Review: Eternity

While the idea of the afterlife as a bureaucratic nightmare is one that keeps on giving, Eternity's riff is a uniquely individualistic one: after you die, you get seven days in a kind of beyond-the-grave convention center to pick the ideal afterlife for you. Once you choose, that's it: no going back.

For a romantic comedy, it's kind of a grim set-up. Unless your loved one dies at the same time - good news for car crash fatalities, presumably - there's pretty much zero chance of spending eternity together. Maybe whoever designed it (in this afterlife it's a bureaucracy all the way up) figured that, as no love could last forever, it was better to pull the band-aid off right at the start. Shame they didn't tell Luke (Callum Turner) that.

For Larry and Joan, living out a slow-driving retirement, Luke is just a faded sepia photograph of someone who died in the war (multiple jokes are made about how the Korean War is not really "the war"). But when Larry chokes on a pretzel at a gender reveal party, he wakes up dead, forty years younger (now Miles Teller), and in an afterlife where his "AC" (afterlife counselor) Anna (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) is pointing him at an exit.

He learns a few things - yes, you can stick around if you're willing to take on a menial gig; no, you can't leave a message behind for your loved one - and with the deadline looming he's got no choice but to cross his fingers and hope Joan can just guess where he's gone and follow... until she (now Elizabeth Olsen) also turns up. Chalk up a win for cancer.

Just one catch: friendly bartender Luke is also the Luke that Joan loved and married way, way back... before he died in the war. He waited for her, and now they can finally have the life together they dreamed of. Bad news for Larry, but he'll get over 65 years of marriage soon enough, right?

The backdrop here is fine for a bunch of throwaway jokes about the various eternities, but it's obviously constructed nature is a little distracting. The various rules largely seem designed to throw obstacles in the way of this particular trio; there doesn't need to be a good reason why you're stuck in the afterlife you choose for all eternity, there just needs to be a reason.

Fortunately the central dilemma plays out well, despite a slow stretch in the middle where Joan gets to try out a future with one then the other. Fun performances from all three don't exactly hurt; it's the kind of story where there's no bad guys, just someone destined to miss out. 

Teller is the standout, constantly channeling an old man while retaining (regaining?) his youth, while Turner's dreamboat facade constantly cracks to reveal little humanising details. Olsen has strong chemistry with both - though that chemistry takes different forms, which is kind of the point of the whole thing.

Attractive people struggling with love is pretty much always a winner so long as you don't screw it up; despite always taking its ridiculous premise seriously, Eternity has a bubbly sense of humour that manages to breath a little life into love after death.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Zootopia 2

The first Zootopia was a pretty funny buddy comedy that also happened to be set in a society where the citizens were largely expected to act in species-specific ways. Which makes sense for animals, but when it's an animated film where "animals" sort of maps onto "ethnic stereotypes"... well, you can kind of see the problem.

Fortunately Zootopia went on to say this kind of thing was bad - it was a story about a hero rabbit (a prey animal) succeeding at being a cop (a predator job), after all - so all good, the coast is clear for a sequel that's a bit less politically fraught, right? And not at all about, say, a conspiracy by one kind of animal to dispossess another species and cast them out of their homeland to live in the desert for a hundred years while they claim the cast out species are murderers who deserve their exile? Hang on, I'm getting an update...

Back at the beginning, Officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and former street hustler turned partner Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) are in a bit of a bind. Their fellow officers see them as chumps who got lucky with their last big case; Hopps is determined to prove them wrong, while Wilde is (as usual) a bit more laid-back about the whole thing.

Adding to the problem, they're a mixed team (she's a rabbit, he's a fox), which has people thinking they'll never be on the same page. And maybe they're right: their next attempt at a big bust goes wrong big time, embarrassing the new Mayor - a former action movie actor horse with flowing locks named Brian Winddancer (Patrick Warburton) - and sending them off to couples therapy.

Undeterred, Hopps doubles down. With evidence a snake was at the scene of the failed bust, she figures out the reptile is in town to attack the Zootenial Gala. It's an event celebrating 100 years since the founding of Zootopia (the creation of the various climate-controlled zones, to be specific), which also saw reptiles largely exiled from the city after a terrorist attack.

If you've ever seen a buddy cop movie before, you have a pretty good idea of what comes next. Our heroes are soon on the trail of what really happened, while the rich and powerful are out to crush them and the system has them marked as criminals. Worse, the rift between Hopps and Wilde seems to be growing: what's even the point of solving the big mystery if it tears the two of them apart?

It's a mystery that's nice and twisty, and a great excuse to propel our leads through all manner of situations and settings. Most of which are at least partially played for laughs, though this isn't afraid to get serious when it's time to crank up the stakes, and the action scenes are possibly a little much for very young viewers.

The jokes are pretty solid too, ranging from pop culture references to silly sight gags to physical comedy to the return of the Sloth, everyone's favourite character from the first film. Speaking of pop culture, there's one shock development that makes more sense if you get the reference the bad guys are based on, but it works even if you (like most kids) don't pick up on it. 

The "partnership" (it's a relationship in everything but name) between Hopps and Wilde is also well handled. Hopps is always right, of course - she's the one driving the story - but Wilde's side of things makes enough sense that he's not dead weight. Pretty much everyone else just gets off a gag or two, but conspiracy theorist / guide to the bad part of town Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster) does stand out.

The result is a surprisingly entertaining adventure of a kind Hollywood doesn't make anywhere often enough. You wouldn't say it's a kids version of One Battle After Another, but there's a similar commitment to old-fashioned story-driven running-around action. Which is fun to watch! Who knew.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Wicked For Good

Prequels can take two paths. In one, they fit relatively seamlessly with what lies ahead - events often build to a finale that's just a rehash of the next film's opening. In the other, all bets are off; you might get a bunch of superficial similarities, but the goal isn't just to provide backstory, it's to recontexualise what we think we know. Even by the end of the first Wicked it was clear we were wandering far from the yellow brick road, and the second half of the story just keeps on going.

When we last left Oz, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) had decided to embrace the whole "Wicked Witch of the West" thing. Enough time has passed (the official version is five years, but the film keeps it vague) that she's now an official symbol of terror in the Emerald City, whereas former bestie Glinda (Ariana Grande) is now Glinda the Good... they're working on the witch side of things, as she still displays no magical abilities.

Behind the scenes, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is pulling the strings, while the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is the slightly more well-meaning front man. Talking animals are fleeing the new repressive regime, while Munchkins are next in line. Elphaba's sister Nessarose (Marrisa Bode) is now governor of Munchkinland, and everyone else is trapped in a web of doomed relationships, which are as follows (deep breath) - 

Nessarose loves munchkin Boq (Ethan Slater), who loves Glinda, who loves former classmate turned Captain of the Guard Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who is hunting Elphaba because he secretly loves her, and she loves... well, him, which would set her up for a happy ending if we didn't already know where things were heading. 

As musicals go, this is good but not great. There's no real standout song or dance sequence here, and by its very nature the story doesn't build to a big musical climax. It's almost easy to forget this is a musical for long stretches, as the plot becomes too complex and the storytelling too brisk for there to be time to stop everything for a musical number to clarify things. 

Dramatically, this makes up for it by cranking up the stakes. The talking animal subplot comes up just enough to make it clear that things are rotten in Oz; the munchkin repression (Nessarose doesn't want Boq to leave her, so she locks down Munchkinland) only makes things worse. When an attempt to lure out Elphaba brings a familiar Kansas house crashing down, it's clear things are going to change. But which way?

Grande and Erivo are pretty much carrying this, and they're easily the strongest elements here (aside from the set design, which remains gorgeous). Both wring every drop of emotion out of characters drawn in broad strokes, justifying the film's reliance on sentiment to sell a drama where much of the late-stage storytelling is about moving characters into their familiar settings. 

