Self/Less is a sci-fi/drama starring Ryan Reynolds and Ben Kingsley as the same character doing the old body swap routine. Kingsley plays a billionaire on his death bed who signs up to have his consciousness transferred to a much younger body, but here’s the catch – the body belongs to a man who sold himself to pay for his daughter’s medical bills, and Ryan Reynolds is gradually getting his consciousness back.
It’s a fine sci-fi concept. This film feels like a decent rough draft for a Black Mirror episode, but as a major feature film it’s completely lacking in so many areas.
The performances are acceptable, like there’s nothing horrendously offensive going on here. There’s nothing laughably bad either. Everything is so just dull and unmemorable. The movie has some level of momentum for a while whilst our protagonist unravels the plot, but then the script crashes into a brick wall and continues on at a snails pace. It’s surprising though because there are so many twists. None of them are particularly good twists and there’s no “gotcha” moment where the movie catches you offguard with something completely unexpected. It’s just full of a lot of attempted twists and turns, and yet even with all of these obstacles thrown in the way, the story just feels like there’s nothing to it.
The main character is really not likeable and I never bought the idea that Kingsley and Reynolds were portraying the same character. Not just because they are two completely different actors but because I got a very different vibe from each actor. Because of this, I could never really get into the character. And Reynolds is supposed to be playing this guy who essentially has two characters in him fighting over his brain and it just doesn’t work. I like Ryan Reynolds and he does great in certain roles, but I felt like he was very much miscast here.
There are some nifty little action sequences, which are fine. But they are few and far between. The action almost feels obligatory. “Well it’s a Ryan Reynolds movie and there’s nothing else in the script really, let’s give Ryan a gun and blow up a car or something.”
The movie is shot well. But I was genuinely surprised to find that this is directed by Tarsem Singh. Someone who directed something so bright, creative and enjoyable as The Fall came out and directed this completely generic and bland sci-fi movie.
I’m stuck really for what else I can say about this movie without just reiterating myself. But Self/Less is just remarkably bland and without any substance whatsoever. I think that this is the worst kind of movie that you can make. It’s not bad, but it’s far from being remotely good. I would rather watch a terrible movie because at least there’s a fun factor with truly terrible movies and you remember them. You won’t remember Self/Less an hour after seeing it and you might even struggle to stay awake and conscious during the duration of the film. I know I did.
If you’re a massive sci-fi buff or you’re a mad Ryan Reynolds fan, then maybe Self/Less is a fine movie to fall asleep to on a lazy Sunday. But otherwise, forget about it.
Justice League is the latest offering from a studio desperately trying to tap into some of that sweet, sweet superhero cinematic universe pie. Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon deliver us a film about a group of superheroes who band together to take on a CGI enemy in a film with your run of the mill generic comic book plot.
The highest praise I could probably lump onto Justice League is that it’s not as big of a train wreck as Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad. It does some things okay. Some facets of it are enjoyable. And it didn’t drag to me as much as the other DCEU films have. But even so, the film is a mess and it feels exactly like what it is: not the vision of a filmmaker, but the product of a marketing team and a committee who are completely lost and don’t have any plan in place. DC/Warner have rushed so hard and fast to get here and it feels exactly that: rushed, even though Man of Steel came out back in 2013. The MCU always seemed to at least have a plan, some kind of outline. We got two Iron Man films, a Hulk, a Captain America and a Thor film before we got to the Avengers. And those movies also introduced side characters like Black Widow, Nick Fury, Hawkeye etc. and it all built towards the big climax of The Avengers “assembling” and taking on a major foe that they wouldn’t have been able to repel on their own. Not only that, but The Avengers helped launch “Phase II”, showing that there are people over at Marvel that seem to have some clue as to where they want to go. I just don’t get that vibe with any of the DC movies.
Justice League, in comparison, just feels incredibly forced. We got Man of Steel, which depicted a rather dramatic, dark and somewhat bland take on Superman, followed by an abortion of a film in Batman v Superman, and a Suicide Squad movie which had no impact on this plot. Wonder Woman is still the only shining gem in the DC film universe. Justice League is bringing us The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg. Sure, we can sit here and say that most of these heroes need no introduction, I’ll be the first to say that origin stories are overdone. But in the context of the DCEU, it would have added far more weight to have followed at least The Flash and Aquaman into a movie before we came to the big team up movie. I don’t need a Cyborg movie though. The character did nothing for me in this film.
