Review: Queen & Slim

Queen & Slim
Cert: 15 / 132 mins / Dir. Melina Matsoukas / Trailer



Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya headline Queen & Slim, a crime thriller from screenwriter Lena Waithe*¹ and director Melina Matsoukas. In suburban Ohio, when young Afro-American couple Angela (Jodie-Smith) and Earnest (Kaluuya) are returning from their first date, a traffic-stop by a white patrol officer results in a bad turn of events turning much, much worse. The pair make a hasty decision to flee the scene, beginning a cautious bee-line to Florida in a bid to flee the country.

This is an odd movie, usually in a good way but it's tonally all over the place. The most meandering getaway you've ever seen passes through neighbourhoods of biting social drama, breath-holding tension and laugh-out-loud comedy alike. At some points these are structurally juxtaposed to suggest emotional pit-stops, although at others this feels like the scripts of two different movies have been filmed using the same cast.

Saved by committed performances all round, the film is quite remarkable. Although I'm deducting a point because it should have ended around six minutes earlier than it did*². Matsoukas aims for Off-Beat™ and in that regard Queen & Slim is a notable success, although perhaps more in the experiment itself than its conclusion...

Well Bonnie & Clyde is the most obvious touchstone, but since characters within the movie reference this I'm disallowing it. Think of The Hate U Give meets Blue Ruin meets the first half of From Dusk Till Dawn meets Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.

Yeah..



If you know you're already onboard, sure.



It is.



Let's not go mad here.



That's possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Daniel Kaluuya is in this, and he was in that Black Panther alongside Lupita 'Kanata' Nyong'o, Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Andy 'Snoke' Serkis.





*¹ Credit where it's due, the story was developed between Waithe and James Frey. Oh yes, that James Frey. So while several high-profile moments in this thriller come off as frankly unbelievable, bear in mind they're probably from the guy who can't even get his own life-story right... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Spoilers - highlight-to-read: Mate, have the pair in the standoff on the runway, have them look at each other, have them look back in unison at the police then cut to the directed-by credit. That's how you end the movie, with ambiguity. As a point of discussion, of uncertainty, of hope. Because if you have to spend the final six minutes with slow-motion sequences telling your audience that white cops shooting unarmed black civilians is A Bad Thing, you've probably wasted the two hours before that...
^{[ 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: Riddick

Riddick
Cert: 15 / 119 mins / Dir. David Twohy



Now, I'm fully aware that throughout my reviews, I tend to rely on the staple of directly comparing the film in hand to others it may seem to borrow from, either visually or thematically. I know that this technique is neither new nor original, yet it positively glistens, gleams, like virgin snow catching the sunlight on Christmas Day morning, compared to the two hours of unimaginative, derivative, first-draft drivel I've just sat through. Imagine an Aliens rip-off, shot through a lens of Dune, and with a peppering of every sci-fi first person shooter you've ever played. Now put Vin Diesel in it. You've already given more thought to the film than the five (five) people who've admitted liability.

After the opening twenty minutes in the company of Vin, you begin to pray for the other characters to arrive; if only because of how embarrassing it's getting watching Diesel be out-acted by an animated dog. Then, once the first band of identikit space-mercs arrive and Jordi Mollà begins to speak, you realise how lucky you've been so far, because at least dog didn't have any lines. The next hour and a half should be a reliably by-the-numbers sci-fi actioner, and all the time nobody's speaking it is. The night-time scenes work best, as the rolling sandscapes shot during the day have a distinctly artificial quality to them, reeking of greenscreens and wind-machines.

Despite all my moaning about it, Riddick never quite becomes unwatchable (read: it can't even succeed at being awful), but it's definitely substandard. For the more dialogue-heavy scenes, I had trouble focusing on the screen because my eyes wouldn't stop rolling. I know that Vin Diesel can't deliver a script to save his life, but I expect better from everyone else involved. And extra props go to that writing team again for taking one of the most important rising actresses in sci-fi, and effectively giving her an unchanging, one-dimensional character and a metaphorical pat on the arse. No, wait… a literal pat on the arse. Well done, guys.

Considering the potential that was there at the drawing-board stage, Riddick is lazy. Considering the film's lack of drive to be anything more than a testosterone-fuelled, one-note gun-fest, it's disappointing. Considering the money the film will take, it's an outrage.

And that's without me going into the film borrowing lines from other movies and the whole Dash Rendar/Swoop-bike ripoff thing that's going on...


Yeah.



Not really.



Probably. Which is the sad thing.



Telly.



A little.



I shouldn't imagine so.



Not that I heard.

How did this get made?

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.