Brexitunited

A watershed moment for animation! Truly incredible, creative and outside the box! Animation is for sure a tricky endeavour but I remember watching this in 2018 & just being blown away by it all! Watching again all these years later brings back that unbridled joy that I got back then. It’s comic gold, impossible to resist, a bit meta, cutting edge and progressive, hilarious at times and so stupidly goofy but it all works, everything is elegantly woven together with some really great writing too, callbacks & motifs that were planted along the way get pay offs, the film never loses sight of Miles & co’s respective journey’s and so the last 20 odd minutes gives you this emotional thud that actually means something! This & spider man 2 are the only spider man movies I’ll ever need in my life! BRAVO

Third watch for me, my second watch really clarified a lot, sorta put a lot of pieces together and showed how it rules in so many ways but this time round found myself leaning forward for a large chunk. Serious serious work this & I still don’t think it’s his best film. Most of this review is just a general gushing about just how good this film is but also what holds it back a bit too. **THOUGHTS ** I’ve seen this twice in 70mm & now in Dolby, both wonderful & is a real pleasure to get to see on the biggest screens possible. I’ll edge to Dolby simply because I like to hear my dialogue & I don’t like to really play visual tennis scanning up & down a lot but in 70 it was great too, packed theatre & everyone was buzzing for it. There’s just so much space on the screen for the world & it’s word building, felt rugged & robust, could see the little film burns too. In 70 it’s probably one of the finest film presentations I’ve seen but Dolby was more of an all round experience , both epic and great to see on a big screen. Said in my previous review that this is Nolan’s best direction, storytelling & writing. Still think that’s true to some degree, maybe Oppenhimer he’s really at his best but when it comes to writing I don’t know he’s ever been better especially when it comes to women, probably the only time I’ve ever thought about one of his films where he’s written that these women are just brilliant, every role bar a few felt like a rich role for them & maybe just as complex as the male characters too. My favourite way he’s used non linear storytelling, applying layers & layers of understanding and then giving it new context, it’s probably the most assured & confident the man has ever been, you can just see it all on the screen! Think it’s safe to say everyone’s mentioned the horror elements & the influences too. Cyclops scene is something you’d get in a Eggers movie, the real showstopper really! Creepy and tragic, your imagination builds the tension until you see it & then the Samantha Morton scene just gets me so giddy every time I see it. He clearly has a horror sensibility, started it in Dunkirk & Oppenhimner but this is the first time he’s properly dived into it! I could for sure see him making a very dark movie but I’m not sure about scary movie. The fighting scenes & the choreography isn’t that great! Feels like I’m watching combat over someone’s shoulder sometimes. Think this is a common theme with a fair few of his intimate action scenes in his films, sure he can do macro action sequences but it’s slightly underwhelming when it comes to those lesser more intimate scenes. I’m in favour that Oppenheimer is one of the best edited films I’ve ever seen BUT I’m sorry but this is pretty poor editing Jenifer! Felt like in parts I’m watching a abridged version of a much more full film, no room to breathe or feel just feels a bit montage and maybe the point of this choice has gone over my head but not a fan either way. Ludwig is just a mad man! Some of the sounds I’ve genuinely never heard before in my life as the man is literally unearthing musical instruments! I appreciate he didn’t use an orchestra for the score, instead opting to use all these weird Greek instruments, not doing the standard fantasy blockbuster score in an epic type thing but instead choosing to one up himself to create something that is truly spellbinding to listen too at times! I think the score plays great with the movie but aside from a few bangers I don’t think I’m a huge fan when it’s on the own. The sorta moody dark synths feels odd in an Ancient Greek movie & some tracks reminded me of blade runner at times. Tracks like “Troy” & “ another name” really do soar & like I said spellbinding at times! Another Oscar incoming for Mr Göransson. Nolan drawing Parallels between this text & modern war, regret & a bit of trauma also a supplementary text to Oppenheimer, simply how we just started to kill each other & never stopped doing so! I find it fascinating how the trick of the Trojan horse was kinda the first needle mover in terms of playing by different rules to your enemies, Zeus law of honour & honesty was broken because believe it or not, war was once operated on certain morale playing fields. We’re still paying for these actions today in 2026 & this kinda strips the idea of triumphants of war and the celebration of it, it’s more pivoted into the destruction of humanity & how we’ve just never learnt! Thus Potentially has one of the most profound & poignant political messages in a blockbuster I’ve seen. I think Nolan has been trying for ages to tell us all about the hubris of man but sometimes comes across naive & too romantic but here he’s made it ugly because this is a 3000 year old story but it’s also very much about now! My two favourite scenes and arguably the best of the entire film. The siren scene is great for so many reasons but you simply just get a glimpse, routed in Damon’s experience and it’s honestly just beautiful, Becomes so powerful because we don’t have to see it. Then Restraint is something that kinda disappears in films if you can’t put bums in seats luckily enough Nolan can so when it comes to the Circe scene, harkening back to theatrics that make it so playful & interesting, slight camera tricks to what you can & can’t see, brilliant scene. Too many leads I think! I don’t think there’s enough character actors here, in isolation I think I like all the actors in the film but some( not all) were underused & misused, looking at charlize theron, just so low energy & a bit muted! bernthal solid but could’ve been utilised much much more, safdie has an insane aura moment! Having a lot of stars in your film, I need them to prove to me what they’re doing & sometimes I just don’t get that. Anna Hathaway & Matty Damon are clear highlights! Think a top 3 Damon performance for me now as he’s just a force in this no complaints from me but Hathaway on a third watch just rocked my world, such emotion & grief embodied into that character, fantastic work! RPatts is delicious to watch, think I just like this mode of him & also get the feeling I’m gonna be seeing something similar come December. Samantha Morton steals a lot of the movie with just 1 scene, the true MVP. Lupita, Patel, Leguizamo all deserve their flowers too, all understood the assignment and delivered! Then I’m giving Zendeya extra credit for marrying Mr Holland cause what a talent imbalance that relationship is.( she’s also great for how little she’s in this) Thomas Holland is probably by default the “worst” here simply because he’s matched with true troopers of the industry. A fine performance but more so I feel like the guy has needed something like this for a while, the spider man vehicle can only stretch so far and I’m glad he’s challenged himself to do something a bit more serious here so there’s that. Appreciate the lack of kenneth branagh though! I’ve seen some critiques of this adaptation of “the odyssey” and some are fair. I originally thought Nolan’s sorta fluid filmmaking would’ve clashed with the source as it’s so episodic but when you capture the essence & core of the text I think you’ve clearly understood its sentiments so for me Nolan & co have done as such. Even though a lot is inaccurate in an historical context & Nolan liberties have been taken but the man still understood the original text & done it in his unique way, this retains the essential qualities of the original text but leveraging new talents & ideas from a new storyteller( Nolan) kinda brazen to do it all as big as humanly possibly and I wouldn’t want it any other way when Christopher Nolan is at the helm. I have just finished Emily Wilson’s translation( I believe this is what Nolan drew most inspiration from) and I have no issue with him playing this pretty straight, probably the right move to make considering it’s such a huge story to tackle( I also like that how there’s been a boom in artists going back to tackle original texts, feels really pure) but after reading this story it is like the perfect vessel for Nolan. A rich text that is both provocative & profound for his cinematic and narrative sensibilities, it allows him to continue on his obsession with time & the structuring of it, contemplates on legacy of a genius who’s potential greatest work brings deconstruction to the world & finally has the emotionally grounding aspects too, a man that wants to conquer for his family that he really loves. It’s all there kinda tailor made for Chris to explore on a massive scale with philosophical ideas at the helm. I’ll end with a quote from the opening pages of the book which I think pretty much sums up the film for me “ **tell the old story for our modern times.” ** This is pretty great & I’ll chew on this for the rest of the Year probably. BRAVOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So disappointing! Advertised as a horror, this pretty much superficially resembles it follows and even has similar beats but I honestly think I’m just good for a while on this whole being terrified by a metaphor genre we are in currently, I have horror metaphor fatigue! Completely competent, I’ll admit good premise especially in this climate we are in, what if desire could be transfigured or exorcised, essentially a movie about what it’s like to be gay in a time when it’s not acceptable but honestly the movie don’t have enough gas to sustain itself, it lays all of its mythology cards out pretty early on, sure has some creepiness but not enough and This never ONCE grabbed me like it follows did, that film was a proper corker horror movie that kept me glued to screen for its runtime. The ending is also disappointing too but I think that lack of resolution is kinda the idea.  It’s really just a drama with some supernatural horror sprinkled in with a metaphor so huge it could literally stand in for so many things. A bit of a shame but it’s 80 minutes so no harm no foul at the end of day!