Next Goal Wins – Movie Review

TL;DR – A fun time that gets held back by some wooden acting and forced storytelling.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

The Team v the Coach.

Next Goal Wins Review

I have been enjoying my time at the Brisbane International Film Festival, but as always, things must come to an end. But if you are going to pick a film to end it on, Taika Waititi’s romp about the American Samoa Football Team is an excellent place to do it. This is a sports story that is so infamous that even I have heard about it. With that in mind, let’s play some soccer and see how a team can come back from abject embarrassment.

So to set the scene, American Samoa has been at the bottom of FIFA’s rankings for an age and reached an even lower level in 2001 World Cup qualifiers when, during a game with Australia, they lost 31-0. Tavita (Oscar Kightley) tries to manage the club, but he has become a laughingstock in the soccer community. After some pushing from his wife, Ruth (Rachel House), he applies to the American Soccer Federation for a new coach. Well, this might be a Hail Mary, but at that moment, they have a coach who is about to get fired, and Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) has only one option: take a plane into the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

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Movie Review – The Invisible Man (2020 film)

TL;DR – A film filled with amazing acting, and technical brilliance, however it was one of the most difficult films I have reviewed due to the issues of abuse that it explores.

Score – I am honestly not sure what to score to give this film

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene that I saw

Warning – Depicts scenes of abuse

Awards

Nominated: Explosive Action, Best Australian Film & All The Tension
Winner: All The Tension

The Invisible Man (2020 film). Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

Review

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Upgrade and thus discovered the wonderful work of Leigh Whannell. Since then, I have been waiting to catch his next film, so I was really excited to get the invite to see The Invisible Man. This was also a film that was going to reframe an old classic monster film and bring it into the modern age, which also intrigued me because that is my jam. However, while watching the film, I found myself feeling very conflicted with the subject material. All of this left me very unsettled in a way that I have spent the past two weeks wondering if the film approached it in an appropriate way or not.  

So to set the scene, we open in on a mansion on the top of a cliff, waves crash against the rocks on a cold winters night as we zoom in on the isolated house. In the house, there is a couple asleep in a bed, Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) and Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), but only one of them is actually asleep. We watch as Cecilia slowly slips out of the bed, at first you think it is just that she does not want to disturb Adrian, but soon you discover there is something more to it than that. In fact, she is leaving him in the middle of the night, the only time she could, which means that when every sound could be her undoing. The moment she grabs her hidden go bag you immediately understand why she is leaving. As she escapes over the high walls of the house everything starts to get better, that is until things start moving in rooms that should be empty.

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