Netflix’s latest original is a high-concept heist thriller, in which a gang of art thieves are recruited by Interpol to steal a terrorist’s gold bullion fortune from a passenger flight in mid-air.

I love a good heist movie, and Lift is certainly a heist movie. The joy of the genre, at least for me, is in the almost magic trick-esque way in which our gang pull off the score — doubly so when it’s eventually revealed in a third-act twist that what we thought was going on wasn’t going on at all. Unfortunately, that means someone — the writer, director, whoever’s in charge — needs to have a big, clever idea, and those are hard to come by. Lift‘s heist isn’t bad, it’s just nothing special. On the bright side, it ticks the box of having that last-minute reveal. Again, it’s not a particularly innovative subversion (if you were tasked with guessing it, it would probably be your first idea), but at least it’s there.

Another common aspect of the subgenre is snappy, funny dialogue. Not so here, I’m afraid. Indeed, the dialogue is unrelentingly mediocre, and never more so than when it tries to be funny. Characters’ emotional arcs are built via Screenwriting 101 backstory dumps. You know: “How did you learn that?” “Well, when I was a kid, this very specific thing happened that taught me exactly that.” Perhaps belying a lack of confidence in the screenplay (or perhaps just Netflix realising they don’t need to spend as much as they have in the past), the film doesn’t look particularly expensive either, with middle-of-the-road CGI. Like everything else, it’s not bad, but you’re never going to imagine they went down the Mission: Impossible / Christopher Nolan route of staging it for real.

The cast is headed by Kevin Hart, doing his best to channel whatever he’s learnt from previous co-stars and be a charming leading man type. I’ve seen worse, but it’s not a natural fit. The Interpol agent / love interest at his side is Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who you can feel is doing her best to inject some verve into proceedings. Some of the supporting roles hint at where the budget may actually have gone. Why else would Jean Reno drop in as a villain who’s mostly just on the end of a phone? Or Sam Worthington pop by as a senior Interpol agent who’s not even interesting enough to turn out to be a secret baddie? Plus most of the henchmen are faces you might recognise from British TV, like Torchwood’s Burn Gorman and Peaky Blinders’ Paul Anderson, who you’d think would be getting better offers than Henchman #2 at this point.

If this review sounds full of faint praise… yeah, that’s about right. Lift is nothing special, but if a gang of crooks pulling off a seemingly-impossible score is your bag, then it’s passably entertaining fare for an undemanding Friday or Saturday night.

Lift is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

The fifth feature animation from Studio Ghibli’s other director, Only Yesterday introduces us to 27-year-old Tokyoite Taeko as she prepares to take a short summer holiday working on a farm in the countryside, which brings up memories of her ten-year-old self. The latter were the subject of the original manga the film is based on, with Takahata adding the storyline of the older Taeko reflecting on her childhood as a way of tying the stories together into a cohesive narrative.

I didn’t know that piece of trivia going in, but I sensed something along those lines, because I generally dislike movies that play as “nostalgic vignettes from the author’s childhood”, and this is no exception. The ‘present day’ stuff, on the other hand, is very good, with beautiful moments in and about nature, and superb character beats related to what Taeko really wants and what she’s really like. (“Ever since I was little, I just pretend to be nice,” she says at one point, a sentiment I certainly felt I could agree with. Mind you, it’s in moments like this that the film’s dual timelines pay off, contrasting how younger Taeko behaved and how she has and hasn’t changed.

Only Yesterday is sort of a film of two simultaneous halves, then. Not that I would lose the childhood bits entirely, but I would prefer a version of the film that pared them back considerably, only retaining the material that really enlightens the older Taeko’s storyline. As it stands, the bits I didn’t care for were quite tedious, but the bits I liked were captivating.

Only Yesterday is the 2nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2024.

A decade and change after their last outing, the Jackass crew are back (minus some members, for various reasons, and plus some new ones; the latter distinctly upping the diversity quotient), doing the same crazy and dangerous shit they always did. Why? I think most of them are asking themselves the same thing. There was a definite sense in the last film that they were getting too old for this and it was time to call it a day, so what inspired them to come back to it — even older, even more prone to injury, with even longer recovery times — I don’t know.

It certainly wasn’t fresh ideas. Despite all that time away to think up new stunts, nothing here feels particularly innovative or freshly imagined. Maybe that’s a highfalutin’ thing to analyse about a franchise that has always been just about doing dumb stunts, but some of them have been memorable, even to the extent of transcending the series itself (surely you’ve heard about the paper cuts, even if you haven’t seen it?) Forever is just variations on a theme; sometimes literally, as they expressly revisit old stunts in slightly different ways, like testing an athletic cup against various fast-and-hard objects, or pitting ringleader Johnny Knoxville against a bull — a stunt that ends rather seriously. Maybe if the film had taken that as a cue to say something about mortality or ageing… but that wouldn’t be so much fun, would it?

So, it is what it is, which is it what it always has been: a bunch of silliness, usually resulting in pain and injury for the cast, and sometimes in laughter for the audience. It’s not the best Jackass film, but it’s not so significantly inferior as to warrant a lower rating. If you were a fan back in the day, you might appreciate the value of hanging out with old favourites for one last rodeo. And if you’re watching the films afresh, presuming you enjoyed them enough to get through the first three, you may as well watch the fourth too.

Jackass Forever is the 3rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.