MSU

Really enjoyed the series and Mae was definitely a worthy winner. I think the S16 line-up is the first one where I haven't heard of most of the contestants. ETA -- I've just checked the list of contestants by series and I'm havering pish. I've not heard of most of the contestants plenty of times.

I've never felt more American.

Been a really interesting thread to catch up on. I'll be 1,000 hangover-free mornings in a couple of weeks. I don't know if I was an alcoholic, and I'm not sure the term is all that useful anyway, but drink was definitely becoming a problem in my life, and the shiftiness I was developing in order to downplay that problem to those around me was turning me into someone I didn't particularly like. I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually enjoyed a drink, and listening to Lee Mack and Limmy's stories about stopping definitely helped me say cheerio to Mr B. First week was tough, since then I've been surprised by how much I don't miss it all. Ice cold ginger ale, as mentioned above, has been useful. Of course, this would've been a good conclusion to come to before I got a Tennent's T tattooed on my leg. Oh, well.

110 Robots -- The conceit of this movie is something Adam Sandler would probably pass on. In the near future, immigrants have been replaced by robots to do all the work the immigrants did. The robots are humanoid but are clearly robots. Somehow, Jack Whitehall's character gets his hands on one that looks and sounds EXACTLY like Jack Whitehall and because Jack Whitehall is a very lazy character, he uses his robot to go on initial dates with women before moving in and fucking them himself. He's a lovely guy. Then we have Shailene Woodley who also somehow has a robot who looks EXACTLY like Shailene Woodley and she uses her robot to go on dates with men and dig some gold out of them before dumping them when they stop splashing the cash. Due to an entirely predictable mix-up with dates and addresses, the two robots meet up, fall in love, and f**k off to Mexico. The problem for Jack Whitehall and Shailene Woodley is that possession of robots is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, and this is the case to make sure the movie can happen, so the two of them head off to track down their robotic counterparts, and wouldn't you know it, they also fall in love on the way. Shockingly predictable but there's a half-decent joke at Moby's expense that I quite enjoyed. 3/10 111 You Hurt My Feelings (#134 in the A24 series) -- When A24 isn't making the same drug movie over and over, it's quite good at making these wee character studies, and this is pretty decent. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies are Beth and Don, a long-married, successful and comfortable couple whose son works in a pot store, while Beth's sister, Sarah (Michaela Watkins) is an interior designer and her husband, Mark (Arian Moayed) is a struggling actor. Beth is a writer, Don is a therapist, and their marriage is given a shock when Beth overhears Don tell Mark what he really thinks about her latest book. The movie as a whole is all about characters seeking validation, but it seems only the kind of validation they want to hear. Beth wants Don to tell her he loves her book and mean it. Don struggles to be appreciated by his client list, a couple of whom actively hate him. Sarah can't find the perfect lamp for a particular customer, and Mark just wants the shortcut to fame. This is a problem as everyone seems to want the same thing, but it's maybe not so much of a problem as these are all fairly rich, comfortable white folks complaining that people aren't loving them in the right way. Still, pretty good fun and I chuckled quite a bit throughout. 7/10 112 Kandahar -- If you're a filmmaker in 2023 who wants Gerard Butler to star in your movie, you need to be prepared to answer four questions: Where is Gerard Butler currently? What is Gerard Butler's occupation? Where is Gerard Butler trying to go? Which holiday or celebration is Gerard Butler intending to share with his estranged daughter upon arrival? The second Gerard Butler movie I've seen this year is very much like the first one I saw, Plane. Except here, he's a CIA operative rather than a pilot, he's stranded in Afghanistan, rather than a SE Asian island, he's trying to get home to the UK in both movies, and his daughter is graduating rather than wanting to see in the New Year. It's a decent, if derivative couple of hours as Butler's character's cover is compromised after he destroys an Iranian nuclear facility, and he and his interpreter race to get to a CIA base in Kandahar, some 400 miles away. In hot pursuit, we have the Taliban, Pakistan's ISI, ISIS, and the BBC License Fee Collections Agency. The landscapes are amazing and there are a couple of decent setpieces that keep the interest afloat. 5/10

I think this is most people's pick of the bunch. Nothing about the series, particularly the books, really stands up to much scrutiny, but it really starts to drop off a cliff after this one.

