Review #1,480: 'Fighting with My Family' (2019)

Wrestling movies don't come along very often, at least not those that take the sport seriously. Perhaps the idea of adults dressing up in ridiculously skimpy costumes and acting out a pre-choreographed fight is theatrical enough already, so a leap to the big screen would be ultimately redundant, or maybe the sport is simply too niche to guarantee a healthy return on a studios investment. But ever since The Wrestler put Mickey Rourke through the ringer, there has been a newfound respect for wrestling and the athletes who push their bodies to the very limit, particularly from those who have never sat down to watch a WWE event in their lives. Fighting with My Family continues this trend, loosely retelling the story of Saraya-Jade Bevis , aka Paige, who emerged from a working-class wrestling family in Norwich, England to become a WWE champion.

The film begins in 2002, with wrestling-mad 10 year-old Zak Knight getting pumped for the start of a WWF pay-per-view event before his younger sister Saraya turns over the channel to watch her favourite show, Charmed. Fast-forward a decade, and the two siblings have embraced their parents' passion for wrestling and have adopted ring names of their own. Zak (Jack Lowden) has become 'Zodiac Zak' and Saraya (Florence Pugh) is now 'Britani Knight', and they perform regularly at their wrestling club. The dream of dad Ricky (Nick Frost) and mum Julia (Lena Headey) is for their kids to make the transition to the big leagues, and tapes are regularly sent off to promoters in the hope of catching their eye. They finally receive a call from WWE trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) and receive an invitation for try-outs, but after a gruelling audition, only Saraya, now using the stage name Paige, is selected.

As Zak is sent into a spiral of anger and depression, Paige struggles to work out who she is in Florida's sun-drenched world of golden-skinned models. Somewhat an outsider even back home (outside of the close-knit wrestling community), she feels isolated, mentally unprepared for the rigorous workout schedules and the standards required for the big-time. Fighting with My Family often flirts with cliche, but this is a sports movie after all. It works by developing characters we can relate to and truly root for, regardless of how ridiculous you may find the whole wrestling craze. This is down to the combined efforts of writer/director Stephen Merchant, who seems like the unlikeliest candidate to helm a wrestling picture, and the cast, who are all entirely believable.

Pugh in particular finds the right balance of inner vulnerability and the outer toughness Hutch no doubt signed her up for, and Merchant helps bring out these traits with the right balance of comedy, drama and sentiment. Frost is also perfectly cast, showing once again that he's a terrific actor in his own right and not just Simon Pegg's sidekick. For wrestling fans, there are plenty of cameos to spot, with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson showing up for an extended cameo that may feel like a gimmick until you learn of his role in Paige's real-life story. Above all, Fighting with My Family is a heartfelt tale that celebrates embracing the inner weirdo and the sport that welcomes such misfits with open arms - if you're tough enough.


Directed by: Stephen Merchant
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,476: 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019)

It feels like an eternity since the bald, purple alien madman Thanos (Josh Brolin) assembled his impressive gauntlet with all of the infinity stones and snapped half of our universe out of existence. It was a bold move by writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo, and although there were many fanboys in the crowd who knew beforehand that what they were seeing was essentially the first part of two-act structure, the sight of many beloved superheroes dissolving into nothingness was a shock for those who had never read a comic-book in their life.

It's actually only been a year since Avengers: Infinity War, but the secrecy surrounding the plot of Avengers: Endgame (the title was only revealed a few months ago) has kept audiences desperate to see how the remaining heroes will react to their failure. The main question hanging over Endgame's head is how they will handle the devastation left over by Infinity War, and whether certain characters who met their demise last time around will in fact stay dead, or, as is the case in the comic-books, find their way back into the story via one of various means (cloning, parallel universes, time travel, etc.).

