Review: We Live in Time

Falling in love is enough to build a movie on, but if you want to talk about an actual relationship you need something more. We Live in Time brings two extras to the table: the story jumps around in time so we don't get to see things unfold in a linear fashion, and someone gets cancer. So a main character dies halfway through the film Pulp Fiction-style? Not quite.

Tobias (Andrew Garfield) is a wet sock of a man, a soft-spoken mid-level nobody at the Weetabix company whose wife has left him (mutual? yeah, right) but fortunately he looks like Andrew Garfield so there's still some hope.

Enter Almut (Florence Pugh), who is so firmly full of life that in another film she'd come close to be a manic pixie dream girl. Here she's one of the UK's top chefs - seriously, at one stage she's recruited to competitively cook for Britain - who knows what she wants and how to get it. Will that be Tobias? Let's wait and see.

This film's strengths are all the obvious ones. It looks like a slick coffee commercial - everyone lives in various forms of amazing homes and is impeccably dressed even when they're meant to be slumming it - and with Pugh and Garfield it has a main cast whose performances overwhelm the average material they're given. You'd watch them together in anything; unfortunately you're stuck watching them in this.

(if all you're after is attractive people in a slightly complicated relationship drifting through well-designed locations while events build to a bittersweet ending, you can stop reading now: We Live in Time delivers all those things in a pleasingly competent fashion)

Narratively the shuffling of scenes adds little to the storytelling. There's no point where the time jumps lead us astray, or provide a contrast that illuminates an aspect of the characters or their relationship. You'd assume it's happening to prevent this from being a traditional romance, only all the big moments - breakup, childbirth, serious news - come at the expected points in the film, so there's never any problem keeping track of things.

This kind of story is usually skewed towards one character or another (they can't both be right all the time), but this largely forgets to give Tobias any positive characteristics beyond being pitiable, while Almut is always right about everything (she dumps him for asking if their relationship has a future, and it's up to him to win her back) and is also so amazingly talented it's revealed towards the end she also had another secret world-class competitive skill only she gave it up because of a family tragedy and if she didn't have video proof you'd have to assume she was some kind of demented fantasist.

Just to make matters worse, the one thing Tobias does want out of the relationship, and that Almut comes around to agreeing to (ok, it's having children), also turns out to be the reason why there's a mention of cancer in the opening paragraph. It's literally the case that a doctor tells her if she doesn't have a procedure she'll almost certainly get cancer, but she knows if she does have the procedure Tobias will be very sad, and there's only so much of Garfield's hangdog expression one movie can stand.

Her storyline is messy in a way that's meant to suggest a strong personality but often just feels muddled, like she's a character that refuses to think anything through. He's little more than a prop, as soggy and shapeless as the products his company manufactures, a background character in his own life. It's not impossible to see them getting together - in a way it makes sense - but it results in a relationship it's hard to get invested in.

Put another way, they both deserve better. They might live in time, but despite a pair of charismatic performances, they're wasting it with each other.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Wolf Man

Leigh Whannell first made his name as co-creator of the Saw films, but in recent years his run of surprisingly effective small scale thrillers has threatened to overshadow his horror roots. 

Upgrade was pure science fiction; his creepy take on The Invisible Man was firmly grounded in technology. Wolf Man might continue his run with the classic Universal horror monsters, but it's also - a brief mention of a virus aside - a return to pure horror.

Blake (Christopher Abbott) grew up in the woods with an overprotective father, a man who, considering what might have been lurking in those woods, possibly had a good reason for his hair-trigger temper. But that was long ago: Blake's living in the city and he's a father himself now. He's trying to do better by his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), even if his marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner) is going through a bit of a rough patch.

The news that his long-missing father is now officially considered dead brings with it the chance for the whole family to head back into the woods and revisit the family farmhouse. Which of course is an extremely bad idea as they promptly get lost, pick up a creepy local, then get run off the road thanks to an encounter with a very strange creature that probably wasn't a bear.

Now the local's splattered, Blake is injured, and the family are trying to make it to the farm house before whatever it is that's lurking in the woods gets its teeth into them. But even if they do make it inside and lock the doors behind them, are they locking the evil out... or trapping it in with them?

