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Chef Flynn (2018)
Should be a case study on why some people should not be allowed to be parents
Food. It's something that is meant to bring humans together. In this documentary however, it serves only to totally alienate both Flynn and his mother Meg from each other all the way from his childhood through to adolescence.
My partner and I watched this and both of us can say that we have never come across a more tone-deaf control freak of a parent in a documentary. Meg, an amateur 'arthouse-esque' director who never "made it" and was instead lucky enough to give birth to what can only be described as a total culinary prodigy - leads us on a journey that is nothing short of a near 90 minute pity party. In this doco we are given everything from numerous examples of not only her shallow jealousy a la "He's on the cover of time magazine, and I will never be", but also examples of how to be the prefect obstacle to your kid's passion, success and personal and social growth. This documentary could be a perfect case study on such topics of psychology.
Every step of the way Flynn's mother Meg ridicules and criticizes her son's behavior and cooking. Her body language is one of looking down at him, whilst he works and lives his dream of cooking. Her home "directing" is nothing short of stalking and a total invasion of Flynn's personal space and comfort zone akin to the level of what the paparazzi display. Her footage is beyond amateur, with intense close-ups, shaky camera footage and camera angles that vilify him rather than glorify him. These are married with an endless stream of manic, condescending, insipid remarks towards him and others, even going so far as to undermine him towards his customers on his NY restaurant's opening night.
The relationship between Flynn and his mother sadly takes centre stage in this documentary as it is mostly narrated by the mother who spares no expense at displaying textbook examples of post-natal depression. Where the mother should show pride, she instead shows jealousy, where she should show faith, she instead shows doubt. The almost predatory victimizing nature of Meg had my partner and I needing to stop the documentary at periods to decompress.
In contrast Flynn's father (despite being constantly character assassinated by the mother) shows genuine interest, pride and even effort in helping his son. Flynn's sister also plays a part in encouraging Flynn, serving only to further highlight the distance Flynn and his mother have by comparison. The final nail in the coffin is when you see Flynn calls his dad, "dad" but Megan is always referred to by name and never "mum".
My partner and I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary despite being shocked at how bad of a parent Flynn's mother is and how she took every chance to try to steal her son's glory. At the end of the documentary we're finally left with the manic mother out of the picture and we can immediately see an improvement in Flynn's behavior and even his restaurant management.
I think this documentary should be shown in both cooking and psychology classes as mandatory viewing. It is both one equal part a total portrayal of unhealthy family dynamic and another of what it is like to have a genuine passion for cooking.
White Noise (2020)
It's exactly what you think it is, but not a documentary
Oh boy where to begin.
Former alt-right idol Lauren Southern sells out the alt-right, that's what you're hoping this is right? Yeah, not even close.
It's a "documentary" about how one pretty white attention-something... said some racist things and advocated for racist beliefs, got too much negative attention and couldn't find a boyfriend who was "nice". Years later she finally found one, but there's a problem, he's a different race and the type of person who she was openly racist towards for years. Realizing there's no way this would end up well, she proceeded to delete absolutely everything about her online presence and hope that the world would forget her as quickly as possible.
But it doesn't end there, because there's no way anyone would let her get away with disappearing after setting back race relations by about a hundred years. So!
She's now right back vying for attention again, but this time she's claiming to be one of the very same type of victims she spent SIX YEARS trying to convince people that no, those victims DIDN'T EXIST. Honestly, it should be criminal to be this much of a drama queen and provocateur and then literally swap sides and play the victim.
The only legitimate reason anyone should watch this is to learn how successful and idolised you can get by being a racist. Then by lying and claiming to be a victim of the very ideology you spent years tirelessly trying to push.
In this criminally bad documentary, she explains about how she was a totally innocent, normal person who was quite simply "tricked" by men. Yep, that's it. That's her simple story. She was tricked (by men of course), fooled into being one of the most famous racists of the 20th century! Who would have thought!?
What follows is her own attempt at a smear campaign and has literally none of the guilt or real evidence befitting a truly reformed person. It's a performance that doesn't deserve the first handful of microwave popcorn waiting in your cupboard.
I am literally dumbfounded that people are watching this and take any of it for fact. The girl quite simply loved being an icon of the alt-right, loved being admired, loved being a sex symbol and when she found the man that she wanted to be with. Well all that negative attention she was getting suddenly had no place in her life. The only way out was to swap sides, feign ignorance and blame everyone else.
If you've ever seen a real doco, you'll instantly realise this is not one.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Rami Malek is one of the greatest actors of all time
After decades of dealing with the likes of Shia LaBeouf, part of Hollywood is finally waking up to realise that people want to see more of real actors like Rami Malek. People who can actually carry a performance and whose performance can single-handed carry a film or even create an entire cult classic.
I know little about Queen, though I do enjoy many of their iconic songs and I know even less about Freddie. Though I think I could say the same for every single one of us who watched and reviewed the movie. Only Freddie's closest really knew him as a person.
In short, this movie is everything you'd hope from a homage to Freddie Mercury and Queen, performed by none-other than one of the bands biggest fans and a person who held himself to the most ridiculously high standards throughout the filming process. I doubt even God could have done a better job.
Just watch it and enjoy the brilliance of it.
Joker (2019)
Perhaps one of the greatest films but also one of the most depressing
There are obviously and quite deliberately so many parallels between The Joker and the world that we live in today. For this reason the movie is at times incredibly painful to watch and will gave you silently and automatically comparing so many scenes to modern-day planet earth.
The rich get richer and even the poor have no time to care about each other. Money talks and as always the rules don't apply to those who have power, or who can at least buy their way out of trouble. Life is all about "who you know" rather than "what difference can you make?"
The Joker is more-or-less a wake-up call for planet earth.
As for the movie and Mr. Phoenix's performance. As many others have said, it's faultless and time that we stopped comparing performances actor-to-actor. Ledger's portrayal was fantastic and Leto's could have been better sure. Though at the end of the day these are just different portrayals of a different role.
Without judging people who disagree with me and generalizing them, I'm just going to say that if you didn't like the movie, it most likely succeeded in delivering its message. If you did like the movie? It still most likely succeeded in delivering its message.
I hope we don't find ourselves in such a similar Black Mirror-esque situation in the future as a species.
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
Waited my entire childhood for this?
Garbage written and directed by people who haven't the first thing about Pokémon. So yeah, I guess I got what I expected. Save yourself the time and just play the old games or watch the anime. This shouldn't even exist.
The Gentlemen (2019)
Pure entertainment and better than anything I've seen in the last 5 years
I finally made an account just to review this movie. Honestly, this movie is proof why you should never, ever rely on critics as they're worse paid actors than anything you'd find in even the worst movies.
The Gentlemen is quite frankly pure entertainment and a rare glimpse at how engaging good storytelling and convincing acting can be.
In short, it is a slow burning half 'who-dunnit' half 'is-anyone-gonna-do-it?' flick in the typical prose of Guy Ritchie. The only thing I wish to add, having seen all of Guy's films is that he has well and truly come into his own here. Whilst so many directors, like Tarantino just re-use the same gags and tricks for shock value, Mr. Ritchie has proven that he isn't an old dog that can't learn new tricks and that he hasn't been asleep during the cultural shift of the last decade.
The Gentlemen is a fantastic fusion of modern Britain, technology, culture (if you can call it that at this stage haha) and old school die-hard gangster/mobster vibes.
There isn't a single weak performance, so you'll have yourself laughing and gasping so often that you'll need to pause and rewind this great flick. We don't deserve actors like Matthew Mcconaughey and love him or hate him but Colin Farrel does one hell of a role in this film so it's time to get off his back for that Telephone movie he did over a decade ago.
Just watch this movie and stop reading reviews, you could do so much worse. If you don't like this style, then I do kind of pity you and I wish you the best with what-ever Marvel releases in the future.
I really hope we get a sequel.