Without spoiling anything, Endgame establishes quite early on that there are indeed irreversible consequences to Thanos' victory, and no amount of magic or technological advancement can set things back to how they were. The decimation happened, and those lucky, or unlucky, enough to be left behind are forced to deal with it. Those that didn't fall victim to the snap consist of the original Avengers crew - Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), who we find drifting hopelessly in space with only Karen Gillan's Nebula for company.

There's also Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye, an integral member of the crew and surprise no-show in Infinity War, who perhaps has more reason than anybody to avenge the loss of half of all life. The sight of Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) disappearing before our eyes may have been shocking, but Endgame's opening scene pulls the snap right back to a personal level. With his family gone, Hawkeye adopts a new persona and has taken it upon himself to take out criminal organisations Punisher-style.

As the trailer pointed out, people find a way to move on, but our heroes don't. Bolstered by the arrival of uber-powerful hero Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), the gang - along with Don Cheadle's War Machine and Bradley Cooper's Rocket - head into space to make Thanos pay for what he has done. Naturally, things don't go quite according to plan, but when Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) - previously believed to have been a victim when in fact he was trapped in the Quantum Realm - re-emerges with Pym technology and an ambitious plan, the Avengers are handed a glimmer of hope.

I'm deliberately leaving out specific plot points for fear of spoilers. This is a three-hour film, but every second counts in some way to moving the complex plot forward or explaining the mind-bending mechanics at work. While Infinity War barely paused for breath, Endgame begins on a sombre note, before launching us into a breathlessly exciting second act that serves as both as inventive way for our heroes to stand a fighting chance, and a celebration of Marvel's ground-breaking 22-film, 11-year spanning arc.

The third act, a colossal battle between the forces of good and evil that is almost too overwhelming to comprehend, throws lots of fancy effects and punch-ups at the screen. In most other big-budget epics, these climactic smack-downs are when my attention start to wander, but here they are involve characters I have watched evolve over the course of a decade and have grown to love, and when that Alan Silverstri score kicks in at just the right moment, the heart-flutters are inescapable. I'd also be lying if I said I didn't well up on multiple occasions. After all, we knew contracts were up and we'd be forced to say goodbye to at least one of the original heroes, but the future also looks bright for Marvel. For the moment, until Spider-Man: Far from Home arrives in a couple of months at least, Endgame is a near-perfect way to wrap up 11 years of storytelling and character-building, and a warm thank you to the fans who have been there since 2008.


Directed by: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Karen Gillan
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,475: 'The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part' (2019)

Before Phil Lord and Christopher Miller surprised everybody with one of the best films of 2014, the idea of a movie based on a toy line seemed like a rather hopeless idea. Yes, the building blocks and miniature figures of Lego have been adored by both children and adults alike for decades, but they are still produced by a company whose main focus is naturally on your wallets. It felt inevitable that The Lego Movie would be a soulless feature-length advertisement, but not only did it feature some of the most eye-popping CG animation in recent memory (which also felt hand-crafted), it also melted our hearts by taking the action into the real world, where we discover that events are being conjured by the imagination of a young boy. His father, an avid collector played by Will Ferrell, had forgotten the true meaning of playtime. Lego, after all, is about whatever you want it to be.

The Lego Movie wasn't just great, it was awesome. It was also unfairly snubbed by the Academy, but with a worldwide box-office gross of just shy of $500 million, Lord and Miller's film was a huge hit and seemingly the beginning of a lucrative new big-screen franchise. The Lego Batman Movie was next, successfully capitalising on the appeal of Will Arnett's supporting character and opening up Lego's own DC universe. The juggernaut started to creak and show signs of fatigue with The Lego Ninjago Movie however, which arrived the same year as Batman, so the brand was allowed a bit of time to breathe before its next instalment. The big question is does The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part steer this yellow-tinged universe back on course, or has it burnt itself out? The good news is that this sequel is far more the former than the latter, but despite the skills of Lord and Miller on the screenplay (Mike Mitchell has moved in to direct), it does suffer slightly from sequelitis.

The end of The Lego Movie saw the arrival of the real-world family's young girl on the playing field, and with her comes unicorns and Duplo, both unwelcome arrivals in the world built up by the young boy. As a result, Bricksburg has become Apocalypseburg, a Mad Max-esque wasteland turned to dust by the invading Duplo aliens. While Wyldstyle/Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) finds the wastelands a perfect place in which to brood and gaze seriously into the distance, Emmet (Chris Pratt) maintains an upbeat attitude, enthusiastically purchasing his morning coffees and listening to remixes of his favourite song, Everything Is Awesome. Despite being plagued by visions of Armageddon, Emmet builds Lucy their dream home, but their attempts to live a normal life are scuppered by the arrival of intergalactic traveller Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz), a mini-doll from the 'Systar System' who has come to take the strongest leader away to marry Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish). Naturally, that leader is Batman, and he along with Lucy, Benny (Charlie Day), MetalBeard (Nick Offerman) and Unikitty (Alison Brie), find themselves kidnapped and taken to another galaxy.

The premise sounds fun and that's precisely what it is. It maintains the madcap energy of the first film and brings back memorable characters, throwing in more meta-jokes and visual gags than you can shake a stick at. But The Lego Movie was fun and so much more, and Lord and Miller really set the bar high for any future sequels. The Second Part keeps the family thread going, this time with Mom (Maya Rudolph) trying to keep the peace between older son and younger daughter, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. One of the funnest aspects of the original was tying to keep up the amount of characters from both pop culture and real life showing their faces, but the supporting cast seems much thinner this time around. There's a joke about Marvel not returning the calls, and in fact no characters from the world of Disney show their faces. More focus could have been given to other DC figures who show up, particularly Channing Tatum's Superman and Jonah Hill's Green Lantern, who both seem to be having a great time behind the microphone. It's still a rollicking ride, and it only seems like a slight let-down because, somehow, we have come to expect something special from these Lego romps. The film boasts a new catchy song called, um, Catchy Song, which warns 'This song's gonna get stuck inside your head." And in your head it will certainly remain, but the rest of the movie sadly won't.


Directed by: Mike Mitchell
Voices: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Maya Rudolph
Country: Denmark/Norway/Australia/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,470: 'Glass' (2019)

When M. Night Shyamalan's Split came out three years ago, I doubt anybody was expecting what appeared to be a relatively low-key kidnap thriller to eventually reveal itself as a supervillain origin story of sorts, as well as a sequel to the director's finest film, Unbreakable, released a whopping 16 years previous. Despite its flaws, Split was a success with audiences, and it seemed that Shyamalan's reputation - relegated to near-joke status following a string of utter stinkers like Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender - was starting to claw its way back to the dizzy heights of his early career, when he was dubbed the next Steven Spielberg after scaring audiences with The Sixth Sense and, to a lesser degree, Signs. Shyamalan doesn't do middle-of-the-road. He's either at the top of his game or testing our patience, but Glass, the inevitable third instalment of this 19-years-in-the-making trilogy, may be the first time he's dabbled with both extremes.

Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), the abusive victim whose 23 other personalities serve to protect him, is still at large. His activities have led to the press dubbing him 'The Horde', and he is currently holed up with four young cheerleaders, the next potential victims of his cannibalistic hunger and his most feared personality of all, the hulking 'Beast'. Meanwhile, super-strong David Dunn (Bruce Willis) juggles his time between running a security business with his son Joseph (an all-grown-up Spencer Treat Clark), and fighting crime.

On top of being damn near indestructible, David - named 'The Overseer' by fans of his work - can also sniff out crime by mere touch, and a chance encounter with Crumb leads him to an abandoned warehouse, where the girls wait bound and terrified. The two superhumans slug it out, but before one can outmatch the other, they are set on by a SWAT team directed by the unnervingly mild-mannered psychologist Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). She specialises in cases in which the patient believes they are a comic-book character, and takes David and Kevin to a grungy institution where an old friend awaits them.

