like Philip Larkin, transmogrified into hard celluloid. It's always engaging and never knowingly straightforward.

Phoenix gives a masterfully emotive performance of course, although to be fair we'd expect little else at this point in his career. So much of the film is just extended reaction-shots of the lead actor that it's actually quite amazing in itself. The central storyline is a meth-enhanced cheese dream of Clockwise, a persistently dark and escalated farce which constantly blurs the lines between fantasy and tragedy. Although at a certain point you can stop trying to connect the points of symbolism and just relax into how absurd the whole thing has quickly become.

MADISON COUNTY

That said, this is being variously billed as Horror (among other genres) when it's really not. Aster's previous outings Hereditary and Midsommar had a far more linear narrative to rein in their very focused shocks, whereas this makes Darren Aronofsky's mother! look like an insurance documentary. As well as a flamboyant number of plot-feints, every scene in the movie veers between slightly-too-long and excruciating (which means the entire film is either far-too-long or perfectly elongated, depending on how you're approaching it). It's a calculated exercise in testing the commitment and patience of the viewer*², and the film snob in me respects the fuck out of that. I have to respect it because in terms of emotional storytelling it's a masterpiece; it's just a masterpiece that I did not particularly enjoy the experience of sitting through.

Full marks then for how uncompromisingly demanding this film is of its audience, yet still managing to secure a mainstream cinema release. Ari Aster glibly reaches so far that he will leave many people cold, and if anything I love it more for that.

Beau Is Afraid is 100% what it's supposed to be, and yet so much so that I cannot honestly recommend this to anybody...

*¹ It should be noted that in 2023, advance-screenings of subtitled Korean and Arabic dramas attracted very healthy audience numbers in this provincial multiplex, whereas only nine people wanted to see what lunacy Ari Aster was offering this time. One has to assume that's down to previous experience when even Russell Crowe's Italian accent can somehow get bums on seats... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Credit where it's due though, not one of the nine people walked out throughout the film's almost-three hours. And bonus marks for you if you watch right this to the very end (like six of us did). ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3
Cert: 12A / 150 mins / Dir. James Gunn / Trailer

Having watched it back on release-day, this review of the James Gunn's off-again / on-again third Marvel sci-fi smash-up has admittedly taken some time to make it onto the blog, not least because I've been busy updating my relationship status with Guardians of The Galaxy to 'It's Complicated'...

Part of this is down to the current odd malaise with the MCU, whereby "no Infinity Gauntlet" equals "no collective-narrative forward momentum and no individual storyline with legacy characters strong enough to really justify its existence". Another factor is still wincing from the frankly atrocious GotG TV Holiday Special, which we now know was definitely filmed on the same sets as the cinematic threequel but with precisely none of the creative talent that's gone into the movie. But I digress.

POOLING

The very short version of all this is that the 60% of Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 which focuses on Rocket Raccoon sustaining serious injuries, the Guardians-family pooling everything to rescue him, Rocket's reflecting on his backstory and how this affects his present and his future, and then properly developing the character into what he needs to be... is absolutely outstanding. It's precisely what Marvel Studios do best; engaging, exciting, affecting (slightly schmaltzy in places, but well-earned) and most importantly funny. Bradley Cooper loses himself in the character once again and everyone benefits. Rocket Raccoon is the beating heart of this film and every minute spent in his company enrichens the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The other 40%, however, is James Gunn throwing as much content at the viewer as he thinks he can get away with. It's a white-noise cacophony of over-written subplots, over-scripted clatter, over-designed sets and over-directed action sequences. Gamora's return feels poorly defined, Adam Warlock's presence (not to mention the fantastic Will Poulter's performance thereof) is wasted, and the sheer volume of returning minor-characters just to really rip into the casting-budget makes the movie feel scattershot and bloated, like emptying all the free vending machines on your final day in the office.

SNOOKERING

Oh, and after two movies with Peter Quill's vintage cassettes accompanying the journey, the tunes come via Rocket's iPod this time around. But the temporal versatility of this as a format means that the soundtrack is an absolute mishmash of anything James Gunn happens to like from whenever. Now I'm always here for a bit of Spacehog but this is basically Danny Boyle's Mixtape Madness all over again.

Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 is worth watching for the things it does right. Just about. Like I said, it's complicated...

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.