Netflix And Chill: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

It's time for another Benoit Blanc mystery written and directed by Rian Johnson and this time around the murder mystery has repercussions that affect a small local church. There are more twists and turns, there's another stacked cast (although, with respect, maybe not as stacked as the previous two movies), and Craig feels as if he has become completely comfortable in a role that has most successfully allowed him to move further away from under the shadow of Bond. Is it any good though?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that Wake Up Dead Man is perhaps the most interesting and substantial Benoit Blanc mystery yet, but it's not necessarily as much fun as the previous instalments in the series.

A Monsignor is the murder victim this time, but he also might have enough belief in the idea of resurrection to make his death less permanent than some others (hence the title). The main suspects are a younger priest with a troubled past, loyal members of a small congregation, and . . . some divine retribution?

I expected to have fun with Wake Up Dead Man. I expected to enjoy the cast, which also includes sizeable roles for Josh O'Connor, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Daryl McCormack, Cailee Spaeny, and Mila Kunis. What I didn't expect was a film that mixed a murder mystery with an exploration of organised religion, personal faith, and the good and bad aspects of both. Some of the cast members may suffer slightly as they wait on the sidelines for some of the runtime, and Blanc himself doesn't come into the movie until about the 40-45 minute mark, but it's impressive to see Johnson use the template for such a thoughtful and insightful conversation about how people can be guided, or misguided, by someone, or something, helping to direct their moral compass.

Both O'Connor and Brolin are superb in their roles, the former quiet and contemplative while the latter is keen to deliver some fire and brimstone fury in sermons designed to drive away those he disapproves of, and Close, Washington, and Scott are the highlights from the rest of the ensemble, although everyone does good work. Then you have Craig, having even more fun this time around with a character who is more comfortable in his own skin than anyone else onscreen. 

Johnson knows that he has people onside by this point. That gives him the space and time to wander around some new territory, always checking back in often enough to show us what is happening with the murder investigation. Patience is rewarded, no questions are left unanswered, and Johnson makes effective use of our goodwill without squandering it.

Some have already stated that this is their favourite Benoit Blanc mystery yet. I'm sure there are others who were disappointed. I'm also sure that it has at least done enough, in terms of audience numbers and conversations, to make a fourth outing very possible. Johnson seems to be very happy helming these, Craig seems to be just as happy to star in them, and viewers tend to be happy with the end result. I'm already curious as to what song title will be used next. 

8/10

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Noir-vember: Max Payne (2008)

All the signs were there that I wasn't going to be a big fan of Max Payne. I wasn't even very aware of the videogame when it was popular (all I knew is that "bullet time" played a part). Directed by John Moore, who has a filmography not exactly stuffed with classics. Written by Beau Thorne, someone who doesn't seem to have written any other features. And starring Mark Wahlberg, an actor who really depends on a director and cast helping him to do his best.

Wahlberg is Payne, a cop who is more dangerous than he used to be thanks to the death, a few years ago, of his wife and child. Payne likes to go out at night and take care of criminals without the hassle of arresting them and going through any paperwork. His nocturnal activities put him in the company of people who are enjoying a fun new drug. Fun until it makes the user hallucinate some scenario that leads to their sudden death. It's a great product though, apparently, and Payne will come up against a variety of enemies as he sets out to destroy the supply chain. He might also come closer to finding out just why his wife and child were killed.

I really hoped that I would be able to list SOME positives here, considering how often I can find the simplest pleasures in films that are otherwise not really worth giving time to. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There's not one thing here that actually works. The script is a messy mass of clichés, which could have worked if the design, characters, and tone of the film had been managed better. Moore directs with the approach of someone who is actually stringing together videogame scenes without any need to worry about the plotting in between. Are there moments that look pretty cool? Yes. I'd say there were about four or five. You do get the slo-mo bullets, and you also get some demons that appear to the drug addicts who are about to quickly shuffle off this mortal coil. Those moments are the only ones I am willing to acknowledge as being remotely considered highlights.

Wahlberg is very . . . Wahlbergian in the lead role. He's tough. He scowls a lot. He's a tortured soul who wants to make the world a better place. It's a horrible performance from him, despite the fact that he's a potentially great fit for the role. The supporting cast has some better faces, but none of them get good enough material to work with. Olga Kurylenko is a welcome addition to any film, as I have said on many occasions, but she's not onscreen for long enough. Mila Kunis is similarly under-used, and her character is not one that plays to her strengths. Beau Bridges pops in and out of the proceedings until an inevitably strong presence in the finale, and I guess he tries his best, but there are better small turns from Donal Logue, Amaury Nolasco, and Ludacris.

It lacks any decent writing or characters, which isn't entirely unexpected when you go into a movie based on a videogame, but it also lacks enough moments that showcase some cool FX work, doesn't have any memorable set-pieces, and seems unable to move in any way from the plodding and sombre tone that you don’t really want from a lightweight videogame movie.

3/10

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The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Mila Kunis plays Audrey, a young woman who is upset on her birthday when she is dumped by her boyfriend (Drew, played by Justin Theroux) through the callous medium of text message. This leads to a chain of events that see Audrey and her best friend, Morgan (Kate McKinnon), getting drawn in to a plot that includes spies, violence, death, and lots of comedic banter between the two out-of-their-depth ladies.

We've had a few action comedies in the past few years, and Melissa McCarthy has given us some big laughs in two of them (Spy and The Heat). The Spy Who Dumped Me tries to give things another twist, but it ultimately relies on the two leads more than the script or direction, and that's not enough to make this memorable.

