Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Director: James Gunn
Screenwriter: James Gunn
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter, Elizabeth Debicki, Maria Bakalova, Sylvester Stallone, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Asim Chaudhry, Mikaela Hoover

How many trilogies really stick the landing?

In 2018, writer-director James Gunn was unceremoniously fired by Disney after some bad taste jokes from his early days as a comedian were unearthed on Twitter by right-wing trolls who objected to Gunn’s outspoken political views. Following a passionate campaign from fans and Gunn’s friends and colleagues, a year later he was brought back on board at Marvel to finish what he started. If you love this particular bunch of a-holes, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is going to be an emotional one.

Scoundrel-turned-superhero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is in a dark place after making a mistake that doomed half the universe and lost him the love of his life, Gamora (Zoë Saldaña). The Guardians were restored following the defeat of Thanos, but a different Gamora – one who doesn’t even like Peter let alone love him – now stands in his paramour’s place. When an attack on the Guardian home base of Knowhere leaves one of their number mortally injured, the team set out on a quest that brings them into conflict with mad scientist the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) and causes Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) to confront his traumatic past.

What James Gunn has been hiding in plain sight up to now is that the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy is really about Rocket above anyone else. This is his journey, one that takes him from a bad start in life to being a full and happy person with people in his life he can trust and rely upon.

Much like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, if Rocket didn’t work as a VFX creation, then nothing else in this instalment (where he’s driving pretty much all the action) would either. Thankfully, the time-lapse transition between a terrified caged raccoon and Rocket’s older, cynically twitching nose that opens the film puts those doubts immediately to rest. Gunn’s empathy for all living things, but particularly those who have been mistreated, is what gives this story its power, and Bradley Cooper’s pitch-perfect vocal performance has the strength to make you feel all the feelings. Just as a raccoon crying over his lost tree friend made us shed tears in 2014, his relationship with his fellow abused creatures brings on the waterworks all over again here with some almost unbearably intense scenes in captivity. We don’t get to spend all that long with young Rocket’s animal experiment friends Lylla the otter (Linda Cardellini), Teefs the walrus (Asim Chaudhry) and Floor the rabbit (Mikaela Hoover), but we quickly grow to love them just as deeply he did.

This does have the feel of a victory lap, bringing everything full circle and giving everyone their time to shine. Everyone loves the literal-thinking lunk Drax (Dave Bautista) and towering tree-man Groot (Vin Diesel) but it is stoic cyborg Nebula (Karen Gillan) and eager-to-please empath Mantis (Pom Klementief), previously both pretty one-note, who end up being the undisputed highlights here. The former’s gruff and tough personality has gradually been eroded over her time with the Guardians, and the rare occasion when she lets down her guard and lets emotion overwhelm her really hits hard. The latter is the heart of the team, gets most of the funniest lines, and her unique power helps her and her friends out of a few tough spots in some unexpected ways.

Newcomers to this universe include Borat 2‘s Maria Bakalova as Cosmo the talking psychic cosmonaut dog who has an adorable film-long argument with space pirate Kraglin (Sean Gunn), Will Poulter as genetically engineered gold man-child Adam Warlock, and Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary, arguably the most evil and irredeemable bastard in the galaxy who will mutilate, torture and thoughtlessly dispose of countless living things all in service of his delusional mission to create a “perfect society”.

The action is all very polished and exciting, and because this is the team’s last ride it all feels a lot more dangerous for our heroes somehow. A fight in a corridor in the final act might be the finest couple of minutes of action in the MCU to date – not only is it meticulously choreographed, ludicrously entertaining and set to a killer Beastie Boys track, but it lets the team work in violent harmony and gives every member of the team a chance to showcase their special abilities, each getting their own big character moment at the same time.

James Gunn has always happily leaned into the sillier visual and conceptual aspects of space opera, and rarely have such strange ideas been more convincingly brought to life as here. From a bio-formed space station seemingly made of meat to learning that the city of Knowhere (built inside the skull of a dead space god) can actually be driven to a new location, and even to a mirror image “Counter-Earth” populated by humanoids forcefully evolved from lower lifeforms, big swings are taken. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an epic, galaxy-spanning quest, but all this imagination vitally remains in service of a very intimate story. 

A minor criticism that could be levelled at this particular Guardians iteration is that the soundtrack isn’t as memorable or pitch-perfect as in the previous two films, with John Murphy’s (Sunshine, The Suicide Squad) original score extensively incorporating choral singing provoking a stronger reaction than the vast majority of the needle-drops. Similarly, the final act of the film, after over two hours of putting every Guardian through one life-threatening incident after another, keeps piling on the jeopardy to an almost absurd degree even when it is already fit to burst.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brings this unlikely team’s journey to an immensely satisfying and appropriately epic conclusion. It is spectacular to look at and really funny, but it is also easily one of the darkest stories in the Marvel universe and does not pull its punches to make its pretty explicit discussion of abuse and animal testing any more palatable. We may see some of these characters again down the road, but for now it’s a fond farewell to them all, especially the acerbic Racoon who just wanted to be loved.

Score: 21/24

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Directors: Michael Jelenic, Aaron Horvath
Screenwriters: Matt Fogel, Shuntaro Furukawa
Starring: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen

It has been thirty years since Mario made his last big-screen appearance in the Bob Hoskins-fronted live-action masterpiece (if you ask the right people…) of videogame cinema. Given the popularity of the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ video game franchise, it’s incredible to think that it has taken so long to get another, and perhaps a testament to how bad of a flop the original was. Now that sufficient time has passed, it’s all a distant memory to everyone except those of us who saw something special behind its questionable exterior. Finally, everyone’s favourite Italian family business is back with a far more faithful adaptation of the games we all know. But being more faithful doesn’t always mean that it’s much of an improvement…

The Super Mario Bros. Movie comes from Illumination this time, the studio that brought us the Despicable Me and Sing franchises, and it is at least visually in safe hands. Aesthetically, for the most part, it looks and feels like a super-high-quality albeit very extensive cut scene. Mario, Luigi, Bowser and every other character that already exists in the Nintendo universe look fantastic. Seeing as Nintendo’s most recent console release, the Nintendo Switch, is still a step behind its competitors in terms of graphic output, it’s at least fun to see this world presented in such high definition.

