Project Hail Mary, How To Make a Killing and Ready Or Not

It's the Easter holidays, and the films are fun if not inspiring. First up and it's a Ryan Gosling vehicle Project Hail Mary  together with an alien sparring about how to go about preventing the end of the world. Best of all is Sandra Hüller, who has impressed me before. Anatomy of a Fall, I'm Your Man and Zone of Interest. Her kaioki is wonderful. The special effects are top drawer, and a big hand of applause for the model makers for Rocky. (Not to be confused with the boxer or the character from Chicken Run). 

Even the story and dialogue are well written by Drew Goddard based on the book by Andy Weir. It's just the part in the middle that became a little tiresome. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have fortunately made a light-hearted story about a very dark subject. The soundtrack is excellent, with songs from Harry Styles (Sign of the Times), Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles, Neil Diamond and, wow, The Scorpions' Wind of Change. I agreed with Henry K. Miller in Sight and Sound Magazine, who said the film was hard to follow at times, but it was good.

How To Make A Killing is actually a remake of the Ealing Comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (see my post of 11th November 2024) produced by Michael Balcon in 1949. It seemed that the new film tried to distance itself as much as possible from the original, which I found to be right. It still starts with the villain in prison and a countdown to his execution. He relates his story to a priest. It's all quite jolly, except perhaps for Margaret Qualley, who is pestering him about those early murders. Why does he then not just stop? This is not Margaret's best performance, but that may be the script. 

So it's all very colourful (the opposite of Kind Hearts' black and white) and surprisingly inoffensive. The very last scene was also very clever and reminded me of the original American version that changed the Ealing ending. In those days America was not allowed to see murderers profit from their crimes. In the April edition of Sight and Sound magazine, Sophia Satchell-Baeza says it "rarely manges to raise a pulse" and "fun but instantly forgettable". What did she expect?

More "fun but instantly forgettable" is a better summary for Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come. I have to say that the producers certainly hit on ways to make this sequel different from the original. Firstly the introduction of bickering sisters, which was central to the movie, was just genius. Then multiple families, not just one. The second half was a bit too predictable, but there were enough funny bits to keep us amused. Samara Weaving is fine in repeating her character from the first movie, and Kathryn Newton plays her sister perfectly well. Add in Elijah Wood, Sarah Michelle Geller and a tiny role for David Cronenberg. 

There were enough good songs to keep me interested, such as 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?', 'These Boots Were Made For Walking', 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' and, would you believe, two renderings of Vivaldi's Gloria in excelsis. I'm still laughing at that. It was the review by Mark Kermode that finally persuaded me to go all the way to Hemel Hempstead, and I'm glad I did. Just.