VOD: Meet Me Next Christmas (dir: Rusty Cundieff, 2024)

"Let fate decide."
 

Netflix kicks off the 2024 holiday season's movies with this good-looking and affable rom-com.  A charged chance encounter at a snowbound airport lounge on Christmas Eve leads to a promise to meet up one year later at a Pentatonix (American vocal harmony group) concert in a year's time, if fate dictates, giving rise to a story that echoes Serendipity and a trek through Christmassy New York for an elusive ticket to the sold-out gig.  The scenes (adverts?) with the actual band are fairly wince-inducing, but the film is saved by very appealing lead performances from Christina Milian and Devale Ellis, and whilst the film veers wildly between different tones - ranging from tear-jerking to uber-camp to typical rom-com set-ups - the lead characters are perhaps a little more rounded than usual for the genre.  Easy on the eyes and ears (plenty of laid-back Christmas tunes) and easy to watch, if you can tolerate the cheesier and more bizarre moments, the charming leads sell the frothy through-story well, all leading to a heartfelt ending that absolutely delivers.   

VOD: Rebel Ridge (dir: Jeremy Saulnier, 2024)

"One mind, any weapon."

Aaron Pierre stars in this Netflix action-thriller that sees a small town's corrupt local police force seizing former Marine Terry's money for a trumped-up misdemeanour, which would have been used to secure bail for his cousin, leading to a one-man battle against the bad guys.  Essentially an extremely subdued 2024 update of Rambo but with minimal action and violence, the film plods along at its relentlessly steady pace and never really delivers on its premise.  Aaron Pierre is capable both in measured ex-marine and  fighter modes, and Don Johnson is solidly unpleasant as the town's chief of police.  The first extended part is a fairly effective slow-burn thriller set-up, with the second half working out why the town became so corrupt and Terry meting out vengeance, but even a late-in-the-day one man versus the entire town/police force face-off fails to lift the film above sincere but plodding.
 

VOD: Bad Boys Ride Or Die (dirs: Adil el Arbi and Bilall Fallah, 2024)

"It's like redneck Jurassic Park in here!"

Following the surprisingly effective (and belated) third Bad Boys movie, this fourth entry sees Marcus and Mike's deceased police captain framed on corruption charges, internal corruption puts the duo on the run, Mike having to make an impossible choice, Marcus making an amazingly rapid recovery from a serious health scare and the remnants of the trustworthy team facing down the bad guys in an abandoned amusement/water park.  Will Smith mostly plays it straight and delivers effectively, Martin Lawrence - especially in the first part - gets saddled with some excruciating comedy lines, and Jacob Scipio (Mike's estranged son) gets a couple of brief but very well-executed fight scenes.  As usual, this neon-soaked film looks terrific - especially in UHD - and the story has potential although the writing is not as sharp as the previous film.  Perhaps reducing the lame attempts at comedy - we get it, they are older now - including the silly end-credits clip - might have made this a stronger entry in the franchise.
 

VOD: Back To Black (dir: Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2024)

"I ain't no f**king Spice Girl!"

With the rise and horrifying fall of the tragic star still relatively fresh, this Amy Winehouse biopic is respectful enough to the point of merely hinting at the sad depth of her troubles.  An excellent cast does its best with some awkward dialogue, with Jack O'Connell giving the standout performance as her cocky but destructive soulmate Blake - here Danny Dyer via Dermot O'Leary - and Lesley Manville touching as her beloved grandmother, whilst Marisa Abela plays Amy with a largely unexpected softness.  The film positions Winehouse as a mix of child-like waif and an old-out-of-time jazz-loving soul as she starts out, both dismissive of, yet utterly dependent on, the feckless men in her life.  Her songwriting is used a a literal record of her life experiences, and the film does a good job of contextualising some of the key numbers.  Camden is used well as her stamping ground backdrop, but Amy's parents remain oddly shadowy figures.  The Shangri-Las are purposefully referenced as evoking the tragic melodrama that became Winehouse's later life, but what maybe should have been sharp and harrowing to watch plays more like a 2000s re-run of The Rose. 
 

VOD: Time Cut (Hannah Macpherson, 2024)

"We're not altering the future, we're just giving it...a little makeover..."

Bearing some similarities to 2023's Totally Killer but filmed first, a miserable teenager jumps back in time twenty years via a mysterious machine in a barn and tries to prevent her sister's murder at the hands of a masked killer.  Whereas Totally Killer was skewed towards daft comedy-horror, Time Cut goes for the YA teen girl emotional tropes - cue 2003 fashion makeover, bonding with the (teen) sister she never knew, Avril Lavigne on the soundtrack and the hilarity of dial-up internet.  It is all rather insipid and low-powered, leaving little impression and with an ending that abandons its own earlier considerations of timelines and paradoxes.  
 

VOD: MadS (dir: David Moreau, 2024)

"What's happened?  Why are you being all weird?"

A young party guy comes across a mysterious injured hysterical young woman by the roadside, but as he takes her to get help it sets in motion a chain of events that sees him steadily losing grip on reality - drugs-fuelled, or an experimental viral pandemic? - in this semi-experimental French psychological thriller/horror.  The story is told in near real-time, with a freeform use of camera (lots of lengthy shots off-tripod) following the characters to create a sense of intimacy and immediacy.  The experimental style with its hallucinatory and nightmarish use of visuals and sound (including a Pink Floyd-ish score) keeps the film veering between interesting and patience-testing, in what may be seen as a post-pandemic response movie.  Where the film falls down is that it reaches a natural conclusion just over half-way through, the remainder veering into familiar territory that is perhaps less interesting and adds very little.