Anaconda (2025)

If the world was crying out for a comedic reboot of the Anaconda movie series then nobody decided to mention that to me. There's a chance that the world wasn't crying out for such a thing, but then . . . why would this exist otherwise?

Jack Black plays Doug McCallister, a man stuck making wedding videos when he really wants to be directing movies. His long-time friend, Ronald Griffin Jr. (Paul Rudd), is an actor unable to really gain any momentum in his career. Ronald doesn't have much going for him, but he does have the rights to Anaconda, apparently, which leads to him convincing Doug, Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) to travel to the Amazon and rework a movie they all have a strangely strong connection with. They meet Ana (Daniela Melchior) once over there, a capable woman who ends up being added to the small cast of their movie, and eventually also meet a very real, and very large, anaconda.

Written by Kevin Etten and directed by Tom Gormican, who both entertained me with their last collaboration, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, this is one of the strangest and least satisfying mainstream movies I have watched in some time. Okay, I wasn't exactly hyped for this when I first heard about the tonal change in the series, but I still assumed that my appreciation of the main cast members would allow me to get some enjoyment from it. I was VERY wrong.

Jack Black can be very funny, Paul Rudd is someone I consider a bit of a treasure, Steve Zahn has been delivering delightful turns for decades now, and Thandiwe Newton has done enough good work by now to make me forgive her stilted performance in the second Mission: Impossible movie. I want to be clear about how much I like all of these people in the right movies. This is not the right movie. It's a tonal mess that doesn't do well enough with the jokes about film-making, doesn't deliver any proper snakey thrills, and doesn't have anything else going for it, with the exception of a couple of fun cameos. Zahn is a highlight, but Dan Silveira upstages everyone as a snake-handler named Timo who has the advantage of possessing a snake that he claims is friendly and obedient, despite the size of the thing. Melchior, and the entire sub-plot that she's involved with, feels completely unnecessary, and I would have much preferred the movie to concentrate on the other added conflict that is brought up at just around the halfway mark before being fumbled and discarded within the space of a few scenes.

Undemanding viewers should still find one or two chuckles here, but they're too few and far between throughout the 99-minute runtime. Other than those fleeting bright spots, nothing else works. At all. And it's saying something when you watch a 2025 Anaconda movie and start thinking fondly of the uneven special effects in the 1997 film.

Maybe not the worst mainstream movie I've seen this decade, but I am currently struggling to think of one I would rank below it. 

3/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share  

Prime Time: Road House (2024)

I was looking forward to Road House since I saw the first trailer for it, a trailer that showcased just how much time star Jake Gyllenhaal had been putting in at the gym. Yes, the original film is a beloved bit of cheese, but it’s no untouchable classic. Let’s not forget that it already has a sequel that very few people care for.

Gyllenhaal plays Dalton, a legendary figure who is hired by Frankie (Jessica Williams) to help sort out the trouble she has been having in her Florida bar. Dalton rolls in to Glass Key (the name of the area, and one of many fun little nods to other films) and starts cleaning house, but it isn’t long until he realised that there’s something more going on. Frankie’s bar is being targeted by thugs who work for a rich douchebag (Ben Brandt, played by Billy Magnussen). And if his thugs keep failing to achieve the desired result then it will soon be time for the much more dangerous Knox (Conor McGregor) to swagger in and start smashing everything up. A storm is brewing, but that doesn’t stop Dalton from making time to enjoy the company of a local doctor, Ellie (Daniela Melchior).

There are things to pick at here, and plenty of things that viewers may dislike, particularly when it comes to the way of staging and shooting some of the fight scenes, but I cannot think of any way this could have been a better remake/reworking of the original film. The tone is similarly fun, punctuated with brutal violence (of course), the lead character is always looking to defuse any situation before things get physical, and the plotting manages to replicate what we’ve seen before without feeling like a carbon copy.

Well done to relatively new writers Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry for crafting a script that changes enough to modernize the idea while also remaining respectful and admiring of the original film. The central concept may be nonsense, and our lead spends a lot of time smirking at people who don’t realise what is about to happen to them, but at no point are viewers made to think they are watching something outright laughable. Everyone is kept safe alongside a confident main character, but the danger keeps piling up around them, and his own darkness is something he doesn’t want to tap into.

