If you are like me and follow Ryan Reynolds on Twitter (if not, you definitely should, as he’s funny, charismatic and overall does seem like a good guy), you would have seen the massive push, him promoting this film. And honestly, if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have probably gone to the cinemas (the first time since the pandemic started!) and watched it alongside my girlfriend. Which would have been a shame, as we both liked the film, she even loved it. But that might have something to do with the overall sex appeal of Ryan. And who can blame her?

Free Guy is a film that 100% (strangely) benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic. Let me explain. This movie was supposed to get released in July 2020, but we all know why it got pushed back. So the filmmakers waited and put it in the cinemas now when it’s reasonably safe. And by that, they scratched something I call “the pandemic itch”. Don’t get me wrong this is by far the best video game based movie (even though is it fair to call it that? Will discuss it later.), so I think it would have been received well, but… I don’t think it would have been received nearly as well as it is being received now if it wasn’t for the pandemic. Why? Because people (myself included) are looking now more than ever for something light, funny, to brighten their day, to lift their spirit. And Free Guy is that. It’s a colourful, funny action-comedy that knows what it is, avoids most of the genre pitfalls well, and most importantly, it never gets boring.

This film also struck gold with casting. From the leading roles to the tens of cameo roles, some more expected than others. I won’t spoil any of those, as I’ve had some spoilt for me and let’s say if you don’t know, who might appear in this film, you are in for a treat. But let’s discuss our main stars. Let’s start with the aforementioned Ryan Reynolds. I appreciated this wasn’t a “Ryan Reynolds type” of a character. He always seems to be down to make fun of himself, and his Guy is a funny character who isn’t trying to be funny. I liked his performance. Jodie Comer was a newcomer for me, who gently reminded me that I have to watch Killing Eve (2018 – 2022) because she was great in this film. I loved that I can’t compare her to any other character from either film or a TV show. She plays a perfect mix of fun, clever and overall well-rounded character with a clear goal. To claim, what is hers. Who surprised me was Joe Keery, as I only know him from Stranger Things (2016 – 2022), where he is great. But as we know, just because you are great in one role in a TV show, that automatically does not translate to a movie. But he was fun to watch. I understood his character, his motivations, everything he did. I honestly hope we get to see more of him. Who kind of let me down, just a tiny bit (and is my only “complain” about the film) Taika Waititi. Listen, I love his work. I like the fact, he makes weird, over the top choices, and I understand what he and the director were going for in this film – I honestly do. But for me, his performance could have been toned down by good a 30% at least, as he was too obnoxious. Again, I understand that was the point of his character, but I think some of his jokes would have landed better if he wasn’t over the top from the very start.

As mentioned prior, after some thinking, I genuinely think this might be the best film based on video games. But as you can see, I wrote “video games” – hence my question. Does this count? Because other movies, based on video games (like the Resident Evil franchise, Silent Hill movies, even the coke and alcohol fest that is Super Mario Bros (1993, my review here)), all are based on one game or franchise of those games. Unlike Free Guy, which succeeded by playing it smart – borrowing the best elements across the spectrum. The biggest inspiration is Fortnite, but you can easily find GTA elements here, a few MMORPG game hints, and some nodes to classics like Half-Life, Portal etc. So this raises the question – since this film is “borrowing” from a plethora of games, is it any wonder it might be the best? Is it fair to say this did a better job than Silent Hill (2006)? A movie, btw, I consider being pretty much the best video game adaptation, as it came quite close to capturing the spirit of the game? Because if you think about it, by borrowing elements from a variety of games, you are not restricted by anything but your own mind/fantasy, whereas Silent Hill had to be contained. And this is a genuine question, as I don’t know myself. This question is not any “gotcha” towards Free Guy as what they have done was clever, and they executed it well.

Maybe this is the more important point – no matter how many elements the people behind this film might have borrowed, it wouldn’t have mattered if the movie wasn’t good. But this film is good. I honestly think the main reason for that, I believe (I don’t know whether I am right or not) that the people behind this are gamers. I used to be a massive gamer (both in the literal and not so literal sense). Nowadays, I don’t play as much, but I still got the references, but what’s more important, this will be one of those films that reward multiple viewings. Forget about the “obvious references” or even the story for a second. This film is jam-packed with literally hundreds of easter eggs in the background or the corner of the screen. I honestly think I can re-watch it five times, and each time, I will find something else I have missed before. I love movies like this.

What I also need to address is how they went about with the main story. They could have simply told the lazy “just a bit of magic/love, that is why we have an NPC, who broke his programming and acts like a player, all of a sudden” story, but no. The movie has a satisfactory explanation for why it happened that made sense and served the story in the real world. I was pleased that they did something different.

Overall, Free Guy is a “bubble-gum ice cream” equivalent of a movie. As in, right now, we live in a weird world. So, when a film like this comes around, which wouldn’t usually connect with you as much, it suddenly does. The same goes for “bubble-gum ice cream” – it’s not a flavour I would ever have/order. It’s too colourful, it can feel like it’s just for kids, and it can be too sweet. But then you get it, after a long time, and you are surprised. It’s still way too colourful and sweet, no question about that, but at the same time, it hits the spot. For whatever reason, it just does. Take my girlfriend, for example – she isn’t and never was a gamer. So she didn’t get most of the references. But she still enjoyed this film. And I used to be a hardcore gamer who has turned into a softcore gamer (phrasing!), and I still enjoyed this film. And who knows? Maybe on a second viewing, I might be down even with Taika’s acting. If Free Guy is playing in the cinema close to you and you feel safe going out, I would strongly recommend it. Even if it might seem from the trailers, it’s not your type of movie, go out and give it a try. It might surprise you.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke

I will be honest I wasn’t planning on writing a review, as I am after a night shift. So what does one do when he is after a 12hour night shift? That’s right, he (or I, in this case) watches something light, something you don’t expect too much from, like The Voyeurs. And holy shit. The moment this movie ended, I knew I was writing something down because I just had to vent. I don’t normally copy and paste the synopsis, as that’s not what my reviews are about, but this is a new film, and I will almost immediately go to spoilers because there is no way to discuss this movie without doing so. This is to give you just a summary of what this film is about.

Pippa and Thomas move into their dream apartment, they notice that their windows look directly into the apartment opposite, this will set in motion a chain of events that will lead to disaster.

Synopsis of The Voyeurs, source: IMDb.com

Sounds pretty intriguing, right? Maybe a new spin on Rear Window (1954, my review here), plus if you watched any trailers, it’s promising to be a bit steamy with the gorgeous Sydney Sweeney in the leading role, so what is not to love here, correct? Well, it turns out you can’t just base your film on twists, nudity and more twists. Or at least, you can’t start from that place. And this film is the perfect example of something that feels like the people behind it started with a few twisty ideas on some old norms, but… Do you know how they say too many chefs can spoil the soup? Well, too many twists can kill your movie. Ok, I can’t hold it any longer…

Beware, SPOILERS are coming!

The movie starts promisingly, especially if you have a weakness for Sydney Sweeney (whoever says they don’t is a liar) as she tries her hardest in this film. But even she couldn’t make this work, but I can’t blame her or any other actors involved. Because this whole movie is a glossy mess, masked as a deconstruction of the “voyeur” genre. Aka, what if we take the rug underneath the voyeurs? Yes, the movie tries so hard to distract you with gratuitous nudity to serve you a story that’s trying to be so, so clever. But here’s the thing – the more you think about the story, about all the moving parts of it, the less sense it makes.

So, the big idea is this – Sydney’s character becomes obsessed with watching their new neighbours across the road. Her boyfriend (Justice Smith, whose “voice choice” puzzled the fuck out of me, to be honest) is kind of game at first. They discover the husband (Ben Hardy) cheats on her wife (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) with models, as he’s a famous photographer. Then one night, they manage to sneak a tiny mirror into their flat on Halloween (I didn’t even know whether it was Halloween or just some other party where people are dressed in costumes). Yes, a mirror because Justice Smith is an audio guy who knows how to spy on people using a laser. Yes, because apparently, if you flash the laser into their flat and it bounces back from the mirror, it transports the sound waves…? (I need MythBusters on this, ASAP!!) Anyway, from then on, Sydney and Justice have not only visual but also audio means to spy on their new neighbours. And this is where they discover that they fight a lot because she suspects him of cheating, but he gaslights her quite effectively.

A few days later, the first TWIST. Of course, Natasha comes into Sydney’s work (she’s working for a company that tests people and gives them prescription glasses) for a check-up. And at the end of that check-up, Natasha asks Sydney out because she seems cool…? Yes. That happens. So, what do you do with a stranger you’ve never met before? You go to a new spa with them, so you can sweat in a sauna and then be butt naked with them in the pool later on, duh. This is where she reveals to Sydney how she feels alone etc. Cool. Weird, but ok. She also mentions how she’s so bad with technology where she has got this new Wi-Fi printer (remember this tiny yet convenient detail for later), and she doesn’t even know how to set it up. After this, Sydney feels morally obligated to tell her that her husband is cheating on her. She discusses this first with Justice Smith, who wants her to stop watching the neighbours and let it go (he sounds clever). But of course, she doesn’t. Do you remember the Wi-Fi printer? Yes, the following night… or a few nights after (I have no idea, as the movie is not great with time), Sydney listens again, but this time, she prints a document to a wireless printer. And then, she tries a second one and surprise, that’s Natasha’s printer! (Btw, as an IT guy, it hurts to see somebody, who somehow manages to print using a printer, that’s A) not part of their network, and B) most importantly, it’s solid 40/50 meters away.) So this is how Sydney informs Natasha that her husband is cheating on her. Natasha snaps and tries to kill him just to chicken out and break down. Justice Smith is displeased, Sydney isn’t. God is dead, let us move on.

The next morning, Sydney and Justice talk, where Sydney promises to stop altogether with this shit, but of course, she takes a glimpse and bam, the second TWIST! Natasha killed herself! Now, Justice is like “bitch, I am so out, you are on your own!” and leaves Sydney. A couple of days pass by, and one night, Sydney yet again can’t stop spying on the grieving neighbour (what a psycho). And she spots him going down to a bar. So, what do you think happens next? That’s right, she dresses up and goes to the same bar. He notices her eye-fucking him from 10 metres and sits down, with his “porn is great and there isn’t a difference between a vibrator and penis” speech. Just as a side note – 9/10 people, who at some point in their life talked to a real woman for the first time, don’t recommend starting a conversation like this. The one person is Ben Hardy because if you look like him, you can pretty much do whatever you want, as anybody will want to jump on your dick, no matter what you say. Or you know, do, as they saw you cheat on your wife. Moving along. He invites Sydney to his flat, where he starts taking pictures of her. And yes, you guessed it, they both undress, sex ensues. But wait, at the same time, Justice is back in the flat, takes a sip of juice in the fridge (remember this tiny yet convenient detail for later, #2) and sees Sydney banging him. So we see him crying. A totally normal thing to do. At this point, Satan is also dead, and hell froze over.

Moving on, the morning after, she wakes up, dresses up, and goes back to her flat, where, shazam, the THIRD twist. Justice Smith hanged himself! I think it was at this moment, I knew. I knew this movie was going to be a mess and not the enjoyable kind. So we see his funeral Sydney is super sad. A couple of days go by again, Sydney bumps into her friend. She tells her the entire story. The friend tells her it wasn’t Sydney’s fault (spoiler alert, it was, you lying no good friend). Sydney wishes she could just see Ben’s character one more time, for… reasons…? The friend says to go for it, and this is when she remembers that today, it’s his gallery thing he told her about. So they both go. In here, this is where the movie went from “bat shit crazy” to “the actual fuck is happening here”, as voila, the fourth TWIST! Natasha, Ben’s wife, isn’t dead! And the voyeur(s) became the ones who were watched. As of course, they own the flat Sydney and Justice moved into, and they had cameras set up to take pictures of them, as they were watching them! At this point, I swear I heard Buddha saying: “Peace, I am out. I am usually a patient man, but that’s some bullshit.” So Sydney is the main point of the exhibition. Well, her and her boobs.

Then we see the psycho couple trying to justify it in an interview. Saying how both Sydney and Justice signed a release on the last page of the contract to be photographed while living in the flat, so everything the crazy couple did, was cool. That is when we discover that bim bam bum (I am running out surprise noises here) fifth TWIST – he seems like a decent guy, and it was her, who is the bitch. Do you think that’s all? Nah, we still have some grounds to cover.

Sydney is moving out of her reality TV flat when she notices dead birds underneath the water feeder. Remember how I mentioned that Justice took the sip of juice just before he committed suicide? Well, he poured the rest of it into the water feeder. This is when Sydney realises that dun dun DAAAA, sixth TWIST! He might have not committed suicide at all! So Sydney decides to play her Wi-Fi printer schtick again while sending the psycho couple some spiked wine, as they follow her into her work, where she doesn’t get admission from either of them, that they have in fact killed Justice. But she’s really convinced. At that moment, whatever she put in their wine knocks them out conveniently at her work, so she can… BLIND THEM!

The movie ends with a nice gay couple moving into the ex-reality TV flat, where they comment on neighbours being weird. That is when we discover for sure, they are both blind, and Sydney is watching from the roof. Calmly walking away, while we see her in the binoculars. Yep, this is an actual movie. It got made by Amazon Prime. You can go and watch it for yourself. But I couldn’t recommend you doing that.

The Voyeurs is a film that wants to do something different. And I appreciate the effort. But when you are half asleep (like me, after a 12hour night shift) and the movie wakes you up so much that you can take it apart as the film is happening, even though it shows you naked Sydney Sweeney, something is very wrong. Not only there are way too many twists, but I honestly felt that every major decision the movie made, they went with the craziest, most unexpected thing. As if to say: “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition! Sorry, I mean nobody will expect this turn!” But maybe, no one would expect it because thinking back to the story you decided to tell, it doesn’t make sense…?

