Johnny English Strikes Again: DVD Review

Johnny English Strikes Again: DVD Review

How you will feel about Johnny English Strikes Again largely relies on how you feel about Rowan Atkinson's inept spy.

Because, to be frank, this latest which sees English pulled out of retirement after a series of cyber attacks exposes all England's current secret agents, doesn't exactly do much to shake up the Johnny English franchise at all.

But what it does do, is allow Atkinson once again to showcase his rubber-faced propensity for physical comedy, like some kind of clown from a bygone era channeling Mr Bean and a James Bond cross.

However, much as it may pain some with its corny execution and its entirely predictable turn of plot and surprise, Johnny English Strikes Again is actually refreshingly retro in its delivery of sight gags, and silliness, both of which are dispatched by director Kerr and lead star with relative unflappable aplomb.

The resurgence of the old school is apparent throughout, both from the physical prop based humour served up by Atkinson to a series of running gags about English being out of touch from the rest of the world - from the advent of iPhones to EVs, to gags about having to sign a health and safety release for use of a gun to a brilliantly written sequence using VR and real life, there's a real feeling of 60s Get Smart mentality about this, rather than the self-knowing, self-referential Austin Powers.

Even Harry Potter gets a nod, with English now serving as a teacher in a spy school, awarding house points for to the best little would-be spies.

And largely, thanks to the quick pace, it works - though in parts, it does feel like a series of sketches thinly pulled together by some overall plot. But you can't deny the childish glee of what transpires in Johnny English Strikes Again, only the hardest of hearts would fail to be moved by the goofy unending silliness of it all, even if it does feel like the world's moved on since the 2011 sequel, Johnny English Reborn.

It may be a bit beneath those who can't see past their own snideness, but to be frank, Johnny English Strikes Again doesn't care for your snobbishness, or for a strong script or for the world which has turned repeatedly in its wake. In many ways, it's the antithesis of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, but ironically, both can co-exist at opposite ends of the spectrum.

It exists purely to amuse, not to score Oscars, and while it's affable and forgettable, its nostalgia for an England of yesteryear and a spy world of inherent silliness rather than Bond-style pomposity means that it feels like a cinematic cuddly jumper, well-executed and comforting - even if it does feel like an 80s TV sketch show throwback. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

A quick note to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Who Year.

Thanks again for the support of this website, and a here's wishing you all a brilliant festive period, whatever you're doing.

The Favourite: Film Review

The Favourite: Film Review

Cast: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Building on the comic unease that's helped Yorgos Lanthimos carve a career and saw him hit a more mainstream audience with The Lobster, The Favourite emerges late in the year as both a potential award winner and best of the year, thanks to its delicious and devilish nastiness.

Set in the court of Queen Anne (Colman, delivering on multiple fronts and without ever missing a beat) in 18th Century England, it's a story of rivalry and a period piece that's clothed in black humour.
Anne is frail, and Lady Sarah (a curt and crisp Weisz) rules the country in her stead; but when her cousin Abigail (Stone) enters the court looking for work, Lady Sarah finds her world unsettled and the power dynamics changed forever.

The Favourite is a combination of a triptych of actors at their absolute pinnacle, dealing with material that's superlative.

Boiling down a microcosm of social interaction over a two hour period, filtering it through a prism of cutting dialogue and dynamics and then playing it out with gusto, The Favourite's acerbic touches make for greatly rewarding times in the cinema.

Lanthimos' use of fisheye lenses and whip-pan shots within the court are dizzying and exciting, a call to arms for how period movies could be presented.

But it's his actors who make this film what it is. From the fact all of the men within the film are varying degrees of buffoons to Olivia Colman's utterly compelling turn from the start, The Favourite is a delicacy worth devouring.

Balanced with off-kilter humour, and moments that drip with double meaning, Lanthimos builds an atmosphere of uncertainty from the frailties of humanity, picking at insecurities like scabs, and exposing the wounds below.

The central trio are more than worthy of praise, with the cameras lingering on moments that offer glimpses into what's bubbling deep below. This is more than a film that delights in the details, it's one which sees Stone, Weisz and Colman utterly deliver on their characters by offering so much with so little.

Colman in particular delivers a powerhouse performance of pain and conflict, as gout debilitates her and leaves her at the whims of those around her. But she has a fire too when provoked, and Lanthimos' desire to showcase it adds to the power. Stone and Weisz make for delicious sparring partners as the power dynamics shift, and the claws come out.

