Netflix And Chill: A House Of Dynamite (2025)

Whatever I end up thinking of them, a new Kathryn Bigelow film is always something I look forward to watching. She tends to make films that refuse to provide easy answers for people. She tends to make films specifically for adult viewers. A House Of Dynamite is very much of a piece with the rest of her filmography.

The plot is quite simple. People in the White House Situation Room are soon made aware of a very worrying situation. There's apparently an ICBM heading towards the USA, due to hit Chicago in about 20 minutes. After figuring out whether it's real or not, everyone is out on high alert as they come up with various scenarios, and maybe even one or two ways to take the missile out of action. The main people involved in some frantic conversations are a duty officer, Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), a Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), and, of course, the President (hidden away for most of the film, but most will be able to recognise the voice before seeing him appear onscreen).

While he was a number of other screenplays under his belt, this is a marked step up in quality for writer Noah Oppenheim, who feels as if he has recently found his sweet spot with fictions based on many real scenarios he would have been very aware of during his tenure as president of NBC News. Teaming up with Bigelow, who has excelled in recent years with films that often feel like docu-fiction, but without ever losing that movie magic, is a win win for both.

It's hard to pick any individual highlights from the fantastic cast assembled here, but the final scene for Jared Harris certainly underlines his emotional turmoil as things look to go from bad to worse. Ferguson is great, as ever, and Letts is superb, seeming to relish the structure of the whole thing (we watch things play out, then jump back about 20 minutes to watch them from another POV, and then jump back again to follow someone else, learning a bit more each time while the missile continues to fly through the air). Basso is fine as the younger man trying to convince everyone to let cooler heads prevail, and there is room for many familiar faces throughout the supporting cast, including Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Willa Fitzgerald, and Kaitlyn Deaver, not to mention the star who plays POTUS.

It may not be as good as her last feature, the phenomenal Detroit, and there will be many who dislike the ending (one designed to keep you discussing the film for some time after it has finished), but this shows Bigelow handling busy and dark material with her usual steady hand and mastery. Whether or not you want to make it a priority on your viewing schedule just depends on whether or not you're in the mood for a drama that looks at what would happen if someone decided to launch a surprise attack on the USA. Considering the recent news cycle, it's hard to decide on just how far-fetched that idea is nowadays. 

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
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share 

 

The Bad Guys 2 (2025)

It's always a good sign when everyone returns for a sequel, and I cannot spot anyone major missing, either behind or "in front" of the camera, from The Bad Guys 2. Considering I enjoyed the first movie enough, thanks in no small part to the style and the voice cast, I was optimistic about this. That optimism was not misplaced.

Some time has passed, of course, and the bad guys are spending their time trying to be good guys. That's hard when you have earned the kind of reputation that they have earned though. It's even harder when someone is pulling off the kind of robberies that would seem to be very much in line with the M. O. of the bad guys. Hoping to crack the case and change the opinions of people who won't let them move away from their past, Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Shark (Craig Robinson), Tarantula (Awkwafina), Piranha (Anthony Ramos), and Snake (Marc Maron) quickly put themselves in a situation that makes them look even more guilty than ever, much to the frustration of Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz).

Just as fun and lively as the first movie, The Bad Guys 2 is a pretty perfect sequel. It may not surpass the first film, but it's a very close call. And it made me laugh hard with a couple of perfectly-executed fart gags I assume will go down equally well with younger viewers. Pierre Perifel is now happy to share directing duties with JP Sans (who worked in the animation department for the first film), and Etan Cohen is now happy to collaborate with Yoni Brenner on a screenplay once again born from the books by Aaron Blabey.

The central cast remain perfect in their roles (as well as those mentioned, Richard Ayoade and Alex Borstein also reprise roles from the first film) and there are equally entertaining performances from Omid Djalili, Colin Jost, Natasha Lyonne, Maria Bakalova, and a few others. Is the plot a bit obvious and predictable? Yes. It's also easy enough to let wash over you as each sequence packs in a fantastic selection of action and gags. 

Perfect for kids (and those as childish as me), The Bad Guys 2 once again nicely reworks the standard  heist movie tropes, adds even more peril, as happens in many sequels, and provides a very nice excuse to spend some more time with some very entertaining and cool characters.

And look, just in case anyone misunderstands how old or mature I actually am . . . let me just emphasise that it was a VERY good fart gag. Otherwise I wouldn't have felt the need to mention it here. Honest. 

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 

Twisters (2024)

Despite the recent wave of nostalgic affection for it, Twister was never a movie that I considered great. It wasn't bad, and I have some amount of goodwill for any blockbuster that gives a lead role to Bill Paxton, but it wasn't up there alongside the many other disaster movies that came along after it. So I wasn't very keen to see this sorta-sequel (there's a bit of machinery used that was in the first film, and there are twisters, of course, but that covers all of the main connections). Thankfully, I had a partner very keen to see this, which is how I can now be glad that I saw it on the big screen, because this is blockbuster fun. 

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate, a young woman who retired from the tornado-chasing game after an incident that left her scarred and traumatised while trying to come up with a way to "kill" tornadoes. She now works in meteorology, in an environment that makes use of her intelligence and intuitive ability to read the weather, and hopes to stay far away from lively and huge tornadoes. That plan changes when she is approached by an old friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos), who wants Kate to help him capture some vital tornado data with the help of her natural talent and some cutting-edge technology. That puts them in competition with Tyler (Glen Powell) though. Tyler is a YouTube sensation, a cowboy daredevil, and a minor celebrity with a major ego. He might have a bit more to him though, hidden behind the cowboy hat and super-charged grin. He might even help Kate to finally realise her tornado-killing dream.

Written by Mark L. Smith, a decent enough talent working here to flesh out a story by Joseph Kosinski, Twisters is actually very smart and well-constructed, considering the type of movie it is. It delivers the required exposition via character moments, instead of in one unexciting info-dump, and it makes some interesting points about the need to stop being so passive in a world that has become increasingly hostile to many of the people living in it. It also nicely inverts the formula of the first film in a few different ways, but does so while absolutely sticking to the blockbuster movie formula you expect when you buy your ticket.

Director Lee Isaac Chung may not seem like the obvious fit for the material, considering the previous features he has helmed, but he goes all out here to deliver a slice of undiluted Americana. The scenery, the soundtrack full of lively Country music, the way in which Powell's character continues to deal with the tornadoes as beasts to be wrangled, this is a laid-back Western, in many ways, with a tornado set to be the main villain due in town for a shoot-out scheduled for High Noon. That undersells the film though, because it's also very funny. This is a fun and funny film, one that keeps entertainment front and centre. Like many modern day blockbusters, the runtime clocks in at just over two hours. Unlike many other films, however, this doesn't feel overlong. The pacing is perfect, and part of the reason for that is the timing of Glen Powell's entrance, about 20-30 minutes into the runtime.

There's no need to go on and on about Powell trying to become a star. Powell is a star. He has moments here that solidly underline that fact, and when he does his shimmy swagger at one point I coudln't help thinking of him as a demin-clad, stetson-wearing, male version of Jessica Rabbit. Powell feels like the lead here, to a degree, but it helps that Edgar-Jones is equal to him in their scenes together. She's smart, sassy, and continues to deal with trauma from her past that feels like something anyone would struggle to reconcile with. Ramos is fine as Javi, but neither he nor his main colleague, Scott (David Corensweet), are half as watchable as those who make up Tyler's troupe:Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O'Brian, and Harry Hadden-Paton (as Ben, a British journalist writing a piece on the star "tornado-wrangler"). Others appearing onscreen include Maura Tierney, David Born, Paul Scheer, Daryl McCormack, Nik Dodani, and Kiernan Shipka, but I won't tell you who gets a decent amount of screentime and who gets to cameo. Is the cast comparable to the group of actors we got in the original movie? No, but it's not too far off.

If you have seen or heard anything about Twisters and already suspect that you will hate it then you may well end up hating it. I would heartily recommend this to anyone after some full-blooded blockbuster fun though. It has human leads sparring with one another to be the brighter star, it has some great special effects also muscling in to be the star of the show, and it has a real eagerness to be absolutely entertaining from start to finish. I think it succeeds  . . . brilliantly.

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
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts (2023)

Although this is typical blockbuster fare, I realised that I might not have much to say about Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts when I prepared to start writing this review. The plot is what you might refer to as bunkum, there aren’t too many human characters, and certainly no complex journeys of development for them, and it jumps from one CGI-filled set-piece to the next throughout the 127-minute runtime (which actually feels much shorter, considering the bloated runtimes we’ve had from a number of big releases recently).

That’s not to say that this is bad though. It may not require any stamp of individuality from director Steven Calle Jr., and you would be right to be wary after looking at the collected filmographies of the six writers credited with the final screenplay, but this is a film that delivers exactly what people want from it, which is a number of scenes involving big robots fighting one another.

The plot involves some key that has been hidden away on Earth to protect both robots and humans from a massive terror named Unicron. Some bad robots want the key (including Scourge, voiced by Peter Dinklage), and good robots want to make it safe again. The good robots include Optimus Prime (of course, and once again voiced by Peter Cullen), Bumblebee, Mirage (voices by Pete Davidson), and some beast-bots aka maximals named Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) and Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), as well as a few others. Two humans who end up helping the robots are Noah Diaz (played by Anthony Ramos), caught up in the action after trying to steal a very nice car he doesn’t realise is Mirage, and Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback), a history expert working in a museum that houses part of the special key. And it’s 1994, for reasons beyond me. Maybe to help keep any canon chronology in order, maybe just to have some decent tunes on the soundtrack.

There’s a decent amount of fun to be had here, with a good voice cast doing what they have to do in between each CGI-stuffed robot fight, and this should please both fans of the series and newcomers alike. Don’t worry if you get confused at the start of the film. I was confused and I have seen every other instalment in this franchise. It ultimately doesn’t matter. All that matters is remembering who is good and who is bad, and the film makes that pretty clear throughout. Talk about nominative determinism when you have the name Scourge.

Sitting snugly in between the main Transformers movies and Bumblebee, this delivers the spectacle without feeling excessive, over-indulgent, or horribly distracted by the kind of male gaze that Michael Bay had when positioning Megan Fox alongside shiny cars. And you get a decent amount of maximal action, which will come as a relief to those thinking this might be another trailer tease amounting to very little (as happened with the dinobots in a previous instalment). And if you don’t know how it will all end then I suspect you’re completely new to big, brash, mainstream, summer movies.

Ramos is decent enough in his role, the typical good guy who just cannot catch a break after having served his country some years previously, and Fishback works very well alongside him, the two feeling very much like equals up until Ramos has to do the standard heroic move to cap off the third act. Dean Scott Vasquez is sweet, playing the younger brother of the character played by Ramos, and his presence, and the way he looks up to his older sibling, remains a major motivating factor, despite him not being onscreen for very long. There are one or two others, but those three make up the most important humans in the film. As for the voice talent, you cannot really go wrong with Cullen, Dinklage, Perlman, and Yeoh, and Pete Davidson has a brash enthusiasm that matches his robot, so I must say that I enjoyed everyone picked to portray robots in disguise. And Michael Kelly pops up just before the end credits, in a scene that may frustrate and delight viewers in equal measure.

Enjoyable blockbuster fare, good enough to help this franchise stay alive (at the very least), this is also the kind of thing you already know if you want to see or not. If you do, have fun. If you don’t, have different fun with the many other movies out there. 

Look at that. It turns out that I did find plenty to say about it.

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 Bad Guys (2022)

If there is one problem I have with The Bad Guys it’s the fact that a film featuring Sam Rockwell as a smooth and conniving thief should also be available in live-action form. But here we are, and this animated comedy crime caper should do enough to entertain most viewers.

Rockwell is Wolf, the head honcho of a crew that also includes Snake (Marc Maron), Tarantula (Awkwafina), Shark (Craig Robinson), and Piranha (Anthony Ramos). Busted during a big robbery, this group of baddies is allowed to escape jail time if they opt to place themselves in the care of the benevolent Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade). The Professor wants to show that baddies can change their ways, but a lot of other people are very doubtful, including Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz) and Police Chief Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein). There might also be someone looking to frame our main characters for one big job. Or maybe they will trip themselves up, especially as they took the Professor’s deal to simply avoid jail time while they planned their next big score.

Based on books by Aaron Blabey, The Bad Guys has a lot going for it. First of all is that voice cast, but I will get back to them in a moment. The script, written by Etan Cohen, with additional material from Yoni Brenner and Hilary Winston, is a great mix of cool and funny. Wolf is very much a charming gentleman thief, in the vein of Cary Grant or George Clooney, and he enjoys the thrill of each job, especially when it can lead to a long car chase. Each main character has an identifying prime trait, and many have a secret or two to be revealed by the finale. And if you have kids who don’t enjoy the energy or wit of the film, don’t worry, they will be amused by the upset tummy of Piranha leading to a couple of amusing fart gags.

Director Pierre Perifel has a nice body of work already, working as an animator on films such as the Kung Fu Panda movies and The Illusionist (to name just a couple of highlights). He certainly knows what he is doing. Every main sequence has just the right energy running through it, including a very enjoyable dance number, and there are lots of gags that make the most of the medium.

Let’s get back to that cast though. Rockwell has been a magnificent star for some years now and his voice is a perfect fit for the charming and fast-thinking lead. Maron, Awkwafina, Robinson, and Ramos all fit well with their characters, and they each make their scenes funnier in different ways. Ayoade, likewise, has a voice that fits his role perfectly, and both Beetz and Borstein are excellent as two authority figures who view Wolf and his gang very differently, the former hoping they can change their ways while the latter just really wants to lock them up.

Some people have commented on the little nods to Tarantino here and there, which is worth pointing out to film fans who may otherwise overlook this, but The Bad Guys is more interested in being an animal-centric riff on the “Ocean’s [Insert Number Here]” movies. And it completely works in that regard, with the stealthy thievery, action sequences, and gags all accompanied by a fantastic score from Daniel Pemberton (who has slowly become an absolute standout musical talent over the length of his career, and I hope we get plenty more from him).

Entertaining for all ages, especially if you can stay in touch with your inner child as easily as I can, this is recommended. It isn’t top-tier animated fare, but it is well put together and . . . well, it’s just a good bit of fun from start to finish. 

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