Ben Affleck, once again, is solid as Bruce Wayne. He was one of the best things about Batman v Superman. He plays the older, more experienced Batman very well and it’ll be a shame if he does hang up the cape and cowl prematurely before getting to do a solo Batman film. Gal Gadot, of course, is great as Wonder Woman. We know all this already. And the movie also knows you love Wonder Woman, which is why it inserts a random action scene with her at the start of the film that’s completely unrelated to the plot in any way. The people love Wonder Woman, let’s give them Wonder Woman.
Ezra Miller as The Flash is enjoyable. I can see him not being everyone’s cup of tea, but he fills the void of comedy relief very well. And maybe I liked him purely because this universe desperately needed some lighthearted humour here and there. They just need to be careful to not make him too quippy in the future and to give his character some kind of weight.
Jason Momoa plays a badass Aquaman. Although outside of one or two scenes underwater in Atlantis, there’s really nothing aqua about him. He’s just a dude with a trident. And the underwater Atlantis scenes felt very rushed and shallow. Like they hadn’t fleshed out any ideas for Atlantis or anything at all and so they avoided showing us much of anything. I am interested to see how James Wan handles the character and the setting. But they played it fairly close to the chest with him here.
Victor Stone, the Cyborg, just didn’t click for me. The character has a small, minor arc, so at least there’s a tiny amount of development. But he’s the most forgettable and dull of the Justice League. He’s a cyborg that can do whatever the script requires at the time.
And together, this band of superheroes will take on Steppenwolf, an underwritten, generic CGI villain that you will forget all about the second you leave the cinema. I was reminded a lot of Thor: The Dark World, actually. In that there was a villain who had a devious world conquering plan of some sort, but it was all very vague and rushed and unmemorable. I still can’t remember the name of the villain from Thor: The Dark World, and give me a few days and I won’t remember Steppenwolf either.
I’ll enter spoiler territory from here on in. But as this movie follows on from Batman v Superman, we’re constantly reminded that Superman is dead. Of course, this dramatic death lasts all of half the movie, as he is randomly brought back from the dead… for reasons. There are these three MacGuffins that the villain is trying to find, and the heroes use one of these MacGuffins, combined with the kryptonian technology that Lex Luthor used to creature Doomsday in the last movie to bring Superman back to life. It’s exactly as dumb as it sounds. The whole “death of Superman” thing is so heavy handed and carries no dramatic weight whatsoever. He died in his second movie, and it was a bad movie. And he’s brought back quite early on here. The thing is, no one ever bought that Superman was actually dead. If they killed him off say, five or six movies in, then maybe it would carry some weight. If Captain America dies in the next Avengers movie (I got money on him or Iron Man), then it will matter. We’ve been with the character for years now, we followed him on several fun, cinematic adventures, and a death this many phases in would feel more than likely permanent. Killing Superman in his second film has no dramatic weight. Nobody cares. They’ve followed a drab, sad Superman through two bad movies. At best, his death is a plot device to motivate Batman and Wonder Woman to start the Justice League. And I guess that had to be the idea. But surely there are less hamfisted ways to do that than to do the Death of Superman arc.
I admittedly did like the interactions between Superman and The Flash. But also, this suffers from the same stupid thing that the Marvel movies do, and that’s find stupid excuses to make the heroes fight.
I love these characters, at least on paper. I have been reading Batman comics since I was a kid. And I love the Justice League as a whole. And I genuinely feel that Wonder Woman was a great film. But this whole DC movie franchise – Wonder Woman excluded – has been a disaster. They put their eggs in the wrong basket with Zack Snyder, and rather than plan a fun series of films that link together and form a coherent story, they’ve made a mess. Just a big old mess in a race to get that phat Marvel money. Their entire plan of attack has been “well, let’s do what Marvel did.” But when you’re being just a weaker, less fun version of the MCU, why should the public spend money on the DCEU? I hold out hope that The Batman, Aquaman and the next Wonder Woman will all be good, but Warner’s track record doesn’t look good.
In closing, it’s not the bloated mess that Batman v Superman was by a decent margin. It doesn’t drag like BvS or Suicide Squad either. There’s some fun to be had here. And maybe, maybe, it’s laying the foundation for a good series of solo films. But again, it’s every over the top Zack Snyder CGI actionfest you’ve seen before, just with the occasional Joss Whedon-ism thrown in.
Speaking as someone that hasn’t seen the original 1990 Flatliners with Kiefer Sutherland, I can only assume that this movie falls in the same category as Point Break when it comes to “films that didn’t need a remake”.
The key concept of the film is that a group of ambitious young med students become fascinated with stopping their hearts and temporarily dying before reviving each other to learn more about the afterlife, only “something” comes back with them.
It’s a fine, shlocky and dumb premise that would work well in a silly horror movie. Only Flatliners takes itself way too seriously. At the end of the day, I wasn’t quite sure who this movie was targeted at. It’s too dumb for the general movie going public looking for a good thriller, the scares are too few and far between (and really, more or less non-existent) to appeal to the horror movie crowd, and it’s not campy enough to appeal to people looking for a laugh. It’s a sterile movie that lacks any heart or sense of fun or tension.
The characters are all incredibly two dimensional and unlikeable, with the exception of Ray (played by Diego Luna). Ray is the more mature student who is a good 10-years older than everyone and doesn’t really approve of these dumb kids doing this stuff, but he goes along with it because he wants to bone down with one of the girls. But he at least has the sense not to go through with “flatlining” himself. I may go into spoiler territory here but it’s just easier to discuss this movie with spoilers than dance around it.
Every character has something in their past that they’re trying to hide (except Ray I guess). The rich kid jock knocked up a girl and abandoned her, the goody two-shoes once spread a nude pic of a class mate for laughs and the bland vanilla girl accidentally killed a patient and then covered it up to avoid repercussions. These reveals really just make you further dislike already unlikeable characters. Ellen Page killed her sister by texting whilst driving. And the big thing is that whatever you’re most guilty about comes back to haunt you for some reason. So she keeps seeing the ghost of her little sister. It’s dumb but checks out. But then it comes off the rails when the others start seeing the ghosts and people who aren’t even dead. The idea is that whatever has come back with them from flatlining is haunting them as whatever they’re afraid of or guilty about. It’s so stupid though because once they’ve “learned their lesson” and made good on whatever they were guilty about, My Name is Earl style, the hauntings stop and they’re all better and stronger people for it. SPOILERS except for Ellen Page who fucking dies half way through the movie. Her character was the least deserving of death. I mean sure, there should be penalties for texting and driving, but not death. And there was no way for her to redeem herself given that her sister was dead. She’s not like the snobby rich kid that can just go back to the girl he knocked up and apologise and start being a good dad and all is forgiven. And Ellen Page was really the core of the film as the only character keeping you remotely interested. She didn’t have much to work with character wise, but she did her best. And Diego Luna does perfectly fine. Everyone else is just going through the motions playing forgettable characters with no depth.
You could forgive the dumb plot and inane story decisions if they ramped up the horror element and made a genuinely scary movie. But this is so pedestrian. Every attempted scare is telegraphed five miles away, and even the handful of jump scares will just make you groan.
Flatliners certainly “flatlined” critically. This was dead on arrival. They shouldn’t have tried to resuscitate this film. I’ll stop there. But this is very much a skippable movie with virtually no redeemable qualities. The most positive thing I can say is that, for the material she’s given, Ellen Page does seem to be trying. And the movie isn’t embarrassingly bad and there are some pretty shots in there. But it’s just so boring and dull.
Baby Driver follows Baby, a skilled getaway driver who uses music to drown out his tinnitus, who gets involved too deep with a manipulative crime lord and has to pay off his debt. Basically that’s the gist of it anyway. Baby Driver goes to the Guardians of the Galaxy school of giving us an organic reason to have a banging soundtrack. And of course being an Edgar Wright film, it’s super stylish.
Baby, as a character, is somewhat of a blank slate. He’s naive but not really dumb. He doesn’t have a ton of personality. He’s not really likeable but he’s not really dislikeable either. He’s just kind of there and the movie follows him and keeps you engaged by showing you the world around him. Kevin Spacey plays the big crime lord that gives Baby his work while also forcing him to pay off a debt to him. And you know, it’s Kevin Spacey, you know you’re going to get a good performance at least. Although I watched this initially before all the big allegations about him came out and his career imploded. This may actually be Spacey’s last major role, at least for a very long time. But anyway, I’ll try and focus on the movie. His character really threw me off tonally. At one stage he feels like the big bad villain that you don’t want to cross, almost on a Walter White level. It seems like he’s the main antagonist. But then suddenly the movie changes direction and he comes across as kind of a paternal and protective figure. I couldn’t figure him out and his character just comes off the rails for me at the end of the movie to the point that it sort of hurts the plot for me and makes you question the characters motivations. His decisions and actions towards the end of the movie don’t really line up with the character was see earlier in the film.
Your other players in the film consist of Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm and Jon Bernthal, who are varying degrees of crazy criminals. None of them really do anything overly engaging or memorable though and Jon Hamm almost feels like a horror movie villain by the end. He just keeps on coming back when logic says he shouldn’t.
Lily James plays the love interest in the movie and it’s a very classic, traditional boy-meets-girl kind of romance. She’s fine and dare I say likeable in the role although the romance subplot does take precedence over the film’s action. And in most cases, that’s fine, having a good story is fine. But I feel like the story is just a little bit weak and flimsy and the thing that’s doing the real heavy lifting in this movie is the style and action. Part of me wished that they went to the Mad Max: Fury Road school of making everything action and minimizing everything else. Because really that’s all Baby Driver’s got going outside of some neat performances and a few funny gags – style.
An Edgar Wright movie will always be entertaining to watch. This story in the hands of a more pedestrian director I think would’ve come out very boring and dull, but it’s Edgar Wright so it’s a fun and easy watch and the action scenes are insanely well done and choreographed. I like this movie, I think it’s a solid film but even so I feel in the minority as all I’ve really seen is endless praise lumped on the movie. It’s pretty good, but not great. It’s got great style, some decent performances, but the substance isn’t there for me.
I’m hard pressed to think of a more middle-of-the-road sort of movie. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is exactly what you would expect it to be based off the trailers and plot. It’s Ryan Reynolds, playing an elite prestigious bodyguard who has to ironically protect an infamous hitman (Samuel L Jackson) that he’s had an intense rivalry with for years, in order to bring down an evil Belarus dictator (Gary Oldman). Whacky hijinx ensue.
It’s generic, bloated and completely formulaic. But isn’t that what you expect though? Can you really trash a movie when it is exactly, 100%, perfectly what you expect it to be? It is Ryan Reynolds playing every character Ryan Reynolds has ever played in an Odd Couple situation with Samuel L Jackson playing every character Samuel L Jackson has ever played almost to the point that it feels like a parody. Like this could have been a 2 hour SNL sketch.
There are laughs though, and as the movie progresses it does start to work more as everything starts to find its niche. Salma Hayek is hilarious in her role and there are some funny recurring gags but the movie knows when enough is enough. Gary Oldman’s performance as the villain is fine but I found myself sitting there like “why’d they get Gary Oldman to do this?” They could have gotten any older actor that can put on a Russian accent to fill the role. It’s such a generic movie bad guy role and it’s so not memorable.
The movie does have a shaky start though as I feel like we’re almost working off of assumed knowledge. You know that scene in the trailer where Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson meet and immediate break out into a fist fight because they know each other? That sort of thing is explained well after the fact. We’re not really shown how well the two characters know each other until much later. There’s also a pretty fabricated romance sideplot (I did say it was generic and formulaic) and the movie wants you to care about it from early on, but it’s hard to care about characters that have largely been assholes, especially from the start of the movie. Give the characters a chance to become endearing first before telling us “these two have gotta get together and you want it to happen!”
The movie is directed by Patrick Hughes, who’s biggest claim to fame so far is directing The Expendables 3. So you kind of get much the same here. Perfectly competent and acceptable directing. The action sequences are fine, and I appreciate that they didn’t go full Jason Bourne and have everything shaky cam with your usual rapid jump cuts.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a fine enough premise built entirely around two actors riffing off each other. I do wonder if there were parts of the script that just said “Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson improv some jokes and maybe sing. Samuel L Jackson calls someone a motherfucker.” It’s funny, but it’s not memorable. Completely forgettable action shlock that’s like fast food. Cheap, easy and forgettable. You don’t need to go out of your way to get it, but if it’s there and there’s nothing else, then eh, it’ll do.
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