argylx Reviews

Bottoms (2023)

Incoherent garbage

[1/10 · 6 February 2024]

A script which screams "I think I'm a lot funnier than I am", Bottoms delivers a mind-boggling hour and a half of conspicuously trying way too hard to fill the gap left in recent years for slapstick, PG-raunchy teen comedy.

The plot, loosely, is that two down-and-out, uncool, gay teenage girls start a fight club for the purpose of hooking up with hot cheerleaders (yes, really). Attempts to satirise football-mad small town high school mentality quickly makes the leap from theatrically grotesque to plain grotesque as this abomination of cinema doesn't so much fall down on itself as float like something which won't flush.

Filled with unlikeable characters and bizarre situations, Bottoms aims for cartoonish absurdity yet unfortunately achieves it only in the sense of having fewer dimensions than a repeating background in a 1960s animation.

Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer (2023 TV Special)

Chappelle delivers again

[7/10 · 8 January 2024]

I can understand why Dave Chappelle isn't to everyone's tastes, but I've always considered his comedic skill to be in his style, his delivery and his ability to raconteur, to regale with extended anecdotes. The first five minutes of The Dreamer were crass, no doubt offensive to many people and struck me with parallels to Ricky Gervais' latest offering, Armageddon.

But that's where the similarity ended. Whereas I found Armageddon to be intellectually lazy, low-effort and crass for the sake of it, it became clear to me as I continued to make my way through The Dreamer that Chappelle's opening minutes were merely a riff on the controversy of his previous shows.

From this point on, Chappelle dives straight back into his signature style, with some deadpan lines revolving around racial humour, his own recent history and press, other celebrities and his unique form of storytelling which draws you in.

I had some good laughs and even where I wasn't laughing, I was entertained.

Ricky Gervais: Armageddon (2023 TV Special)

Ricky has run out of steam

[2/10 · 30 December 2023]

When I think stand up comedy, I think jokes, punchlines, witty anecdotes or skilled raconteuring.

None of which you'll find in Armageddon. Watching Gervais' new special feels more like you're watching the DVD commentary for a different gig you haven't seen, because so much of it is Gervais soapboxing, explaining things that annoy him about people's reactions to things he says.

It comes across like the whole "people are offended" schtick is really more of a way to deflect criticism and cover for the real issue that Ricky's just not that funny anymore. And I say that as someone who was a big fan of his earlier shows, Politics and Animals in particular. Armageddon isn't clever or witty in the way those shows were.

Without any spoilers, the show is largely Gervais railing against internet culture and modern sensitivities in a manner which is not original, not innovative, not funny, not even new material for himself. A lot of the jokes are just rehashes of bits you've heard him tell before, either in his shows or vicariously through his fictional characters on his TV shows.

Black Mirror: Demon 79 (2023) Season 6, Episode 5

Best (Not) Black Mirror to date

[10/10 · 18 June 2023]

Yes, yes, it's not your typical Black Mirror story, the episode was released as part of BM S6 but under a "Red Mirror" name to highlight that it was a departure from the usual "technology dystopia" theme.

But the execution was FLAWLESS. What's so amazing about this one is that the plot isn't even conceptually original or unique; at the abstract level it's been done a number of times in movies and TV series. But in true Black/Red Mirror style, the writing, the directing, the lighting, the soundtrack all combine in to a mesmerising hour of expert storytelling finesse which sucks you in to that universe completely.

You can see from the not-so-generous reviews that some people didn't like the change in artistic narrative, but if you're happy to allow yourself the opportunity to enjoy something which delivers the Black Mirror experience without just being more of the same "omg consciousness can be manipulated, or erased, or copied in to computers" universe we've all come to know and love, Demon 79 is a rare and real treat.

On the Line (II) (2022)

A twist too far

[2/10 · 4 February 2023]

Family Guy once did a double episode where Stewie goes through with an elaborate plot to kill Lois, who survives and comes back to expose him. At the very end, Stewie reveals to Brian everything the viewer has seen was just him running a simulation. They have a conversation where Brian quips something like "So none of this was real, none of it was of any consequence, none of it happened? And you don't think, if someone was watching these events, maybe that wouldn't be clever, maybe they'd just find it annoying?"

On the Line is precisely the concept which was being satirized there. Twists, when done well, are fine - they surprise the audience who've missed hopefully clever, subtle, layered clues that what they're seeing isn't quite how it is.

But On The Line doesn't deliver a twist, it just undoes everything that happened, entirely. In one sense, I admire the sheer audacity of taking you through a quite good, quite tense 90 minutes of suspenseful thriller only to go "Woaaaaah! Crazy! None of it actually happened for real! Like whaaaaaaat?" - but there's a damned good reason it's a no-go, it's something you just don't do in film. It ruins the movie, enough to drop it from a solid if not particularly original 7/10 thriller to a 2/10 garbage steamer. The 2 points are only merited by a solid cast performance led by Mel Gibson.

Fox Trap (2019) (2016)

Low rent Scream cookie-cutter

[3/10 · 11 September 2022]

If you've seen one of these movies, you've seen a hundred. Fox Trap adds nothing new to the bog-standard "let's do something kind of like Scream" slasher formula. This one lifts more than a few ideas from the original, including two-killers-working-together, killer-in-a-mask, tenuous revenge plot, final girl, killer pretends to be one of the victims at one point and fakes their own death, etcetera etcetera. Poor production quality, the lighting was awful, dialogue contrived....think Cherry Falls, Urban Legend and the like but set your expectations down another level from those, still.

Not quite a B movie, more like a C- movie.

The Runners (2020)

Poor attempt at indie thriller

[2/10 · 3 August 2022]

This is a poorly scripted, directed and acted story about a wimpy teenage girl who's kidnapped by people traffickers, who ends up trying - unsuccessfully - to rescue her even wimpier, useless older brother when he tries - unsuccessfully - to rescue her. Not worth the time.

Dual (2022)

Feature-length Black Mirror

[8/10 · 12 June 2022]

I'd describe Dual as almost avant-garde in style. Dark, quasi-dystopian sci-fi combined with brilliantly delivered, deadpan, black comedy - the film's tone, pace, humour and plot remind me very much of any good Black Mirror episode.

Under the surface we also get a very human story and by subjective interpretation, perhaps a lesson or provocation of thought on the intertwining of who we are inside and the life we lead - can we separate these things, are we a product of our environment, will who we are follow us anywhere, even if we try to abandon everything and start again?

I really enjoyed this - it's probably not for those who struggle with irony and prefer an action-oriented thriller. (That's not me being pretentious, btw - I love a good action thriller, I'm just saying not everyone enjoys a reflective movie with a slower burn and this is one of those movies)

Ricky Gervais: SuperNature (2022 TV Special)

Not terrible but not his best

[6/10 · 30 May 2022]

Let's drop the partisan "woke vs. Free speech" thing for a minute and just judge this as a stand up comedy show.

I'm a big fan of Gervais. I've seen a few of his shows live. I'd rate him better as a TV writer/producer than as a stand up but he's done some very good shows in the past (particularly Politics and Animals, both outstanding).

Supernature is somewhat mediocre. It's not terrible, it's maybe slightly better than his "Science" show but I think you have to be kidding yourself to give this 10/10 or even 7/10 on quality of laughs. The problem with Supernature isn't the use of crass, trying-to-offend-you humour about everything from AIDS to the Holocaust to the big T issue, it's that he's trying so, so hard that he ends up delivering his point with all the subtlety of beating someone around the head with a cue ball in a sock.

His long-time habit of finding himself and his own jokes so hilarious he spends extended periods rolling around on the stage laughing at what he's about to tell you before he tells it also detracts from the humour. The punchlines largely fall flat and aren't worth the build-up.

The result is you'll get a few strong laughs, a lot of weak ones and depending where your political views fall might get a feeling of "yeah, you sock it to 'em, Gervais!" which leaves you prone to thinking the whole show was a lot funnier than it was.

Coming Home in the Dark (2021)

Yet another threadbare cookie-cutter revenge horror

[2/10 · 8 December 2021]

More plot holes than bullet holes (and there's a lot of bullets fired in this movie). Why would the first act of a bad guy whose entire motivation turns out to be revenge for abuse he suffered as a child be to murder two innocent children? And that's within the first ten minutes.

Not to mention the revenge isn't even enacted against anyone who was directly involved in the abuse, just a father who briefly worked as an assistant teacher at the boarding school and witnessed some of it. Plus his innocent family, an innocent gas station attendant and a car full of random teenagers.

Bland, one-dimensional revenge horror which doesn't develop any characters, or any plot beyond "bad guys murder man's children, spend the rest of the movie driving around tormenting him", of exactly the same variety you've seen in two or three dozen other movies of the same genre.

The Outlaws (2021– )

Brilliant dramedy

[9/10 · 11 November 2021]

Having read some other reviews complaining they didn't get as many laughs as they were expecting, I'd like to clarify; The Outlaws is not a sitcom. It is a dramedy or comedy-drama. I think people have seen Merchant's name, thought of The Office and Extras and thus misunderstood the idea behind this series.

Some of the humour is around social disparity, inequality and issues of race and class. That these topics are both explored in the dramatic theme and at times joked about does not make the show "woke" or "PC" as some reviews are suggesting....that's just some people's reaction to anything mentioning these issues in any context and one of the characters is based on the white, middle-class, rage-baited tabloid reader stereotype (though goes on to become more multi-faceted and sympathetic as the story and characters develop), so that's where those reviews are coming from.

The Outlaws delivers a masterful blend of tension, action, emotion and Merchant's signature style of comedy, which tends to be a mix of self-deprecation, irony and social observation. Each of the characters has something to like, something to sympathise, something to dislike and something to laugh about.

As with any series, I'd say always give it at least two episodes before you make your mind up - the pilot is always going to be the weakest link because it has to set everything up which follows.

This one is well worth the patience to pursue.

Dave Chappelle: The Closer (2021 TV Special)

Chapelle does it again

[8/10 · 12 October 2021]

Dave Chapelle delivers black comedy (in both ways) in his inimitable style. It's edgy from the get-go (and I'm not referring to this trans stuff you've heard about in the media), because Chapelle is a comedian unafraid to make light of a dark world coming out of a dark couple of years.

The Closer is refreshing, it's witty, in my opinion having seen it the criticisms being bandied around the media and social media are unwarranted and often indicative of people who've shared without seeing.

As always with Chapelle, if you're looking for slapstick, a conveyor belt of puns and wordplay, impressions or family-friendly gags, this is NOT the show for you. Chapelle's style is at times almost philosophical rather than stand up (though the overt jokes, the dark comedy, tend to be more crass). He is a storyteller and will make you think as much as he makes you laugh.

A solid 8/10.

The Holden Girls: Mandy & Myrtle (2021)

Could potentially be used as a form of torture

[1/10 · 22 September 2021]

Straight up one of the worst TV shows I've ever seen. Mind-boggling that someone, somewhere read a script for this and gave it a green light.

You couldn't write a sitcom this bad if your brief was to write the most cringey, unfunny garbage you could think of.

Amanda Holden's acting is terrible, wooden, utterly unconvincing, while the character of Myrtle is so grotesquely over-the-top, no suspension of disbelief is possible.

0/10.

Zombie Spring Breakers (2016)

Comically bad

[1/10 · 26 July 2021]

Not comedy, not even bad comedy, just a movie so bad it's almost comical. Emily Atack and Matt King must have shot this flick saying over and over to themselves "think of the paycheck think of the paycheck think of the paycheck". You will get the odd cringey laugh *at* the movie rather than anything *in* the movie, but it's not worth the time. Terrible, 1/10 maybe 0/10.

The Stalker Club (2017 TV Movie)

So bad couldn't even finish it

[1/10 · 1 July 2021]

It's rare a movie is so terrible I can't make it to the end, but all I can say about this one is think inferior, low budget Scream clone and then set your expectations even lower than that. Doesn't even deserve 1/10.

Eagle Eye (2008)

A movie with AI, possibly written by AI

[5/10 · 11 May 2021]

The screenplay for this is basically what you'd get if you ran a bunch of action movies through a machine learning bot and then asked it to create a movie script with lots of guns, chases and explosions and just enough of a threadbare narrative to loosely justify there being a lot of guns, chases and explosions. The result is about what you'd expect. If you don't really care about plot and in the mood for an explosive action movie you absolutely don't need to concentrate on, you'll enjoy Eagle Eye.

Deadly Illusions (2021)

Good movie, until they throw it all away

[3/10 · 21 March 2021]

Creepy, suspenseful, entertaining and keeps you on your toes. Everything you'd want in a bog-standard, decently watchable psychological thriller - until the last 15 minutes when they gratuitously throw it all out the window in something like a bad parody of the worst M Night Shyamalan movie.

I have never seen a movie go so downhill so quickly in such a poor attempt to deliver a twist ending. What's utterly ridiculous is that up until this point, it does a really good job of hinting at a plot resolution and ending which would have been much, much better.

It's like they switched writers for the last 10 pages of script.