Movie Review: Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
If you are a Tarantino fan then this is mostly everything you could hope for, and if you are not then this is too similar to what you have already rejected to change your mind, though with two caveats. This is his very personal take on Hollywood of the late sixties, effectively his religion, and even if not a Tarantino fan there is a lot here in his striving for both actual and philosophical verisimilitude for those interested in the era, but also plenty for fans of Pitt, DiCaprio or Robbie. That verisimilitude has to be taken in the context of the fairy-tale indicated by the title, and that the title indicates it is Quentin’s tale, and not just the typically Tarantino-esque homage to Sergio Leone.
There is plenty out there for you to read and a lot of it is best read post-film, so I will stick to my purpose of advising your viewing decision. Tarantino’s major weakness is being so impressed with his work that he will not edit brutally enough and his films routinely exceed 2 and 1/2 hours and he hits 161 minutes here. His work often has iconic scenes whose length is disruptive to the film itself, and it is no coincidence that Tarantino was a writer for Natural Born Killers because this is a recurring problem in Oliver Stone films too. The result here in Hollywood is that feeling of knowing you are watching something special and yet too often wishing for the plot to be advanced. If you bore easily then this will not be for you, but if you indulge yourself in Tarantino’s Easter egg hunts then you will be well rewarded here with many of his typical motifs.
There is a typically Tarantino ultra-violence pay-off at the end but otherwise this is rather tame by his standards. There are moments of brilliant menace throughout, and plenty here for the gender grievance industry to harp on partly as a result, and partly because it is 1969. Between Pitt and DiCaprio I am overwhelmingly a Pitt fan and he really shines here, though I was more sympathetic to DiCaprio than I usually am. Robbie is splendid in capturing the starlet vibe of the day, the cinema scene a pure delight, and I doubt it is a coincidence QT has cast her along with Pitt, though their characters do not interact. Among the rest of the worthy ensemble Margaret Qualley as Pussycat captures a part of the Manson Family vibe that continues to fascinate.
Ultimately Tarantino’s devotion to his craft shines here, and this works on many levels: take your pick whether to notice them, let alone work through them, or not.

Movie review: Angel Has Fallen
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Stars: Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Danny Huston
The third in the “...Has Fallen” franchise sees Gerard Butler’s Secret Service agent Mike Banning yet again caught up in protecting a POTUS from a deadly, conspiratorial threat. Morgan Freeman has been upped to POTUS this time around, and Piper Perabo substitutes for Radha Mitchell as Mike’s wife Leah.
This is what it is, B grade action, and while neither as spectacular nor as slick as Hobbs and Shaw, it has its moments and is pretty standard Cineplex grist. Entirely predictable, yet reasonably well paced, if you need a time-out slot this can fill it if you are not over Butler yet.
Butler has been in a slow decline for a long while now and he needs to rediscover the versatility he showed in the 2000s because he is starting to look ordinary in action films. Part of the plot is his aging body which presumably was not meant ironically, but which only emphasises how tired the tropes are here no matter how fresh some of the tech – and it is hard to look past the drones featured in the trailers as the real stars.
Freeman has the freedom and stature to make these pay-days without trashing his legacy. I guess you have to take him at his word that he still finds it fun to make movies because with a net worth estimated at $200M surely he does not really need the money.

Movie review: Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw
Director: David Leitch
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby
Utterly ridiculous. Ridiculously good fun though.
A tad underrated in my opinion. This is what $200M can buy in pure popcorn when you hand the directing reins to a martial-artist cum stuntman. For the high culturists remember that it is these films that pay the bills and build the skill sets. David Leitch has directed only a handful of films after a long career in stunts but what a list: John Wick (uncredited co-directorship), Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2!
A nice balance of talent with Vanessa Kirby, Idris Elba, Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren joining Johnson and Statham for this F&F spin off. With tongue just enough in cheek it offers plenty of eye catching action, hackneyed tropes, corny lines and faux sentimentality. For you low culture types, this is perfect.

Movie Review: Late Night
Director: Nisha Ganatra
Stars: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow
Get woke, go broke.
This is supposed to be a comedy, yet as I laughed sometime into the second act I realised it was for the first time.
Some wry smiles from sardonic humour do not a comedy make. Which is a pity because the bones of this were definitely good enough to build a better film around.

Movies: Spider-Man Far from Home, plus Avengers: End Game - Bonus Footage
Director (Far from Home): Jon Watts
Stars (Far from Home): Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Gyllenhaal
I have to recommend Far from Home (FFH) as it is the first movie in MCU Phase 4, and thus serves as the link between that and Avengers: End Game, and I felt better for catching End Game again after seeing FFH. However, this is entirely lore and structure based as overall FFH is a weak MCU film - seemingly having learnt little from the misfires of Spider-man: Homecoming. Presumably this is because Marvel used Jon Watts as director again – doh!
There is a blink and you will miss it moment in End Game when Tony directs Banner-Hulk to snap back everyone who was “dusted” by The Snap™️ into the present, 5 years later, and not to change anything for the non-dusted. This of course would cause a great deal of misery in any non-comic realm where the overwhelming majority of people would, in five years, get on with their lives; remarry, have children, grow, graduate, reskill, move and so on, only to have some superhero do-gooders create billions of scenes reminiscent of Tom Hanks’ and Helen Hunt’s characters towards the end of Castaway. Well FFH has to deal with some of the fallout of that, and it is pathetically stupid. Go see for yourself.
In terms of the actual plot it is not nearly so bad in concept, and it has some good scenes and twists. Generally I can suspend disbelief in MCU pretty easily but I really wanted to just pound my head into a wall in frustration at having to again watch an adult actor playing a 16 year-old with the maturity of a 13 year-old, and as I said in my Homecoming review this does not work unless you love corn. See it anyway.
Having seen FFH is a great time to re-watch End Game. I stand by everything I said in my real review of it, and Infinity War was a far better film, but seeing it in 2D was better than 3D. Again, I would dump 30 minutes from the first act but the rest of it is good enough. Tony meeting his father is one of several scenes given a new lens through knowing the outcomes. As for the extended footage, definitely do not go for that. After the normal film is over you get a somewhat pathetic clip of Stan Lee hugging actors, an incompletely rendered Hulk action scene that had to be cut in order to squeeze in six scenes of people sighing and thinking wistfully of dusted friends or lovers, and the scene from FFH that normally would have been inserted in End Game as the post credit prelude, had they not broken that tradition to mark the end of the cycle. No - go to ensure that they make an even bigger bank guaranteeing the production of many more MCU phases.
Sadly, since writing the above news has come out that the arrangements between Sony and Marvel for using Spider-man in the MCU have broken down. Let us hope it is all bargaining because Tom Holland’s Spidey has been a great addition to the Avengers line up, even if I do not rate the stand alone films.

Movie review: Yesterday
Director: Danny Boyle
Stars: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Kate McKinnon
This is a charming enough romantic comedy but it never suppresses the feeling that someone heard that major movies about Queen and Elton John were in the works and thought "screw that, we can make several metric fuktons of money with a Beatles sound track, if we just come up with a story to fit them around". That is not the case, apparently. It just seems that way.
The story uses the blunt contrivance of a strange worldwide blackout causing everyone to forget everything about The Beatles, along with the disappearance of the physical evidence. The lead character Jack Malik, well played by Himesh Patel, does remember though, and happens to be a struggling musician who now has at his disposal dozens of amazing songs with which to wow the world. Lily James makes a solid go of the pseudo-romantic lead and Kate McKinnon gets caught between some very good portrayals of the record industry stereotype and some clumsy slapstick which really should not have made the final cut. Ed Sheeran also gets a gig mirroring his own commercial discovery.
It all hangs together reasonably well, with James and the Beatles songs the highlights but runs perhaps twenty minutes longer than it should, reuses the same gags once too often and ultimately settles to be just an ordinary covers band.

Movie review: Parasite
Director: Joon Ho Bong
Stars: Kang-ho Sung, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo
If you enjoy the Asian cinema that reaches cinema here, and you should, this cracker comes out of Korea. A little effort to get it down under two hours would have been welcome, but mostly engrossing. A poor family gradually grifts its way into the lives of a rich household, which provides plenty of food for thought, but eventually an extraordinary turn of events gives this a genuine "holy shit!" factor.
Not what you seek if you are looking for the usual escapism.
 

Bio: Juddy keeps busy consuming cultural media while posing as a student at a major Sydney university, thus shirking real work. He hosts pub trivia, and tutors at said university, for beer and book money.