Netflix And Chill: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

When Rian Johnson gave us Knives Out a few years ago, he served up a delightful murder mystery that made great use of some excellent plotting, provided numerous laughs, and allowed for everyone in the ensemble cast to have at least one or two moments to shine. I loved it, and I was far from alone in loving it. I'd say that a lot of people were looking forward to this follow-up, another case for the talented detective Benoit Blanc (Craig David) to crack.

Edward Norton plays Miles Bron, a super-rich tech "genius" who is gathering a number of people together on his island to take part in a murder mystery weekend. Most of the guests are his friends, but most of them also have a reason to relish his potential demise. They include Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), a fashionista and social media personality, Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a famous idiot who has found an audience for his idiotic agitation, Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.), a tech guy who actually ends up doing the work that Bron can then take credit for, and Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), a woman making moves in the world of politics. Janelle Monáe also turns up, not necessarily a friend, but certainly an integral part of the group, and there are a couple of other people present (Peg, the assistant to Birdie Jay, and Whiskey, the partner of Cody). The most important guest, however, is Blanc. And things take a turn for the mysterious when it is revealed that he wasn't actually invited. Who is really orchestrating the events of the weekend, and who will wind up dead?

It's hard to think of people hating this film. The cast and the quality of the film-making should please most viewers. It's also hard, however, to see how fans of the first film can consider this a superior mystery. Before getting into detail, it's overlong (by a good 10-15 minutes, and most of the opening act could be trimmed down easily), it's not as engaging or clever when it comes to the plotting, and most of the cast are sadly wasted.

Craig is clearly having a wonderful time in the central role, and that emanates from the screen, which is a big plus. Hudson also has a lot of fun, it's good to see Norton not in full serious mode (especially in the flashback scenes that have him sporting hair stolen from Magnolia's Frank T. J. Mackey), and Monáe sinks her teeth into a script that gives her a chance to shine bright, which she does with aplomb. Unfortunately, that leaves the rest of the cast floundering. Bautista can't do much with his underwritten character, nor can Odom Jr., and wasting Hahn this painfully should be punishable by public flogging. Henwick manages to shine in her supporting role, but that's more to do with her presence than the writing (for comparison, just look at the way Cline feels almost non-existent), and Noah Segan has no need to be in the tiny role that he's given.

I like Johnson, he's a film-maker who often mixes in just the right amount of cine-literacy (and he's been very open about this film being influenced by The Last Of Sheila) and sheer fun, but this feels like a mis-step, as if he's already forgotten, or didn't actually realise, what made the first film work so well. This lacks bite, it lacks enough solid laughs, and it lacks that important feeling of satisfaction that viewers should get when all of the pieces lock into place during the final act. Some of the silliness is deliberate, especially when Johnson is underlining the idea of people mistaking wealth for intelligence and class, but some of it feels out of place, almost as if Johnson was worried about people becoming bored. Which, ironically, leads to a few scenes which may leave some viewers bored.

Generally well-made, and with some delightful cameos, this is a nice bit of escapism for the swollen runtime. It's just a bit disappointing, especially when stood alongside the brilliance of the first film in the series, although it's not essential to have seen that before diving into this one. I'll still look forward to the next Knives Out mystery though, and I wouldn't be too pained if I was ever made to rewatch this.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days (2003)

It had been quite some time since I had seen How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. The last time was certainly before the transformation of Matthew McConaughey from rom-com lead to versatile actor in more critically-appreciated fare. And here's the main thing I couldn't help thinking about while watching the movie; McConaughey is doing work here that is as good as work he has been doing in recent years. It's just a very different kind of performance, one that makes use of his innate charm and his ability to handle light comedy. I'm actually keen to check out a number of other McConaughey movies from this period, to see for myself whether or not I was being a bit unfair to just ignore them while the man was cashing those paychecks and laying the foundation for years in which he could make some more daring choices.

McConaughey plays Ben, an advertising executive who wants to be in charge of a large campaign selling diamonds. Ben doesn't seem to understand women, however, because he hasn't had a relationship that has lasted more than a few days. If he can meet a woman, and get her to fall in love with him, before a big event party then his boss may just let him head up the campaign. He is told to make his move on the lovely Andie (Kate Hudson). What he doesn't know is that Andie writes a "How To" column in a popular woman's magazine, and her latest project is "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days". Andie is about to test the waters, using every major faux pas committed by women who become too needy, clingy, and overbearing. Despite their agendas, Ben and Andie really start to warm to one another, and you know there will be a standard rom-com third act full of revelations, confrontations, and a race-against-time to fix some major damage.

Based on a book by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long, subtitled "The Universal Don'ts Of Dating", How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days is a self-aware and clever entry in the rom-com subgenre. The screenplay, by Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan, and Burr Steers, is very happy to hit all of the required beats while also letting the central characters try to push each other further and further apart as they feel themselves growing inexorably closer, emotionally.

Director Donald Petrie has a good handle on things (his varied filmography doesn't show this as a given, but he had a great double-whammy of Miss Congeniality and then this movie in the space of a few years) and he's helped by the assembled cast, with a number of wonderful supporting players orbiting our charismatic leads.

Hudson is perfect here, having a lot of fun as she goes more and more over the top in her "girlfriend from hell" guise and still radiant when her character is allowed to relax and not work on her agenda. McConaughey is his usual charming self, all abs and gleaming teeth and gentlemanly politeness and respect. Bebe Neuwirth and Robert Klein play the bosses of Hudson and McConaughey, respectively, and there are fun moments for Kathryn Hahn (the unlucky-in-love friend of Hudson, and inspiration for the article), Adam Goldberg, and Thomas Lennon (the latter two friends of McConaughey, hilarious when they get to look on and comment on their friend's disrupted "new life").

You can act snobbish and dismiss films like this easily enough. Okay, they are formulaic and predictable. But that doesn't mean they aren't enjoyable, especially when you have stars who so easily emanate such an air of, well, stardom. Sometimes it's a treat to watch actors you know disappear into roles that explore various facets of the human experience, and sometimes it's a treat to watch stars be stars.

7/10

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Ani-MAY-tion: Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is the best Spider-Man movie made, to date. That's not to say that some of the others don't come close, or to call this perfect. It just captures the spirit of the character, and the comic-book style, better than anything else put onscreen so far, helped in no small way by the stylistic choices made, and a fantastic voice cast.

Shameik Moore plays Miles Morales, a teenager who finds his life becoming a bit more problematic when he's bitten by a spider and turned into Spider-Man. It's confusing because, in the universe that Miles inhabits, there is already a Spider-Man (Chris Pine). And then another Spider-Man (Jake Johnson) turns up. And then quite a few other incarnations of the character also turn up: Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), and Spider-Ham (John Mulaney).

Taking a cue from the character of Morales, this is a movie infused with the energy and colour of well-made street art. It has a sense of anarchy art times, and yet remains surprisingly on point when it comes to the kind of lesson that we're used to seeing delivered by a Spider-Man film. It's loud and vibrant for a lot of the runtime. It also takes some time to allow Morales to try sorting through his own muddle of thoughts as he figures out how best to adapt to his potential new life.

Directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman do a great job with the script, co-written by Rothman and Phil Lord. There's a reason for the events onscreen (a device being fired up by the main villain, Kingpin) and everything is balanced out perfectly. You get plenty of moments to make you laugh, plenty of fun action sequences, and a plot that actually makes sense and builds towards the sort of spectacular finale you get from any standard superhero movie, despite this feeling far removed from standard superhero movies in a number of ways.

The voice cast are absolutely superb, across the board. As well as those mentioned, you also have great work from Brian Tyree Henry (the father of Miles), Mahershala Ali (a cool uncle that Miles looks up to), Liev Schreiber (Kingpin), Kathryn Hahn (a scientist working for Kingpin), Zoë Kravitz, and Lily Tomlin.

The only thing holding this back from being a perfect movie is the fact that it's sometimes a little bit TOO loud and busy in scenes that have your eyes darting around to try and take in every single detail. And most scenes have plenty of details that will make this a treat to rewatch again and again.

Who would have thought that, while attempting to tell various Peter Parker adventures again and again, the secret to making the most satisfying Spider-Man movie to date would involve putting Miles Morales front and centre? Actually . . . a lot of Miles Morales fans have been saying it for years. It's good to see that others can now see how right they were.

9/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Ani-MAY-tion: Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

Love or hate Adam Sandler, and most people fall firmly into the latter camp nowadays, it's hard to deny the easy appeal of the animated movie series that cast him in the role of Dracula. Almost every classic monster you can think of makes an appearance, the jokes are no less amusing for their obviousness, and everyone seems to be having fun doing their voice work.

This time around, after surviving the perils of seeing his daughter fall in love with a human (in the first movie) and then figuring out how to best be a grandparent (second movie), Dracula is taken on a holiday on a cruise ship. The whole gang is with him, of course, and there's an immediate connection between Drac and the ship's captain, Ericka (Kathryn Hahn).

Although not quite as good as the two films preceding it, this third adventure for "the Drac pack" has plenty packed in it to keep fans of the series amused. None of the characters are twisted into something they shouldn't be, mainly because that work was done in the first movie when the monsters realised they could get along with humans, and the straightforward plot has a couple of twists that you can see coming from the opening scenes and a finale that basically falls back on that old standard, a dance off.

Sandler is good in the lead role. In fact, I would say that most people will find him much more enjoyable as an animated Dracula than in his normal, live-action, guise. Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg are just as good, playing Drac's daughter and son-in-law, respectively. Hahn is good fun as the cruise captain with an obvious secret, and Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, and a few others return to join the monster mash.

Also returning is director Genndy Tartakovsky, who has been at the helm since the first movie a few years ago. He also co-wrote the script, with Michael McCullers, which manages to keep focused on the leads while also providing a selection of amusing moments for each one of the main supporting characters.

If you enjoyed the previous Hotel Transylvania movies then you should enjoy this one. I'd prefer them to end it here, having already started creeping down the slope of diminishing returns, but I also know that I will watch any future instalments.

6/10

There's a good triple pack here.
Americans can pick it up here.

Yule Love It: A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)

Everyone returns for this sequel to the very funny and enjoyable Bad Moms, with the cast also being swelled out by some great new additions, and maybe that's something that ends up working against the end product. It's not really a bad film. I laughed a fair few times, I enjoyed spending times with the characters, but it's one of those sequels that plays things all too safe by basically reworking the first movie, with a few minor twists and tweaks. That can be fun. I am sure that I have thoroughly enjoyed some sequels that have been designed that way. But I was left disappointed by this one.

Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn are, once again, parents struggling to live up to the ideal image set by society. But this time society is right in their homes, in the shape of THEIR mothers (played by, respectively, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines, and Susan Sarandon). And it's all about Christmas. Baranski is too pushy, happy to throw gifts at her grandchildren as she plans an extravagant Christmas for everyone around her family to be suitably impressed by, Hines is just unable to give her daughter any space, and Sarandon is so lacking in maternal instinct that Hahn starts to reconsider her own approach to parenting.

You can tell how things are going to pan out from the very opening scenes, although that's made all the more obvious by it starting with a depressed Kunis telling viewers that she has ruined Christmas before then jumping back in time to show how she got to that point. But there are no surprises here, and that's not just due to the structuring.

Writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore obviously feel that fans of the first movie were most entertained by the scenes showing some bad behaviour, which is why they rework them here. One main sequence, which basically has the women saying "fuck the capitalism and unattainable standards of the Christmas that we have all been sold", is amusing, but far less amusing than it could have been. Why? Because it's really just the same montage that we saw in the first movie, except this time around we have Christmas decorations involved. Despite having developed into different people by the end of the first movie, even slightly, the leads are now back to exactly as they were, although ready to band together for occasional moments of civil disobedience. The entrance of the grandparents allows Lucas and Moore to pretend that this isn't a pretty weak retread, but that is exactly what it is.

All of the leads do well though. Hahn is a scene-stealer once again, and both Kunis and Bell do well in their roles. Baranski is the best of the newcomers, but Sarandon and Hines certainly have their moments, and the latter made me laugh as she desperately called out diseases that she was pretending to be afflicted by in order to deflect her daughter resenting her.

And that's the saving grace of A Bad Mom's Christmas. It's much like Daddy's Home 2, which I know I am in the minority for enjoying. Whatever you think of the lack of originality, of the predictable plotting, of the sheer needlessness of it all, it provides some laughs. It provides some good laughs, although a few more wouldn't have gone amiss. But that's what a comedy should do, make you laugh, and this succeeds in that department.

6/10

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