Mike_O_Dwyer Reviews

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

Lost In Ambition

[2/10 · 17 July 2024]

There's probably no actor alive today more synonymous with the western than Costner, the man has a remarkable record when it comes to creating successful western movies. He's also one of those few actors who is always watchable and has rarely put a foot wrong over his 40 year catalogue of work.

That said, Horizon simply sucks: I gave up after an hour.

There are some pretty images, but it's an utterly incoherent mess. After an hour I still had no idea who's journey I'm following or why I should care about any of them.

The editing is atrocious, cutting from one thing to the next with no connective tissue to hold things together - stuff just happens. Badly.

The cinematography is all over the place. There's a few nicely framed views interspersed between badly lit budget TV get it done b roll filler. Clumsy is being generous.

The dialogue is abysmal. The whole thing feels like someone threw every western cliche at an ChatGPT and just went with it. There's no emotional resonance, just beats without any sense of rhythm - a vacuous exercise is myth-building that lacks empathy or structure.

Ugh.

Mayor of Kingstown (2021– )

Frustrating & Repetitive

[2/10 · 9 July 2024]

Loved the first season of this because it had set the groundwork for a lot of characters and had some real depth. The second season was more of the same, but smaller in scope, with very little real development other than one or two characters.

I just can't get into the third season at all. It's like the die has been cast and everyone just does stuff to make other stuff happen. Character has been replaced by the sheer relentlessness of plot - which is exactly what happened with Yellowstone. Both shows, more so Yellowstone, become increasingly formulaic as they go on. Well shot and well acted, certainly, but it all just feels like a process designed to get from one episodic obstacle to the next.

In Yellowstone you have supposedly smart rich people doing one dumb thing after another because everyone is reactive and unable to think things through, or even talk to each other before they do some stupid sith.

MOK has the same problem, everyone is reactive to the moment and impatient to find a solution - nearly every problem centers on immediacy, which is tiring and tiresome.

No wonder Dianne Wiest got out of it.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Subpar Madness & Fury

[4/10 · 1 July 2024]

The story is fine, good if overlong, but everything else is off.

One of the very best things about Fury Road was the cinematography: it was breathtaking, memorable, and knocked the socks off everyone who saw it. Unfortunately Tom Holkenborg isn't John Seale, and it shows in terms of composition and visual flair. Furiosa is an insipid copy of Fury Road in terms of 'movie moments' - it's competent, at best, but that puts it on the back foot from the get-go.

It's overlong. It's about an hour until grown up Furiosa (ATJ) shows up, and even when she does appear the film never fully commits to her as the lead. If the first third is about her as a child (a 5 minute flashback would have been enough), the second act of the film is Furiosa as sidekick to Tom Burke's 'Praetorian Jack', and Jack lacks any real charisma or screen presence. Burke simply doesn't command the screen in the same threatening way as Gibson or Hardy, he's just a guy who drives the truck. So: meh.

The final third of the movie is the face-off with Helmsworth's 'Dementus', who has been in the film from the start and has had more screen time and dialogue than ATJ. There's just too much of him, and he's not the best actor in the world; if you need pretty with muscles and squinty eyes, he's the go-to guy - but he's not in the least bit dangerous. And that's fine, no one who goes to see Chris Helmsworth in a movie expects much depth.

Anya Taylor Joy, on the other hand, is a terrific and versatile actor who is just horribly miscast here.

Lastly, there is just too much cgi and not very much of it is good. If Fury Road felt like a kick in the head, Furiosa hits like and overstuffed pillow. This world isn't gritty and hard, it's cgi smooth and soft looking: a B movie rip of an A movie classic.

It's all a bit of a bodge.

Hit Man (2023)

Duh Dull

[1/10 · 10 June 2024]

Like most people I'd read all the positive reviews and was looking forward to a whipsnappy good old fashioned bubbly rom-com.

I don't remember seeing Glenn Powell in anything other than a bit part in Maverick, and being charming in Anyone But You, which was likeable and fun, while Adria Arjona was good in Irma Vep and Andor. Not huge stars by any means, but enough there to make the good reviews seem believable, especially when coupled with Linklater's name: what's not to like.

A lot, as it turns out. I bugged out after struggling to feel engaged after 30 minutes of plodding set up...for a rom com!!

To be clear, there's not a single frame of Rom in the first 30 minutes, and the com is laboured and repetitive - how many scenes do we need of a guy wearing lame disguises to fool dumb patsies in order to get the premise? A lot, apparently.

Netflix is making a bad name for itself in making these half-cooked filler films, chucking money and names at material that needs at least one rewrite before seeing the light of day.

Why do the majority of Netflix films feel like they've been shot on a tight budget to a strict deadline using first take cuts directed remotely by someone on a beach who's watching proceedings on a smartphone while stoned.