The old friend, of course, is Samuel L. Jackon's Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass, named after the rare brittle-bone disease from which he suffers. Split is still fresh in the memory, but if - like me - you haven't seen Unbreakable since it was released 19 years ago, it may take a while to fill in the blanks, because Shyamalan isn't willing to refresh your memory. Glass was an intriguing (and surprising) foe for David last time around, but would a man who is simply more intelligent than most really be lumped into the same category as a man who can survive a train crash and another who can scale bare walls? Nevertheless, the actors are all on top form, with Willis' gruff, underplayed performance finding a nice balance with McAvoy's manic character-switching, and when he isn't being laboured with exposition, Jackson has fun as the guy who is always one step ahead.

The strength of the performances makes it seem as though all of the movie's budget went into paying the actors to up their game, as it's difficult to judge where else it was spent. The first two-thirds builds an intriguing atmosphere, despite spending too much time pondering the question of what it would be like if superheroes really existed (doesn't every superhero film tackle this in one form or another?). Shyamalan blows it in the last act, delivering an underwhelming showdown that will leave audiences wondering what the hell the writer/director was thinking. It won't have many calling for more from this unexpected cinematic universe, but it's certainly worth a gamble.


Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,469: 'How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World' (2019)

Loosely based on the series of books by Cressida Cowell, the How to Train Your Dragon series has grown to become the jewel in the somewhat small and dusty crown of Dreamworks Animation. With Pixar killing it near enough year in, year out, the adventures of reluctant Viking leader Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his trusted Night Fury pal are the closest thing that Dreamworks have ever come to the quality and visual splendour of its most fearsome rivals. If you've kept up with the series since its debut in 2010, you'll have watched Hiccup grow out of his father's shadow into a battle-scarred warrior and forward-thinking frontiersman, who brought a close to his tribe's never-ending war with the dragons to discover the fire-breathing beasts actually make for useful and loving friends. The second instalment veered into incredibly dark territory, signalling a maturing tone that matched the protagonist's transformation from nervous kid to an innovator destined to change the lives of his people forever.

The third and presumably final entry into the series, The Hidden World, doesn't darken the tone further - it is still a kids' film after all - but you get the sense from very early on that we are heading inevitably towards an emotional parting of ways. Hiccup and his friends continue their quest to rescue captive dragons and bring them back to the village of Berk to live in harmony with humans. The problem is that they've become so good at their search-and-rescue missions that their home is now overcrowded with the lumbering beasts. Hiccup believes their only hope lies in 'the hidden world, a mysterious and possibly make-believe haven at the edge of the world spoken of by his late father Stoick (Gerard Butler). But cracks start to appear in the young chieftan's plans when his dragon and best friend Toothless happens across a Light Fury, the female of his species. Wild and distrusting of humans, the female bolts from Toothless' advances any time Hiccup shows his face to help, and it becomes clear that if he is ever to see his best bud happy, he must also let his dragon run free.

As ever, there's a dragon-hating antagonist to jeopardise Hiccup's plans in the form of renowned hunter Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham), whose own mind-controlled dragons have the ability to vomit acid and melt pretty much anything in their wake. He certainly looks and sounds cool, but Grimmel shares much of the same motivation as the bad guys that come before him, and the character really symbolises the film's overall reluctance to dig that little bit deeper. For me, How to Train Your Dragon 2 really stepped up the game for this franchise, but it feels like returning director Dean DeBlois is happy to ease off the accelerator and ride this trilogy-closer out. If this were practically any other series, The Hidden World would be a delightful surprise, offering up great moments like the opening night-time raid and the sight of Toothless clumsily attempting win over his potential mate, the latter proving to be one of the most charming and heart-warming scenes of the entire trilogy. But with the knowledge of how great this could have been, The Hidden World is a disappointment, fizzling out with an ending that undoubtedly satisfies, but when compared to the emotional wallop of, say, Toy Story 3, plays it rather safe.


Directed by: Dean DeBlois
Voices: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,460: 'Captain Marvel' (2019)

It says a lot about the mammoth universe built by Kevin Feige and the folks at Marvel over the past 11 years that merely the glimpse of a modified pager displaying the colours of their costume is enough to generate a huge amount of buzz around the arrival of a new superhero. Captain Marvel's introduction was teased during the traditional post-credits stinger of last year's Avengers: Infinity War, and now, just under a year later, Brie Larson's Carol Danvers finally makes her bow. Black Panther became a cultural phenomenon, and Infinity War delivered and then some on its promise to bring this breathtaking (first) saga closer to an end, so the small-scale and light-hearted Ant-Man and the Wasp was a welcome, if underwhelming palette cleanser. Captain Marvel is the studio's first female-led superhero film, so there's a weight of expectation behind Marvel once again.

There has been a wave of ugliness online in protest against the idea of female empowerment and Brie Larson's pro-feminist comments before the film even premiered, but an opening weekend of north of $500 million has silenced the haters and, with any hope, brought us closer to a future when a hero's gender or sexuality is irrelevant to a film's success. Captain Marvel is far from perfect. In fact, it relies heavily on Marvel's tried-and-tested origin story formula we saw a lot of when this universe was still in its first phase, although directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck toy around with the structure enough to keep things slightly less familiar. Anyone who was keen to write Captain Marvel off as an example of forced diversity should take the time to actually watch it. Don't get me wrong, the film takes a strong pro-feminist stance and tackles issues plaguing our modern world, but it does so with subtlety. Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel is strong, confident, even arrogant at times, but just like Tony Stark or Dr. Strange, she is also flawed, troubled and - despite the mystery surrounding her ancestry - recognisably human.

The warrior known as Vers (Larson) is a member of Starforce, an elite band of soldiers operating within the Kree Empire tasked with infiltrating the Skrulls, a race of shape-shifting aliens they have been at war with since before they can remember. Vers is troubled by dreams that feel like memories she does not remember, but her commander Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) trains her to put aside her emotion to focus on the enemy. During a mission to rescue one Starforce's own, Vera is captured by Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), who proceeds to dissect her memories before they all crash down on a strange, primitive planet. That planet is Earth, and the year is 1995. It isn't long before an eager, two-eyed agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. called Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is drawn to this mysterious stranger and is caught up in her desire to uncover the secrets of her past, along with learning of an intergalactic war that may one day threaten his home. With the help of old friend Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) and a cat named Goose, Vers discovers that she was born Carol Danvers, and that everything she has been taught about who she is and what she's fighting for may actually be a lie.

Although Marvel have done period before with Captain America: The First Avenger back in 2011, Boden and Fleck were clearly having fun revelling in some 90's nostalgia. Although some of the music choices are a little on-the-nose, the appearance of a Blockbuster store and the sound of a dial-up internet connection will delight those, like me, who grew up in the decade. The big joke is that while Carol embarks on galaxy-hopping adventures with the Kree, down here on Earth everything takes an age to load. Captain Marvel switches seamlessly between these two extremes with good humour, and for a character that is destined to become the franchise's next cosmic powerhouse, the low-key approach to her origin actually works in the film's favour. It also allows time for Larson to develop the character, whether it be bouncing off Jackson's one-liners or discovering her old self with her best friend. Larson is great: strong but not over-powered, cocky but endearing. Despite Mendelsohn's scene-stealing, Larson ensures that it'll be Captain Marvel's appearance you'll be eagerly awaiting in the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. Formulaic? Certainly, but Marvel knows how to entertain, and they can't exactly re-define the genre with every film.


Directed by: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch, Clark Gregg, Gemma Chan, Rune Temte, Djimon Hounsou
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie