southdavid

As I'm trying to see as many films as possible at the cinema in 2025, "The Bad Guys 2" feels like an easy film to slot into a daily schedule ahead of something I'm actually more interested in seeing. However, I'd not see "The Bad Guys" before and decided it was probably worth seeing that one first.

A gang of criminals Mr Piranha (Anthony Ramos), Mr Shark (Craig Robinson), Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr Snake (Marc Maron) and Mr Wolf (Sam Rockwell) have achieved notoriety for their daring and skilled heists. They are caught, in part because Mr Wolf does something "good" for the first time, and starts to understand the appeal. Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade) senses their potential, so offers them a chance at a pardon, if they can learn to be good.

One aspect of the film I particularly enjoyed was the animation style. It's definitely a touch more stylised than the previous DreamWorks animations, with almost a cel shaded look to the drawing at times. Performances are good too, particularly from Rockwell and from Richard Ayoade and the script ahs quite a few funny elements.

Whilst it sounds hypercritical to pick faults, I would say that the films twist elements are both really obvious, though perhaps that comes from watching the film as an adult and not the target audience, and also that, perhaps the human characters aren't as interesting as any of the anthromorphic animal ones.

That said, I've sat through family films that were a lot more painful than this one and if I do get the oppo.

With "Superman" in cinemas, I decided to head back to the Snyderverse and all the way back to the beginning with "Man of Steel". Whilst my appreciation of this era of DC's film has been. . middling, at best, I did, at least, used to the think that it got off to a good start with this one. After this viewing, I'm not so sure.

Ahead of the imminent destruction of Krypton, the infant son of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is sent to Earth with a codex of Kryptonian genetics. Adopted by Jonathan (Kevin Coster) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) Kal-El, renamed Clark (Henry Cavill), is provided with superhuman strength and speed by the planet's yellow sun. Urged to keep his powers a secret, he keeps his profile low until General Zod (Michael Shannon), another Kryptonian, arrives and demands the codex, so Earth can be transformed into a new home world.

The trouble with reviewing this film again now, is that it comes with a decade of history and baggage, one where (for some reason) battle lines have been drawn and sides taken. I suppose the only thing to do is ignore all that and give my opinion as it is, which is that I find the film to be a dour experience, that it's tough to ring any enjoyment out of. The visuals are good, if perhaps desaturated and dark to the levels that Zack Snyder prefers. I think I liked the story in principle and didn't rub up against a distraught Clark forced to kill near the end, in order to save a human family.

Whilst nobody's performances are bad, there's not really one offering anything different other than brooding, quiet cynicism. Again, dour is the word that occurred to me the most. What I may have considered cool a decade or so ago, now feels po-faced and cynical.

I'm going to keep going with this era of DC's films, but I'm already glad that we don't live in this era anymore.

Netflix's "Love, Death and Robots" returns for a fourth season. Overall, I've enjoyed the first three runs and have written individual reviews for each episode. I think I'll continue that approach with this set too.

Lydia (Emily O'Brien) lives in an asteroid ring, trying to trade with passing ships. Lydia is planning revenge against Jade (Feodor Chin) but has so far only been able to kill his clones, and not Jade himself. She is temporarily left with the pet of one of her trading partners, a creature that absorbs the DNA of those that it eats. She bonds with the creature, nicknamed Nosey, but Jade has discovered her location and is planning an attack.

We're back with Blur Studios here, and their level of near photo realism animation is back too. To be fair, this is not quite at the highest level of graphics we've seen, but a strong contender. Unfortunately, many of these visually splendid efforts are pedestrian with their stories and I'm afraid that "Spider Rose" felt like another one of those to me.

There was a gory battle scene, which was intense, but nothing else particularly memorable about the episode.