The Quite Nerdy Blog

You may remember, five long years ago, a film came out called Suicide Squad . It was a complete mess of a movie that was cobbled together from multiple cuts, hated by many ( myself included ) and still somehow made almost $750 million worldwide. It was a weirdly large cultural moment, everyone was dressing up as Harley Quinn that Halloween and mocking Jared Leto's Joker. A lot has happened in the past five years, including a Harley Quinn spin-off and James Gunn being fired and rehired over at Marvel, both of which helped get us here, to The Suicide Squad . It's a sort of sequel to Suicide Squad , as well as a sort of sister piece to writer and director Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy films, but it's not nearly as complicated as it all sounds. It's not exactly an intricately woven story, but it feels somewhat refreshing when compared to other recent superhero films. The basis of the story is, similar to the first film, that a gang of misfit criminals are offered the c...

Black Widow is the hotly awaited solo film of Black Widow, a character who has been dead for over two years now. I bring this up at the start because it helps foreground the weird place the MCU finds itself in currently. After the pandemic shuttered most cinemas and film sets for the majority of 2020, studios have been working with a mix of productions finished during COVID (more on them in a bit) and productions that have been sitting on a shelf gathering dust. Black Widow is the latter, originally supposed to be released in the spring of 2020, now here in the summer of 2021. It feels exactly like it's been on a shelf somewhere, and that colours so many of my thoughts towards it. This feels like the exact wrong time for a movie about Black Widow, a step back while the TV branch of the MCU is attempting (again, more on that later) to push this universe forward. Paramount among the reasons this feels like a film that was meant to come out years ago is that it's set in between Ca...

I don't normally add these to my reviews but I don't normally review films like Promising Young Woman . So, this is a formal trigger warning, the film I'm about to discuss contains details of sexual assault and violence against women as pivotal plot points. I'm going to try and be as sensitive as I can in discussing these themes but if you find them too upsetting, I'd recommend not reading this week. Promising Young Woman is one of this years biggest nominees at the Oscars, up for Best Director, Best Actress and Best Picture, among two other nominations. It's from Emerald Fennell, who's a first time director and it's also really controversial for a whole heap of reasons. As someone who loved it, let me tell you why I think it's worthy of a watch. Much as you may think you know where the film is going, it keeps convincing you that you might in fact be wrong. Three men are at a bar, they're trying to pick up women. They look over and see a very dru...

Writing a review of Malcolm and Marie , even in my amateur capacity, feels like a slightly futile gesture. It's a film constructed around how pointless film critics are and how they'll almost always be more dedicated to showing off to other film critics than in actually giving the film they just watched a fair shake. If you've seen the trailer for Malcolm and Marie , you might be shocked to realise that's what the film is about, which is fair, especially since it also isn't really about that. On a basic level, it's about a couple, who return from the premiere of Malcolm's new movie. Marie is upset because she wasn't mentioned in his speech and so she has a bone to pick with him. That's it. This is a movie about pretty people dealing with petty problems, a subgenre of film I'm pretty fond of. The problem with Malcolm and Marie though is that it isn't just that, it's also trying to be some great thesis statement on film, filmmakers and how ...

Wonder Woman 1984 is not, as the title implies, the 1,984th film in the Wonder Woman  franchise. Instead, it's the sequel to that film a few years ago everyone loved called Wonder Woman , except instead of being set during World War 1, this film is set in (get this) 1984. Diana, being the seemingly ageless being she is, has continued living since that war, doing her best to help humanity and currently working at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. However, this peace is disrupted when a mysterious magical mcguffin turns up, which has the power to grant the wish of whoever touches it. As you would expect, there are exactly no terrible consequences to it, but heroes and villains alike are using it to make their wildest dreams come true. It's hardly earth shaking stuff, but importantly, it doesn't have to be. This is a disposable blockbuster and in a year when disposable blockbusters have been so absent, I needed something as well plotted as this. Its plot is predictable, bu...

  Mank is David Fincher's first film since 2014, when he released his trash pulp masterpiece Gone Girl . He has been busy since with TV projects but as a feature director, it's a welcome return, though not into territory that feels familiar for the director. He's got a hell of a filmography, mainly covering serial killers but also veering into sci-fi, home invasion and whatever the hell The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was. The most important touchstone though is The Social Network , as that was Fincher's last attempt at a biopic and also widely regarded as a drop dead masterpiece by many, including yours truly. And so, into that waiting void, Fincher drops Mank , his return to biopics, though this time about a much less prominent figure: Herman Mankiewicz. I admit I didn't quite feel the emotional punch I was hoping to. Because you are likely unaware, Herman Mankiewicz was one of the screenwriters behind Citizen Kane , a film often regarded as one of the greates...

Welcome back to my second post covering the 2020 London Film Festival! It's honestly been a completely exhausting festival and while my sleep schedule and academic courses are glad it's over, I do already find myself missing that beautiful chaos. It'll be the same kind of thing this time, with me reviewing three more films I loved from the eclectic selection on offer. No particular order, they're roughly organised by the order I saw them, but I recommend them all strongly. I've also been doing some coverage for Exepose, Exeter University's student paper. So far, they've published my reviews on  Relic and Undine , with two more on the way for One Man and His Shoes and Possessor . If you want smaller, more immediate thoughts on these films, you can find them on my Letterboxd , where I've also ranked all the films I saw at this years festival. With those things said, onto the films! Never Gonna Snow Again Cards on the table here, Never Gonna Snow Again wa...

Hey everyone, hope you're all still having a good apocalypse! It's been busy for me over the last few weeks because, in a virtual form, the London Film Festival is here. I'm gutted that I can't get that specialness of a weekend away in London watching films this year but the big plus side to going digital is that it is now more accessible than ever. As part of that, BFI offered what they've called "Film Academy accreditation" for young people, allowing them to get access to press and industry screenings of pretty much every film at the festival. With no worrying about rushing across London to the next cinema or thinking about gaps where I could grab some lunch, I've been able to watch a huge swathe of films so far (though I admit that still being a university student has slowed me down somewhat on the watching). I've seen a bunch of excellent films and there's more I'm planning on covering in two weeks time but for today, I want to talk abo...