A man’s quiet life gets upended when a UFO crashes in his backyard in rural Pennsylvania. As he befriends the mysterious extraterrestrial, things start to get complicated when two neighbours discover it and the government quickly closes in.
Jules is yet another pretty big surprise from 2023, I’m sure there’s people out there that will write Jules off as being an ET clone but with old people instead of children, but that’s really not the case. Sure it does have a few similarities with ET but how the films approach the premise are completely different.
Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris are all fantastic here, they all give hilarious performances with some genuinely touching moments that will make you instantly love these characters. If there’s a theme here it’s being kind or nice, throughout the film we see Milton (played by Ben Kingsley), Joyce (played by Jane Curtin) and Sandy (played by Harriet Sansom Harris) treat Jules (played by Jane Quon) like family and while they do question where Jules came from that doesn’t bother them all that much.
Jane Quon is absolutely incredible here, her performance as Jules is genuinely funny and manages to express emotions without really showing them, there’s something genuinely sweet about Milton, Sandy or Joyce talking about their issues or what’s on their mind to Jules. While Jules might not fully understand what they are saying, but you can tell Jules genuinely cares about the three and actually does help the three learn a bit more about themselves and actually does help them with their issues.
As I said before the approach is much different from ET, Jules is a much smaller film that isn’t quite as big in scale, but that ultimately benefits the film in the long run, it’s a smaller story that really focuses on building it’s characters into something truly special. Characters that the viewer can easily connect with, combine that with excellent acting and writing that is so charming and you have yourself a simple yet very effective story.
After hitting a breaking point, Hannah’s inner thoughts physicalize into a monstrous creature that threatens to upend her life.
Appendage is based off the 2021 short of the same name (which had Rachel Sennott and Eric Roberts in it) while at times Appendage can have a lot of tone shifts that can be distracting, there is still enough here to satisfy the viewer.
The movie is a body horror with a decent amount of gore that is genuinely fun at times, there’s this interesting theme of imposter syndrome that the film somewhat discusses which does give the movie some character too it. The movie itself is pretty well made and the performance from Hadley Robinson is quite solid as well.
I’m not entirely sure if the comedic aspect of Appendage fully worked as it does at times feel like a drastic tone shift that could take some viewers completely out of the movie. Having that said the effects are genuinely impressive and the movie itself is pretty enjoyable.
Henry Sugar, a wealthy man, decides to take on an extraordinary challenge – he wants to master an extraordinary skill in order to cheat at gambling games.
The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar is the first of four shorts based off stories from Roald Dahl which are directed by Wes Anderson, this isn’t Wes Anderson’s first time tackling Dahl’s work as he directed Fantastic Mr. Fox (excellent film!) I guess I will go in order of release with these shorts to make things easier.
The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar has the most going on out of the four shorts mainly due to being the longest with a run time of 41 minutes while the others are much shorter. With that said this short is quite fantastic, everyone here hits out of the park Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes and a few others capture the spirit of Roald Dahl’s story. When you combine the acting with Anderson’s style it’s truly fantastic and quite investing.
So many different techniques are used here from breaking the fourth wall, the narrators describe themselves in third-person, backstories are told briefly but done in such a clear way that the viewer can easily connect to the characters in just one minute and several others. The story itself is a redemption story as well as a human growth one, as the short moves along we see Henry Sugar grow into this moving and quite powerful character that’s genuinely charming.
Some people might have an issue with these shorts being more of just a reading of Dahl’s stories rather than traditional acting, in some cases that would be an issue but when you have Wes Anderson involved that’s not an issue at all. As Wes Anderson’s style completely fits this approach of storytelling especially here in Henry Sugar.
Overall The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar is the best of the four shorts! It’s well acted, fast paced and incredibly appealing to the eye!
The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar is available on Netflix.
9/10 A
A small brilliant boy is tormented by two large idiotic bullies.
The Swan is the second of the four Roald Dahl shorts directed by Wes Anderson. While I don’t think it’s as good as The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar it’s still quite a great one and actually surprised me with a few brutal moments that I did not see coming.
There’s a bit less going on here than there was in Henry Sugar, however the story having to do with bullying and how the short approaches the topic is quite interesting and actually leads to some dark moments that do feel authentic. The acting once again is phenomenal and everything I said about Henry Sugar can be applied here, it’s a fast paced short that’s only 17 minutes long.
The information the short is able to get out in just 17 minutes is quite incredible, Wes Anderson’s style of course helps with this fast paced speech that isn’t so fast that the viewer can’t understand. It’s at a speed where the short can move along and the viewer can understand, the short is also beautifully filmed and the atmosphere really matches the story being told.
The Swan is a powerful and at times brutal exploration of bullying that the viewer can easily get into.
The Swan is available on Netflix.
8/10 B+
A rat eradicator, who looks like a big rat, comes up with a cunning plan: gain the rats’ trust to better exterminate the rodents.
The Rat Catcher is the third of the four Roald Dahl shorts directed by Wes Anderson. The Rat Catcher follows a mechanic and a reporter who listen to a rat catcher explain his plan to outsmart the rats.
The Rat Catcher is definitely the most comedic out of the shorts, where as Henry Sugar was a redemption and human growth story and The Swan being a powerful story about bullying and how brutal it can really be. The Rat Catcher goes for a much more humorous idea and to it’s credit it is genuinely funny.
The stop-motion used on the rat that eventually appears makes the short pop and heavily reminds me of the alien from Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (which came out earlier this year.) like with the previous shorts the acting is phenomenal Rupert Friend and Richard Ayoade and Ralph Fiennes all give phenomenal performances and easily compliment each other incredibly well, it’s such an experience see three actors display their talent and leave so many impressions in only 17 minutes.
Overall there might not be a whole lot going on thematically with The Rat Catcher but it’s a pretty hilarious ride that I can definitely see myself going back on.
The Rat Catcher is available on Netflix.
7/10 B
When a poisonous snake slithers onto an Englishman’s stomach in India, his associate and a doctor race to save him.
Poison is the fourth and final Roald Dahl short directed by Wes Anderson, the short follows a doctor and his associate who race to save a man who was bitten from a snake bite.
I’m actually quite surprised about the amount of tension this short had, it really brings you to the edge of your seat while also having this comedic tone that’s quite charming. The acting like in the other shorts is fantastic, Dev Patel, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Kingsley compliment each other quite well and once again this short displays some strong performances in just 17 minutes.
Once again there isn’t a whole lot thematically going on here, as it is essentially two men trying to save another from dying. However the rapid fire pace combined with the tension of the story really makes Poison standout from the shorts, it’s such a beautifully done short that has so much detail all over it. Especially when combined with Wes Anderson’s usual comedic style and tone.
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire. Now tired of his life, he wants to die at last after the disgrace and family crises he has caused.
El Conde is directed by Pablo Larraín director of Spencer (2021), Ema (2019), Jackie (2016) and a few others. One thing that I always loved about Larraín is he always tries to go for something completely different with his films. El Conde is no exception even if it’s nowhere near as good as his previous films.
El Conde is certainly not a bad movie, there’s a lot to appreciate here as well as a lot of impressive parts. The whole alternate history aspect of Augusto Pinochet being a vampire is quite interesting and you could read him sucking the blood from the working class as a conversation the film is trying to have. When you combine that with the black and white cinematography that’s just absolutely stunning with ever sense of the word, you get some really excellent moments that tell a story that seems like it’s going to be quite interesting.
The story unfortunately ends up being sort of a mess when the second and third act roll around, the convoluted story going on here brings up a lot of odd plot points that ultimately don’t support the main narrative being told here. I will say what does keep the movie going is the performance from Jamie Vadell who plays Augusto Pinochet, he absolutely knocks it out of the park and brings this gothic horror atmosphere to the film that is quite great.
El Conde definitely is not a bad movie, it’s just one that had a lot more potential and has the right ingredients to tell an interesting story. There’s just a lot missing, despite that however I do recommend giving it a watch if it sounds like your thing.
In the not-so-distant future, amid a society madly in love with technology, tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share their pregnancies via detachable artificial wombs or pods. So begins Rachel and Alvy’s wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world.
Seems like a running theme with some movies I’ve watched recently has been having good ideas but either poorly executing them or not taking them very far. That’s definitely the case for The Pod Generation.
Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor are both solid in the leading roles and are actually the reason why I watched this movie in the first place, the movie presents a lot of ideas with varying degrees of success. It’s a satirical approach to childbirth there’s a bit of comedy that got a few laughs out of me. But the main focus asking moral questions that the film brings up, plus there’s actually some decent world building that i’m actually quite surprised even happened in movie.
Unfortunately a lot of the movies ideas just don’t go anywhere, it’s very surface level at best and the characters aren’t written very well at all. It almost feels like the movie is holding back from going even bigger, the ending while not bad sets itself up to be something huge but ultimately acts like someone retracting a statement midway through the speech or letter they are discussing.
It’s odd, you have some genuinely solid world building that actually does take time to discuss what this world is and how it’s different than our’s but it forgets to discuss almost everything else. It’s a bit of a shame because the movie itself isn’t terrible, there’s a lot of strong moments and the performances from Clarke and Ejiofor as I said before really make this movie. But sadly this is a very forgettable one.
The Pod Generation is available on all VOD platforms.
Ashley and her daughter turn to Matt, her estranged beach bum father, to help escape a ruthless crime boss.
You would be forgiven if you thought The Retirement Plan was a Netflix original, it has a lot of the similarities that make a bad Netflix original an overdone plot, very few good jokes and a chore to sit through.
The cast at the very least does seem like they are having fun, Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman and Ashley Greene definitely try the best they can with such a lousy script that only has a handful of moments that are passable at best.
Honestly the main issues here are the plot is very by the numbers and a majority of the movie has no impact at all, the movie attempts to use many twists and double crosses but none of that really matters since the characters are written so poorly. The interactions between Bobo (played by Ron Perlman) and Sarah (played by Thalia Campbell) while somewhat decent ultimately doesn’t lead anywhere, it’s just another kid gets kidnapped and talks to one of the henchmen sort of subplot.
Not even Nicolas Cage can really save this movie, he isn’t really given a whole lot to work with and doesn’t have many lines where he could use his charm, it’s a very limited action comedy with no substance to it at all.
The Retirement Plan is available on all VOD Platforms.
A fiercely independent pilot fighting to keep her family business afloat starts to fall for the man sent by corporate to ground her operation forever, forcing her to choose between her heart and her family.
Love Is in the Air is yet another Netflix romantic comedy movie and it’s no different than what came before it.
There’s only so much I can really say here without sounding like a broken record, this is basically a Hallmark movie if it were Australian. This movie is also Delta Goodman’s first film role since 2005 (Hating Alison Ashley), to be absolutely fair to Goodman she was the best part about this movie by a lot.
The same can’t be said for the rest of the movie where there is very little to engage the viewer, there’s so little going on throughout the movie that by the time the second half of the movie rolls around the viewer has already checked out. A majority of what happens is pretty much every single romantic comedy cliche in the book, I get these Netflix romantic comedies are supposed to have a formula and aren’t supposed to be well written masterpieces. But can’t they at least try to make these movies have more substance to them?
That’s the main problem Love is in the Air is essentially every bad Netflix romantic comedy movie from the past combined into one and while it’s not the absolute worst in the catalogue it’s a movie that people will instantly forget about after viewing.
When the children of the world’s greatest secret agents unwittingly help a powerful game developer unleash a computer virus that gives him control of all technology, they must become spies themselves to save their parents and the world.
Spy Kids: Armageddon is the fifth Spy Kids movie and serves as a reboot to the series, a reboot that was absolutely not needed as well as offering nothing new to the series.
Look I’m well past the age demographic of these movies and I did not go into this movie expecting a masterpiece, however Spy Kids: Armageddon completely misses so much of what made Spy Kids so fun in the first place. I’m not going to act like the Spy Kids movies are well written pieces of cinema but at least the first two had charm too it.
With Armageddon there is very little charm, the cast don’t work nearly as well at all. Zackery Levi and Gina Rodriguez as the parents are uninteresting and really phone it in. Connor Esterson and Everly Carganilla as the leads have some decent moments and at the very least do seem like they are having some bit of fun in certain scenes.
It doesn’t help that Armageddon reuses so many plot elements from other movies and makes them worse, for example there’s the part when the family has to fend off skeletons which is from Spy Kids 2, the movie being centered around video games and set inside a video game that’s Spy Kids 3D. Heck even character traits are reused such as a lot of the jokes being at the expense of the brother, the parents not telling the kids they are spies and the sister having a comeback roast. It’s absolute laziness and wants to come off as a throwback type of movie but it isn’t really a throwback when you are just using the exact same ideas but only somehow making them worse.
Everything else that isn’t reused is quite forgettable, some of the action scenes for some reason take themselves a bit too seriously which is completely odd considering the whole point of why people like the first two Spy Kids movies is they don’t take themselves seriously. It’s a very odd tone shift that completely doesn’t work at all.
Overall Spy Kids: Armageddon was a terrible reboot that offered nothing new to the series, I’m sure the age demographic will get a kick out of this one. Everyone else not so much.
After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers. Their new friend, April O’Neil, helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them.
At this point when a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film is released you kind of know what to expect, some of the movies over the years range in quality and there’s always at least some fun to be had (whether it be so bad it’s funny or genuinely fun.) So I went into Mutant Mayhem with the same mindset and in a very interesting way the focus is not only on the action or jokes but there’s an emotional core to it as well.
For starters I truly think casting actual teenagers as the turtles really benefited the film, there is some surprisingly touching moments between the four that the viewer really connects with and really makes you believe that they genuinely care about each other. Nicolas Cantu, Micah Abbey, Brady Noon and Shamon Brown Jr. all do a fantastic job as the turtles and bring so much energy and heart to the roles. We don’t often really get to see the teenager side of the turtles in a lot of these movies, but we get to see that a whole lot here which makes the film quite fresh.
There’s even this coming of age element to the film, the turtles wanting to be accepted into the human world. It’s a very interesting take that sure might not be exactly a brand new idea but it’s a much different direction from what we usually get from these movies and it works really well here. The jokes aren’t entirely the center focus here even with the supporting cast like Seth Rogen (plays Bebop), John Cena (plays Rocksteady) or even Ice Cube (plays Superfly), there’s a strong balance of comedy and more dramatic moments that is carefully done throughout the film.
The animation is also stunning, much like The Bad Guys or Puss In Boots: The Last Wish it’s inspiration comes from the Spidrer-Verse movies yet makes the style it’s own. Between the attention to detail, to the character’s emotions and actions there’s so much detail to the animation that really paints a beautiful picture.
Overall Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem puts the series in a different direction that is absolutely welcome, excellent character moments, energetic animation, touching moments and so much more make this movie worth the ride.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is available on all VOD platforms.
On their flight from New York to London, Hadley and Oliver fall in love with each other. However, they lose each other at customs and the possibility of ever meeting each other again seems improbable, but destiny may have a way of changing the odds.
Love At First Sight is yet another Netflix romantic comedy…what a shocker. However this one ends up being a surprisingly decent one, still a very heavily flawed one but one that is at the very least competent.
Haley Lu Richardson and Ben Hardy quite strong as the leads and the movie wastes no time with establishing the strong chemistry between the two in the first act. In particular in the airport, which might not seem like anything different but the movie does a really solid job of connecting these two characters. Which gives the rest of the movie the chance to further develop these characters.
The rest of the cast are quite great Dexter Fletcher and Sally Phillips as the Shakespeare loving parents were genuinely entertaining with an decent amount of laughs as well. The movie is ultimately a straightforward story about fate, it doesn’t really do anything different that hasn’t been done before. But at the very least Love At First Sight has charm to it that is present throughout the movie.
Jerome Reviews... 