Luca

This review may contain spoilers!

 

 Luca is a charming story set in the Italian Riviera detailing the friendship formed between a young girl and two 'sea monsters'. Watching this film felt like watching a folk tale or fairy tale come to life before my eyes, this was the sort of feature that quietly presented itself to you and never once begged to be watched. I watched Luca because I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into the story being woven in front of me; much like our two fish-folk protagonists steadily grew immersed into the human world. The film is very much a light fantasy tale coupled with a coming of age story, a group of young kids from various backgrounds become friends and work together to overthrow the town bully. The twist here is the message behind the film; how we deal with that which is different. Our two main characters are both fish-folk, however they become human in appearance when they are dry on the surface. This leads to an interesting story about how humans treat that which is different to us with fear and hostility, while also teaching us the value of why such behaviour is wrong. The beautiful friendships at the heart of this film feel so rich with emotion and the connection between them all is so strong that I can't imagine any audience member who wasn't choked up by the train station scene. The Italian Riviera is already a location viewed with a lot of reverence, but this film really sculpts it into this magical place. The detail paid to the design of the buildings, the little dockside, the cobbled streets or the rolling hills grounded me in that setting perfectly. In fact as a whole the animation is very pleasing to watch, with cute yet detailed character designs paired with stunning visual environments. The score for the film is a lovely blend of either Italian music or music from Italian artists and it couples with every scene exactly right, crafting an atmosphere that helps draw you further into the world of Luca.

 

 Jacob Tremblay, who voiced Luca Paguro, is wonderful as the protagonist for this film; Trembla makes you see things as full of wonder and has such a vibrant way of expressing all the new things his character is experiencing. Jack Dylan Grazer, who voiced Alberto Scorfano, is a lot of fun as the carefree and adventurous best friend; the hurt he expresses at feeling phased out of the growing friendship between Luca and Giulia is one of the strongest parts of his performance. Saverio Raimondo, who voiced Ercole Visconti, is a brilliant antagonist for Luca; his boyish arrogance and wild need for validation and praise mark him as a dangerous bully to the three heroes. Maya Rudolph, who voiced Daniela Paguro, makes the classic Disney Mum role an actually interesting character; Rudolph presents a mother who is fiercely protective and determined to track down her son by any crazy antic necessary. Marco Barricelli, who voiced Massimo Marcovaldo, is such a likeable father figure in spite of his gruff intimidating introduction; Barricelli presents a tough man who has a big heart that extends to the trio he comes to be the caregiver of. Sandy Martin, who voiced Grandma Paguro, is quite a fun minor role; Martin comedically deadpans this very intelligent role who seems to know where events are going before they happen. 

However, the best performance came from Emma Berman, who voiced Giulia Marcovaldo. This character zooms into the story with such fire and energy that it's hard not to love the role instantly. Berman voices a young girl who views herself as the underdog, the misfit of the town with no friends and a bad nickname. Yet she still seems so full of life and determination; she is ready for any challenge, be that bullies or the big annual village race. The easy charm Berman presents makes this character come across as friendly and caring, she welcomes the two fishy protagonists with open arms. At the end of the day Giulia puts herself on the line for those she befriends and loves and that's what makes her the undeniable heart of this film.

Luca starts in a rather slow way, detailing the divide between the surface world and the underwater fish-folk setting. The problem with this is that it doesn't really tread any new water; our protagonist pining to know what 'up there' is like shares a lot of comparative traits with a number of films. Disney even already had its own famous underwater pining hero in The Little Mermaid's Ariel. While the two stories are both vastly different, the beginning really does nothing new. Watching Luca get told not to go up there by any means while he steadily begins to sneak off feels familiar but when the narrative finally has the courage to break from the underwater world we receive one stunning piece of animated cinema.

Jim Gaffigan, who voiced Lorenzo Paguro, is a pretty generic take on the bumbling Dad character; Gaffigan is often in a scene to be the butt of a joke or to give a voice for Rudolph to bounce off against.

A beautiful love letter to coastal Italy and a visual fairytale that will undoubtedly live to become a classic. I would give Luca an 8.5/10.

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

This review may contain spoilers!

 

 The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard is the sequel to 2017 audience-favourite, The Hitman's Bodyguard, a feature that capitalises on Reynolds increasing expansion into the world of action-comedies. In this follow-up, bodyguard Michael Bryce finds his career in tatters after working hit hitman Darius Kincaid and decides to go on a self-help bender in Capri. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned when he is pulled back into the chaotic world of, well, world saving by Darius' wife, Sonia. The pair go on a personal mission to rescue Darius which spirals into a race against time to stop all of Europe's power grid being decimated by terrorist, Aristotle Papadopolous (yep, that's really his name). What the film lacks exceedingly in plot it does make up for with some key moments of comedy; often the more chaotic the dialogue and the ideas are the more jokes manage to land well. The cinematography for the film is actually very slick for almost the entirety of the time; the action looks a step up from the first film and there are only a handful of dialogue-based scenes that don't look great. The stunt work for the film is stunning, there is a massive quantity of vehicle-based work that actually looks and moves great.

 

Ryan Reynolds, who played Michael Bryce, takes a while to find his stride back into the character but is once again a pretty solid protagonist; Reynolds has fun with being the straight edge to Jackson and Hayek's more unpredictable performances. Morgan Freeman, who played Bryce Senior, is such a fun reveal as the father who welcomes his son in need home; Freeman plays well to both the caring side of his role and the effective elite bodyguard aspect too. Frank Grillo, who played Bobby O'Neill, is very entertaining as the loose cannon Interpol agent; Grillo's intense lack of interest for the roles and pining for his Boston home made him a fine new attachment to the cast.

However, the best performance came from Salma Hayek, who played Sonia Kincaid. Hayek was the sort of character who stole the show despite her lack of screen time in the first film, so capitalising on that character in the sequel might be the smartest thing the writers ever did. Hayek is absolutely wild in this film, every colourful insult you could ever think of is not enough to cover the long list of strongly delivered barbed quips we get in this feature. The fun thing with Sonia is that you can never quite predict how she'll act or react in a scene; she can be an extremely affectionate wife one moment, a bezerker with a gun and a jealous cussing lover the next. Hayek really has fun with her role's desire to be the mother and the complete lack of knowledge around what that role entails. This is a character who is a joy to watch and Hayek is carrying the comedic talent of the movie consistently.

Sometimes you watch a sequel that was clearly greenlit without there really being much of a plan or story in place for what the sequel should be or look like. The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard follows a lot of the same character relationships and narrative beats as the last film without ever really finding the fun or joy behind those moments. Bryce and Kincaid had this excellent love/hate rivalry turned friendship in the first film but in the sequel all of that has been stripped away to build up to the same exact same end result. The overall villainous plan of a Greek terrorist destroying all of Europe's power grid except for Greece, in a bid to restore the nation as the heart of civilisation gets very convoluted. The film just really has no interest in its own story or how said story is delivered, for that reason we get very boring Interpol agency characters hamming out the plot against the villain while our heroes bicker over their respective personal journeys. Darius and Sonia wanting to have a kid together feels like an uncomfortable joke which definitely ends in a bad punchline. More than that, seeing Bryce, the protagonist, being so tired and disinterested in being involved in everything going on around him actually doesn't work in favour of the film. Having both Bryce and the Kincaids as reluctant heroes makes the audience feel disconnected from the stakes of what we're watching. The soundtrack for the film felt like an amateur playing darts, there were a couple of really funny tracks but most of the music missed the mark and failed to lend humour to a scene.

 

Samuel L. Jackson, who played Darius Kincaid, looks almost bored to be in this film and you can't really blame him; Jackson's character doesn't actually get anywhere near as much to do in this film and has even less time spent examining his character. Antonio Banderas, who played Aristotle Papadopolous, is a dreadful antagonist every step of the way; not only does the character have exceedingly shallow motivations but Banderas is far from convincing as a Greek national. Tom Hopper, who played Magnusson, is the generic henchman antagonist this time around; Hopper's role is styled as the perfect bodyguard which makes for a very two-dimensional performance. Caroline Goodall, who played Crowley, is the overseeing Interpol head who deals exposition with little emotion or interest; Goodall's emotionless delivery makes her just as interchangeable as the other two head intelligence actors from the first film.

 

It can be hard to generate a good action-comedy sequel and this film fails spectacularly with a dull plot and a cast that doesn't seem very engaged with the feature. I would give The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard a 4/10.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

This review may contain spoilers!

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is the third Conjuring film and the eighth instalment in the Conjuring universe. Here we loosely follow the real life events surrounding the possession of David Glatzel and Arne Johnson; the latter whom is arrested for murder and pleads defence by possession in a court of law. As far as this particular film goes it opens really strongly, featuring an exorcism that not only goes badly but sees Arne offer himself to the demon possessing David. It's a very harrowing moment in which our heroes, the Warrens, are rendered powerless in the face of darkness and for a fleeting moment the Satanic forces of the occult seem like the most powerful tey have ever been. Yet beyond that moment the real strength of the film is the depiction of Ed and Lorraine's relationship, the love and strength they find in one another coupled with the trust that comes with is right at the core of what makes these films and these characters worth coming back for. The cinematography also looks great, framing key settings richly and setting the stage strongly for some of the spine-tingling moments.

 

Ruairi O'Connor, who played Arne Cheyenne Johnson, is very good at playing this kind and self-sacrificing role; O'Connor's character goes from a rather happy figure to a young man who seems tortured by the evil he has taken on.

However, the best performance came from Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who played Ed and Lorraine Warren respectively. As the films have gone along the work these two do together can't simply be described as roles performed by individuals; this is the extraordinary work of a brilliant acting duo. That has never been more evident than in this feature, the fourth time we see the pair in a major starring role. Patrick Wilson plays the most physically vulnerable take on Ed Warren we've seen yet. In this film we see Ed's heart damaged in an exorcism gone wrong, leaving him permanently debilitated for a large section of the film. Wilson does a great job of showing his protagonist struggling to keep up with his on-screen wife and hurting over his inability to truly be of service in the investigation. Farmiga on the other side takes on more of an active investigator role in this feature. She blends her role's otherworldly visions with an active drive for the truth at the heart of their investigation. Watching Lorraine extend herself deeper into the urgency of their mystery while Ed struggles to keep up and is plagued as a victim of the antagonist. The relationship this pair has constructed is very tender and they bounce off one another with such a loving effortless display that you can't help but be drawn in by this leading duo.

A problem I've noticed about these Conjuring films as they've gone along is that they have really departed from the horror genre while still trying desperately to make you believe they're scary. Films like The Conjuring 2 and The Nun lost their credibility as scary features the moment they pivoted away from horror and into cross-genre pieces is where quality was sacrificed. The Conjuring 3 is exactly the same, opting to be more of a supernatural crime-thriller than a genuine horror film. In fact when the film does pretend to go back to its horror roots the elements are very generic; you have the usual jump scares, levitating possessed people and litany of props being yanked around by invisible forces. The plot itself is really badly constructed, the possession of Arne feels quite sudden and he is really propped up to be this overly sympathetic figure. Then as the film decides to delve into a sort of criminal investigation there is only so far it can go until it has to relate things back to a mystery antagonist. The Warrens are pitted against a Satanic female antagonist who has been crafted as a sort of evil Lorraine Warren. This very basic rivalry and the fact the threat becomes significantly more human takes a lot of the high stakes right out of the film. The editing used throughout is rather predictable and doesn't do anything fresh from previous films; while the effects often seem crude in their design. The score for the film is barely present and the soundtrack might ground the audience in the 80s but it never suits the type of film this is.

Sarah Catherine Hook, who played Debbie Glatzel, falls right into the heartbroken family member who doesn't know how to deal with the supernatural evil; Hook's work at being the lovelorn partner of O'Connor's Arne isn't very convincing either. Julian Hilliard, who played David Glatzel, is a prett stereotpical kid being possessed b demon role; if anything Hilliard never manages to get quite scary enough for those key possession scenes. John Noble, who played Kastner, was both a bizarre performance and a bizarre role; Noble really grated out the delivery of his lines and never seemed to scrounge up any emotion even for his character's big parental reveal scene. Eugenie Bondurant, who played The Occultist, is the antagonist who essentially lessened the quality and scare factor of the film; by introducing a human as the true threat while also giving Bondurant next to no character motivation to work with it is no surprise this was an underwhelming villain. Steve Coulter, who played Father Gordon, is constantly in these films but never manages to make much of an impact; his attempts at portraying the on-screen acquaintance and friend of the Warrens is stiff and devoid of meaningful emotion.

The Conjuring series has really lost itself at this point, I could barely recognise this as a horror film most of the time. I would give The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It a 3.5/10.