Review: Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion
Cert: 12A / 123 mins / Dir. Justin Simien / Trailer

And so to the House Of Mouse's second-stab at adapting their Haunted Mansion theme park attraction for the big screen. It's an ensemble tale of apparitions and adventure, of chills and chuckles, of ghoulish gags and of grief. The last of these is the cornerstone of Katie Dippold's screenplay, although it never really slows down enough to properly explore the emotions to which it refers (and for Disney that's a criminally-missed opportunity).

All of the central cast here are superbly likeable and perfectly matched to their roles, with particular standout performances from LaKeith Stanfield and Rosario Dawson. The antagonists they're up against, however, don't balance this out with any sense of credible threat. In fact we only really meet one - Jared Leto's 'Hatbox' - a supernatural villain who looks like Tim Burton has re-tooled The Grinch and sounds like a half-arsed impersonation of Darth Vader. Screen-time with this character is all but wasted, then again Leto has proved on more than one occasion that he can easily take an average movie and make it feel far worse. Although the playfully creepy visual effects are every bit as accomplished as you'd expect (given that this is catering to a family audience), the film never manages to evoke the eerie otherworldliness that even Pirates Of The Caribbean managed in its darker moments. Because of this we're never convinced that this is anything other than a ride.

The comedy is executed with more skill than the horror, even if there are plenty of chuckles but no real belly laughs. The scares aim for 'traditional' but still fall short at cliché much of the time. Justin Simien never quite matches the kookiness of Beetlejuice, the adrenaline of Goosebumps or the emotional rawness of Ghostbusters Afterlife. And that's a shame because Haunted Mansion feels like 80% of a great movie, but with its unfulfilled potential and capacity to be something more meaningful the end result is, sadly, forgettable...

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: Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Cert: 15 / 105 mins / Dir. Kevin Smith / Trailer



Well, it looks like I may have been hasty in calling Once Upon A Time In Hollywood the most self-indulgent flick of 2019. You live and learn.

Also living and claiming to learn is geek-maestro Kevin Smith, who after a near-fatal heart attack last year has regrouped the troops and crafted a follow-up to 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. When the eponymous pair learn that a movie studio has plans to relaunch Bluntman and Chronic after legally pilfering Jay and Silent Bob’s intellectual property rights, the boys embark on a roadtrip from New Jersey to Hollywood to stop that happening. Yes, like last time.

FINE

It genuinely pains me, reader, to tell you that Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is fine. 'Fine'. Because I don’t want it to be ‘fine’, I want it to be great. Fine isn't great. Fuck it, fine isn't even fine. I want to love this because Smith has made some of my all-time favourite, go-to movies, and I know he’s better than this lazy, opportunistic rehash. Shamelessly anachronistic in both tone and execution, a vast swathe of characters and performers from previous entries in the View Askewniverse enter and leave, each ham-fistedly issuing catchphrases and callbacks that feel like Peter Kay was the script-consultant. Because looking in to the camera and telling your audience they’re being ripped off isn't clever unless you subversively add some new ideas or themes.

More a paid-for backslap than a retrospective or confessional, Reboot is part cosplay, part tribute-act, part reunion. And like most reunions, you look at your watch after about an hour and realize you’re done and you’d rather be at home. The film doesn’t have the inherent silliness of Smith’s glory days and the irreverence just feels forced now. Some things do stay true to form however, and the writer/director is still tone-deaf when it comes to actual sentiment. But that never stopped him in the past so why would it now?

TRUE

The worst part is, this isn’t awful. It just plays like a grindingly average fan-film, like everything Kevin Smith’s critics have been accusing him of for years and now the prophecy has self-fulfilled and Smith is last to notice.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot feels like a first-draft screenplay knocked out quickly by someone who knows precisely what film he wants to make, and knows precisely that there's no one to tell him no. Not because he's successful and powerful, but because the industry stopped paying attention once Smith was happy to self-finance and crowdfund his own failures. In that respect, there's a surprising purity to the project. Well, if something so shamelessly recycled could ever be called pure.

CHEMICAL

Things pick up for the finale, but it feels like a long ride getting there. I didn’t hate this, and despite my moaning I’d be pushed to say I even actively ‘disliked’ it, but the boredom I felt was much worse. The 15-minute pre-recorded Q&A which followed made me laugh more than anything in the movie. This only reassures me that my problem isn’t with Kevin Smith, but this sausage-machine of a movie he’s put his name to. I'm not holding my breath for Clerks 3 or Mallrats 2, although I imagine there'll at least be something more of a narrative.

For a venerable master of communication who’s had a life-transforming experience, you’d think Kevin Smith’s new insight would consist of more than just repackaging action figures from two decades ago then saying “I love my kid”...

This is similar to Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back
Without being as good.

Although in all fairness, it's not as godawful as Super Groovy Cartoon Movie.



If you're a fan, sure, why not?

But let's be clear, this movie is specifically for fans of Smith's earlier work and no one involved is even pretending otherwise.



