Michael (2026)

There have been few celebrities to cause the kind of reactions that Michael Jackson managed to cause throughout various stages of his career. Then there's the scandal that overshadowed the last decade or so of his life. It's a very odd and complicated situation (even those who believe him entirely innocent would have to admit that nobody would be asking for more evidence if it was Old Jimmy from round the corner building a park in his garden and inviting kids over for sleepovers). I always try to separate the art from the artist, I know that some seem unable to do that (for specific examples anyway), and Michael Jackson was quite a big part of my youth. I made multiple trips to the video rental store to rent the tape that had the full Thriller video, as well as The Making Of Thriller. I, like so many others, have tried to moonwalk. And, also like many others, I have failed spectacularly. I was about twelve or thirteen when Bad was released, and I spent some of my birthday money on a special set that had the album on cassette, and a branded pencil and notepaper.

Michael Jackson ruled the world for a number of years. I'm still not sure his fame wasn't the absolute pinnacle of that kind of thing for a solo artist. Maybe I was just more aware of it because of my own fan status. He was a genius, but he also had a best friend chimpanzee. He worked with top-tier directors to deliver astonishing music videos. But he also gave us Moonwalker. He was a big kid, but he should have been able to at least accept how his lifestyle and choices would look to a constantly watching public.

This movie gives a glimpse at the star that was Michael Jackson, but it's no more than the very smallest and superficial look at his life. Legal rulings meant that the film had to be reworked, at no small expense, and writer John Logan seems to think that viewers will be happy with a number of song-creating scenes that wouldn't feel out of place in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. I don't envy Logan his position, but he must have known what he was getting into when he took the job.

Jaafar Jackson takes on the main role (with Juliano Valdi playing the younger Michael in the earlier scenes), and he does what is asked of him. It's not a great acting performance, but it's a very good impression of Michael Jackson. It's a tribute act, which you could also say about the whole film. Colman Domingo is very good as the tyrannical Joseph Jackson, Nia Long is enjoyable as Michael's mother, Katherine, and the others worth mentioning as KeiLynn Durrel Jones (playing the main security guard assigned to Michael), Miles Teller (a strong-willed agent), and Mike Myers (playing a powerful exec who proves pivotal in getting MTV to change their policy on how much airtime was allotted to black music artists).

There's not much more to say. I'm surprised that Antoine Fuqua decided to direct this. I'm surprised that it runs for 127 minutes and feels like it gives you nothing of actual interest. Michael didn't have a great childhood, as the family were trained and exploited to make as much money as possible, but that's not a revelation. There's nothing here showing Michael leaning into his own imagination, perhaps because it was belatedly decided to end things just as Bad became a huge success. So we don't get any idea about the creation of Moonwalker. What's worse is that we don't get any look at the purchase of the property and development work that would become Neverland (that's a whole movie in itself, surely). Sadly, we also have to miss out on learning anything about the development of We Are The World, the hit charity song that Jackson wrote with Lionel Richie in response to the British Band Aid hit. There's also no mention of any women in his life. Okay, his marriages happened later, but I assume that neither Tatum O'Neal nor Brooke Shields wanted to be part of the story. Despite being part of the story. But, hey, at least there's screentime for "Bubbles". 

If you LOVE Michael Jackson and want to spend a couple of hours remembering some of his hits then this might be for you. I don't understand how even fans will be satisfied though, unless they specifically wanted something that was split evenly between depicting his victimhood and saintliness. With some time devoted to reminding us all about that Pepsi incident, that I admit I didn't realise was as serious and damaging as it seems to have been.

Maybe the life of Michael Jackson is best explored through books and documentaries, almost all of them with their own bias. Maybe it takes a lot more effort to weigh up his entire life, to consider everything he did for fans over the years and everything that then started to overshadow his public persona. I recommend a lot of other sources for those wanting to learn more. All you will learn here is how spineless and lacking vision the film-makers are. Although I'm sure they're figuring out how to prep a sequel already.

3/10

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Missing (2023)

Another film in the “screen life” format (you watch events unfold, for the most part, on a computer screen), Missing is from the people who brought you Searching. If you liked that film then you should like this. It isn’t quite as good as that film, and I think the gimmick will be harder to maintain for any future thrillers, but it’s enjoyable enough.

Storm Reid plays June, a young woman rolling her eyes as her mother (Nia Long) gets read to go on holiday with her new boyfriend (Ken Leung). June just wants to enjoy her time at home alone, and maybe a big party or two, but she starts to immediately worry when the pair don’t return for the pre-determined time when June is scheduled to pick them up from the airport. Making calls and starting her own investigation, June is able to connect with Javi (Joaquim de Almeida), an oddjob worker who lives in the country where her mother was last seen alive, and her own investigation seems to progress faster than the official police investigation.

With Sev Ohanian and Aneesh Chaganty credited with the story for this one (after both writing the script for Searching together), which was directed by Chaganty, it’s up to Nick Johnson and Will Merrick to co-direct their co-written script in a way that doesn’t completely drop the ball. While constrained by the format, they fudge things slightly to keep everything moving along in the narrative without transforming into another type of film entirely. I don’t think they’re entirely successful though. It’s been a few years now since I saw Searching (when it was released in cinemas), but I remember that, for better or worse, feeling as if it was able to adhere a bit more rigidly to the format. 

The plus point is the plotting though, with a number of enjoyable twists and turns that will have viewers reconsidering their opinion a number of times on how events may have unfolded. A number of details are nicely sprinkled throughout every scene, and there are only a few moments that will have you exasperated by something obvious overlooked by the main character.

Reid is very good in the role of June, doing well in a tough role that requires her to be onscreen for the vast majority of the runtime, even if she is just clicking through and observing various video clips. Long and Leung are both fine, and obviously not onscreen for too long, but it’s Almeida who you will remember once the film is over. His character is a ray of sunshine, and he actually gets a decent little narrative arc of his own, even as he helps to progress the main plot and help our desperate lead. Although not as sunshiney, the same applies to a character played by Amy Landecker, who may or may not be involved in the disappearance of June’s mother. There’s also a small role for Tim Griffin, playing June’s father, and his scene at the very start of the film helps to show the impact he had on the lives of his wife and daughter.

Perhaps a film that will inevitably work better when watched on your own computer, compared to a cinema screen, Missing is a decent little thriller that will work for those who can accept the genre trappings being dressed up with modern tech and tech-savviness.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: You People (2023)

An updated version of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner with some additional commentary on cultural appropriation and white privilege, You People is the kind of film you will know you should love or hate based on the trailer alone. I thought it looked fun, I watched the film, and I had fun with it.

Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a Jewish man who is working in a financial role that he doesn’t really enjoy. What really makes him happy is a podcast he co-hosts with his best friend, a woman named Mo (Sam Jay), all about the commonalities and differences between white and black culture. Ezra also really enjoys an encounter with Amira (Lauren London), a beautiful black woman, that leads to a serious relationship, but that emphasises the differences between them more than any chat on a podcast could. Ezra gets a hard time from Amira's parents, played by Eddie Murphy and Nia Long, while Amira finds herself made uncomfortable and unhappy by the oblivious stereotyping and insensitivity of Ezra's parents, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny.

Directed by Kenya Barris, who has written numerous features and directed some TV show episodes before this, You People is a fun mix of Meet The Parents and that classic movie I mentioned in the first sentence. It's not as good as Meet The Parents, which puts everything in place and escalates the comedy in a much better way, but it's certainly a lot better than Guess Who (the remake/update of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner that tried to mine the topic for laughs without giving enough time to the more serious side of the situation). The biggest problem seems to be that the script was co-written by Barris and Hill, with the latter feeling like some idealised version of a white ally who knows enough of the music and fashion, and can play basketball well enough, to be viewed as safe and cool when compared to other "tourists". Maybe that side of things came from Barris, but it doesn't feel that way.

Am I saying that it hits a number of surprisingly similar beats to the much-maligned Soul Man? I might be. People will perhaps tell me off for that, but when you think of a few key scenes, they're either an inversion or recreation of moments from that movie. But I guess it's okay, because Barris is at the helm, and a number of transitions are given a funky, graffiti, style. And we get shown a lot of cool footwear. Seriously, WHAT is going on with the focus on the footwear here? Our two leads are defined by their footwear, they're used to show the passage of time in a relationship, and sneakers even tie in to the grand finale. Maybe finding true love is just meeting someone else who loves the same Nikes as you do and being brave enough to ask "shall we just do it?"

Hill and London are good in the lead roles, with the latter doing the important job of lighting up the screen and showing herself as a beautiful and strong young woman who has chosen someone that makes her happy. Despite the strand that allows him to be an ideal cool guy, Hill is a lot of fun when cringing at events unfolding around him, usually caused by one set of parents or another. That's where you get the real treats though. Long doesn't get as much to do, but Murphy enjoys another great role in what might yet be another resurgence in his lengthy film career. He's a stern figure for almost every minute, and enjoys trying to prove that Ezra isn't the right man for his daughter. Duchovny is hilarious with the way his character is always grasping for cultural references to use and rapper names to drop into conversation, but it's Louis-Dreyfus who gets more of the laughs, being the kind of person who doesn't realise how inappropriate they are being when trying to overcompensate for their ignorance of black culture. Both of the characters played by Louis-Dreyfus and Duchovny seem unable to view Amira as a strong and gorgeous woman without viewing her through an additional filter because of her skin colour. Jay is an extra shot of energy in her scenes, and there are a few effective bits of scene-stealing from Molly Gordon, in the role of Ezra's sister (a young lesbian who is already very used to their parents making them cringe).

You People is most interesting when showing people unaware of their own behavioural changes, or when Ezra is made to think more about his ability to comment on cultural aspects that he may never be fully immersed in. There are a good selection of laugh throughout, a number of decent soundtrack choices, and the runtime just manages to avoid feeling overlong, despite coming in at just under the two hour mark. It's a well-made comedy that allows some performers to remind you of why they have had such enduring careers. And I look forward to seeing more from London, who has had a decent film career already, but hopefully gets some more central parts after being such a star in this.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Premonition (2007)

One of a couple of movies in the very small subgenre we can label “Sandra Bullock is confused by time not acting in a linear fashion while she tries to save the man she loves”, Premonition is a slick mystery thriller that makes good use of the supernatural idea at the heart of it. It’s just a shame that nobody feels right in the main roles, and the writing and direction remain distinctly average throughout.

Bullock stars as Linda Hanson, mother of two young girls and wife of Jim (Julian McMahon). This is how her character is defined, and that is all viewers need. A police officer comes to the door one day, delivering the awful news that Jim has been killed in a car crash. As distraught as she is, things become more confusing when Linda wakes up “the next morning” and finds Jim alive again. She eventually gets pulled back to the time in which Jim remains dead. And is then back to before the crash. And so it goes on, with Linda trying to figure out how to fix things, while those around her assume that grief has made her lose her mind.

Written by Bill Kelly and directed by Mennan Yapo, Premonition perfectly illustrates why these two people have a very limited filmography, and nothing that stands out as being even close to this kind of thing. There’s a solid central premise to be worked with here, but neither writer nor director leans hard enough into any direction with it, although things improve slightly in the third act. None of the plotting keeps viewers off-kilter, meaning we all know more than the main character almost every step of the way. And there’s an annoying refusal to make things any more dramatic, or tense, or horrific, than your average evening soap opera.

Bullock is okay in the lead, but I am only saying that because I like Bullock. She feels miscast, just never as comfortable as the stressed-out and mentally fraying woman she has to portray. McMahon is also miscast, mainly because he is SO good at playing shitty men that it can be hard to root for him as a normal guy. Peter Stormare and Nia Long are both sorely underused, the child actors are decent enough, and Kate Nelligan does good work as Linda’s concerned mother. There’s also a small role for Amber Valletta, who is perhaps the biggest victim of the poor writing and execution.

Not exciting, not tense, not populated by people you can really care for, I predict most people will rate Premonition even lower than I do.

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

I like sharks. They terrify me, and I want to look away, but I also have great respect for them as predators who are very close to the top of the food chain in their main environment. I used to read up on them, and various aquatic creatures, when I was a kid with the time to spend on special projects and absorbing factoids like some info-hungry sponge.

I cannot remember all of those facts here and now, and I won't use Google to make myself seem smarter, but I do remember that a) a shark can sense one drop of blood in a large body of water from quite some distance, and b) they can also sense the small electric fields given off by animals. They're pretty canny when it comes to finding "food".

So the fact that 47 Meters Down: Uncaged wants you to believe that a bunch of panicking teens could stay still, whimpering, while trying to avoid a large, blind shark is just one of the many preposterous elements that made it impossible to ever take seriously. I'll try to mention some other ridiculous highlights below.

Scheduled to go off on a boat ride, Mia (Sophie Nèlisse) and her stepsister, Sasha (Corinne Foxx) are instead persuaded to go off with Sasha's friends, Alexa (Brianne Tju) and Nicole (Sistine Stallone), to dive and explore an underwater city. It's an area that is being explored by Mia's father (played by John Corbett) and his team, although they will be at a different part of the site while the girls sneak in to have their underwater fun. And eventually they are all surprised by the giant, blind, shark. The appearance of the beast is so surprising that one of the young, thin, teenage girls pushes back in the water so far that she hits a stone pillar . . . so hard that it is knocked over, blocking the way that they entered the sunken city. Because that is entirely plausible.

I like director Johannes Roberts. He has spent the past couple of decades working with various budgets and resources to supply a mixed bag of genre thrills. Highlights include the superb, and too rarely mentioned by horror fans, F AKA The Expelled, the film preceding this one, and The Strangers: Prey At Night. But I'll even stand by some of his films that could be viewed as lesser efforts. The Other Side Of The Door at least tried a couple of different things among the more familiar beats, and Storage 24 simply aims to be an entertaining, low-budget, British sci-fi horror. He even manages a couple of good moments here, one or two set-pieces that still entertain in between the stupidity, and the final sequence is just the right kind of silly to prove a satisfying conclusion.

It's as a writer that he seems to have slipped most, once again working with Ernest Riera on this. You can either go for gritty realism and tension or complete absurdity, but trying to land between the two rarely works. Most people will start wondering how they are supposed to take this film when the girls all put on scuba masks, nothing covering their ears, and then are all able to talk clearly to one another once underwater. Maybe the masks were designed to work in the same was as bone-conducting headphones, I cannot swear that there aren't any out there that don't work in that way, but it just didn't seem at all likely. Then the blind shark appears. Then you get that pillar knocked over. And things just keep getting sillier and sillier, for the most part. It would be more endearing if you didn't suspect that there could have been the chance here for another properly good underwater horror from Roberts.

The main actresses don't do a bad job. They are all required to swim around and look frightened, and they do that well enough. There's the strained relationship between the stepsisters, you get the one person delivering all of the information to the group (and viewers), and there's a great moment that has the classic freak out by someone who then tries something incredibly selfish. Make the rest of the plotting more believable and the cast would come out of it all a lot better. Corbett also does a decent job, and also provides some info at just the right time.

It's laughable in what it wants you to believe, a film that assumes everyone will be able to switch their brains off for the duration, and tests that notion to the limits, but if you CAN at least switch your brain off for some of the runtime then you also get some decent death scenes, and some crude jump scares that will provide a distraction for 90 minutes.

4/10

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Boyz N The Hood (1991)

An absolutely fantastic directorial debut from John Singleton (who also wrote the film), Boyz N The Hood holds up to this day as a great movie about people trying to break a cycle of violence and hate. Despite what you may think, if you've never seen the film, this is a movie with some major negative moments that pushes hard to convey a message of positivity. It doesn't glorify or glamourise any of the lifestyle choices that it shows other than one that can see people living happily beside one another.

Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as Tre Styles, a young man who has been brought up for a number of years by his father, Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne). Furious, despite the name, is a peaceful man who wants to see African Americans opening their eyes to the problems around them and making everything better. He is well aware of the statistics and he wants those numbers to change, especially when it comes to the life that his son will lead. Tre has a few close friends who seem to be on very different paths. Ricky (Morris Chestnut) actually has a chance to do well thanks to a scholarship opportunity but he's also already a daddy at a very young age so it's not going to be easy. Ricky has a brother called Darren AKA Doughboy. Doughboy is an angry young man, happy to waste most of his time relaxing with friends but also quick to reach for a gun if there is any sign of trouble.

I could, indeed maybe should, just wrap up this review now by saying that the movie oozes quality from almost every scene and deserves to be viewed at least once by anyone who loves great acting but everyone should know by now that I like the sound of my own voice (or the font of my own text - is that the blogging equivalent?) so I'll say a little bit more about the movie.

The main thing going against it is predictability. In a lot of ways the film feels fresh and different, especially in the way that Laurence Fishburne brings up Cuba Gooding Jr, but the main beats of the story are so obvious that you can spot them at least half an hour in advance. That doesn't make the movie horrible or unwatchable but it is something that's worth mentioning. There aren't any major surprises here.

Thankfully, the rest of the film works so well that you don't care. It remains the best directorial outing from John Singleton, who announced himself to the world with an astonishingly accomplished debut. It also remains some of the best acting work from the collected actors onscreen. Laurence Fishburne has given a number of great performances over the years but this is certainly up there with his very best. Cuba Gooding Jr. is superb and he's well matched by the different styles of Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Regi Green and Dedrick D. Gobert. Angela Bassett has a small, but important, role and so does Regina King while Nia Long plays the most prominent female character and makes herself into someone effectively adorable.

Although there are many ways in which Boyz N The Hood is exactly what you expect it to be there are a number of other ways in which it's completely removed from the preconceptions that viewers may have. Treat yourself by watching it soon if you haven't seen it already.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boyz-Anniversary-Edition-Blu-ray-Region/dp/B005DL7S4M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347008149&sr=8-2