mondofilmaday 2020 - march

not the worst film i've ever been recommended but still...not good.

• Klaus - decent holiday fare
• Good boys - spirited but uninspiring transposing of American Pie onto characters 6 years younger.
• Columbo: try and catch me - one of the classics with a wonderful Ruth Gordon a lively and sympathetic foil to Falk
• Camp cold brook - fairly plodding found footage flick with little to offer apart from a random Gremlins 2 tie-in gag.
• Columbo old fashioned murder. - watchable as the 70s one are, this doesnt quite manage to be top tier.
• Invader zim enter the florpus - i recall enjoying the original show a lot and this late follow up is fine but skirts the line of being more like an annoying friend retelling you the plot of an episode in too much detail.
• Master of disguise - astonishingly awful. ill thought out and a waste of Carvey's talents. Super fucking racist too.
• Spies in disguise - mostly fun and lively animated fare.
• Asterix 12 tasks - dully paced, with no real understanding of how to transfer the pages jokes to screen and make it work.
• Sonic - its attempts at thematic depth are laughable, which is more than can be said for a lot of the jokes but the cast are game and it sprints along.
• Onward - you're gonna see this review a lot as i fill in some pixar gaps as i go and i often feel the same way about their films - beautifully made but just a little boring. This one offers up some dnd flavourings which appeal but never does anything other than the expected.
• Southbound - a gimmicky portmanteau with a couple of interesting touches but mostly undistinguished.
• The dead dont die - there are some fun performances, some good gags but the whole endeavour feels throwaway with a recurring meta-plot where at least one of the characters knows he's in a movie not really paying off.
• Night school - light-weight entertainment with a breezy cast.
• Portrait of a lady on fire - astonishingly beautiful. powerful, subtle with a grip on tight emotional control.
• Tosca (1976) - a slightly gussied up version of simply filming a stage act it expands to location shooting and occasionally moving the camera but little more. Play hits though. With some top notch performers belting their hearts out.
• The seventh seal - much funnier than i was expecting, and although often reduced to the chess on the beach scene, its more expansive and interesting. Really great.
• Ni no kuni - video-game tie-in that doesnt seem to serve much purpose. Feels like a tee-vee series truncated a lot of the character stuff comes undeveloped.
• My spy - i have a soft spot for these undemanding throwaway action comedies. Every now and again you'll get something like Spy which rises above. This one doesn't.
• Standing up, falling down - Ben Schwartz is great.
• Helvetica - amazingly interesting for a documentary about a font. It manages to weave a narrative out of not much and offers just enough counterpoint to stop it feeling like a simple love letter.
• Narrow margin (1952) - Pacy thriller with an okay twist. 
• The platform - super on the nose but potent allegorical horror.
• To all the boys I've loved before - rather delightful
• Toy story 4 - beautifully made but just a little boring
• Coco - beautifully made but just a little boring
• Ratatouille - beautifully made but just a little boring
• The cruise - this seems to have a gem of an idea and despite not knowing the particular target of its satire, a lot registers. But its too repetitive and the gags just not funny to work
• Invisible maniac - gross misogynistic horror with little to recommend.  
• Prince avalanche - very good in that low key way that is often hard to get excited about but worth watching.
• Dead in a week...or your money back - fairly forgettable hitman comedy that touches on some of that John Wick ridiculous world building but with a distinctly british take on the bureaucracy of its hired killers.