But The Favourite is more than a film exposing female insecurities and weaknesses; it's a portrait of strength under fire, and a towering movie that is commanding from beginning to end.

Spider-Man: Into The SpiderVerse: Film Review

Spider-Man: Into The SpiderVerse: Film Review

Vocal cast: Shameik Moore, Chris Pine, Jake Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Hailee Steinfeld, Kathryn Hahn, Mahershala Ali, Liev Schreiber
Director: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Another Spider-Man origin movie, I hear you cry?

Well, let's be honest, you've not seen a Spider-Man story like this slice of animation excellence.
Centring on Miles Morales, a mixed-race, relatively normal 13-year-old kid (voiced with heart by Shameik Moore) from Brooklyn, this computer animated tale spins a story when Morales is bit by a radioactive spider while underground with his uncle Aaron (Ali).

Things are further complicated for Morales when he sees Spider-Man killed by Kingpin (Schreiber) as an out-of-control experiment threatens Manhattan. As if that wasn't bad enough, Morales finds himself landed with another group of Spider-Men from different universes pulled into the conflict by Kingpin's quest...

If the multi-verse aspect of this film looks confusing, it's not. And to be frank, it's the least enticing part of Spider-Man: Into The SpiderVerse, a film which smashes the visual medium to pieces with originality and flair.

Using 3D animation on 2D backgrounds takes a little to get used to, but to anyone who's played anything from the Telltale Games back catalogue, the format and concept is very familiar.

Except what the directors also do is use the visuals and the tenets of comic books to induce a kind of sensory overload throughout. Visually, this film has style, and really does much to redefine the comic book animated movie genre, much like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm did years ago.

It starts with a voiceover saying "Let's do this one last time," a tacit nod to how often we've heard this story, but with clever twists, that same voiceover is given a thrilling new spin.

With meta touches and cheeky nods, as well as a heartfelt ode to Stan Lee, Spider-Man: Into The SpiderVerse may lose some of its emotional way in the final run, and may be a little long, but it's a thrilling reinvigoration of a story told a multiple amount of times, and a positively dazzling reinvention of how comic book movies should be translated to the big screen.

Searching: DVD Review

Searching: DVD Review

Searching taps into the digital world we live in and the price we pay for living online.

A solid and empathetic Cho stars as David Kim, whose life is changed when his daughter goes missing. As he tries desperately to track her down, with the help of a detective (Will and Grace star Debra Messing). he discovers he knows little to nothing about who his daughter really is...

Searching has a gimmick - it's a smart digital film thriller played out with everything unfolding via a computer screen. Admittedly, the contrivances come piled high in the back third of the film, threatening to topple the house of cards that's piled high, but there's a lot to digest beforehand.

Chaganty opens with a clever digital montage of the family, a reminder of how much we catalogue online these days, and how computers are so much about our memories as well as the RAM within. In many ways, it's a digitised version of the opening of Up, but for the Facebook generation.

If the gimmick is smartly executed by digital native Chaganty, it's also humanised by Cho's performance. Anchored with a turn that's both empathetic and gripping, Cho's desperation feels real as he plays off a screen and Face time conversations. The anguish etched on his face is never over-played, and he holds the story strongly.

Chaganty spins the thread as far as he can, but the back stages of the film feel like they have piled up the coincidences a little too highly, and while the smarter technical edges have reminiscences of Kristen Stewart's Personal Shopper, Searching always constantly feels gripping when it needs to.

An outlandish twist seals the deal for Searching, but that aside, the film's desire to provide an emotional rollercoaster for the large part works - it may not be perfect, but it's a thrilling tale of the lengths parents will go to and the cautionary fact we're all slowly becoming disconnected in a digital world.  

Ralph Breaks The Internet: Film Review

Ralph Breaks The Internet: Film Review

Vocal Cast: John C Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Gal Gadot, Bill Hader, Taraji P Henson, Alan Tudyk
Directors: Phil Johnston, Rich Moore

Mashing elements of The Emoji Movie and a riff on friendship, Ralph Breaks The Internet's deep dive into internet nostalgia, in truth, seems more aimed at an adult audience than kids enamoured with the sugar rush of Wreck-It Ralph.

When someone breaks the controller of the Sugar Rush arcade machine, Ralph and Vanellope spring into action to try and secure the part from eBay via the Internet. But the clock's ticking and the machine faces being permanently turned off.