Director Susanna Fogel, who also co-wrote the movie with David Iserson, may not be an absolute first-timer here but you could be forgiven for assuming that she is. This is a film riddled with amateur errors, although it has enough weight behind it, and polish, to keep it as an enjoyable disappointment, as opposed to a complete disaster. The script doesn't have enough laughs (I probably laughed aloud at about two lines, and they may have been in the same scene - an interrogation sequence), the action feels a bit carelessly planned out, and it's hard to care about any of the twists and turns that occur.

Kunis and McKinnon are two great actresses, but neither of them are well served by the script that they're given here. McKinnon suffers more, with her character often coming across as annoying and unhelpful throughout (bar a couple of moments that make her useful out of the blue), but Kunis just never feels like the best fit for the character that she's supposed to be playing. The men generally fare better, perhaps because they're all being made to look arrogant and shifty most of the time, with Theroux decent fun, and Sam Heughan and Hasan Minhaj just fine as the other agents who may be good or bad. Paul Reiser and Jane Curtin are a welcome addition, and could have done with some more screen time, and there are good performances from Gillian Anderson and Ivanna Sakhno (playing, respectively, an agency boss and an ex-gymnast turned assassin).

The Spy Who Dumped Me isn't a bad film. It's just not a very good one. And the fact that it has too few laughs, action scenes filmed quite badly, and leads who don't feel quite right in their roles make it a  bad action comedy. I REALLY hope someone makes another great vehicle for McKinnon soon, because I tend to enjoy her performances, even when she's given weaker material, and it would be a sin if we were denied her comedic talent because nobody figured out how to make the best use of her in movies.

5/10

You can buy the blu here.
Americans can get it 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

Treat yourself to double the bad moms here.

Extract (2009)

Another enjoyable comedy written and directed by Mike Judge, this may be his weakest film to date but it's still a fun viewing experience thanks to a great cast working with a great script.

Jason Bateman plays Joel, the owner/manager of an Extract plant. All is going pretty well for Joel apart from the fact that he can't seem to get home before eight o'clock, which is the time that his wife (Kristen Wiig) puts her sweatpants on. Once the sweatpants are on, Joel gets nothing and he's a bit frustrated by his lack of sex life. When a work-related accident leads to loyal worker Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) losing one of his testicles, Joel finds himself the unwitting payday opportunity for Cindy (Mila Kunis), a thief who realises that she can engineer a meeting with Step before manipulating him into suing the company for more money. Meanwhile, Joel also makes the mistake of following the advice of his friend Dean (Ben Affleck) and hiring someone to seduce his wife, supposedly leaving his conscience clear to begin his own affair.

It may not be as brilliantly wired into the consciousness of all working Joes (a la Office Space) or full of the easy, big laughs of Idiocracy but this still deserves to be appreciated by anyone after comedy that aims higher than most.

Judge is a great talent behind the camera. There may not be too many tricks and flourishes onscreen but he does what's needed to keep things moving along and set up every scene full of that memorable dialogue.

Bateman is good in the main role, playing the kind of role that he can play in his sleep, and Kunis is believably cute and charming. It's easy to imagine her getting away with just what she gets away with. Wiig is also very good in an atypical role, as is Ben Affleck, playing someone slightly addled from a life centred around far too many drugs. Clifton Collins Jr. is a sweet enough "mark" and there is good support from J. K. Simmons, T. J. Miller, Betsy Palmer, Gene Simmons, David Koechner (also in a slightly atypical role, as a persistent and dull neighbour) and Matt Schulze.

All in all, Extract is well worth your time. By the time the end credits roll, there's nothing major to mull over but it's simply a nice, consistently amusing, character piece that won't disappoint.

7/10

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American Psycho II: All American Girl (2002)

American Psycho wasn't ever a movie that I thought needed a sequel. It was a self-contained slice of cinema gold. But such a thought has never occurred to film executives before so why should it occur now?

After an opening sequence that pretty much pisses all over the greatness of the ending of the first movie, this film then moves on to establish its own identity as we follow the latest psycho on the block (played by Mila Kunis), a young woman determined to be the best in her class so that she gets to follow the path she has chosen for herself all the way to the FBI training facility at Quantico. If she can't achieve her goals simply by being the best in her class and working hard then she has no qualms about getting rid of anything (or, more specifically, anyone) in her way.

Directed by Morgan J. Freeman, this is an example in many ways of how to create a bad sequel. It creates a tenuous connection to the first movie that feels quite disrespectful, for want of a better word, and it simply moves from one ridiculous moment to the next after that.

Luckily, the cast help make this rubbish entertaining. Mila Kunis isn't all that believable in the lead role but she's always a welcome presence onscreen and has fun delivering some of the dialogue. William Shatner is also good fun to watch (when is "The Shat" never entertaining?), Lindy Booth and Kim Poirier lift things with their small roles and Geraint Wyn Davies is amusingly perplexed as the psychiatrist who doesn't make much professional headway with the leading lady. Robin Dunne and Keith Lawson also do fine with their roles.

While it's far removed from the sly, dark humour of the first film, American Psycho 2 does bring along a camp, over the top tone that makes things fitfully amusing. The script by Alex Sanger and Karen Craig seems to know from the very beginning that the very idea of a sequel following on from the first movie is a ridiculous notion and so it starts piling on the absurdities one after the other until we get to a grand finale that is as laughable (both intentionally and unintentionally) as it is unbelievable.

You could certainly wring some entertainment from this movie, as I did, but it's not one I'd recommend and it's certainly not one that you're likely to be won over by if you were as big a fan of the first film as I was.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/American-Psycho-II-All-Girl/dp/B00005UWP4