Film Round-Up: Respect, Vacation Friends and Don’t Breathe 2
More mini reviews!
Respect
A film which tells the life and times of soul legend Aretha Franklin. This is quite old fashioned in terms of how it is set out as a biopic. A lot of modern biopics will focus on a certain event in a person’s life as that means you can have far more focus on the narrative. This goes for trying to tell her life from childhood to her gospel album, which is a very long time. This means lots of time skips where it feels like you miss a lot. Many films make a lot of a descent into alcoholism when famous. This film makes Aretha Franklin an alcoholic during a time skip, dismisses it rather quickly and moves onto the next thing. It feels more like someone read a Wikipedia entry of Aretha Franklin and wrote the film based off that. It’s a shame as Jennifer Hudson is the perfect casting for Aretha and plays the part very well.
Vacation Friends
Marcus and Emily have the holiday of their lives when they meet John Cena and his girlfriend. However when they follow them into their real lives, things go wrong. So this is a classic pretence. Have some wet blankets as the leads, throw in some mad wild cards and put them in a situation where they can cause maximum damage. The problem is that it never is that funny. It’s not incredibly unfunny, which is a very different thing to a lack of funny, so it’s not unbearable like a lot of comedies I’ve had to endure since starting to review films on a regular basis. But other than one decent moment which I can’t even remember a day later, I didn’t laugh at this film. Which is a big problem for a comedy as that’s the one thing you expect them to do!
Don’t Breathe 2
The Blind Man has an adopted daughter Phoenix who is tracked down by her parents. Bloodshed ensues. The first Don’t Breathe is brilliant. While it was a great mix between a thriller and a horror, the true brilliance was how it completely flipped the hero/villain scales halfway through the film. At the first The Blind Man is a victim of a robbery, but then it turns out he has a kidnapped girl he’s artificially inseminating in the basement. Changes your perception of someone that. The sequel has The Blind Man as the hero, which cannot happen because as I repeat, HE KIDNAPPED A WOMAN AND ARTIFICIALLY INSEMINATED HER. That is definitely some sort of rape and not the sort of thing I can ignore because it was in the previous film. There’s an attempt to do the hero/villain switch again but it doesn’t work because it’s been done before. It’s also done pretty half-heartedly. The film is nicely shot and the thriller sequences are well done so viewed without a plot it’d probably be decent. Just a shame it tries to make an unconsenting artificial inseminator, not sure that’s a thing but I’ll go with it, the hero.
