Review: M3GAN

M3GAN
Cert: 15 / 102 mins / Dir. Gerard Johnston / Trailer

Gerard Johnston's cyber-chiller is the story of a software engineer, Gemma (Allison Williams), who masterminds a next-level interactive toy; a life-sized android of a little girl named M3GAN (Model 3 Generative ANdroid) complete with an artificial intelligence which exponentially grows and adapts to its owner/subject. When Gemma's niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is orphaned in an horrendous traffic collision, she is awarded interim custody of the child whilst trying to juggle a modern, independent life and her demanding career. When M3GAN appears to be the perfect companion for the grieving Cady, Gemma sees this as indicative of the projects success, while her boss David (Ronny Chieng) sees this as indicative of a product which needs to be hurried through production to maximise profits. But no one seems quite prepared for how M3GAN attaches herself to Cady, and the lengths to which the surrogate babysitter will go to protect the pair of them from outside harm...

Now, narrative cinema requires a suspension of disbelief from its audience; the ability to forget they're sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers watching a series of rapidly projected images created by hundreds of people thousands of miles away for millions of dollars, and a willingness to buy into the in-universe reality and emotion of the story they're being told. Science fiction and horror need this above all else, because of the logical unbelievability of their content.

Director Johnston, along with screenwriter Akela Cooper and story-lead James Wan, require what can only be described as several gargantuan leaps of faith from the media-savvy viewer in 2023. They are asked (indeed, expected) to believe that a) a doll of this technological and mechanical complexity can be fully developed and then produced to retail at $10k, b) that there will be enough takers in the domestic, suburban market to make this a viable business model, rather than using the same tech to create workers for hazardous environments (ie the replicants in Blade Runner), and c) that aunt Gemma is in any remote or meaningful way equipped to be the legal and moral guardian of a traumatised child, despite her not being sure and every single other character in the film (including the robot) confirming this doubt repeatedly. The last of these challenges is where reality just hangs up its gloves for the rest of the movie...

HAMMER

So this write-up feels like it's peaked already, but there's no way to skirt around the elephant in the room. M3GAN isn't awful, but it's a long, long way from being great. Oddly slow to start (given that it's a movie which is perfectly encapsulated by its 2½ minute trailer), this is a social satire implemented with a hammer rather than a scalpel, practically winking at the camera every time one of the vacuous adult characters makes a pointed comment about technology being loud, confusing or unstable, like it's been script-edited by a committee of Daily Mail readers.

It's not that the film is stupid - it's really not - but in order for this to be smart it needs nuance, and that's something to which the budget would not stretch. In producing this film it apparently took twelve million dollars to create a screen-realistic synthetic human that looks deliberately false for story reasons, but authentic enough to be perfect as the film's uncanny antagonist. And yet Hollywood™ still can't find anyone who can convincingly Photoshop together a mantlepiece photo of three actors who are supposed to be on family vacation together...

Weirdly, while the central performance of the eponymous android is every bit as believable as the story requires, the whole thing is repeatedly hamstrung by the surrounding humans making the simplest mistakes, dumbest assumptions and most tonally myopic oversights that the genre has ever witnessed. It's not that you're rooting for the robot exactly, but M3GAN certainly seems like the most level-headed character.

ESCHER

To be fair, there are positives in all this. The film holds a very respectable number of female characters, not just the story-leads but in supporting positions too. It never overplays this or makes it a thing (so forgive me for making it a thing), but this really works in M3GAN's favour as not feeling too much like a standard studio-horror. There are also a handful of scenes where Johnston and the cast finally embrace the silliness of the situation and effectively turn it into an eighties slasher movie. These are very welcome, but they're too few and far between to be a defining feature.

The cast give it their all as far as they're able; of my varying problems with the film, acting isn't among them (although it's worth noting that young Violet McGraw is great at playing 'emotionally scarred' to the point of absolute unlikability; as previously noted, zero nuance). Allison Williams carries the lead well, completely aware that her character's flaws are integral to the plot mechanics. First and foremost though, the combination of Amie Donald's physical performance, Jenna Davis' vocalisations, and the model-making, animatronic and digital artistry which completes M3GAN herself is, if anything, beautifully understated. Because the audience is told the character is artificial, the need to find flaws in the presentation immediately evaporates, focusing attention on the story. That the story isn't particularly great*¹ is by the by, but yeah...

