Sing 2 – Review

This review is a bit later than I intended, though a delayed review is pretty fitting for a movie with a delayed UK release. And on the subject of delayed UK releases one of the trailers was an old one for the upcoming Minions movie with the amusing details of “next year” followed by “2021”. I guess they ran out of footage they felt comfortable using in the trailer, which is amusing considering the trailers for the Sing movies.

This is better than the first movie. As I said in the opening paragraph it still has the problem of showing the beginning and end of all the character arcs in the trailer but that’s more of a marketing problem than a fault of the movie, the arcs themselves are decent and there’s still at least some details that don’t make it into the trailers. The interaction between characters is still limited as most stick to the characters relevant to their own arcs but they do have more of a dynamic now as they’ve been working together more between movies and aren’t competing against each other anymore.

One detail about this film I did find interesting is its answer to a question I didn’t think to ask about the first movie but is a good question. In a jukebox musical set in a world of anthropomorphic animals that is knowingly a jukebox musical who sang the original songs in that world? Their answer is to cast the original singer as a character with Bono’s character Clay Calloway being the one who wrote U2 songs in this universe. It’s certainly a more interesting answer than making an animal pun of a singer’s name.

If you liked the first Sing you’ll probably like this one but if you’re not a fan of Illumination it’s not exactly going to be the movie to change that for you either. That said as Illumination movies go I do think it’s probably one of the better ones I’ve seen, still not as good as the first two Despicable Me movies though. I do plan on making a ranking image for Illumination’s films later this year when the Mario movie comes out along with one for just the Despicable Me movies when the new Minions movie comes out.

Sing – Review

So Sing 2 has been in cinemas for a while now but other movies have been higher priorities for me when it comes to cinema trips and as you can tell by the fact this is a review of the first movie I also still needed to see it first. Well recently I noticed that the first movie was available at no extra cost on Amazon Prime so I decided this seemed like the best time to watch these movies rather than waiting until the Mario movie comes out.

It’s an enjoyable movie. Illumination often are known for making good trailers that deliver on their premise better than the actual movie, for example Secret Life of Pets where that title only really applies to the opening scene that is also the original teaser trailer with the actual movie just being a Toy Story rip-off. And while this movie has its problems the big performance scenes are the selling point and they do work better in the movie than in the trailers so that’s an improvement.

Unfortunately this movie does suffer from trailer problems with entire character arcs being shown in them. Not every character arc but unfortunately most of the contestants don’t really do much outside of their scenes in the trailer and their big performance.

Short review this time but hopefully I’ll have more to say about both movies after watching the new one as I’ll have something to compare it to. I will note that the sequel did make finding images for this review a bit trickier because there were a couple of times I almost clicked on one before noticing the outfits were different or a character I didn’t recognise was there.

The Batman (2022) – Review

And now the reason I did that catch up marathon. When I saw the trailers and designs I was pretty skeptical of this film, I’ve been pretty vocal about not being a fan of Batman using armour as his default suit and I am getting tired of the fun being taken out of the designs for the villains when adapted to live action. But I heard plenty of friends and content creators I like say how good the film was it did make me more interested in seeing what it was like.

I liked it and because I watched The Long Halloween before seeing it I was able to appreciate the references to that story. However unlike that movie this isn’t an adaptation, it’s just another movie that has Carmine “The Roman” Falcone as a major part of the story along with his connections to the Wayne family and Selina Kyle. It’s also neat to see a live action Batman movie include the Penguin as part of Gotham’s organized crime scene with the Iceberg Lounge being a common location in the movie, it helps that side of Gotham’s crime still feel connected to his rogue’s gallery.

Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz are both great as Batman and Catwoman and as sceptical as I was of the Riddler from his design Paul Dano’s performance is really good and his unmasked design is pretty spot-on (he just needs the suit). This is a pretty solid Batman cast and I look forward to seeing many of these characters return for future movies since this is planned as a trilogy, I’m also glad to know the team working on this series have already said they want to include Robin.

The movie isn’t without its problems, for example it can be a bit too dark. And by dark I don’t mean the tone, a lot of scenes have very little lighting and while some benefit from that approach not all of them do. There’s also my design problems I mentioned earlier but I have those with all the live action Batman movies (except the 1966 movie of course) so that’s nothing new. But how does it compare to other Batman movies overall?

It didn’t make my top 10 but it is my new favourite live action Batman movie. Also because this movie is called The Batman it got me thinking about the show The Batman a bit more and as a result its movie got a bit of a higher ranking than last time I was up to date on Batman movies. Of course I’ll be updating this image again later this year when the Batgirl movie comes out. One last thing before I end this review; if you checked What’s After The Credits? to see if this movie had any bonus scenes it says yes but it’s not actually a scene, it’s just a “the movie’s over” visual.

Catwoman: Hunted – Review

And now for the movie I almost missed. Part of me is surprised it’s taken this long to get a Catwoman animated movie but then I remembered that her live action movie is one of the more universally agreed as bad movies in the Batman franchise so I guess I can see why WB might avoid doing another for a while.

This was a lot of fun. I like the anime inspired look, it really helps it stand out next to other DC movies. This probably isn’t going to be anyone’s favourite Batman movie but it’s certainly a fun one and easily the best Catwoman movie, I’m glad I didn’t miss it before finishing this marathon.

It’s neat that of all the Bat family members to tag along they went with Batwoman, they have a fun dynamic and Liz Gillies and Stephanie Beatriz do a good job voicing them. The movie also has a pretty decent lineup of villains from Black Mask to Solomon Grundy to a version of Tobias Whale voiced by Keith David. And of course there’s fellow cat themed characters Cheshire and Cheetah, surprisingly Catwoman got a movie where Cheetah is the main villain before Wonder Woman did.

This marathon has been pretty good for Catwoman content with The Long Halloween, this movie and from what I’ve heard the Catwoman content in The Batman is pretty good too. But of course speaking of The Batman I’m finally all caught up and ready to watch it, and surprisingly I’ve avoided spoilers despite seeing a lot of people talking about it online.

Batman: The Long Halloween – Review

When mentioning that I was going to review this movie I brought up that it was released in two parts and as a result you can either consider it one movie or two. Now that I’ve seen it I’m going with one as part 1’s ending doesn’t really feel like an ending, even in an “end of part 1” cliffhanger way. Plus it’s going to get a release of both parts as one movie anyway in the same way The Dark Knight Returns did.

So far this is the best part of this mini marathon. It’s one of the better adaptation DC movies I’ve seen. I’m also glad that instead of copying the art direction of the comic it has its own art style that still stands out and uses the art of the comic for opening credits so it can still be part of the film’s visuals. While I haven’t read the comic I’ve heard good things about it and from what I’ve seen this is a pretty faithful adaptation.

This film was Naya Rivera’s last role, she’s really good as Catwoman and looking at the interview she filmed it was clear this was a role she was really happy to get to play. The rest of the main cast are also great with Jasen Ackles being a good fit for Batman (which is especially neat since he was Jason Todd in Under the Red Hood) and Josh Duhamel depicts Harvey Dent’s slow transition into Two-Face really well.

While Two-Face has been part of the main cast of multiple Batman movies very few have made him a big part of the overall story and even then he’s often overshadowed by another villain like the Riddler or the Joker. But this is a Two-Face story and a good one at that, it even comes in two parts. If you’re a Two-Face fan this is the movie for you. Now before I go see The Batman I have one more movie to see…

Batman: Soul of the Dragon – Review

One of the first DC animated movies since they ended the New 52 inspired Animated Movie Universe and the first of them. Also while checking this detail I found out there’s one more Batman animated movie I need to catch up on after The Long Halloween, there’s a Catwoman movie that came out earlier this year.

Not one of the stronger Batman films I’ve seen but an interesting team up movie. I like the idea of Batman being on a team with people he trained with before becoming Batman who went down different paths and this does a good job at depicting that concept. However while this doesn’t seem to be an established named team the other members do overshadow Batman who barely spends any of the movie suited up as Batman so it feels less like a Batman movie and more like a movie that has Batman in it.

As for the members of said team the character selection works fairly well. They’re not so iconic that it might as well be a Justice League movie but also not so obscure that people who don’t read the comics won’t at least recognise their names. Well except Richard Dragon but he’s been redesigned to be DC Bruce Lee in this so most viewers will get the idea of the character right away. Speaking of characters feeling familiar I’m amused I watched two movies featuring a character voiced by James Hong back to back without even intending to.

As far as a first impression of this post-DCAMU animated DC movie direction so far it doesn’t feel that different. There’s still a bunch of weirdly brutal deaths of henchmen that seem to exist just for the R/15 rating and that was one of my biggest problems with a lot of those movies, even the better ones. Something that does help this movie stand out however is the heavy influence from 70s media in everything from the character designs to the music.

Turning Red – Review

I said this in my top 10 movies of 2021 list when talking about Luca but I really like Pixar’s new range of art styles with their most recent movies. It helps their original movies stand out next to Disney Animation Studios more now that both studios are making CGI movies.

This was a lot of fun. The animation is great, especially during dream sequences and the magical parts of the story where characters aren’t limited by the boundaries of reality. The expressions are also a highlight, as a fan of a lot of TV animation I’m always happy to see a similar range of expressions in theatrical animation.

It’s interesting that the recent talking point concerning this movie was a critic who thought it had too specific an audience to be relatable when the opposite is the case. This is a movie about the experience of early teens and it depicts that experience in a really effective way by setting it in 2002 meaning in addition to teenage viewers relating to the characters many parents watching it with their own children will have nostalgia for when they were that age thanks to the time period specific details. All Mei’s Chinese culture means for relatability is that anyone who shares that culture has an extra detail to relate to her about, and that’s a good thing that should be embraced.

Fortunately that critic’s views are the minority and this movie is doing really well critically with it being Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a shame that much like the last two Pixar movies this one missed out on a cinema release, especially now that the time between the cinema and Disney+ releases is much shorter. Now to get back to the Batman movie catch up…

LEGO DC Batman: Family Matters – Review

Of all the storylines to influence a LEGO Batman story I was not expecting Jason Todd becoming the Red Hood to be one of them. As of 2020 Universal now owns the LEGO movie rights (though this doesn’t effect the distribution rights of the existing movies) so this might end up being the last LEGO Batman movie.

While it’s a shame LEGO Batman didn’t end with a sequel to The LEGO Batman Movie it is nice that we got a movie with a focus on the Bat Family. It is the most common lineup of Bat Family members in animation meaning sadly so Tim, Stephanie, Cassie, David or Luke but Tim does get a mention at least. As a Steven Universe fan it was pretty neat hearing Zach Callison as a pre-Shazam Billy Batson.

The Red Hood stuff certainly has an interesting depiction compared to previous versions, obviously all the darker details from Death in the Family aren’t part of this version but it still makes the Red Hood stuff work in its own LEGO way. It’s also neat to have a Batman movie with a focus on the important work Bruce Wayne does and why he shouldn’t abandon that side of his life to be Batman full time.

This certainly isn’t on the same level as The LEGO Batman Movie but it’s at least better than repurposed video game cutscenes like LEGO Batman The Movie: DC Super Heroes Unite. I’ve got two more Batman movies to watch (three if you count both parts of The Long Halloween as separate movies) before I’m ready to see The Batman.

Death on the Nile (2022) – Review

It’s starting to look like the Kenneth Branagh Poirot films are cursed to come out at the worst possible time for their cast to work as a selling point. Murder on the Orient Express came out at a bad time to have Johnny Depp in your movie and now with this movie Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer and Letitia Wright have each had their own recent controversies that have effected public opinions of them.

The movie itself is enjoyable but as someone who experienced the specific mysteries for the first time in these films the reveal in this one is underwhelming, especially when compared to the big twist in Murder on the Orient Express. The rest of the film is still good though including the smaller mysteries surrounding the various suspects and the setting does allow for some nice cinematic shots of Egypt. It’s also pretty neat to see French and Saunders working together again.

Kenneth Branagh continues to be good as Poirot though for some reason they threw in this tragic backstory scene as the origin for his mustache that really didn’t need to be there and would have worked better if the reason had been as a tribute to the captain he failed to save instead of the actual reason they go with.

If you’re more familiar with this story, just want to see Poirot on the big screen and liked the previous movie I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. With this review finished I’m sure some people are expecting my next review to be of the new Batman movie. But it’s going to be a few days before I can go see in, during that time I’ll make an effort to watch the three Batman movies I need to catch up on (Family Matters, Soul of the Dragon and The Long Halloween) so I can include a complete ranking image.