Month: August 2022

Spin Me Round (2022)

Rating Unrated in US (UK tbd)
Length 1h44
Release 19.08.2022 in US (UK tbd)
Director Fred Baena
About A woman wins an all-expenses-paid trip to a company’s gorgeous “institute” outside of Florence, and also the chance to meet the restaurant chain’s wealthy and charismatic owner. She finds a different adventure than the one she imagined.
Moon: no moon sighting
Where to Watch: TBD
Trailer:

The Good

  • When the humour is good, it’s genius. That is mainly thanks to the ever loveable Zach Woods. He’s more like The Office Zach Woods than his Silicon Valley alter ego, but much more likeable than either.
  • Honestly, the only way I tolerated this movie was telling myself it was a GLOW special in which Allison Brie was playing Ruth Wilder playing Amber. The starting music and retro title sequence sold that to me at the start. It allowed a lot of the shoddy to get past me before it was too late.
  • Allison Brie cannot really be faulted. She handles the role really well and makes the wooing as believable as it can be. Her chemistry with Aubrey Plaza?! They really should have just ran with that.

The Bad

  • It’s a very busy film that, with a few tweaks, could have been a grand ensemble. By tweaks, I mean use the characters as more than plot devices. Molly Shannon, for example, goes from Sadness (yes, capitalised for the blue emotion) to wackadoodle for absolutely no apparent reason.
    Yes, sometimes we don’t need to know, but me? Couldn’t keep my mind from screaming “How the fuck was she a manager?” and wondering what like in *that* branch was like.
  • I wish the film started with Amber arriving in Italy. I don’t feel like I learned anything from the opening 15-ish minutes centred around her life. It doesn’t endear me to her any more than casting Allison Brie in the role does.

The Ugly

  • The plot was so haphazard and non existent, I’m pretty certain about 90% of the “script” was improvised. Badly. Painfully.
    No amount of Allison Brie being her amazing self was ever going to save this film that was having a massive identity crisis. The comedy was too cringe inducing and the romance was none existent.
  • The biggest problem for me was the sinister undertones of the first half of the movie. They’re there. They’re under and toney. They’re also underwhelming. I think as an audience, we’re also meant to get swept away by the “romance”.
    It’s really hard to when your watching the protagonist get served to the leading male on a plater. The lack of chemistry doesn’t help. Hell, maybe I’m a cynic, but I was never sold.
  • Finally, what the actual fuck happened to Aubrey Plaza?!
    She just fucks off for the last third of the movie and there’s zero resolution with the character. I hope to the celluloid gods there’s an alternate ending because that is the only way this film can redeem it’s romance genre cred.

Final Thoughts

I think it was trying to be satirical and this decades answer to Office Space, but lost itself in production. Or maybe up the creative’s ass! Either way, it’s nowhere near as clever, or original as it thinks it is.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rating 12a
Length 2h11
Release 27.05.2022
Director Joseph Kosinski
About After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him.
Moon: no moon sighting
Where to Watch: Amazon Prime and Paramount+ from 24/08/2022
Trailer:

The Good

  • Miles Teller! There are so many levels of perfect to his casting. As the biological son of Goose, he’s spot on. As the boy who will have been raised by Maverick, he’s got it down. The mannerisms, the anger (that flush! I hope to god that’s real and not some CGI deep-fake shit because I identified with that anger tell so hard) and the chemistry with everyone he worked with was what had me invested.
    The final act had me wishing we’d gotten there sooner and spent the majority of the run time with just him and Cruise.
  • Bashir Sakahuddin’s turn as Hondo was understated and quite possibly my favourite part of the movie. The lines he gets to give out are gold.
  • It is a visually stunning film. The first movie struggled to keep my attention during flight sequences, but this?! There were so many shots I’d hang on a wall.
  • Tom Cruise knows how to entertain. I’m not just talking about his role in this movie as Maverick. He’s probably the only old school “star” able to command a box office. He has a brand and he’s used all his power to get this film made and into the cinema.
  • Val Kilmer and Iceman. Nope, that’s all your getting.
  • That said, my final note must be about Cruise and the character of Maverick. It’s a feat to have a character stay true yet not have washed out by the time we pick up the story 30 years later. Absolutely loved how it was within the realms of possibility.

The Bad

  • I personally could have done without the romance. It undoes the resolution of the first movie. I only couldn’t tell you if it was better or worse that they made a new character rather than have Jennifer Connelly play Charlie.
    Don’t get me wrong Connelly, and the character of Peggy, was decent. I just felt that it didn’t add anything.
  • The film really was trying to hard to recreate the conflict of the original. Unfortunately Hangman is too much of a unabashed dickwad throughout the film that it doesn’t have that same feel.
    I either needed a very different dynamic, or I needed something that breaks him down and humbles him and I’m not talking about not being picked.
    In fact, you know what would have been good? Keep the final act involvement of Hangman, but have him choke out during one of the final training missions.

The Ugly

  • I think I’ve spent too much of my life worried I’d become my mother, that I’ve become my father. Mainly because this movie is just a retelling of Star Wars: A New Hope.
    Seriously though?! There’s a good chance you were already thinking it, but if you weren’t, watch it again and tell me I’m wrong?!
  • Where was all the gay undertones that the original was so famous for?! My lecturer didn’t write a paper on the homoerotic coding of Top Gun for Top Gun: Maverick to do us so dirty!

Final Thoughts

I did not expect to like this film, let alone like it as much as I did. Issues aside, it’s a fairly decent movie. Dare I say the “blockbuster” has a pulse after all?!