Even then, some of that storytelling is a bit too pat. If you ever wanted origins for The Scarecrow and The Tin Man beyond "Oz is full of weird stuff", you'll find them here, though they mostly just make Oz feel like it only contains maybe half a dozen actual people. The flying monkeys get redeemed too, which is certainly a choice for one of movie's more iconic threats.

But the fact this is actually about something rather than simply an excuse to play with some much-loved toys carries it over the line. The politics have their heart in the right place, and if a few of the classic characters are done dirty - Tin Man fans may not look kindly on the revisionism, though the Scarecrow definitely levels up - for the most part the new angles revealed here make things more interesting. 

Though if you end up watching this before you see The Wizard of Oz - something that it's now and forever possible for people to do - you're going to have a pretty wild ride.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Running Man

Edgar Wright's adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Running Man presents audiences with a grim future in which deadly game shows are seen by many as the only path out of poverty. Back in the 1970s, it was bleak satire; today, it's a less compelling version of The Amazing Race. Say what you like about the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger version (which gets a few nods here), but it did a bang-up job of predicting the future of television. Well, aside from the lengthy dance routines.

Working stiff Ben Richards (Glenn Powell) is the angriest man in the crapsack future USA. Whether he's angry because he keeps getting fired for trying to do the right thing, or he keeps getting fired because he's angry, who can tell; all he knows is, he needs money for medicine for his baby. Some things never change, at least not in Hollywood thrillers.

Even his attempt to audition for a low-risk game show makes him angry, which attracts the attention of The Running Man producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). Angry is what his show needs, mostly because the whole thing is an exercise in riling the audience up; Richards gets fast-tracked into a jumpsuit and away we go.

Unlike the Schwarzenegger version, which took place in a confined stretch of trashed city blocks, here the whole USA is Richard's hiding place, with a ticking clock that runs for 30 days. It doesn't really make a lot of sense as a television show; much of the appeal seems to be for regular folks out on the street who can cash in by spotting the contestants. But it's implied the whole thing is just a barely coherent distraction where the real goal is to get people cheering the execution of various cliched undesirables.

Once Richards is on the run the film takes on an episodic feel, as he goes from city to city finding himself in new scenarios, from a flophouse attack to hiding out with various rebel factions who see his growing fame as a way to get the public on side. The hunters here are just generic military goons (no Sub Zero here) aside from their masked leader (Lee Pace) - no catchphrases or one-liners here, though they do seem to like giving their weapons names. 

Richards himself is much more of a regular guy than in the previous film, so most of the action scenes are more about escaping than colourful kills. The pace is where Wright really succeeds here; the film moves fast enough to keep you leaning in, rushing past points where the story or setting feel just a little flimsy.

Powell himself seems to take a little time settling into the role - or it's just that all his big angry moments are early on, and once he's running he settles down and focuses on dealing with a string of tight situations. He gets enough good moments to come off well, but like everything else here he's a bit all over the place.

One problem is that Wright keeps dropping in moments designed to remind us that we can't trust what we're seeing. Richards has brief (violent) fantasies that are revealed to have never happened; at one point he has a lengthy stress dream which may or may not have taken place for real. Plus it's made clear from the start that the Network can fake any footage; how can we believe anything we see on a screen really happened?

So while this has effective scenes, the overall feeling is of a film that's a little too unstable to buy into. It's not about a world where we don't know what's real - Richards is definitely on the run - but the specifics remain a little too blurry, especially as his character's arc is more about staggering from one desperate scene to another rather than any kind of plan to succeed.

No spoilers, but the ending(s) take this to a whole new level, providing multiple scenarios that pummel any real tension or triumph out of proceedings. Whether studio meddling required a change from the novel's conclusion (which this seems firmly heading towards), or Wright wanted to reflect our current conspiracy-heavy culture, it doesn't really matter.

This isn't a failure, but it's not going to replace the original movie either. Fans of the novel will appreciate its largely faithful approach; fans of the earlier film will enjoy the occasional in-joke. As for fans of futuristic thrills, they'll find plenty to enjoy here - even if this Running Man sometimes runs out of breath.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Now You See Me: Now You Don't

The idea of a crack team of stage magicians using their abilities to right wrongs and take down Bond-level bad guys is... look, you either buy in or you don't. This long-delayed third installment in the Now You See Me series does pretty much everything right, and the result is exactly what you'd expect: a very silly movie. You have been warned.

It's been ten years since global magic sensation - these movies take place in a parallel dimension where stage magic really is as cool as Chris Angel: Mindfreak thinks it is - The Four Horsemen performed on stage, so of course rumours of a hard-to-find comeback gig bring fans out of the wood work. As usual, the Horsemen do their standard trick of using magic to right wrongs (bad news for an embezzling finance bro), but there's a twist: these aren't the Horesemen you were expecting.

Charlie (Justice Smith), June (Ariana Greenblatt) and Bosco (Dominic Sessa) are young magicians who figured using the OG Horsemen's images was fair enough. Enter J Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), original leader of the Four Horsemen, who is less than impressed at these kids ripping off his act but a magic card told him he needs them to take down a bad guy so all good.

The bad guy is evil South African diamond miner Veronika Vanderberg (Rosalind Pike), who launders money for arms dealers and drug lords via selling overpriced diamonds and holding fancy events. The new teams' attempt to steal her family's Hope Diamond on a rare trip outside of its high security vault proves to be more difficult than they thought. Luckily the rest of the Horsemen - Merritt (Woody Harrelson), Jack (Dave Franco) and Henley (Isla Fisher) also received magic cards so they're on the scene as surprise backup.

From there the movie is pretty much just a bunch of illusions that mostly work and a couple of surprise reveals that again, mostly work. The best thing you can say about the story is that it does a great job of giving everyone enough screentime to make their characters feel essential, while jumping from set piece to set piece that, again, gives everyone enough to do to make them feel essential. Remember how The Fast & The Furious movies got a lot better once they started bringing all the old characters back? Same here.

The secret to this franchise's success - aside from finding a lot of actors who can come across as likeable, and also Jesse Eisenberg - is that it took a pair of genres that relied on outsmarting the audience (that'd be heist movies and movies about magic tricks) and made them as stupid as possible. Not always a bad thing! Much like magic itself, all the pleasures here are surface level: the second you start thinking about anything you're seeing, you've ruined it for yourself.

The result is a hangout movie best experienced as a chance to watch a group of good-looking airheads run around trading quips while everything around them is either glamourous, fake or a chance to make cops and security guards look silly. Not the best time you'll have in a cinema; not the worst time either.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Predator: Badlands

A big part of the reviewing business is accurately identifying what it is you're reviewing. It's not much good attacking a film for being a boring action movie when it is, in fact, a romantic comedy. And sometimes the identifying part of the review is the whole point - when, for example, a franchise known for being one thing takes a turn towards something else entirely.

Stymied by the demands of turning a one-off story into a franchise, the Predator movies have largely drifted in and out of focus over the years. Aside from the car crash that was The Predator, none of them have been outright bad (we're only talking about solo Predator movies here; enter at your own risk the world of the Aliens crossovers), but none of them have really been solid enough to set a firm path for the series to walk.

The recent direct-to-streaming (but was really good enough for cinemas) Prey made things work by getting back to the basics: badass in regular trouble, then a Predator arrives and the real trouble begins. Predator: Badlands - directed by Dan Trachenberg after helming Prey and the animated Killer of Killers - takes things in a very different direction. So much so that it's a far question to ask: is this really a Predator movie?

Well, it definitely features Predators, if that's what you're asking. After a bunch of family feud backstory - turns out our lead Dek (New Zealand actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is the runt of the litter, which is not a good thing to be in Predator (or as they prefer to be known, Yautja) society - Dek is off to Genna, aka "The Death Planet" to prove his worthiness by killing the most deadly creature in the galaxy, the Kalisk.

Also after the Kalisk is Weyland-Yutani, the evil corporation from the Alien movies. That explains why, after a lengthy stretch of struggling to survive on a planet where everything is trying to kill him in entertainingly inventive ways, Dek finds the top half of Thia (Elle Fanning), a synthetic damaged and left behind after a WY attempt to capture a Kalisk.

She says she can help him find and defeat it if he takes her with him. He disdains co-operation - but if she's merely a tool, then okay. Is this the start of a beautiful friendship? There's a lot of competing agendas standing in the way of any kind of bonding, and that's before Thia's much more committed to the mission sister Tessa (Fanning) shows up with an army of identical synthetics.

This works very hard - and mostly succeeds - to hide the fact that this is very much a PG-Disney coming-of-age movie. The WY forces are 100% robots (WY has a long history of using them), which means a lot of "killing" where no people get hurt. The plot is very much about the importance of working together and the value of found family over those violent losers you were born (or made) with. Is there a cute animal sidekick? Sadly yes, though they do play a useful part in the plot (and the killing).

Judged on its own merits, this is a highly entertaining romp. Fanning is a perfect foil as the chirpy Thia, Dek is a classic earnest teen (whose youthful Yautja features are surprisingly expressive), and their story is a legitimate "fun for the whole family" (well, maybe not little kids) adventure. There's lots of exciting action and thrilling danger that never gets too scary because it's almost all plants and robots. But is it a Predator movie?

Fans of old school Yautja action - skinning people alive, ripping out their skull and spinal column, slaughtering dozens of heavily armed men (as opposed to robots) at a time - will notice a distinct lack of that kind of thing here. It's a good film, but the term "Disney Predator" is a pretty accurate description of what this is, no matter how well it plays up all the (plentiful) action, (limited) violence and (non-existent) gore it can get away with under that heading. 

The obvious path for Predator sequels would have been a string of movies that seem like they're going to be something else entirely (workplace drama, family comedy) only to have a Predator turn up out of nowhere at the end of act one and start hunting people. But they couldn't market that kind of movie as a Predator movie without spoiling the surprise, and so instead we've had decades of films striking out in different directions trying to find a way forward.

This probably isn't going to be the long-sought-after new direction. A big part of why Predator: Badlands works is that it's running against what you'd expect to get from a Predator film, but it never just ignores the franchise's violent past. The whole "found family" thing wouldn't hit as hard if we hadn't seen a bunch of films showing us just how brutal and murderous Yautja are.

The result is yet another Predator movie that tonally doesn't have much to do with what came before. As such, it brings honour to the franchise. 

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Bugonia

Bugonia is a film about two people who have two extremely different views of the world - so much so that only one of them can be right. Fortunately, one of them is a raving nutcase with a worldview he seems to have pulled from the internet's most insane depths. Unfortunately, he's also the one with a gun.

Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his trusting cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) live on a run down farm in the shadow of a tragic incident that left Teddy's mother (Alcia Silverstone) in a vegetative state. It's understandable that he'd want revenge on the corporation responsible, but what he's planning isn't about revenge: he's trying to save the planet from aliens sent here to doom us all.

Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is a high flying executive at a large corporation. She's a polished operator, well versed in corporate speak: her current push is to encourage employees to leave on time, unless they still have work to do, in which case they should get their work done but also feel free to leave on time just so long as their work is getting done. You know the type.

It's not enough for Teddy and Don to kidnap her and tie her up in their basement; they also shave her head and smear her with antihistamine cream because she's an alien (an Andromedan, to be specific) and her hair is how she communicates with the mothership that'll be arriving in a few days during a lunar eclipse. The clock is ticking if Teddy wants to persuade her to take him with her so he can negotiate for the survival of the human race- or just demand they leave Earth alone.

Much of what follows is a back-and-forth between the two as he explains his conspiratorial world view and she tries to lead him to a place where he lets her go. Both of them seem roughly in agreement that the world is in trouble environmentally: he blames the aliens, she suggests humanity might be responsible all on its own but hey, at least her corporation is trying its best and they could try even better if he let her go.

And meanwhile a famous executive is missing so there's a bit of a search going on, which has Casey (Stavros Halkias), a local cop and also Teddy's former babysitter (which seems to be a story with a bit more to it than we're getting) sniffing around. Is Don fully on board with all this? And what's the deal with the bees?

This adaptation of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet largely rests on the performances of its two leads - well, that and director Yorgos Lanthimos' sense of the absurd - and Stone and Plemons are in excellent form. They both find the humanity in characters that are often little more than debating points, giving the offbeat mix of environmental concern and unhinged conspiracy some much-needed grounding.

As for that debate, the back and forth is often entertaining, and there's just enough going on outside of it to keep this from feeling like a filmed play. The substance of the debate isn't really connected to the real world - especially when we get the occasional hint that maybe Teddy might somehow be onto something - but again, it mostly works dramatically as a power struggle rather than a real attempt to discuss anything authentic.

Which becomes a real problem towards the end, when this takes a big swing dramatically that it honestly hasn't earned. The result is a conclusion that's easily the most powerful and memorable part of the film - it just doesn't feel like it develops emotionally from anything that came before no matter how many clues were scattered around.

The view of humanity here isn't exactly rosy, and despite Teddy's wacky views this is not much of a comedy either. He's put someone in peril in an attempt to deal with his own pain and loss, and the film respects that; while the tone occasionally swerves towards the manic, anyone after something that will lift their mood - or just reflect a generally positive take on human existence - may want to look elsewhere.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

There are two possible audiences for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and they want very different things from this biopic. As befits the story of the making of Springsteen's classic album Nebraska, one audience wants a deep dive into the details, a case of history brought to life - or at least, heavily referenced. The other wants a movie about who Bruce Springsteen is, a character study that brings the man to life instead. The big problem here is that it tries to do both.

At first it seems like this often moody and introspective film has sidestepped one of biopics usual potholes. Rather than covering the entire sweep of his life, Springsteen - here played by Jeremy Allen White - is just recording Nebraska while struggling with undiagnosed depression. So by focusing in on the small details of one of his biggest artistic triumphs (he's also recording tracks like 'Born in the USA' at the same time), we get the big picture? 

Well, no. Thanks to a powerhouse performance from White, Springsteen is a compelling figure throughout, getting at emotional truths even when it's obvious the film is fudging details. And the parts where the story is happy to just present elements without explanation - Springsteen, despite being a massive star, seems to like blowing off steam by playing guitar with a bar band in a local dive - we rapidly get a sense of what kind of man he is.

But then there's a bunch of reductive flashbacks to his childhood where his boozy dad (Stephen Graham) is bad news but means well, turning a bunch of Springsteen songs into mysteries to be solved (who knew or cared that there was a literal 'mansion on the hill' that inspired the song of the same title). At least his doomed relationship with local single mother Faye (Odessa Young) has the benefit of not being used as direct inspiration for some well-known song.

Unfortunately, despite decent chemistry between the characters, pretty much every scene with Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) is a leaden clunk of exposition, where everyone is utterly supportive of Springsteen while being in theory a little worried about the massively non-commercial direction his new album is taking. 

These scenes alternate between infodump speeches - Landau's wife (Grace Gummer) has a hilariously thankless role as the silent sounding board for his semi-regular updates on what stage the plot is currently up to - and the kind of "we're doing this The Boss' way or not at all!" confrontations that sound like Landau (who's still Springsteen's manager) had his lawyers go over the script to make sure he was presented in exactly the right light. 

And yet, the scenes where Springsteen tries to record 4-track demos in his bedroom for what would become Nebraska, and then decides he wants to put the demos out despite the sound being sub-par - re-recording them only made them worse in his opinion - are amongst the films best, simply by setting up a real problem and showing how it was solved.

If this could have somehow left out the history (do we really need to know 'Cover Me' was originally intended for Donna Summer?) and just focused solely on how someone puts together a record as memorable as Nebraska, it might have been something special. At least the music - of which there is plenty - is always ready to lift things up

Especially when The Boss is just chilling at home listening to Suicide's first album, which here seems to be nothing more than a bunch of inhuman screaming.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Tron: Ares

The big gimmick with the latest Tron movie is that it takes the various glowing computer-generated - as in, creations from inside the computers inside the movie, not just the usual unlikely CGI effects - out into the real world. Which sounds promising, but the results only occasionally impress. That's a problem, as that's pretty much all this has going for itself.

The plot largely revolves around a quest for the "permanence code" a line of computer code never before mentioned but was somehow created during an earlier installment that will enable a computer generated character or object to exist on a permanent basis in the real world.

While it's bad news for the evil Dillinger Corporation that their cool tanks and super-soldiers - most notably Ares (Jared Leto) - crumble to dust and vanish after 29 minutes, it's great for the movie, as this timer provides most of the tension in the action sequences. 

Dillinger - led by CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), with his mother and former CEO Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson) not doing much in the background - can send out Ares and his 2IC Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) on superfast motorbikes that can release knife-like walls of solid light behind them as often as they like, but when the clock counts down the chase is over.

Only they can't even keep on sending Ares out because he's staring to dislike the way they openly call him expendable and don't seem to care that he's constantly dying in the real world. So when he finally does catch up with the Permanence Code - don't worry, there's been a whole plot about that going on as well, only it's amazingly forgettable - in the form of rival company boss Eve Kim (Greta Lee), he's open to offers.

With seemingly every blockbuster aimed at 12 year olds it's easy to forget that Disney is a company that makes movies for children, and Tron: Ares is for the most part a kids movie. Well, the half-baked story is for kids: the glowing visuals and Nine Inch Nails soundtrack is for adults looking to zone out and no drug use is implied let alone required to achieve that effect.

Unfortunately it only rarely hits the heights of the previous (and not really that great either) installment Tron: Legacy, which combined Daft Punk and a lot of inside-the-computer visuals to become a not-so-secret stoner hit. The shift to the real world does allow director Joachim Rønning to create some decent action scenes - and one ominous sequence towards the end does generate some actual awe-slash-fear - but ironically it's all too grounded to really work purely as visual escapism.

Still, that side of things works better than everything else: Leto does fine early on when the only emotion going on with Ares is vague dissatisfaction, but he never brings the character to life beyond that - most of his latter scenes require you to imagine a better actor in the role for them to make any sense. 

The story throws a bunch of new characters in like we've already met them - we haven't, so no need to rewatch the previous film - and aside from Peters' chewing the scenery none of them make any real impact at all. 

Is Jeff Bridges back? Well, yes, but he's firmly in "The Dude as Yoda" mode for his brief appearence. Usually a movie with zero engaging characters would be in trouble; in the world of Tron, the computers have always been the stars.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Play Dirty

The latest in a long line of attempts to bring Richard Stark's armed robber Parker to the big screen, Shane Black's Play Dirty feels a lot closer to the books Donald Westlake (the man behind the Stark pen name) wrote starring bungling thief Dortmunder. Superficially similar on the surface, world's apart in tone.

Parker (Mark Wahlberg) is once again motivated by revenge when the score from a mid-level racetrack heist he was part of is stolen by a fellow thief (Rosa Salazar) who leaves him for dead. By the time he catches up to her, she's spent the money to finance a much bigger heist. To recoup his losses, he deals himself in.

Westlake started writing the much more lightweight Dortmunder novels after he tried writing a Parker novel but it kept slipping into comedy, and that's pretty much what happens here. The story holds together (just), but it's the usual run of heist after heist with a few twists and surprise reveals as things repeatedly turn out to be not what they seemed without ever becoming all that interesting.

The lack of stakes extends to the cast. The crims are all just a little too over-the-top, and even Parker's buddy in crime Grofield (Lakeith Stanfield) - who is a character in the Parker novels - is played too laid back to have any real edge. Only Gretchen Mol, as the wife of one of Parker's dead friends, gives this fluff any real emotion.

Wahlberg is surprisingly not bad as Parker - at times it feels like he's the only one who's actually read a Stark novel. He's given way too much dialogue and way too many chatty / chummy scenes, but when he's given Parker business to do he comes off well (physically he's too small for the role but that's Hollywood). 

It probably helps that he's the only major character who isn't a comedy motormouth, as while everyone else is fine nobody else really stands out (even Stanfield, who's usually a winner, is on autopilot here). Black's had form in the past when it comes to combining comedy with enough edge to give his crime capers real stakes. Here? The whole thing is as weightless as the numerous CGI-heavy stunt scenes.

For fans there's a bit of business that initially seems like a fun bit of Parker continuity (it involves The Outfit), but then turns out to actually be a major part of the plot that's referenced so often you don't need to know Parker history (or have seen Point Blank / Payback) to get the point. 

Play Dirty isn't a failure as such, but it's hard not to feel let down seeing so many quality ingredients add up to something that's middling at best. Parker - under various names - has been fumbled by movie-makers time and time again; much as it'd be great to see a film that really captured the character, it might be time to let him enjoy his retirement.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: One Battle After Another

Just like its characters and the war they're fighting, writer / director Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film (loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's Vineland) rarely slows down. Despite the title, it's a rare recent action movie that's all about the chase, not the battle: everyone is constantly running to or from conflicts that are over in seconds.

To balance this - there's only so much character and exposition you can get out while you're on the run, though this does better on that front than you might expect - One Battle After Another is a film where what you see is what you get. People are who they say they are, and if they're not then you see the change played out on the screen. The story is about what it's about, with subtext largely kept to the minimal-slash-accidental kind.

So while this is a film that hits hard in the current moment, it is at heart an entertainment. The priority here is to make a satisfying action thriller of the kind that changing priorities and special effects have largely rendered redundant, and in that it succeeds: this feels satisfyingly grounded and weighty throughout, despite the plot containing no hidden depths or startling insights.

As for that plot, in broad strokes: Fifteen or so years ago, terrorist-slash-revolutionary organisation The French 75 roamed the USA, freeing people from immigration camps, setting off bombs in corporate headquarters and robbing banks to pay for it all. Leader Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) combines revolutionary fervour and a straight-up sexual lust for destruction. Good news for her partner and explosive expert "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio); confusing news for military man, one-time captive and now sexually obsessed enemy Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn).

When circumstances required Perfidia to make a choice, she did; in the present Calhoun is Bob Ferguson, a burnt out stoner largely shambling around in a dressing gown who is raising their teen daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) as best he can. The world has moved on, what's past is past - until the now Colonel Lockjaw is offered a chance to join the secret white power organisation that runs America. The only thing that stands in his way is the possibility that Willa might be his daughter. 

Much running around follows as Lockjaw sends all the forces at his command into the Ferguson's home town in a massive crackdown that sends immigrants fleeing under the guidance of Willa's martial arts teacher Sensi Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) while her high school classmates are locked up and interrogated. Willa is in the wind thanks to her family's revolutionary contacts; Bob, who is somewhat past his prime, is left struggling to catch up.

The action, by current standards, is small scale: lots of running, a couple of car chases, a few people get shot. But Anderson wrings every drop of drama and excitement out of these scenes, keeping everything on the move and everybody - even comedy grotesque Lockjaw - firmly human. 

Jumping out of a moving car would be extremely dramatic if it was happening to you; this is a war where one side can bring the full force of the state to bear and the other just has the connections between people to sustain it. By keeping things at the personal level, Anderson makes it very clear whose side he's on.

It would probably help balance the scales a little if Bob could remember the password to contact his former comrades. This isn't quite a comedy but there's a lot of humour here. Killer nuns and ridiculous conspiracy chiefs get laughs, but most of the comedy comes in the form of the well-meaning Bob swinging between anger and a kind of baked exasperation at having to try to resurrect his old life in a world where everything but the bad guys seems to have changed.

It's north of two and a half hours but the whole thing just flies by. Some things might not change and some wars may never be won, but you're a lot harder to hit if you don't stop moving.

- Anthony Morris 

 

 

Review: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

David (Colin Farrell) needs to get to a wedding. Problem: his car just died. Solution: the world's quirkiest car rental place, where a pair of maybe-sinister, maybe just hamming it up types (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) rent him a thirty year old car and then go hard on the upsell to get him to add a GPS to the deal. If this doesn't sound all that dramatic to you, bad news: this is pretty much as dramatic as it's going to get.

Eventually he arrives at the wedding, where he meets fellow singleton Sarah (Margot Robbie). They don't hit it off, then they do, kinda. He fumbles the ball, she gives him a regretful look (then sleeps with someone else), and on the drive home his GPS asks him if he wants to go on a "big bold beautiful journey". He says yes and it steers him into a tree.

Just kidding! It instead steers him into a third meet-cute with Sarah, and thanks to her equally old, equally rented car failing to start, he offers her a lift back to the city where they both live. Along the way the GPS keeps directing them to mysterious doors that lead to memorable scenes from their past - some uplifting, others a bit more downbeat - and if you're wondering if they really did die in a car crash or something, rest assured that they did not. They just like walking through portals to the past.

The whole point is a kind of interactive therapy session, where the pair - who both have serious issues with intimacy - go over their past to try and figure out what went wrong and how they can find their way to a place where they can accept that the person sitting across from them is in fact right for them. Fortunately they're played by Farrell and Robbie, otherwise this would be unbearable.

Director Kogonada (After Yang) knows there's not a lot to work with in terms of plot so this goes all-out with the visuals while providing plenty of opportunities for both leads to pump out the star wattage. It's a good-looking movie about two good-looking people flirting away like crazy then pulling away because their broken hearts can't take one more failed romance. What's not to like?

Unfortunately the unreality and schmaltz of it all undercuts the emotion, leaving this as little more than an illustrated version of a 100 minute deep and meaningful conversation that isn't quite as enthralling as the two participants think. 

Hollywood loves to strip "love" down to an imagined essence, a primal force that exists on a plain divorced from the human condition. As anyone who's actually been in love knows, the real world - the background landscape this duo merely drive through - plays a big part in who we connect with and why. 

Here, aside from some family history, we know next to nothing about these characters. Jobs, hobbies, friends, political opinions, they're nowhere to be seen. Without that, this unreal fable carries about as much weight as the balloons that drift away meaningfully at some point for some reason.

That said, sit through to the end of the credits for the shock twist that Sarah voted three times for Trump while David works for a migrant welfare organisation. Just kidding! They're saving that for the sequel.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Long Walk

In an economically depressed version of the USA that never really recovered from "the war" that tore the nation apart almost twenty years ago, the best idea they can come up with to motivate workers into being more productive is to have 50 young men walk non-stop until only one remains. It's starting to make sense why their economy is in the toilet.

Oh, and by "only one remains" they mean "we kill anyone who slows down for more than a few seconds". Add in the fact that the walk takes place through hundreds of miles of grimly rundown countryside, broken only by the occasional gawker (spectators are firmly discouraged until the walk's final stretch) or saluting cop, and that the repeated headshot murders are broadcast live, and it's very clear that something ain't right in the nation led by the drill-sergeant-esque Major (Mark Hamill).

But Stephen King has never been much of one for logic when it comes to setting, and The Long Walk - written by King back in the late 60s and published a decade later under the pen name he used for his more off-brand works, Richard Bachmann - was more blatantly metaphorical than most. A group of young men sent off to die pointlessly by a cruel government while their deaths were broadcast to the nation? Written during the Vietnam War? Not hard to connect the dots there.

That explains director Francis Lawrence's commitment here to an old-fashioned vibe, with cars, clothes, camera and guns all firmly placing this dystopia somewhere between the mid 60s to mid 70s. Together with a barely sketched-in setting (we learn almost nothing about the wider dystopia) it serves to make the whole thing seem more timeless - or just a reminder that this is a King adaptation, with his fondness for setting his horrors in what is usually a more warmly remembered past.

As a King adaptation, this feels of a piece with works like Stand By Me and It, where a group of well-outlined youngsters come together, form a bond, make a bunch of jokes, and face down death. The difference is that there's no outwitting death here, and poking it with a stick gets you a bullet in the face.

With no flexibility as far as the structure goes - after an initial scene with Raymond (Cooper Hoffman) and his mother (Judy Greer) and a flashback later in proceedings, the whole movie is just one long walk - it's the relationships that form between the characters that's basically the whole deal. If we don't care about them, then it's just a bunch of random death along an endless stretch of road.

Fortunately, there isn't a false note to be found in the performances here, especially Raymond's eventual buddy Pete (David Jonsson). Even the ones that seem a little stagey at first are revealed to be bravado or unease in the face of near certain-death. These young men (the entry age is 18, but at least one character lies about that to get in) have thrown themselves into a machine that is going to kill them, and they all realise that in their own way before their end.

Which is to say this is a film where you get to know a collection of mostly likable characters who you then get to see die in the most senseless way possible. Powerful, gut-wrenching and relentless, The Long Walk is a straightforward idea taken to a brutally logical conclusion. This walk will stay with you long after the end credits.

-Anthony Morris 

Review: The Conjuring: Last Rites

The horror genre has delivered a lot of excellent film-making over the last decade or more - seriously, there's no genre out there that more consistently punches above its weight - but that kind of excellence can only thrive when there's a solid foundation of predictable, crowd-pleasing, almost instantly forgettable films audiences can rely on to do a passable job. Welcome to the Conjuring franchise.

There have been a few winners over the years. The Annabelle movies, tracing the history of the evil doll currently caged in the Warren's basement, were about, you know, an evil doll: automatic win there. And The Nun movies, about an evil nun who... possessed a painting? They were often surprisingly full throttle when it came to just throwing scary stuff at the screen.

But it always came back to Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), renowned paranormal investigators - well, renowned unless you actually looked up anything at all about their real life activities, in which case yikes. Pretty much the only way to enjoy these movies is to pretend they're about fictional characters investigating fictional cases, an approach the movies themselves are more than happy to encourage.

Supposedly this film is about their final case; the opening makes it very clear they were well on their way out even before people started spewing up broken glass and hanging themselves in a church. It's 1986 - though it often looks a decade or more before that: one of this film's secret strengths is the way it realises that for most people the world is always at least a few years out of date - and the Warrens are giving poorly attended lectures to disinterested teens shouting out lines from Ghostbusters, which is a much better movie than this one.

The birth of their first and only child Judy (Mia Tomlinson, taking over from Sterling Jerins) was messed up by an evil mirror inherited by a young woman who literally vanishes from the story (when asked about her later, Ed says "we don't know what happened to her"); 22 years later, the mirror turns up in Pittsburgh as a confirmation gift for the Smurl family's teen daughter. It's creepy, she hates it, she and her sister throw it out but uh oh, that only makes things worse. Who you gonna call?

Ed's heart attack (as seen in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It) and Lorraine's worries that she's passed on her psychic gift to Judy mean they waffle about for ages before deciding to help the Smurls, providing plenty of time to explore the relationship between Judy and besotted beau Tony (Ben Hardy). Will they become the next generation of spectre-seekers, battling grunge ghosts in the early 90s? Guess that all depends on the box office.

None of this makes all that much sense but there's a decent atmosphere around the hellish Pittsburgh house (this was filmed in the UK) and the jump scare stuff is mostly effective. It's a long slow build up to an "all hell breaks loose" exorcism ending - evil grannies, an axe wielding farmer, and a holy book that bursts into flames all make an appearence - and while none of it is all that memorable, it's a decent enough amusement park ride through the usual spooky cliches.

The good news for regular church-goers is that this is about as overtly religious as a mainstream US film (currently) gets. The bad news is that all your faith is pretty much useless when a demonic force gets you in its sights. Just ask the spectacularly useless priest in this; looks like we're going to need a bigger crucifix.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: But Also John Clarke

A documentary about John Clarke starts off with one huge advantage: it's got John Clarke in it. The New Zealand born comedian who made Australia his home was one of the most effortlessly likable and charming features of both countries' media landscapes, which possibly explains how he managed to get away with so much over so many years.

So this is a must see straight out the gate. Directed by Clarke's daughter Lorin Clarke, this works on pretty much every level you could ask for. Skillfully crafted personal history, peek behind the curtain at the history of his long running satirical segment opposite Bryan Dawe, potted history of Fred Dagg and by extension the origin of New Zealand comedy and much more besides, it's a constantly engaging look at a creative whirlwind who also seems to have been a top bloke in person.

With access to what seems to have been a seemingly endless archive, large sections of this are narrated by Clarke himself in a mix of public appearances and home movies. His extensive written work gets a solid look in as well, with a lengthy collection of his peers and co-workers (ranging from Andrew Denton and Shaun Micallef to Ben Elton, Wendy Harmer and Rhys Darby) reading out snippets in between providing their own insights and recollections. Lorin herself chimes in at times, deftly reminding us that along with everything else he was also a loving father, and a very inspiring one at that.

Add in an insightful look at Clarke's own personal life (where a lifelong dislike of authority was instilled by a school he hated so much there's a note in the end credits to let us know his views towards the school later mellowed), Sam Neill getting emotional more than once, and a reminder that Farnarkling was a craze that swept the nation, and you'd almost think this was too much of a good thing - if such a view was possible where Clarke was concerned.

Instead, this often gives the impression of barely scraping the surface. Which is exactly the impression a look at a man as talented and creative as Clarke should give. Put together with loving care while allowing Clarke's humanity to shine through, this works whether you're a longtime fan wanting to see your favourite works remembered, someone after an overview of a career that spanned multiple decades and formats, or simply looking for a tribute to a man who always had a mischievous twinkle in his eye - even, as Andrew Denton points out, when he was on radio.

-Anthony Morris 

Review: Honey Don't!

Hitting our shores on a wave of mixed reviews out of the USA, Honey Don't! is the kind of film that definitely has problems if you're looking for them. It also has a fair bit going for it if you're willing to meet it at its own level - which, to be clear, is a pretty shallow level. But when it's a film about a lesbian PI investigating a case packed with wacky types you weren't seriously expecting "deep".

Honey O'Donohue (Margaret Qualley) is a love 'em and leave 'em California small town private investigator who feels bad that she never got back to a client in trouble before she (the client) died in a fairly suspicious car crash. So she decides to dig around, and uncovers a string of over-the-top types vaguely linked to a local preacher (Chris Evans) running a church that's big on bringing people to the lord via sex (with him).

Movies about private investigators have a long and proud tradition of not really making much sense. This barely hangs together, even when it throws in a few twists - Honey's niece (Talia Ryder) goes missing (or does she?), Honey strikes up a relationship with one cop (Aubrey Plaza) while brushing off another one (Charlie Day) - but eventually there's an answer of sorts.

This is a film where getting there is pretty much all the fun. A striking Qualley is largely the (not-so) straight man to a bunch of comedy types who are all playing it very broad but rarely stick around long enough to get annoying. Neither does the film at barely 90 minutes - big thanks to co-writer / director Ethan Coen (working with his wife Tricia Cooke) there. 

Oh yeah, it's directed by one half of the Coen brothers. If you're someone who's been worshipping the ground they walk on for the last few decades then a): good work forgetting films like The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, and b): this probably feels like a pale reflection of past glories. 

While it's true this is operating in a register the Coens made their own without ever reaching the heights of their best work, that doesn't make it a failure. Again, it definitely has flaws. For one, Honey is surrounded by over-acting, which sometimes makes it hard to figure out which deaths are tragic and which ones are more like "guess that just happened".

For another, the plot never comes together to resolve much of anything, which possibly is intentional. Again, often the problem is tonal; some elements are built up but turn out to only be there so something else can happen, while more than once an inevitable development is either ignored or skipped over.

But Honey Don't! is a decent small town noir investing heavily in the idea that a bunch of steamy lesbian sex - or ogling, or even just banter - can make up for its flaws. Better films have skated by on less.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Relay

Sneaking in under the radar, Relay is the kind of small scale, procedure-based thriller that rarely makes it to the big screen these days. Which is a shame; it'd be nice to think there was room in cinemas for something more than big budget franchises and horror movies, even as the box office constantly says otherwise.

The premise is straightforward: if you are a whistleblower who changes your mind - you want to give the incriminating evidence back to the evil corporation and just get on with your life - then Ash (Riz Ahmed) is the intermediary who will keep you safe and handle the delicate negotiations. Not face to face, of course, as a big part of this movie is about laying out the extreme levels of secrecy he applies to his operations. 

For one, "relay" refers to the fact that all his phone calls go through an untraceable phone relay service for the deaf. They're not allowed to record or monitor the calls in any way shape or form, and he never has to speak - he types in the words, the relay service has someone speak them to the person on the other end. And his secrecy doesn't stop there.

This, we rapidly realise, is a good thing. His latest case involves a scientist (Lily James) who has changed her mind about spilling the beans regarding a dodgy strain of wheat. Only she's already being targeted by a squad led by Dawson (Sam Worthington), who want the info back and don't trust Ash in the slightest. 

What follows is a game of cat and mouse (think a low tech version of one of the good Jason Bourne movies) as Ash runs everyone ragged to put all the pieces in place without being identified, while Dawson and his team are constantly drawing ever closer to tearing off his (proverbial) mask.

There is slightly more going on here, but it's also the one area where the film isn't quite as smart as it thinks it is. Fortunately, the whole thing works as a procedural no matter what, and it's more a matter of how the tension is released (either all at once or over a longer period) than the film relying on a big reveal to work.

Out of the three main characters Worthington is clearly having fun as a stock standard highly competent badass, while Ahmed gets to slowly open up in a journey that's constantly engaging even if what's revealed is somewhat predictable. James as a fairly generic damsel in distress is possibly the least interesting of the three, though a close study of her character does reveal a few layers that spice things up a little as her bond with Ash grows.

Satisfying more as a step-by-step look at a bunch of smart people trying to outsmart each other than as a high octane thrill-ride, Relay is the kind of espionage drama that'll always find a receptive audience. Whether that audience is in cinemas or streaming remains to be seen: there's still time for audiences to have their say.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: The Naked Gun

The problem with making a comedy that's more than "merely" a comedy is that pretty much anything is easier to do than comedy. Once you start down the path of making a comedy only, you know, the dramatic scenes are treated seriously, it's not long before you've got a half baked drama with a few limp gags scattered throughout. It takes creatives who take comedy seriously to make a film that's just trying to be funny from start to finish, which brings us to The Naked Gun.

A sequel of sorts to a much-loved and very silly 80s comedy franchise that's currently seen as a high water mark of a genre nobody really misses, this particular do-over has been a while coming. So much so that it initially was surfing a completely different wave, in the form of the brief feature-length comedy renaissance of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, whose success with talking teddy bear movie Ted briefly had him as the saviour of big screen comedy.

Fortunately it took so long to put the puzzle pieces together that MacFarlane himself stepped back to merely produce, and while Liam Neeson (who'd worked with MacFarlane) stuck around as Frank Drebin Jr, new director Akiva Schaffer (Hot Rod) brought in his own writers to create this particular 85-odd minutes of non-stop comedy wrapped around a loose parody of police mysteries and action drama.

And "non-stop" is no exaggeration: that previously mentioned genre that nobody misses is the one where the jokes come thick, fast, and in pretty much every form available. In early examples like Airplane! (Flying High! in Australia), Top Secret! and The Naked Gun, the mix of genre parody and whatever the creative team thought would get a laugh often struck comedy gold; by 2008's Meet The Spartans, nobody was having much of a good time.

The Naked Gun (2025) works mostly because the jokes are funny, both in isolation and taken together. They're usually so silly they'd float away if not for the weight of the gruff performance from Neeson and the... not exactly gravitas or sense of legacy, but in that ballpark... that the original Naked Gun has gained over the years. 

Forty years on, the original is seen as a real movie. It's something to live up to, and the fact this clearly tries to do so - even if the way it tries is through a lot of stupid-smart jokes - makes it feel like a real movie in a way that, say, most of Adam Sandler's efforts for Netflix do not.

So jokes so stupid they come out the other side and seem almost smart: this has plenty of them. Not all of them work, and sometimes you can see where the jokes that didn't work were cut, but mostly this gets the laughs it goes for - and it goes for a lot. Pamela Anderson is the surprise MVP here, and it turns out two leads who are good at playing it serious in a crazy world are all you need.

The Naked Gun knows where it's going and it does everything it can to make sure it gets there; would that more of Hollywood's more serious products could manage that.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Weapons

More than a lot of other genres, horror movies don't want you to look back. The point is to scare you in the moment; if that means that later on you realise the scare didn't really make sense, well, here's a new scare, don't think about this one too much either.

Weapons is a story told via a number of characters whose paths overlap. Over the course of their stories, the pace slowly but steadily ramps up: the first couple of chapters (it's broken into a series of roughly 20-minute segments, each open opening with the name of the character we'll be following) take place over days, then hours, with the final one pretty much running in real time.

So as the bigger picture becomes clear, there's less time to take it all in. Which on one level makes this a lot of fun to watch; the stakes get higher, the tension builds, characters are rushing towards situations they don't understand - and we barely know more than they do, just that they're heading into worse trouble than they realise - and the whole thing reaches a crescendo that's both extremely satisfying and pretty ghastly if you think about it.

As for what it's actually about, beyond the basic set up - in small town USA, at 2.17am, seventeen primary schoolkids from the same class got up, ran out of their homes, and vanished - the less you know the better. 

The community is outraged, with much of their ire falling on the children's teacher (Julia Garner), who has a few personal flaws of her own. Distraught father Archer (Josh Brolin) is conducting his own investigation, while inept cop Paul (Aiden Ehrenreich), local junkie James (Austin Abrams), and the only child from the class who didn't vanish (Cary Christopher) and his great-aunt (Amy Madigan) also come into focus.

There's a lot of possible touchstones here. Small town, young children gives a Stranger Things vibe; throw in the big cast and the overlapping chapters and there's echos of Stephen King. Likewise, early on this is happy to feint in a lot of directions as far as possible meanings; mob violence, a metaphor for school shootings, American citizens desperate to latch onto any explanation for the horrors around them. Take your pick.

Even the distinctive arms out run of the missing children has multiple possible meanings, from historical images to kids pretending to be aeroplanes, but writer/ director Zach Cregger is much more interested in making gestures than building anything solid out of them. It's a film of surfaces, gesturing towards deeper meanings then discarding them.

What really matters here isn't so much the explanation (though there is one) as the journey. There's plenty of scares and a growing sense of unease; there's also a surprising amount of comedy, both to relieve the tension and because some of what's going on really is legitimately funny. 

Weapons is a twisty, satisfyingly startling ride that relentlessly pushes you onward - and if later on you're left thinking "hang on a second", you'll probably be too worried about what's behind you in the back seat of your car to look back.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Fantastic Four: First Steps

A consistently entertaining, back-to-basics superhero tale shouldn't be quite so surprising in 2025. But after almost two decades of ever-increasing bloat, cutting things back to the core - likable characters with interesting abilities using them to battle a clear villain - feels like a radical move. All of which is to say, The Fantastic Four: First Steps basically re-invents the wheel, which is handy because Marvel's been dragging their heels for a while now.

Over in Earth 828 - a nice salute to Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby that we probably wouldn't have if Stan Lee was still alive - the 60s are going strong, thanks in part to the super-powered occupants of New York's Baxter Building. A few years back Reed Richards / Mr Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) Sue Storm / The Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm / The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm / The Thing (Ebon Moss-Backrach) went up into space, got pelted by cosmic rays, and came home celebrities with a side hustle in fighting monsters and averting disasters.

All that backstory is covered in a TV special; the new news here is that Sue is pregnant. A concerned Reed (after all, who knows what cosmic ray exposure might lead to?) is using his big brain to come up with devices to constantly monitor her pregnancy, while the ever-cooking Thing (who refuses to say his catchphrase, claiming it was made up for a cartoon) and the always-cocky Johnny work on being the best uncles ever. Oh, and an alien herald (Julia Garner) on a flying surfboard turns up and tells the people of Earth they're all about to die.

The Fantastic Four swing into action, tracking her back to a planet in deep space. Maybe not the best place for a pregnant woman to head off to - but they're a team, they're pledged to protect Earth, and after a journey that sells space travel as a bit more complicated and exciting than these movies usually manage, they reach their destination... just in time to see it eaten by the planet-devouring being known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson).

There's a tonal shift in director Matt Shakman's film from this point - what had previously been something of a light romp gets a bit more serious - but that's to be expected when the fate of Earth is at stake. The lack of other superheroes means we get a lot more of a look at the FF's schemes to save everybody (in a traditional Marvel movie, this part would be replaced by 40 minutes of recruiting other heroes), alongside some reminders that having near-certain death hanging over the planet would be a bit of a downer for a lot of people.

Another beneficiary of the straightforward story are our four leads, all of whom get enough room to exist as actual characters beyond their roles in the plot. The connection between the grounded Sue and the super-smart but a little distant Reed feels real, while the gruff but good-hearted Ben and the (slightly) hot-headed but always focused Johnny are a solid double act while each getting their own moments to be endearingly human.

This isn't flawless - some of the CGI could have used a few more weeks polish - and while the story's simplicity has its charms it's also lacking a bit of the grit that made the best Marvel films work. It's a reminder that there's a good reason why the four previous attempts at a Fantastic Four movie faltered: more than many superheroes, these are good-hearted characters aimed at children, and they need a lot of sincerity (provided here by the idealised '60s backdrop) if they're going to click.

How they'll fare in the wider MCU remains to be seen - though it'll be seen soon enough, with the FF locked into the upcoming Avengers movie. With their biggest nemesis confirmed as the bad guy there, they'll have their work cut out for them: the good news is, First Steps has them off to a great start.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Twenty five years ago, the sleepy fishing town of Southport was rocked by a series of brutal murders triggered by a bunch of teens trying to bury their involvement in a fatal car wreck. The killings were promptly covered up by the local real estate mogul, who realised that a resort town with a hook-handed body count might be a tough sell. And where did it get them? A quarter century later and it's happening all over again.

Okay, there are a few minor differences. This time the cover-up crew are in their early 20s; they're also much less directly responsible for the car crash, which does take away a lot of the "hey, maybe they deserve it" energy the first film had. 

And this is a direct follow on from the first film, with the characters from the original played by Jennifer Love Hewitt (now a college professor) and Freddie Prinze Jr (now a local bar owner) both increasingly involved with events. And yet even now, with their former glories far behind them, they still have way more screen presence than the younger cast - apart from maybe angsty Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), who is clearly being set up to be the final girl. Rich comedy relief Danica (Madelyn Cline), not so much.

But for the most part we've been here before. Which isn't automatically a bad thing, and for much of the run time this ticks along nicely as a not-too-serious slasher film. As such, the kills aren't great, and the film isn't always sure just how serious we should take them - some are a bit grim, most are like "well, that would suck" - but at least the nautical theme from the first film is maintained for absolutely no reason (okay, there are still a few fishing boats in the harbor).

As a whodunnit it works a little better, thanks in part to an orderly kill list: first to go are people with no real connection to the car crash death, then as the killings get closer to the core group you start to notice that hey, we never see this character or that character around during the deaths and then whoops, they're dead too. 

Of course, it all stops making any real sense long before the drawn out conclusion - which also features a development that goes against all logic and common sense once yet another shock twist reveal happens in the very next scene. But if you wanted a movie that made sense you wouldn't be here in the first place. 

Utterly inessential viewing for anyone who's not a massive fan of the original and yet still a passably enjoyable time-waster taken on its merits,  I Know What You Did Last Summer is a reminder that sometimes last summer - or summer 25 years ago - is better left in the past. Even if it does involve a bisexual hook-up in an airport bathroom with a true-crime podcaster.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Superman

Superman has always stood a little apart from the flood of big-screen costumed superheroes - or metahumans, as this film likes to call them. Batman is just a guy in a costume, who can trace his ancestry back to earlier pulp characters like Zorro or The Shadow; Spider-Man and most of the Marvel heroes that followed were built as much around a flaw as a power. Superman got there first, and that gave him more gravity, even if you did believe a man could fly.

But now, as they say, all that's changed. The Superman (David Corenswet) we meet mid-battle in Superman is one more costumed hero in a world full of them - and unlike the Snyderverse's Justice League, the other superheroes here are comic book deep cuts, not household names. Superman still soars, but the gloss has come off a little: he's a regular guy, trying to do the best he can in a world where he doesn't stand out quite as much as you might expect.

The story here bounces around a fair bit while the main thrust remains constant: Lex Luthor (Nicolas Hoult) really does not like Superman. Stopping a recent small-scale war without getting government approval has Superman on shaky ground PR wise, while Luthor and his super-powered henchman The Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria) and Ultraman (some guy in a mask) are off looting Superman's Fortress of Solitude and trashing his robot helpers in the process. Which is mostly just finishing the job Krypto started, because that dog (who comes in handy more than once) does not have good manners.

A Superman movie comes with a lot of expectations, and this does a decent job of ticking the familiar boxes. Despite being set three years after Superman announced himself to the world, his origin - as seen in the last two Superman movies - still manages to get a fair amount of air time thanks to a twist in the message his Kryptonian parents sent along with him to Earth, along with a late-stage recovery session at the Kent's family farm. 

Likewise, the romance between Clark and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), now in its third month and with some bumps still to be ironed out, gets a few scenes without ever really feeling like the heart of the film despite Brosnahan's strong performance. And yes, all the Daily Planet crew do make an appearance, though it's ladies man Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) who gets a surprisingly large role in proceedings.

It's all stuff we want to see and writer / director James Gunn does a good job of fitting it all in (even though it doesn't always feel central to the plot) by making this a film that's as much about showcasing Superman as it is about telling a story. The gamble here is that Superman himself is interesting enough to carry a film whatever he's up to, and for the most part it comes off.

This focus on character over plot does give Superman a slightly sprawling feel, as pretty much everyone gets their moment in the (yellow) sun - including the members of the "Justice Gang" (operating out of the cartoon Super-Friends Hall of Justice, though they haven't fully moved in yet). Blunt force Green Lantern Guy Gardener (Nathan Fillion), the equally bludgeoning Hawkgirl (Isabella Merced), and scene-stealing brains of the outfit Mr Terrific (Edi Gathegi) pull focus in the back half as Superman is brought low - so he can come back in the final act, of course.

Superman is usually a solo act when it comes to super-action - we haven't even mentioned Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), who can change his body into any element and that should probably set alarm bells ringing - so having him share screen time with a bunch of second stringers does dilute his impact a little. Again, Gunn steers into that, giving us a Superman who's a bit dorky and a little square (his taste in music is not great), the kind of hero who sees asking for help when it's needed as a strength rather than a flaw.

(also, it seems his Clark Kent disguise now involves "hypno glasses" to throw everyone off) 

Balancing that, Luthor gets plenty of screentime to evil up the place, freely admitting to being envious of Superman for distracting humanity from his (human) greatness while swinging between moments of extreme supervilliany and all-too-grounded brutality. Plus his evil scheme is, on one minor level, something of a callback to the first Superman film: seems Lex just can't resist a real estate deal.

This doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as the recent Snyderverse films, which isn't surprising: there are films about death camps that don't take themselves as seriously as Man of Steel. It's a charming, highly entertaining film that isn't afraid to keep things light (and light-hearted); the mood here is pure comic book, throwing out concepts and characters at a rapid pace with a breezy vibe underlying it all. 

Well, a breezy vibe and an anti-proton river from a pocket universe that flows to a black hole that might destroy the Earth, but that's all in a day's work for your friendly neighbourhood Superman.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Jurassic World Rebirth

What if, after the massive success of Jaws, the only shark movies ever made were sequels to Jaws? Every single movie about a shark was about a shark threatening a small coastal town, no exceptions? Good thing that never happened - sharks are such great movie monsters, it'd be a real shame if they were endlessly corralled into the same handful of scenarios over and over and over again.

On an unrelated topic, Jurassic World: Rebirth is the seventh in the Jurassic Park / World series, and after the last film brought pretty much everyone back for a farewell that was... better than some of the other films in the series... this one strikes out for all new territory. Only joking, it's basically the same movie as at least two of the other ones.

After being a world-spanning threat in previous films, revived dinosaurs have suddenly realised that they're not built for Earth's modern climate and have died off everywhere but a narrow band around the equator - one uninhabited island that was formerly used as a research lab in particular. Just because everyone who goes there dies doesn't mean it's not worth a visit, especially when "worth" is measured in billions because once again dinosaurs hold the key to a world-changing medical breakthrough.

So shady rich dude Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) has hired one mercenary (Scarlett Johansson) and one dinosaur expert (Jonathan Bailey) to in turn hire some disposable sidekicks to help them take blood samples from three different kinds of very big dinosaurs - a flying one, a swimming one, and one just walking around.

Meanwhile, cool dad Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is taking his family on a yacht trip across the Atlantic, just in time for them to get crashed into by an ocean-going dinosaur. Older daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), her stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono), and younger daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda) cling onto the wreck with a new-found dislike of dinosaurs, only to be rescued by the one boat where the crew think going to Dino Death Island is a good idea.

As you might have predicted if you've ever seen any of the previous movies in the series, things do not go to plan and not everyone survives to be wrecked on the island. Those that do are split into two groups - the family, and the professionals - who alternate mildly scary encounters with the wildlife while trying to make it to the abandoned research base where they can either be rescued or eaten by a demonic genetic freak dinosaur we first saw in the opening scene.

To be fair, just because the overall story is a blatant retread of what has gone before doesn't automatically make this a bad film. Director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, The Creator) serves up a number of thrilling sequences and even a few moments of genuine awe, while the script (from David Koepp, back after scripting Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World) does at least drop Isabella into numerous psychologically scarring situations - so much so that her only path back to sanity turns out to be adopting a cute (and confirmed plant-eating) dinosaur.

Friend, playing the superficially charming but eventually amoral business executive that's been a staple of these kind of films since Aliens, does a good job of portraying his character's arc from "maybe he's not so bad" to "hurry up and fall into a dinosaur's gaping maw", while Johansson and Bailey's charisma helps distract from the fact they're basically playing action figures in a child's backyard game. Everyone else is fair game for the dinos, though fewer people end up eaten than you might have expected. 

Being aimed at a slightly younger audience than your average blockbuster usually puts the Jurassic films at a disadvantage, but by sticking to the basics and over-delivering on them this one manages to be both serviceably entertaining and largely forgettable. And if your child is the kind of dinosaur expert who'll complain that the movie versions aren't realistic (where are the feathers?), don't worry - we're told early on that the dinos on and around the island are "genetically modified", so all bets are off.

If nothing else, this does feature an amazing Final Destination-style opening sequence where a dropped Snickers wrapper single-handedly destroys a billion-dollar lab and leads directly to at least one person being eaten alive. Just like life, death finds a way.

-Anthony Morris