Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

The second instalment of the Jumanji reboot turned out to be more enjoyable than I anticipated, and makes for a really nifty little family adventure movie during the winter holidays. Only weeks ago, I declared that the first chapter was 'giving me cancer' while my daughter watched on eagerly, and my main grievances were the waffer-theen stereotypes of characters that were defined by no more than two traits apiece, and the pacing of both narrative and comedy. I wasn't hyped to see this movie, and ended up having a lot more fun this time around.

So my first observation before watching was how and more importantly why the characters would play the game again. The setup had the advantage of the real-life characters being embodied by avatars that could remain consistent, so perhaps Jumanji would be found and unwittingly stumbled into by another group of kids. However, despite the same quartet landing in the jungles of Jumanji for a second time, the movie at least cares to give it some prompting: Spencer (Alex Wolff) has broken up with Martha (Morgan Turner) during their first year at separate colleges, and has hit that part of young adult life where he doesn't know who he is or what he is doing. What he does know is that living in the body of Dwayne Johnson for a brief period won him the girl the first time around, and even gave him a little sense of purpose. When he doesn't show up for the group's reunion brunch, they grow worried and go to his house, where they find he has rewired the game and started again.

This movie had all the potential to be a really dreary retread of its predecessor, and it pulls out several stops to avoid this, the first of which being the additional characters of Milo (Danny Glover), Grampa Eddie (Danny DeVito) and Ming (Awkwafina), the second of which being more body-swapping than you can shake a stick at. What I really loved about this movie was how much fun and freedom the actors were allowed by the script. Due to the game console being smashed, the kids don't get assigned their former avatars, and Eddie and Milo accidentally get sucked into playing too. Later, pools of glowing water are found to have crazy swapping powers, meaning that each actor gets to embody at least two of their costars over the course of the narrative. My personal favourite among these was Ming acting as DeVito: her voice and mannerisms are spot on, and every second was a joy to watch.

Of course, the real original '90s Jumanji fell into the fantasy narrative trope in which characters have to navigate a series of deadly encounters to reach safety, and the reboots are no different. This movie drops its momentum at one point with a few skits that only slow the progress, but generally has a decent flow and is largely exciting. A particular scene involving a maze of rope bridges that move like the staircases at Hogwarts stands out in terms of action and imagination, and the picture generally looks vibrant and fun.

One issue that the film carries on from its predecessor is a lack of game-oriented cinematography. The narratives make great use of the video game environment, with dialogue that reflects the tropes of non-player characters, but in many cases adopt a fairly standard action camera setup with quick cuts and conventional angles. It could have been fun to use more third-person angles that show characters from above and behind like video games tend to do, or perhaps oddities in the developing backdrops as the camera pans. Thinking in more gameish terms with the cinematography could really pull the other elements together and create a truly immersive gaming movie experience. 

The original set of kid and adult actors reprise their roles very nicely, with the particular zest that we have come to expect from Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black. Some great additions include Rory 'the Hound' McCann as the latest evil overlord threatening Jumanji's safety, and the aforementioned Awkwafina as Ming, who was truly entertaining. DeVito and Glover's characters bring a sense of sentimentality that the Williams Jumanji used to humanise an otherwise wacky story, and offer plenty of prime meat for the actors impersonating them to chew on. 

Jumanji: The Next Level delivers more than one might expect from a movie of its sort, and has a relentless sense of fun to it. Director and co-writer Jake Kasdan creates a really cool atmosphere and, aside from the odd slip-up here and there, knows exactly what kind of movie he's making. It's far from a perfect or artistically intriguing movie, but it never takes itself too seriously, ticks all the boxes and leaves its audience feeling exhilarated and thoroughly entertained.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

Making films, music and literature based - either loosely or otherwise - on real events, and more specifically, on true crime, is far from a modern trend, and yet it is still a divisive topic on moral grounds. The better known serial killers, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, continue to inspire recreations of their lives and crimes, and the human condition of morbid curiosity keeps ensuring return on profit is seen. The question of whether it is ethical to rehash such crimes for 'entertainment purposes', and how such recreations can impact the survivors and their loved ones, continues to be asked, yet it seems to have little effect on the industry's production of such movies, or on audiences' viewing of them. Monster and The Girl Next Door are serious and well-made productions based to varying degrees on true crime, but for every Monster, there are easily a hundred The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

Critics have been slamming this movie for many reasons, and Lionsgate have been pulling out all of the damage control stops to ensure people still give their movie the benefit of the doubt. Not only is this not a well-made film, but it is a very inconsiderate one. It doesn't seek simply to recreate the crimes of the Manson family in 1969, but to put a supernatural twist on things, and perpetuate dismal rumours first circulated by the media mere hours after the news broke fifty years ago: talk of infidelities, open relationships and devil worship somehow being the cause of those events is tasteless and speculative at best. What, I ask you, could possibly be gained, or added to this story, by the suggestions of Roman Polanski (who is not portrayed onscreen in this movie) 'cheating' on his wife, or Gibby Folger and Wojciech Frykowski manipulating Sharon into a position of vulnerability? It drags this whole sorry tale to the depths of tabloid fodder in the least tactful way possible.

The media spin that continues to embody the Tate-LaBianca murders could be an interesting way to tell this story, but this is clearly not what the makers had in mind. If nothing else, its only real goals are to paint Sharon and her friends as people they were not, with an aim to add a sense of suspicion and tension that never existed. And this is not to say that this movie manages to achieve even the slightest feeling of suspense. It consists primarily of repetitive sequences of Sharon creeping wide-eyed around her dark house, convinced that she is in danger but for some reason doing nothing about it.

For some reason, Hilary Duff 'stars' as Sharon Tate, and we are suddenly and rudely reminded of why her repertoire never really expanded beyond Lizzie McGuire and being Steve Martin's stroppy teen daughter in Cheaper by the Dozen. She looks and sounds nothing like Sharon Tate, despite her fleeting attempts at some sort of regional accent. Duff is very strangely directed throughout this picture, in every way from accent to emotion and mindset. There are odd moments at which she seems to react to things in ways that just don't match the action, and her character's thought processes are sloppy. This heavily pregnant woman, whose several friends are literally in the next bedroom, keeps creeping around this dark house when she suspects intruders. No guns, no phone calls, she doesn't even turn on the lights or scream for someone. She just keeps skulking around in the dark.

The main narrative bookending this piece is what pissed me off the most. The movie opens in black and white, and purports to show us Sharon giving an interview in 1968. The interviewer asks her if she has ever had any experiences she considered psychic. Now this in itself is not crazy, as there was quite a trend for metaphysics, spirituality and psychedelia in the '60s and '70s, and this could have been an interesting approach in more competent hands. But Sharon responds that she had a nightmare in which she and her friends are murdered, which "I guess you could consider a psychic experience". We are given no other indication at this point in the story's timeline that could give weight to this idea that a simple bad dream is some form of premonition, and the narrative only seems to show Sharon come to recognise this much later on. This terribly contrived plot device is the frayed string from which the entire narrative precariously hangs.

Now when I did some basic research into this film (which I did when I got to this very point in writing my review), I made a striking discovery about the resume of writer/director Daniel Farrands. Not only is his filmography comprised almost entirely of horror sequels and true crime movies, but he actually wrote the aforementioned The Girl Next Door, which was a very good and considerately handled movie. Interestingly, that was more or less the first thing he wrote in twenty years, preceded by Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995. This in itself makes me wonder why and how Farrands' ability to craft believable dialogue that propels a difficult narrative seems to have evaporated. On top of this, his more recent credits include another dreadful Amityville movie, and production on an upcoming piece titled The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. There is a definite pattern there, which I might not take such a distaste to if not for Farrands' sharply declining standards. In 2007, he proved himself capable of taking a horrific true crime, dramatising it in a way that gives context to the behaviours of its characters, and approaching what is essentially an exploitation picture with utmost dignity, respect and care. Somehow, he is now a shadow of his former professional self.

Farrands' habit of running with the scrag ends of existing narratives smacks of commercial and artistic cynicism. He demonstrates little ability to create original material, and he has absolutely forgotten - or neglected - the way real people speak, which is so crucial to his line of work. Often when we hear of true crime stories, particularly those in which people are somehow convinced or manipulated into committing crime by others, the mind really boggles at how things get from A to B. What does a person have to say, and how do they have to say it, in order to get another person to commit such cruelty on innocents? With The Girl Next Door, Farrands showed us just how an evil adult could have manipulated neighbourhood children into torturing and killing a young girl, and it was his way with dialogue that made these unimaginable events believable. Now, he can't even convince us that a woman is trying to tell her friends she thinks she is being stalked. I mean damn, that's not a lot to ask of a writer who has previously shown his mettle with conveying difficult ideas on screen.

Although The Haunting of Sharon Tate is nowhere near as technically inept as I had expected it to be, it is just a sad, sorry and puzzling excuse of a film. A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be redeemable, but this is just the laziest form of 'retelling', and is not entertaining, scary, intriguing or compelling. As unethical as it can seem, it is undeniable that our nature as humans is to find curiosity in the extraordinary, in the things we don't see every day or have never seen before. Whether this is a motorway pileup or a murdered film star, we can't help but be fascinated. But there are so many elements of the Manson crimes that actually warrant elaboration and exploration, that don't disrespect the memories of the victims, and better filmmakers have explored these. Cult mentality, the transition to a life of crime, the death of a social movement; these are all insights that can be gained from these awful events that people can learn from. We gain nothing from 60 minutes of Hilary Duff creeping around in the dark and 25 minutes of crass crime scene recreation. This movie is utterly worthless.

Toy Story 4 (2019)

You know how I found out about the passing of veteran entertainer Don Rickles? I saw Toy Story 4 and noticed that Potato Head was present throughout, but only spoke a single line (off screen) the entire time. By the time the credits rolled, I was busy googling whether or not Rickles was still alive, and found my answer way before the brief post-credits dedication to his memory. Rickles died in 2017, by which time voice recording had not yet begun, and it would seem that Pixar decided the most graceful way to deal with this issue was to steal an unused sound byte from a previous instalment and simply tack it on. This move sets the bar for the entire movie, which left me angry in a way unlike any movie in recent (or even more distant) memory.

Having heard from critics I respect that Toy Story 4 held up surprisingly well, I went in with middling expectations and by the 30 minute mark, I was absolutely over this shit. What I was faced with was 90 minutes of live vivisection of a childhood icon. I hope that by the end of this diatribe, I have successfully expressed my disdain for this picture, and haven't been sidetracked by animalistic rage and many four-letter words.

Y'know partner, this used to be a respectable franchise.

Unlike every other chapter, Toy Story 4 does not begin with a fantasy action sequence, but with some incident in Andy's childhood in which RC is somehow getting sucked into a storm drain outside while a Gumtree user rocks up to the house to collect a lamp he has purchased, which is apparently where Bo Peep originates, despite us never having seen her act as part of a lighting appliance. We don't kinow how or why RC ended up outside in torrential rain, but it serves to give Woody and Bo an odd farewell scene. Flash to nine years later, and the toys are in the possession of Bonnie, as the third film left them. The less than likeable kid is about to start kindergarten and Woody tags along to make sure things go well. The kid creates a crude figurine out of a plastic spork, pipecleaners and lolly sticks, the aptly named Forky, and brings it home, where Woody sets about trying to teach the developmentally stunted creature to live as a toy.

Of course, the toys have to have an adventure away from home, so the kid's parents suggest a road trip. The retarded spork acts like someone's senile parent, constantly wandering off, and eventually throws itself from the RV window, prompting Woody to follow, assuring the other toys that he is entirely capable of catching them up at their destination five miles down the road. On foot; on toy foot. Of course this is stupid, but how else are we going to send Woody off on his latest wild goose chase?

The substance of the movie, if it can be called that, is so unforgivably lazy: the previous scores are recycled, with the addition of a single uninspired song by Randy Newman; scenarios veiled as homage directly rip off preceding chapters; the new characters are inconsistent and not at all relatable. Toy Story 3 was a retread of Toy Story 2 in terms of plot, but it still showed creativity, poignancy, humour and thematic strength. Toy Story 4 feels a lot like the family film equivalent of Game of Thrones Season 8: it is entirely disinterested in engaging our minds or emotions, takes half-assed shortcuts, and seems to think that its validity relies on their ability to remind us how good the previous instalments of the same story were. Hey, remember how awesome Randy Newman's music wqas? Here it is, literally all over again. Hey, remember how the toys launched themselves in a conga missile through the catflap of Sid's house in a rescue attempt? Here is pretty much the same thing all over again.

My face throughout this movie

All characters but Woody are resigned to the background. Buzz is occupied with a stupid and nonsensical microplot that hangs on conscience and voicebox being synonymous in the toy world; Jesse and Bullseye have absolutely nothing to do, and favourite bit players such as Potato Head and Rex may as well not even be there. Bo Peep is given an inexplicable makeover, from her voice, to her origins, to her physical makeup. She was previously an entirely porcelain figure, but now her clothes are made of fabric and are removable. Her sheep now have names, and she drives some sort of vehicle disguised as a skunk. She claims she has been living her best life as a free and independent woman for the last nine years, but later laments that she spent years gathering dust on the shelf of an antique store. Everything is so confused and nonsensical, and it made my blood boil to watch.

The villain of this piece is the most underdeveloped and unstable of the series. A Gabby Gabby doll, who purports to date from the '50s, just like Woody - uhh, what?! - has never been loved because her voicebox never worked, and so her evil plan is to get Woody drunk at a bar, seduce him and allow him to wake up in a bathtub full of ice. Well, actually, she just straight up tells Woody that he is about to get organ trafficked, but after hearing her half-hearted spiel, Woody just relents and allows her to take his voicebox, and later wakes up having his back stitched up by a ventriloquist dummy. It was so dark in a way that hasn't fit the Toy Story tone since the very first movie, and struck me as kind of disturbing. Then it is never touched on again. Nothing about how they never needed their voicebox to be loved by a kid or anything. Woody just gets his fucking organs stolen by some mad doll, who then becomes a sympathetic anti-hero for the narrative, and gets a happy ending nothing like that awarded to Stinky Pete or to Lotso. The tone of this movie is up and down like a tart's drawers.

Another questionable addition is that of what I refer to as 'ghetto comedy'. You know, that kind of thing where a black character makes any loud and sarcastic comment, and it is played like it is funny, regardless of whether it actually is. Two stuffed animals from a carnival tag along with Woody for some reason, and serve no purpose other than to yell "Nawwww way, man!" every now and then.

The ending is perhaps one of the most maddening elements of the movie, so *spoiler alert*. When the rest of the toys finally reunite with Woody and Bo at the end of the ordeal, Woody does that weird thing that has become more prevalent as the Toy Storys have gone along, where there are long shots of his furrowed brow as he reflects on something that we cannot interpret. He then murmers a few words to other characters like "Are you sure?" and we just have to wait impatiently to find out exactly what he is referring to. This time, it turns out that Woody has decided that he doesn't need a kid anymore, and is instead going to become the Mickey to Bo's Mallory. That's right, he leaves all of his longtime friends behind in order to enjoy some porcelain pussy. What the actual fuck?!

I'm sure there are one or two other annoyances that have slipped through the cracks of my exhausted bullshit detector, but quite frankly, I feel that I have given this shite movie enough of my precious time for one day and one lifetime. I will never watch this movie again, and I hate to say that it takes twisted glee in slowly picking the stitches that Toy Story 3 had so neatly sewn. Fuck this movie.