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Category: Reviews

Movie Review: “Mufasa: The Lion King” (2024)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Was expecting this to be bad, was not expecting this to be this tragically prequel-brained.

I do try not to fall into the same old conversation about these “live-action” Disney remakes and their followups, right, but, like, fuck, man. Consistently they’re worse, duller versions of all-time classics that cost all the money in the world to make and have nothing to say.

What does the director of Moonlight think his take on this world is? What does Barry Jenkins think he’s adding to the history of these stories?

Sigh. What’s good about this one is what’s always good about these, what’s bad about this one is what’s always bad about these.

But like. As an artist, I try not to ask art to justify itself — art inherently has value just for being made, just for you having made it — but when it costs half a quarter billion dollars to make, I don’t think it’s unfair to ask it to have a reason to exist.

Though I suppose at half a quarter billion dollars, from this company, it can’t afford to have something to say because it needs to appeal to literally everyone and their cat to be worth making… So imagine if it actually had something to say. The thought is genuinely unfathomable.

Any time Timon and Pumbaa aren’t on screen having a fight for their lives with the fourth wall, I’m sat here asking, where are Timon and Pumbaa?

Since Disney didn’t fucking bother making 2024’s Mufasa: The Lion King a new movie, either, my review is entirely compiled of bits from my previous reviews of modern Disney remakes. Also on Letterboxd.

Movie Review: “Kraven the Hunter” (2024)

Posted on by Alex Daily

This is a slightly expanded, lightly edited version of my review (Letterboxd, Mastodon) from right after I saw it last night.

Is 2024’s Kraven the Hunter good? No. Because these movies never are. Of course it’s not good.

Think about what this is for a second. 2024’s Kraven the Hunter is a Sony-made Marvel movie about the guy who hunts Spider-Man… that don’t got Spider-Man in it. Exactly like how Madame Web just aggressively didn’t have Spider-Man in it, just like how Venom and Morbius didn’t have Spider-Man in them. You already know what this movie is. To ask anything different of it is like expecting the weird store-brand M&Ms that are a little too sweet to change.

“Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters,” the SUMC, was, in the end, for that’s the terms in which we can talk about it now that we’ve been told it’s over, always a cinematic universe desperately searching for a Spider-Man, and it just never found him. It had Venom, who looked weirdly like Spider-Man’s black suit for no apparent reason, it had Spider-Man’s mum and Spider-Man’s uncle, and a guy who looked like if Spider-Man had an emo phase. And now it has Kraven the Hunter, who, I’m not kidding, gets bit, injected with modified animal fluids in the process, gets powers from that, learns lessons about what to do with power from a father figure, and then stalks around the world with spider-like moves. It’s not subtle. He crawls, as they say, walls.

But it never actually found a Spider-Man.

Outside of the fluke of the first Venom, these movies never really did numbers. When Sony got trolled into rereleasing Morbius it might actually, somehow, have done negative numbers. I found a lot of joy in the gonzo madness of the first Venom, and I’ll defend all three of those as fun rides, but these movies, they were never really for anyone. Nobody was jonesing for a movie about the guy whose one good story fundamentally has to have Spider-Man in it without Spider-Man in it. Maybe there’s a subreddit out there somewhere where they lose their minds over these, I don’t know.

Everyone, to get back to the movie, kind of understands the assignment. Which I think was probably… to make a bad movie. There’s fun bits. A good fight, a good chase. The CGI occasionally makes Kraven feel weightless in the world, and characters regularly teleport or know things they shouldn’t, but I liked several of the action sequences, and though it never actually intentionally managed to make me laugh, occasionally a body got flung around in a slapsticky way that got me. The closest comparison might be to the kind of generic action movies we see at Sneak Preview sometimes.

2024’s Kraven the Hunter marks the end of this particular side story. The end, fin, of a franchise that always felt like it was made to please the executives of another universe, one where not Iron Man but Daredevil and Elektra were the breakout superhero hits of the 00s.

So long to the SUMC. It never made sense in this universe.

But fuck, I really think I’ll kinda fucking miss it.

Weird Soda Review: Oreo-flavoured Coke Zero

Posted on by Alex Daily

Rest assured that when I saw these in the soda aisle I immediately alerted every relevant authority, by which I mean Mastodon, David, and the family group chat.

Several cans of Limited Edition Oreo Coke Zero in a supermarket display. The can has a black and white design on it of circular Oreo-like shapes stacked to resemble a Coke bottle. They're 79 cents a can.