Director Doug Liman handles the whole thing quite well. Aside from some computer trickery that doesn’t always work in the fight scenes, and a frustrating handful of night-time moments that don’t seem to be lit as well as they should, it’s generally slick entertainment, helped massively by Gyllenhaal being so committed to his role.

That commitment can be shown in every defined muscle, with the actor displaying a physique normally shown in anatomy textbooks that display the musculature of the human body. It is a hell of a look, and Gyllenhaal backs it up with a physicality and personality that I am sure Swayze would have liked to see. It’s a winning performance, and the best thing in the film. Magnussen is a lot of fun as the villain who doesn’t like to get his own hands dirty, the kind of person you know is failing as his hair becomes more messed up in the middle of some unfolding carnage, and McGregor . . . hmmmmm, I think he is good at doing what he is asked to do. It’s definitely a difficult performance to recommend though, as he is asked to be the kind of cocky and careless menace who is unleashed in the second half of the movie like an angry Rottweiler that has been flicked in the testicles and then let off the chain. Melchior is fine in the least interesting role, and the role that feels most like the writers tried a bit too hard to keep a template from the original film, Williams is good, if a bit underused, and there are decent supporting turns from Lukas Gage, Joaquim de Almeida, Hannah Love Lanier, Darren Barnet, JD Pardo, Arturo Castro (scene-stealing and hilarious), and even a cameoing Post Malone at the very start of the film.

I never thought this was going to surpass, or even equal, the first film, but it’s not as if everyone here got together to remake Citizen Kane. A little perspective is a good thing. I love Road House, but that is just as much to do with nostalgia and the unbeatable power of Sam Elliott’s beard as it is to do with the film itself. This remake lacks both of those ingredients, and also lacks a decent selection of soundtrack choices, but I still had a lot of fun with it. I think people should give it a chance, and I think it will be judged less harshly by viewers who can separate the concept from their sentimental attachment to the original film.

7/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

The Suicide Squad (2021)

There's an extra factor at play here, something that makes The Suicide Squad feel like it deserves to be relished more than perhaps any previous superhero movie within the recent selection of DC adventures. Because writer-director James Gunn got this gig after some idiot attempted to lose him work with Marvel/Disney, which temporarily worked, allowing him to deliver this film . . . before returning to Marvel/Disney for the third Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. So thanks to that idiot, with a name I have already forgotten, for allowing us to receive even more fun from Gunn.

The plot is relatively simple. A squad is assembled for a mission that doesn't seem to have much chance for survival. That squad includes Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), and one or two others. They wade into the hostile territory of Corto Maltese, where they end up plotting to apprehend an important figure named Thinker (Peter Capaldi).

If there's one word you could use to describe The Suicide Squad it's gleeful. Gunn gleefully throws around bucket-loads of blood and gore, mixing laughs in with the action to provide the most twisted and anarchic superhero film since, well, Super. Strangely enough, that sense of anarchy still manages to feel very calculated and formulaic. The film is wild fun when compared to other movies within this subgenre, but it's not all that surprising when you know the kind of film it is aiming to be, and Gunn makes that pretty clear from the opening sequence (with great use of the song "People Who Died", by the Jim Carroll Band). Thankfully, the set-pieces are entertaining enough to keep your spirits high, and there are also one or two moments that allow viewers to remember that Gunn is good at giving his high-budget fare a good bit of heart and soul.

Robbie remains arguably the most valuable jewel in the crown of this movie universe, and is once again excellent, while Elba makes effortless cool again look . . . effortlessly cool. Cena is a lot of fun in his role, Melchior and Dastmalchian are both wonderful, and Stallone's vocal work is a lot of fun. But it would be very easy to criticise these characters for obvious parallels, considering the direction from Gunn. King Shark may have more words in his vocabulary, but feels quite Groot-ish, and Cena is as humourless as Drax. Consider Harley Quinn as an equal to Rocket, and that just leaves you wondering whether Elba would be Peter Quill or Gamora. It might seem unfair to think of those comparisons while the film is on, but Gunn practically invites them by the fact that he seems to be drawn to the same kind of ragtag bunch of lovable rogues. 

Each main act here has enough inventiveness and energy to blow away that feeling of over-saturation that many film fans have been experiencing lately. Superhero movies aren't going away any time soon, but that's not a problem when we get some more variety from the films being released. And if that variety sometimes comes from focusing on "the villains" then all the better, because I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Suicide Squad. And I liked Suicide Squad well enough.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews