Best and Worst Films of 2024

Usually I start off these lists with some kind of apology for not having seen - and therefore judged - every film of interest that was released in the previous year. I still haven't seen If or the musical version of Mean Girls; I'm sorry, I've let you all down.

New policy: no apology! Mostly because this year I spent much of my movie-watching time watching things I was interested in seeing, which inevitably meant I watched a lot of things many more serious critics avoided (ie: the Arj Barker vehicle The Nut Farm). What can I say? I have poor taste, as the list to come will no doubt reveal.

And yet once again I am, in creating this list, holding my taste up as something to pay attention to. This is very much a privilege: watching movies on any kind of a regular basis and claiming to be "a critic" is very time-intensive, time is money, and at a time where the phrase "good luck getting paid" is pretty much the only useful advice I can give to anyone wanting to be a critic, doing this kind of thing even remotely professionally requires resources unavailable to most people.

So I watched a lot of undemanding film this year, a lot of it at home. Undemanding doesn't mean bad of course, unless you believe hard work is a virtue and/or its own reward, in which case I have a ditch I'd like you to dig. 

As usual this list is slightly skewed by the way the end of the year is the time when the distributors show all the films they're releasing early next year in the hopes of scoring big during awards season. The Brutalist will almost certainly be on this list next year (unless I forget); Nosferatu (Jan 1) and Conclave (Jan 9) will also be up there, so if you're reading this a week or two into 2025 feel free to mentally add them in.

Also this should technically be titled "Best and Worst Films I Saw That Were Released In 2024" otherwise it'd mostly be Japanese Yakusa films of the 60s and 70s, plus the 1973 hobo epic Emperor of the North. And who knows when the third Baby Assassins film will get any kind of release outside Japan but when it does you want to run, not walk, to whatever venue is offering it.

The Good Ones, in no particular order:

*Mad Max: Furiosa

 

*Anora

 

*A Quiet Place Day One

 

*The Zone of Interest

*The Shadow Strays

 

*Bangkok Breaking: Heaven and Hell

*Rebel Ridge

 

*Kill

 

*Mars Express

 

*American Fiction

 

*The End We Start From

 

*Blood for Dust

 

*Mayhem!

 

*Challengers

 

*Bad Genius

 

*Twilight of the Warriors Walled In

 

*Blitz

 

*One More Shot (no list is complete without a Scott Adkins film)

 

 

Plus five I do not in any way recommend:

 

*Audrey

 

*The 2024 French remake of Wages of Fear

 

*Cash Out

 

*Armor

 

*Gunner

 

 

Review: Nosferatu

If you're going to make another Dracula film, the field is wide open: if you're taking a swing at Nosferatu, you're setting your sights a little higher. Both the original 1922 silent film and Werner Herzog's 1979 remake are masterpieces of menace and dread, subjects director Robert Eggers (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) knows a little about. So this is the perfect match of subject and talent? Lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Nosferatu began its (un)life as a bootleg version of Dracula. So while there's a few changes around the edges (the setting is now 1838 in Germany), the core, both in characters and story, remains the same. Thomas (Nicolas Hoult), a junior real estate agent, is sent to visit a creepy Count - here named Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) - in his spooky castle, only to be stuck there while the Count heads to his home town to menace Thomas' wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and as a sidebar, destroy the rest of humanity.

Vampires might be a type but here Orlok is singular, referring to himself at one point as "an appetite". He bites you, you die and don't come back; he brings rats and plague and death in all manner of forms. The tone here is apocalyptic. Orlok isn't merely feeding on humanity, he's a being incompatible with all human life.

Ellen has powers of her own; we're told more than once that her supernatural teen desires revived the Count and bonded them forever. Which you'd think would make for at least a few moments of at least minor sexiness, but sadly the rampant horniness of something like Coppola's Bram Stokers' Dracula is not to be found here, no burgeoning sexuality stifled by Victorian-era morality.

Orlok is literally a decaying corpse with a Stalin mustache, a looming figure of dread rather than an object of erotic fixation. There is no love beyond death here, or even a love of death; for much of the film, Orlok just is, a threat lurking in the shadows.

With the horror focused on Orlok, and Orlok focused on Ellen, she gets a few Exorcist-style sequences to keep the creepiness flowing as she shudders and writhes from the looming presence of her dark lover. It's effective in the moment, but her character - and everyone else living in the film - rarely stretch the confines of their well-worn types (though it is fun to see Willem Dafoe in the Van Helsing role).

There's a performative atmosphere to much of this, a knowing sense that we're watching a familiar story being told yet again (which of course, we are). That feeling of ritual gives this version of Nosferatu its strength; at its best this feels like watching an unholy summoning, the characters going through the familiar motions required to bring the greatest of vampires back once again.

Visually stunning and overwhelming in its atmosphere, this rarely comes to life as a story. The characters don't convince, the events follow each other merely because they always have. We're left helplessly watching as a horror existing outside humanity feeds off our attention, shuffling characters and settings around to arrange its own apocalyptic birth. Nosferatu is a vampire movie.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Better Man

There's no real explanation as to why Robbie Williams appears in this biopic as a monkey. There's a suggestion that it's a metaphor for how he sees himself; as he begins his traditional pop star downward spiral he's constantly seeing angry versions of his chimp self taunting and threatening him. But as far as explanations go, "it makes Better Man a better film" is pretty much all you need.

For one thing - and it's a pretty big thing - having Williams as a monkey (the motion capture performance is by Jonno Davies, with Williams providing his own voice) instantly makes what is otherwise a firmly standard music biopic (rise, fall, rise again) seem fresh. 

(it also dodges the bullet that comes with casting a look-alike: the monkey version here is clearly just a stand-in for the real thing, even if at times they do look very much alike)

Just about everything here is something you've seen before, even if it's all true: wanting to impress a distant dad (Steve Pemberton), dealing with with a dodgy manager (Damon Harriman) and Take That bandmates who sour on him, solo success followed by a downward spiral into drugs and relationship failure just seems that much more interesting when it's a CGI chimp dealing with it.

That's not to say it's a bad biopic, just a generic one. There are occasional flashes of personality here and there where Williams introduces (then dismisses) elements of his past he's not going to fully explore - rumours about his sexuality, rumours about his relationship with his long-term (musical) partner. But mostly this is a story you've heard before, even if you know nothing about Williams the man or the musician.

More interestingly, having a CGI lead frees director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) to go big with the musical numbers. They never quite shade into full-blown fantasy, but the editing and dance moves have a computer-assisted energy that boosts them well above the norm. 

It helps that Williams has had a string of legit hits (despite what the befuddled US reviews claim - who knew music was popular outside the continental USA?), giving the best numbers here a pop energy that most recent musical adaptations struggle to deliver. An euphoric street sequence at the height of Williams' Take That fame set to 'Rock DJ' is easily the high energy dance number of the cinematic season, and is worth the admission price on its own.

The result - flashy, brash, cheeky at times but rarely surprising - feels like it captures something authentic about Williams. He's a solid entertainer (as he puts it himself) who delivers the goods, and if those goods might not have anything all that original about them... well, being a good salesman is better than nothing.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Mufasa: The Lion King

Whether or not we needed a sequel-slash-prequel to The Lion King is up for debate; whether it needed to be told using photo-realistic CGI animation is a lot easier to judge. An epic fantasy story about anthropomorphic animals requires an expressive storytelling medium to fully encompass the heightened emotions and conflicts driving events; the visuals here, while impressive on a merely technical level, aren't up to the job.

Put another way, the framing device for what is basically Mufasa: Rise to Power is that it's a story being told by Rafiki (John Kani) to Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), daughter of the OG Lion King Simba (Donald Glover). So even in-universe, it's a kids story... one in which at least four named characters die and a whole bunch of others also get bumped off off-screen. 

Which is fine, except that because it's all photo-realistic there's a constant struggle (one the film mostly loses) to figure out a non-realistic way to kill off the multiple cast members that have to die. There's a lot of cutting away from characters in situation that seem pretty survivable, only to have them never be seen again. Bad guy Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen) keeps on saying "you killed my son", presumably to make it clear that his son is in fact dead.

The high body count is especially striking because - unlike the first film - most of this story could be told without stacking up the corpses. After being separated from his family by a flood while a cub, Mufasa is befriended by Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr). Taken in by his pride - though Taka's father, local king Obasi (Lennie James) isn't a fan - we quickly get two main plot drivers: Mufasa wants to get home, and Taka wants to prove himself to his father.

Then Kiros and his pride of "outsiders" turn up and the killing begins, just to make things even more dramatic. Considering Taka's cowardice is a major character point it wouldn't be hard to just have him run away (especially as his brother Mufasa already has motivation to leave). It's hard not to think that the main reason for the constant murders is that the first film is based around a big memorable death and so the follow-up has to bump up the stakes.

That's not to say this would be a better film without the killing, but if you're telling a story that's based around constant murder - only you don't want to show any murder - you're setting yourself a pretty tricky line to walk and Mufasa doesn't do a great job of it. Maybe if you don't want your audience noticing that your predator main characters are never shown eating, don't have a supporting character make a big joke about scarfing down bugs and insects.

Director Barry Jenkins can't do much with his relatively expressionless characters but the visuals are otherwise solidly impressive and sometimes striking, while Lin-Manuel Miranda's songs aren't going to displace the originals any time soon (as the film itself acknowledges). 

As with all prequels, knowing how things will end undercuts a lot of the tension, though this manages to sidestep that a little by focusing heavily on Taka's journey from happy and fun-loving cub to the sullen and beaten down Scar we all remember (hint: it involves a girl).

It's not really a problem that the title character is the most boring character in the film, though it does give the story the air of political propaganda: Mufasa was the best at everything, which is why he was the best choice for king. At least Kiros gets to point out that the "circle of life" is just predator and prey. Once again a Disney bad guy speaks the truth.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Heretic

Hugh Grant has always been fun to watch in movies, even more so in recent years where he's been going big in supporting roles rather than giving the more restrained performances leading man gigs so often require. Heretic sees him stepping up to front man for a film with an exceedingly simple hook: what if Hugh Grant was evil? 

This isn't Grant playing some twisted variation of his usual type: Grant is providing 100% pure Grant here, no accents or fake teeth or abrasive harshness to blunt his appeal. "What if the charming Hugh Grant you all know and love invited you in and then turned out to be evil" is the premise, and it delivers on that premise.

Enter the two Mormon missionaries who are our guide into the world of Hugh Grant horror, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East). Barnes is the more worldly of the duo, the one who's got a bit of experience under her belt and has thought through things a bit. Paxton is the chirpy fresh-faced newcomer, someone who means well and hasn't yet had the thrill of doing good works knocked out of her - though the fact she hasn't yet actually converted anyone is a bit of a bummer.

Right from the start, this is a duo you don't mind hanging with. You may not want to sign up to their church, but they're likeable, intelligent, self-aware and committed to what they're doing without being pushy about it. They turn up on the doorstep of Mr. Reed (Grant) because they've been invited, and they only go inside after asking all the right questions - mostly about his unseen but definitely a real person wife.

Of course, once they get inside things start going wrong, but importantly a): the missionaries continue to ask the right questions and do the right thing (Paxton wants out the second things get iffy - nobody's failing to read the room here), and b): this is Hugh Grant at maximum charm they're dealing with, so even when he starts going on a little too much about religion he does so in a way that's very disarming.

Which is, of course, where the scary side of things comes from. We know he's bad news - just look at the poster! - but in the world of the movie it's perfectly reasonable to give him the benefit of the doubt. Should we panic at the first suggestion of not-quite-rightness from anyone we meet? Of course not; we'd never get any shopping done for starters. And yet there are people out there willing to exploit their charm and our desire to get along for their own ends - why look, there's one on the screen now.

Heretic is at its strongest when the threat is simply that someone as charming and likable and fun to listen to as Hugh Grant is using those powers for an evil you can't quite figure out. There's a point around the middle of the film that's possibly the highlight, where the missionaries - having been drawn deeper into Mr Reeds creepy church-like house by his promises that the only way to leave is to go further in - are given a choice of two doors to leave by.

One, we're told, is the good door, and the other is the bad. Mr Reed, as is his want, poses this choice in big terms, saying their choice will reveal the very core of their beliefs. Sister Barnes, just wanting to get the hell out, brushes off this choice, opens one of the doors, looks inside, then quietly closes it and goes to the other door, refusing to say what she's seen.

It's a chilling moment, largely because it's the point where Mr Reed's creepy preaching enters the real world. What's beyond the door - a literal gateway to Hell? Another door? The bathroom? And once we find out, it becomes a more traditional scary film, the core mystery gone.

Which is kind of the point: Mr Reed is someone in love with his own voice, his own ideas, and to him everyone else is just a prop.  Sadly his ideas are, when you boil them down, bog standard internet troll blather about religion that our heroines can see right through. Seems charm alone will only get you so far.

Of course, this being a horror movie, what lies behind his charm isn't all that pleasant.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Wicked

One of the big questions when a fan-fave hit moves to the big screen is, what do you change? It's not like adapting a regular book or a play: it's already a success with an army of fans. They know what works (everything), but film is a different medium, with different requirements and needs. So how do you make it work while keeping the fans on side?

In the case of Wicked, the answer often seems to be "go bigger". And to be fair, why wouldn't you? A revisionist take on the pre-Wizard of Oz life of the Wicked Witch of the West, aka Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and her complicated relationship with Glinda (Ariana Grande) in the years before all that business with Dorothy, there's plenty of scope for big sets and big costumes to go with the much-loved stage version's big songs.

Born green thanks (we assume) to her dead mother's fondness for hard liquor, Elphaba grew up withdrawn - and filled with a rage that occasionally bursts forth in magical form. When her wheelchair-bound younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) is accepted into Oz's Shiz University, Elphaba's only along for moral support, but when the usual color-related snickering sets off a magical outburst it attracts the attention of university bigwig Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who brings her on board to get the training she needs.

Director Jon M Chu (everything from G.I.Joe: Retaliation to In the Heights) knows how to create arresting visuals, and he constantly opens up every scene, largely grounding his characters (even the non human ones) in actual sets for the big musical numbers. Movie spectacle almost never replaces the magic of seeing someone actually sing on a stage in front of you, but this does a better job than most.

Big singing, big dancing, big sets; also a big run time of 2 hours 40 minutes, and a teeny tiny "Part 1" under the opening title to let you know there's a very big story ahead. Fortunately, this half of things ends up coming to a fairly satisfying conclusion - there's clearly more to come, though if you decide you've had enough it works as an origin story on its own.

It's strengths are pretty much what you'd expect. Composer Stephen Schwartz's songs are quality stage musical gear, Chu gives the big set-pieces some real zing, and the performances are first rate (Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard is a role he was born to play). Fans of the stage version have nothing to fear.

The flaws are no surprise either. Did we really need an origin story for the Wicked Witch's hat? Or the Yellow Brick Road (though at least that does involve a cool diorama)? There's an overstuffed feel to proceedings that makes a few scenes drag, every moment milked for main character drama while a few of the subplots feel underserved (presumably they're needed for later).

Some parts of this revisionist take are interesting. The Munchkins' glee at the demise of the Wicked Witch in the opening scene is pitched as just a little disturbing. Others parts are just the usual elbow-to-the-ribs reminder of bigger moments from a better film (and at one point, where someone is zooming around the sky in a flapping CGI black cloak, that better film is The Matrix)

Whether this film will win over many new fans is up for grabs. The epic tone at times feels more interested in fan service than pure entertainment, the story not entirely sure where it wants us to focus and the ending could have ended sooner. 

But the story's heart - the central relationship between the two future witches - is a strong one. When they're together, Wicked sings.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Gladiator II

In an era of remakes and reboots, Gladiator II is a good old-fashioned sequel. Which is to say, it's a step down from the first film while still having enough going on to make it watchable. In fact, its big problem is that in some ways it has too much going on: someone should have said "this Rome isn't big enough for the both of us".

The story we've come to see is the tale of Lucius (Paul Mescal), who, after his African home town is conquered and his arrow-shooting wife killed by a Roman army led by Marcus Acaius (Pedro Pascal), is enslaved, becomes a gladiator, and starts stabbing his way through Rome on a mission of revenge.

Complicating matters somewhat is the fact - known to us but not him - that Marcus is sick of Rome's endless lust for conquest, and together with his wife Lucilla (Connie Nielsen from the first film) is plotting to overthrow the creepy twins currently ruling the place and restore some semblance of good governance, aka "the dream of Rome" that everyone in the first film was going on about.

And just to add another layer to proceedings, Lucius' owner is Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave turned wheeler-dealer who clearly has plans of his own. He's promised Lucius that, if he plays along, he'll have all the vengeance he thirsts for and more. But if Marcus is secretly a good guy, then that means vengeance is... bad?

It's not hard to see how Lucius's character arc is meant to play out: revenge against one man becomes revenge against the system becomes trying to restore the system. Unfortunately the script is too busy with everything else going on to give Mescal (who does a very good job with the whole "leader of men" side of things) time to work through his character's multiple changes of heart.

Usually what would happen in this situation is that other subplots would be whittled down to provide that room. But when you have Denzel tearing up the place, you'd be a fool to limit his screen time - and whatever his many flaws, director Ridley Scott is no fool. Washington lights up the screen every time he's strutting around, and while he's technically a bad guy (what with not being on board with the whole "dream of Rome" deal) all that bad ain't nothing but good for the film.

And the film needs it, because while there's plenty of very impressive surface spectacle here, there's rarely much of anything to sink your teeth into. It's telling that the opening battle - which is the only one where anything is actually at stake - is also the most impressive and compelling. 

We're told that Rome is rotting from within but the sleazy decadence is barely on show, the fights are competent but rarely brutal, and the big coliseum spectaculars lack narrative heft. They don't move the story forward, they're just Lucius's day job. He doesn't even make any gladiator friends we can be worried will be killed off.

The other solution to Lucius' lack of agency - his role for much of the middle of the film is to slowly have his real status revealed to him - would be to present his arrival as a wild card, a rogue element tossed into an already complicated situation. There are traces of that, but this is so intent on looking back to the first film and presenting his arrival as a continuation rather than a new story that the longer this story goes on the less of his own man Lucius becomes. 

By the end his own motivations have been forgotten entirely, replaced by those of long dead characters whose story ended in the distant past. Even for a tale of ancient Rome, that's a bit on the nose.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Here

Robert Zemeckis' movie Here is based on Richard McGuire's graphic novel Here, and you only have to be familiar with the work of one of them to wonder how the heck this is going to work. Shock twist: it doesn't, and sad to say the blame lies pretty much entirely on the Zemeckis side of the ledger, because on the rare occasions when he seems to realise he can use the substance and not just the surface of McGuire's work there are glimmers of a worthwhile experience.

Here (the novel) uses the grammar of the comic book - panels on a page - to unfold an experience that remains fixed in space while roaming freely in time. Each page shows the exact same view onto the world, presented randomly from the dawn of time to the distant future as it goes from wilderness to wasteland to jungle to a suburban lounge room and back. Smaller inset panels show other points in time - a person in the 1950's is seemingly handing a drink to someone there decades later while around them a primeval forest thrives, and so on as all of time is layered before us.

How does this work as a movie? Not well; Zemeckis does use the device of panels as windows into different times, but mostly just as a way to transition from scene to scene. The real power of McGuire's book is the way events and situations echo across time, revealing patterns and interactions even as the human scale shrinks down to nothing. Here (the movie) isn't interested in that.

Instead, we're mostly shown moments in the lives of the people living in the house. Or the time before it: there's a bit of dinosaur versus meteor action early on, and both a Native American couple and the residents (Ben Franklin's son!) of the colonial-era mansion across the road get a few scenes as they travel to and fro. But the main focus is on two generations of the one family, led by WWII veteran Al Young (Paul Bettany) and then his son Richard (Tom Hanks) and wife Margaret (Robin Wright).

Aside from folksy sayings like "time flies" and "there's no place like home", there's not a lot of substance in their stories (suburban life is tough, especially when you're a cliche), and the smaller lives around them don't add much. It seems the house was once owned by the inventor of the La-Z-Boy Recliner Chair, but said chairs play no part in future events (though a new couch and a fold-out bed do).

The rare moment where something does echo across time - the pandemics of 1919 and 2020, for one - provide a brief window into a much more memorable film. Emphasis on brief: it seems much more likely that the driving force for Zemeckis here was the requirement to digitally de-age his cast to cover their decades of puttering around the lounge. The technology used is competent.

Here (the movie) is surprisingly busy - that lounge room sees strokes, funerals, bedridden invalids, sex scenes and a lot more - and yet resoundingly hollow. It tells a handful of cloying, uninspired stories using a conceit that constantly hammers home the small and inconsequential nature of our lives. 

It wants to be a warm look at connection over the years. Instead, its centuries-spanning gaze into a structure that outlasts and erases all who dwell within tells us the opposite: trying to slap a feel good ending onto the march of time is both futile and pointless. 

Sadly for Here, that's not just a matter of perspective.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Saturday Night

There's plenty of interesting and exciting facts about the early days of Saturday Night Live. The problem with Saturday Night is that it packs them all into the 90 minutes before the first episode went to air. It's not that it all becomes a bit much, it's that when you put them all right next to each other... well, maybe being a bit much really is the problem.

It's 90 minutes before the first ever episode of Saturday Night (the Live was added later) and Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) the man behind it all, is flailing. Scripts are being worked on, sets are being built, the crew aren't exactly helping, the cast are all over the place, and management - which may very well have only said yes as part of a wider power play - are wandering around considering whether they should pull the plug. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

There's a lot to like here. Director Jason Reitman (who co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan) keeps things moving at a snappy pace, shifting seamlessly from character to character, subplot to subplot in a way that suggests bedlam but never lets the viewer get (too) lost.

The cast are pretty much all note-perfect. Stand-outs include Rachel Sennott as Michaels' wife Rosie, who's having an open affair with Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), and Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, who feels his theatre background (and race) makes him an outcast (he's right). Everyone else either looks enough like their characters to keep things feeling authentic without getting into CGI creepiness, or is chief writer Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), who it's nice to see making many of his notoriously offensive one-liners.

Reitman also gets many of the smaller details right. Most of the characters (and the conflicts) are accurately, if briefly, sketched - though John Belushi (Matt Wood) attacked Bill Murray (not in this film), not Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith). Weaving in various rehearsals and sound checks allows for most of the first episode's classic moments to make an appearance, even if they're also a reminder that comedy has changed a lot since 1975 (don't worry, there's plenty of cutaways to people laughing hysterically at these bits).  

But even if you know nothing at all about Saturday Night Live, it's not hard to see that something's off. The bad guys here are a): manual workers who don't want to work outside of their positions, b): Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, c): NBC's David Tibet (Willem Dafoe), who looks at this obvious train wreck and is like "yeah, we need a backup plan here", d) host George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), who also suspects the wheels are coming off, and e): Milton Berle's penis. Reitman's swimming against the tide of history on all counts.

And while LaBelle gives an excellent performance, making Lorne Michaels the hero of your story is definitely, as they say, a choice. After all, SNL was the end of a comedic era, not the beginning: pretty much everyone involved already had solid track records (the writers on National Lampoon; most of the cast had worked together on The National Lampoon Radio Hour). 

Saturday Night ends up being a salute to Michaels' drive and vision as he overcomes a wide range of obstacles that the film created to make things seem more dramatic. It wants to applaud a comedic visionary who blazed a trail people still follow today; it ends up being a high five to middle management, a man whose real skill lies in getting everyone else to think he's irreplaceable. 

Looks like he's still got it.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Hellboy: The Crooked Man

As a comic, Hellboy has been running for 30-odd years now under the guidance of his creator, Mike Mignola. Things have changed a lot for the demon fated to destroy the world, and his adventures have grown creepier and closer to folklore than they were back when he was punching out Nazis and giant monsters.

The year is 1959 (well before any of the previous Hellboy films) and the chain smoking, tough talking good guy demon (Jack Kesy ) and a couple of government sidekicks are taking a demonically possessed funnelweb spider back to the lab via train. Thinks go wrong, not all the sidekicks survive, and it's left to Hellboy and rookie agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) to track down the giant spider through the Appalachian mountains. That's not all they find.

Supposedly a big part of the reason why Guillermo del Toro (director of the first two Hellboy films) didn't get to make his idea of a third was because Mignola wanted to take the character back to his roots; that's definitely one way to look at Hellboy: The Crooked Man (which is specifically based on a three-issue run of the comic).

While Hellboy himself remains the same character here, this is a pretty big pivot to small scale horror for the big screen version, in ways that those looking for pulp action might find off-putting. There's no evil end-of-the-world cult or giant monsters or Nazi hold-outs to punch here: ok, there are a few zombies at one point. But this is much more about a creeping sense of dread, of people stumbling into a place that's gone rotten with bad magic.

A lot of the small moments are memorably creepy. There's a witch who leaves her skin behind to roam the woods as a raccoon; another witch rides a horse that turns out to be someone's enslaved father. The main evil haunting the mountain is called The Crooked Man, a walking hanged corpse who sells souls to the Devil for a cent apiece in an attempt to rebuild his long gone fortune.

The main plot is straightforward: Hellboy and Song team up with newly returned local Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) to purge the area of evil, which involves battling the local population (now basically all witches) and defeating The Crooked Man. But for long stretches, it's the kind of story where unsettling things just happen. 

There's asides explaining how to make witchballs and summon up a demon, hints of portals and Lovecraftian monsters, a number of dream sequences featuring Hellboy's mother, a grim joke or two, and at least one character dies for (again, memorably creepy) reasons that are never quite explained... which is kind of the point. They've stumbled into a place where bad things just happen, and a certain dream-like quality is to be expected.

Still, there are also points where this doesn't quite work, rough edges that feel more the result of an uneven script (co-written by Mignola himself) and low budget than firm intentions. Director Brian Taylor (the Crank films, the second, more demented Ghost Rider movie) does a decent job of balancing the unsettling mood with some high energy weirdness (there's the occasional Evil Dead vibe to proceedings), but the whole thing never fully comes together like it should.

If this film manages to chart a new direction for Hellboy, smaller in scope but bigger in strangeness, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. As the film handling the pivot, this struggles to straddle two worlds; it's those memorable moments that stand out, like pennies scattered on an old floor.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Subservience

If you're the kind of person who watches a lot of direct-to-streaming movies, you'll have noticed that Megan Fox is slowly becoming a name you can trust when it comes to halfway decent trash viewing. Not everything she's in is gold standard, but if she can make a decent film out of a story about a sexy nanny who sleeps with the boss then tries to replace the wife - only here the nanny is a robot - then she's doing something right.

Nick (Michele Morrone) is a construction foreman who must be making a decent living, because when his wife Maggie (Madeline Zima) has a pre-sexy times heart attack he's quickly off down to the robot department store to purchase a helper. Fortunately for him, his younger daughter takes a liking to Alice (Fox) and not one of the many non-hot models that are no doubt flying off the showroom floor.

Horror movies about AI tend to fall into two categories. The first is "oh no, our house is possessed", where an AI assistant or app or doll uses the power of AI to do a bunch of evil murdery stuff - basically, the AI is non human. The second is "oh no, our maid / butler / sexbot is possessed", where a human is playing the murdery AI. And so it goes with Subservience.

Those films are usually less interesting because it's basically just an evil person and we know the kinds of things they can do, but Subservience pulls out a few tricks to keep the interest levels up. Alice isn't intrinsically evil, for one: Nick's poor programming leaves her fixated on him (bad move when there are other family members) and enables her to fully commit to her forbidden love. Also, Nick? Bit of a dick.

Not only does he have sex with Alice, he then does the whole "it was a mistake, we can never do that again" thing, turning this for maybe fifteen minutes or so into the robot version of Fatal Attraction. Also, unlike most movies of this stripe, having home robots is not a brand new thing. As the movie goes on we see more and more how they're reshaping the world.

For one, "construction worker" isn't really a viable career when your boss can just rent some super strong robots. Suddenly Nick's loyalties are torn between his workmates on the chopping block and bringing in a steady income (again, he's kind of a dick). 

Somewhat surprisingly, this is not one of the many, many recent films where having to pay medical bills forces our lead into a morally dubious corner. This is surprising because for the first 20 minutes or so you'd be forgiven for thinking Maggie (who is nowhere to be seen) was dead, and then when Nick (the dick) does finally visit her we discover she's in dire need of a transplant. Presumably hospital costs are down because yes, robots are doing all the heavy lifting there too. 

While the focus remains on Alice's descent into murderous evil, all these background details gradually build up, creating a wider sense of unease. If robots are all around us doing all the work - as you'd expect they would - and they can turn nasty like Alice, then everyone is in a lot of trouble.

So while this does deliver the usual "I'm doing this insane murdery thing for your own good" thrills, there's just enough going on around the edges - plus decent performances from Fox and Zima - to keep it from feeling like it's just going through the motions. 

In the end it's still more of the same, and how much you get out of this will depend a lot on a): your interest in sexy robots and b): your interest in evil robots. But within those parameters, this does manage a few memorable moments: is letting robots take care of humans ever going to be a good idea?

- Anthony Morris

Review: My Old Ass

Stories where younger and older versions of someone meet are usually focused on the older person. They're the ones with wisdom (and stock tips) to impart; young folks are usually too busy living for today to want to leap into the future and meet their older selves. My Old Ass says "too bad, here's your older self, deal with it"; thankfully the rest of the movie is not someone yelling "you're not my real future self" and slamming their bedroom door.

Elliot (Maisy Stella) is all set for college and looking forward to the bright future (and college girls) that awaits. But first there's a painful summer to be spent on the family farm being annoyed by pretty much everything that isn't hanging out with her friends. Then one night after taking a lot of mushrooms with her buddies, the usual group hang now includes a 39 year old (Aubrey Plaza) who announces "I'm you dude".

Turns out she hasn't been sent back in time to save her younger self from a killer robot, but instead to hand out some basic wisdom: appreciate her family, and stay away from a boy named Chad. It's not a long visit, but she does leave behind a contact in Elliot's phone: My Old Ass.

No surprise then that when Chad (Percy Hynes White) does show up, there's an instant connection. Which is a bit confusing for Elliot, who's only been into women before now. Also, her older self is not one for giving out any big details about the future (aside from the fact she clearly has some regrets), so exactly why he's to be avoided is a mystery. Which is kind of the point.

This is a tightly packed (at barely 90 minutes) coming-of-age story that's not afraid to keep the stakes low. Having her older self lurking around - and seemingly still figuring stuff out - makes it clear that growing up is an ongoing condition. Whatever choices she makes, right or wrong, there's going to be a lot more choices after that.

The performances are a delight, with newcomer Stella and Plaza sharing an energy that makes their connection totally convincing. Writer / director Megan Park really nails the "last summer before everything changed" vibe of waiting to ditch small town life and head off to higher education (though the farm and local lake look gorgeous), and Stella is totally convincing as a bubbly teen having fun living a low-stakes life.

My Old Ass is pretty slight, but the film's lightweight nature is the point. Time does go by fast, and small decisions can linger. Appreciating what you have? That might not be a bad thing.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Uglies

Is Uglies a real movie? At barely 90 minutes (before credits), it scrapes in time-wise; director McG used to make real movies, but that was a while ago. It's available on Netflix, which features things that are definitely movies, and also a lot of things that are definitely not movies. Let's put it another way then: is Uglies a serious movie worthy of serious consideration, or just an excuse for some cool hoverboard action?

The central premise of Uglies is that a few hundred years into the future, a series of disasters have driven humanity's survivors to embrace the idea that the only way to avoid conflict is to make everyone roughly as hot as the best-looking person on some sexy sex-based reality show. If this seems stupid to you, don't worry: there's an actual in-movie reason why humanity has (mostly) fallen for this, which largely boils down to "we only have to convince people this silly idea works until they're 16".

Tally Youngblood (Joey King) has bought into the system 100%. The only drawback as far as she can see is that her platonic bestie Peris (Chase Stokes) gets to have an extreme makeover and go live in the party city across the river a few months before her. But when he doesn't get in touch after his touch-up like he promised, she sneaks over to see how the other half live - and realises that maybe partying all night is the kind of thing only vapid airheads are totally into.

Fortunately her new bestie Shay (Brianne Tju) lets her know about the outdoor rebels led by David (Keith Powers), and while Tally isn't really up for the camping lifestyle she does enjoy learning about the exciting world of hoverboards. There is a lot of hoverboard action in this film, which is a big plus, especially as "hoverboard" pretty much equals "skateboard" here. Skateboarding is not a crime, unless you use it to smash the state.

After a few twists and turns Tally finds herself denied her makeover, but only because she has a secret mission: she's the only one who can track down David and infiltrate his organisation before they can unleash their "weapon" which will destroy party central and make everyone's eyeliner run. Will she be unable to resist the allure of his message, which is basically "touch grass"? Will party central turn out to have a dark secret? Will part of the big action climax be a direct steal from one of the most iconic moments in The Matrix?

Anyone who has ever watched a single movie in their lives can spot the problem here. In a Young Adult novel you can get away with having a lead who's meant to be tough to look at: in a YA movie, no. Everyone pre-makeover here is still very easy on the eyes, which you can either go along with or complain about - luckily enough, both responses work as far as the message of the movie is concerned.

Otherwise the great ideological divide here is between vapid high-tech partying and getting back to nature and doing something real, which is as good a conflict as any for a YA movie. The bad guys are bad but have just enough justification behind their actions to be plausible, the good guys are romanticised but are clearly on the right side of history, and the whole thing only has to work as a metaphor for a bunch of teenage life choices anyway.

What this is really about is Netflix (and by extension, Hollywood in general) wanting to see if audiences are ready for the return of the good old days when Harry Potter led to The Hunger Games and YA ruled both the page and the screen. The trouble with this kind of trial balloon is that it's for a genre that really needs some serious money spent on it to make it work: Uglies does pretty well with its special effects for what it is, but it's just not on the same scale as the YA classics of yore.

So is Uglies a real movie? Well, it's not a serious one; neither is it an epic tale of overwrought emotional angst like the best YA films. But King makes for a solid heroine who sells her character's journey even when the film is fast-forwarding through it, everyone else looks good even when they shouldn't, and it makes up for its lack of an emotional rollercoaster by having Tully hoverboard down a real one. 

Plus, this pushes the ending just far enough past the (very effective) conclusion of the first novel to make sure we don't need a sequel that we know will never come. Tidying up loose ends: Hollywood should do more of it.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Speak No Evil

There's a certain kind of story that really pulls you in but can't really sustain a full-length movie all on its own. Comedies have this problem all the time; it's a very high bar to come up with something that's hilarious from start to finish, so they're always slipping in a bit of regular drama to drag things over the line. There's not a lot of laughs in Speak No Evil, but there is a lot of awkward, unsettling family interactions - and when the story moves on from them it's hard not to feel a little let down.

Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) are holidaying in Italy when they run into semi-retired doctor Paddy (James McAvoy) and his family, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and speechless youngster Ant (Dan Hough). Paddy is a force of nature, fun and welcoming; Ben is cautious, careful, and something of a wet blanket. But eventually he's worn down and forced to enjoy the company of their new found friends. When they part, they promise to catch up again back in the UK.

Everyone in the Dalton family (even their daughter, who's getting a little too old to be so emotionally attached to her stuffed rabbit) knows that seeing Paddy and the rest is probably not a great idea. But being stuck in London, where Ben's failing attempts to find a job add to Louise's growing annoyance with his passive ways, isn't helping them either. Maybe a trip out into the countryside to stay at Paddy's isolated farm for a few days is just what they need?

No it isn't.

The best part of the film is the lengthy middle stretch where it's screamingly obvious that something isn't quite right on Paddy's farm (their parenting methods, for one, leave a lot to be desired), but the Daltons can't quite put their finger on what. As a host Paddy is so forceful and seemingly reasonable - even when he's being nosy or using the importance of truth-telling to stir things up - that it's hard to say no to him, especially if you don't want to look insensitive or ungrateful. And that's the last thing the Daltons want, even when it feels like every conversation ends up in an awkward, uncomfortable place.

With so much of this reliant on vibes, good casting is essential. McNairy is spot on as a man with a wet noodle for a spine, a sad sack whose commitment to meaning well and wanting to do the right thing has been enough to get him through life (until now). Davis is strong as a character who should be trusting her instinct but being halfway out the door relationship-wise has worn her down, while Franciosi remains consistently convincing as someone who has to sell at least two contradictory stories.

Based on a 2022 Danish film, this ditches the grim inevitability of euro-horror for a more predictable fight-and-flight third act. It's not a fatal flaw, but delivering the familiar thrills does let a lot of the tension out of the room. Once all the cards are on the table it's pretty easy to see how things will play out, even if exactly when and how characters will meet their grisly end is up in the air (and then flat on the concrete).

It's McAvoy who carries this through, putting out enough energy to power a small town as in the space of a minute or two Paddy goes from your best mate to that guy who's always trying to test your limits to someone just having a laugh. He's a memorable villain in a film that can barely hold him, an always entertaining dinner party guest you'd be happy to have over - just so long as you were able to get him out the door before things turned sour.

- Anthony Morris

Review: It Ends With Us

Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) is home for her father's funeral, only she doesn't seem all that sad. Is she eager to get back to opening her Boston flower store? Or is there a dark secret that will hang over her okay her dad used to beat up her mother. Forget about that for now: she's just had a meet-cute, almost kiss with handsome neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs) and - actually, forget about that too, it's time to renovate the store with the help of random passer-by turned shop assistant Allysa (Jenny Slate). Fingers crossed they get around to these dangling plot threads soon.

Fortunately it turns out that Allysa is Ryle's sister - what are the odds? - and while Ryle doesn't do relationships, Lily doesn't do casual, so obviously they'll never get together oh hang on. Meanwhile, there's all these flashbacks to when Young Lily (Isabela Ferrer) befriended a (literally) smelly homeless yet extremely hot guy named Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter), who seems like a decent candidate for the love of her life. 

So where is he now? And what exactly is this film about, beyond a bunch of good-looking people who are amazingly rich but still wear onesies to the local bar to get free beer? The answer will surprise you - unless you remember Lily's abusive father, in which case you'll have spent the entire movie waiting for Ryle to follow up on the aggressive chair kick he delivered during his first five seconds of screen time.

Based on the best-seller by Colleen Hoover, this kind of story is built around a balancing act. Our lead needs to be smart and on the ball. She's the audience surrogate, so she has to be someone we'd like to be (or be friends with), which means no silly mistakes. But the entire story is built around her making a bad decision. Just to make things more difficult, Ryle's fatal flaw has to be present right from the start: if he suddenly out-of-nowhere turned bad, then why couldn't he just as suddenly turn good?

That means that much of the drama in this film comes not from the actual situations, but in seeing how the story is going to thread the needle. He needs to be decent enough to be worthy of her love, but bad enough to make the plot work; she needs to be someone we can admire, but also someone who would fall for an (somewhat) obviously flawed man.

It Ends With Us manages to pull it off, but it's a close thing. Once he goes bad, everyone - no exceptions - understands that a line's been crossed; once Lily calls out his behaviour for what it is, there's no half-baked justifications or explanations. Which leaves that behaviour weirdly rootless, an aberration (that nevertheless cannot be excused) that stands alone. He's not a controlling violent freak, he just acts like one on those rare occasions when he gets jealous.

The big loser in all this is modern-day Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), who when he finally does show up just gets to glower and be aggressively supportive at a time when everyone involved realises romance of any kind is off the table. It doesn't help that Sklenar and his younger self don't look all that much alike (Ferrer, on the other hand, is spot-on as young Lily), which tends to defuse any real connection between their current day counterparts.

Wanting to tackle serious issues yet still keep that rom-com / female empowerment vibe strong, often this kind of film has so many contradictions it tears itself apart. There's plenty of stress fractures here (can Allysa manage to be a good friend and a loyal sister?), but there's decent chemistry between Lively and Baldoni and that makes up for a lot. She fell for him because he's hot and rich; what more do we need to know?

Well, maybe a bit more, which is where Lively steps up. This is her film and she carries it well, selling the few comedy moments as strongly as the drama. Despite the wobbly mix of the lightweight (the film makes a joke of it, but still: did this flower-obsessed woman really need to be named Lily Bloom?) and the extremely serious, Lively keeps Lily's feet firmly on the ground. You may not leave wanting to know what happens next, but this ending feels earned.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Deadpool & Wolverine

The most outrageous moments in Deadpool & Wolverine come when we're expected to believe Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is a character with serious thoughts and heartfelt emotions. Fortunately those moments are few and far between, because they don't make any sense. Deadpool is a gleefully amoral pansexual shit-talker for whom nothing is off-limits (unless you're looking for a joke about why TJ Miller was dumped from the series); why should we care about his feelings when he doesn't give a crap about anyone else's?

Instead, this makes a massive withdrawal from the bank of goodwill that the previous films made (meager) deposits into, by briefly re-introducing pretty much the entire supporting casts from those last two films (sorry, no sign of Zazie Beetz' Domino) and then telling us "these are the people whose lives are at stake" from a universe-shattering plot while never showing them again. 

To make matters worse, this comes after a scene where Wilson tries to join the Avengers (hey look, it's a John Favreau cameo) because after two movies worth of making jokes about everything, he's decided he wants his life to mean something. Yeah, right. Spoiler: he does not get the gig, his life falls apart, he retires from being Deadpool, and then-

Well, before all that there's a joyously violent opening sequence in which Deadpool, having dug up the corpse of Logan, AKA Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) - who died in Logan, which was meant to be Jackman's swan song playing the character, and which fans were reassured was a death this film would respect - uses various parts of the corpse to kill dozens of disposable goons in increasingly gory fashion. Now this is what we came to see.

It probably wouldn't have been possible to make a film that was 100% smutty jokes, brutal (if clearly CGI) violence, deep cut in-jokes (there are a lot of as-seen-in-the-comics versions of Wolverine here) and fan service, but this particular creative team should have tried a little bit harder because that's the best stuff here. The plot is a garbled mess that's also a send-off of some of the Fox versions of Marvel characters (oh look, more cameos) while making Deadpool firmly part of the MCU even has it once again reminds audiences that having a multiverse means nothing really matters.

The story is basically kicked off by having the MCU, in the form of Time Variance Authority flunky Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), recruit Deadpool while tossing the rest of his universe in the trash. Needing a new Wolverine to keep his universe alive, Deadpool eventually finds a version that won't murder him on sight, just in time for the pair of them to be dumped in "The Void", a garbage dump dimension where the TVA puts surplus characters and hey, even more cameos. They also find chief villain and Professor X's secret sister Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), who is surprisingly good as a bad guy and probably deserves to turn up again in a film that has actual stakes.

What tiny emotional core all this has comes from the buddy act between Deadpool (annoying) and Wolverine (annoyed), which is basically the same dynamic as Deadpool and (mentioned but not seen) Cable in the last film, only here Wolverine gets his name in the title. It's a fun double act that would have been even better in a film that just focused on them; then again, now that they're both in the MCU - and as we're told multiple times, Marvel won't let anyone retire forever - nothing's ever off the table.

While it makes a kind of sense to have Deadpool push the whole multiverse thing to the point of absurdity and beyond, that doesn't really make this hang together as much of a movie. Whatever its flaws as a story, it's still an entertaining experience; the rapid-fire gags often hit the target (especially the ones about the actors and production), the action is solid if rarely memorable, and the cameos are... well, they're there for the fans, but they're a decent mix of the obvious and the in-joke. You could make a decent sketch show out of all this stuff: Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Longlegs

Longlegs is a movie that works in the moment. Scenes are soaked in dread; the whole point is that what you're watching is scary right now. Some horror movies get bigger as you consider their implications. This one is happy to provide 90-odd minutes of skin-crawling tension.

Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is the kind of hyper-focused, socially awkward detective familiar from decades of film and television. New to the FBI, her instincts (psychic or not) during a door-to-door search prove sharp enough to get her bumped up to assisting veteran agent Carter (Blair Underwood) on a very cold case that just might be heating up. Her partner on the search ended up dead; her instincts might not be coming from a mutually beneficial place. 

The case involves a string of family murder-suicides seemingly sparked by strange coded letters sent by a figure known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Nothing in the case seems to add up. Harker cracks the code but the messages are just the usual taunts, Longlegs himself is a creepy freak but his role seems less clear as events progress, the sole survivor (Kiernan Shipka) is fresh out of her coma but less than helpful and each new clue (what's going on with the giant dolls?) only muddies the waters.

This is clearly riffing on a number of classic serial killer films - Seven and Silence of the Lambs come to mind - though this eventually slips sideways into a slightly different genre. It's all retro-stylings (the film is set in the 90s), chilly rural landscapes, dingy houses and big winter coats. The weather forecast says "ominous foreboding".

Monroe's earnest but slightly distant performance only adds to the tension, playing the kind of character you know will keep going past the point where someone more easily unsettled (that is, most of humanity) would be running like a maniac. Maybe blame her mother (Alicia Witt), who, it's increasingly clear, has issues of her own.

As the story progresses the bad vibes grow. The FBI, it becomes clear, is an unsafe space; even when they get the job done, nobody's sure it's the right job. Writer-director Oz Perkins isn't telling a story where all the pieces fall into place. They just fall on the floor in a pattern that's unsettling without ever being fully satisfying.

Cage is only in the film for a handful of scenes, though they're memorable ones. It's surprising to realise his brand of off-kilter performance hasn't been harnessed for straight-out horror earlier. He's often left audiences thinking "what the hell am I watching?". This time hell might be the answer as well as the question.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Fly Me to the Moon

There's a lot going on in Fly Me to the Moon, possibly too much for one movie. Part romantic comedy, part caper movie, part vague gesture towards a rare part of history people still feel good about, it's largely held together by good old fashioned movie magic. Or in layman's terms, here's two good looking people, hopefully you'll want to watch at least one of them.

Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) is wowing them in the sexist world of 60s advertising, but her ability to effortlessly con her clients suggests something a little darker. Which is exactly what the Nixon White House - in the form of Moe Burkus (Woody Harrelson) - likes about her. So here's the gig: head south to Florida, show up at NASA, and help turn a PR mess into a political asset just in time for man to land on the moon.

Meanwhile, heading up NASA's efforts is square-jawed former fighter pilot Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), who you'd think would be great publicity but after the tragic deaths of three astronauts on a mission he was in charge of, he's all about keeping his head down and getting the job done. 

He has a meet-cute with Kelly before he knows who she is, so his loathing of publicity is tempered by his attraction to her. She, on the other hand, knows exactly who he is and likes what she sees. What could possibly get in the way of this romance, especially once Cole realises that her people skills can help smooth the bumpy political road ahead? Guess he better not find out that Burkus has secretly ordered her to create a fake moon landing in case Cole screws the real one up.

At times it's hard to know if this is a romance with a caper movie mixed in, or a caper movie with a romantic subplot. The various political and PR hijinxs are never less than entertaining, but they don't always feel essential; as fictional backstory for an actual event, the stakes couldn't be lower - unless what's really on the line is Kelly and Cole's relationship, which this takes a little too long to focus on.

Still, the tone is enjoyably light, the Mad Men-era 60s vibe remains both stylish and smart, and Johansson is having a lot of fun as a fast-talking career gal constantly charming all and sundry. Tatum is playing the kind of stiff who everyone likes because he gets flustered rather than mad; he's the passive partner, his wound over his past the main obstacle to be overcome.

The final third brings it all together as the traditional rom-com dynamic is revealed (the couple comes together, but one has a secret that will tear them apart) and then woven into the caper (how do our heroes show the world the real moon landing?). The gags speed up, the tension builds, and some real stakes come into play.

This could have lost half an hour, but a slow start's to blame. Much like the moon landing itself, it's the end of the journey that makes the long trip worthwhile.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Twisters

Twisters is basically the platonic ideal of a sequel. It's the same film all over again, only now it's the film you remember rather than the actual first film which, after all, did have its faults. Light on the story but heavy on the destruction, it knows you're not here to think about actual science - unless it's the kind of science you can do in your mom's barn.

