Dear friend,
as I write there is a trend on BlueSky of people reporting their childhood movie theatres have been reconverted to… betting shops, car dealers, bars.
I’m not completely up-to-date with the events in my hometown, but I’m happy to report that the place of my first ever cinema experience (and where I later saw Ghostbusters and Back to the Future) is still there, still going strong, somehow converted to an urban multiplex.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, directed by Jonathan Levine, written by Jacob Forman, US, 2006 - ⭐⭐ (down from ⭐⭐⭐½)
Why do all the boys love Mandy Lane? No idea. Is it because for most of the time she just sits there with an empty gaze? She exists, she likes to run, and to resist the approaches of all the boys hitting on her.
I read that that’s exactly the point of the film. Fine. Amber Heard could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout, and it would have had the same effect.
Perhaps I’m too mean. But, after seeing this film, I went to log it in Letterboxd to find out that… I had done that already, in 2014. Not once while watching it, did I think ’this reminds me of something’.
Back then, I left a one-sentence review: ‘A movie that tells us what we all already know, but with more blood’, and a positive rating.
Back then, I wasn’t used to watching horrors. Or films with a lot of blood in general.
This is a completely predictable movie, which only manages to be interesting in its first ten minutes. Then, a very 2000s cinematography and a desire to be Texas Chain Saw, together with insufferable characters (do we spare Anson Mount? Let’s spare Anson Mount), make it an annoying experience.
Director Levine went on to helm decently reviewed films starring Seth Rogen, while screenwriter Forman has a film produced each decade.
Resident Evil, directed by Zach Cregger, co-written with Shay Hatten, US, 2026 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It’s a known truth that sometimes creatives need to have constraints in order to create their best works. I suppose not many people would think this concept applies to Cregger, but since I didn’t particularly enjoy Weapons and thought Barbarian was all over the place, there, I’m saying it, this is the film of the three that I liked most.
Inevitable disclaimer: I haven’t played the games, and I couldn’t stand more than 15 minutes of the first Paul W.S. Anderson film. What I know of the saga, I’ve learned from Stacie Ponder’s series on Final Girl After Dark.
Enough to know that there is a place called ‘Raccoon City’, and that dogs may be a little peculiar in this area.
A gaming DNA is clearly visible here, with what I suspect to be cameos from the original work’s monsters and settings, but only in one occasion they felt gratuitous.
I had a lot of fun with this film: once a guise of a plot is established, with a clear goal and a not-very-original character motivation, the frenetic journey of courier Bryan (Austin Abrams, i.e. the lesser-known face from Weapons, and the non-A-lister from Wolfs) to deliver his urgent medical parcel to Raccoon City starts and never stops (the screenwriter from John Wick 3 and 4 is co-credited alongside the director).
One may feel justified in initially worrying that Cregger, once again, has focused on hagsploitation, but he soon turns his attention to every kind of living creature.
Jump scares, gore, body horror are all great, but what sets the film apart is the comical component - something that has surfaced from Cregger’s past in his previous horrors as well, but that here is applied on the same level as the scary component.
Evil Dead 2 fans, always complaining that every new horror film is not as fun as their favourite movie, will finally be happy.
It may be argued that the scale tips a bit too much on the comedy side in some crucial moments, but I didn’t really have a problem with that.
Dix Pour Cent ! Le Film / Call My Agent! The Movie, directed by Émilie Noblet, written by Fanny Herrero and Lison Daniel, France, 2026 - ⭐⭐½
I have watched the original Dix Pour Cent! series twice, and loved it both times - it’s also a great way to practice French listening. Besides the presence of film stars (some known to me, some too French to be in my radar) playing ’themselves’ with a huge dose of irony, the strong point of the series was the large ensemble cast.
So, I was pretty excited about the idea that the story of the Parisian casting agency, which ended quite satisfactorily in 2020 after four seasons, would be continued in a Netflix film.
As I was in Paris last week, I smiled when I saw a big poster Netflix set up for ’the event’ on Rue de Rivoli (actually, Rue Saint-Honoré), where the ASK agency was depicted to be located.
Well, how often has this kind of operation worked?
There is a reason why fairy tales end with ’they lived happily ever after’. As unrealistic as it is, sometimes you don’t want to know that the hero is going to be killed by their own son forty years later.
For a sequel to exist, you need to reopen dramas, and create new ones.
In this movie, two of the series protagonists have moved forward in life: strong-willed Andréa (Camille Cottin) is now a director ready for her first feature film; for plot reasons, she asks effervescent ex-secretary Noémie (Laure Calamy), now the producer of a popular sitcom, to produce her film.
But, as their careers takes flight, both women’s private happiness is having troubled moments.
Can you imagine that things could go wrong?
It’s commercially reasonable that the film focuses on Cottin and Calamy, the two actresses that have achieved more professional success in the six years since the series ended; one could build a case that they had slowly become the centre of the last season as well.
But the plot struggles to fit in most of the other characters, whose involvement ranges from reasonable (Nicolas Maury’s Hervé, now an actor himself, and Thibault de Montalembert’s Mathias, almost relegated to the role of comic relief) to little more than cameos (especially underserved is the former ‘audience surrogate’ Camille - Fanny Sidney - and there’s just little more to do for Grégory Montel’s Gabriel). Arlette (Liliane Rovère) was already basically a supporting character, and she keeps the same status here - with a few scenes but a palpable emotional presence.
It wouldn’t be Dix Pour Cent without the presence of self-mocking actors, so we have Laetitia Casta, Laurent Lafitte and (unknown to me) Vincent Macaigne, with Eva Longoria’s name mentioned in the opening credits (she’s in the film for, maybe, thirty seconds) and the uncredited cameo of a Hollywood A-lister.
Seasons 1-3 showrunner Fanny Herrero returns as the screenwriter, and she delivers what is essentially a TV-show script, which stays true to the main characters, but orchestrates slightly unrealistic events, for both comical and dramatic effect; and I can’t decide whether a certain development coming very late in the story is irritatingly manipulative or absolutely fitting for the character concerned.
I’m maybe a bit too harsh in my rating, driven by my disappointment about the TV-show characteristics of a film that is the continuation of a TV show, but I lost interest halfway through this movie! and I can’t hide it.
The Avengers, directed by Joss Whedon, co-written with Zak Penn, US, 2012 - ⭐⭐⭐
Marvel/Disney is pushing the upcoming release of Avengers: Doomsday a lot: a new version of Endgame is in cinemas now because clearly it didn’t make enough money the first time around… but with additional post-credit scenes to motivate the fans to spend more time and money. ‘It was never the ending’ they say now, yeah, sure.
Then there are two ‘Road to Doomsday’ initiatives - one is a Disney+ playlist, one is a podcast co-hosted by Ms. Marvel herself, Iman Vellani. Confusingly, they cover different films.
I will admit the hype touched me a little bit, so I thought of at least rewatching the core Avengers movies and Civil War - although I’m firmly convinced that I don’t really need to be reminded of details from those stories.
But hey, by taking another look at The Avengers I ‘discovered’ Harry Dean Stanton is in a scene. Why? Who knows! But it was a nice surprise.
And I always forget the highly symbolic scene in Germany, where American (and one Russian) heroes save the day (you know, history…).
It made me realise that, after 38 films, Doctor Selvig is still the only non-British EU citizen recurring character in the MCU1 (feel free to correct me). Well done Sweden!
Despite having loved Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Dr. Horrible, I never really liked The Avengers, although I can concede that assembling the heroes from the previous five films, making them acquainted with each other, dealing with a new Bruce Banner, and introducing Thanos was never going to be an easy task.
And it probably Whedon achieved it in the best possible way.
But this means that half of the runtime is used just to introduce the characters and make them punch one another. I guess I am not enough of a comic books fan to appreciate these sections. But again, I suppose that the best way to show the clashing of egos is to have people fight.
What has always felt unnecessary to me is the unrestrained addition of ‘gags’. Not that I absolutely want my heroes super-serious2, but some humour-at-all-cost scenes are so grating (looking at you, Galaga guy… but also Loki gets some highly gratuitous lines).
I convinced myself to watch the film until the end, and while I still love the long sequence tracking all the heroes in action, I found very little else to be excited by.
You can find the index for all weekly visions here.