Netflix And Chill: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

It's time for another Benoit Blanc mystery written and directed by Rian Johnson and this time around the murder mystery has repercussions that affect a small local church. There are more twists and turns, there's another stacked cast (although, with respect, maybe not as stacked as the previous two movies), and Craig feels as if he has become completely comfortable in a role that has most successfully allowed him to move further away from under the shadow of Bond. Is it any good though?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that Wake Up Dead Man is perhaps the most interesting and substantial Benoit Blanc mystery yet, but it's not necessarily as much fun as the previous instalments in the series.

A Monsignor is the murder victim this time, but he also might have enough belief in the idea of resurrection to make his death less permanent than some others (hence the title). The main suspects are a younger priest with a troubled past, loyal members of a small congregation, and . . . some divine retribution?

I expected to have fun with Wake Up Dead Man. I expected to enjoy the cast, which also includes sizeable roles for Josh O'Connor, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Daryl McCormack, Cailee Spaeny, and Mila Kunis. What I didn't expect was a film that mixed a murder mystery with an exploration of organised religion, personal faith, and the good and bad aspects of both. Some of the cast members may suffer slightly as they wait on the sidelines for some of the runtime, and Blanc himself doesn't come into the movie until about the 40-45 minute mark, but it's impressive to see Johnson use the template for such a thoughtful and insightful conversation about how people can be guided, or misguided, by someone, or something, helping to direct their moral compass.

Both O'Connor and Brolin are superb in their roles, the former quiet and contemplative while the latter is keen to deliver some fire and brimstone fury in sermons designed to drive away those he disapproves of, and Close, Washington, and Scott are the highlights from the rest of the ensemble, although everyone does good work. Then you have Craig, having even more fun this time around with a character who is more comfortable in his own skin than anyone else onscreen. 

Johnson knows that he has people onside by this point. That gives him the space and time to wander around some new territory, always checking back in often enough to show us what is happening with the murder investigation. Patience is rewarded, no questions are left unanswered, and Johnson makes effective use of our goodwill without squandering it.

Some have already stated that this is their favourite Benoit Blanc mystery yet. I'm sure there are others who were disappointed. I'm also sure that it has at least done enough, in terms of audience numbers and conversations, to make a fourth outing very possible. Johnson seems to be very happy helming these, Craig seems to be just as happy to star in them, and viewers tend to be happy with the end result. I'm already curious as to what song title will be used next. 

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Back In Action (2025)

A Netflix action comedy that stars Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, the latter coaxed back out of retirement for it, Back In Action is the kind of glossy entertainment that seems designed to upset cinephiles while entertaining many who just want an easy option to start watching on a Saturday night. While it is silly, and very slick, it's also quite a bit better than the trailer would have you think, thanks to some fun casting and enjoyable running gags.

Foxx and Diaz play Matt and Emily, a couple of talented spies who end up in a relationship. Their latest mission goes spectacularly awry just after Emily tells Matt that she is pregnant. They decide to get out of the spying game, knowing that both could be assumed dead anyway, and start over for the sake of a calm and normal family life. Fifteen years later, that seems to be happening. They have two children, Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson), and no worries, aside from how their kids view them. Alice is in a bit of a rebellious teen phase. Leo enjoys his videogames and just embracing his nerdiness. Then there's an incident, and Matt and Emily end up being shown around the internet, which brings trouble to their doorstep. 

There are certain things that you can expect from this type of fare nowadays. It's very easy to spot who the villain is. There will always be someone shown in a bad light who has something in their history that puts a different spin on things. At least one big stunt sequence will make use of technology that can make it seem as if our main stars are actually in the thick of the action (I miss the days when you could point out the huge differences between actors and the stunt performers who would take over for the more dangerous moments). Oh, and everything set up in the opening sequence will be brought back into the plot for the third act.

Considering that standard checklist, Seth Gordon and Brendan O'Brien do a decent job on this screenplay. Gordon is also the director, another role he handles well, and this is a huge step up from his last feature, Baywatch (not counting the TV movie he did back in 2018, Dan The Weatherman). It's often generally amusing, if rarely outright hilarious, and the action beats are surprisingly well-done and satisfying, if a bit prone to repeating one particular tag-team move that the main characters enjoy utilising.

