Tag: review

Dub’s Take: Unsung Hero (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2.5 out of 5

“Unsung Hero” – the much-anticipated faith-based family drama inspired by the lives of, and produced by, the boys from “for KING + COUNTRY” – is a perfectly middle-of-the-road motion picture. There’s your one-sentence Kojima-style review right there.

Viewer mileage will largely depend on their opinion of FKAC: you’ve probably heard one-or-two of the Christian pop-duo’s crossover hits on Top-40 radio. My wife is a fan and we attended their 2023 Christmas concert, where half the intermission was taken up with promoting Unsung Hero. Their stamp is all over it: its namesake song off their 2022 album “What Are We Waiting For” is the film’s theme; Joel Smallbone steps into the shoes of his Job-like father; and the young actors playing Joel & Luke as children are in the background of scenes ten-times more than the other adolescents, even making sly jabs at their eventual rise to stardom, despite the film’s focus being the awakening of their older sister’s singing career (Rebecca St. James).

A perfect example of the movie’s internal struggle to balance corny cheese with heart-tugging worship can be found in its climax: Dad has one last chance to redeem his music management career, by presenting Rebecca to his rock-star neighbour Eddie Degarmo. While Kirrilee Berger’s singing as Rebecca is enduring, we keep cutting back to Degarmo’s reaction, and “General Hospital” ‘s Jonathan Jackson wears a stupid wig that cessates any sincerity the scene earns otherwise. I can’t think of any other way the filmmakers could have avoided this (Jackson’s acting is fine) other than not cutting to his reaction until the end.

Other bits of movie dissimulation include a trip to the playground that ends in a heavy-handed metaphor about moving on, and at least two of the seven siblings barely getting any screentime. But there’s at least one stand-out moment for Joel’s patriarch when he’s at his lowest, and I appreciated the script not skimping over the financial intervention of Lucas Black’s overly-generous co-congregant. The movie is presented professionally, but workmanlike. There isn’t anything stand-out about its plot or themes, nor anything so egregious it doesn’t deserve a recommendation if you’re into this sort of thing.

Unsung Hero’s faults are cancelled out by its positives & vice-versa, resulting in an average time at the movies. I can’t say I was disappointed, since it was exactly what it said it would be on its label.

Poster sourced from impawards.com.

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Dub’s Take: Jeanne du Barry (2023)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

3.5 out of 5

Let us all admire for a second how far French actress/director Maïwenn has come, from Scream Queen in 2003’s “Haute Tension” to her filmmaking status in the 2010s. Her “Jeanne du Barry” may only stymie Western audiences for her casting of the French-speaking Johnny Depp as her film’s primary male lead: the King of France, no less. Allow me then to proudly declare that the two-hour-plus subtitled film was such a successful love story, that my pale-as-a-ghost wife – who will avoid foreign films – was in tears by its end.

In my screening’s post-film behind-the-scenes interview, Depp is as restrained as to his reasons behind the “challenge” of playing the character as his Louis XV is in the film itself, only really iterating that Maïwenn was able to convince him otherwise. Taking the last four years of Depp’s highly-publicized fall into account, it’s easy to dismiss his performance here as sleepwalking for a much-needed paycheque – personally, I think Maïwenn’s casting wants audiences to draw parallels between the eminent nature of her actor’s public & private lives with that of Louis XV’s, who also forwent the luxury of discretion based on his status and what was expected behaviour of royalty. As a man willing to forgo etiquette for love, Depp is great here, in a role he makes believable despite it leaving little room for his usual ostentatiousness.

Of course, the film’s real success isn’t just in its fortunate stunt casting: Maïwenn displays herself an equally-capable dramatic actress as she is director, allowing her Jeanne’s love for Louis to help her carry the silent burdens of her position. The production design is sumptuous (love those powdered wigs). While Jeanne’s poor upbringing made me want for more juxtaposition between her life in the palace and the one she left behind, I understand it was probably jettisoned to focus elsewhere (once you mention the Revolution, we want to see it). I also think the film could have ended at the perfect point about 10 minutes earlier than it did.

As a romance and not a biography, Jeanne du Barry is at its best. It’s when the viewer begins to look broader than the borders of its script that we realize the shortness of its plot: nothing much happens, other than the slow unfolding of life, which ends when it ends. I suppose you could say that about most lives.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you a big Johnny Depp fan? (I’m really not.) Are you excited to see him in a “normal” performance for once, even if it is the first post-trial role he was able to get? Do you think Amber Heard will ever have a similar comeback? Did you all know that Kevin Spacey is starting to work again, too? Do you believe in second chances, or are these all just a bunch of spoiled libertines? Leave a comment below!

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Dub’s Take: Killer’s Kiss (1955)

A spoiler-free movie review.

2 out of 5

It’s a mistake to confuse pity with love.

Stanley Kubrick’s second narrative feature “Killer’s Kiss” is a remarkable step-up in quality from his first film “Fear and Desire”, but it still ain’t no Georgia peach.

We’re talking about movies that are closer now to their centennial anniversaries than ever before, and unless you’re a Film Major in post-sec, or doing research, or you’re an old soul & actually enjoy watching older movies (the minority), or a senior (the majority), as we move further and further into the foreseeable future, it’s less likely that ensuing generations will seek out a black & white film from the 1950s, out of a largely-chauvinistic & misogynistic body of work, even if it IS a Kubrick film. Why watch this when you could watch “Full Metal Jacket” again, and possibly catch something you missed the first dozen times around? Is there even a reason to watch Killer’s Kiss in the 2020s other than what I mentioned, or possibly to farm content for a humble blog? Hmm? Read on to find out!

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Dub’s Take: Fear and Desire (1952)

A spoiler-free movie review.

1.5 out of 5

If only Stanley Kubrick knew how, decades later, his acolytes would give credence to his debut feature, when he thought the negative itself should be burned. “Fear and Desire” is a trade photographer’s exercise in the world of narrative film, and of not much value otherwise, were it not for the retrospective knowledge of what its creator would go on to do (and to a different degree its cast, including “Harry & Tonto” director Paul Mazursky in a key role).

Fear and Desire has come back to consciousness with the discovery of the Venice Film Festival cut, longer by a mythical 10 minutes.

OOO! I’d be lying if I said those 10 minutes didn’t make me more interested to see the film than I was initially. Kubrick (particularly “A Clockwork Orange”) was my childhood gateway to “cinema”, but I’d never seen Fear and Desire before. As a result, I watched what I got, which is the widely-available 60-minute version.

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Dub’s Take: Godzilla x Kong (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

I think we’ve confidently reached the point where the “kaiju” in a Godzilla movie can easily hijack the film from its human cast. Never was I more malaise-stricken than during the live-action scenes in “Godzilla x Kong”, where capable actors who put in a good performance every time regardless of pay or cast heading (like Rebecca Hall or Brian Tyree Henry) couldn’t save their loquacious appearances from making-plain the techno-babble that rationalizes the film’s monsters & their “world”, in a language understood by us surface-dwellers.

Who cares? Aside from the parallels between the little deaf tribal girl “who holds the key” and all the non-verbal grunting going on between the titans, scenes with dialogue are quickly shoved under the bed when the Big Boys start stomping around.

These action scenes, with decent special-effects even five movies on, are antithetical to those in the recent “Dune 2”: fights have a beginning, middle, and end, without cutaways; they’re generally framed in-full so viewers can see the blows and their consequences; and they weren’t finely-minced in the editing room. The broad stokes of the production design also seem to have some thought put into it: there’s good squish when Godzilla heat-beams into another beast’s mouth; a bridge of bones over a river of lava; a “mini-Kong” that plays like Gollum to King Kong’s Frodo; and the gangly movements of an “evil-Kong” that recalls the uninhibitedness of Mark Hamill’s Joker from the nineties’ “Batman” animated series.

But it’s all still not very original, isn’t it? How many more of these “Monsterverse” movies (and by extension TV series’) are we going to get before audiences get sick of them, or their diminished budgets start to affect what we see on screen, or are remade again? And while the wider design is fun, the details could have used some work: in the climax, the Great Pyramids seem to get destroyed three times over and yet are still standing in the background by the end of the scene. Considering the work that looks like went to the rest of the picture, that’s a big oversight. Doesn’t change that I was entertained.

2.5 out of 5

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you a Legendary, or even a Toho, “Monsterverse” fan? Do you think all this talk of “Hollow Earth” dilutes these movies, or is it the most believable alternative to the titans being products of nuclear testing, or extra-terrestrials? Do we even “need” an explanation? And why do audiences seem so concerned with the number of civilian casualties in a superhero movie when even the friendly kaiju seem to take out thousands here (and yes, I know from the “Monarch” show that there’s an Amber Alert in place)? Leave a comment below!

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