For It Is Man's Number: laeta kalogridis

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Wednesday, 7 May 2025

Prime Time: Another Simple Favor (2025)

The simple addition of one word to give the title of this sequel could be seen as a relatively amusing and clever bit of work. Or it could be seen as unimaginative and lazy. Considering the film itself, I am going to go with the latter option.

I enjoyed A Simple Favour when I caught up with it about six years ago. The leads did good work, and it was a pleasant distraction. I have never spent any time since wishing that it had a sequel though. But it seems that director Paul Feig wanted an excuse to spend more time with the characters played by Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, which explains why writers Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis came up with this load of nonsense.

Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick) is trying to boost her book sales and stay relevant, which makes a surprise reappearance by Emily Nelson (Lively) both a blessing and a curse. Emily is out of prison on appeal, which means she can go gallivanting around Italy as she prepares to marry Dante Versano (Michele Morrone). For reasons that never quite make sense, Emily wants Stephanie to be a major part of her wedding, which allows both ladies to be put in danger when people start dying.

Lively is the star draw here, revelling in her callous and bitchy persona (even if the first half of the film seems to think it will be hilarious and shocking to have her overusing the word c**t), but it's always good to see Kendrick able to give some shading to her perky and sparkly onscreen persona. Alex Newell is fun as an eager agent, Henry Golding returns to the role of Sean Townsend, but with much more alcohol and bitterness added this time around, and there are a few decent moments for Allison Janney and Elizabeth Perkins. Morrone isn't great though, which is in line with most of his acting performances, and both Taylor Ortega and Elena Sofia Ricci feel sorely wasted. I could mention one or two others, but why bother putting more effort into this review than seems to have been put into crafting the narrative of the film?

Look, it's sometimes hard to really explain the full range of reactions to a movie. I thought that Another Simple Favor was pretty rubbish. It never made sense, it never had any actual tension, and there were too few laughs scattered throughout the screenplay. I wouldn't ever choose to rewatch this. BUT, mainly thanks to Kendrick and Lively, I still kind of enjoyed some of it. Despite the awful plotting, despite the fairly flat direction from Feig, there was some fun to be had here. Not much, but enough to save me from feeling pained.

I'm sure everyone enjoyed spending some time in Italy, and I hope they all enjoyed each other's company, but it doesn't translate to any more fun for viewers. Some of the scenery is nice. It starts to look less nice when blocked by unfolding events that are as irritating as they are illogical.

You might end up liking this more than I did, despite me somehow still ending up not judging it too harshly (and, trust me, this is me not being harsh), but I would suggest that you do yourself a favour and just pick something else to watch ahead of this.

4/10

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Tuesday, 30 July 2019

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Hey, I am as surprised as you might be to be saying this, but maybe more people should check out Alita: Battle Angel. It's not necessarily going to become your new favourite movie, it's certainly not going to placate you if you've been spending some time recently seeking out quality cinema with great actors delivering ear-tickling dialogue, but it's a fantastic bit of escapist fun, set in a world full of cool little details and wonderful production design.

The film starts off with Christoph Waltz, playing a Dr. Dyson Ido (and his surgical work now involves a lot of engineering or robotic parts), finding a discarded cyborg body that he then rebuilds and reactivates. The cyborg is Alita (Rosa Salazar), a young woman who strives to remember her past, and who ends up having a number of much bigger cyborgs tasked with ending her life.

Based on a manga (Gunnm AKA Battle Angel Alita) by Yukito Kishiro, Alita: Battle Angel comes to the screen courtesy of a screenplay by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis and direction from Robert Rodriguez. As ridiculous as it may seem, considering some of their achievements throughout their careers, none of these names are the draw they once were. People tend to actively mistrust Cameron nowadays, with good reason, considering how many times he has done his bit to sell us on Terminator sequels of ever-diminishing quality. Everyone is on good form here though, and it's refreshing to see Rodriguez back at the helm of something that is looking forward rather than trying to emulate the past (he does the latter well, but it's a well he's gone back to a few too many times throughout his career).

The cast help to sell everything, especially Salazar in a role that transforms her into the wide-eyed central character and Waltz as the fallible human who kicks things off. Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali are enjoyable as the people who are manipulating events to direct Alita towards dangerous confrontations, Keean Johnson is the pretty male/potential love interest, and a couple of the main mean cyborgs are played entertainingly enough by Ed Skrein and Jackie Earle Haley.

But don't go thinking I am praising this as a near-perfect cinematic experience. While it delivers on the eye candy, and it really does (I was relieved to see that Rodriguez could still do well with action scenes), it's also full of good quality cheese. The script is silly and clunky, especially in the few moments in which it tries to have characters showing some real emotions. It's easy to forgive, however, as we're taken from one gorgeous sequence to the next (whether it's just a crowded street scene or a violent sporting tournament).

I'm not sure if we'll ever get any other instalments after this one, it didn't seem to do as well as expected at the box office, but I do know that I'll try to catch them on the big screen if we do. For sci-fi action blockbusters that enjoy pretending they have some depth to them, this is one of the better examples we've had in recent years.

7/10

Sunday, 5 July 2015

Terminator Genisys (2015)

I DID say the hiatus may be temporary. While there definitely won't be a review here every day, my recent EIFF 2015 attendance spurred me back into some enjoyable writing.

Terminator Genisys didn't seem to have much going for it. There's that title for starters. A horrible mess that seems like nothing more than an attempt to blend in with the cool kids. And it was coming along after Terminator Salvation. I like Terminator Salvation. I am, however, aware that my positive view of the film (and my equal enjoyment of Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines) puts me firmly in a minority. And then we had that spoiler-filled trailer, which actually puts it on a par with Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the "potentially great twists ruined by the need to market to a wider audience" stakes.

Despite the fact that you may have already had plenty spoiled for you, I'll try to surmise the plot without giving anything major away. Jai Courtney plays Kyle Reese this time, and he's sent back (as we all know) in time by John Connor (Jason Clarke). But instead of finding a frightened and vulnerable Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) he finds a woman all-too-prepared for the battle that will affect the future of the planet. This is mainly due to the fact that she's had her own terminator (Schwarzenegger) serving as a protector for many years. She even calls him Pops. With everything so different, our leads hope to prove that the future is not set in stone, and that judgment day can be averted.

Let's cut to the chase here. Nostalgia. That's what proves to be the best thing about this movie, and also proves to be the worst. This is a film, arguably more than any other franchise instalment I can think of in recent years, that is reliant on the nostalgia of fans to carry viewers through a number of weak scenes. Newcomers are brought up to speed quickly enough, and will enjoy seeing everything unfold, but it is the older fans who will get the most from this. Scenes are either replicated from the first two movies or they are inverted in ways that writers Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier clearly think are clever. They're not. Every Terminator movie has had paradox problems (indeed, it's almost that way with every time travel movie, period), but this would seem to be the first movie in the series to take the paradox and just heap more and more complications on top of everything until viewers realise that this is one knot destined to never be undone. There's no satisfying explanation for that first major plot twist, which would surely already be known to everyone if the script wasn't cheating, and then we have Kyle Reese and his "impossible memories", people careening into the lives of others without any more notable ripples of cause and effect, and also a surprising lack of any sense of real threat while everyone moves from set-piece to set-piece.

Arnie makes it all worthwhile. Some will view him as Conan, some will always think of him fighting against the Predator, but he'll always BE The Terminator to me. Showing him as an older model here is the best idea that the film has (and the explanation doesn't entirely suck). Occasionally pitting him against the younger version of himself provides the best moments in the film, simply because the CGI doesn't feel overused or overly familiar in those moments. Jason Clarke is a decent John Connor, but that is the best I can say about the leads. Emilia Clarke isn't necessarily bad, she's just not believable as a tough woman who has been primed for her role as warrior and potential saviour of the planet. And how the hell Jai Courtney keeps getting work is a mystery that even Scooby Doo and co. couldn't get to the bottom of. I charitably mentioned to others that he wasn't as bad as usual here, but then I remembered that he was supposed to be portraying Kyle Reese. No. No, no, no, no. He doesn't work, which is pretty much how you could sum up his performance in every movie he's starred in. J. K. Simmons does well with a character who doesn't need to be in the film at all, and Lee Byung-Hun deserves more than the small amount of screentime that he's given.

Director Alan Taylor feels as if he's playing things very safe, allowing himself to be led by the script, and the movies that have come along beforehand, instead of putting any kind of personal stamp on the material. It's a savvy move, I guess. This instalment will inevitably make money so why take risks? Yet it's hard to stop thinking about just how much better things could have been if everyone involved had attempted to move slightly off the beaten path. How much more enjoyable could the action scenes have been if they didn't feel so familiar to scenes from the first two films, especially when they suffer in comparison? The FX work here varies in quality, and nothing delivers that impact that most of us felt when we first saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day (which was almost twenty five years ago now - a quarter of a century). And don't even get me started on just how lame the entire finale is. The writer in me wanted to think of a better word than "lame", the realist in me knew that it was the most appropriate adjective.

Although I've already seen a wide range of opinions on this movie already, from the outright hating of it to the pleasantly surprised, I have to say that I think most people will at least enjoy parts of it. Despite the many complaints I have about different aspects of the movie, I was entertained for most of the runtime, and a few of the action beats were very enjoyable. It's just a shame that this is the blandest and safest Terminator movie yet. AND it has Jai Courtney in it.

6/10