The Expectation

What I’m expecting is a take on a vanilla-flavoured cola, something in the cream soda zone, but with Vanilla Coke Zero literally easily available for sale right next to it, I can’t quite picture what will distinguish this from it. The can says it’s “fizzy cookie” flavoured (fizzy “cookie” flavoured?) so presumably the dark biscuit taste of the Oreo comes through in some way.

The Nose

Open, let settle, sniff. Hm. There’s a lightness in the aroma that means I might be close with my vanilla/cream expectation. There’s something else there that I can’t quite identify.

The Taste

Pour, let settle, sniff again. No new information. Let’s sip this thing.

Oh, this is really subtle. Sip. No vanilla or cream flavour, really. Sip. No, there’s some of it in here, but not a lot, it’s, somehow, mostly the cookie. Sip. They’ve somehow translated the dark Oreo cookie to the dark soda. Pour some more. Take a bigger sip, hold it in the mouth for a bit. This is weirdly subtle.

The aftertaste is reminiscent of a sweet chocolate, no, not even the aftertaste, the afterfeel, the way it coats the mouth. Yeah, now that it’s settling, what this is a lightly chocolate-flavoured cola.

Conclusion

It’s like somebody left a pile of just the cookie part of the Oreo at the bottom of a vat of cola syrup and then pretended they meant to do that. It’s not bad, it’s just not what I was expecting. I’m not sure I’ll buy these again, because they’re so subtle — I’d rather just buy some Vanilla Coke Zero.

I’m a big fan of these Creations-branded experimental flavours, and I’m glad they’ve figured out a way to do a really nuanced one after a few pretty unsubtle fruity ones.

Review: “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver” (2024)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Also on my Letterboxd, and a sequel to my review of the first one.

cover the second half of this film.

Look, I don’t want to accuse Mr Snyder of anything, but if I thought there was any kind of coherent ideology to this beyond “Star Wars and Seven Samurai are cool and Netflix will give me $166 million American dollaridoos to make a 2-part 5-hour remix of them,” I’d be extremely suspicious of a lot of what’s going on here. That the planet is called “Veldt,” for one.

The shift of focus from, in the first one, a competent adult who knows what she needs to do, to, well, the gang she’s assembled just… doing it, really highlights the extent to which this has not a single original idea going for it. Where this could’ve been a take on Luke Skywalker, blazing with righteous fury at the injustices of the world around him, finally doing something about it, instead it all just serves to reinforce the cold, oppressive, authoritarian bleakness Mr Snyder has so consistently forced upon the culture around him. It’s all just unpleasant.

The film truly never makes a case for her quest, or for anything at all, beyond that that’s simply what you do in one of these. She doesn’t need to learn anything to achieve her goals, she simply knows who to reach out to and does so. Space Nazis line up their Stormtroopers because that’s what they do in Star Wars, her gang trains the people of Veldt because that’s what they do in Seven Samurai. Cary Elwes gets stabbed by two dozen men in togas because he’s supposed to be Ceasar. You’ve seen every part of this before.

And so she plods ever onwards, taking her team back home to her South African-coded home moon — which she and her gang successfully defend, saving the world’s most generic day from the world’s most generic antagonist, generically. What happens next in this world? Is Kora now equipped for future attacks? If Mr Snyder cares, the impression doesn’t come across. I’m baffled by the idea that anyone would want to find out.

Truly, this is Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver, in which the picture’s equivalent of Luke Skywalker achieves the quest she sets out on, exactly like you expect she will, in the exact ways you know she will. I don’t remember exactly where the first one ended, but let’s just say there’s a reason this kind of story doesn’t usually get split into parts like this.

A mistake George Lucas makes in the 90s is he starts using character tropes from the old film serials he enjoyed in his childhood too uncritically, too un-remixed — the bumbling local, the sniveling merchant, the conniving bankers — and so they end up too close to those originals for comfort, and come across as racist clichés. Mr Snyder, really, makes a very similar mistake. All of these parts work in their obvious primary source, and all of these parts work in other movies all the time. But where with Lucas you can feel the fondness, the admiration, the love — here it feels cynical, cold, calculated. There’s no heart here.

I feel about Mr Snyder’s work like most cats do about going to the vet, every now and then they come out and you can tell it wasn’t that bad, but most of the time they go in reluctantly and come out knowing damn well somebody just did something to their nethers without their consent. And 2024’s Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver is the exact cultural spaying and neutering it looks like.

A real movie to vacuum during. I mean, I vacuumed earlier, but

Weird Soda Review: Coke Zero “K-Wave”

Posted on by Alex Daily

My hand, holding a can of Coke Zero K-Wave in front of the window for lighting purposes. It's an energy drink-style can, with a pastel purple to green gradient design and Korean characters on it.The problem with finding weird sodas like this is I’m only really looking at the soft drinks aisle when I’m in the mood for something brown and fizzy to drink, so I buy these, put them in the fridge, and end up keeping them in there for a week, not even drinking then when I’m thirsty, because I figure, no, I should do this properly, I should do a review. Such was the case with this can of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Creations: K-Wave Limited Edition, which makes no big claims on the can itself but is apparently inspired by K-Pop.

Once again, I truly do not know what that could possible mean.

Let’s get to it.

Expectations

I don’t listen to K-Pop — if you say “BTS” to me I will assume you’re talking about a behind-the-scenes featurette of some kind, not four to seven randomly generated young men. If this is meant to taste like that kind of music, or, like the kind of thing a fan of that kind of music would like, well, I’m expecting a flavour that’s bright and loud in front with very, very little depth to it.

So unless it tastes like boys something fruity, I guess.

The Nose

I’ve opened the can and will now take a whiff of it. To enhance the experience, I’ve also popped on some BTS on Spotify. On first sniff, this is different than the 3000, lighter. My first thought is perfume, flower smells. Slightly artificial. All of this not in a nasty way. It sits in the nose pleasantly, but leaves it quickly.

The Taste

Time to sip.

Hm. It’s a more complex blend of fruit flavours — yeah, definitely fruit flavours — that’s a little hard to unpick. My first thought is of the light sourness of apple-flavoured candy, but as it sits in the mouth what comes forward is the flavour of banana candy. That raspberry idea from the 3000 is kind of here, but where that was “the shape of raspberry flavour without raspberry flavour,” here that’s maybe been filled in with, well, apples and bananas.

I take back the thing I said about a lack of depth, there’s a real aftertaste development here. That development is reminiscent of mouthwash more than anything, but still, that’s a layered flavour.

Conclusion

Overall, from flowers to a simple fruit basket to mouthwash, it’s kind of a weird blend. Not unpleasant, and with a sweetness that I suppose fits the K-Pop thing, probably. I wouldn’t know, I’ve clicked through this Spotify playlist looking for something that sounds like music made by people instead of robots and have struggled to find any.

If you liked the 3000, you’ll probably like this one. I’d recommend maybe keeping a taste you like nearby to wash it down with, though. I’m gonna throw back some M&Ms, I think.

The Pitcairn Review: “Contemporary View,” by Maze de Boer

Posted on by Alex Daily

Being approximately the size of a large shoebox, the Pitcairn Museum for Contemporary Art is, probably, the world’s smallest museum. I walk past it several times a week, and would happily say it’s my favourite museum. But I’ve never seen any kind of serious writing about it, so in the spirit of living the change, enjoy this recurring feature.

The Pitcairn typically asks you to imagine standing in the space it presents, but for Maze de Boer’s Contemporary View, no imagination is necessary, because we’re already standing in the space. In fact, from this side of the fourth wall, we appear to be the art.

A photograph of the exhibit described in this review. We see the back of what is, relative to the scale of the space, a large canvas, and, in the corner, a tiny fire extinguisher.
“Contemporary View,” by Maze de Boer.

Or, in other words: Ah, a meta one.

From Exhibition Continues Upstairs by Gerbrand Burger and No Show by Maurice Bogeart, which play with the gallery’s implied but non-existent space, to Michell Bows’ Sorry for the Inconvenience, in which the lack of exhibit becomes the exhibit, the meta exhibit is, at this point, a standing tradition at the Pitcairn. Even the fourth wall break of the art gazing back upon you is nothing new, with Jelte van Lente’s Kijkers previously having taken a much more literal approach.

But what we have here is much more pared down than those. There’s no stairwell, no mirror1Unless you count your own reflection in the glass., nothing looking at you. The only things in the space are a large2Relatively speaking. canvas, visible only from behind, a bench, a fire extinguisher, and, in the very back of the space, a sign.3I need to remember to transcribe the text from a better picture.

A lightly blurry photograph of the sign in the back of the space. The text on it can't be made out.

Mostly, I’m bored here. So bored that this review has been sitting here unfinished for four months. The next exhibit will have gone the way of the courier service back to where it came from by the time this review goes up.

So let’s just turn it around. If we are the art… what are tiny visitors to the tiny museum seeing through the fourth wall? Or, well, what did they see, back in November?

A photograph of the street as seen from in front of the Pitcairn Museum.

I walk past there three times a week. Maybe parked vehicles, the top bit of a trash can, and ugly construction fences are inspiring to you, but they’ve lost a little of their luster to me.

The Pitcairn does not publish images of its full exhibits until they’re already gone, but with limited local exceptions, I’m writing for a global audience here. To publish without an image of the full exhibit robs that international audience of context, and to publish with full images spoils the full exhibition for people who might still want to go see it. As a compromise, these reviews run one week before the exhibit closes or, uh, much later.

Some of my photographs of the space have been lightly modified only to obscure my reflection in them.

  • 1
    Unless you count your own reflection in the glass.
  • 2
    Relatively speaking.
  • 3
    I need to remember to transcribe the text from a better picture.

Review: “Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire” (2023)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Also on Letterboxd, based on the usual Mastodon thread.

I feel about Mr Snyder’s work like most people do about the dentist, every now and then you come out and go “that wasn’t that bad,” but most of the time it’s like somebody is just violently wrestling your face. And 2023’s Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire is the exact oral fistfight it looks like.

Backing up a little, okay, so, in Star Wars, at the same time Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed offscreen by Stormtroopers, the film is in the middle of presenting this whole galaxy of magic that you, the viewer, want, nay, need to see more of. Luke, this innocent, a survivor of imperialist violence, touches but the edge of an imaginative world full of funny droids and cool swords and interesting people, and immediately you’re desperate to see him explore it, to see him bring his innocence into the galaxy, to see it through his eyes. There’s pain and loss and greed and corruption — but it’s a world full of love and life, too.

In 2023’s Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire, Mr Snyder’s equivalent of Luke is a brooding badass, already a highly-trained ex-military fighter, whose backstory is that her entire family is already long dead and she was trained by a different brooding badass. Having retired from being an action here, now her fight is against the people1Imagine the Empire from Star Wars, make their costumes 10% more Nazi, and stop there. who want to tear her village apart with visceral violence and explicitly sexual threat. Before she sets off on her quest, the world around Kora is depicted only as unpleasant, dangerous, hard to exist in — even on a better day it’s hard to imagine her having a particularly good one. And yet her quest is to put together a team2Because this is doing Seven Samurai just as much as it’s doing Star Wars. to defend her way of life on her South African-coded3I’m sorry, it’s literally called “Veldt.” home moon — even though nothing about her way of life on Space South Africa feels particularly worth defending. I certainly don’t want to see any fucking more of it. I’d like to see less of it!

The film truly never makes a case for her quest, or for anything at all, beyond that that’s… what you do in these. She doesn’t need to learn anything to go on it, she already knows who to reach out to. We get a cantina scene where they meet a pilot and get some exposition because that’s what they do in Star Wars, but the scene is homophobic, misogynist, and anti-sex work at the same time, and has none of the life in it you want from a cantina scene. We get episodic introductions to each team member because that’s what they do in Seven Samurai, but they’re all sketched so thinly that they might as well be cool action figures, clanking against each other plastically. The scene with the griffin-like bennu is straight from Avatar. You’ve seen every part of this before.

While the shift of focus to an already competent adult who knows what she needs to do might be an interesting flip on Star Wars in the hands of a competent storyteller — a Luke who’s blazing with righteous fury at the injustices of the world around him, discovering he has the power to do something about it4Wait, is that Anakin? — instead it all just serves to deliver the cold, oppressive bleakness Mr Snyder has so consistently forced upon the culture around him. It’s all just unpleasant.

I don’t want to accuse Mr Snyder of anything, but if I thought there was any kind of coherent ideology to this beyond “Star Wars and Seven Samurai are cool and Netflix will give me $166 million dollars to make a 2-part 5-hour crossover of those” I’d be extremely suspicious of a lot of what’s going on here.

On top of that it’s only half a film. In the rest of this review, I will

  • 1
    Imagine the Empire from Star Wars, make their costumes 10% more Nazi, and stop there.
  • 2
    Because this is doing Seven Samurai just as much as it’s doing Star Wars.
  • 3
    I’m sorry, it’s literally called “Veldt.”
  • 4
    Wait, is that Anakin?

Review: “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (2023), or, the Modern Cinematic Experience

Posted on by Alex Daily

Posted a few days after the fact — I saw it 27 October — because I reread it while compiling the first media roundup post and decided I wanted to preserve it in full. Other versions of this post have appeared on Letterboxd and Mastodon.

I have returned from the cinema subscription members only Halloween screening of 2023’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, where there was free Fanta and popcorn, approximately 150 giggling teenagers, and an attempt at an interactive pre-show quiz that just imploded.

Truly, the trinality of cinema.

Let’s do this in reverse order.

The quiz thing is kind of a shame because all the questions glitched past and I think I would’ve known most of them and so could’ve plausibly won something. (Test run these things, y’all.)

The 150 giggling teenagers totally worked for this movie specifically — I can’t help but see all the clichés, I metagame twists, I see story structure before me like it’s the fucking Matrix, but a teenager excited for the movie based on the video game they know from the YouTube videos doesn’t do that, and I think I would’ve enjoyed this a lot less without over the top “oh my god”s and “what the FUCK”s at things I, you know, might make fun of.1I was glad I was sitting front row, though, so I didn’t have to see the teenagers with what I’m sure were one hundred brightly lit cellphones in hand. Also worth nothing, the weirdly huge reaction at a random waiter — that I have now learned was portrayed by one Mr Mat “MatrickPatrick” Pat, who is at least a YouTuber I’ve heard of.

The Fanta2Orange. Both Zero and regular were available. was flowing so freely I came home with a full litre and a half of Fanta, I’m not even fucking kidding.

And the movie: Was good. Fun, solid, balances what I understand is fairly limited game play and deep lore in a way that works as a movie. The comparison to Willy’s Wonderland3I think of myself as on the record as a Willy’s Wonderland enjoyer, but I guess I’ve given it three stars and no review, so it may be due for a rewatch. is fair, but I think they’re doing different enough things that they can religion co-exist dot jpeg.

Anyway.

A perfectly cromulent time at the movies.

  • 1
    I was glad I was sitting front row, though, so I didn’t have to see the teenagers with what I’m sure were one hundred brightly lit cellphones in hand.
  • 2
    Orange. Both Zero and regular were available.
  • 3
    I think of myself as on the record as a Willy’s Wonderland enjoyer, but I guess I’ve given it three stars and no review, so it may be due for a rewatch.

The Pitcairn Review: “In my Sleep” by Nina Maria Kleivan

Posted on by Alex Daily

Being approximately the size of a large shoebox, the Pitcairn Museum for Contemporary Art is, probably, the world’s smallest museum. I walk past it several times a week, and would happily say it’s my favourite museum. But I’ve never seen any kind of serious writing about it, so in the spirit of living the change, I’m going to try to make this a recurring feature.

Let’s, as the Pitcairn asks us to imagine we’re doing, stand in the space for a moment.

A photograph of a large shoebox-sized L-shaped gallery space. From left to right, a white door, a collage piece of a person with black paper cutout tears on their face on a blue and orange background, in a black frame. Then, three black sculptures on white pedestals, the first two in the shape of the tears from the first piece, then the third approximately C-shaped. Behind these sculptures is a poem -- "There are things / I can neither talk /about nor forget. Not even in my sleep. And I realize / that there will be / things in life that / are impossible to / overcome." -- and then on the right wall there is another collage piece, of a person looking at the camera and then a blob of pink paint, all surrounded by cutouts of various unspecific black shapes and various fabrics. It's in a black frame.
Nina Maria Kleivan, In my Sleep, 2023, Pitcairn Museum for Contemporary Art

Right away, and I’m sorry to start this first Pitcairn Review this way, I’m bored. I’m sorry. This is where I admit a personal bias — I’m simply not big on collage.

Continue reading “The Pitcairn Review: “In my Sleep” by Nina Maria Kleivan”

The Locksmith

Posted on by Alex Daily

This anecdote originally appeared as my Letterboxd review of Wes Anderson’s The Rat Catcher.

My neighbour had locked himself out, no phone, no keys, so he knocked on my door to ask to use my phone to call his friend who, one, had his spare key, and two, was apparently in the Phantom Zone, seen recently by half the city and yet totally unreachable.

So we called a locksmith, just the top result in the search engine of your choice, who was here as fast as he could have been, and instantly jimmied his way in with some WD-40, a sheet of plastic, a rope, and my door as a cheat sheet.

Which we both found incredibly impressive — I applauded without prompting, which I never do — and also, our human doors might as well not be there for this man, nay, ghost.

Anyway, the rat catcher here looks like an English version of the locksmith, which is why I’m sharing that story here in this review in lieu of struggling to find something to say about this one. It’s good, it’s like the other Wes Anderson Roald Dahl shorts.

The locksmith was a lot nicer than this rat catcher, though. There was a fistbump.

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