There is a bit of a clash of styles once we start meeting the more minor, background characters, however. They’re all designed in the typical Illumination style rather than attempting to match the style of the Nintendo characters. It’s only a slight difference, but it does have the effect of making Mario and company stick out a bit more than they should. Other than that slight complaint, it’s vibrant and colourful, and it’s more or less what a big-budget Nintendo adaptation should look like.

The narrative starts in a fairly typical place: Bowser and the Koopa Troop have attacked a region that loosely resembles the Snow Kingdom from ‘Super Mario Odyssey’. Bowser pursues a Super Star powerup that he plans on using to win Princess Peach’s affection. Meanwhile on Earth, Mario and Luigi are filming an ad for their newly set up plumbing business. At first, everything is fairly realistic if a bit heightened for the two of them, and they’re just going around doing whatever jobs they can get. After seeing reports of a significant leak on the local news, they spot their big opportunity to make a name for themselves. It all goes wrong when Mario is sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi is sucked into a dimension that is essentially ‘Luigi’s Mansion’.

We meet Toad who accompanies Mario to meet Princess Peach so he can plead for some help in finding his newly-lost brother, and this is where it all gets somewhat strange. Mario immediately goes from being any other person on Earth to being considered a bit of an oddity by Peach on account of him being a human in a non-human world. Mario doesn’t seem all that phased by anything. This leads to the major conflict of the film as Bowser is overcome with jealous rage, seeing that Mario is in such close proximity to the Princess that he desires.

It’s a shame that during all of this, Luigi is somewhat forgotten about. We see where he is and there are sufficient visual clues for us to know that he’s entered the world from his title games, but that’s about it. Most of the time is spent with Mario and Peach trying to come up with a plan to find him while avoiding Bowser, and we only meet him again when he’s needed for the story to progress. Ultimately, it isn’t anything that we haven’t played already, even though there was a chance of bringing the two worlds together in a much more meaningful way.

It isn’t quite hitting us over the head saying “Remember this thing you liked?”, but there is a feeling that remembering the thing you liked is paramount to getting along with this particular video game adaptation.

Of course, one of the more prominent tropes of the videogame movie genre (if we can call it that) is nostalgic references. Whether it’s a direct game-to-film adaptation or an original title like Wreck-It Ralph, more modern releases in the space tend to be saturated with callbacks to things we already know. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is no different, and there are plenty of references that will make fans of the franchise say “Oh!” quite regularly. Some other pop culture references are played for jokes in its soundtrack, though these are not quite as successful. Songs that we recognise from films such as Kill Bill play on top of battle scenes that could’ve felt a little more authentic had the depths of the Mario franchise’s discography been explored more.

A key ingredient in a film like this is joy, but The Super Mario Bros. Movie is somewhat absent of that. Jack Black sounds as if he’s having a great time as Bowser – it’s even reminiscent of how Robin Williams played the Genie in Aladdin – and similar can be said for Charlie Day’s Luigi, Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong and Keegan-Michael Key’s Toad, but our two main characters don’t seem all that interested. Chris Pratt as Mario and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach come across as disconnected. What calls for quite an enthusiastic performance is often met with something more indifferent. Other reviews have spoken about the dialogue being stilted, but it’s not so bad that it wouldn’t have been forgivable if it were delivered with a bit more liveliness.

As a new adaptation, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is certainly more faithful and recognisable than its live-action cousin, but it’s almost to a fault. It doesn’t quite do enough to provide existing fans with anything exciting or give new fans a reason to dive any deeper into the franchise. Although it looks fantastic for the most part, and Jack Black’s performance as Bowser gives us some memorable scenes, there’s hardly anything else to this latest Hollywood foray into the Nintendo library.

Score: 9/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones

Universal’s crown jewel, which includes three Jurassic Park movies and a further three Jurassic World films, has left an indelible imprint on cinema and has become a box office and merchandising phenomenon, earning around $10billion in revenue to date. Perhaps more impressively, it has forever changed our culture, its visual representations of dinosaurs coming to define their very image for the past thirty years (whether that image is factually correct or not).

Initially released as a Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation of respected author Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name, the Jurassic franchise has mixed themes of environmentalism, the ethics of cloning, and astute commentary on conglomerated big business, with the blockbuster tropes of thrilling action, sharp comedy and wondrous special effects – the work of visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic has redefined visual effects techniques forever, ensuring the franchise’s indelible mark on the industry as a whole.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are revisiting every film from the Jurassic franchise – all three Jurassic Park films and the further three Jurassic World releases – in order to decipher which of the Jurassic Park / World movies is the worst and which is the best in terms of artistic merit, enjoyability, purpose, meaning and message. These are the Jurassic Park / World Movies Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

6. Jurassic Park III (2001)

When Joe Johnston took over from Steven Spielberg at the helm of the Jurassic Park franchise following success with his mid-90s family hit Jumanji, he seemed like the most natural fit to continue the franchise’s legacy. The director, who would go on to helm Captain America: The First Avenger among other notable films, was a long-term understudy to Spielberg throughout the 1980s (even acting as director of visual effects on Raiders of the Lost Ark) and was stepping into the franchise just as Spielberg had seemed to lose his passion for it. Unfortunately, Jurassic Park III turned out to be a cursed production, its spot at the bottom of this list due in no small part to the shoot beginning before a script was ever even finished.

Jurassic Park star Sam Neill returned to his role as Alan Grant from the 1993 release 8 years prior, his character a continual reminder of the better film many at the time could catch on TV or home video. Here, his respected palaeontologist is conned into heading to the island of the 2nd movie, The Lost World, to rescue a teenager stranded there as the result of a holiday mishap. Tonally, Jurassic Park III is all over the place – supporting characters as annoying as they are stereotypical, inappropriate jokes made to cover cracks in the narrative, inspired horror elements side-by-side with poop jokes – and it never really gets going like every other Jurassic film does, the pace picking up just once beyond the threshold of the narrative’s inciting incident.

Of all the Jurassic movies, Jurassic Park III is simply the most forgettable. And, while there are moments of genuine inspiration (most notably the bird cage sequence) and points of tension here and there, the film’s lack of awareness as regards its own cheesiness and silliness (both massive steps away from the more earnest Spielberg outings), made this the only franchise entry worthy of being mocked on the internet: a Velociraptor talking directly to Alan Grant is cheesy, cheap and not even played for laughs.

Jurassic Park III is likely the result of “too many chefs in the kitchen”, a situation in which the director, screenwriters, producers and studio all had distinctly different visions of what should have been another mega-hit franchise entry. The result is poor to mediocre, and certainly more boring and unpleasant than the other franchise entries. Jurassic Park III is the film that would end the franchise for some 14 years, and that should be proof enough that it is deserving of the number 6 spot on this list.

5. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Thrusting Jeff Goldblum into the lead role of The Lost World: Jurassic Park after a film-stealing performance in the original film seemed about as logical as Dr Ian Malcolm himself, but tacking on familial interests and a strange romantic angle seemed to remove the mystery surrounding him, watering down his cool-factor in the process. In revisiting his role as the prophet of doom, The Lost World: Jurassic Park became eternally bonded to the character’s cynicism through focusing so much of its narrative on his journey, the movie losing touch of the awe and majesty of the 1993 original as seen through Richard Attenborough’s wide-eyed John Hammond and Sam Neill’s more pure and (reluctantly) kind-hearted Dr. Alan Grant.

Not only was The Lost World: Jurassic Park missing that cool character we’d all come to love as a part of the original’s ensemble of strong, instantly recognisable icons of the screen, but Ian Malcolm was now a father having an existential crisis about his girlfriend going missing while navigating issues of divorce; The Lost World was simply more cynical than any other Jurassic movie.

In the decades since the release of this Jurassic Park sequel, many have placed The Lost World in the lower echelons of Steven Spielberg’s filmography, this 1997 movie marking a point at the height of Spielberg’s fame in which the director seemed much less interested in money-making ventures than he was by passion projects such as Amistad (released the same year) and Saving Private Ryan (released the year following, 1998).

While Spielberg’s legendary blockbuster-leading trademarks are still present in The Lost World (elevating a relatively mediocre script), the bedrock of this Jurassic Park sequel seems to reverse the original film’s stance on armed intervention and mass governmental control by film’s end, and this weak structural base simply fails to provide enough of a springboard for a less-than fully motivated director (even one as great as Spielberg) to overcome. There are glimpses of greatness here – the cracking glass over the edge of the cliff being one particular highlight – but The Lost World is missing the intention and politics of the four films to come, its on-the-nose efforts futile in the face of the deeper realisations of the Jurassic World movies and the original Jurassic Park.

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Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Screenwriters: Emily Carmichael, Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Isabella Sermon, Omar Sy, BD Wong

Dinosaurs, nostalgia and locusts… oh my!

We’re not in the park anymore. The dinosaurs have escaped, and for the first time they’re roaming freely across the Earth. Kind of…

Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom co-writer Colin Trevorrow returns to the director’s chair for the third (and reportedly final) instalment in the Jurassic World trilogy, Jurassic World Dominion.  It’s a movie that has been promoted around the premise of finally presenting our favourite pre-historic animals as wild and free, roaming into drive-in cinemas and nesting atop of famous American landmarks. And yet, with all the potential that comes from a T-Rex being able to wander into a Walmart or a Velociraptor being able to hunt humans across the Amazon, Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael have reverted back to the tried and tested formula, once again finding a convoluted way to return the dinosaurs back to solitary confinement. The biggest thing missing from Jurassic World Dominion is the realisation of the very premise it has been sold on.

But don’t worry, that’s just about the only thing that is missing…

Jurassic World Dominion is packed so tightly with so many different things that it’s no wonder this is the longest Jurassic movie to date at 2 hours and 27 minutes. We catch up with Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) living in relative isolation with their surrogate daughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon), just as a big pharma CEO (Campbell Scott) is rounding up all the dinosaurs and placing them in a forest in the Italian alps, using the mountains as a kind of natural fence to keep them all in their place. Once Maisie and the child of Owen’s velociraptor friend Blue go missing, Owen and Claire embark on a trip to Europe to get the children back, becoming intwined in underground markets and with billionaire psychopaths along the way. Meanwhile, a unique breed of locusts is decimating crops and threatening the very resource pyramid we all rely upon. It’s a lot.

Like many recent blockbusters, there is little to excuse Jurassic World Dominion of its excess, the script choosing to ignore the original Jurassic Park’s lessons in offering ever-escalating stakes at a precise rate in favour of something closer to filmic cocaine: rapid, undeterred, adrenaline-boosting sensation. Sure, the dinosaurs aren’t actually free after all, but look at all this stuff!

For those familiar with the modern blockbuster, and those expecting all the trappings that modern studio tentpoles come with – including but not limited to the overarching attempt to take narrative shortcuts in order to maintain the attention of even the most addicted TikTok users – Jurassic World Dominion is what you should expect. It’s not the all-time classic that Jurassic Park is – it isn’t deep enough for that, nor as focused or as immaculately realised – but it is a good 2020s blockbuster. In fact, it’s one of the most fun modern-mould blockbusters there is.

Trevorrow and Carmichael’s script is left wanting in terms of its central premise, yes, and there’s no doubt that this is a narrative of convenience in many instances too; but which tentpole isn’t? We have each been battered around the head by the same copy and paste films for years, the difference here is that Jurassic World Dominion actually makes you feel something.

It’s difficult to hold resentment towards any film that has you clasping your hands one minute and grinning ear to ear the next. Jurassic World Dominion does that. Through nostalgia, some next-level visual effects, and some utterly brilliant call-backs and homages, Trevorrow has constructed 2 and a half hours of fun that absolutely flies by. The dinosaurs are menacing and look better than ever, the human stakes are very recognisable, the pacing is fast and unrelenting. If you’re looking for an escape or something to take you back to an easier time in your life, Jurassic World Dominion is more than capable of doing that. And it does it all with Jurassic Park’s political ideologies very much in the foreground.

One thing that is grossly under-appreciated about the Jurassic World movies is how they brought the Jurassic films back in line with the original Jurassic Park in terms of their core beliefs. Dominion, like Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World before it, never loses touch of how it is humanity that is the great evil, that it is precisely ungoverned wealth (and all the power that it brings) that is the biggest threat, the biggest bad, that we can ever face. Dominion isn’t as emphatic at sending this message as the original Jurassic Park is, but it’s clear that there is a genuine attempt to build the film from this ideological base, and that imbues Dominion with all the stuff that made Jurassic Park so resonant. Our world is to be lived in together, by people of all ages and races, humans alongside animals. Such a message isn’t one to be taken for granted, especially when we live in a world of ever-increasing individualisation and isolation, on a planet seemingly in the midst of another mass extinction event. It isn’t much, especially from a multi-billion-dollar corporation, but it is something. And, in a world of nothings, something can feel pretty damn good.

With so much going on in terms of abstract ideological messages and more literal story beats, and as such Jurassic World Dominion having so many people and story strands to keep up with, there is a lot in Dominion that acts more as out-and-out fan service than meaningful interaction, but this is not the case when it comes to the returns of the three original stars of Jurassic Park: Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. Together, the original trio are re-introduced and later reunited in a way that seems as organic as can be expected from such a nostalgia-heavy sixth franchise instalment. Their performances are fun, and the way the movie revisits the core relationships will be enough to bring smiles and purposeful cringes from even the most Jurassic World-averse viewers. Isn’t it such a shame that we’ve had to wait thirty years for this?

At times, Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World Dominion is like the best parts of other movies – a motorcycle chase through Malta rivals the work of Tom Cruise and company on the Mission: Impossible franchise, Dr Alan Grant’s attachment to his hat is no doubt an Indiana Jones homage, and some science centre exploration seems to have been lifted directly from breaking into the Death Star in Star Wars – and while none of these individual elements hold as much meaning as in their cinematic brethren, there’s no doubt that it is still fun to absorb. And that’s what Dominion is: fun to absorb. It isn’t Jurassic Park, only reminiscent of it. But Jurassic Park was born in 1993 and died in 1993, and no other Jurassic film has got close since.

Jurassic World Dominion is a modern tentpole blockbuster heavy on nostalgia and built on the shoulders of giants. And for what it is, it’s so much of what you could hope for and a whole lot of fun along the way. Jurassic World 3 is an enjoyable and rewatchable dinosaur movie. It isn’t going to change the world as the original Jurassic film did, but in a modern landscape of fun and mostly meaningless regurgitations of recognisable IP, it fails to succumb to the almost-TV feeling of other franchises, instead acting as a reminder of how cool the movies can be.

Score: 15/24

The Tomorrow War (2021)
Director: Chris McKay
Screenwriters: Zach Dean
Starring: Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J.K. Simmons, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson

The Tomorrow War is, essentially, about time travel. Trying to use the past to save the future. In this specific case, it’s about cobbling together a bunch of ideas and scenarios and images from incredible movies from decades ago, shoving them into a time-travel blender, and then popping them out in 2021 in what was, surely, hopefully, an earnest attempt to create something fresh from a combination of known quantities, but that inevitably came out looking like the filmic Frankenstein you might expect.

In the future, the human race is under attack from albino tentacled cloverfields. To try and save the remaining 500,000 humans left alive, the humans invent time travel (somehow, it’s never really explained), to recruit people from the past to fight for them, including former-soldier-turned-biology-teacher Dan (Chris Pratt). In the ensuing episode of ‘Doctor Who’, Dan backtracks through Cloverfield, Aliens, The Thing, the original Alien, and other reputable monuments of cinema, in a kind of CGI rendition of better films you’ve already seen, to try to save the future and repair the past he’s told he’ll live when he returns.

Pratt tries his best, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong is probably the best part of the film as his daughter Muri. It’s so rare to find a child actor who can seriously act, and she plays the exact right amount of childhood innocence, adoration of older figures, and independent spirit. And to be fair to the screenwriters, they at least try to keep some character development through the story, giving Dan some personal stakes. Admittedly, Dan is always saying he fights for his daughter, and never once says he does for his wife, played by Betty Gilpin (who, by all accounts, he’s very much in love with, who I’m sure would be very disappointed she didn’t get a look in at least once, even in passing), but it’s something.

The directing, however, is at the very top of a substantial list of sins that this film needs to repent for. It butchers the script (even if it is a clumsy, bitty, patchwork script) before it even manages to get going. Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) seems utterly obsessed with having subtle push-ins during conversations to such a degree that some sequences of shot/reverse-shot have them in every single shot. Could he not find another way to direct it other than to attempt to manufacture some kind of lazy, forced tension?

The signs are there from the very start, the introduction serving no purpose other than to give us a lazy ’28 years earlier’ to generate fake tension by giving a big dumb audience a big burning sky with people falling. And then when there is some meaningful action taking place, it’s just machine gun fire at CGI monstrosities which show that the filmmakers are using less brain cells than the aliens they’re putting on screen, often chopped up to hell under the eyes of the editorial equivalent of a contest knocked out of round 1 of ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen’. There’s no imagination, no love, no interest in making something exciting beyond “lots of machine guns firing; that’ll do it!”

This lack of thought obviously translates to what the filmmakers think of the audience, because the music is loud and obnoxious, sounds like a knock-off Zimmer score and drowns out everything it can whenever it can, like that annoying kid that won’t shut up at a restaurant. It’s possible they thought we wouldn’t know that the film’s biggest moments were meant to be tense if they didn’t get the music to say so whilst turning the amps up to eleven, but who knows?

There’s also some very basic time travel paradox stuff that simply isn’t thought through. When a biological weapon is discovered in the future, and sent back in time where it will eventually wipe the aliens out before the war starts, this then means that there’s never a war to necessitate the invention of said biological weapon. Therefore it can’t be sent back in time (not to mention that the need to invent time travel won’t exist, therefore it won’t get there), and so the aliens won’t be wiped out, and the whole paradox begins again. This issue is never addressed even in passing, not even in a Back to the Future fading-away kind of thing. Have these sci-fi people never watched a single time-travel movie or TV show to at least find a way to mention this in a thirty second scene, and explain how they’re getting around it?

And let’s ignore the fact that it’s not even so much inspired by older sci-fi movies as it is blatantly ripping them off – enough to have them explode a giant spaceship out of the ice, it having been buried there for at least a thousand years. A ship which crashed, the original pilots dead, and were carrying the aliens (nicknamed ‘white spikes’) in big, egg-like embryonic sacs in a ship wrapped with big, vein-like pipes which is only just about passable as a toned-down Giger-inspired vessel. There’s just enough to get away without having copyright strikes launched at the film like nuclear missiles, but I doubt John Carpenter and Ridley Scott would want to waste their time watching the film to know to do so in the first place.

The Tomorrow War is stupid. It thinks it’s clever by throwing time-travel into a military-sci-fi alien extravaganza, but it’s only clever if you’ve never seen a sci-fi movie before. It’s got dialogue as subtle as a sledgehammer at times, direction and editing to make a first year film student’s product look decent, and not even some good acting or the attempt to create some threads to pay off later, can save it from being dull and lifeless. If this is where science-fiction cinema is going, there’ll be more woes tomorrow than wars.

5/24

This weekend, the Korean-language film surpassed Mel Gibson’s 2004 epic The Passion of the Christ (£11.08 million) to hit a previously unforeseen mark of £11.5 million in the UK, making it the region’s highest grossing foreign language film of all time.

This weekend also saw the highly anticipated release of Disney Pixar’s latest fantasy adventure, Onward, which took £3.4 million to secure first place in the UK top ten.

After the huge success of the two previous Pixar films, 2018’s The Incredibles 2 (£55.9 million) and 2019’s Toy Story 4 (£63.2 million), it was easy to predict the continued success of the animation giants, though Onward has notably ended the weekend with figures much lower than The Incredibles 2’s £9.7million and Toy Story 4‘s £8.28million opening weekends. With fears of the COVID-19 likely a factor in its underwhelming start, Onward also earned significantly less than Pixar’s last original story Coco, which grabbed £5.25million in its opening weekend back in 2017.

Elsewhere on the chart, there’s a debut for Military Wives from Lionsgate UK, which comes in at third in our top ten this weekend with a strong £968,468. 

The UK box office chart for the weekend of 6th-8th March 2020:

The highest grossing films at the UK box office in 2020 thus far:

As predicted during last week’s box office report, Sonic the Hedgehog has this week surpassed the overall total earned by Bad Boys for Life to earn it a strong 2nd spot on the annual UK box office chart. Though unlikely to remain in the top 5 for the entire year due to the volume of huge releases still to come, this is a sure sign to distributors Paramount of the character’s viability as a franchise leader. To date, Sonic has earned $295million worldwide from a production budget of $85million, all-but securing a sequel.

This time next week, we could see Parasite jump The Gentlemen for a spot in our annual top 5.

Friday 13th may be unlucky for some, but there are plenty of films being released this weekend to distract us from such worrying fates. 

The Hunt is an action-horror film telling the terrifying story of a group of strangers who wake up in an unknown location. They don’t know who they are, where they are or what they’re doing there. They soon find out that they have one purpose, The Hunt. After the success of The Invisible Man (£5 million in the UK so far), we can expect great things from what should be a thrilling adventure. 

Vin Diesel (Fast and the Furious; Guardians of the Galaxy) is Ray Garrison, a soldier who is brought back to life by a team of scientists after him and his wife are assassinated. Enhanced with advanced technology, he then becomes a superhuman who becomes obsessed with avenging his wife death and goes by the name Bloodshot. Sony Pictures must be predicting Bloodshot to be a success as it is rumoured to be the start of a shared comic book universe using other characters from the Valiant Comics series. 

Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland; The Space Between Us) and KJ Apa (The Last Summer) star in I Still Believe; a romantic tale of a Christian musician whose journey teaches him the ways of love and loss, bug above all, hope. Sure to tug on heartstrings of cinema goers up and down the country, I Still Believe is in cinemas from this Friday. 

Also being released this weekend is the crime drama The Postcard Killings starring ‘The Walking Dead’ star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a real life drama starring Javier Bardem titled The Roads Not Taken, and the emotional drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which is being released in select cinemas. 

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Onward (2020)
Director: Dan Scanlan
Screenwriters: Dan Scanlan, Jason Headley
Starring: Chris Pratt, Tom Holland, Octavia Spencer, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Lena Waithe

“Long ago, the world was full of wonder. It was adventurous. There was magic. But it wasn’t easy to master. So the world found a simpler way to get by. But I hope there’s a little magic left in you.“

Onward is the first Disney Pixar original since Coco back in 2017, as since then we have seen the sequel adventures The Incredibles 2 (2018) and Toy Story 4 (2019). Dan Scanlon takes the director’s seat of this latest Pixar adventure, his work on a number of Pixar projects, including being the director of Monsters University in 2013, seeming to indicate a safe pair of hands for the production company’s first original movie of the decade. It’s fair to say that through his work on Onward, Pixar are moving into the 2020s in a big way.

In this magical adventure we follow Ian (Holland) and Barley (Pratt) Lightfoot – two elf brothers who have very little in common – as they discover a powerful spell to bring their father back from the dead, though for only 24 hours. When the spell goes horribly wrong, Ian and Barley have to find a way to fix their mistake and in doing so find themselves on an epic quest.

Ian, Barley and the rest of Onward’s characters live in the town New Mushroomton, a generic small town where everyone has busy lives and all spend too much time looking at their phones. New Mushroomton hasn’t always been this way; Barley is passionate about the history of his town and in doing so becomes an avid player of the board game The Land of Yore (which players of Dungeons and Dragons will love). Thanks to his obsession with this game, Barley becomes knowledgeable about the folklore of their world and believes that magic truly does exist.

While on their quest, Ian and Barley’s first stop is The Manticores tavern, which in the days of old would have been a terrifying castle guarded by the savage Manticore (Spencer), but in this modern day society is now a novelty restaurant not dissimilar to the ones found at Disney theme parks all over the world. The ability to not take themselves too seriously is what makes Pixar and Disney the powerhouses they are; the comical irony in this scene is one of the many examples of comedy that will keep parents entertained while sitting with their children in the cinema.

The design of New Mushroomton is one that is animated in true Disney fashion. Jam-packed with mystical creatures and the intertwining of modern civilisation with historical fantasy through its beautiful production design, Onward is a magic-fueled adventure for the whole family and is simply a pleasure to look at.

Including both Pixar’s first self-identifying LGBTQ+ character, in the form of Lena Waithe’s Officer Spector, and a strong independent mother, Laurel Lightfoot, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Onward is filled with strong and powerful characters that will resonate with younger audiences, the voice cast of Waithe, Dreyfus, Spencer, and the two leads Pratt and Holland, each contributing their own unique brand of quality towards making a typically well nourished group of Pixar heroes.

Although feeling ploddy in parts and including a few narrative beats that didn’t bring anything extra to the story (biker pixies were completely lost on me), Onward is a special treat for the whole family. It’s not quite up there with the big wigs of Pixar (Toy Story, Up and Wall-E) but being slightly forgettable doesn’t warrant it a bad film.

Parents and children alike will thoroughly enjoy experiencing this particular Pixar original story on the big screen.

20/24

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Director: J.A. Bayona
Screenwriters: Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Geraldine Chaplin, James Cromwell, Jeff Goldblum, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, Rafe Spall, BD Wong

The monsters are out of the closet, they’re off the island and they’re in your bedroom, but these monsters are not the ginormous prehistoric animals you might expect; they are instead suited business men hell bent on profit no matter the cost. Welcome to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, a fantasy intent on giving you the revolution wish fulfilment you’ve been waiting for: the literal killing of the evils of big business; a bloody good movie with the sort of equality mantra that communism could get behind; a “f*ck you” to the current direction of world politics and wealth distribution we could all do with a little more of.

Taking many of the well developed commentaries of the original Jurassic Park movie, and indeed the novel of the same name it was adapted from by Michael Crichton, Fallen Kingdom makes no bones about being a story told from the side of the dinosaurs. In fact, replace really cool Velociraptors and T-Rexes with cows and pigs and you have what is essentially a vegan propaganda piece filled with anti-war commentaries and a strong leaning towards the hippyest of “peace and love” stories you’ll likely see in a blockbuster for the next 20 years, even despite its viciously murderous set pieces and general reliance on guns and teeth to set up its thrills.

As an entertainment spectacle, Fallen Kingdom in many ways exceeds its predecessor – which often felt void of stakes, tried to tell its story from too many perspectives and was so attached to paying tribute to the Jurassic Park trilogy that it sometimes removed you from the story – as it followed an almost Haunted Mansion concept for the vast majority of the piece, with the dinosaurs playing a vital role in bringing the horror, violence and action to the narrative, which itself was much more focused and tightly knit around the singular idea of the original Jurassic World crew of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard trying to protect the ancient animals from a couple of new types of extinction: death by volcano or death by exploitation.

Strangely, Pratt and Howard actually managed to create some sense of chemistry in this movie despite their huge misfire in Jurassic World, with Pratt being given a harder edge more akin to Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones than any of his other famed performances (‘Parks and Recreation’, Guardians of the Galaxy), much to the benefit of the character and his relationship to Howard’s now fully established bad ass animal rights activist Claire Dearing. The duo of course came across a few friends and foes along the way, with the former being largely represented by the similarly as tough and strong willed Zia (Daniella Pineda), performed with a charming moody milennial tone we can all identify with, and her wimpy co-worker Franklin (Justice Smith), who brought many a moment of comic relief yet didn’t feel overplayed or overused, and the villains being more a case of having to embody the evils of big business than offering any real character development yet were inclusive of a couple of worthwhile performances nonetheless (spoilers on who played these roles shall not be included here).

At the base of any Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movie is, of course, the quality of the effects, and despite a few early blips that seemed to put the movie in an almost video game realm of CG overload, Fallen Kingdom was actually most powerful in its moments of more intimate settings, with the film delivering spectacularly through the course of its 2nd and 3rd acts. The CG was so good that it became second nature that the creatures were there.

Just like Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom is intrinsically linked to many of the problems at the heart of its shortcomings, not least that its studio Universal Pictures now see it as a cash-cow that can make billions of dollars off the back of people wanting to see CGI dinosaur fights and can also create a heap of cash in merchandise and theme park attractions on the back of such moments. As such, there are moments of unbelievably human characteristics for certain dinosaurs that detract from how believable the piece may have been (as silly as that seems) and a continuation of the insanely high level of product placement that plagued this movie’s predecessor and seems to dictate the way certain shots are constructed and/or presented, to the detriment of the quality of the overall piece. In the screenplay, there are also several issues, mostly attaining to underdeveloped characters and using nostalgia-shaped shortcuts.

The biggest criticism that can be levelled at Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom however, is the criminal under-use of Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm who utters all of 5 lines throughout the entire film and may leave you feeling you’ve been mis-sold what this movie is set to offer. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen almost all of Goldblum already. So, if he’s your only reason to see this release, don’t bother.

Despite its indomitable flaws, Fallen Kingdom is a sequel that not only makes for a worthwhile follow up to Jurassic World but actually goes one better than Jurassic Park’s sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park by exceeding the original in almost every way and finally putting a certifiable, recognisable print onto a movie franchise that may never be as good as its associated Spielberg-directed universe brethren, but is a whole heap of fun with a positive message and all the dinosaur action you can imagine. This could, and likely should, be a mega-hit of this summer’s box office; a bloody good cinematic experience.

16/24

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Screenwriters: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Chadwick Boseman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Elizabeth Olsen, Karen Gillan, Carrie Coon, Pom Klementieff, Sebastian Stan, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Benedict Cumberbatch, Idris Elba, Letitia Wright, Vin Diesel, Danai Gurira, Paul Bettany, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Mackie, Benedict Wong

Unforeseen and unprecedented, Avengers: Infinity War delivers a conclusion of a lifetime that you’re going to want to see on the big screen and ahead of someone spoiling things for you. May you never have concerns about Marvel’s lack of conviction again…

10 years and 18 movies in the making, Infinity War was asked to juggle the massive expectations of its audience as well as the need for each of its franchise leading characters to be served appropriately. And, through some of the Russo Brothers’ now trademarked story-centred action, a premise that demanded attention and stakes, and a strong effort to invest in the arc of the villain, this full stop on the first 10 years of the MCU has managed to do just that. This is more than a superhero movie, it’s a defining moment in modern cinema.

The most pressing positive from the film comes from the brains at Marvel Studios – headed by studio head Kevin Feige – whom seem to have listened to concerns regarding the quality of the universe’s villains and made rectifying that issue their first port of call regarding Thanos in Infinity War, ensuring that the character’s desires were not left without explanation; that we were given the correct amount of insight into the tyrannical titan’s motivations, as well as his – for lack of a better term – humanity. In the space of a few hours, the most important of peripheral MCU figures became directly important to the story of the film and the future of the franchise, spearheading the direction of the conflict not as “generic ‘unwelcomed other’ number 4” but as a genuinely believable monstrous being with all the bells and whistles needed to make him a credible threat – on a scale of Malekith in Thor: The Dark World to The Dark Knight’s Joker, Thanos was a lot closer to The Joker.

That’s not to say that Thanos encompassed the entire film in the same way that The Joker did however, as the directors and their writing team did an incredible job in ensuring that each of the heroes was given their moment to shine too, with the franchise’s most prominent figures each finding room to manoeuvre in a cast of characters larger than arguably any in history. Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Starlord and Captain America were each given important direction and a lot of screen time through which to fulfil their tasks, and their interactions with secondary characters made for moment after moment of fan service that reached levels so high that Infinity War is almost untouchable in such a regard. This hectic and all-encompassing presentation did make performances harder to judge, and it’s fair to assume that there won’t be a single Infinity War cast member being nominated for their role in the movie at next year’s Oscars, but that’s not to deny the gravitas of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Pratt and Chris Evans in particular, each of whom offered tidbits of how special each of them are at important moments in the film; with Josh Brolin’s Thanos performance also being notable in its own right despite being so heavily masked by CGI.

Questions will also be raised about the quality of Infinity War to viewers unfamiliar with the franchise’s predecessors as the movie clearly placed a lot of its content against the backdrop of an expected familiarity between those watching the film and the characters within it. And sure, to a person fresh to the universe, Infinity War is hardly the film it would be to a person who’s a fan of the MCU, a reader of the comics or even a film goer who’s seen the vast majority of other Marvel movies, but to judge the 19th instalment of a universe with such traditional film criticism credentials would be to misunderstand the very nature of this once in a lifetime beast. Infinity War isn’t a film that 99.9% of people will begin their Marvel Cinematic Universe journey with, and though they’ll need a lot of catching up if they do choose to go down that route, the film’s lack of exposition and direct-to-action approach is actually to the movie’s benefit, keeping the run-time as low as it can be, the action and excitement high, and the story at the forefront of everything on the screen.

It’s in the story that Infinity War, and particularly the work of the Russo Brothers, comes to bare fruit, because for a film with so many must-see names, characters and moments, set across planets in different galaxies, everything somehow miraculously not only fits together, but also makes sense. The film’s narrative through-line is so strong that Iron Man can be fighting in one place while Star Lord fights in another, and at no point does it seem unnatural to be with one character as opposed to someone else, and while the film is filled to the brim with action set pieces and beautifully put together CG, the Russo Brothers ensure they never lose touch of the main arc of the film in what can only be described as a spectacular feat in direction – one that is complimented by every other aspect of post-production.

In short, this superhero-war-action movie is a moment in time that you shall never forget. This is a film so entwined with the history of a genre its own predecessors have come to define that it cannot be overlooked as anything other than a year defining, decade defining, genre defining all-time classic that belongs in the same echelon as The Dark Knight and The Empire Strikes Back in terms of quality blockbuster material. If you get the chance to see this on the big screen, do it. This is an event invitation you’re not going to want to pass up on; the near perfect comic book movie.

22/24

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Film Baldwin vs TV Baldwin

Once upon a time, if ever a well-known movie star popped up on TV – which was renowned for paying less, carrying less kudos, and being less accessible – the sound of their career circling the tubes accompanied it. The concept was even lampooned by Alec Baldwin in ’30 Rock’ – Alec himself had been an Oscar-nominated actor (best supporting actor for 2003’s The Cooler) and resorted to television in 2006, an era in which a move over to TV from film was a nail in the coffin of a serious acting career. But, ten years on, series are peppered with A-list actors doing meaningful work; reaching a larger viewership and critical acclaim. But, why the shift in opinion?

When Bill Paxton debuted in ‘Big Love’ in 2006 (HBO) as a Mormon husband, and Patrick Dempsey donned the scrubs to be “McDreamy” in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in 2005, they attracted a great deal of attention because many considered these to be moves that signalled an end to their chances of being the leading man. Movements the other way seemed to prove this thought, with people like George Clooney being the largest pieces of evidence. Clooney started in ‘ER’ and skyrocketed to fame and fortune by jumping out of the tiny TV ship and onto the film galleon.

That jump – from TV to film – is still considered to be a great acting move. Bryan Cranston and Chris Pratt both flourished moving from ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Parks and Recreation’ respectively, to seemingly meatier roles. Throwing it back some years, Jennifer Garner (‘Alias’) and Jessica Alba (‘Dark Angel’) moved from cult TV to mainstream film. Some succeed. Some don’t. Eva Longoria’s film career [remember the film where she played a dead woman who haunted her ex’s new girlfriend?] didn’t do nearly as much for her as her time on Wisteria Lane in ‘Desperate Housewives’, and Ginnifer Goodwin moved back to TV following her forgettable gig in He’s Just Not That Into You (2009). Then there are some, like Alyson Hannigan, whom straddle the line of film actor and TV actor – she was Willow in ‘Buffy’, yet she was also Michelle in American Pie at roughly the same time.

Historically, it has always been the case that some films opt for TV actors to secure financing. Choosing a well-known face from ‘How I Met Your Mother’, let’s say, may have given Forgetting Sarah Marshall a bit of a box office boost, or pairing SNL stalwarts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler together in Baby Mama may have given the film the life it needed (the concept alone, probably not so much). Partly, this could be down to the fact that TV and film are made differently. The pressures on the actors are different and the schedules vary. TV is considered to be the ‘boob tube’ to pass a few hours, while the cinema remains an outing, even in the day and age of streaming services and ever-decreasing times between theatrical presentations and home video releases.

The TV show ‘Damages’ is an interesting example. Glenn Close heads up the cast as ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes and with support from the likes of Ryan Phillipe, Ted Danson, John Goodman, and Lily Tomlin, each of whom is primarily known for being an actor on film. The show drew acclaim and appeal on the fact it had cast film actors for a more “cinematic” TV show.

But the TV renaissance hasn’t stopped at film actors. Rihanna was on Bates Motel; Lady Gaga and Stevie Nicks on American Horror Story. The kudos of TV has been renewed. So, why is this?

The answer probably boils down to Netflix. Or, at least the way we have evolved our watching habits.

Instead of tuning in weekly, we can binge-watch television in one go. The TV show is more like a TV Event, consumed at our will and much less likely to be forgotten about as time goes by. ‘Game of Thrones’ is a great example of event television for many reasons, not least visually, offering a product that can be binged but also enjoyed in the more traditional weekly format due to an embrace of spoiler culture that ensures avid watchers will tune in at the time of airing. As far as actors are concerned, the show debuted with a cast of unknowns and a few notable names who hadn’t had a great deal of success in film (Lena Heady, for example) or were lacking the star power to be the front-person (Sean Bean), yet the amount of power the show has gathered, the likelihood that their screen time is greater and the fact that the actors are in the public’s conscience for up to eight years, makes TV an attractive offer for actors in particular. ‘Game of Thrones’ is probably better known the world over than any of 2014’s summer blockbusters. Emilia Clarke’s ‘Game of Thrones’ TV success was used as a sell-in for Terminator: Genisys and Me Before You.

From Matthew McConaughey’s star turn in ‘True Detective’ to Kirsten Dunst in ‘Fargo’, Reese Witherspoon in ‘Big Little Lies’, and Drew Barrymore in ‘Santa Clarita Diet’, big A-list Hollywood actors have made the steady exodus over to television. TV is different now and the fact that film actors are opting for TV roles shows that the power of TV has returned and, more importantly in regards to the purpose of this article, that actors are able to embrace it as a potential boost to their career. While it’s difficult to imagine a Matt Damon or Brad Pitt heading up a TV cast just yet, the lines between film actor and TV actor have certainly been blurred and the glass ceiling for TV actors seems to no longer exist.

Written by James Cullen