Netflix And Chill: A Family Affair (2024)

If you liked The Idea Of You then you should like A Family Affair, a rom-com with a similar age and status divide getting in the way of the potential romantic relationship at the heart of things. Unlike the former film, this gets a better balance of both the rom and the com elements, but it suffers slightly from a lack of any real chemistry and heat between the leads.

Zac Efron plays Chris Cole, a vain and selfish actor who constantly makes life difficult for his young assistant, Zara (Joey King). When he eventually goes too far, once again, and has Zara walking out on the job, Chris knows that he has to make things up to her. He heads to her family home, where he meets Zara's mother, Brooke (Nicole Kidman). Things quickly get hot and heavy for the two of them, which makes things very awkward when Zara eventually walks in on them in flagrante. Not only could this complicate things if Zara returns to work for Chris, but it puts Zara on edge as she waits for the moment when Chris inevitably hurts her mother. Because Chris eventually hurts every girl that he's been in a relationship with. It's what he does.

Although he has numerous directorial credits already, I am not overly familiar with the filmography of Richard LaGravenese. I have seen some of the features that he has written, including the fantastic The Fisher King, but nothing of his work that had him sitting in the big chair on set. Writer Carrie Solomon is also someone I am not too familiar with, but that's because this is her first big feature after holding a few production assistant roles on various projects (which is something to make you wonder how much of this is based on a strange reality that us normal people struggle to comprehend). I hope to see much more from Solomon in the future, she's got a great writing style that blends the melodrama with some good laughs, and just a pinch of raunch to keep things skating close to the realm of the spicy (relatively speaking).

The cast helps though, in many ways. While they don't have sparks flying between them, both Efron and Kidman are beautiful people who you could imagine falling for one another. The problem maybe lies with Kidman having to spend some time pretending she can hide her light under a bushel, and also having her character being a bit too restrained to allow herself to have as much fun as possible, but Efron doesn't need to worry about that. He has a blast portraying his character as the most ridiculously selfish and needy star you could imagine, although it's nice when the script also allows him to have just enough self-awareness to also occasionally poke fun at his lifestyle. King is also a lot of fun, very good with the sharp dialogue and the physical comedy she is given, and Kathy Bates pops up to play the wise and kindly grandmother in a turn so sweet and lovely that you can almost forget that time she hobbled a stranded writer in her home. Almost. 

This kept me chuckling throughout, it gave me a central relationship that I eventually felt invested in, and there were a few big laughs sprinkled throughout the 111-minute runtime (which felt nice and brisk, compared to the stream of movies that seemingly have to hit the 2-hour mark nowadays). The soundtrack is decent, the visuals help to keep things romantic (there's even a holiday sequence, because Christmas trimmings always add to the dream of an ideal love, for some reason), and the finale is as predictable and satisfying as you'd expect.

I'm not sure whether I would necessarily recommend a double-bill of this and The Idea Of You, but you could certainly do a lot worse. I rate both of them equally, but for different reasons, and if you had a good time with one then you're unlikely to hate the other.

7/10

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Bullet Train (2022)

A comedy action movie, emphasis on the comedy, starring Brad Pitt as a professional criminal who wants nothing in his life but good vibes, Bullet Train has a lot going for it. On paper. Directed by David Leitch, starring Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Joey King, Michael Shannon, and Hiroyuki Sanada, and mixing action and comedy on the titular bullet train, what’s not to love?

Pitt is on a simple mission. He is given the codename “Ladybug” and tasked with retrieving a briefcase from the bullet train. Ideally, he should get on, grab the case, and then get off at the next stop. Meanwhile, Lemon (Henry) and Tangerine (Taylor-Johnson) are looking after someone they are supposed to keep safe, in exchange for a decent payday. Meanwhile, Prince (King) wants to get revenge on a number of people, as does Wolf (played by Bad Bunny. MEANWHILE, others start to board the train with their own deadly agendas. Ladybug shouldn’t even be there, as he is filling in for an agent named Carver, and it isn’t long until he wishes he hadn’t taken the job.

Based on a book by Kôtarô Isaka, turned into a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz, this is a bizarre throwback to a time when every other film was trying to rip off Tarantino or Guy Ritchie. I am not sure if the problem lies with the source material, having not read the book, but there’s a smugness throughout that isn’t matched by the dialogue or plotting. Everything feels far too much like a Rube Goldberg machine, an excessive amount of moving parts and complications leading to a very underwhelming final result, and the eclectic cast isn’t good enough, overall, to help it all along.

Leitch, who has spent the last five years directing films that mix action and comedy better than this one, fails to find the right way through the dense plotting. There aren’t enough moments of impressive action, the comedy always feels like a separate component, rather than an intertwining strand, and any sense of entertaining spectacle is undermined by the overuse of CGI. This is a busy movie in so many ways, often painfully so, and I only felt that working in its favour during an enjoyable finale that somehow managed to tie up every strand and provide a punchline for every running gag (so fair play to Olkewicz for saving his best work until the end of the movie).

Pitt is fine in the lead role, playing a character we have seen a version of in a number of different movies now. The main thing that allows him to stand out is what he views as a constant string of bad luck, something that allows the script to keep getting bigger and wilder, but there’s a moderately interesting idea tucked away here about perspective, and how bad luck in one way may be good luck in the long run. Taylor-Johnson is bad, I just didn’t like him in this role (and I can only imagine how much this movie could have been improved with someone else there), but Henry does a bit better, helping to make their scenes together more bearable. I don’t want to rate every single main player, especially when I can spend some time highlighting just how good both Shannon and Sanada are. Both get in on the action for the third act, and both take this movie up an entire notch or two. King is okay, Bad Bunny is . . . okay, Zazie Beetz is great, but sadly underused, and there are a few cameos that properly amused me.

It certainly tries to keep the momentum going for most of the 2+ hour runtime, I will give it that, and the soundtrack has some great choices, although I wanted even more. I MIGHT revisit and reappraise this at some point, to see if I enjoy it more while spending less time trying to unpick the various plot threads, but for now I have to tell people that it’s not recommended. It’s tonally very messy, it’s comedically very hit and miss (but one hit, a sequence showing two men tallying up the numbers killed in their most recent job, is superb), and it spends a lot of time going off the rails before sorting itself out just in time for that enjoyable finale.

4/10

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Shudder Saturday: Creepshow Animated Special (2020)

Here we are, a special episode of the much-anticipated anthology series springboarding from the classic movie, and I felt it should be discussed here. It's not a movie, I know, but it's not the first time I have discussed something here that is not a movie. And it won't be the last time either.

A lot of people were delighted with the news that this series was coming. Many people are still delighted that it has happened, with some commenting that the feel of the show is just what they wanted, and the stories and framing make everything seem nicely in line with that Creepshow vibe.

I have to respectfully disagree.

Much like the tale of the monkey's paw that features in one episode in the first series, Creepshow is a classic example of being careful what you wish for. We already had the classic first movie. A lot of people really like the second movie. But there was a third movie, which was pretty bad. Now we have this, arguably the weakest of all of the products that have the Creepshow name attached.

I don't know why I held out hope that this animated special would be better, but I did. Maybe I was carried along on the wave of positivity that seems to keep coming from the horror community. But let's be clear, I cannot help thinking that the positivity, the love, for this series is coming from people who are still hoping it becomes better than it has been so far. As easy to please as I am, the hit rate for the show has been just below 50%, at a conservative estimate. The better stories have been good, the worse stories have been godawful.

A lot of the success depends on the source material, so I was pleased to see that the first tale this time around was "Survivor Type", a dark and twisted Stephen King story about a man who ends up on a desert island, and aims to stay alive for as long as possible, no matter what. I've long been a fan of this story (which I first read in "Skeleton Crew" and, considering the nastiness of it, using animation to tell it seemed like a perfect choice. Kiefer Sutherland voices the main character, the animation style is okay, and it wasn't that bad. If the second tale was a good one then I could see myself enjoying this special.

The second tale, "Twittering From The Circus Of The Dead" was not a good one. I'd actually say it sit easily alongside the worse of the tales featured in season one. A young girl (voiced by Joey King) and her family end up going into a roadside circus attraction, which features zombies and people in peril. The people in peril act as if they're genuinely afraid. I am sure you can guess why. Based on a short story by Joe Hill, I can only assume this was picked as a way to give the special that father-son writer connection, all this did was make me wish they had gone with some other, ANY other, Joe Hill story. Given the form, this would have been an ideal opportunity to introduce people to the quirky world of Pop Art (okay, not as grounded in horror, maybe, but a much more interesting choice).

I'll watch a second season of the show, but it's become increasingly obvious with each episode, and particularly with this special, that the people crafting Creepshow (and it's Greg Nicotero who has his name writ large over most of it) have forgotten how to capture that spark of magic that makes the original film such an enduring classic, and even makes the second film a fun time for horror fans. I hope they bring some people on board soon who can help them remember how to find it.

4/10

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Slender Man (2018)

I've said it before, as have many other people, and I will say it again. The worst thing that a movie can do is to leave you feeling absolutely nothing. The ones that just exist, you watch them, you wonder what else you could have done during that time, and you hope to never have to watch them again. Slender Man is one of those movies. I can't give it the lowest possible rating, mainly due to the fact that it has a degree of technical competence and acting ability that the worst films end up lacking, but I don't want anyone thinking that this comes even close to being any good.

The very basic plot sees a group of friends discussing the modern urban legend that is the Slender Man and then working together to summon him, for no other reason than shits and giggles (this is no Candyman). Their plan works, they start to disappear one by one, and it's then a race to figure out how to get him to go away and leave them alone.

As far as I can tell, the Slender Man was created in stories on the internet about a decade ago, by someone named Eric Knudsen AKA Victor Surge, and the creation snowballed and grew into something impressively convincing and developed. My own experience with the character happened when I started to dig into the online series, Marble Hornets (look it up on YouTube, it's highly recommended), and I have been aware of his "brand" growing over the years, in videogames, movies, and as the figure at the centre of a number of crimes and media-crafted tales of fear and panic.

His presence, and the way it has developed from those early days, makes this movie all the more disappointing. What we have here is a bland, safe, mess of a film that tries to make use of the character without ever capturing the real sense of creepiness you can find in most of the tales.

The cast all do what is asked of them, without being memorable or interesting. Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, and Annalise Basso are the four main girls involved, Taylor Richardson is a younger fifth character who may get dragged into proceedings, and Alex Fitzalan plays one of the few male characters, and is so redundant that he may as well not be onscreen at all. Nobody stinks. They just can't work well enough to make up for the drab, familiar, aesthetic that is used for the nightmare imagery and scares.

Director Sylvain White has spent the past decade doing mostly TV work (his last feature was The Losers) and this doesn't look likely to lead to an increase in demand for him to try creating more cinematic outings. Although the script by David Birke is about as middling and horribly predictable as you can get, White does nothing to help, instead content to work with imagery and scene construction that feels as if it could have easily been cut and pasted from dozens of other teen horror movies from the past decade.

Do yourself a favour, skip this movie and instead spend 90 minutes browsing the internet for the early tales and videos that brought the Slender Man to the attention of the masses. You'll find a lot of that stuff much scarier.

3/10

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Wish Upon (2017)

Here are some things that can almost guarantee I watch a film: zombies, sharks, time travel, Diora Baird, and wishes that are granted in deviously twisted ways. So I knew that I would see Wish Upon eventually, despite hearing plenty of negative opinions on it, and it was only the concept that sold me. I was unaware of writer Barbara Marshall. I wasn't exactly blown away by the filmography of director John R. Leonetti (who bagged the Annabelle gig, and scored a hit there). And although I recognise lead actress Joey King, I don't know her well enough to seek out or avoid anything that she stars in.

King plays Clare Shannon, a young girl who isn't doing too well in life. Her schooldays are quite miserable, her father (Ryan Phillippe) spends most of his days scavenging from bins for items to renovate or sell on (I guess), and she gazes lovingly at a hunky fella (Paul, played by Mitchell Slaggert) who hasn't looked her way in years. She does at least have two loyal best friends (played by Sydney Park and Shannon Purser) but not much else. But everything changes when she finds a magical box that grants wishes. Those wishes come at a cost, of course, but Clare has already been seduced by a better life by the time she realises the big picture.

Starting off with an enjoyably twisted wish (Clare just wants someone to rot away), things start subtly enough to allow the film to build and build with each wish. The fact that the main characters go throughout approximately half of the movie just thinking everything is the result of an overdue deluge of good luck is ridiculous, and writer Marshall could have tried harder there, but it's easy to forgive the failings of the film as we start to watch one tease after another, wondering if people will live or die in sequences that wouldn't feel out of place in a Final Destination movie. Admittedly, tension is diluted while viewers can laugh at people sliding their hands into garbage disposal units, moving under cars that are jacked up while a tyre is being changed, or just helping someone go to work on a tree branch with the most unsafe chainsawing set-up possible, but it's all still good fun.

King is okay in the lead role, with Park and Purser both likable enough as her friends, and Slaggert does okay in a role that really sees him unwittingly under the spell of one of the wishes. Ki Hong Lee is also enjoyable enough, playing a student who ends up helping Clare try to solve the mysterious origin of the box. It's odd to see Phillippe in the dad role, despite the fact that he may have been in that age bracket for a few years now, but he does well enough, and Sherilyn Fenn gets some screentime too, which will always make me happy.

Leonetti keeps things pretty teen-friendly, neither elevating nor dragging down the average script, and the concept should please anyone who, like me, already thinks they might derive some pleasure from it. Once past the first third, which sets up the characters and shows the box starting off small before growing and growing, in terms of the price paid for wishes, this provides solid entertainment.

Oh, and if anyone ever makes a movie in which a time travelling zombie shark tries to entrap the soul of Diora Baird by offering her a number of wishes that won't pan out as she wants them to . . . . . . show me where to buy my tickets.

6/10

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