Prime Time: Arthur The King (2024)

Based on the true story of an adventure racer who ended up with an extra member in his team, a dog he named Arthur, this is exactly the kind of film you expect it to be, although it has the added bonus of Mark Wahlberg in the lead role constantly making you think about the wonderful "Wahlberg talks to animals" sketch from SNL.

Wahlberg is Michael Light, a man who has gone his entire adventure racing career without ever getting a gold medal. In fact, his last attempt was quite the disaster, based on the fact that he pushed his team too hard without listening to the advice of others. Some years have passed since then though, and Michael wants one last shot at glory. He wants to put together a team, he needs sponsors, and he wants a win. He gets a tentative sponsor, but they insist that his team includes his old team member, Leo (Simu Liu), someone who has made the most of social media and viral marketing. His other choices end up being Chik (Ali Suliman), a man who was dropped from his last team due to a knee injury, and Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), a climber not necessarily wanting to make that her main discipline, but urged that way by her successful father. The race is tough, the team need to work together to overcome the usual obstacles (in the environment and in their own different approaches), but things start to improve when a stray dog starts to accompany them on their gruelling journey.

Based on the book by Mikael Lindnord, this has a screenplay by Michael Brandt (who has had huge success with a number of TV projects in recent years) and is directed by Simon Cellan Jones (who has a background in TV before a more recent move into movies, and specifically Wahlberg movies). Both do competent work, and they certainly convey the impressive distance and scale of the challenge facing the racing teams in the movie. There's one vertiginous set-piece, but it's otherwise pretty grounded and standard stuff, with those involved quite rightly banking on viewers being won over by the bond developed with the dog at the centre of the story.

Wahlberg does his usual Wahlberg stuff, although there are a couple of pleasantly surprising moments here that have his character admitting to being wearied and sometimes not the person who knows best in every situation, and Liu does a good job of keeping up alongside him and explaining how they can still do well enough for themselves even if a win evades them. Emmanuel is convincing in her part, as is Suliman, and they certainly do a great job as separate elements who can work together as an efficient and determined team. I was surprised by how much of the focus stayed on the team, thinking that Arthur would join them and have his impact noticed sooner, but, never fear, the dog (played by a canine named Ukai) is certainly made to feel like the key cast member he is when he gets more directly involved in the storyline.

Very predictable, but that's not a big deal when you're watching a true story in movie form, and surprisingly downbeat in one or two scenes, Arthur The King does enough to make it a decent enough choice for those wanting something simple and ultimately satisfying. I could rattle off a number of other "talented animal bonds with humans" movies that I prefer, but this was far from a terrible way to spend part of my evening.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Netflix And Chill: Atlas (2024)

It would be nice to have a week when some movies don't feel all about A.I. They're either using A.I. as a threat (existential, physical, or both) or they are put together in a way that has people being far too quick to accuse the film-makers of using A.I. to bash together their slick, but ultimately empty, feature. Atlas falls into both of these camps, from the online discourse I have seen about it. I actually think it's a decent little sci-fi action movie, however, and those looking to insult and dismiss it are being a bit harsh. I may well forget all about it within the next six months, but I don't regret having watched it just now.

Simu Liu plays the big baddie here, an A.I. being named Harlan Shepherd who sees the end of humanity as the solution to all of life's major problems. He may not be completely wrong, but plenty people want to stop him. Heading to the planet where he has based himself after fleeing Earth, Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez) is the one person who has been trying to warn everyone around her of just how dangerous Harlan is. Whatever attacks are planned, Harlan will always be a step or two ahead. Unwilling to use tech that can be all-too-easily hacked, Atlas is forced into a difficult situation when the soldiers around her are quickly taken out of action. Yes, she has to clamber into a mecha-suit that has a built-in A.I. core. Can Atlas trust the tech around her? Can the tech adapt well enough to the situation to truly help our leading lady? It's not hard to see where things will go, but it's a pleasant enough journey as we head to the predictable third act.

Written by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite, this checks every box that you expect to be checked. Thankfully, it has a cast that are all capable of carrying viewers through the weaker moments, has an impressive visual palette throughout, and Lopez has enough screen presence to hold your attention while she spends a lot of time panicking while confined in an unwieldy mecha-suit. Liu is an impressive and plausible villain, Abraham Popoola is a decent secondary villain, and Gregory James Cohan is a good choice for the voice of the suit. While both Sterling K. Brown and Mark Strong are always welcome, both are largely wasted in their supporting roles.

