fdhvs Reviews

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Franchise Buster

[3/10 · 25 March 2024]

How can you put Paul Rudd, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Kumail Nanjiani & James Acaster in a film & not raise one single laugh?!

Sony are not having a great year! First, there was the laughably bad Madame Web, now this.

Are Sony doing their best to kill off two franchises?

I've given this a 3 purely out of my love for Bill Murray & the RPJ will never fail to get me humming along.

The love story between the young girl & a ghost is unnecessary, clumsy & cringeworthy. But that's not even the worst part of this film. It's surely supposed to be fun? This falls woefully short.

Let Bill, Dan & Ernie write & star in the next instalment & consign this franchise to the afterlife please.

Sexy Beast (2024– )

How did Tamsin Greig end up in THIS?

[3/10 · 27 February 2024]

I'm pretty sure the Sexy Beast film was rated 18?

I only say that because I can only assume that whoever created this mess has never seen the film, is aged 13 & 3 quarters & has used the internet to read the best quotes from the film!

Honestly, this is laughably bad!

There's a reason there wasn't a sequel to the film. It was pretty much perfect with a career best, film stealing performance from Ben Kingsley.

The young Don Logan in this is just about the only redeeming thing but the material he has to work with is terrible & contrived.

& how does Tamsin Greig, a genuine comedy talent, end up playing the most ridiculous, humourless gangster you'll ever see?!!

A 3 rating just because Emun Mohammadi shows some promise but let down by an awful script.

Madame Web (2024)

A Tangled Mess

[1/10 · 14 February 2024]

Sony proved that you can take Vampires, superpowers,Jared Leto & Jared Harris & still conspire to make a tedious film.

Surely they learned their lesson?

The answer, is unequivocally no!!!

This is not just the worst superhero movie of all time (It makes Quantumania look like Citizen Kane) it's one of the worst movies of all time.

The most unforgivable thing is that it's soooo boring!!

1hr 54 minutes has NEVER felt so long.

Sony / MCU are in serious need of a break & / or reset. Fans are being ripped off in the hope that there's life after Endgame.

On this showing, the signs aren't great.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Phoebe Waller Bridge & The Death Of The Franchise

[2/10 · 28 June 2023]

We all now know & accept The Last Crusade should've been just that. Indiana Jones riding off into the sunset at the end of a perfectly satisfying trilogy.

Then some bright spark thought we needed aliens & Shia swinging through the trees with the monkeys so we got the abomination which is KOTCS.

I was hopeful Dial of Destiny would let Indiana sign off with some dignity but no, we have the PWB show & some kid shoehorned in to try & recreate the chemistry of Short-Round.

An Indy adventure with him travelling through time should've been a sure fire hit.

Disney, as with Star Wars, have conspired to somehow ruin something which couldn't possibly be ruined!!

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Just take a break now....

[2/10 · 15 November 2022]

Spider-Man & Shang Chi aside, the recent Marvel efforts have been pretty mediocre so I didn't have high hopes going into this.

I liked the opening credit tribute to Chadwick, a genuine talent taken far too early.

But then, I'm afraid to say, was 2.5 hours of nonsense.

An underwater god sat twiddling his thumbs while Thanos was causing havoc. This film couldn't even be bothered to off a feeble 'Eternals, we promised not to get involved' excuse.

What does tempt this wing-footed god to the surface is the worlds most powerful scientist! Sounds justified until you realise it's a precocious brat who is just in in this film to introduce more canon.

I won't spoil the post credit scene for you but let me just say the reasoning behind 'the secret' is laughably tenuous.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Benny Hill: God of Thunder

[3/10 · 9 July 2022]

I watched Ragnarok again the night before seeing this.

It's one of my favourite Marvel films, just the right blend of humour, action & character development. The relationships between Thor, Loki, Valkyrie, Hulk & Korg are well observed, funny & touching.

Now we have Love & Thunder & I couldn't wait to see what Taika Waititi did with Thor in this new adventure.

The answer, I'm sorry to say, is make a complete joke of him.

I love the underlying humour in the Marvel films, it's what makes them infinitely more watchable than most DC efforts in my opinion, but here the joke wore very thin & very quickly.

Cast your mind back to the original Thor film. Chris Hemsworth played him brilliantly, from reckless joker to Earths saviour through his sacrifices.

He's a character we all love because he's a God yet utterly relatable & fallible.

Well in this he's a clown from start to finish. Every scene with him another opportunity for a cheap gag.

Well I'm not laughing & honestly, there wasn't as much as a snigger from the audience today.

Christian Bale, one of my favourite actors, is criminally underused when there was the potential to turn Gorr into the next Thanos. Why cast an actor of his credentials & do so little with him?

& please, please, please, for the love of Zeus (see what I did there) can films just be made for entertainments sake rather than the current trend of having to fulfil an agenda. 'King' Valkyrie, Korg (who can only mate with other males) It's just unnecessary tokenism & clumsy.

I wondered where Marvel would go after Endgame, & with the exception of Shang Chi & No Way Home, the answer is rapidly downhill, reaching optimal velocity with Thor: Love & Thunder.

I shall keep everything crossed for a return to form with Wakanda Forever.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Obi Woke Kenobi

[6/10 · 24 June 2022]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

Star Wars was written by people who cared what the audience saw & didn't take them for complete idiots.

Fast forward a good few years & you start to notice one or two things don't add up.

Flying Princess Leia & the complete character assassination of Luke in The Last Jedi. How Boba Fett has been transformed from bad ass Bounty Hunter to neutered good guy. How baby Yoda & the return of Luke disguised a lot of the Mandalorian.

& now we have Obi Wan, Disneys latest cash grab, I mean Star Wars show.

It just doesn't do the originals service & insults the audience!

We are expected to believe that Leia completely forgets who Ben is in 10 years or so between this series & A New Hope.

Obi Wan also forgets that he says 'Obi Wan, that's a name I haven't heard since before you were born to Luke. Well he hears it a lot in this series!

We're expected to believe that Darth Vader, the most feared & powerful Sith / Jedi in the Universe can be outwitted, sometimes hilariously & implausibly, at every turn.

Well this series forgets / can't be bothered to recall these conversations ever took place because it desperately needs audience pleasing fight scenes to disguise a laughably thin plot. It's lazy & insulting to proper fans.

I know full well Disney are trying to attract a new audience & don't care if older fans like me subscribe or not (of course I will but don't tell them!) but why not employ 1 or 2 fact checkers to make sure everything aligns? It's lazy & insulting to the original audience to do anything less.

On a positive, I did like seeing Hayden Christian back even if I can't help laughing while I reminisce about some of the awful, cheesy lines he had in the Prequel trilogy.

Sand anyone....

This last episode as a stand alone was brilliant, a solid 8/10 from me. But overall, the series as a whole has left me at a generous 6/10 because of all the plot holes through lazy writing & too much time spent building Reva into a character I was supposed to care about...

I didn't!

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

As Ian Malcolm said... "That's one big pile of...."

[3/10 · 11 June 2022]

Let's start with the positives..... It was really good to see original cast members back, especially Jeff Goldblum.

But that's about it I'm afraid.

All the returning cast did was remind me how good Jurassic Park was & how poor pretty much every sequel has been in comparison, with Dominion reaching new lows.

Chris Pratt only works with a snappy, humour filled dialogue, & there's none of that here.

Bryce Dallas Howard spends most of the film under a blanket to disguise all the weight she's put on since the first film & subsequent Disney pay check meals out. This makes her outrunning a raptor even more ridiculous!

I wanted the cloned, sulky kid to get eaten by a dinosaur, but here we have the real problem, there's just not enough dinosaurs!

Art imitates art here. They give us bigger dinosaurs to impress us but ultimately who cares when the plot is so laughably bad?

This could have been the epic conclusion we hoped for. Dinosaurs running amok in big cities & towns in an apocalyptic stand off with humans.

What did we get....

Giant locusts & a really tall ostrich in need of a manicure.

The Northman (2022)

Boring, boring, boring.....

[1/10 · 15 April 2022]

Billed as The Gladiator For This Generation, Maximus himself would chop his own head off rather than sit through this again.

I'm hugely sceptical when I see the words 'From Visionary Director' on the posters as it usually precedes a boring film that only the director & a few of their luvvie mates will appreciate.

The rest of us will be bored.

How can Nicole Kidman need the money THIS much??