There is also the thing about “the voyeur becoming the one(s), who are watched”. The movie tries to question the morality of this situation. And that’s a great question, which is totally undermined if you think about it. How? Well, let me ask you this. How come the psycho couple had the cameras already set up when they moved in? The movie wants to have its cake and eat it too. It’s trying to have some witty comment on “watching people is bad” as almost to give the psycho couple some leg to stand on, but do they? Because for them to make that point, they (Sydney and Justice) need to act on the urge to watch them, otherwise, they (the psycho couple) are the voyeurs who already set up the cameras and put it into their contract! This movie…

Overall, The Voyeurs, as you might have guessed, didn’t impress me at all. It’s full of hot, young, naked people and Sydney Sweeney on top of it. But it all feels dumb in the first half and batshit crazy to insane in the second half. The movie wants to have a message, but it doesn’t work. It wants to have a complicated, sexy, twisty story that also doesn’t work when you think about it for just two seconds… I can’t even say: “It’s so bad it’s good.” No, it’s not. It’s just a bad nonsensical mess that tries to lure you in with some nudity. But in the age of “the Internets”, you don’t have to watch an almost two-hour-long movie, that doesn’t make sense, to see some (albeit magnificent) boobs.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke

This movie was full of paradoxes to me. On one hand, there are some original things I really liked about this movie (the one sequence with no cut, where we see the horror behind the song “Strange Fruit”, the fact the movie portrays Billie Holiday as a person with flaws) on another, it unfortunately falls into the same traps as many biopics that came before it, where even if you are not familiar with Billie’s story, you know where this is going. And also, the movie is a bit longer than necessary, where it looses the emotional impact.

Let’s start with the positives, Andra Day is simply phenomenal in this role. I do need to state that I know nothing about Billie Holiday, so I can’t judge how faithfully she portrayed her, but I can say that Andra’s performance really resonated with me. One of the pitfalls The United States vs. Billie Holiday doesn’t fall into as a biopic, is the fact it’s not afraid to show the person, who the movie is about (in this case Billie Holiday) with all their flaws and imperfections, they are not trying to make a saint out of her. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is saying that plenty of her issues were not her fault (which again, I don’t know how true or not it is, but given everything I know about American history, it wouldn’t shock me, if most of it was at least somehow true) but then it also displays her as a broken person, who at the end of day, is just a person. I think the movie succeeded in painting a thin line, where you can see what’s happened to her was awful and at the same time, how some things would have happened without anybody’s interreference. And Andra gave her everything to this performance, where she never felt one dimensional. She can be strong in one scene and broken in the next and you still can tell that deep down, it is the same person.

I also was stunned by that one sequence, that definitely stays with you, where we see the burning tree and the horrors of lynching. That one shot, everything that leads to it and everything that happens after it, will stay with you for some time, that is for sure.

Unfortunately, the movie suffers from being a bit too long, where except Andra’s performance and that one sequence, you don’t really remember anything else. I am writing this review about a week and a few days after watching this movie and I can’t really recall much more beyond those details. One of the reasons for this is the length, where the movie just goes deeper and deeper into the same stuff, where unfortunately it starts to feel repetitive, and no matter what you see, it doesn’t hit you as hard as it should. If you let the viewer wallow in the dirt too much and for too long, eventually, they become numb to it and that is what happened here. You watch the movie, you see everything that’s happening, but at some point, it feels too repetitive and it doesn’t impact you as much.

Again, I need to repeat this, I knew nothing about Billie Holiday before watching the movie, but in this movie, there was nothing, that surprised me, as the film follows the unwritten rules of biopic movies “rise, fall, rise, fall, rise, fall, death”, if I were to oversimplify them. And there is definitely something wrong, if you are watching a drama about a person you know nothing about, but you can tell without a doubt where it’s going, what the next scene will be and there are little to no surprises in store for you. It almost feels as if people making biopic movies believed, that if their movies are not over 2 hours long, they wouldn’t be taken seriously. So they cram the movie full of things that not only are not needed, but make the movie bloated, where even though you shouldn’t be bored, because it’s dealing with serious topic, you are bored.

I do believe there is a great movie in here, if it was to be re-edited a bit, by good 20/30 minutes. And based on the fact the movie scored only one Oscar nomination for Andra’s performance (deservedly so) and the current IMDb rating is 6.3/10, it seems like I am not the only one who thinks that. It’s a shame, as if done well, we could have had a hidden gem on our hands, about somebody I would say plenty of people are not THAT familiar with. Instead, what we’ve gotten is a decent enough movie, that only goes to above average territory simply because Andra Day.

Overall, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a decent movie, that is only worth seeing for the one and only Andra Day (I know I’ve mentioned her name a lot in this review, but she truly deserves it). The movie’s topic and message couldn’t be more relevant today, but unfortunately it feels really dull and falls into the same traps as bunch of biopics prior to this one, where except of one really strong sequence and one hell of a performance, you won’t remember much else a week or two later on. And that shouldn’t happen.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke