Netflix And Chill: Fathers & Daughters (2015)

I am not surprised that Fathers & Daughters was written by someone, Brad Desch, who has no other screenplay credits to his name. It feels very basic in the way the predictable storyline is plotted, and ultimately relies on the talent of the two main stars. What is more surprising is the fact that director Gabriele Muccino is no newcomer. He's done a number of movies in a very similar vein, and a number of his previous films are much better than this one.

Russell Crowe plays Jake Davis, a writer and a loving father who loses his wife in a car crash that also leaves him with some health issues that impact his everyday life. He's also now the single parent of young Katie (Kylie Rogers), but there are other people who don't think that is the best situation for both of them. In the here and now, viewers get to see Katie (now played by Amanda Seyfried) making her way through life, her father absent for reasons to become clear before the end credits roll, and making her way through a number of one-night stands. Until she meets Cameron (Aaron Paul). Happiness may be belatedly coming back into her life, but will she be able to deal with it?

If you like Seyfried and Paul then this movie should work for you. They both try hard to compensate for the weak material with performances that deserve a better movie around them. Crowe, on the other hand, settles into a performance that makes use of far too many familiar "ACTOR" tricks, whether he's angrily defending his ability to look after his young daughter or dealing with the problematic tremors afflicting him post-accident. Diane Kruger is disappointingly underused, but Bruce Greenwood excels as her partner, and the man who has the money and willingness to be diplomatic in offering to welcome young Katie as a permanent resident of their home, and it's good to have Octavia Spencer, Quvenzhané Wallis, and Jane Fonda doing well enough with their limited screentime to make it easier to enjoy things in between moments that have Crowe overdoing things.

Things are quite jarring when you move between watching scenes with a main character as an innocent young girl and then scenes in which she's a woman using sex as some band-aid for a deep well of pain, but the rest of the film is very standard and manipulative stuff. Desch seems to have spent less time writing a full screenplay and more time stringing together a whole load of dialogue and moments he's picked from many superior movies, Muccino thinks that he can rely on his cast to lift everything out of the doldrums, and the cast are too restricted by the material. There are intermittent highlights for fans of the supporting players, but not enough to make this more worthy of your time ahead of at least a hundred other melodramas that people could recommend to you.

4/10

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. All links are HERE.
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

The Housemaid (2025)

Considering the fact that the last film directed by Paul Feig was Another Simple Favor, I was not inclined to be optimistic about The Housemaid. Based on the tremendously popular book by Freida McFadden, I wondered if Feig could deliver something fun and trashy so soon after failing us so badly with something that should have been fun and trashy. Thankfully, he's helped by writer Rebecca Sonnenshine and lead cast members who are happy enough to revel in the silliness of the whole thing.

Sydney Sweeney plays Millie Calloway, a young woman who cannot believe her luck when she lands a live-in maid job with the seemingly-perfect Winchester family. There's Nina (Amanda Seyfried), the lovely and warm lady of the house, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), the devoted and gorgeous husband, and young Cece (Indiana Elle). Millie soon finds out that all isn't as it seems though. People in the house have some dark secrets. But, considering she's still on probation after serving ten years of a prison sentence, Millie has to tolerate more strange behaviour than most, considering she needs to stay employed and housed as part of her probation conditions. 

Having not read the book, or any of the McFadden books, all I knew was that it was apparently quite dark and twisted. Well, this film is quite dark and twisted, which makes me think that it's a decent adaptation. Unfortunately, everything is so ridiculous and overblown that none of the twists and turns are surprising, especially when you start mulling over the different directions that the film could take. Feig knows how far he can push things though, and he works with the screenplay to deliver a satisfying mix of intrigue, thrills, nastiness, and occasional laughs. 

Sweeney doesn't stretch her acting chops here, but she's fine in the lead role, and I like the fact that she has been involved in at least two erotically-charged thrillers throughout her acting career (reminder - check out The Voyeurs if you haven't seen it already). Whatever role she takes on, Sweeney seems to have good instincts when it comes to what she can bring to the table, whether that's tied to her acting range or just her obvious sex appeal. Seyfried gets to do much more with her character, and it's a lot of fun to see her move from the well-known sweetness of her usual persona to a whole lot of rage and nastiness. It's also fun to see Sklenar make use of the image that he has cultivated onscreen over the past couple of years. Elle is an entertainingly cold child, and there's room for a strong and silent turn from Michele Morrone and a "mother-in-law from hell" turn from Elizabeth Perkins, who does a lot with her very little screentime.

Despite the work of Feig and Sonnenshine, and despite the game cast, something here holds The Housemaid back from being as good as it could be. The 131-minute runtime doesn't help, especially when you notice how much time is still left after one or two of the earlier plot reveals, the soundtrack is also disappointingly insipid, in contrast to some of the wilder visuals, and the ending is just a bit too preposterous to be truly satisfying. 

I still enjoyed it though, and I'll absolutely watch the sequel when it comes along. I just can't see myself ever rewatching this, and I suspect others may feel the same way.

6/10

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 

Netflix And Chill: Things Heard And Seen (2021)

If the past year or so has taught us anything, impact of a global pandemic aside, it is never to move in to a house with Amanda Seyfried. She just doesn't seem to have any luck with it. The biggest worry for most of us is watching the movers take our things in and out, and wincing if a beloved item of furniture is bumped and forced through a doorway that looks a bit too small for it. Seyfried seems to have a knack for finding haunted houses, which can make for a more nerve-wracking experience than sorting through bags to find the one that you stashed the bath towels in.

Seyfried plays Catherine Claire, a talented artist who has given up most of what she enjoys in life to support her husband, George (James Norton), and look after their young daughter, Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). Catherine also has an ongoing battle with an eating disorder, seems to be more susceptible to tales of spookiness, according to George, and looks to be a bit unhappy with her life. George, on the other hand, is feeling great about things. He's now the college professor he always wanted to be, he starts having an affair with a young local woman (Willis, played by Natalia Dyer), and his life is almost exactly as he wants it to be. George isn't really a nice man though, and a lot of his current situation may have been created by some cheating and manipulation.

Co-directed and co-written by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, adapting "All Things Cease To Appear", the novel by Elizabeth Brundage, it's no surprise to see that neither Berman nor Pulcini have any other horror movies in their main filmography. They deliver some great little chills throughout this movie, but they're more interested in showing the extensive damage in the relationship between Catherine and George, and how George has been causing this for a number of years, but it was easier to overlook when creating fault lines under the surface. You also get an ending that, while satisfying, actually moves away from delivering some better horror and supernatural twists.

Seyfried is as good as ever in the lead role, easy to root for as he gets angrier and tougher in the second half. Norton does well as someone it's easy to hate, starting with an air of entitlement and arrogance before becoming worse and worse. Heger doesn't get too much to do, but she certainly does decent work. Dyer is saddled with one of the weakest characters, but she does okay, Alex Neustaedter and Jack Gore are good as a couple of young brothers who come around to help at the house (and also lived there at one point), F. Murray Abraham is a welcome presence, and I hope this is the first of many more worthwhile film roles for the talented Rhea Seehorn. I should also mention the small role for Karen Allen, someone else I am always happy to see in anything.

It's not that Things Heard And Seen is bad, or boring. It does everything well enough, including an ending that focuses on details that were signposted elsewhere in the movie. I just can't help but think of the third act as a missed opportunity, for reasons I won't go into here (because of spoilers), and that makes me then think that the rest of the film could have been tweaked and improved here and there. It never really feels as if it does more than coast along, and Berman and Pulcini seem to steadfastly refuse to turn the screws when they have chances to ratchet up the tension. The end result is something that's decent, but also so safe that it's also a bit disappointing.

6/10

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

You Should Have Left (2020)

Although released in 2020, You Should Have Left feels very much like a film that could have easily been a 2000 option. In fact, it has more than a few similarities with a major 2000 hit, which I won't mention here, because that would spoil things somewhat. It's not a bad film, I actually really enjoyed it, but it is quite a safe and predictable one, ultimately.

Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried are the couple who move into a strange holiday home in Wales. It's just them and their daughter, Ella (Avery Essex). And whatever else resides in the house. Because the house definitely has something in there, be it a supernatural presence or just a constant disregard for the everyday rules of physics. Doors lead to other doors, leading to other doors. The house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside (not in a fun TARDIS way). And time moves in mysterious ways once you start wandering through the various corridors and rooms. It's not entirely unironic that Mr Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon stars in a film set in a house which keeps changing by many degrees.

Written and directed by David Koepp, based on the novel by Daniel Kehlmann, what you end up with is a very traditional tale of the supernatural that feels a bit fresh and unique because of the very modern home used as the main setting. Well, it feels that way until you get to the grand finale, which actually provides an explanation that you almost refuse to believe, because it's the most obvious of all possible explanations (in terms of genre plotting, not in terms of everyday life). That doesn't detract from how effective the rest of the film is, and doesn't in itself ruin the whole thing. It's just a shame that there wasn't a more interesting and unique way to bring everything to a close in the third act.

Bacon and Seyfried are both excellent in their roles, despite the latter being about thirty years younger than the former (something I thought would be used within the actual plot, but really isn't . . . so I guess that is still just mainstream movies being mainstream movies, right?), but it's hard to truly buy them as a loving, married couple. Viewers see them with some  strain already on their relationship, and it takes time to tease out the details. Unfortunately, the damage is already done by then. It's almost impossible to think of how they got together, how they connected, and how they have stayed together for as long as they have. Essex is a very good young actress, managing to show a balance between being afraid and having the kind of open mind that can allow children to accept more weirdness than adults would put up with.

This review seems more critical than I intended. The more I thought about the movie, the more I could think of that was wrong. But, and this is important, I didn't really think of all of these flaws while the film was playing. I enjoyed the strangeness, enjoyed the spookiness, even enjoyed predicting some of the third act beats. You Should Have Left is far from perfect, and there are many ways in which it could have been improved, but it's an enjoyable attempt to do something familiar in a way that feels slightly new.

7/10

Buy me "a coffee" here, if you like any of my reviews, or even if you hate them and want me to get over-caffeinated - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Scoob! (2020)

An attempt to give the Scooby-Doo brand a shot in the arm, Scoob! may fall a bit short for fans due to two main points. And one of those is the fact that the brand never feels like it needs a shot in the arm (and this is from someone who quite enjoyed the live-action movies).

The story starts with Shaggy (voiced by Will Forte) meeting a little Scooby (voiced by Frank Welker, so that is a plus). The two then meet the rest of "Mystery, Inc" before that was formed - Fred (Zac Efron), Velma (Gina Rodriguez), and Daphne (Amanda Seyfried). Years pass by, a montage shows the gang doing what they do (in a wonderfully-recreated copy of the opening titles of the cartoon I grew up with), and life is good. Which makes it a perfect time for the group to be split up, with Shaggy and Scooby meeting the Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg), and possibly helping to foil some nefarious plan by Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs).

You might have already surmised the other main problem people may have with Scoob! Yes, as seems to be the norm now for companies wanting to get lots and lots of money coming in . . . this film is also an attempt to create some kind of bizarre Hanna-Barbera movie universe. You get Blue Falcon and company, you get Dick Dastardly and Muttley, and you get a small role for Captain Caveman (and whoever thought Tracy Morgan was the best choice to voice one of my favourite cartoon characters was so far wrong that I hope they spend many sleepless nights thinking about what they have done).

The script, written by a few different scribes, works in the first third, generally, before trying to fit the gang into a wider movie universe. Then it all goes to pot, one or two witty, meta lines aside.

The same may be said of the direction from Tony Cervone, although his hands are tied by the script. But everything becomes a long, slow slide downhill once the main mystery comes into play.

The voice voice cast generally do well. It's a shame that nobody offered Lillard the chance to return to the role he made his own, but Forte doesn't do too bad as an alternative. Efron, Rodriguez, and Seyfried are a good match for their characters, Welker does his usual excellent work (which really goes without saying), and Isaacs has a lot of fun as Dick Dastardly. Unfortunately, the rest don't really fit in, be it Whalberg and his companions (voiced by Ken Jeong and Kiersey Clemons), or that unforgivable mis-casting for the Captain Caveman role. And let's not mention the clanging Simon Cowell cameo.

Scooby-Doo isn't a property that you should be able to mess up so easily, certainly not in animated form. But the creative forces behind this film manage it.

Consider my rating generous, with at least one point just for the sweet glow of nostalgia.

4/10
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 

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

I was quite unimpressed when I first saw Mamma Mia! I wasn't exactly the target audience for it, I didn't think the songs were always as well worked into the plot as they could have been, and I found the antics of Meryl Streep and her friends just a little bit cringe-inducing. But it still sits on my shelf, surrounded by many better (and a few worse) movies. Why? Because it was one of the free blu rays that came with my first player, and I rarely throw out a film, especially a freebie.

You can already surmise that I wasn't keen to rush out and see the sequel, but see the sequel I did. I am a married man and that can mean compromising sometimes. My wife was going to join me for the latest Mission: Impossible movie so I could put a brave face on and accompany her to this movie. I did my duty.

The plot this time around sees Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) getting ready to open the hotel that she wants to make a success in honour of her deceased mother, Donna (Meryl Streep). Viewers also get to see the early years of Donna (played by Lily James) and how exactly she got herself in the predicament that eventually led to the events of the first film. There are some new faces, mainly in the scenes showing the younger incarnations of the men and women we already got to know as adults, another mix of ABBA hits, of course, and plenty of sea, sunshine, and sanitised -or-family-viewing sexual shenanigans.

Here's what happened when I watched Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. I had quite a good time. Not only that, I realised that I had been a BIT harsh in my judgement of the first film. I didn't enjoy it when I sat there, watching it in the comfort of my own home, even if I could singalong to the ABBA tunes. But that situation wasn't the best way to view it. It's a shared experience. It's fun for everyone, and the sequel aims for exactly the same end result.

And it achieves it. The songs may be, for the most part, lesser choices but the laughs are more frequent, and simply better. Which makes this a slight improvement over the original. That wasn't clear from the beginning. The first 15 minutes or so had me rolling my eyes on a number of occasions, thanks to the sentimental moments and the poor musical number that feels shoehorned in to the first scenes featuring Lily James (as well as Alexa Davies and Jessica Keenan Wynn, playing her friends). James is good in her role, but things start to pick up when Julie Walters and Christine Baranski come onscreen, and then it's all a surprisingly consistent crowdpleaser as we move back and forth between the past and the present, with lots more fun coming from Hugh Skinner/Colin Firth, Josh Dylan/Stellan Skarsgard, and Jeremy Irvine/Pierce Brosnan. Andy Garcia is also very good, Omid Djalili steals his all-too-brief scenes, and Cher takes the baton from Djalili and almost walks off with the entire film.

Writer-director Ol Parker, helped by Richard Curtis and Catherine Johnson, shows that he knows exactly what the audience wants, and he builds everything to a completely predictable and enjoyable finale that will have even the most cynical viewers grinning. I'm not completely converted, not quite yet, but I WILL rewatch the first film at some point, and I may even let my wife persuade me to endure/enjoy a double-bill one day in the future.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a film that it is easy to turn your nose up at. It is a safe viewing choice, one or two risque lines of dialogue aside, and it suffers from an overabundance of sweetness in almost every character. It will also have you leaving the cinema with a big smile on your face, despite how hard you might fight against it.

6/10

This is the shiny disc version.
Americans can get it here.

A Million Ways To Die In The West (2014)

I quite like Seth MacFarlane, despite the fact that he often sets off my Spidey-sense when he delivers gags that feel more mean-spirited than actually funny. Ted was a lot of fun, but a lot of good work,and goodwill, was undone by MacFarlane's stint hosting the 2013 Academy Awards. He just didn't seem as funny when not hidden behind a character.

The premise is standard stuff. MacFarlane plays Albert, a peace-loving sheep farmer living in the wild west. He doesn't really fit in there, due to his lack of courage and the fact that he's never fired a gun, but he's happy enough with his lady, Louise (Amanda Seyfried). Until Louise ditches him, claiming that she needs time to herself before quickly latching on to the dapper Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). Just when he's at a real low point, Albert meets the lovely Anna (Charlize Theron), a woman who decides to help him grow a spine and perhaps even win back the love of his life. Unfortunately, Albert and Anna grow close, which causes some serious friction when her husband, the outlaw known as Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), arrives in town.

Let's get straight to the point here, the biggest problem with A Million Ways To Die In The West is Seth MacFarlane. He directed the film, he co-wrote the script (with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild), and he stars in the lead role. Despite weakness in all three areas, it's probably his attempt to be a leading man that drags the film down the most. He's just not a likable enough onscreen presence to hold together a movie. When not delivered from behind an animated curtain,  the gags and dialogue just come across as smug and obvious.

The rest of the cast try their best, with Theron particularly enjoyable for every moment that she's onscreen. Seyfried and Harris are fun, and Neeson does okay, but isn't given enough screentime to make a better villain. Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman are a loving couple, despite the fact that the latter works every day as a prostitute while convincing her man that they should both save their own sexual activity for when they get married. There are also some great cameos, with one being SO good that it almost made me want to give the movie a bonus point, but to name names would spoil the surprises.

But the cast can only take you so far. At just under two hours, A Million Ways To Die In The West is far too long and far too misguided in attempts to wring humour from the scenario. Oh, if people think that seeing a sheep's penis in detail before it urinates on someone is funny then they will enjoy themselves. Similarly, anyone wanting to see a hat pretending to be filled with liquid excrement might chuckle, but someone hoping to see the unnecessary shot of the hat being knocked so that the liquid excrement starts to spill out onto the ground will find that this is their dream movie. Oh yes, those "gags" are in the movie. Thankfully, a lot of the other gags are better, but not by much.

There's some nice cinematography, and the kind of rousing score that you'd expect from a Western, but those are the only two elements that MacFarlane gets right. There's no love here for the movies, and certainly little attempt to twist the tropes of the genre (other than the obvious High Noon stuff). And, worst of all, the whole thing constantly feels just like a movie. It's self-conscious at almost every turn, but also self-satisfied, which makes it feel lazy and irritating.

Feel free to disbelieve me and check it out for yourself, but this is yet another film that packs most of the best bits into the trailer (and at least one gag that wasn't present, which I'm sure will be shoehorned into the "unrated, even ruder, even more dangerous" extended version that will hit shiny disc). It's not really worth your time or money.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Million-Ways-Blu-ray-DIGITAL-UltraViolet/dp/B00KM9MP9I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401818195&sr=8-1&keywords=a+million+ways+to+die+in+the+west+blu+ray

Jennifer's Body (2009)

Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried star in this hip comedy horror directed by Karyn Kusama from a script by Diablo "writer of Juno" Cody. I think every review of this movie has to mention the fact that Diablo "writer of Juno" Cody was the writer of Juno. This fact may help people decide whether they are going to like or dislike Jennifer's Body because it certainly contains a lot of the highly stylised teenspeak that Diablo peppered throughout her most famous script (to date, anyway).

The plot sees Jennifer (Fox) and her unlikely, and slightly geeky, best friend Needy (Seyfried) attending a rock gig featuring a band with a lead singer (Adam Brody) that Jennifer would like to get to know a lot better. But when a fire burns down the venue things go speedily downhill and Needy simply looks on as Jennifer is taken away in the rock group's van to who knows where. The next day it seems that all is well, weirdly so, but something is different about Jennifer - she's now possessed and likes to terrorise and eat her fellow schoolmates. This causes some understandable friction between the two pals, and as the rift widens it's Needy who starts to uncover the truth behind the recent spate of deaths in town.

A lot of people have had the knives out already due to the lead role being played here by Megan Fox, an attractive girl most associated with the large battling robots of the Transformers movies. But it's with performances like this one and her turn in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People that she proves she's more than just a pretty face. Seyfried is a great asset as the best friend who has to face some difficult decisions and none of the other young actors let themselves down in any way. There really aren't too many older stars given much time but J.K. Simmons stands out in his small, fun role.

Stylistically, the movie reminded me very much of Heathers and also Mean Girls in its skewing of high school hierarchy and the twisting of the stereotypical teen roles. As mentioned before, those who do not like the kind of teenspeak used in Juno, etc. may find the whole thing a bit jarring to the ears but the blend of scares, tension and smart one-liners (my personal favourite being a great "Rocky Horror" gag) should please those who dig the movie's overall vibe.

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