Meewella | Critic

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Tag: Tyler Bates

QuickView: John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

“How you do anything is how you do everything.”

Marquis

With Chapter 3, I cautioned that the John Wick franchise was on the verge of diminishing returns through familiar repetition; in Chapter 4 it collapses under the weight of its High Table mythology in an overwrought and charmless instalment that runs to nearly three hours. Visual style remains front and centre with fighting figures silhouetted against beautifully lit Japanese decor in Osaka before moving to a Berlin rave, slick with cascading water and neon. The action choreography contains plenty of impressive moments and attention to detail, like a body pivoting on an arrow-pinned joint, but they are strung together in a manner more exhausting than entertaining, with little sense of fighting through interconnected spaces. With better editing, much of the first hour could be excised. Atrocious dialogue belabours the flimsy plot (“It looks like we have a conundrum. A quandary, if you will. A real life dilemma.”), though some new faces are welcome — Bill Skarsgård’s sneering French villain is easy to loathe, whilst Donnie Yen offers the charisma that Wick seems to have lost, playing a blind assassin with largely nonsensical combat abilities. The last hour of the film soars: a kinetic chase across Paris to Sacré-Cœur displays some of the best driving stunt choreography in recent memory, and a lengthy fight up and down the stairs to the church shows Wick earning every step. This strong closing may explain the predominantly positive response to a lumbering action film at nearly twice the length of this year’s similarly stylised Sisu. For all the merit of its individual moments, I cannot imagine wanting to sit through Chapter 4 again.

5/10

QuickView: Pearl (2022)

“You think others won’t notice? You can’t keep your true self hidden forever, Pearl.”

Ruth

Filmed back-to-back with X, the only cross-over in this “origin story” is Mia Goth, who co-wrote with director Ti West and is magnificent in her embodiment of the demure, unstable Pearl. West continues his blend of horror and period filmmaking, this time drawing inspiration from early technicolour movies like The Wizard of Oz, the vibrant colours of its early 20th century Americana at odds with its tone. Pearl desperately wants to be a star but extended shots of her performative stage smile devolve into an unsettling rictus grin. Even in less obvious moments, West has a skill for allowing the camera to linger a moment too long to be comfortable. Pearl uses the 1918 flu pandemic to draw on viewers’ recent pandemic experiences of fear, distrust and isolation. This allows the audience some empathy with Pearl’s sense of suffocation on the family farm — caring for her invalid father under the yoke of her stern German mother — even as we know that her response is destined to be horrific. My experience with Pearl was much the same as X: its depth may be limited but there is plenty to enjoy in its period detail and atmosphere.

7/10

QuickView: X (2022)

“Alright, that’s enough jabbering. I reckon it’s about high time we cut to the chase and give the people what they want to see.”

Wayne

Ti West’s horror flick set in 1979 is more than just a throwback — he expertly recreates the visual identity of early slashers, using it as a tonal palette even as he subverts many of their clichés. For example, the premise of a group of young filmmakers travelling to a remote town to make an adult movie provides a justification for the requisite titillation whilst also undermining the traditional rules linking promiscuity and survival in exploitation flicks. There is no mystery to solve in the killer’s identity since there are so few people on the isolated property and, although X raises the topic of youth and aging, it has little to say beyond the jealousy that gulf invokes. Typically, self-aware horror films swiftly descend into parody but West avoids this, choosing to maintain the enjoyably sinister atmosphere by delivering on gory scares he sets up. The closest analogue is Robert Rodriguez’s modernised yet reverent approach to grindhouse movies in Planet Terror. Fans of the genre will enjoy the period detail — particularly in the distinct visual style of the film-within-a-film — but it’s unlikely to appeal to those without an interest in either slashers or filmmaking (and ideally both).

7/10

QuickView: 300 (2006)

“Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty… For tonight, we dine in hell!”

King Leonidas

Fittingly nominated for QuickView #300, Zack Snyder’s sophmore feature marked the first of many comicbook-inspired movies and remains arguably his best. 300 is less a film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel than a translation — Snyder would develop a range of visual techniques to emulate the source material, including its dichromatic palette of red and gold, shot almost entirely on digital backlot with only two practical sets. Even Snyder’s trademark overuse of slow-motion seems fitting here, where he is literally recreating panels of Miller’s art. Although based on the Battle of Thermopylae, this is overtly fantasy rather than history, narrated by a Spartan soldier with the purpose of mythologising events. This explains the one-sided perspective that garnered criticism for painting the Persians as barbaric mystics (often monstrously disfigured) whilst the Greeks are styled as the discliplined defenders of rationality and freedom (conveniently ignoring that Sparta was built upon a slave class that is never shown). The cast is filled with character actors able to bring stage skills to empty digital backlot sets; though many are now household names, most were not at the time immediately recognisable faces. 300‘s focus is not the reality of war but a pulse-pounding hypermasculine depiction of battle, cartoonish crimson sprays barely slowing its improbably muscular heroes, who are clad in little more than loincloths, capes, and more underlying homoeroticism than a Top Gun volleyball game. Like much of Zack Snyder’s work, 300 is undeniably style over substance but that is less of an issue here, where the source material was likewise unburdened by depth. When there is this much style, deployed creatively in ways we had never seen before, that can be satisfying in itself.

8/10

QuickView: John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)

John Wick Chapter 3 poster

“Nothing’s ever just a conversation with you, John.”

Sofia

John Wick: Chapter 3 picks up right where Chapter 2 ended, with John excommunicated from the cult-like order of assassins and a $14 million bounty placed on his head. Like its predecessor, the approach is very much more of the same brutal action, though it fixes a few flaws with fights lit more brightly and easier to follow. Parabellum (literally “prepare for war”) briefly moves the action to the middle east — with heavy overtones of the Assassin’s Creed franchise — but this diversion serves to confuse rather than expand the High Table mythos, becoming ultimately redundant as Wick returns to New York. A welcome change is the number of prominent female roles, Halle Berry proving her action chops in a fight I dubbed “revenge of the dogs”. John Wick‘s strength is a po-faced delivery whilst not taking itself seriously (“What do you need?” / “Guns, lots of guns”, says Keanu Reeves, repeating his line from The Matrix two decades earlier). This is a film in which he can ride a horse through the streets of New York whilst battling bikers. Despite this, a sense of familiar repetition is creeping into the series suggesting that we are on the verge of diminishing returns.

7/10

QuickView: Atomic Blonde (2017)

Atomic Blonde quad poster

“You know those movies where the picture just starts to slow down… and melt? Then catch fire? Well, that’s Berlin.”

Lorraine Broughton

Outside of superheroes, Hollywood has struggled to provide us with compelling female-led action movies. Atomic Blonde bucks the trend, though ironically Charlize Theron’s dedicated performance crafts a coldly determined character with whom audiences may struggle to empathise. A Cold War spy thriller with graphic novel roots, the script retains the unusual ability to surprise. Told in flashbacks through an adversarial debriefing, we know that what we are shown may not be the whole truth. James McAvoy’s nihilistic, brazenly duplicitous turn as a deep cover agent is a particular highlight. 1989 Berlin is shot in cool blues infused with splashes of neon colour⁠ — it is reminiscent of John Wick, which Leitch co-directed. Everything is familiar then, including the action (a brutal extended fight in a stairwell stands out), but this strange blend of Le Carré and John Wick is presented with a stylish boldness that demands attention.

7/10

QuickView: Deadpool 2 (2018)

“Family was always an f-word for me.”

Deadpool

Like the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, Deadpool retains his confident swagger but has lost some of his disruptive freshness. The humour remains edgy and wonderfully delivered, and the film maintains its ability to surprise, despite straining with the attempt to tell a larger story. Domino is a fantastic addition and her “lucky” superpower allows for the most creative action sequences. In some ways the film serves as an argument against Disney’s acquisition of Fox, so that Deadpool can take equal potshots at DC and the MCU from the sidelines. Deadpool 2 also makes far better use of a post-credits sequence than Marvel has managed of late.

7/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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