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Reviews
Eighth Grade (2018)
Beautiful, funny and painful
A Beautiful, funny and painful portrait of the pressures children have at school. It's called eighth grade but it applies to every year group, since time began - the pressure to fit in and the difficulty to do it is painfully exposed. A Story of seemingly small stakes becomes an epic battle - heightened by the social media age we live in now.
Very funny and very affecting, the lead actress is phenomenal. Not a hint of "child actress", completely natural and engaging.
Burnham has crafted a subtle, nostalgic and empathetic view of how difficult being a kid can be. It feels incredibly authentic.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
A Love letter to Nintendo
If you didn't play video games as a kid your mileage may vary, but for nintendo fans this is finally the Mario movie we wanted. So funny, so entertaining, so many little references to the world of nintendo.
Cast do a great job with a clever script - the clever subversion of the "its-a-me-a-mario" voices, the emotionally sensitive Bowser, the nihilistic star in a cage, and a lovely story of brothers sticking together.
Visually stunning, loads of references for fans, and even my girlfriend who wasnt a big gamer as a kid, found it delightful.
Throughly, thoroughly recommend for kids and adults.
War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023)
Would have rather watched an actual Martian Invasion
So to begin, the positives:
-the shooting, editing and sound are quite good - better than a no-budget film.
-The main 3-4 cast do a good job with what they're given.
The bad:
the script is truly dreadful - written in a different language and translated maybe? Dialogue nobody would say, clunky exposition, and most importantly there is nothing new about this version. Zero. You have seen everything before. Its like if ChatGPT was asked "write a war of the worlds film without any originality or reason to exist".
Feels very much like a late 90s early evening kids drama series. Boring staging, predictable action, endless running around to give the impression something, ANYTHING, is happening.
There's no characterisation other than "dad died" "is a girl" "is black". In fact the girl is basically there to say "what do we do now?" every other scene.
The VFX are largely awful - most look unfinished, and the tripods move like they have no weight to them. Very cheap looking, like a PS2 in game cut scene. Every 20th VFX shot is semi convincing. You know a film is in trouble when even the trailer has bad shots.
Supporting cast are clearly amateurs, and some in particular (the army guy, the reporter) are very poor.
Overall a complete waste of time for all involved, especially the viewer.
Matriarch (2022)
Atmospheric and unsettling
Wasn't sure what to make of this, and in many ways it's a few different films put together. It's a mother/daughter relationship drama, it's an addiction drama, it's a folk horror and it's a body horror.
The actors are tremendous - Kate Dickie is always good value and is deliciously insincere.
Jemima Rooper manages to make a pretty unsympathetic character somewhat likeable, though that is a bit of a flaw in the film.
The cinematography is lovely - the British countryside has never looked so desolate or haunting.
The music and sound design is incredibly atmospheric, and works in conjunction with the editing to really keep you uneasy throughout.
Perhaps by the end of the film one too many ideas have been thrown into the pot, but I really enjoyed the journey and would happily recommend it.
Love and Monsters (2020)
More like "Love and Mehsters"
Whilst lovely looking its really really boring. Predictable story, weirdly erratic pacing and crucially nobody that you really care about. Hardly any actual monsters, and a really irritating lead actor who is very unlikeable. Might be a distraction for simple minded 12 year olds but the rest of us will feel our time has been wasted.
Invasion Planet Earth (2019)
Almost a parody of a bad film.
The story of getting the film made is very inspiring, but not relevant to whether the film is any good or not. And sadly, it isn't. It's woeful in almost every regard.
The overall story is an interesting idea, but everything from the terrible script, the uniformly awful supporting cast, the stagey direction/editing and the mostly cheap VFX make you wonder why they even bothered.
If given the right resources maybe the director could come up with something impressive, but this is not a good calling card.