Foxx and Diaz have a great rapport together, and they feel equally suited to the spy action as they do to the moments of being fretting parents. They're so good together that it almost makes you forget the fact that, once again, they can never share an onscreen kiss (because this is mainstream movie entertainment, and the USA would still be shocked to see a loving relationship that has a black man and a white woman kissing one another - sad, but true). Roberts and Jackson both do well as the children who end up majorly surprised by the skills of their parents, although the latter has a ridiculous sub-plot that makes no sense, unfairly positions him as being superior to his sister in one important way, and ultimately goes nowhere. Kyle Chandler is someone I enjoy seeing in movies, and he's fine here as the "handler" named Chuck, Andrew Scott is a British agent who is in pursuit of our leads, but also has a bit of an obsession with Diaz's character, and there are a few scenes stolen by Glenn Close and Jamie Demetriou. I'm going to mention Demetriou again because he's the person who provides most of the biggest laughs in the movie.

There are some decent tunes throughout the soundtrack, as well as a suitable score from Christopher Lennertz, and the mix of action and humour remains consistently distracting enough to help you avoid picking at any plot holes, including a huge misunderstanding of just what the Thames Barrier is used for. I had a lot of fun with this while it was on. I'm unlikely to ever rewatch it, but at least it meets that bar set for undemanding Saturday night entertainment featuring stars being stars.

7/10

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All Of Us Strangers (2024)

Whether it's conscious or not, we are all in constant dialogue with those who came before us, specifically our parents. Sometimes those conversations are satisfyingly fluid, changing as you grow up and the people around you adjust to the changing world around them. Sometimes those conversations are crystallized and kept within a snowglobe of a memory, something you think about again and again while knowing that the outcome wasn’t what you had hoped for, either because you didn’t know how to word things better or the people you were talking to weren’t quite who you hoped they were.

All Of Us Strangers explores this, allowing the central character (Adam, played by Andrew Scott) to process his memories and longing for conversations he never had with his dead parents (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) by allowing him to meet them at the age they were when they died. There’s no explanation for this, and everyone decides against overthinking it, but the chance is there for everyone to have a kind of closure that reality denied them decades ago. Meanwhile, Adam also meets a young man named Harry (Paul Mescal), someone he starts growing very close to after initially refusing his awkward attempt to enter his life.

Director Andrew Haigh has been helming great films for quite some time now, but I am tempted to hail All Of Us Strangers as his masterpiece. Based on a novel by Taichi Yamada (this isn’t the first time it has been adapted for the screen), Haigh uses the supernatural framework to look at different kinds of love, different regrets, and how people might change their lives if they realised the butterfly effect caused by many of their actions. He also crafts a delicate love story between Adam and Harry that reminds every viewer of the kind of connection we want with those we care about.

The central quartet are all quite flawless. Foy and Bell play their parts well, young enough to be open and just old enough to have some insight and wisdom (possibly, bear in mind that they might just be projections), even while their view of their son is being reframed. Mescal is a sweet and welcome presence, an apparent chance of very real hope and happiness in the here and now. Then you have Scott, a man who has found a delicate gift he doesn’t understand, but doesn’t want to mishandle or break. Scott goes through a full range of emotions here, and Haigh knows how to complement the insightful and warm script with moments that just show everything via Scott’s face. The man can deliver dialogue brilliantly, but he also knows how to often say everything without saying anything.

There’s great use of a few classic pop hits, a visual style that mixes the everyday with heightened moments that celebrate a life suddenly buoyed by love, and a potentially-divisive ending so heart-achingly beautiful that it moved me to tears as the credits started to roll and I realised that this was going to be an early contender for one of my favourite films of the year.

9/10

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Netflix And Chill: Pride (2014)

This is the kind of thing that we get every so often in British cinema. A little gem of a film that works as well as it does because of the way in which various characters manage to maintain a sense of humour in the face of overwhelming derision/hatred from others. Having finally reminded myself to give Pride a watch, my timing could not have been any better. Remember that saying about those not remembering history being doomed to repeat it? I hope more people watch Pride this year. Not only is it a wonderful and satisfying viewing experience, it's a reminder of why those being held down and pilloried by authorities should help to support one another, hence the importance of unions, and also serves as an important reminder of the attitude people used to have towards gay people, a rush to demonise someone unknown because they weren't familiar with the concept in their own life. There's a LOT that is shown in Pride that still goes on today, the only differences are the main targets.

