Film Round-Up: Jackass Forever, Moonfall and Death on the Nile
Let’s talk about some films!
Jackass Forever
A bunch of guys do a lot of stupid but hilarious stunts. I’m not really sure how to review this movie. Jackass Forever does not have a plot as such, or any ongoing themes. It is exactly what it says on the tin. You have a lot of guys, mostly middle aged, coming up with very inventive ways to hurt themselves for our entertainment. Most of these involve getting hit in the nuts. It really should be the most stupid thing on enough, but yet it’s very funny. I think it’s because the guys all seem really up for it and despite the cruelty on show, everyone’s willing to take punishment as well as dish it out. There’s also a level of anarchy to it as a random challenge will be interrupted by one of the guys trying to taser the other. It’s not all fun and games though. Anytime they get the public involved with some sort of prank, it’s not at all funny and it even feels scripted. When you compare it to Impractical Jokers, you can see the difference. But these are only small parts of the movie and the rest is just incredibly funny and brutal.
Moonfall
A disgraced NASA astronaut discovers the moon is out of alignment and is determined to save the world from potential oblivion. I have one main question. How does Roland Emmerich keep getting big budgets despite the last film he had that actually made money was back in 2009 which is so long long ago Lady Gaga had just started her career? Moonfall is the most awful representation of a disaster film with clichés so old that even parodies of said clichés are tired and worn out. You have a disgraced man who has a troubled kid and a divorced wife who has a husband whose a bit of a dick. Throw in a comic relief sidekick and ‘strong woman type’ and you have every disaster cliché seen in almost every other Emmerich movie. The film could get away with them if the action scenes were fun but they are CGI dominated messes which look more like a budget PS3 game than something that is actually happening. This film was eclipsed by everything that went before it.
Death on the Nile
Hercule Poiret is embroiled in another mystery when an heiress is killed on a cruise in the Nile. Murder mysteries are pretty simple to set up. Get a bunch of vibrant characters into an isolated place, have one of them be killed then allow some genius to slowly work things out before he or she points fingers at the end. What you should not do is wait a bloody hour to get to the murder! I understand set up is needed but it is really tiresome to wait that long to get to the meat of the story. This does mean the actually mystery side ends up being a bit rushed, a problem when the film wants an ongoing tension to be that Poirot is taking too long to solve the murder. There are some things to like despite this. It’s beautiful to look at, the characters are memorable and Poirot’s moustache is immaculate, even if having a backstory for it is pointless. But the biggest mystery is why this film takes so long to get to the death on the Nile.
