Hustlers

A fairly enjoyable film that was boosted by a fantastic - and fantastic-looking too! - Jennifer Lopez in possibly her best role in years! Unfortunately, the rest of the film failed to live up to the heights of J Lo. Constance Wu, in the lead role, was unengaging and uncharismatic, and placing her next to J Lo really highlighted the difference in ability and screen chemistry.

Similarly, although the film, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, went beyond the typical debauchery and skankiness usually associated with stripper-flicks, whenever Scafaria dipped into more serious territory of capitalism, sisterhood, motherhood, survival and friendship the pacing faltered and the air just went out of the film. Until J Lo reignites the screen.

There could have been a better film within this if they had focused on the central relationship between Wu's and Lopez's character instead of the hustling. The flashback narrative structure served to only highlight the boringness and predictability of the central story, whereas the one thing that the audience are keen to find out more, namely the above-said relationship, got teased out to a rather unsatisfactory conclusion.

Scafaria seemed more interested in telling the story of the hustle rather than furthering the depths of these potentially complicated characters, but yet the hustle itself seemed as rote as that of a bloated Lifetime movie.

There was humour in the film too, and it was scattered around. I guess that could have been more due to the contribution by Will Farrell and Adam McKay rather than Scafaria, because oddly enough, on hindsight, one cannot really remember the specifics of the comedy.

Wu's character, the audience surrogate, was written very well - on paper - but its translation onto the big screen by Wu was a bore. Her costuming and look itself did her no favour, and obviously the costumer focused more on J Lo than recreating an authentic Asian look. I honestly doubt and Asian stripper would looked and dressed like Wu in 2007. She looked like she was stuck in the 70s or 80s instead. Added to that, the fact that Wu was just very uninteresting and did not play her character as someone worth rooting for.

Actually, there were no one character that was worth rooting for. Maybe except Doug. Poor Doug.

Scafaria had created for Wu a central lead character that had a great back story with so much potential emotional depth, but in the end, they only gave us someone who was essentially going through the motions without a sense of authenticity or lived-in-ness.

Having said that, Wu did deliver towards the end, but it was too little too late. What a shame.

Thankfully, we had J Lo. Man, we all should look like her at age 50.  And boy, the chatter is real, J Lo has a chance - albeit likely a long shot depending on how else the year goes - of some award recognition. A Golden Globe nomination for sure, but Oscar...we will see. She was electrifying, magnetic, charismatic and dosed out in just the right amount without being overbearing. She easily commanded the screen and out-classed and out-acted everybody. Then again, the latter was not hard, considering the rest of her cast mates were more well-known for their television screen roles and music career than acting per se. J Lo was the ferocious beating heart of this film and her screen entrance will be one for the books.

Another highlight of the film was the music. The songs featured were a homage to naughties and early teenies, and helped to move the narrative along despite the absence of a score.

J Lo should get back into serious film-making as we eagerly anticipate her 2019/20 awards campaign. Just as we anticipate Hollywood try to get a female-driven, female-led ensemble heist/hustler film done right. Steve McQueen's Widows was still the closest for now.

Weathering With You 天気の子

Makoto Shinkai's follow-up to 2016's phenom-hit Your Name continued the director's gorgeous visual and animation aesthetics, and blatant - but excellent - emotional manipulation with a killer piano score, as the story integrated Japan's hyper-modernity with its ancient shinto religion and manga-esque fantasy genre.

However, unlike Your Name, the film's central story (and romance) lacked emotional depth, thematic complexity and was narratively simple. Although the characters were very likable and very easy to root for, their relationship just felt too basic and thinly sketched, lacking the necessary emotional baggage to strengthen their emotional arc.

The resulting film ran just under 2 hours, but at times felt draggy. The prologue and epilogue were excellent bookends for the story, the former effectively setting up the intrigue and the latter closing the chapter.

The first act was fun and well-paced, getting to the premise and establishing characters efficiently, but the second act was unnecessarily complicated with multiple subplots existing for comedic reliefs at the expense of deepening the central premise and mythos. The third act then ultimately felt rushed and hence the climatic weight felt lost.

Although the introduction of the main characters from Your Name into the storyline was a nice touch, and seemed to suggest Shinkai may be starting a whole new in-universe franchise.

Nonetheless, despite its flaws - which were just more obvious because of the looming spectre of Your Name - Weathering with You was an enjoyable film. It was stunning to look at with breathtaking landscapes and stunning rain-animations, and had a killer piano score and charismatic, likable characters.

It Chapter Two

This was one of the funniest film of the year, and I am sure that was not what director Andy Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman were aiming for. But unfortunately, that was the outcome.

It was genuinely funny due to Bill Hader (go watch Barry!) who was the only standout actor; he and James Ransone were a great comedic duo and they deserve a buddy-comedy film after this. But besides the real, good laughs from them, the rest of the film was filled with ridiculousness and over-the-top, exaggerated "scares" that deflated any sense of dread, fear or trepidation that led up to it. The over reliance on (bad) CGIs and blatantly telegraphed jump-scares (can it still be called jump-scares if the audience knows when to jump?) was pathetic for a horror film.

Most tellingly, you know you are in trouble when a horror film's more horrific moments are a gay-bashing in the cold open and domestic violence sequence in the opening minutes of character-introductions. Nothing after that in the bloated, over-wrought, 169 minutes ever came close to those cringing, eyes-shutting moments. And I honestly doubt that Muschietti and Dauberman had the smarts to have the wherewithal to establish a subtext that nothing in the world is scarier and worse than humanity/humans/men.

Not that there were not anything good about this film. For one, it was more faithful to the source material than the 1990 two-part miniseries; secondly, it did - effectively - foreshadowed the final form of It throughout the film such that when It becomes that it was not such a sucker-punch like in the miniseries.

As for the characters, the bonds of the adult members of The Loser Club was better demonstrated and genuine in the TV series than in this film. One of the best things about It Chapter One was the bond between the characters, but here it was lacking. They were obviously split into groups with Hader and Ransone as the comedic pair, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy and Jay Ryan as the inevitable love-triangle, and Isaiah Mustafa as the always-alone Mike.

Chastain and McAvoy were just there with minimal acting required on their parts (just like in X-Men: Dark Phoenix) and Aussie Ryan's introduction to an international audience was more through his abs than his acting capabilities per se.  Also, there was nary any chemistry between all three of them to make any relationship worth rooting for.

Lastly, nobody can replace Tim Curry's Pennywise as the ultimate personification of fear and nightmares. Bill Skarsgard crafted his own unique Pennywise but it was so visually distinctively evil and crazy that its scariness was more dependent on Skarsgard's body language and all the CGI layered over him. You cannot really be scared of something that looked so blatantly evil and mad. Go watch Skarsgard in Castle Rock  instead.

Curry, on the other hand, was just an innocuous clown with dead eyes and a crazy grin standing there waving to you...until he struck and - BAM! - coulrophobia for life!

In the end, despite the faults of the miniseries, inevitably at the conclusion it was a much stronger presentation of It than this two-part film franchise. It was scarier, more haunting and more honest.

And Tim Curry is what nightmares are made of.

Ma

Octavia Spencer does crazy creepy very well and very unnervingly, but unfortunately her performance was the only thing good about this not-even B-grade (C-grade?) horror camp-edy although I am sure it was marketed as more of a psychological thriller. It had laugh out loud moments but more due to the unintentional hilarity of bad script and bad acting, rather than genuine comedy. Its premise had so much potential but it was squandered away on a pedestrian, generic, utterly predictable plot. In spirit, it had similarities to 2016's Don't Breathe, but whereas that film subverted expectations, Ma's director Tate Taylor and writer Scotty Landes lacked the courage to even dip their toes in that pool.

As aforesaid, Spencer was great. She really owned the film and the screen, but as an executive producer, she should really have pushed for her character to go beyond. We have faith in her to do that and at least then the film might have been more interesting.

Diana Silvers led the cast of teenagers and she was mildly interesting, but was much better and interesting in Booksmart. 

As for the rest of the teenage cast, there were moment whereby it seemed that the film might subvert the generic roles as expected, i.e. the jock, the bitch, the cute/nice boy and the joker, but alas, Ma ain't no The Cabin in the Woods and Taylor/Landes did not have the balls to do that.

