Glass Onion – Review

And here we are with the last review of the year. I would have seen this earlier but unfortunately I caught covid and had to quarantine and since seeing the original Knives Out both my parents have seen it and loved it so I knew that since this was a Netflix release I had to watch it with them.

Much like Knives Out this is really good. Much like with that film I won’t go into any details about the mystery and spin on the formula, I’ll just note that it’s a different spin from the one Knives Out had. It’s fun getting to learn more about Benoit Blanc as a character including the fun detail that he’s terrible at mystery games like Cluedo and Among Us.

And of course what’s a murder mystery without the suspects and victim/victims. Once again the cast are all great and it’s hard to go into detail about any specific performance without going into detail about their role in the mystery. I do like the detail that this time they’re based on famous people with many being based on a type of celebrity and for this year in particular the fact the host is specifically based on Elon Musk is pretty amusing.

If you have Netflix and liked the first movie I do recommend watching this and if you haven’t seen the original it’s on there too so if you like the genre and just haven’t gotten around to watching it yet it’s a great time to watch them. I still have a bit of catching up to do before my best of 2022 list is read. This was also a good reminder that I really should get around to watching Rian Johnson’s earlier films, my review for the first film ended with a note about how I should watch Looper which I still haven’t seen.

A Boy Called Christmas – Review

When I mentioned I wanted the next film I reviewed to be a Christmas film my parents checked their recordings to find this film from last year. Amusingly while this is a Sky Original here in the UK Netflix have the international distribution rights, I bring this up because I find it funny that this movie starts with the Netflix logo but isn’t available on UK Netflix.

I think this works as a Sky Christmas movie. It’s a charming film to put on at Christmas if you haven’t seen it before with a good cast that you record when it pops up on Sky Cinema but not a classic you’d want to revisit regularly unless it’s with a child that loves it.

It’s a fun take on the Santa lore, not as good as Klaus but still charming and focused more on the English name of Father Christmas than his other names. It’s got a good cast with the stand out without a doubt being Stephen Merchant as Miika, the talking mouse. I also like the Princess Bride style framing device of this being a story being told to children, it even weirdly had a story being told to a child within that story which I found pretty funny.

My main criticism of the film would be the ending. Most of it is fine but the cruel aunt character gets given something she expressed interest in earlier in the film as a present despite not having any kind of redemption or guilt over her actions beforehand. It would have made more sense for her to be the origin of getting a lump of coal if you’re naughty or just not be brought back after the quest started. I also find it odd the king gets depicted in a positive light in the ending when at the start of the film he’s actively avoiding the issues his subjects bring up about what he could do to solve their poverty while he lives in luxury.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – Review

Earlier this year Disney released their remake of their classic take on Pinocchio and in my review I made sure to bring up how another Pinocchio movie was coming out this year and it looked like a much better movie. Well now it’s out on Netflix. Like with Matilda this did get some cinema screenings but not in my local Odeon, I do think it’s good that Netflix are doing these screenings and hopefully it means films like this can have their trailers shown in the cinema like Matilda’s were.

This was really good. Stop motion really is the perfect medium to tell a Pinocchio story, in addition to the stop motion being great for the whole film Pinocchio himself is animated especially well. The design is great too with the most attention given to his wooden and hand crafted features than any other Pinocchio design I’ve seen.

Coming out the same year as Disney’s live action version it’s hard to avoid comparing the two movies if you’ve seen both and this movie comes out on top in pretty much every area I can think of. The Disney remake takes away elements that made the story work while this movie builds on the story with a bunch of new details, it’s a very different take on Pinocchio (especially with the setting being Italy during World War 2) but all the important story beats are there. The only area I’d say the Disney remake comes out on top is the songs because it uses the iconic songs from the 1940 film, though that’s not a criticism of this film’s songs which work well for this version of the story.

If you see only one Pinocchio film from this year it should be this one. Between this and Wendell & Wild this has been a great year for stop motion films on Netflix, I hope this is a sign they’ll work with more stop motion filmmakers. I also hope this won’t be the last animated film from Guillermo del Toro, he clearly has a passion for animation with him regularly using the quote “animation is a medium, not a genre”. Now since it is December I should try watching a Christmas movie next.