Dan Says its Alright

  Single location thriller Flight Risk is the latest film to suffer from an "over eager" trailer. That is to say, the trailer covers pretty much everything that happens in the movie, more or less in the exact order it occurs. On the plus side, it isn't a film that was ever going to keep any secrets so it doesn't suffer as much as some others have. FBI agent Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) takes a flight with informant Winston (Topher Grace) but a short way into their journey they discover the pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is actually a mob hitman there to end them both before Winston can squeal. There is a brief opening at an Alaskan cabin and the finale is on a runway, but for the most part it's just the three of them in the cabin of a small plain. Events unfold almost like a theatrical play as the three talk and argue with intermittent attempts at murder.  The main thing to know about Flight Risk is that it is ridiculous. The decisions the characters make a...

  Babygirl opens with Nicole Kidman and husband Antonio Banderas having the kind of passionate, intimate sex you see in Hollywood movies. When they are done, Kidman quickly scampers off to another room to enjoy some pornography. Hollywood sex you see, often doesn't cut it in the real world. And that's really the crux of writer/director Halina Reijn's latest film, even ideal isn't good enough if you aren't being honest with yourself. Kidman plays Romy Mathis, a tech company CEO with a charming and handsome theatre director husband (Banderas), a seemingly good relationship with her two children and at least two palatial homes. She has accomplished the "have it all" life women are told to aspire to and works hard to keep it, striving to be the best at her job, undertaking a painstaking (and painful looking) beauty routine including such delights as numbing free botox and ice baths and attempts to be the ideal loving and supportive wife. The problem is, she is...

Wolf Man is Blumhouse's second modern take on a classic Universal monster following 2020's The Invisible Man.  The previous film's writer/director, Leigh Whannel, returns on both fronts and while Wolf Man isn't as successful as his previous effort it is better than the insipid horror-lite fair the studio was putting out last year. This is not a not a straight retelling of the classic wolf man story, portraying the transformation as more of a virus than a curse and dispensing with any notion of a full moon being involved. These suckers are monsters 24/7 and when we eventually get a full look at the titular beast, he doesn't really look anything like a wolf. The creature idea here is a more Cronenbergian picture of a human body twisted into something disturbing, although despite some fairly grim stages of transformation we never come close to anything like The Fly. After an opening section set thirty years previously and an introduction to the central family, the maj...

  The opening scene of A Real Pain , showing a bright eyed Kieren Culkin sitting alone in a busy airport to the score of Chopin piano music, really sets the tone for what the film intends to be. You are about watch a semi-whimsical but worthy dramedy that is going to use characters that are, at first glance, entertainingly comedic to hit you in the feels. It certainly attains those goals and will tug at your heartstrings, even if you can see the notes it's going to play in advance. Jessie Eisenberg and Kieren Culkin play David and Benji, Jewish American cousins who travel to Poland to take part in a holocaust tour and visit the home of their late grandmother, using money she left them in her will. David is reserved and a little neurotic, dealing with issues through exercise, therapy and medication, aka the American way. This leads to him being emotionally withdrawn, much to the lamentation of Benji, who misses the version of his cousin who felt everything acutely. Benji himself is ...

Bye bye 2024, time to put your ducks in a row. If ducks are films I saw in the cinema. As ever, ranking is purely my opinion (although my opinion is obviously correct), a movie needs to have been released in the UK during calendar year 2024 and I have to have seen it on the big screen for it to be eligible.   60. The Strangers: Chapter 1 Unrelentingly tedious reboot of an already mediocre home invasion thriller that ramps up nothing but the banality. If your idea of entertainment is watching an insufferable couple hide while a man and a woman in stupid masks walk about slowly then this is the film for you. Otherwise the only scary thing here is the fact they have already filmed chapters two and three.  59. In a Violent Nature You don't need to make people drink curdled milk to know it would taste awful. Similarly, you shouldn't need to make people watch a slasher film that follows the killer for the whole runtime to know it's a terrible idea. Dialogue is replaced by endless...