Oliver Battershall

DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004)
You very much knew what you were getting with the studio comedies-for-guys of the late-90s/early-2000s. They’re all some shade of decent, this is at least on the upper end of that. The funniest bit was pre-scandal Lance Armstrong giving a motivational cameo.

Argo (2012) 4/5
There’s certainly a cap on how much I’m able to enjoy a film where America (especially the CIA) are the good guys triumphing over those pesky Ay-rabs, even for (half) true stories, but this just about reached that cap. I knew nothing of the real events going in which definitely helped. I liked how much of the film was just pure heart in your mouth stuff, the entire second half was really intense. Sometimes you just have to resign yourself to some solid (and successful!) Oscar bait.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) 3.5/5
A solid slasher film with a much better mystery element than most of its peers and some excellent screaming from Sarah Michelle Gellar. I enjoyed the kills but it was the final confrontation that bumped it up half a star. Grooved out to some Kula Shaker in the credits.

Black Dynamite (2009) 4.5/5
Even more hilarious on rewatch now I’m more familiar with the blaxploitation that it satirises. A perfect example of satire that pokes fun but also celebrates the idiosyncracy of its source material. One of the most quotable films out there.

Yellow Submarine (1968) 4/5
Fun, silly and whimsical. A must-watch companion piece for The Beatles’ psychedelic era. It would’ve been great if they’d voiced their own characters but the little cameo from the boys at the end was lovely. I was left tapping my toes with a smile on my face 🙂

Jaws (1975) 5/5
My favourite thing about films, aside from watching them, is listening to people wax lyrical about their favourite ones. It’s an infectious joy that I was grateful to be privy to tonight at the Broadway as their projectionist and a local film club leader introduced this classic for its 50th anniversary. After their words I absorbed a film that was thoroughly engaging from start to finish with no moment wasted. I love watching characters react in their different ways to a crisis and that’s the crux of the phenomenal character development here, combined with effortlessly fun dialogue and little quiet moments like the American Psycho business card scene but with scars. Both jumpscares got me good. So good. If I’d brought a date she would’ve got the ick from how tremendously good the jumpscares got me. I even knew when one of them was coming! Sometimes you just have to say, fair play, Steven Spielberg made a perfect movie at age 26.

Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) 3/5
I watched this at work when it was in cinemas but had to leave halfway through because the person I was supporting wasn’t feeling it. It took me until now to finish it because I’ll be damned if I’m paying twice to watch the same movie. The little message to the audience from Cruise at the beginning was a very nice touch and the ensuing fast-paced montage thing covering Ethan Hunt’s journey since the first movie I quite liked. What was distracting though was seeing a few milliseconds of Philip Seymour Hoffman from the third one and for the next ten minutes only being able to think “Oh my god I miss that guy so much”. After that the film takes a long time to really get going, especially with all the flashbacks. I think this is really the apex of the McQuarrie Trade-off (trademarked term) of having to put up with excessive exposition and convoluted MacGuffin usage before the eventual reward of some of the best action filmmaking of recent years, although with the context of this being the final film in the saga I thought the long build-up made more sense in this case. The second half of this makes it really hard to rate because by the end it feels quite caught up in its own slightly grating sense of self-importance, but also that scene with the biplanes was so so good. Like I said, The McQuarrie Trade-off! Don’t read too much into the rating on this, it’s unfair to the film that I had to finish it in these circumstances, but ultimately this wasn’t quite the triumphant note I was hoping this franchise would go out on.

Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023) 4.5/5
I found this movie after seeing some pretty good Please Don’t Destroy sketches and thought it’d be a nice way to round off the week. This was hilarious! I laughed and smiled so much and I’ll definitely revisit it. Curse SNL for splitting these lads up. I think a lot of people tend to underrate movies that just try to make you laugh for 90 minutes and nothing else, take off your critic hat for a minute and have a Daft Laugh with me. Come on in, the water’s lovely.