There's a few minor twists and turns along the way, but for the most part this is the kind of horror movie where the horror comes from knowing exactly what's to come (and it's all bad). There are some very effective, very creepy sequences, and some strong monster action moments as well, but the horror lies mostly in the story of a man uncontrollably changing into something that's not really human.

In his recent films Whannell has shown his strength is in embracing the pulpy aspects of his subjects, thinking deeply about their core concepts and coming up with twists that make sense while still being surprising and thoughtful.  

The big innovation here is to drag out the transformation and show parts of it from the transformed's point of view. This is more a story about infection than it is about traditional werewolf tropes like the thrill of unleashing the beast or the shock of waking up from a violent bender, and the scenes where a character can feel their humanity being drained from them are amongst the film's strongest.

Otherwise, Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck stick to the basics - this is a film that's largely about three people trapped in a house for one night - which means pretty much everything has to be firing to make it work. The body horror, the gore, and the big action moments largely deliver the goods.

If there's a weakness here it's that the family stuff, which really needs to be the film's solid emotional core, doesn't stand out quite like it needs to. The basics are conveyed effectively enough, and the horror of being taken away from your family by a disease is definitely effective, but the family here is more of a sketch than a deeply felt portrait.

There's also a distinct lack of howling at the moon. That's the real tragedy right there.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Conclave

Conclave is a reminder that there's a good reason why the Best Picture award at the Oscars is given to the film's producers. This is a very good film, verging on excellent: it's also a film that was clearly put together, a puzzle the likes of which Hollywood seems to have largely forgotten how to complete.

Based on a (short, pacy, punchy) novel by Robert Harris (Fatherland), it's the story of what happens after a Pope dies - the cardinals get together, they have a vote and keep on voting until they have a new Pope. Once the election has begun, no-one gets in or out (technically), so the pressure's on.

While the former Pope's right hand man, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) works to keep everything above board, various power blocs emerge. The forces looking to head back to the past - an Italian Pope, masses in Latin, social attitudes out of some previous century - are unified and strong, while those looking to keep moving forward are divided, their votes sloshing behind one candidate then another. 

Lawrence's duty is to the church, though he sides with the progressives. Scandals must be investigated; better to lose a weak candidate than elect a fatally flawed Pope. But all the scandals seem to dog those on his side of the vote; as one after the other drops out, is there anyone who can unite the Church in its time of need?

Harris has been writing thrillers for decades now, and Conclave touches on issues both modern and eternal via a twisty plot featuring a number of memorable characters. The people here are almost all creatures of politics, their words and expressions always looking to shore up their positions - and as in real life, the most powerful players are the ones who don't seem to be playing at all. 

The setting is a mix of vast opulent rooms where people make speeches about charity and piety, and utilitarian stairwells and corridors where the real moving and shaking gets done. Even when the rooms are bland and functional, they're telling us something about the mechanisms of power - and seeing a Cardinal in full costume in a room with modern office equipment is always good for a chuckle.

The credits are full of names (Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati, Isabella Rossellini) who have been perfectly cast, the kind of actors who are subservient to their roles and work within a film rather than trying to go big and be a breakout star. If they're in a bad film, they're rarely the cause or the cure; here, in a good film, they each play their part to perfection without trying to attract attention with over-the-top performances. Except, of course, for those cardinals for whom "over the top" is a power play.

Not everything here is perfect, especially if your attitude to the Catholic Church is a skeptical one. This is a story that admits the Church has flaws, but also sees it as an organisation still capable of good. Within the confines of the film, it works; thinking about it afterwards is another matter.

But the pleasures here are mostly small and nuanced, even at those times when the characters go big. The plot is a well-(holy) oiled machine, carefully laying the groundwork for the next big twist even as the current one is playing out. All the main characters get one big scene, and all the actors take full advantage, a string of Oscar clips that all fit perfectly into the wider story.

It all comes together in a satisfyingly mature fashion, entertainment for grown-ups. It's serious but light on its feet, a good time for an audience that doesn't need everything explained to them but likes everything to be wrapped up tidily. In the current cinematic climate, it's a blessing.

- Anthony Morris

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