well, this is all pretty much what it says on the box. or, if you will, what it says in the title, look you see. i have of late watched 3 (three) films, and so have opted to add some comments here. no, actually, i have seen a few more than that, but all of these were gone done released this year (2025), so it in some way or other kind of makes sense (in a roundabout way) to clump them all together in one post.
sadly, or alas, it also makes a degree of sense to have the three (3) of them together as they were not too good. underwhelming when not plain disappointing is an apt review of each of them, really. which means yes, you probably could skip reading of what i have to say (write) on each, as the crux of it is right there for you. on the off chance you are wondering which three films have such a review, well, thanks to my deft skills on ms paint here's an image of the posters for them.
many thanks indeed to those of you still reading at least this bit after having observed my overview and, presumably, had a gander at the picture. for clarification, the three (3) films are Mickey 17, Death Of A Unicorn and Black Bag. the first 66% of which are ones i did wish to go to the cinema to see, but no more is it that i verk in that there London (innit) and there's no cinema near me what shows films such as this in walking distance. nearest closest would be a prohibitively expensive public transport route which would leave me with over a mile walk to get to it. should Warner, Paramount or what have you gift me a car then i guess i can resume going to the cinema to see their offerings, but for now the delights (or joys) of home video entertainment it is.
they, the films, are shown in the order what i gone done watched them, and that seems like a sensible enough way to write of them. so, then, i start with Mickey 17, which i was disappointed not to have seen at the cinema. from late last year (2024) to early this (2025) i saw the trailer for it on other films watched at the movies, and it looked amazing. at least the first trailer they released did; the second one for it had me thinking maybe it wasn't going to be that great.
alas, the second trailer was (it turns out) a warning that should have been heeded. never, ever have i experienced such a disproportionate dynamic of excellent trailer to truly sh!t film as was the case with Mickey 17. just rubbish. i came close to switching off the video with about half an hour or so to go, and found myself wondering (as i watched) if i wouldn't at all have walked out on it had i made it to the cinema to see it.
how or why is it so bad? i believe there was that mythical "studio interference" here, but it's likely they salvaged it. the film is quite close to being an incoherent mess, and the big problem is that it just doesn't know what sort of film it wants to be. no, actually, my thoughts on watching was that they, them what made it, simply didn't have the courage to stick with a genre, message, statement or sentiment. quite a jumbled up mixed bag in which nothing works.
at times Mickey 17 wants to be a black comedy, at times it wants to be some metaphorical thing on why people risk their lives to flee one place for another, at times it wants to be a (reasonably) straight emotional drama, sometimes it just wants to be a pastiche of various politicians and/or religious leaders. not one of these gets done with any success. you soon get bored of trying to work out which president, politician or evangelist Mark Ruffalo is trying to do a parody of. normally at the very worst usually you can count on Robert Pattinson at least being watchable, but here your heart goes out to him, for he seems all to aware what he signed up for is not what he's having to do. truly an insipid, monumental waste of time, resources and everything.
the idea of Death Of A Unicorn amused me greatly. quite the quirky premise it had, which is "what if a car hist an animal, but the animal turns out to be a mythical creature". again, for this is part of that 66% i mentioned, this was one what i saw the trailer for and was keen to see it at the cinema. glad, as it turns out, that i did not, for that premise was clearly the only idea they had. as in it seems the idea was people would be so taken with the concept that they would not care no story beyond the premise was given any sort of thought or attention.
even allowing for the suspension of disbelief one would apply when watching a film (particularly in this genre) it's just ridiculous. hey, let's have a car hit a unicorn. fine. but in some woods near a wealthy and dying head of a pharmaceutical company? and have it that the blood of the unicorn magically heals him? just a bit too contrived. to be fair they seem aware of this as they go along, electing to just cover it with a few scenes that (ahem) pay (a poor) homage to Aliens and Jurassic Shed.
oddly there's a redeeming feature to the film in two of the cast. the young lass in it, and the young lad, actually have decently written parts and are played well. for the main cast, however, not so much. it is so that Paul Rudd plays the exact same character he does in everything, that droopy, downbeat one that constantly looks like a puppy what has had its @r$e belted for some indiscretion. still, he is more tolerable in this than the other two proponents of it, the mildly bearable Chris Pratt and the totally, hopelessly f*****g awful Vince Vaughan. as for Richard E Grant, well, he's just embarrassingly bad, you want to cringe when he is on. things like Withnail & I and How To Get Ahead In Advertising feel a long way back. even Hudson Hawk.
leave all the curiosity you have about Death Of A Unicorn as unresolved. no good can come from watching the movie itself, surely you can find better ways of spending one hundred minutes.
my friend asked me to watch (it turns out) as the plot premise (or blurb) felt, to them, somewhat misleading. it very much is. the plot sounds quite class, with it involving a "spy catcher" possibly needing to catch his very own wife (also in the business), leading to a decision on which he loves more, her or his country. poster looks exciting, and everything suggested it would be a taunt, reasonably tense thriller. no, it is not this.
quite early on there's a dinner scene (pictured here somewhere) that goes on and on and f*****g on. you start to think, or fear, that the entire film will be just the characters having a conversation. with mercy it moves on, but not to too much better. at the great risk of spoilers, the film is hugely flawed as it frequently contradicts its own logic - at once we are expected to believe that some of the characters are gifted, intelligent and good at their job, yet we are also supposed to accept they would fall for a really obvious ploy or trap. it just doesn't work.
can't say i have seen all that many Michael Fassbender films, but here it seems like his brief was "do something a bit like a 60s Michael Caine, but more wooden" in Black Bag. there is indeed a school of thought that every acting job Michael Fassbender gets comes with the brief "act like X but wooden". poor Cate Blanchett here only seems to do things when someone remembers they hired her so they might as well get her to do a bit. admirably the rest of the cast do a superb job presenting accurately just how intolerable and full of themselves most Londoners are. quite an immediately forgettable film, and not one you should rush to see just to forget.
right, that's that. may it be so i see a decent film in the not too distant future, then.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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