Thunderbolts* (2025)

I had to once again force myself to be optimistic when I prepared to watch the latest entry in the ever-expanding MCU. It wasn't too difficult though. The trailer looked decent, I liked the cast, and this felt like something a bit more fun, in the right ways, when compared to the few other Marvel movies that we've had over the past few years. I hoped to be distracted and entertained. I didn't expect to find myself enjoying something that so deftly blended fun, action, and some interesting exploration of depression and/or addiction.

Here's the very basic summary. Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) end up teaming up on a mission that has them encountering the mighty . . . Bob (Lewis Pullman). Bob is someone of great interest to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), the director of the CIA who wants to gain more power, maintain control, and avoid an ongoing pesky potential impeachment.

Perhaps this is the result of assembling an equally eclectic team behind the camera, but Thunderbolts* feels like the proper breath of fresh air that the MCU was so desperately in need of. Despite most of these main characters being featured in previous movies or shows, throwing them together, and developing the narrative and team dynamic in a way that feels natural and well-handled, leads to a great result. Writers Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo use the main characters well, and without really changing them too much to fit into their new roles (reluctant heroes), while Jake Schreier shows a real knack for delivering hugely satisfying moments of cinematic joy in the midst of something that still feels more personal and smaller in scale than many of the features that preceded it.

Pugh is the nominal lead, and this is made clear in a witty and impressive opening sequence, but most of the other cast members get a chance to shine (perhaps John-Kamen being the exception there, due to being the only one who has the super-power of phasing through objects, making her inherently less present than the others). Everyone certainly does enough to warrant their inclusion though, and it's great to watch them be misfits who also happen to have some well-honed skills. Stan gets to look tough, and has the coolest moment in the entire movie, Russell continues to be a great fit for a slightly more complex character than expected, and Harbour delivers a lot of the laughs. Pullman is a wonderful addition, especially in the moments that show him stuck within his own darkness and bad memories, and both Louis-Dreyfuss and Geraldine Viswanathan (playing her assistant) bring their usual level of excellence.

This is what we've been missing from Marvel for a little while now. It's blockbuster entertainment with a mix of characters that you care about, enough spectacle to make it feel well worth seeing on the big screen, and an exploration of themes that feel like more than just set-up and pay-off for the rest of the movies. I'm sure I missed some references and Easter eggs here, but I was consistently entertained, as well as being very impressed by the way the screenplay gave us quite a literal look at the mindset of someone who has spent a long time burying their soul within an deepening and darkening abyss of self-loathing and self-harm. 

Maybe I'm being too kind to something that just feels even better in comparison to a whole lot of inferior features, but there's a chance that Thunderbolts* is just actually that good. I'll lean towards the latter idea, of course, but am happy if people consider the former option. This doesn't feel cheap, it doesn't feel like a temporary place-holder, and it doesn't feel anywhere close to what would be considered lower-tier MCU fare.

8/10

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Unwelcome (2022)

Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) are a young couple who we see going through a terrible ordeal at the start of this movie. So when Jamie is informed that he has inherited a house in Ireland it seems as if things are looking up. There’s only one catch, explained to them by a local woman. An offering has to be left out every night for the little people. A bit of liver or some other raw meat, making it a blood offering. Maya and Jamie roll their eyes at this idea, but decide to go along with it. They have just been given a house, it’s the least they can do. And it may end up saving them when they end up inadvertently hiring the wrong family of builders to work on renovating their home.

Directed by Jon Wright, who once again worked with Mark Stay on the script (the two also co-wrote Robot Overlords), Unwelcome is a horror movie laced with moments of comedy that sadly fails to get the balance right. And it’s not as if Wright shouldn’t be able to handle the mix, given how well he did with the wonderful Grabbers. 

The problems start with the script, which spectacularly fails to give you anything that feels plausible, as well as making the main characters too annoying to root for. But you have to root for Maya because she’s pregnant. Okay, the themes of motherhood and protection run through the entire the film, but I still cannot help feeling that making a main character pregnant is an easy and lazy way to force viewers to be on their side.

Things aren’t helped by the weak acting from our leads. I have seen John-Kamen and Booth give decent performances in other works, but they are both quite poor in this, with the latter suffering from the script going too far to show his inability to be the protector that his partner needs. In fact, almost every decision that is made by Booth’s character makes any situation worse, and I spent a lot of the movie hoping to see him be killed off, which I don’t think was the intention of the film-makers. The antagonists do a much better job though, headed up by a fun Colm Meaney. He is the patriarch (“call me Daddy”) and has fun as he weaves between being jovial and menacing. His children are played by Kristian Nairn, Chris Walley, and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, with the latter being the best of the bunch, and getting away with a bit more inappropriate behaviour as she toys with the new man in the village. Niamh Cusack also has a small role, but she is leading a supporting cast of players who all seem to have been pulled from the “to be sure, to be sure, shamrocks and shillelaghs, every green-eyed Irish stereotype casting company”. The dialogue and character types populating the rest of the movie will have many cringing with embarrassment.

There’s a 5-10 minute segment in the third act that hints at how good this could have been. It feels fun, there are some entertaining bits of bloodshed, and the effects work well enough for what the film wants to show. That’s all you get though, and that glimpse of something better just makes the rest of the film all the worse. It’s really bad. I sincerely hope that Wright gets back on track with whatever he directs next. 

3/10

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Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (2021)

Despite my inherent awfulness when it comes to playing videogames, and I know I have said this before, Resident Evil has been my all-time favourite gaming series since I first started battling zombies and solving puzzles when I first got a PSOne. I have enjoyed the games on various consoles since then (mainly different Playstations, but I also had a Nintendo Gamecube for a while) and have also taken some pleasure from the main live-action movie series, most often kept in the hands of Paul W. S. Anderson. The animated movies haven't been quite as good, but I can't deny finding enough in each one to ensure I have had to own them all, at least in digital form.

This, however, is a film that finally feels like the games (well, the first 2 anyway). That's not to simply dismiss all of the other movies now, not at all, but this is arguably the definitive cinematic interpretation of so much of what players love about the Resident Evil game series. And I am happy that we can enjoy both the other movies, often full of bombastic slo-mo and CGI-laden silliness, and this movie.

Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, although most of the events depicted here were already written for the videogames, what you get here is an adventure that throws together Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), Jill Valentine (Hanna John-Kamen), Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia), a young girl named Sherry Birkin (Holly de Barros), and Dr William Birkin (Neal McDonough). Raccoon City is about to become a very dangerous place to stay, full of infected people, dangerous dogs, and other mutated dangers, and not even the Police Station can offer safety for long. That's before we even  get to the reported disturbance at the Spencer Mansion.

While none of the cast may be causing Oscar-winners to start looking over their shoulders, they all do an excellent job with the material. Scodelario, Amell, John-Kamen, and Jogia show a variety of skills, and they seem to enjoy portraying the nominal heroes, while McDonough is an enjoyably untrustworthy potential villain. Tom Hopper makes for a good Albert Wesker, and it's nice to have a small role for the likeable Donal Logue, playing a Police Chief who knows that everyone should get the hell out of the city while they can.

It's the attention to detail here that really impresses. This is not really a great movie, but it IS a great Resident Evil movie. The characters all feel very much in line with their videogame origins (okay, Leon Kennedy may be overdone slightly, but his first adventure did have him as someone pretty heartbroken and hungover who just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time when the zombie nightmare began), the creature design is on point, making me wish we could see more of the monsters that cropped up in the games (please give me a giant snake or sharks in the next movie, and definitely a Plant 42), and the environment often feels as if it has been surgically transplanted from a console directly into the movie.

There's a good score by Mark Corven, great work done by the costume and makeup department, and everyone generally works in service to a script that allows viewers to feel a sense of familiarity without the potential accompanying boredom. Changes that are made are ones that make sense, cinematically, (the main one being how a character named Lisa Trevor is used, which is very clever) and I can't imagine any fans of the series thinking that any character or element has been done a major disservice. Even the relatively small amount of screentime for Ada Wong (played by Lily Gao) feels in line with her impactful involvement in the RE 2 game.

Roberts has a varied filmography, in terms of quality, but his best horror work is well worth your time. This is up easily there with his best. I really hope that it has done well enough to kick-start a whole new movie series in this vein. I'll still revisit all of the other movies available, but I already know that this is the one I will go back to most often. At least until I need my next fix of watching Milla Jovovich kick ass.

8/10

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