The adult cast, other than Spencer, were generally adequate. Yes, even Allison Janney. Juliette Lewis did her best but has yet to recapture the glory of her Cape Fear days; Luke Evans, getting ubiquitous these days but may need to be more selective in his roles, was uninteresting; at least Missi Pyle just camped it up unabashedly.

Like I said, this film had so much potential. A Josh Whedon/Drew Goddard version of this might have been great, but sadly we only have Spencer's creep-tastic performance to reminiscence on.

Booksmart

A fun and funny, familiar yet fresh, raunchy but not rude, end-of-high-school buddy comedy that was well-paced and competently directed by first-time director Olivia Wilde albeit a tad over-tropey and predictable. 

Nonetheless, the excellent and natural chemistry of the two leads, Beanie Feldstein (who almost stole the show from Saoirse Ronan as the best friend in “Lady Bird”) and Kaitlyn Dever (an electric mix of a young Juno-esque Ellen Page and an Amy Pond-era Karen Gillan), drove the story and helped immensely to accelerate through the dull bits especially in the weaker second act. 

The film started strong but once the narrative got going, Wilde and her team of all-female writers seemed to have gotten lost in executing and obviously subverting the patriarchal tropism of the genre, which then, ironically, made those moments became less smart and just a bit more annoyingly preachy. 

Luckily, they all managed to craft a deserving final act; through the 105 minutes there were some chuckles but the genuinely good laughs came at the end which really helped to salvage the film. 

As a director, Wilde has potential. Just based on this film, she may be more suited to television storytelling than movie. She can tell a good story but seemed to lack originality and a personal vision. 

“Booksmart” was a fun, feel-good film that will likely find a bigger audience on streaming than in cinemas, although its actresses Feldstein and Dever are due for their breakouts.

Toy Story 4

Even Pixar could not escape sequel/franchise fatigue, and although “Toy Story 4” was lots of fun - it had the usual laughs, action, heart and moral - but beneath all that beautiful, slightly unoriginal, storytelling laid a sense of fatigue and impatience especially for those of us who had been following the adventures of Woody, Buzz and gang for the past 24 (!) years. 

We are all now older but it seemed that the story never really grew any more older after that fitting end in “Toy Story 3” 9 years ago. This felt more like an attempt to relaunch the franchise for a new generation rather than a continuation for the original Andys (and Mollys). 

Nonetheless, this was a fun and absorbing film, maybe a little less heartbreaking/heartwarming, a little less exciting and a less laugh out loud, but like the previous three entries, it introduced new characters to the universe without ever feeling overcrowded, although the adventures of Rex and Ham were missed. But Tony Hale’s Forky was a delight, Christina Hendricks’ Gabby Gabby was sympathetically scary and Keanu Reeves’ was very Keanu -esque. Annie Potts’ Bo Peep has been missed and gotten a whole new image fittingly in-line with Disney’s new girl power princess movement. Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key’s wisecracking Bunny and Duckie were thankfully restrained to a minimum, although they did get a great mid-credits scene. 

And stay till the very, very end for a little funny Easter egg.

Yesterday

Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis did a Magical Realism rom-com and result was a shiny, glossy, well-produced, excruciatingly Boyle-esque film that was shallow and empty with a pair of incompatible and boringly flat lead characters.

It coasted on the infectious nostalgia of The Beatles and with Kate McKinnon as the only other saving grace. And really, why Ed Sheeran?! Nothing against him or his songs (love them!) but he ain’t really an actor and to be featured in such a prominent role, it just felt extremely distracting. 

Although nothing was more distracting then the absolute lack of chemistry between Lily James and Himesh Patel. It was so hard to buy into their love story when we can barely believe that they are friends, much less lovers. James, we know, has talent but it barely shone here; and this was not a great introduction for Patel. 

This film had a great concept but the whole story seemed to only exist for one quintessentially Curtis piece of dialogue, but sadly the words were great but not the situation nor the delivery. 

For a better use of The Beatles’ catalogue, go watch Julie Taymor’s trippy “Across the Universe” which had a more believable central love story between Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess.