Hit Man. A jaded assassin finds himself on the run from his employers for refusing to kill/cocking up his latest hit/being too old etc... Fooled you! It's none of those, because it's directed by Richard Linklater, who doesn't do that. Despite me not being a fan of his generally (not because I don't like his films, but because they generally just don't appeal so I don't watch them) I gave this a look after some reliable feedback.

A teacher doing part time geek work for his local precinct finds himself, at short notice, employed as a fake hit man to entrap potential murder perps. So there's no actual hitting in it. He warms to the job, tailoring his assassin personas to the subject, resulting in a funny sequence of accents and disguises that'll probably help turn Glen Powell into a big star, and not just capable support in hits like Top Gun Maverick. And it's a rom-com, as is obvious when She (Adria Arjona) turns up wanting her husband killed and falls, as you do, for the 'hit man'. The rules of rom-com must be followed, however, so the path to (possible) true love is rocky, but the attractive leads have chemistry, with Powell oozing easy charm. And the story doesn't forget it's also a cop thriller so it's meatier than most. And crucially, it's good fun. Recommended, especially if you're already on Netflix, chose Under Paris to watch, and are still regretting your choice.

Furiosa - A 'Mad Max Saga'. I set the bar low for this one as I had to grow into Fury Road due to badly miscast and awful Tom Hardy. This is really just more of the same but without a Mad Max.

It's an origin story for the Charlize Theron character, of course, because everyone was gagging for one. Anya Taylor-Joy appears a third of the way in, and doesn't have an awful lot to do since she has about ten lines of dialogue and spends a lot of time scowling in a truck next to a Mel Gibson 80s Max lookalike. The requisite vehicle-mashing action scenes are there, but the problem (and the main reason my bar was low) is that too much of it is digital. Fury Road was a string of action scenes filmed with actors and vehicles; not free of cgi, but that was used to enhance rather than replace. Many shots in this are entirely, glaringly cgi, and it's not always top-notch. Greenscreening abounds, and it's often apparent that the actors ostensibly riding round a desert are doing so in a studio. To my eyes the whole thing just had an artificial sheen that was a massive distraction. And ironically this was never more obvious than when the end credits rolled (not a spoiler). Those credits contain several scenes from Fury Road, and it's made immediately obvious that the former film was not cgi'd and greenscreened, but the one you've just watched is. If you don't mind overused digital trickery, then knock yourself out, you'll probably take more away from this than I did. It's not without entertainment value, but the cgi will probably prevent me from watching it again.

A word about the baddies. The repulsive Immortan Joe from Fury Road is present throughout, but is underused. This is because they want the big baddy to be the Chris Hemsworth character, and while he's surprisingly not completely crap in the role, he's not that good either. His comfort zone can be summed up in one 4-letter word that begins with T and ends in R. Yes, he's Thor with a false nose, and just doesn't have the gravitas to pull off the big baddy role.

Trigger Warning - Netflix. Hmmm, let's just say I watched this so you don't have to. It was so generic that I don't remember a lot about it, just that there was supposedly a scene in it where where some special forces soldiers are using an ambulance/ aid vehicle to sneak into an enemy base to kill the generic baddies and this is "triggering" people on the internet. Apparently nothing is made of them using this vehicle to trick the enemy so it's a double standard. It's actually the first scene, and all we see is special forces in said vehicle being chased by generic baddies in trucks, seemingly trying to steal the content. It looks to me that they were using the truck to draw out the generic baddies coz they'd been attacking relief trucks. The Mrs said at the end she wouldn't let me pick a film again. So yeah. Skip it.

Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F. Exactly what I was expecting, and also not. Follows the same blueprint as the first: opening smash-it-up action sequence, bollocking from boss, excuse to go to Beverly Hills, Axel gets there and smirks at the sidewalk freakshow, and so on. When you're reviving a 40-year old hit you don't mess with the formula, and if it works for Tom Cruise...

There's not a thing remarkable about it. In most respects it's a bog-standard buddy-cop action comedy with a fairly trite plot involving the hunt for a memory card with Murphy having to flush out a corrupt cop while patching things up with his estranged daughter, and there's never any doubt as to how things will turn out. Original cast members return and while there's mostly a refreshing lack of 'we're too old for this shit' filler dialogue, they are clearly too old for that shit. The crucial exception is Murphy who gets away with it easily; I couldn't spot any ghastly de-aging so either there have been massive leaps in that department (which I doubt) or Murphy is just in great shape. For a Netflix production it doesn't have that direct-to-streaming sheen that most of them do - that used to be called 'made for tv or video' - and while cgi has been used to enhance action, enough of it seems to be satisfyingly practical. Not great, but not bad, and would have made a better direct sequel than parts 2 and 3. Expect a part 5!

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. It's been an erratic 50+ years for this franchise which, of course, wasn't a 'franchise' decades ago, it was just a big hit with four increasingly ropey sequels, then a short-lived tv spinoff; all with men and women in ape costumes. Then the appalling Burton/Wahlberg reboot introduced cgi and managed to make Helena Bonham-Carter more attractive as a chimp than she looked in real life. The recent trilogy was pretty good on the whole, if predictably too reliant on little computer animals and being hampered by James Franco in one of them.

This reboot-continued is at times so completely (admittedly good) cgi that if it weren't for the odd real human on screen it could probably qualify for animation categories at the award ceremonies it won't win anything at. This is set 'many generations' after the events of the last Andy Serkis one. Exactly how long is kept secret, but it's long enough for machines to all be rusted heaps and for most humans to cluster in groups of semi-naked feral grunters - but not so long that the female lead couldn't find perfectly figure-hugging outfits and a nearby hairdresser when needed. From the director of the uninspiring Maze Runner films and the writer of... not a lot of good stuff according to wiki... this is a reminder of why so many spectacles fail these days. The script and characters are boring, the action is nothing you haven't seen before, and... okay, full disclosure, I gave up halfway through. I honestly could not see a reason to continue, it was that dull.

That orang-utan on the poster deserves a special mention/punch in the throat. Going in blind I didn't know the cast and so was distracted by having to guess the actors under the cgi. He's a very prominent character once he enters, and it turns out he's an African-American actor not known to me. But he sounds like Laurence Fishburne, stoned at a party, attempting to amuse a bunch of teenage orangs with a dismal Yoda impression. Every line of his dialogue is read as if it's of world-shaking importance, except he's doing a Biden and forgetting what comes next... so that

every...

line of his...

dialogue...

comes...

out like...

this.

Every single...              one.

If he doesn't get the Golden Raspberry next year I'll buy an edible hat.

That's a big shame ... was looking forward to more ape action.

It's gone down rather well, I think, from viewers who watched the whole thing, so I'm probably in a minority. In fact according to Kermode the point it starts to work is roughly the point I quit. By then I didn't care, but... monkeys for courses...

Young Woman and the Sea. A 'based on a true story', Disneyfied version of a young woman having a go at swimming the channel. If I wanted to sound charitable I'd call it a rousing true story that proves they can still make 'em like they used to; if uncharitable, a painfully by-the-numbers biopic that takes no risks and present the viewer with nothing they haven't already seen in the last ten biopics they watched.

As it is I'm somewhere in the middle. The cast is fine, it's more than competently put together, and isn't swamped by bad cgi. Much of the aquatic action, that makes up roughly the second half, looks refreshingly practical. It just takes predictability to new levels, and I'm not just talking about whether she makes it across; whenever a new plot beat is brought in, you know exactly how it's going to turn out. So if you're in the mood for an old-fashioned, partially-true true story, you could do worse... but even though it's better than the pedestrian drivel that's been seeping from the House of Mouse's waste outlet for the last couple of years, it ain't no masterpiece.

A word about the score, because it's the wrongest thing about it. I wanted it to stop long before the end. Think of the worthiest, dreariest, most manipulatively 'rousing' score you can - you know, the one that wells up with metronomic precision at the exact moment an emotional reaction is required from you. Now stretch it out for more than two hours.

Posted by: @wowbagger

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

I was looking forward to the movie but it wasn't as good as one might think. it was a disappointment but watchable. once you forget about looking at the actors and try to enjoy helps but overall its just another hyped film

Rebel Ridge (Netflix). I watched the trailer first (I usually don't) and it looked like another take on First Blood - ex-forces guy comes to town and is mistreated by police, who think he's an easy mark, and so on. I wasn't mad about it, given that direct-to-streaming action thrillers generally have a sheen about them that makes them all feel the same, and forgettable as soon as the credits roll. But this is from the director of Blue Ruin and Green Room, two films of ten or so years ago that if you haven't seen you should, so in I went...

Well, it isn't a rework of First Blood, though it would have looked like that if there'd been more action in it. What it is, is a very effective, suspenseful slow-burner that makes you wait for the action, that pops up in short bursts and just isn't the same old 'tons of shit blowing up' conveyor belt product. Lead Aaron Pierre is a Brit, entirely convincing as American, whose career will get a big boost from this. Don Johnson proves once again he can make a very serviceable bad guy; and the female lead (Annasophia Robb) isn't there for love interest. I admit to being occasionally confused by the machinations of the plot, due partially to mumbly dialogue recording. And it's too long; at around 130 mins it could comfortably lose a few. But it's a gripper and one that I'll definitely be watching again. 👍