I understand major film companies bury bad films for tax reasons, but Netflix's approach seems to be to produce and release more of them.

More awfulness.

Duh-Dull!

The Fall Guy (2024)

A Car Crash Of Witless Banter

[1/10 · 6 May 2024]

The last time I walked out of a film was in the 1990s (Highlander 3: The Final Dimension) and 20 minutes into The Fall Guy I was feeling all those vibes again - and i've seen plenty of questionable dreck in the intervening 30 or so years.

This is a huge disappointment as I'm a fan of both leads and the idea of them in an action rom-com sounded appealing. But boy, what a misfire. I haven't seen anything this badly put together and clunky in forever, so here's what's wrong

The dialogue is awful. It feels like two people who aren't naturally gifted at ad-libbing have been asked to ad-lib. It's about as inane and facile as you might fear, and it just keeps going ... on and on and on. This film is already long for a rom-com, and it really feels every minute of it because the dialogue is utter torture. Both Gosling and Blunt seem oddly unemotional and disconnected from everything, as if they can't wait for the whole thing to be over, which brings me to..

The chemistry between Blunt and Gosling is non-existent. It's almost as if they detest each other - the best scene between them is when they're talking on the phone - and when they're together I can barely remember them wanting to be near each other. Nada. Nothing.

The stunts. I love stunts - I grew up watching Steve McQueen hop barbed wire on a motor bike and scoot around San Fran in a Mustang, the French Connection car chase, James Bond barrel rolling a car over a river, Burt Reynolds romancing Sally Field with a Trans Am - and always thought there should be an Oscar for them (there still should). But there's no stunt here that hasn't been photographed better in other films, which brings me to...

The direction. Leitch may be a terrific stunt guy, but as a director he sucks the life out of scene to the point where there's a ho hum quality to the whole thing. But those rolls, you say - so what? There's no sense of threat or thrill, and again. Any one of the numerous car flips in Fury Road easily surpasses this particular stunt in terms of visual flair. The pace is leaden throughout, it trudges through pages and pages and pages of stiff exposition and mind-numbingly witless banter, interspersed with fight scenes that feel rote and an overall sense that the director didn't know what kind of film he wanted to make.

5 of us, of varying ages from 20s-60s, went to see it and while I was the harshest critic of it, the most any of us gave it was a generous 5.

There's a much better film about stuntmen called The Stunt Man, an 80s flick with Peter O'Toole, or even Hooper with Burt Reynolds.

But yeah, there definitely should be Oscars for Stunt people because they invariably make some of the strongest and long-lasting moments that films have to offer. Just not in this case.

Lastly. Our iMax screening was preceded by the longest trailer I've ever witnessed for a film: Furiosa. If you've ever thought you've seen a trailer that gave too much away about a film, you ain't seen nothing yet. I've never seen a trailer than came in parts, literally with intertitle parts and names (all that was missing was an intermission). Overall feeling, besides the sense that I've just seen the entire movie, is that this looks like a massive dud and there's a desperate air of being battered over the head with shiny visuals demanding I go see it. That and ATJ, an otherwise fab actor, looks horribly miscast. Nope.

Road House (2024)

Nortoriously Awful Acting

[4/10 · 4 April 2024]

It says a lot about a movie when the main star has more presence off screen than than another big character has when they are on.

It doesn't happen often, but here - and this may be the single greatest example in the history of film-making - absolutely everyone who has a speaking part is significantly more charismatic and believable in their roles even when they are off screen than McGregor is when he is on it.

There's no doubt McGregor is a tough nut in real life, but on screen as a thug he's utterly laughable, a high pitched squeal spaffed up to a bulging steroidal uber-swagger of shiny porcelain toothed rage. Imagine Darth Vader with the voice of Daffy Duck and you would find yourself nearing the outer periphery of just how bad McGregor is in this role.

Thankfully, it's still almost possible to enjoy the whole-hearted B-movieness of Road House. Gyllenhall doesn't have to do much because he can play the beat-em-up feckless charmer with his eyes closed, always watchable. Billy Magnussen is a hoot; I'm guessing that when he saw what McGregor was bringing, he decided to ramp the ham all the way up to 11 knowing it would seem restrained in comparison.

Everyone else does the necessary and gets out of it with their bits intact, which is a credit to Liman.

In the 70s this would have been passable summer fare silliness at the cinema, which probably explains why it's available direct to Prime in April.

3 Body Problem (2024– )

YA Science & Catwalk Casting

[4/10 · 25 March 2024]

I was looking forward to this, something that promised to be an interesting take on hard-science what iffery. Not having read the books, I don't have any axe to grind with how good or not the adaption is - I just want to be entertained with compelling characters, interesting ideas, and just maybe a Netflix show that delivers on its promise.

What we have here is a failure to communicate anything of substance. Catwalk pretty scientists allude to wikisearch results with all the depth of a Mr Men episode - simply referencing the existence of hard science does not make it that kind of show. Good looking young people ramp their expositional acting all the way up to 3 by way of first-take it'll-do directing. It really does not help with the dialogue has everyone talk with the same voice; there is no nuance between any of the characters, except Liam Cunningham who drops the C bomb every so often because he's Irish and that worked well for him in GoT.

Anyway: somewhere out there, there are God like beings far more advanced than we can imagine. They are coming. They may get here sooner than Jesus, they may not. Hopefully both arrive at the same time and there's a proper religion V science kick-off. Neither can come soon enough if this show is any barometer of the smarts humanity allegedly possesses.

Rich people want to be best positioned to take advantage, and will do whatever it takes to make that happen while creating more plot-holes per minute than any other show in living memory.

The special effects are Dr Whovian, circa 2005.

That's pretty much it.

Enjoy.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024– )

Straight Talking Hitsters

[8/10 · 4 February 2024]

Finished this 8 episode series in two sittings, which is a rarity for us; most episodes clock in around the 40 minute mark, so they're not tediously padded out.

Anyone expecting this to be a crash bang wallop adventuring romcom, like the original film, will likely be somewhat disappointed by this. This version of M&M Smith is heavy on the dialogue and exploring the relationship between Jane & John Smith as the assume their roles as married assassins. Initial curiosity about how they'll make things work, who does what domestically, and how far to take the marriage aspect of things eventually progresses towards a more evolved relationship and all that entails.

They're charming. How can they not be when Glover and Erskine play the relationship side of things with such ease. While their first mission seems simple enough, it quickly lets them know they're in a high risk profession. With a new mission each episode, it's not hard to binge a few episodes at a time; the missions seem to escalate in difficulty just as the arc of their relationship develops, their lives becoming more challenging as things progress.

Both of them are good company: he's chilled and not as sure of himself as he lets on, while she's dead-pan and more sociopath with a heart of gold leaf. The missions are varied if relatively straight-forward, with some nicely gauged cameos. Thankfully any shoot-outs are kept to a minimum - when they're extended they tend to resort to the good guys being tediously dull one shot wonders (when the plot needs them to be) while the bad guys are disposable and inept (when the plot needs them to be) ... can this be not a thing anymore, please, it's lazy and any semblence of something being mildly thrilling is reduced to the ho-humness of inevitablility. A fing awful trope.

Erskine and Glover carry the weight of the show lightly, the ups and downs of the relationship and it meets personal and professional obstacles is neatly judged. The locations make it stand out from those generic mission based shows that always seem to use a few stock establishing shots before resorting to generic studio interiors.

Mr & Mrs Smith are jolly good company. Looking forward to seeing what kind of approach the writers might take going forward given the final scenes.

Griselda (2024)

Just Say No

[1/10 · 1 February 2024]

I was really looking forward to this, hoping it would be on a par with Narcos in terms of gritty stories exploring how someone so violent comes to power.

Unfortunately, due to the tepid direction and bland depictions of complex characters everything kind of trudges along without any originality. It's one of those shows that looks exactly like someone showed the director some photos from 1980s music videos and discotheques and they just saw the vibrant colors, but never got the memo about how seedy and dark it all actually was. The look of Griselda is superficial, utterly fake, and completely falls flat in terms of energy and impact.

That said, the only thing more fake and flat is Sofia Vergara's appalling make up. I'm not sure what they were after, but if hiding her natural charisma behind a wall of matte prosthetic rubber-faced weirdness resembling nothing more than a botched botox job followed by a drunken make-over was the aim then they nailed it. There's simply far too much, applied far to awkwardly to be in any way realistic, and all that remains is the distraction of WTF have they done.

I'm not saying that the make-up alone is what keep from from being pulled into the story, but it certainly didn't help. Stuff happened, but I just couldn't enough to follow through.

Fargo (2014–2024)

S5: Second Best Fargo

[10/10 · 28 January 2024]

1. Fargo (movie) 2. Fargo S2 3. Fargo S5 4. Fargo S1 5. Fargo S3 6. Fargo S4

Season 5 is a welcome return to form after Seasons 3 & 4, both of them decent, with fab production values as usual, but just didn't have the Fargo vibe.

Juno Temple is terrific, and the episode with the long scene of her in the back of a car with all her emotions playing out across her face is awesome.

Jon Hamm is better than I've seen him in anything recently. He does cruel very well. Jennifer Jason Leigh is fabulous, more of her, in anything please.

Joe Keery leaves his Stranger Things persona at the door and is so good at being the required Fargo inept try-hard idiot.

Can't wait for the next season.

Sexy Beast (2024– )

Pure Tosh

[1/10 · 27 January 2024]

'eavans above. An absolute twavesty is what it is. Laiwy geezers giving it all that wiv their posh-boy wannabe wide-boy jibber jabber. Tamsin tryin being 'ard as nails wiv her Pat Butcher hair and Sid James cigarette. It's all gone very Pete Tong.

Ray Winstone would eat this lot wiv his corn-flakes, and Ben Kingsley would (*) 'em out before lunch.

It's got all those ingredients from the original, a 20+ year old cult classic, being given to people who've heard of the original but not seen it. Then imagine the Great British Bake Off, but for TV production, with Guy Ritchie and Vinnie Jones as the judges.

Tasty.

Unlike this dog's upchucked dinner.

Poor Things (2023)

Darkly Comic Frankenbarbie

[9/10 · 14 January 2024]

Differing from Alasdair Gray's 1990s novel of the same name in that the book told Bella's fantastical story from her husband's point of view, and also a rebuttal of it from Bella's.

The film chronicles Bella's life as a resurrected young woman who must learn how to be - from walking to talking to building relationships, all at an accelerated rate of discovery.

It's a film that's bound to be divisive, not just because the scope of Yorgos Lanthimos' particularly peculiar eye is darkly comic tonally, but his eye for visuals and ear for how dialogue is delivered is invariably 'off' in ways that can be discordant. At the end of our viewing we heard a young couple in the cinema argue about it: him - I'm not ever going to see a film with you again without watching the trailer first!

As if that would help! Yorgos Lanthimos' films are all on brand, so it's not very likely that anyone who doesn't like one will find the others any more accessible. He doesn't do the easy thing.

Neither does Emma Stone. After playing disappointingly vacuous in The Curse, here she puts herself wholly into an unabashed portrayal of a fully grown newborn woman embarking on a voyage (in every sense) of self-discovery. Bella is wonderful and engaging and absolutely delightful, an uplifting force that rises far above what all the grounded and desolate men about her would rather her be.

The fools.

The Curse (2023– )

Try Hard Banality

[2/10 · 8 January 2024]

Up until The Curse I had thought I could watch Emma Stone in anything, apparently not.

After two and a half episodes I gave up. Whitney (Stone) and Asher (Fielder) have zero chemistry, zero likeability, and zero self-awareness. I get that the humour is about that lack of self-awareness, but here it's played with such earnestness that there's no room for anything else. There's no sense that these are real people with real lives outside of being script perfect performative: they are earnest; always on note; all of the time. They are entitled and exhaustingly uninteresting try-hards, which the other avatars of everyday mediocrity acknowledge and somehow put up with for their own meritless advantage. Dougie (Safdie), hamming it up to a minimum of 11, outright despises Asher but is happy to use him as a patsy plaything while trying to manipulate Whitney.

Unfortunately, as a viewer, there's nothing to gain from being in their company. They are all petty and small-minded, all skin-deep shallow, pretentious blank facades masking humour-adjacent witless voids.

Ugh.

Reacher (2022– )

Season 2 Falls Off A Cliff

[2/10 · 5 January 2024]

Really enjoyed season one, (8/10) properly old school loner-on-a-mission to fix the world one bad guy at a time. Nice wry sense of humour and good back up from secondary characters that were interesting and well-rounded.

Second season? Dear God, what the absolute effity. Fights are woeful, worse than last season A-Team grab the pay-cheque awful. Bad guys are laughably incompetent. Secure facilities can be ram-raided without hinderence, consequence or, as best i can tell, even a scratch to the paintwork. If the best they can come up with for a catchphrase is 'Just Reacher' they're not even trying. Throw in a ham-fisted will they won't they love interest that no one gives a heck about and meh.

Life's too short to abide tosh like this.

Maestro (I) (2023)

Pretty, But Utterly Shallow

[6/10 · 1 January 2024]

A series of Kodak moments played out to look as good as possible while saying nothing of consequence. Not so much a movie as a series of postures and poses designed to work with light and composition, as if the whole point was to create a book of still images that provide a glossy and shallow overview of a notable life.

There's no sense of what compels Bernstein to do anything, he merely floats effortlessly between moments being rather too pleased with himself. The dialogue wants to be snappy in that heightened overlapping way of golden era Hollywood black and white movies, but it's far to vacuous and slight to be more than hot air puffery.

I couldn't care less about the fuss over Cooper's prosthetic nose, people are so eager to find offence in anything these days that it won't be long before actors are only allowed to play themselves. I'm more offended that this portrayal of Bernstein is so one note and blandly inoffensive. Mulligan can usually lift any movie she's in, but here she is far too simpering for far too long to create any heft to this biographical fluff.