M3GAN isn't trashy enough to be fun, and it's not clever enough to be provocative. Passable Friday-night fare, what this wants is to mix philosophical morality with self-aware satire and cutting edge visuals, like a 21st century take on Shelley's Frankenstein by way of Ex Machina. Instead, this is Lawnmower Man for the TikTok generation*², desperately hoping the 'what if' will be loud enough to drown out the 'yeah but how?...

It'll make money though, so at least Blumhouse's largest box is ticked, right?

*¹ Spoilers, highlight-to-read: At the climax of Act III it turns out that the robot isn't remotely waterproof, which feels like the shittest thus-far-ignored plot progression since H.G. Wells painted himself into a corner and made all the Martians catch a cold so that his story could end without everybody just dying. That isn't the clincher, though: in an actually-telegraphed move, it's shown that anyone could have just stabbed M3GAN in the face at literally any point to stop things getting out of hand. [/end]
^{[ BACK ]}

*² Yeah it's easy for me to be that snarky, but it's also easy for the film to try and be better. ^{[ 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: A Man Called Otto

A Man Called Otto
Cert: 15 / 126 mins / Dir. Marc Forster / Trailer

Content warning: This film contains upfront references to suicide. Along with various spoilers, so does this review.

A Man Called Otto is the new outing from Marc Forster (written for the screen by David Magee), as we follow its titular hero (played by Tom Hanks) struggling to adapt to life without his recently deceased wife (played by Rachel Keller in an ongoing series of flashbacks). Otto has always been a stickler for order and routine, but cannot find comfort in these at his lowest ebb. An attempt to take his own life is interrupted when a young family (Mariana Treviño, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, with Alessandra Luna and Christiana Montoya) moves in across the road of the gated compound which he has made his fiefdom over the years. Never one to share his problems publicly Otto slowly warms to these new arrivals, although his own demons prove harder to evict...

First things first: the film is nowhere near as twee and cuddly as its carefully market-tested trailer might suggest. Second things second, it's nowhere near as coherent and heartwarming as it needs to be, either. The central lane of this particular journey is a man repeatedly trying - and failing - to take his own life. Adapted from a Swedish novel and its own screen-version, the fingerprints of a pitch-black European farce are still evident, but it's clear much has been lost in translation (not to English, but to Hollywood™). In a bid not to upset the mainstream appeal of its leading man, the film never truly explores the depths of his despair, opting instead for a series of soft-focus flashbacks in which genuine emotion is drowned in cack-handed schmaltz. Back in the present-day, everyone seems to be acting for the PG13 Judd Apatow version of the movie, also at odds with the story about actual grief.

SOURCE

It's probably worth remembering that this is the director who previously helmed Christopher Robin and World War Z; both from much loved source material, both ambitious with clear good points, and both something of a mess when all was said and done. Hanks plays Hanks™ here of course, great in its own right but not suitable for a character who needs much rougher edges. Hoping to come across as Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, Tom's curmudgeonly outbursts at neighbours and store-clerks never really convince, and while his quieter scenes of reflection are much more reliable they feel like similar performances from his other films.

Worse still is the bewildering choice to cast Hanks' actual son Truman as his younger-self for the unfurling flashbacks: a man who neither looks, sounds nor acts like his father. If anything, Truman seems to be channelling the wide-eyed, clunky innocence of Forrest Gump, which would be fine except that's not the way Tom is playing things, even if both characters are clearly neurodivergent (but in massively different ways - Tom understands this, at least). So for two thirds of the film you never forget that you're watching Tom Hanks, and for the other you never believe that this guy is going to grow up to be Tom Hanks...

That said, at least they tried to solve this with casting. One flashback sequence features a digitally de-aged Hanks to play Otto at a point where he neither looks like 27yr old Truman or 66yr old Tom. And as CGI-work goes, it's not too bad. Well, not too bad apart from the effects team's range of reference material meaning that every intercut camera angle shows Hanks at an apparently different point of his younger life, as if the one scene out by his garage takes place over about ten years.

BAR

The reason all of this is so frustrating is that when A Man Called Otto does work, it's nothing short of beautiful. At its core this is a story about companionship and humanity, and the best sub-plots are the quieter ones where the performers aren't relying on the dialogue. Given how robbed of screen-time everyone apart from the Hanks's are, it's actually remarkable that Rachel Keller, Mariana Treviño and Mack Bayda turn out to be the film's high points. There were a couple of moments where even a hardened old cynic like myself almost had Something In My Eye, and they hint at a much better version of exactly the same story waiting to be made.

But ultimately, there's just not enough connective tissue between what's great and what Columbia Pictures thinks the audience of a Tom Hanks movie wants, expects and indeed deserves. Story-turns and reveals feel sketched in, and it's left to the goodwill of the audience to paper over the cracks in the screenplay*¹.

Not as bad as it could be, nowhere near as good as it should be, the necessary darkness is almost non-existent and Marc Forster can't even get the heavy-handed, cookie cutter, mawkish sentimentality right. A Man Called Otto has moments of greatness, just not enough to make it the film it wants to be.

*¹ Okay spoilers, highlight-to-read: In the third-act it's revealed that Otto's wife Rachel had been paralysed in a traffic accident shortly after they were married and had moved into their dream-house in the 1960s or 70s. There was an earlier throwaway comment (in the present-day) from a neighbour about the house having low-worktops in the kitchen (except they're not that low, so at that point you just assume Rachel was short), but this new information comes after we've already seen that the house has an upstairs. And no stair-lift. Otto and his wheelchair-bound wife have apparently lived for over forty years in a house where he's had to carry her upstairs - unaided - every single day, and apparently he's not then built like Hulk Hogan. And we know by now that he's got a heart condition as well. Neither of them had thought about moving to a house more suitable for their needs, they're both so in love with their dark, poky little new-build, inner-city compound-condo, even getting slightly outraged when more houses are built at the end of the street (that they can't see until they go outside, since they're facing their opposite neighbours across the dual-lane tarmacked roadway). It's like they're all living in an open prison-complex, and this script feels like it's still in second-draft... [/End] ^{[ 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: Empire Of Light

Empire Of Light
Cert: 15 / 115 mins / Dir. Sam Mendes / Trailer

And so to January, where the annual internal-committee decision that there really should be more of an effort with reviewing films walks in largely lockstep with the sort of emotionally laden awards-fodder that wore down a writer's resolve to begin with. But no matter, we are where we are. Following stints showing the routine physical and moral punishment of James Bond and the entire allied forces, Sam Mendes turns his directorial eye to one of our national ruddy treasures in Empire Of Light...

FORTUNES

We meet Hilary (Olivia Colman), a middle aged woman working at a cinema in a small seaside town*¹ in the closing days of 1980. While not exactly dilapidated, quiet business reflects the downturned fortunes of the town in general and society as a whole. When the small team is joined by Stephen (Micheal Ward), an affair is struck up between the two of them which reveals longstanding tensions but ultimately cements their friendship further.

Boasting Colman, Colin Firth and Toby Jones in its ranks, there are few more British™ films around at the moment than this. That said, Empire Of Light is not the twee chocolate-box outing the casting might suggest. All three of these are big hitters in the Drama™ stakes of course, but Mendes also restrains himself from diving headfirst into the angst-pool. Mostly. Fans of genre mainstays the Loaded Silence and Sideways Glance will not be disappointed. Tony Jones is great as ever as projectionist Norman, and Colin Firth ensures full value for money as greasy cinema manager Donald. Colman and Ward are fantastic.

The film's colour palette is a subdued as the lighting, with master cinematographer Roger Deakins indulging the quiet claustrophobia perfectly. This is counterbalanced by the delicate, sweeping score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, almost a character in its own right.

NESS

While it's essentially a portrait of Hilary over about nine months, various external social troubles intersect her already-tested soul. These are handled somewhat bluntly, but we view them from those who are affected the most directly and there's certainly little sense in trying to dial any of this down. In other hands this would have been a film about the racism, the mysoginy or the mental instability, but here they're just pieces of Hilary's larger picture - albeit an unflinching one. Likewise, Norman's occasional interplays about cinema being a magical tool of escapism in turbulent times almost feel pasted in from a different draft of the film where that was the focus. He's always a welcome of presence of course, it just feels like this version of the film shortchanges both the actor and the character somewhat.

The central thread is all executed competently (although would we expect less from this director?), even if some of the turns seem clearly signposted at times. In its most tense scenes, you can almost see Sam Mendes at the side of the set, grinning as he toys with the audience. Fair play to him. Overall, Empire Of Light is less of an A-to-B narrative and more a mood board on the fleeting nature of interpersonal relationships in a chaotic world, and the film is arguably all the more interesting for that. A 'Sunday Evening' type of thing, this is worth watching for the performances alone; perhaps not as philosophical as intended, but always thoughtful and sometimes even beautiful.

Mind you, there's a brief section in Stephen's flat where the television is on showing Wogan-era Blankety Blank featuring Norman Collier and Diana Dors. That episode was originally transmitted on 02 October 1980, and this part of the film takes place well after the New Year's Eve scene at the start, meaning the story is now in 1981. The episode in question was not repeated the following year. Well done, Sam. Film ruined.

And it is for this entirely avoidable reason that I have no choice but to award Empire Of Light the lowest possible score...

There. I said it.

*¹ This was mostly filmed in Margate (Kent), and while the town isn't specifically named as Margate, the script refers to "the South coast" and it's not not named as Margate either. Also, to anyone who's ever been to Margate this is Very Obviously Margate. That said, Empire Of Light also shows its characters getting on a regular passenger-bus that's destined for Hastings (East Sussex), a mere 70 miles away and nestled well into the next county. So who knows? ^{[ 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.

2022: Another Year In (Another Lack Of) Review

Ugh. 2022.
The apparent knock-on of The Dark Times is that global film production is still in absolute flux, thanks in no small part to online-streaming having knocked distribution into a cocked hat. I'm not saying that all the best stuff's going direct to the small screen, because from my (admittedly undocumented) experience, that's clearly not the case either.

My year began with good intentions of course, as most do. The usual ongoing cinema-reviews were going to be supplemented with catch-up pieces from home, and I'd even pick back up on my list of Can't Believe I Haven't Seen classics. Didn't fucking happen of course, since February's customary despondency fell in lockstep with the frankly 'challenging' standard of newly-released entertainment, with studios veering wildly between 'brainless crowd pleaser for crowds which still aren't there' and 'we're putting this out because even Netflix wasn't interested in throwing money into promoting it as new'.

It's not that all new films are crap.
I'm saying that seem to I care far less about them either way.

That said, my creative energies have been diverted a little (as you are possibly aware from the social-feeds of this site). The retro-TV podcast which I co-host goes from strength to strength, and a short sub-series on movies back in May/June created crossover-posts where I'd write here about them as well. Whereas the audio shows lovingly take the piss out of these celluloid gems, the written versions re-imagine them in a far darker light.

But I digress. This post is is a belated catchup on what I actually watched at the cinema. I only clocked 50 visits this year, the least number of times I've been since 2010. And hand-on-heart, this isn't just down to the choice on offer; I have resolutely refused to spend time sitting in front of movies which did not appeal from their trailers - precisely the kind of movies I'd previously have gone to see as a matter of course. If a trailer doesn't do the job of selling the film to me (the only job it has), I very much doubt I'd be surprised by the final product. Because of this, there's nothing below about Avatar, Uncharted, Three Thousand Years Of Longing, Black Adam, Secrets Of Dumbledore, Rise of Gru, Mrs Harris Going To Paris, Morbius, Strange World, Prey For The Devil and definitely nothing on the cultural fucking atrocity that appeared to be Ticket To Paradise. These might all be marvellous of course, it's my loss in not knowing.

Anyway, here's what I managed to get myself to the pictures for, that I didn't write about here...

THE FILMS

Licorice Pizza
Paul Thomas Anderson, 128m
I'm not a scholar of PTA, so the only thing I was impressed with here was his minute attention to detailing the most unlikable characters at the centre of his own film. Technically exquisite, emotionally excruciating...

Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro, 150m
Like a beautifully-filmed episode of Hustle where there's no intricate twist anywhere to be found. Blanchett's femme-fatale character is so overplayed she's basically a cartoon. GDT is better than this.

Death On The Nile
Kenneth Branagh, 121m
Okay this was always going to be a hard-sell with me as I adore both the Ustinov and Suchet versions, but Branagh ditches half the characters, does nothing with the rest and assembles a cast so bland to tell the story that the world would be a better place if he just hadn't bothered. I mean, who hires French & Saunders and then utterly wastes having French & Saunders on-set? And the moustache doesn't need an origins-flashback, you tool.

The Batman
Matt Reeves, 176m
Very decent stuff. Not my sandpit to play in, but I enjoyed this thoroughly. Loved the performances, and only felt let down by the simplistic pay-off to Riddler's character arc and the screenwriting genius of protecting Gotham's city folk from flooding by herding them into a building which is beneath ground-level. This film works best as a one-off, standalone snapshot, so naturally DC are going to make more...

Phantom Of The Open
Craig Roberts, 102m
Sunday afternoon film. Great cast, decent scripting and solid performances, but can't overcome the hurdle of its own tweeness.

The Duke
Roger Michell, 95m
Was on standby for eye-rolling levels of cinematic saccharine, but found this surprisingly enjoyable due to it having a properly crafted storyline.

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
Tom Gormican, 107m
If you think the idea of Nicholas Cage playing Nicholas Cage in a movie about Nicholas Cage is exciting, innovative or hilarious, you are going to love this movie. I mean it's basically fine, but the central conceit wears thin pretty quickly, and after that it's just another Ferrell/Wahlberg action comedy with a different label. Consistently entertaining, but far too in love with itself.

Operation Mincemeat
John Madden, 122m
A timely reminder for us here in Blighty that the winning team in the Second World War achieved victory despite having some unlikable arseholes in its ranks, not because of that. Madden's film is too playfully throwaway for Saturday night historical-drama territory and too introverted and acidic for Sunday afternoons. Not a total loss, but the cast are lost with a script still in its second-draft.

The Lost City
Aaron Nee, 112m
An all-star action rom-com, written in caps-lock and painted in neon? Yeah, I was surprised I loved it as well. The cast are committed, this never takes itself seriously and is a better film for that. An unexpected highlight of the year.

The Northman
Robert Eggers, 131m
Takes itself too seriously. Visually dark and tonally linear. Eggers is better than this (The VVitch, The Lighthouse), although I suspect his cast really aren't...

Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Jeff Fowler, 122m
Like a lot of movies, this sequel could never re-capture what made its predecessor a pleasant, lightning-in-a-bottle surprise. It's fine; check-the-boxes, straight-to-video fare which is only intended for an audience who are into spotting Easter-eggs over an actual story...

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Sam Raimi, 121m
The closest the MCU have/will come to making an outright horror flick. There are pacing, plotting and performance issues and I loved this anyway. Certainly the best it could possibly be without Scott Derrickson at the helm, but a beautiful continuation of his 2016 work.

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Daniels, 139m
Not feeling the love for this. Some moments of audience-baiting genius (subtitled rocks), but spends far too much time being pleased with itself for an arthouse mashup of Brazil and Jet Li's The One...

Men
Alex Garland, 100m
Nice filmmaking, shame about the story. The performances and visual crafting here are outright beautiful, just don't expect the screenplay to have any meaning other than what's ham-fistedly reeled out in its final moments.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Sam Raimi, 121m
Back to this one for a second-pass (a rarity this year), revelling in Raimi's revelling in the undead.

The Black Phone
Scott Derrickson, 99m
Very strong performances (this, from someone who usually detests Ethan Hawke) and visual design, and a weirdly flawed narrative where one half of it is compelling and the other is utterly needless other than changing the scenery. Should probably have written about this because I have issues with the aspects which are holding back what should be a great movie. Is this really what Derrickson bailed out of Doctor Strange for..?

Thor: Love & Thunder
Taika Waititi, 114m
Despite the chronic mis-casting of Christian Bale bringing DC energy to a Marvel character and wondering why his performance falls flat on its arse, I absolutely loved this. Okay it hasn't got the flow of Ragnarok, but I don't think anyone realistically expected it to. And yet I didn't go back and see this again during its run, unheard of for Legacy-Marvel. Suspect that has more to do with me in 2022 than the film, though.

Bullet Train
David Leitch, 121m
Film of the year, there I said it. It's messy, it's too long and it's not sure who its main character is supposed to be, but Bullet Train is very bright, very fast and very silly. Like Guy Ritchie directing a Deadpool movie. Full ruddy marks.

Nope
Jordan Peele, 125m
Maybe it's a first-world problem to expect a movie from a provenly-brilliant writer/director to have a coherent narrative and structure, but Nope is a mish-mash of interesting ideas which haven't been developed properly, dumped out in this form because no one at the studio had the cojones to tell Peele to go back and fix it. If this film had come from any other director it would have been utterly roasted, and deservedly so.

Bullet Train
David Leitch, 121m
This was still on, so why wouldn't I go and see it again? Joyous.

Fisherman's Friends: One And All
Meg Leonard / Nick Moorcroft, 112m
Better than it has any right to be and nowhere near good enough to have been green-lit in the first place. The soundtrack is still superb, the scenery is still gorgeous, but that's not enough the second time round.

Nope
Jordan Peele, 125m
Just to make sure. Yeah, I was sure the first time.

Bodies Bodies Bodies
Halina Reijn, 90m
Okay my comparative-pool is smaller than most this year, but this is hands-down the worst film on the list. 94 minutes of mumbling, shrieking and hand-held cameras in the dark. A couple of interesting shots, but I'm actually slightly impressed with how relentlessly awful it is.

The Invitation
Jessica M. Thompson, 101m
Hammy, overcooked, and features some of the very worst British Person Dialogue Written By Someone Who Is Not British™ you have ever heard. But it's got the fun swagger of a decent mid-90s vampire romp. I've certainly seen far worse.

Top Gun
Tony Scott, 111m
First time I'd seen this since the late 80s, first time ever in a cinema. And I don't care what people say, Top Gun is a demonstrably bad film. Deplorable characters, next to no story, just a series of loud events for the best part of two hours while people who like the sound of engines tell themselves they're fans of cinema now. Seriously, I almost walked out...

Top Gun: Maverick
Joseph Kosinski, 131m
...which is why I was so surprised when I enjoyed this immediately afterward. The characters are still cardboard at best, and the fixation with afterburners and destroying what's left of my low-frequency hearing still remains, and the story (such as it is) is basically the Death Star trench-run, but I had fun with this. I'll never intentionally watch it again, but I had fun.

Fall
Scott Mann, 107m
Beautifully shot, well assembled but appallingly written. Fall should have ended after 25 minutes with a Wilhelm Scream. All I'm saying is, this film was better when it was an episode of Bottom.

Bullet Train
David Leitch, 121m
Yes, again.

Hatching
Hanna Bergholm, 87m
As social, coming-of-age metaphors go it's incredibly on the nose, and structurally far from perfect. But for sheer bloody-minded, pent-up, what-the-fuckery Hatching is very solid.

See How They Run
Tom George, 94m
Wes Anderson-lite, and there's something missing in the 'togetherness' of the film as a whole, but it's satisfying and entertaining enough for casual fans of Agatha Christie.

Jaws
Steven Spielberg, 124m
Yeah, it's not great. Sure it's iconic an'all, and obviously worked better for a 1975 audience, but I found the characters to be almost entirely one-note in a story which is grindingly linear. I say this because I know for a fact that the novel has layers which just aren't represented here. Yeah, this and Top Gun. It's almost as if 'a shark' and 'a plane' aren't quite enough for me on their own...

Smile
Parker Finn, 115m
A few superb performances fail to save this social-horror involving a tag based curse which takes seven terrifying-vision-filled days to kill its victim. Well done guys, you've invented The Ring a mere 24 years, 1 reboot and 8 sequels after it already existed.

The Lost King
Stephen Frears
Sunday afternoon. It's fine. Nothing to disappoint, nothing to shock, exactly what you expect. If anything, it's Sally Hawkins I feel sorry for, this is all on her CV...

Halloween Ends
David Gordon Green, 111m
Solid cinematography and a few nice set-pieces, but this is a tonal car-crash of a movie. Narratively and emotionally incoherent, this feels like it's been directed by three people, none of whom have met one another.

The Banshees Of Inishirin
Martin McDonagh, 109m
Intriguing and bleak in equal measure. At one point I was literally crying with laughter, and by the end I was expecting the cinema staff to be handing out leaflets for Dignitas. Wouldn't go so far as to say I enjoyed this, but I certainly appreciated the fuck out of it.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Ryan Coogler, 161m
Torn between acting as an industry-tribute to Chadwick Boseman (which it does very well, when it remembers), and dragging out a b-list story with badly chosen characters and GCSE moralising (I think you can tell how that goes). To be fair, this entertained me all the time it was on and as soon as I stepped out into the foyer I knew I didn't need to watch it again. Also, no post-credits scene: what the fuck, Marvel? Don't get all 'sombre and respectful actually' after a movie where you had the gall to bring the atrocious Sub-Mariner on to the stage...

Confess, Fletch
Greg Mottola, 95m
By no means perfect (more a series of sketches than an actual narrative), but very entertaining in an old-school, disposable, 1980s action-farce kind of a way.

The Menu
Mark Mylod, 107m
Plays like a Shyamalan movie at every single turn, until the crescendo when you realise the twist is that the film is going to do exactly what it said it would. For this reason: decent.

She Said
Maria Schrader, 128m
The template for this 'January Oscar-Bait movies for people who love current affairs but apparently don't watch the news' outing is tried and tested now, but I'll happily admit I was surprised by how fucking good this is. Always justly furious, never preaching or condescending. A masterclass in social filmmaking.

Living
Oliver Hermanus, 102m
Yes it's twee, yes it's meandering, yes it plays like a cinematic mood-board rather than a story, but Bill Nighy raises his game above autopilot and just about saves this.

Bones And All
Luca Guadagnino, 125m
Weirdly decent considering how much the director and the cast seem determined to not let the audience enjoy the story or any of its players. Too drab for a horror, too visceral for a YA drama, but its compelling characters make this worth a watch.

Violent Night
Tommy Wirkola, 112m
Sure, it's an r-rated Home Alone and the storyline is average at best, but Wirkola and his cast embrace the live-action slapstick in a way that's impossible not to enjoy. And the absolute, nailed-on stroke of genius that makes this really work is that the film remains committed to Santa being real throughout (which of course, he is).

The Muppet Christmas Carol
Brian Henson, 89m
Fully restored version, remastered and with When Love Is Gone back in there. This very well may be the single greatest film of all time, and bear in mind I say that as someone with three Star Wars tattoos and none of The Muppets...

The Silent Twins
Agnieszka Smoczynska, 113m
It's not every true-story that's got the balls to haphazardly show its unintelligibly dialogued protagonists as inherently unlikable. Awful. Then because there's no story, there's no ending - the film just finishes as things stop happening. Absolute scenes, although it's still nowhere near as bad as Bodies Bodies Bodies.

Nocebo
Lorcan Finnegan, 97m
Solid performances from the central cast crumble as soon as the film cack-handedly telegraphs that it's going to half-inch the sweatshop subplot from that shit Steve Coogan film. Everything afterward is precisely what it deserves to be.

The Pale Blue Eye
Scott Cooper, 128m
Languorously pacing proves to be this film's greatest ally, as a story that's just on the right side of batshit-crazy builds the atmosphere of paranoid hyper-reality required to make it work. A lovely mood-piece for the cold winter months, this will be largely (and wrongly) overlooked.

THE CONCLUSION

Whatever. 2022 has felt - overall - grindingly average, and my heart goes out to the cinema industry when this is all they've got to attract customers to spend money. I haven't cancelled my Unlimited card, but this is the first year I've thought very seriously about it on more than one occasion. Other than Indiana Jones, there are currently no 2023 movies which I'm actually excited about seeing. And I'm not ready to bin this blog off completely yet (if I was, it'd all just disappear), but I need to formulate a quicker way of writing about movies. This is the one aspect of blogging which I've got worse at over the years, with my obsession over formatting outweighing spontaneous efficiency.

I'd like to say reviews are going to pick back up, but that's precisely the sort of thing I always come out with at the end of December. Let's see. No promises, no regrets.

Let's all just agree to never do 2022 again...

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.