Five years ago, Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) saw her college buddies dragged up into the sky when an experiment requiring them to get too close to a tornado went wrong. Now a shadow of her former self, she works in weather in tornado-free (for now) New York - but when old buddy Javi (Anthony Ramos) shows up needing the best ever tornado predictor ever, how can she say no?

Once back out in the field (literally) she soon discovers that Javi and his slick corporate team are, well, a slick corporate team. Their main rivals are Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his YouTube crew of "tornado wranglers" who race around setting off fireworks inside twisters and sell t-shirts with his face on them. They're loud and crude, but Kate soon finds herself falling for their charms... which is handy, because who's that sinister-looking real estate mogul financing Javi's data-gathering efforts?

The whole film is so lightweight it feels like it could fly away in a slight breeze, which is a big part of its appeal. Aside from the opening - which comes very close to an "a tornado killed my family, now I want revenge" kind of set-up - nothing involving the characters risks cranking up any serious tension. There's slightly more than hints of a love triangle (in a heavier film you'd have Javi marked for death as a loser in both love and staying alive), the "we've got to help these people, not exploit them" subplot is mostly just shades of light grey, and everyone aside from a few obvious jerks just... gets along.

That's because all the real drama comes from the killer tornadoes wreaking havoc across the USA, and this repeatedly and effectively points out that being anywhere near one of these things is a very bad idea. There's nothing quite as memorable as the first film's flying cow (RIP) and even the firenado is something we've seen before, but these sequences are always effective whether they're going for awe-inspiring or terrifying.

At times a bit more drama might not have gone astray. We're introduced to a group of orange rain-poncho-wearing "tourists" who you'd expect to get torn apart at some stage, but nope. By the time Maura Tierney turns up as Kate's warm-hearted, no-nonsense mom, it's clear the real appeal here is just hanging out with a collection of likable all-action nerds who get their kicks looking at clouds and weather maps.

Oh, and seeing a lot of middle America get ripped asunder and hurled into the sky. At one point we see a star-spangled woman rising around a rodeo carrying a giant American flag; it feels like the film-makers missed a trick not having her soar off into the heavens with it as an (inadvertent) sail.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Exorcism

Heading into The Exorcism, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a follow-up to Russell Crowe's recent The Pope's Exorcist. There Crowe played a real-life priest and occasional exorcist; here he's playing an actor who's just been cast as an exorcist in a remake of an iconic movie involving priests and demonic possession. The movie's real title is never mentioned. Guess these days there's a fair few of them to choose from.

Anthony Miller (Crowe) flushed his career and his family down the toilet years ago. Now he's sober and he's trying to get both back. His career through a comeback role as an exorcist, his daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) by having her stay with him after she was kicked out of boarding school.

Miller is a troubled man, and his childhood experiences as an altar boy have left him skittish around the church. But he needs the gig, and despite a lot of reluctance from the money men, the director (Adam Goldberg) signs him for the role - though his motivational methods might be a little too effective in stirring up Miller's past.

Oh yeah, and the main reason why Miller got the role was because the big name they previously cast died. On set. While going through his lines for a scene where he confronts a demonic force. 

Now Miller's sleepwalking, lights are falling from the ceiling, his performance is bad in an increasingly unsettling way, and the whole situation is giving off a very creepy vibe. Is it merely Miller's personal demons brought back by the pressures of work, or will Lee and the film's religious advisor Father Conor (David Hyde Pierce) have to face down a demon of the more literal kind?

We all know how exorcism movies work, and while this (which was filmed back in late 2019) is initially a slow burn, it does eventually get around to delivering the sudden soundtrack stings and casual blasphemy. A more interesting development here is having Miller be the source of a few of the better jump scares; one of Crowe's big strengths in this stage of his career is that he can just as easily be the good guy or the bad, and this makes good use of that ambivalence.

Director and co-writer John Joshua Miller is the son of Jason Miller, who played the priest who goes out the window in the original Exorcist. He brings a satisfying level of dread to a number of individual scenes, which helps gloss over the way the overall story doesn't really hold together. Presumably "I was possessed by a demon" is a legitimate defense when it comes to being charged with murder in the US justice system.

There's next to nothing new here (somewhat intentionally, considering the classic its riffing on), but Crowe drags the whole thing over the line through sheer force of will. It's the kind of film where it feels like everyone else turned up just because they knew he'd be there; Sam Worthington, who basically has an extended cameo as Miller's adoring co-star, almost certainly signed on just to spend time across from Crowe. And who could blame him? Even when Crowe's deliberately acting badly, he's still good.

So yes, the story loses focus here and there, and a few scenes stretch credibility beyond breaking point - like the time when someone goes full Satanic crabwalk during filming and the entire crew doesn't quit on the spot. And yet: the power of Crowe compels you. 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Just look how far the Bad Boys have come. When they first burst onto our screens in a wave of legally dubious carnage, the buddy cop dynamic between Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) was your typical loose cannon vs anxious guy with something to lose. Now, well over 25 years later, they're both just too old for this shit. And in Bad Boys:Ride or Die, the shit has once again hit the fan.

Even a franchise this free-wheeling knows action doesn't mean much when there's nothing at stake. So first, some character development: Mike's settling down and getting married to Christine (Melanie Liburd), so he's finally got something to lose. Marcus just had a heart attack on the dance floor where a vision of their cranky dead boss Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) told him it's not his time to die, so now he thinks he's invulnerable. As role reversals go it's no Freaky Friday, but it'll do.

Speaking of the late Captain Howard, he's the big plot driver this time around. Seems he's been framed by the evil cartel from the last film, angering his devoted US Marshall daughter (Rhea Seehorn) who doesn't want to believe it. In reality, he was secretly investigating corruption inside his department. It turns out the only way to clear his name is for the Boys to go on the run, team-up with Mike's son and cartel killer Armando (Jacob Scipio) and trash half of Florida.

Returning directors Adil & Bilall (they took over the franchise from Michael Bay with Bad Boys For Life, maintaining his hyperbolic style in a near-seamless fashion) know that too much is never enough when you're dealing with the Bad Boys. It's probably not humanly possible for someone to enjoy everything going on here, but with so much going on you're bound to find something you like.

Probably not the comedy though, which rarely gets above painful until the second half and even then relies an awful lot on the goodwill Lawrence and Smith bring to their characters. And while it's tempting to consider this a last chance for Smith to redeem himself after his Oscar antics, his laying low since then has largely done the hard work for him - and here he's often surprisingly subdued, while Lawrence takes full advantage of Marcus's fearlessness to crank things up.

And making some noise is probably a good idea, because this is so over-stuffed (old characters are back! New characters are important! The action is dizzying!) eventually it starts to take on the relentless feel of the engine drone from one of the often-present helicopters - but like a trip on one of those copters, it's always a wild ride.

The big crowd-pleasing twist here is that Marcus' son-in-law Reggie (played by Dennis McDonald), who's been a one-minor-note-joke since Bad Boys II, finally gets to take out some trash on his own. If Mike and Marcus are getting too old to be boys, at least the next generation now get to be (equally lethal) men.

- Anthony Morris