Completists will want it for their shelves, everyone else can stream it.



HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.



Given the general reputation of Kevin Smith in the cinematic community, probably not?



There isn't.



Level 1: That First Order Stormtrooper is in this.







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: Unforgettable

Unforgettable
Cert: 15 / 100 mins / Dir. Denise Di Novi / Trailer



I see yer da's been browsing the steamy-thrillers section in Ritz Video again…

Yes tonight we're going to party like it's 1991, with the story of a jealous ex-wife who'll go to any lengths to blah blah blah you've seen it before oh look there's going to be murders and it'll end with a cat-fight*¹. Unforgettable is a film which desperately hopes the paying-audience isn't old enough to have already gotten bored of this format once and still not forgotten about that. As a tale of manipulation, obsession, vulnerability and deceit in which no-one really comes out smelling of roses, it'd be easy to think that this film hates women, although since it's directed and co-written by females I think it's fairer to say that it just hates its own audience more.

But it's not only the structure of the film that's the problem here, but the type of performance which is inevitably required of the cast. Katherine Heigl's psycho-Vogue performance is so gratuitously hammy that there was a group of animal rights protesters outside the cinema. I know the film's meant to hold a creeping air of unease, but I'm fairly certain that's meant to come from the plot developments, rather than worrying if the cast will ever work again. I understand that this is essentially Heigl's default-level of movie these days of course, but what the hell was Rosario Dawson thinking? Okay, Trance had its issues, but it was at least interesting to watch. Unforgettable's director, Denise Di Novi, doesn't even have her name at the top of the end-credits. That could be a sign of professional humility but I suspect it's more likely to be embarrassment, hoping all the punters*² will have filed silently out of the room by the time her own moniker floats across the screen.

In fact, given the mechanically linear nature of the story and the box-ticking 100 minute runtime, the only surprise was how bored I got waiting for the film to actually end. The only things that aren't a half-arsed love letter to 1990s trash thrillers are a) Facebook as a plot-device*³, b) the incessant Apple product-placement, and c) the excruciating R&B soundtrack. And for three things meant to lend a hackneyed screenplay some modern-relevance, they feel very much like a geography teacher telling his class he likes the new M&M album.

Perhaps worst of all (and despite my moaning), Unforgettable isn't even bad enough to be classed as A Bad Film. So it fails on that front, too.

By the way, if you're ever looking through someone's stolen phone and you see a file named "life ideas", I'm pretty certain that allows you to go ahead and kill them anyway.

Anything Channel 5 used to show after 11pm.



Hahahahahaha.



No.



Cast, no.
Director, I certainly hope not although I haven't seen her other work.



Oh, I think I probably will.



There isn't.



Level 2: Rosario Dawson provided voice-work for 2016's Ratchet & Clank movie, along with James Arnold 'Kenobi' Taylor and Jim 'a shitload of SW videogame voice-roles' Ward.





*¹ Okay, I have to confess that I'd already written the non-specific framework of this review based on the trailer alone. Not so much wilful prejudice as the fact that the promo-reel sells this film perfectly, and you just know it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Four. At the first showing on the opening day of this movie, there were four people in the room. I know that's hardly the fault of the cast or crew, but still. Four. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ It's perhaps worth noting that while the film is allowed to say Facebook, they actually show a sloppy facsimile of the site. Whether this is down to budgeting reasons or FB's brand-reputation management isn't clear. Also, the production can't seem to afford playing Nat King Cole singing Unforgettable, which was almost certainly a feature of the script at one stage. Why the hell else would the film be called 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: The Lego Batman Movie

The Lego Batman Movie (2D)
Cert: U / 104 mins / Dir. Chris McKay / Trailer



It's an unusual feeling for me, being someone who sees more than their fair share of BBFC cards, to be watching the ident screen with the green-detailing of a U-certificate. It's not that I actively avoid the Us, more that most of the movies seem to be PG at the least. All the more interesting then that the summary notes read "mild comic violence, rude humour, very mild bad language". Rude humour? How much 'rude' can you put into a film which is suitable for everybody? Well providing you keep it resolutely silly, the answer is 'a fair bit'. The fact that one of the main characters is called Dick hasn't been lost on the writing team.

Yes, the eagerly anticipated Lego Batman Movie finally swings down into cinemas for weekend-previews ahead of general release. The short version: enormous amounts of fun, and I say that as someone who went for the animation, comedy and bricks without being a Batman geek per se. Chris McKay's film is consistently funny and has a script far too tightly packed to take in on the first viewing. And while it may not be anywhere near as meta as its forebear, it's very self-aware nonetheless and quick to poke fun at its own ancestry, albeit in a playful way.

Learning quickly from The Big Boys, the Warner Animation Group have opened their latest outing with an five-minute promo teaser for the upcoming Lego Ninjago movie. And while kids and Lego-geeks will be rightfully excited, I suspect that it'll be the first real test for the series, being slightly too niche for civilian audiences that previously fell within the catch-all net of Lego™ and Batman™.