So I *think* she's going to a Taylor Swift concert but doesn't want to? Is that what this is?

Just last week I did my very best Al Pacino impression as I muttered "stupid fucking c**t" at something that was pissing me off. Apparently it needs work.

Only time I've been the only c**t in the screening was Saw IV and when the Cineworld boy poked his head in to make sure I wasn't recording it on my phone, I shat myself. (Also enjoyed Missing -- good fun)

"No-one should endure an extended period under arrest, just because they're an innocent bystander." She seems dangerously close to getting the point.

Agreed. Saw this a few weeks ago and still don't quite know what to make of it. So much of it didn't make sense (or rather I couldn't make sense of it) but I don't know that I've seen a better representation of a nightmare or a panic attack. Phoenix is awesome either way.

107 STILL: A Michael J Fox Movie -- Still as a literal and figurative concept is something the movie tackles as it covers Fox's early life and rise to fame and diagnosis with Parkinson's disease. The documentary rather cleverly uses footage from Fox's movies and TV shows to reconstruct real moments from his life, which always serves as a reminder that in a lot of ways, the Michael J Fox we see is the version that Michael J Fox wants us to see, but when this is contrasted with more contemporary interviews, there is no such facade. The man who left his wife to raise his children, who became an alcoholic, who hid his horrible illness for as long as he could, is suddenly laid bare. Michael J Fox comes across as a good guy, but he's flawed and he doesn't hide away from those flaws. He's an arsehole just like everyone else in the world and because of this, he's more relatable. 10/10 108 The Great Ziegfeld (#9 in the Best Picture series) -- Two and a half hours of overblown, bloated extravagance as MGM proved they had tons of cash to burn on this biopic of Flo Ziegfeld, a big-time producer at the turn of the 20th century. Something to be endured rather than enjoyed or admired. 1/10 109 Hypnotic -- Ben Affleck seems to have been forced to play Danny Rourke, a cop whose daughter has been kidnapped and is missing, presumed dead. When he's given a tip about an upcoming bank heist, he discovers some strange clues that suggest she's still alive and comes across a mysterious bad guy who appears to be able to control people's minds. Through the confusion, Alice Braga shows up as a medium who is on hand to provide a running commentary for everything that's happening without once saying the words Inception, Memento, Tenet, or Scanners. The exposition from Braga was already enough to anger me, but the movie insists on really pushing my buttons with absurd dialogue, and a constant soundtrack that is there to tell you exactly how you're supposed to feel at all times. Robert Rodriguez directed, wrote, produced, made the tea, swept the floor, switched off all the lights on his way out, and got his daughter to write the score, and maybe half the problem is having one person behind these elements, and not enough people to tell you that what all this control is creating is shite. 2/10

Foreigner at the Kalamazoo Wings Event Center last night. The missus got tickets for our youngest's Christmas last year, who just wanted to go to a concert and wasn't too fussed about who it was. They were pretty good and their singer Kelly Hanson, who is in his sixties, was like a yellow-spandexed ferret whipping around the stage (brave for a man that age). I didn't realize that I knew so many Foreigner songs and although I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, I had a ball. Live music is just that fucking awesome. It's funny, though, that the band encouraged the audience to participate in an atmosphere of love, and togetherness, and commune, and unity, and we sang along, and high-fived strangers, and danced, and raised the roof, and did as we were told, then 5 minutes after it's done, six lanes of traffic are merging into one to get out of the parking lot and everyone turns into a p***k again.

Espedair Street was my first Iain Banks, then Complicity, and then The Bridge. Never really got The Bridge or why everyone seemed to think it was his best work, so it's probably time to revisit it. Those black and white covers still look great.

I'm in.

101 Romy and Michele's High School Reunion -- I forget how much I love this stupid movie until I watch it, and so it always seems to be years between viewings, giving me enough time to forget the jokes and the little looks between Lisa Kudrow and (Academy Award winner) Mira Sorvino and Janeane Garofalo. The story of two stereotypical airheads in LA heading back to Arizona for their 10-year High School reunion is simple enough but the movie has a wonderfully good and honest heart and there are many, I think, universal truths of acceptance and nostalgia and how the hierarchy of school means that we were all somewhere in the middle, simultaneously being treated like shit by some while treating others like shit in return. 9/10 102 Die Another Day -- Pierce Brosnan's tenure as 007 ends with a whimper and very much the sense of what could've been. I maintain that he's a good, maybe even great Bond, but he's had a couple of absolutely stinking stories to work with, and this is the bottom of the barrel. The story is poor, but the dialogue put around it is criminal. There's a scene where our villain is being questioned by a British press pack and honestly, the questions that are asked sound like they've been devised not only by someone who has never seen the British press in action but also by someone who has never heard a question being asked out loud. By the time Madonna, in her Cockney phase, and Oliver Skeet turn up in cameo roles, I had long given up. Not even a reasonable turn by Rosamund Pike is enough to save this calamity, and that's before I mention an invisible car. 2/10 103 Mutiny on the Bounty (#8 in the Best Picture series) -- There's an awful lot to like and enjoy in this epic historical/nautical romp with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as the dastardly Bligh. Acting in the 30s is to a different standard than these days but once you get used to it and adapt to the slightly odd way people talk to each other, it's something that can easily be tolerated. The production and location work is quite impressive for the time -- parts of it really were filmed in French Polynesia -- which must've seemed like extravagancies. Historically, apparently there are plenty of inaccuracies -- for example, Bligh was nowhere near as ruthless as depicted and the number of floggings on the Bounty was below average -- but what it left makes for great entertainment and it's easy to see why it picked up Best Picture. Oddly, it lost out to The Informer in other categories, and having three actors up for the Best Actor gong resulted in the birth of the Supporting Actor category. So that's nice. 8/10 104 Romancing the Stone -- Forty years on, just about, and it's still a hoot and a half and everyone is SO IMPOSSIBLY YOUNG! I always suspected that more recent movies like The Lost City and Jungle Cruise owed Romancing the Stone a debt of gratitude, and that has been more than confirmed. Douglas and Turner work well together and Robert Zemeckis's direction, while never really diverting from the tried and tested formula of 80s romantic comedies, is vibrant and full of fun. A more than decent way to spend 100 minutes on a dreary afternoon. 7/10 105 Casino Royale -- What a difference four years makes, so much so that this feels like a new franchise. No transition from one Bond to another has been such a reinvention. Daniel Craig's 007 plays by his own rules and it's an incredibly welcome move. There are obvious throwbacks, of course. The cast of characters remains largely the same, the globe is sufficiently trotted, and the baddies typically have some visible deformity, but it all feels like it's in the new century for the first time. I can't imagine any effort from Pierce Brosnan or Timothy Dalton featuring an extended base running sequence on a Madagascan construction site, although the thought of Roger Moore doing it is pretty amusing. Mads Mikkelsen is a fine villain, Martin Campbell's direction is an improvement on his work on GoldenEye, and Paul Haggis's script is sharp and thankfully not dripping in innuendo. This Bond is blunt, flawed, somewhat inexperienced, and brilliant. And the theme tune kicks serious arse too. 9/10 106 Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret -- Been a quiet couple of weeks at the movies if you're not interested in Marvel, so this was Mrs MSU's pick and I guess all the nostalgia and memberberries that this serves up worked better for her than it did for me. It's a coming-of-age drama-comedy that wasn't all that funny and didn't have much in the way of tension, but it was charming, cute, and surprisingly frank in places as Margaret attempts to negotiate a new school, new friends, and the threat of puberty. There's an interesting subplot of her maternal grandparents being Christian and disapproving of their daughter's marriage to a Jew but it didn't really pay off at any point. Rachel McAdams is acting within her means throughout, Abby Ryder Forston as Margaret and Elle Graham as her friend Nancy are great, but it's Kathy Bates as Margaret's granny that steals the show. 6/10

Ivo deliberately throwing the Live task was probably my highlight of the series so far.

David Mitchell has said he'd never do it, but I still think he'd be great. Ade Edmonson, Lenny Henry, Lucy Porter might be fun. Sean Locke would've been good in his pre-dead days.

095 The Evil Dead -- I don't know what's more amazing; that Sam Raimi could make this for around $300k, or he was able to raise the investment in the first place, but what he does with that money is still remarkable and it's astonishing how some cheap practical effects and a vocal octaver could create such a chilling atmosphere. The acting is a bit overblown but it's also much better than we could have any reason to expect. The infamous tree scene hasn't aged well, but it was never applauded in the first place, and the movie would be better without it, and there's never much of an explanation as to why there are spooky goings on even before the incantations are made, and it's lost some of it's punch in 40 years but overall, there's still a huge amount to admire in a brutal 85-minute assault on the senses. 8/10 096 Evil Dead II -- It's a different style of horror here with far more emphasis on the comedy than before, which renders the gore -- of which there is a ton -- in a far more palatable frame. There are some incredible sequences here -- the headless torso cutting itself down the middle with the chainsaw by accident, the eyeball flying across the room, the possessed hand etc -- and while they're kinda gross, it's like the movie is nudging you in the ribs at the same time. Bruce Campbell is camping it up big time here but there are still really clever uses of camera angles that maintain a genuinely unhinged and hallucinatory feel. And once again, it's all done and dusted in under 90 minutes without feeling rushed. If anything, it's still quite exhausting. 9/10 097 Ghosted -- Chris Evans is a farmer who sells plants at an artisan market -- because of course he is -- when he meets Ana De Armas and after one date he is convinced that she's his perfect partner only for her to secretly be a special agent -- because of course she is -- and he inadvertently gets caught up in her world of espionage and adventure which allows the pair of them to discuss various aspects of their relationship while they drive through high-speed chases and shoot bad people. It's a terribly cliched premise that's made all the worse thanks to a truly diabolical script that I've seen some reviewers guess was written by ChatGPT. If that was the case, I think we can all sleep soundly that our robot overlords perhaps won't be enslaving the planet any time soon. Evans and De Armas, to their credit, manage to be entire charisma vacuums as they bump through one pointless encounter to the next, and director Dexter Fletcher has done so much better with Rocketman and (kinda) Sunshine on Leith. 2/10 098 Army of Darkness -- The least Evil Deady of the Evil Dead movies is still camp as f**k and plays out like a more twisted version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or a comparably twisted Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's good fun, and very funny in places, but I think the reason it's taken me this long to finally watch it all the way through in one viewing is that it almost feels like a spoof of itself. Ash is a real arsehole at the start and through the movie he -- shudder -- discovers things about himself and starts fighting for the people he saw as peasants at the start. Or something. I'm not sure I want that from an Evil Dead movie. In keeping with the others, it's a short affair so it doesn't eat up a lot of your time, and it's not bad at all. It's just not what I expected. 6/10 099 Evil Dead -- I loved an awful lot about this the first time I saw it, from the poster, to the soundtrack, the corny dialogue, the story, the premise, the color palette, the effects, the handy availability of a nail gun and chainsaw. And after watching all the Evil Dead movies this week, I just love it even more. Just a great combination of gore, guts, jumps, scares, and dread. Poor Mia the junkie is coming off heroin at her mother's old cabin in the woods and for a while her demonic possession is mistaken for cold turkey. It's such a great conceit that makes the realization for the others that something else is afoot all the more effective. Before we even get there, before the title card comes up, there's a little prologue that in itself is pretty fucked up. And on this viewing, there are even a couple of minor chuckles in there. There are horror movies that work better on a psychological level, that push my buttons, that tap into my own fears, but for what it is, Evil Dead for me is among the best in class. 9/10 100 Chevalier -- Proof, if ever it was needed, that Paris turns everyone into an arsehole. I went into this not knowing very much at all about the life and times of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and I came out of it none the wiser. The story of the son of a slave and her wealthy master, uprooted and planted in Paris as a protege musician, who rubbed shoulders with royalty and nobility would be an interesting tale, but Stephen Williams' movie really robs the biography of any nuance and for the longest time presents as something of a forbidden romance as Chevalier (Kelvin Harrison Jr) has an affair with his leading lady, Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving). The problem really stems from the fact that Chevalier isn't really presented as a likable character and his challenges are mostly overcome with ease, and his later interest in the revolution seem purely motivated because he didn't get the head job with Paris Opera. It's such a shallow look at what I'm sure was an interesting life, I cringe to call it a biopic. The music, however, is great although I was under no illusion at any point that any of the actors are responsible for any of it. 3/10

He says it wrong twice, realizes he's said it wrong, then says it right, then says it wrong again under the qualifier of that's how Russians say it, to suggest that when he said it wrong the first two times, he was actually saying it right.

090 Tetris -- One of a recent spate of movies about tech or business. Air is in cinemas just now and I saw a movie about the Blackberry is coming soon. The Social Network was probably about as interesting as a movie about contract law can get, but I still enjoyed this quite a bit. Taron Egerton is great as Henk Rogers, a tech entrepreneur who spots a new game at a Vegas conference built by Soviet programmer Alexey Pajitnov, Nikita Efremov, who officially works for the Soviet's government-owned version of Silicon Valley. The movie follows the licensing hoops Rogers has to jump through while keeping track of Pajitnov's run-ins with the KGB who want their share, and Toby Jones's Robert Stein who controls the rights. Egerton here is channeling a weird kinda hybrid of Matt Damon from the Oceans movies, and Michael Keaton from The Founder, and it works brilliantly. The first half of the movie is fun and inventive and uses bright graphical overlays that are delightful in a nostalgic kind of way, along with a bright 8-bit and 16-bit soundtrack, and it's a timely reminder of just how awful the Maxwell family -- who somehow had a dog in this fight -- really were. The second half gets bogged down a bit when, much like Tetris itself, it fails to evolve into much more than it was to begin with, but also in keeping with the game, it's still pretty satisfying watching it all fall into place. 7/10 091 The Souvenir (#87 in the A24 series) -- Joanna Hogg's semi-autobiographical debut is absolutely dripping in pretension and self-importance. Honor Swinton Byrne plays Julie, a film student who lives in Knightsbridge -- Knightsbridge! -- who wants to make a film about poor people in Sunderland, who has parties with her friends and fellow students when Anthony, Tom Burke, enters her life. He claims to work for the Foreign Office and can't talk about his job too much -- it's all hush-hush -- and he has an obvious heroin problem that Julie simply refuses to see for the longest time, by which point they're already a couple, and he's already borrowing money from her, and stealing from her, which sends her back to her mansion home to beg for money from her mother, Tilda Swinton, as she resolutely refuses to kick his arse out. It's so ludicrously over the top and tone-deaf that I became convinced it was meant to be funny, except I wasn't laughing. The biggest smile came onto my face right at the end, after the credits, when it cheerfully announced that a sequel would be happening soon. Well, there's optimism for you. 3/10 092 Evil Dead Rise -- I love Evil Dead movies so much that I went to the first screening on a rainy Thursday night when I would normally be tucked up in bed. A decade after the Fede Alvarez reboot, Lee Cronin, who I thought did a decent job with The Hole in the Ground, has written and directed a sequel that isn't so much a natural progression, but a new story with different characters that plays with the same set of rules. Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is a mother to teenagers Danny and Bridget (Morgan Davies and Gabrielle Echols) and tween Kassie (Nell Fisher). They live in a converted and soon-to-be-condemned bank in Los Angeles when they're visited by Ellie's sister, Beth (Lily Sullivan), who is a bit of a black sheep, works as a guitar technician that everyone confuses with her being a groupie, and she's just found out she's pregnant. A minor earthquake tears a hole in the parking level basement as the kids are heading out for pizza, and this leads Danny the DJ down to an old bank vault where he finds a familiar, nasty-looking book, and some old vinyl and when he plays the recordings, literally (kinda) all hell is released, Ellie is quickly possessed, and the remainder of the movie is about how and how many the remaining characters, including a couple of disposable neighbors, are going to get out. Cronin absolutely knows how to make an Evil Dead. His script puts some of the humour that was missing from the reboot, but it's nothing like the slapstick of Evil Dead 2. There are a couple of questionable moments that my suspension of disbelief just refused to let go of -- When will people stop reading books made with teeth? How consistently can you spin a record at 78 rpm with your finger? -- but the fact remains that this is a very strong entry into a much-beloved series that manages to be an homage to what came before while being inventive enough to tell its story its own way and Lily Sullivan as Beth, covered in blood, grasping on to the mandatory chainsaw, all white eyes and white teeth, makes a fantastic female Bruce Campbell. 8/10 093 Beau is Afraid (#133 in the A24 series) -- This is going to divide people. Ari Aster really has a thing about head trauma. He also has a thing about anxiety. And after this, I'm sure he could do with a chat with his mum. Beau Is Afraid is such a difficult movie to describe. It's part comedy, part horror, and kafkaesque seems to be a word invented just to get involved somewhere. In broad strokes of things that might have happened, Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau, an anxious middle-aged man, terrified of everything, who unfortunately lives in the most terrifying apartment in the most terrifying part of town. Everything he fears can go wrong, does go wrong, and during an attempt to get home to visit his mother, his apartment keys are stolen, he misses his flight, and his home is eventually invaded by everyone on the street. Matters take a turn for the worst when he's attacked and stabbed by a naked serial killer and then run down. There are many moments during its perhaps indulgent three-hour runtime, that don't seem to make much sense, and maybe they don't, but everywhere I looked during the movie there was remarkable attention to detail. Names of businesses, graffiti, TV shows, are all cram packed with little nuggets and it all suggests to me that there is method even in the darker moments of its madness. I don't suggest that I got it in its entirety, and I'm not convinced that seeing it again would necessarily help, but I enjoyed being bemused at it for what it was, or what it struck me to be, which was a study or an impression of anxiety, guilt, and how Ari Aster feels he was a massive disappointment to his mother, told through a language of generational trauma, all weaved into one of the most convincing nightmares committed to screen. 7/10 094 Tomorrow Never Dies -- Forgot to log this one last week. I see this one towards the bottom of many Bond lists and I have no idea why it scores so low. Admittedly, perhaps GoldenEye has it beat but I didn't think there was an awful lot in it, and it was somewhat refreshing that the baddie here was a media mogul, and the fake news aspects couldn't be more of the current time. Brosnan feels entirely settled into the Bond role at this point and he's helped by a great supporting cast. Jonathan Pryce excels as the Steve Jobs lookalike Elliot Carver, Teri Hatcher is his wife, and Michelle Yeoh proves she's been kicking ass in the movies for decades as Chinese superspy Wai Lin. The sequence where she and Bond are handcuffed and making their escape on motorbike is a bit of a masterclass in chase sequences and practical stunts. To score this below Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever, as it is on Rotten Tomatoes, is lunacy. 6/10

I've really enjoyed this series so far. The drum task and the bingo stuff was just wonderfully funny.

086 80 for Brady -- I hate the Patriots and I hate Tom Brady but I love Sally Field and I hoped that there'd be a few laughs to be had from this. Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and the aforementioned Sally Field star as four unlikeable elderly Pats and Brady fans who decide as a last hoorah to go to Super Bowl LI. There's the most meager of plots surrounding the means in which the ladies get tickets in the shadow of ill-health, but mostly this is an excuse to have multiple set pieces where the friends enter a wing-eating competition, play high stakes poker, consume edibles, and other activities which are supposed to be funny because the women are old and dottery. The movie also hopes that we've forgotten how that particular Super Bowl ended up. Really poor stuff. 3/10 087 Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum -- A Korean found footage horror movie, anyone? I had my doubts but it turned out to be an unexpected hit. The story might not be based on truth, but as far as I can make out, it's a real location that has its own real urban legends, so it's at least based on commonly accepted falsehoods. Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital was closed down in the 1970s, but not because of any mass suicide from its patients as the movie would have you believe. A group of friends, filming for part of a web series called Horror Times, get all GoPro'd to the hilt and break into the abandoned hospital to film the ghostly goings-on. This means lots of close-up shots of a static face while the background moves about, a method that always freaks me out a bit at the best of times. It's a slow burn toward the denouement, which for me is not a bad thing at all, and all the way through there is a simmering level of dread that amplifies as the story progresses. The atmosphere of the dark hospital at night is pretty much perfect for scares and jumps and catching glimpses of weird shapes in the shadows. The subtitles are a bit rubbish but it's well-acted, genuinely scary, and the final third is nuts. 7/10 088 Murder Mystery 2 -- The first one hasn't lingered much in my memory but out of all the shite Adam Sandler movies, the ones that feature Jennifer Aniston seem to be slightly less shite. The two of them have good chemistry together, they just do. Nick and Audrey Spitz are invited to a private island and the wedding of a billionaire character who may or may not have been in the first movie -- I honestly can't remember -- along with some other characters I may or may not have been introduced to previously. It doesn't matter. Once all the potential suspects have shown up, the billionaire is kidnapped. Nick and Audrey, with the addition of Mark Strong's hostage negotiator, and the investigation leaps to Paris where matters that are already complicated take a few additional twists and turns. It's quite good fun while not being enormously funny, but a setpiece in a van in Paris makes it just about worthwhile. It's billed as 89 minutes long but there are 10 minutes of credits at the end and the miserly runtime is in its favor. I think I kinda liked it. 6/10 089 Renfield -- Urgh. I'm not thinking much of Nicholas Cage's cosplay adventures so far in 2023. I really didn't like his cowboy movie The Old Way, and I really didn't care much for him being a vampire in this. Nicolas Hoult plays the same sort of character as he does in everything I've seen him in, only this time he's called Renfield and he's Dracula's "familiar" -- basically a servant who ensures his master is looked after (not like that) and well fed. From this perspective, we get the script's only interesting twist, which is the co-dependent relationship between master and servant, both of whom need the other to survive. The jokes, such as they are, threaten to land best in the adult support group that Renfield joins in New Orleans. But inexplicably, this aspect of the storyline spends a lot of its time in the backseat while a storyline of a drugs cartel, the Lobo Family, takes the wheel, presumably as a method to introduce Awkwafina to proceedings. I'm trying to remember the last time I enjoyed Awkwafina in a movie, and it might be back in Oceans Eight, which was terrible, but I seem to have fond memories of her performance. Here, she's phoning it in as Officer Quincy, the only good apple in a barrel full of bad who are all in the Lobo's back pockets. She's so wooden that with a decent aim at Dracula's heart, she could've wound the movie up within 10 minutes, which would at least have spared us from the attempts to convince us that Renfield and Quincy had any romantic potential whatsoever. In the absence of anything better, McKay tries a sleight of hand to distract us with the ropiest CGI blood and gore I've seen in a long time and if it's meant to shock or turn the stomach, it flat-out fails. There is, though, an awful lot of it, far more than can be considered necessary or effective. But surely the biggest crime of all is that there are long periods of the movie where Nicholas Cage just disappears, and given that he's about 110% Nick Cage when he's at his Nick Cagiest, this is unforgivable. 4/10

Bob trending on Twitter always gets me worried but he's trending now because people are talking about which celeb they'd like to be stuck in a caravan with over a rainy weekend.