Anyway, let's get to the crux of the tale. It's the mid-1980s. The miner's strike is taking a huge toll on small mining villages all over the country. The LGBTQ+ community are busy trying to be treated like the normal human beings they are, something about to be made even harder by the rise of AIDs (which was seen by many as a "gay disease", and I suspect many still think that way). Seeing how the UK government have directed their resources and threats towards the miners, when it had previously been so busy crusading against the imaginary gay agenda, one young man (Mark Ashton, played by Ben Schnetzer) has the idea of supporting the miners and raising some money for them. Others don't immediately see the point of his campaigning, especially as the many small towns that would have mining at the heart of them would tend to be most unwelcoming, and outright hostile, to gay people. Mark keeps at it though, eventually getting more and more people on his side, and the charity group he heads up soon start to make a positive impact on a struggling Welsh town. Dai Donovan (Paddy Considine), a main spokesman for the miners in that town, is very happy to meet and thank them, and invites them to be thanked by the rest of the townspeople. The rest of the townspeople, however, aren't as eager to admit that they are receiving a lifeline from the gay community.

While director Matthew Warchus may not have an extensive filmography, he tends to aim for quality over quantity, and while this is the first screenplay by writer Stephen Beresford to be made into a film, Pride couldn't feel much more comfortable and assured. A large part of that is down to the casting, which I will get to shortly, but Beresford knows how to make the most of the laugh out loud lines that he intersperses throughout the film, Warchus moves viewers swiftly through the timeline of events without giving anyone whiplash, and the whole thing manages to maintain a constant bittersweet tone throughout, especially if you have any idea of how things ended for the main characters. This is a "feel good" film, but that's an impressive achievement when you consider just how many things aren't necessarily going to lead to a happy ending.

Is it all factually accurate? I doubt it. I'd imagine that the heart of the story is true, and some liberties have been taken to give us a better mix of characters and some dialogue that emphasises what everyone was striving for, be it tolerance from others or an ongoing attempt to smash through the iron fist of Margaret Thatcher. Yes, it helps that this often aligns with my own political leanings, and it's a very political film that offsets that with a focus on the humans at the heart of the machine being turns by cogs of government and the law, but it's hard to think of anyone watching this and absolutely hating it. 

Schnetzer is fantastic as the lightning rod for everything that unfolds, helped by the fact that he is surrounded by so many familiar faces. The Welsh accents are all fairly well executed, and you cannot go wrong with a cast that includes Considine, Imelda Staunton, and Bill Nighy, all of whom are doing absolutely fantastic work, and all of whom have fun with their new allies. Menna Trussler and Jessica Gunning are also wonderful, being inspired to do a bit more with their time as they see how the LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) live their lives, while Lisa Palfrey gets her teeth into the role of Maureen Barry, a character used as a personification of the intolerance and ingratitude that the LGSM come up against. George MacKay is Joe Cooper, a young man getting to grips with his own sexuality, and the film is helped by often placing viewers in a position to see his nervousness giving way to a sense of purpose and happiness, Dominic West steals a few moments, playing the flamboyant and carefree Jonathan, and there's also excellent work from Andrew Scott, Joe Gilgun, and Faye Marsay, the latter two portraying other core members of the LGSM.

What else can I say? There's a very good soundtrack, featuring a number of songs you'd expect to accompany this story, a hefty emotional weight to everything, and a real feeling of, well, pride in watching what can be accomplished by people connecting and working together instead of letting their lives be defined by what makes them different from one another. And there are few things funnier than Imelda Staunton's sharp retort to someone trying to be a smartass while she drives a bus donated to the community by the LGSM, but I won't spoil it by quoting it here. Enjoy it for yourself, and do it as soon as you can.

 8/10

Here is a link to Switchboard (the LGBT+ helpline).
And here is a link to the website for the Durham Miner's Association.

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Prime Time: Catherine Called Birdy (2022)

England in medieval times. It isn’t great fun. Especially if you’re a 14-year-old girl being prepped for marriage. Catherine aka Birdy (Bella Ramsey) is in that exact position. She doesn’t want to get married, especially to the kind of people who come courting, but her parents (particularly her father, played by Andrew Scott) need her to marry someone who will add a substantial amount to the family coffers.

Directed by Lena Dunham, who also adapted the source material, by Karen Cushman, into screenplay form, Catherine Called Birdy is a superb, pointed, comedy that uses the time period and attitudes to make a number of pertinent points alongside many moments that should give most viewers a hearty laugh. It’s a film about the ripples of change that can come from one person holding tight to their feminist ideals, but it is also about bonds of friendship, the good and bad aspects of being part of a family unit, and trying to come up with the most enjoyably florid insults.

If you don’t want to see a period film full of anachronisms (in terms of the film technique, sensibilities and self-awareness, and reappropriated modern music) then you should avoid this altogether, but I would recommend it to everyone else. It has enough of a proper narrative to join together every enjoyable “episode”, it manages to sneak some real drama alongside all of the humour, and the cast is chock full of great people doing great work.

Ramsey is perfect in the lead role, continuing to capitalise on her youthful appearance to convincingly play child characters with adult strength and/or smarts. Scott is also very good, a dad who can make lame jokes one minute and angrily lay down the rules that need to be obeyed in the next, and his scenes with Billie Piper (also excellent, playing the role of Catherine’s mother) show a warmth and love that many people would like to aim for. Paul Kaye is an unpleasant, but very rich, suitor, and is lots of fun, and there are great moments for Lesley Sharp (nanny), Ralph Ineson (a helpful peasant), Sophie Okonedo (a rich woman who marries Catherine’s Uncle George, played by Joe Alwyn), and Isis Hainsworth (Catherine’s BFF).

I haven’t seen a lot of Dunham’s work (and being unimpressed by Tiny Furniture meant that I wouldn’t rush out to check the rest of her C.V.), but this film is good enough to make me much more willing to check out other projects she decides to helm. I might even belatedly watch “Girls” one day, over a decade after everyone else was won over by it.

8/10

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1917 (2019)

Directed by Sam Mendes, who also co-wrote the thing with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, 1917 is that WWI film that looks as if it is all made in one shot, with some of the hidden cuts easier to spot than others as you follow the main characters on a quest to the front, to deliver a message that will stop a load of soldiers from falling into a trap laid for them by the enemy.

That's really all there is to it. Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay play Lance Corporal Blake and Lance Corporal Schofeld, respectively, the two soldiers sent through dangerous territory to deliver the message. And the cast also includes small roles for Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The more recognisable faces seem to help mark various chapters in the journey, with most of the other people onscreen either unrecognisable or just featured as one part of the military unit they're enlisted in.

There was a time when I considered attempting to write this review in one long ramble, hence that lengthy opening paragraph. But then I decided that would be too painful to read. It's a gimmick that would work worse on this blog than it does onscreen, and it doesn't work that well onscreen. Maybe war isn't the best subject for gimmickry, or maybe this technique (one shot/long scenes without cuts) already feels slightly overused, thanks to some recent great examples.

That's the main thing about 1917. It's quite dull. The acting is just fine from everyone involved, the cinematography from Roger Deakins is pretty glorious, and the music by Thomas Newman is there to ensure that you never forget how important and impressive the film is. That's in line with every other aspect of the film.

Considering the main message of the film is one we have seen many times before (which, in itself, is no reason to NOT make a film), and considering we don't get to learn as much about many of the main characters, 1917 is a film that turns out to be all about itself. It's all about that pretend one shot, it's all about Mendes marshalling everyone to get his vision onscreen, it's all about nothing more than how it all looks.

That wouldn't be so bad if it was also thought-provoking or interesting. It isn't. 1917 is a very dull war movie. And war during wartime is far from dull, I'm sure, which leaves me thinking that Mendes has somewhat let down the many people he had set out to honour. There are a couple of cinematic moments that do make it worth your time, for the scale and skill of the visuals, but that's the best thing I can say.

5/10