It's not that Ralph Breaks The Internet is a bad film - in truth, its ode to friendship and the central relationship between Ralph and Vanellope means that it keeps you engaged and makes you forget that it was six years since the last one.

But it does feel shallow and episodic throughout, with a great deal of Disney product placement within. And to be honest, it does feel like the idea of parodying the internet has already been done in many ways with The Emoji Movie - leading to a feeling that mocking viral videos, memes and internet fads feels more tired than it should do.

Central to Ralph Breaks The Internet, is a 10 minute section involving the Disney princesses which led this reviewer to feeling majorly conflicted.

The bastardising of the Disney canon is fair enough, but it seems unnecessarily cheap to mock the princesses who have helped the company make so much money, and have left them so ingrained in our culture. It's almost as if the meta-touches are not needed here, and some targets should be off-limits.

The messages come thick and fast at the end of Ralph Breaks The Internet, and with no subtlety whatsoever, but given one takes on the male toxicity of the internet before devolving into a Stay Puft marshmallow man / King Kong showdown, it's a nice, albeit sledgehammered, touch about bullying and the darker side of the world.

Ultimately, Ralph Breaks The Internet is a solid time at the cinema, albeit a forgettable one.

Its ode to friendship and letting go is commendable, but obvious from the beginning, but to be honest, Reilly and Silverman overcome such lazy tropes and obvious touches with performances that have warmth and emotional depth.

They're cool to hang out with thanks to the nostalgia and some of the gags, but the novelty may be wearing off a little quicker than expected.

Leave No Trace: DVD Review

Leave No Trace: DVD Review

A strong piece about deep connection, a symbiotism and subsequent disconnection, Granik's follow up to Winter's Bone is mesmerising in its minimalism.

McKenzie and Foster play father and daughter, Tom and Will. We first encounter them walking through the woods, and it soon becomes clear that this is where they live - to outsiders, it's less than idyllic, but for this pair, who seem unnaturally close, it's perfection.

Certainly for Tom, it appears to be all she's known - but all that changes when she's accidentally seen one day by a passer-by and authorities are alerted.

The pair are picked up by social services, and it's here problems develop for the father and daughter.

To say more about the adaptation of Peter Rock's 2009 book My Abandonment is to spoil what unfurls - and certainly, there's more of an air of mystery in this piece that eats away at you as the film goes on.

Hints are dropped both in moments of dialogue but also in actions - primarily via Foster's edginess, and the decision not to reveal everything immediately. It's this pervasive sense of mystery which soaks through Leave No Trace's DNA which makes such a rewarding watch.

What Granik achieves is a feeling of capturing the margins of society in hints rather than direct exposition and action. Coupled with two naturalistic turns from Foster and McKenzie, the film's power lies in its stillness and its sense of connection.

Initially, everything seems fine between the father and daughter - and the film's suspicions are raised by societal obsessions over motivations of why they live in the woods. It's notable that everything that goes wrong in this is due to external circumstances and intrusions - and certainly Foster's performance of internalised pain and struggle is deeply affecting.

Equally, McKenzie's turn as Tom is something else. She manages to affect great subtle change in Tom's arc, and her journey feels like the full gamut has been reached by the end. However, her confusion, occasional fiery burns, and her strength are key traits to Tom, never once overplayed and ultimately deeply empathetic.

While the film's suffused in mystery, the bond is resolutely human and co-dependant in many ways.

"How important are their judgments" is a line uttered early on, but it's one which forms the mantra of what Granik's trying to achieve here - everything is viewed from other's perspective, the inner sanctity of Tom and Will's bond subject to repeated scrutiny, and due to this, ultimately Tom's own scrutiny comes into play, setting in motion a chain of usually normal events that feel loaded with sadness.

Along with the reflection of an America split and marginalised (as briefly glimpsed throughout), Granik's pared back direction and wondrous cinematography helps Leave No Trace gain its growing atmospheric sense of dread.

But yet, Granik is also wise enough to present those from the outside world who interact with the duo as normal people, blessed with both empathy and a desire to help - making their discord and disconnect even more heart-wrenching to endure and watch.

It's compelling in extremis, and executed with such naturalistic edges, that it almost feels intrusive to watch. Very much the antithesis to Captain Fantastic, and although endowed with similar themes, Leave No Trace has a quiet power from beginning to end.

It's wondrous to behold, with much of the apparent coming-of-age tale leaving lots to unpack long after the lights have gone up and Foster and McKenzie's performances have been marvelled at.