Aside from being a perfectly robust family adventure movie, the main event however, is also like some wonderful case-study in brand-licensing. The film is positively stuffed with Batman characters and references of course, with Lego interpretations from pretty much all eras of the canon and expanding out into the wider DC continuities. There are also various appearances by more generic Lego faces (particularly their Monster Fighters line), but the net is cast wider still into other Warner properties with characters from the Gremlins, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Matrix movies showing up, among others. Which is all well and good, but Warner seem to have hammered out an appearance-deal for some of Universal's trademarks too, with King Kong, the Creature From The Black Lagoon and velociraptors from Jurassic Park rounding out the antagonistic team. While I genuinely love this level of crossover, it draws needless attention to the absence of Marvel superheroes. And sure, we didn't get any of those in the first Lego movie, but we at least got Disney's newly acquired Star Wars in the mix. This time round however, even that olive branch has been withdrawn. Nothing underlines the messed-up world of licensing agreements more than this movie featuring hordes Daleks, which are then referred to as "British Robots"*¹.

This is undoubtedly the most fun we've had in the caped crusader's company for some considerable time, although I have to say I found it a little disposable. I preferred the film when it was being a Batman movie rather than a DC one, if only because the number of references and easter-eggs (both scripted and visual) makes for a very crowded screenplay. And the movie will work just fine for audiences who aren't picking all of those up, but it'll still feel a little cluttered. Truth be told, I think I just need to see the movie again, and soon.

Still; your move, Affleck…



The DC movies.
The Batman movies.
The Lego movie.



Oh hell, yes. For the level of visual detail, if nothing else.



It certainly does.



As much as I enjoyed it, probably not.



Nope.



Didn't hear one, although there is a scripted 1138 reference.



Level 1: The movie features the voice of Lando Calrissian, assuming his rightful place in the Bat-verse.





*¹ This could be an elaborate and self-referential in-joke, but when the only Marvel reference allowed in the script is the Batcave's password being "Iron Man sucks", that seems unlikely... ^{[ 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: Sin City 2 - A Dame To Kill For

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (3D / SLIGHT SPOILERS. ish.)
Cert: 18 / 102 mins / Dir. Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller




The opening roll-call of Miller and Rodriguez's seamless follow-up to 2005's Sin City warns once again that this will be a film with too many characters. Episodic in nature as its predecessor, the stories A Dame To Kill For are set after the Hartigan thread from last time, but before the Marv one. Although both characters still feature in this film, and the comic-book roots of the stories mean they exist in their own heavily-inked isolation, anyway.

We're back once more in Basin City for another trio of tales of nocturnal sleaze, debauchery and vengeance. Mickey Rourke returns as the bullet-headed trouble-magnet Marv, this time siding with Josh Brolin's not-so-private eye Dwight in a story which pits them against Eva Green's calculatingly unhinged Ava. Elsewhere we get Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the brash gambler Johnny out to teach Senator Roark a lesson he won't forget, and the return of Jessica Alba's Nancy, with her own score to settle from the first film. As mentioned above, Bruce Willis reprises his role, as do Rosario Dawson, Power Boothe, and Jaime King.

It's all shot in uber-noir, and the presence of JGL reminded me how much I'd love to see a live-action Batman feature executed in this style. First-person voiceovers feature heavily again, as does the convoluted web that exists between the characters. But the moments of monochromatic bloodshed which drag the smoky 1930's screaming into the present-day seem to be spaced too far apart, even if when they do arrive, they do so with a glee which outshines Sin City's. In terms of general tone, Rodriguez seemed to be having far more fun in Machete Kills. And just because you can count the number of smiles in A Dame To Kill For on one hand, don't be fooled into thinking it has any deep message to impart. If anything, the film's treatment of its female characters leaves me feeling somewhat uncomfortable, but that's an area best covered by writers more qualified to wade into such waters.

You'd imagine the 3D would be a great addition to a film which is borderline animated, but if anything it just makes the juxtaposition between the photography and rendered backdrops more jarring. It's clear from the off that more money's been spent on the visuals this time around, but it doesn't make for a smoother ride. Not withstanding the fact that the screening I saw had 3D ghosting all over the shop, the lesson I gleaned from Sin City is that film noir needs restraint, not excess.

All in all, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For has been made with care and attention, but I'm not entirely sure there was any need for it to exist. It expands on the continuity of the first film with flair and conviction, but it never really adds anything to it. If that's good enough for you, then fair play; it's certainly more entertaining than a lot of films I've seen this year.

Fans of the first film will welcome it to their shadow-loving hearts and bookshelves, but it's not doing anything Sin City didn't.
And crucially, it's not doing anything better.

I'd say so.



Y'know what, I don't think I actually did.



Probably, although that's not really for me.



If you're going to see a film this dark, a massive dark room is the perfect place for it.



Nah.



Probably.



I didn't hear one. And this is Robert Rodriguez, here. Sort it out, man.

What the hell is Eva Green doing with her accent? British? American? Australian?

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.