VOD: tick, tick...BOOM! (dir: Lin-Manuel Miranda, 2021)

"Everything you are about to see is true...except for the parts Jonathan made up."
 

The story of musical theatre writer Jonathan Larson, who died tragically young, is told performance-style through his music in this terrifically entertaining movie.  Lin-Manuel Miranda is a perfect fit for the project, and his directorial debut fizzes with life in its presentation of content, use of camera and editing.  Larson is presented as a larger-than-life bundle of enthusiastic creative energy, charismatically brought to life in a remarkable central performance by the excellent Andrew Garfield.  The winning music is performed powerfully and the emotional beats in the layered story hit home beautifully.  This film manages that rare feat of being both superbly made and hugely entertaining and engaging from start to finish. 

VOD: Jungle Cruise (dir: Jaume Collet-Serra, 2021)

"If I wanted to go to a primitive backwater, where I can't understand a word anyone's saying, I'd visit our relatives in Scotland!"
 

The elevator pitch for this film was probably 'theme park ride + The African Queen + The Mummy/Indiana Jones franchises', and it is essentially a standard CGI-laden formula blockbuster, and as such it is far too long, with a frustrating stop-start narrative that does try to flesh out its very basic characters with annoying flashbacks and exposition.  Emily Blunt is by far and consistently the best aspect of the movie with a solidly engaging take on the material, but Dwayne Johnson is on usual full charm mode with a nicely-played twist to his character that sets up the finale, and Jack Whitehall is effectively irritating as the prissy upper-class stereotype brother.  The film looks great in spite of variable effects and the set pieces are lively enough, but overall Jungle Cruise treads a very familiar path which, at over two hours, gets wearing.

VOD: The Harder They Fall (dir: Jeymes Samuel, 2021)

"Now, let it be known that I don't particularly enjoy violence.  That being said, you are currently in the company of extremely violent individuals."

Pitched somewhere between Spike Lee and Tarantino (but not hitting the heights of either), The Harder They Fall is an interesting film that certainly improves as it goes along.  At first it takes time to get used to the clashing styles of old-school Western genre tropes, blaxploitation and an anachronistically contemporary soundtrack, but what sells this movie is that it is packed with terrific performances.  Weaving a story out of oft-overlooked real people of colour, it tells a full-blooded revenge tale that takes it time but pulls together very well for an engaging third act.  It is well-lensed and the narrative is well-constructed.  The film may do less in conveying black experience in the Wild West than redressing the absence of people of colour in the Western film genre, but it certainly gives an entertaining and well-made twist to a well-worn genre. 
 

VOD: Siren (dir: Gregg Bishop, 2016)

"Well, that's not good..."

Think of The Hangover reimagined as a low-budget horror and you have the set-up for Siren, as a boorish group embark on a stag weekend, are lured to a 'special' nightclub hidden way off the beaten track and... that is where the predictability ends.  Taking in classical female mythology, body horror and Hostel-style torture, Siren may be at times chaotic and seemingly randomly aimless, but it is rarely dull and keeps bowling along with cheerful abandon, bags of energy, some decent effects work and a fair amount of creativity that punches above its weight

 

VOD: Home Sweet Home Alone (dir: Dan Mazer, 2021)

"You can't promise a kid McDonalds and not deliver."

When a character in the movie actually says, "I don't know why they're always trying to remake classics - never as good as the originals," it is hard to tell if it is an act of acute self-awareness or weak self-defence.   What this largely charmless and flat loose remake proves is that the there were two key ingredients that contributed to the long-lasting success of  the original Home Alone that are sorely missing here: the delightfully sweet performance of Macaulay Culkin and the direction of Chris Columbus.  Young Archie Yates - so good in Jojo Rabbit - tries hard but never feels like a comfortable fit here, the attempts at humour frequently fizzle out amongst longer dreary dialogue pieces, and the pranks are largely neutered, presumably in order to appease more PC viewers of today.  Whilst Home Sweet Home Alone does not quite hit the dismal depths of the last couple of TV-level incarnations of the franchise - at least there is a snowy and Christmassy authenticity to the settings here - it will make you more inclined to 'Bah, humbug!' than 'Ho, ho, ho!'
 

VOD: Red Notice (dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2021)

"I'm about to send you to the worst place in the world!"
"Your Instagram account?"

Reportedly costing an eye-wateringly indulgent extravagant $200 million, Red Notice is an unashamed mash-up of the James Bond and Indiana Jones franchises, as an FBI profiler (Dwayne Johnson) and his nemesis, a master art thief (Ryan Reynolds), reluctantly team up to bring down the world's most-wanted art thief (Gal Gadot).  Falling short of the cool style and suave sizzle of a caper such as The Thomas Crown Affair, the film relies heavily on the individual charms of the three leads to carry what feels like a relentlessly adequate enterprise - even the many pop-culture references are delivered with a largely smug indifference.  For a good-looking and moderately entertaining film, a bit more substance and style might have been expected for the price tag.
 

VOD: It Came From The Desert (dir: Marko Mäkilaakso, 2017)

"Trippy!  We just went from Jurassic Park to Aliens, dude!"

It Came From The Desert is an unpretentious and cheesy low-budget update of 1950s-style creature-features, which marries Them! with the joyous silliness of Eight-Legged Freaks and attempts to hit the dry humour of Tremors, as our two lead party dudes stumble into a seemingly long-abandoned test facility and unleash mayhem.  More cheap than cheerful, it takes its very-evident budget limitations and combines them with a recklessly ambitious enthusiasm (and some well-shot drone footage and half-decent CGI effects), making the film an acceptable watch for its presumably undemanding male adolescent target audience.

 

VOD: No-One Gets Out Alive (dir: Santiago Menghini, 2021)

"There's something wrong with this place."

The nicely-presented count-the-conventions pre-titles sequence sets the tone for this slow-burn Mexican horror, which follows the misfortunes of an immigrant worker in Cleveland as she moves into a spooky low-rent apartment.  In spite of a plethora of familiar generic elements in play, including a locked room, visions, lights flickering and dying, an old tape machine, an ancient relic and a scratched-out face on a photo, there is a reasonable balance between set pieces and story/character development.  Although the overall slow pacing of the main story tests patience, and the creepy atmosphere is replaced by more visceral CGI shocks in the final act, Cristina Rodlo does well in the lead role, the story elements pull together quite effectively and there are some well-directed moments on offer.
 

VOD: Falling For Figaro (dir: Ben Lewin, 2021)

"I've always wanted to be an opera singer."
"Wha...? What, you mean, like, in the shower?"

Falling For Figaro is a timid British middle-class rom-com that is typical easy-Sunday-afternoon-viewing fare.  Following the Richard Curtis/fish-out-of-water template, a successful but dissatisfied City fund manager improbably ups sticks to stereotypical rural Scotland in order to train to become and opera singer with a reclusive former diva, alongside developing a romantic interest in her main rival.  It is full of reliable British character actors following predictable story arcs, with Joanna Lumley spitting out her waspish put-downs with gleeful efficiency, Danielle Macdonald proving reasonably charming if often underpowered in the lead role, Gary Lewis giving good value as the dour pub landlord, and the ever-reliable Hugh Skinner giving one of his best, nicely-judged performances here as the failing opera competition rival and love interest.  The film is pleasant and well-executed, but it is so tame that it leaves no real impression, unless you are the type of viewer who finds a creaky old plumbing system to be the height of hilarity.