murkee Reviews

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Mundanity is the point

[9/10 · 6 March 2024]

It is a film well worth seeing. It doesn't directly focus on the plight of the victims, instead its focus is the perpetrators and their indifference.

The plot is slow, not a lot happens - and that is the.point.

The film is all about the sheer mundanity of the perpetrators, the uninspired kleptocratic bureaucracy of the Holocaust, and the priority given to it.

It is about the complicity of families, the casual cruelty (implied and oral), and the culpability of German industrialists, paying for labourers.

It is understated, intentionally.

This is a film worth seeing, with an effecting conclusion that has several readings.

Ferrari (2023)

It was fine...

[6/10 · 10 January 2024]

This film could have, should have, been better.

I didn't feel like I got a deep insight into the main characters. Stuff happened to them, it had all the right elements, but it felt like it was very much 'by the numbers' - it did not really connect one thing to the next and each element felt very distinct and isolated from the next.

The racing felt *slow* and very 'safe'. Even as cars flew through the air, it felt like a toddler had thrown a matchbox car across the room. The car to car shots felt like they were filmed in a warehouse with locked off cameras. If they were not filmed this way, then a lot of money was wasted!

The final accident that put the end of the Mille MIglia was very effective, it was telegraphed quite a lot - even though I was not aware of the circumstances - but the actuality of it was no less effective. The film then felt rushed to the end. It could have had less before this point and more aftermath.

It was fine. It wasn't great.

Poor Things (2023)

Artistic and stylistic.... a watch once.

[8/10 · 10 January 2024]

This was very artily shot, and certainly at the start we nearly left (it was late, we were tired.... it was odd)

Glad we didn't. The film is essentially Frankenstein's monster told with a female 'monster' and without the 'rampaging through the local village' element. It's more about self discovery and growing up.... fast.

And it's about Bella's womanhood.

It does play more like an out of control art-house student film.

It's fine, it's weird, it's interesting. Perhaps it's a bit too odd.

Is it a film to return to....? Probably not anytime soon. It is..... over-long. Some stylistic choices did not land for me, the use of black and white versus colour, I wasn't clear on the distinction, was it historical vs present.... or a function of Bella's awareness? I wasn't sure in the moment.

It'll be a film that does well in the award seasons - and it's one that teenage boys will likely return to.... but for most people, will it be one they revisit in ten years? Probably not.

Next Goal Wins (2023)

Not without issues, but a feelgood film

[8/10 · 10 January 2024]

Its a lovely little film, essentially 'Cool Runnings' but football. It's got a lot of heart.

Unfortunately, Taika Waititi's cameo rather detracts - and he really should have made the call to find another way to open the film. His character comes up, I think, once in the film outside the credits - and that would have been enough as a director cameo. In the introduction it's just over the top in a bad way (I didn't wait through the credits)

Oscar Kightley is fantastic in his role, and Jaiyah is clearly the heart of the story (a few times, I thought more emphasis on the team dynamic would have been of benefit - in the Haka, the camera kept finding Kaimana).

Minor quibbles with the edit aside, the overal experience was lovely.

Dream Scenario (2023)

What was the point?

[3/10 · 11 November 2023]

This is a film that was weird - no problem with that, I enjoyed "Being John Malovich" - but this was weird with no point and no resolution. Yes, there was something about cancel culture, but ultimately it was unresolved.

A man is dreamt about by al. Why? It is never explained.

People get angry as he does mad stuff in the dreams. (Okay, I have dreamt about people but then, waking up, I've not held a grudge)

Then, it gets commercialised somehow, and he stops appearing in dreams for ... no reason. His marriage breaks up, the film ends.

Why did this happen? Why did it stop? What was the message?

What was the POINT?

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Deux ex machine in spades

[4/10 · 19 March 2023]

I saw this film as a 'secret preview', not knowing what I would get. It's not a film I would have chosen, but I gave it a go.

It's visually spectacular, but I found it disjointed - there were contemporary sensibilities mixed with a mythic setting, it jarred. The internal logic didn't sit right: Any problem? Magic! We want to do this hard thing, so lets obtain this rare thing nobody has seen in generations and is believed lost. It was like forming a plan to tryto crack open a safe with the beak of a living Dodo. Now, I did look at the socials afterwards - and it appears that I was in the minority, all the comments I saw.were positive. And that's fine. People can enjoy different things.

But for me, it was just a series of disjointed set pieces.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Fun - but don't think too hard

[8/10 · 17 February 2023]

I enjoyed the heck out of this - nice to see Kang properly in the MCU, but I did have some issues with the internal consistency of Ant Man going bigger and smaller than quantum's scale... he's a slow lumbering thing when he's large but *still subatomic*. That kind of works if the quantum world is faster than our world, but not otherwise.

I did miss Luis, but he wouldn't have fitted in to this one. The mirroring of Scott's narration was a really nice touch beginning and end.

The thing Marvel will have to take care with in Kang is that keeping his narrative coherent for the lay-audience will be very tricky indeed. "Didn't they kill him, why are there two of them?" I can imagine future films having characters asking dumb questions just so they can be explained to....

Nice to see Kamala in the titles :)

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Overlong and self indulgent.

[4/10 · 17 February 2023]

Visually spectacular, but my goodness, does it drag.

It's a 1hr 50 minute film, crammed into a runtime of a little over three hours. My goodness me.

The whole film can be summed up with 'humans bad, do the bad things'. Yes, from the Point of view of Pandora, correct. That's it really.

We only get hints at how Earth is.... And the resources for interplanetary missions... yet Pandora is the sole option? At least 'unobtainium' is not the macguffin, but it has suddenly jumped to the alien whale brain-juice (at 80 million a vial, that'll pay for the interplanetary missions, multi-ship missions, in no time flat). It's just stupid. Double down on the 'humans need pandora for survival of the species' - don't have that as the throwaway line and then make it about whale brain juice.

Gah! Such an annoying film.

Black Adam (2022)

Decent, but unearned DCEU

[5/10 · 25 October 2022]

A decent DCEU film, but going from nothing to world-threatening stakes feels unearned. DC desperately playing MCU catchup.

A whole suite of characters are introduced, with no earlier mention that I recall from any DC film, yet the whole time it is screaming "Look at us, connected mythology, DC, DC!!"

Having none of the justice league with adam fighting the big bad and post credits - fine.

Introducing the league elsewhere first - fine... but it was deus ex machina all the way.

That said, basic premise of a darker "hero" - without connection to the "west" - absolutely fine.

It just went straight from zero to 100 with nothing to deserve that.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Confusing mess

[5/10 · 24 May 2022]

What was that all about? It was just a hunch of incoherent set pieces, it was just unclear what was going on. Then magic thing.... Lack of logic.... Total mess.

The Prestige (2006)

What a con!

[5/10 · 30 March 2022]

I should have liked this film, but rather than being a heist-like film around magic, something really clever, it was ultimately something that cheats the audience.

Really annoyed me.

The Book of Boba Fett (2021–2022)

Had promise, but.....

[6/10 · 27 March 2022]

Disappointing. They took an iconic character and made him... dull.

That speeder bike chase!

HOWEVER, the two episodes where they moved away from the main story and did a couple of Mando episodes. Fantastic.

The Matrix Resurrections (I) (2021)

A confusing mess...

[5/10 · 23 December 2021]

Some clever bits in setup, but rather all over the place.

I guess the line about Warner Bros wanting another trilogy was bang on.

Man, this dragged.

Eternals (2021)

It was okay....

[5/10 · 7 November 2021]

Tldr; Rather long - too much filling for the pie.

There are reasons some people will hate on this film, that one of the characters kisses his same sex partner is one. Ignore these people. They would not complain if it had been a goodbye kiss of the opposite sex, and these people need to be part of the world. Some people are gay.

Some will use coded language to express displeasure at the representation in the casting. Those people can take a long hard look at themselves.

It is possible to have issues with a film without it automatically being for these issues.

For me, I felt the film had structural issues and would have been better split into two. It was burdened with introducing a huge number of characters, developing them, and in a few cases, killing them off. There was a certain amount of story to cover if the characters could be integrated into the wider MCU, AND the film felt over-full. My solution?

Split the film.

FIlm 1: The Eternals land. They fight deviants. They seed various bits of human advancement. They defeat the Eternals, Thena gets calmed. Druig storms off with his band. The Eternals separate and have a 'happy ending'.

After a pause to let the audience digest.

Film 2: We pick up at the modern day, we find that Sersi is no longer with Icarus. The deviants return - and we start to get the twists.

Each story gets more time to breath, and we get to know characters before the betrayals and twists. After the first film, and the elapsed time, the impact of the twists is increased.

As things stood, there was *so* much story to fit in it felt like "and another thing"..... so many characters at once, and in a few cases there was little time to 'live with them' before they met an end.

WandaVision (2021)

Need to see at least 4 eps to 'get'

[9/10 · 5 February 2021]

Eps 1-3 could be hard going for some (but others will enjoy 'as is').... but when you have ep 4 under your belt, it all comes together.

If someone has seen ep 4, pay attention; if not.... look at another review.

For what its worth, I have watched 1-5 (5 was released today) and I am annoyed I can't get to Ep 6 yet!

Proxima (2019)

Undermined at the end

[6/10 · 31 July 2020]

This isn't a film about space, but rather, about motherhood. That's all fine - it was all very well done (though Matt Dillon was a bit two dimensional - a bit more than one note, but only just).

The whole film, though, was completely undermined by the breaking of quarantine - it showed a lack of professionalism that undercut everything else about balancing home life and the extraordinary commitment of the astronaut. It did have some nice shots of the launch pad in Kazakhstan, but it was ridiculous.

Seberg (2019)

Decent film

[7/10 · 11 January 2020]

An exploration of US civil rights in the late 60s (which, lest we forget, was the result of many years of less than glorious actions from white america) through the device of its impact on Jean Seberg.

One might take exception with some actions of the Panthers (especially after the period depicted here); but much of that is afterwards; it is also the case that reports of incidents between panthers and police are unreliable. It is true that if people feel oppressed, they begin to fight - and that is where we are soon after the panther formation.

It is well documented that Seberg was the target of a propaganda campaign about her pregnancy - the "sol" letter is real.

There may be factors unexplored, but this is a film focussing on Seberg, not a text book exploring every facet of the Panthers - and it does a decent job.

Ad Astra (2019)

Beautiful but ludicrous

[5/10 · 11 January 2020]

Beautifully shot, classic pace (although getting gravity right in the lunar spaceport would have been nice) a but the central plot, the search for Dad, was awful.