Director Brad Peyton can do well with silly and spectacular entertainment, as he has shown with the likes of San Andreas and Rampage, and a few other less successful outings, but this shows that he can handle more serious fare equally well. The premise is still quite silly, at the heart of it, but it's all crafted with enough seriousness and attention to detail to draw viewers into the world and keep them invested in the plot. The script sets everything up with an impressive economy, and Peyton uses the framework to deliver a satisfying smorgasbord of fireworks and meditative moments. 

I am once again in the minority here, a lot of people have rushed to declare this as yet another stinker from the Netflix movie stable, but there's nothing here that made me angry, and I was never bored. Compared to the last Netflix movie I watched with J-Lo in the lead role (The Mother), this was a pleasant surprise. It didn't stop me from wishing for the day when we'll stop having so many movies focused on the looming threat of A.I., but it entertained me well enough for most of the 118-minute runtime.

7/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Barbie (2023)

Prime Time will be here on the blog tomorrow. This felt like it should be scheduled immediately after my Oppenheimer review.

"If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you." That was the tagline being used in some of the advanced marketing for Barbie, a pink-drenched film based around a crisis for the titular doll. The people who came up with that slogan seem to have underestimated the extreme emotions that the film would create in film snobs who seem to be viewing this as a harbinger of the death of cinema. It was always going to be hilariously upsetting to viewers with fragile male egos, but I didn't expect to see such "righteous anger" from people who seem to think that Barbie is the blockbuster to take to task for marrying product placement to a central narrative. It's almost as if these people missed, well . . . *gestures to every other mainstream release from the past four decades*. Look, films sell other products. Arguably more than any other art form, they focus on the business in show business. And, yes, something like Barbie is more inextricably intertwined with a product that represents disposability and capitalism than most, but it's also very smart, very funny, and very much made for audiences who have already helped to turn it into such a special event (with a very positive knock-on effect for Oppenheimer that shouldn't be under-estimated).

Margot Robbie plays Barbie, living a very happy life in Barbie-land alongside a multitude of other Barbies, as well as a multitude of Kens (with the main Ken played by Ryan Gosling), and one Allan (Michael Cera). Oh, and Midge (remember Midge? she's played here by Emerald Fennell). Every day is wonderful, with the Barbies all happy to have done their part in helping to please and inspire women in the real world, doing their bit to dismantle the patriarchy and ensure equality for all. Yeah, you might have noticed something there that doesn't quite add up. We all know the reality of the world we live in, and it's far removed from how Barbie imagines our world. As things start to go awry for Barbie (her feet go flat, she starts to get cellulite), she is told that the only way to get everything back to the way it was is to visit the real world and help her "owner" to rediscover some positivity. Barbie, with Ken tagging along, commits to this journey, and she eventually meets Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). She also meets sexism, capitalism, and a patriarchy that she thought she'd helped to end. It's not good for the women. Ken sees the upside of it all though.

Directed by Greta Gerwig, who also co-wrote the screenplay with her partner, Noah Baumbach, Barbie is an absolute delight from start to finish. It's the first film I have seen in the cinema in many years that ended with people giving it a round of applause. Not everyone will respond that way, of course, but even those who notice a few mis-steps should be able to view it as a resounding success. What could have been an easygoing and lightweight confection is instead a smart blend of celebration and condemnation of the figure at the heart of it. It's also just as much about Ken as it is about Barbie, and Ryan Gosling unexpectedly emerges as the real star of the show (his big musical number is one of the most enjoyable sequences I have watched in modern cinema, period). Gerwig sets up the characters and the rules quickly enough, helping herself with some witty and knowing narration from Helen Mirren, and the escalation of the surreal silliness feels very natural once you have accepted everything presented in the opening act.

It also helps that the cast are all fantastic, all feeling like a great fit for their roles, and all very much game to go with the camp and kitsch of the crowd-pleasing set-pieces. I could spend hours writing about Robbie and Gosling, but I would much prefer you to see the film and enjoy every little character detail that they include in their performances. Simu Liu is a lot of fun, playing a Ken who always seems to be ready to have beef with our lead Ken, and Cera gets to effortlessly steal a couple of scenes, even while he's just watching the main action from the sidelines. Kate McKinnon is another highlight, playing "weird" Barbie, and there are fun turns from Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, and others (including some fun cameos). As for the actual human characters, both Ferrera and Greenblatt are easy to root for, with the former allowed to deliver a barnstorming motivational speech that proves pivotal to the third act, Will Ferrell is a despairing Mattel CEO, and Rhea Perlman delights as Ruth (you should know who she is, but the film clues you in quickly enough).

With Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt taking care of the music, crafting a soundscape full of appropriately upbeat score and great pop songs, as well as those unforgettable Gosling moments, and everyone behind the camera doing flawless work when it comes to set decoration, makeup, costume design, and other artistic choices, there isn't much to be critical of. The only weaknesses are couched in the script, with an unnecessary chase sequence feeling a bit out of place and scenes featuring Mattel executives not quite landing the jokes as well as expected, but the good far outweighs the bad, and it's much easier to celebrate everything that Gerwig managed to slip into a mainstream blockbuster than it is to pick at the minor blemishes.

"If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you." If you cannot get a chip off your shoulder, or feel that your masculinity is threatened by such a deluge of pink . . . well, maybe this movie isn't for you. But feel free to let the rest of us enjoy it without having to sneer and dismiss it, especially if you haven't actually seen the thing.

9/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021)

The past couple of years have proven to be quite challenging for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they have proven to be quite challenging to numerous movie productions and companies. But Marvel seemed to be in a more precarious position than most, already having many people voice their concern over where things would go after the massive success of the films that ended the superb, long-running, storyline that culminated in "the snap" from Thanos.

Let's not spend too much time worrying about them though. Despite a mixed reception, they have still spent the past couple of years releasing films like this one, Eternals, and Black Widow, and making a great mix of TV shows such as Loki, WandaVision, Captain America And The Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye. Whether you love or hate them, they keep making blockbuster entertainment with a consistent minimum standard of quality, in my view, and they keep managing to set things in place to give them many options of whatever path they choose to take in the years ahead.

Take this film, for example. This is another Marvel movie that now happily mixes in the magical and mythical with the sci-fi elements. It all starts when Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) discovers ten mystical rings, allowing him eternal life and superpowers. He then meets, and falls in love with, a woman. Children are born. Love wins. Temporarily.
That happened some years ago. Back in the here and now, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) is a bit of a loveable loser who enjoys spending time with his friend, Katy (Awkwafina). He's not special, at least not in the eyes of most people around him. That all changes when members of the Ten Rings, the army headed up by Wenwu, attack Shang-Chi, desperate to gain ownership of a pendant given to him by his mother. Shang-Chi immediately heads off to warn his sister, Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), because she has a similar pendant. They soon realise that their father, because Wenwu IS their father, wants the pendants to find the mystical village his deceased wife lived in, convinced that he can be with her once again. But the messages he is hearing are lies, delivered to his mind by something that needs his help to break free.

It's pretty redundant to review a decent Marvel movie nowadays. Obviously there are more interesting words to say about the best and worst of their output. They know what they're doing, they have a great team of people working on each film, and they often get their casting pretty perfect. Such is the case here. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings may lose steam in the third act, where it suffers from that blockbuster mis-step of big CGI battling big CGI, but there's easily enough here to please fans of this kind of fare. The extended action sequences which have Shang-Chi battling the Ten Rings are the highlights, leaving the film a little adrift when nothing else can top them, but you also get some good humour and a nice running commentary on determinism and real power. 

As good as Liu, Awkwafina, and Zhang are, and they are excellent (with both Liu and Zhang doing very well with the physical side of their roles), the real treat here is seeing the likes of Leung and Yeoh (for a second time) getting a small piece of that Marvel pie. It's also fun to see another small turn from Benedict Wong, reprising the character of Wong, and one other returning main character proved to be a very pleasant surprise, and had more of an involved role than the last time he was used onscreen in these movies. There's nobody doing bad work here, at all, but I do need to single out Florian Munteanu, who makes a strong impression as the aptly-named Razor Fist, a main henchman wielding a red-hot machete blade where his right hand should be.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton helped to write the screenplay with Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham, and the team work together well. They may have the might of Marvel behind/helping them, but there's nothing here that shows Cretton feeling out of his depth with his sudden leap from smaller fare such as Just Mercy, The Glass Castle, and Short Term 12. It might be easier to get this kind of thing right with a whole army of people ready to ensure you stay in line with the overall vision of the brand,  but that is no guarantee that the end result will show that. This gets much more right than wrong.

The interconnectivity remains the best thing that Marvel worked on, however, and that's why I know so many people will already know whether or not they are going to watch this. If, like me, you have been on the complete journey so far then you can't just stop, cold turkey. Things keep being set up that you know will pay off, be it this year, next year, or maybe a decade down the line. If you managed to resist the allure of the polished MCU product when they were a bit less practiced at lining up all of their cinematic stepping stones then you checked out by the time you read the title of this review.

I really wish the final act had been better, but I can't deny that the rest worked well for me. And the fight sequences at least have a fluidity and choreography that puts them on par with the best of Hollywood martial arts (which is still, lest we forget, rarely on a par with actual martial arts depicted in non-Hollywood movies).

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share