Review: The Alto Knights

Nominally based on the true story of New York gangsters Frank Costello (Robert De Niro) and Vito Genovese (Robert De Niro again) as they waged war for control of the mob in the 1950s, what The Alto Knights mostly resembles is some kind of half-remembered dream. 

Things happen, then they didn't happen or didn't happen the way they were meant to happen and the whole thing is named after a club that plays no real role in the story anyway; best to sit back and enjoy the old familiar cliches washing over you.

Opening with the brutal murder of Costello by a gunman working for Genovese, only to have it revealed that Costello didn't actually die as the bullet bounced off his skull, the story then bounces around in similar fashion filling in the backstory in piecemeal fashion, at times narrated by an older Costello years after the fact. 

The pair grew up as friends despite their markedly different worldviews - Costello was a dealmaker who flourished during Prohibition, while Genovese was a thug who was only interested in collecting, not investing - so when Genovese fled the country to avoid a murder rap he left Costello in charge as the boss of bosses. 

Bad move: WWII broke out, Genovese was stuck in Italy for the duration, and by the time he came back there'd been fifteen good years under Costello's rule and a lot of the mob didn't want Genovese back in the top job. Costello tried to fob him off with a piece of the pie, Genovese wasn't happy with that, then when his whirlwind marriage went sour Vito's wife (Katherine Narducci) named names in a divorce court and suddenly a big fat spotlight was on Costello. 

If there's a theme here it's that sunlight is the best disinfectant, as the more the media and government focuses on the mob the tougher things get for them. You're damned if you plead the fifth, you're damned if you don't.

Running parallel to that is Costello's constant efforts to placate the volatile Genovese even after he tried to kill him, making this feel like a gangster movie where one of the leads thinks and acts like he's in a different kind of film entirely. Rational thinking? From a mobster? Forgettaboutit.

The result is a story that (probably rightly) assumes we know all the gangster cliches and tropes so well there's no real need to tie things together when we all know what we really came to see: a double dose of De Niro playing mobsters who are constantly having circular conversations around topics whether they be deadly serious or wondering if the Mormons were stupid enough to only dig up one gold bible before moving directly to Utah.

De Niro himself does a good job of differentiating his two roles (helped by some relatively subdued prosthetics - Costello has the nose, Genovese has the top lip), but he's not given a lot to work with aside from Costello rarely being angry while Genovese almost always is. His characters only get a couple of scenes together; as an acting partner, De Niro makes sure to never overshadow himself.

But look, you don't care about any of this. You're here to see De Niro play gangsters one more time, and it's just as much fun now as it ever was. Sure, it'd be nice if it was in a film that added up to something, but his performance is worth the ticket price on its own - and during the final act, when this finally finds its feet and gives us both a solid barber shop wacking and a big scene where mobsters flail about like clowns, it even manages to become a solid mob film in its own right.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Black Bag

In Black Bag a personally restrained, glasses-wearing British spy named George whose private life is a matter of public conjecture is secretly tasked with the job of uncovering a high-level mole in his organization; hang on a second, John Le Carre's lawyers are on line two. 

Here Steven Soderberg (in only his second film so far this year) is both riffing on and borrowing from Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, in a way that updates the otherwise familiar material (spy satellites!) while answering a question hardly anyone's been asking: what if this particular George had a wife who was also a spy?

To get the obvious out of the way, Soderbergh's many, many skills as a director are perfectly suited to a spy thriller, and this is one of the most polished installments of the time-worn genre in years. Working from a script by David Koepp, the result provides all of the expected thrills with just enough of a fresh spin to make the whole thing worthwhile.

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) works for an unnamed branch of British Intelligence, where his job largely seems to consist of making sure everyone around him in their fancy office stays in line. His wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), seems closer to the core businesses of doing what it is they do - she's the friendly face, he's lurking in the shadows.

Yes, the mole: after being tipped off that nobody's to be trusted - including his wife - George starts sniffing around. The rest of the staff are rapidly revealed to be flawed in one way or another after a Woodhouse-hosted dinner party in which he's secretly dosed everyone with an inhibition-lowering chemical that makes them increasingly unhinged. Relationships break up and make up, though not the ones you might expect. 

The usual mystery pleasures are once again on offer, as everyone turns out to be a plausible suspect. Salt-of-the-earth Freddie (Tom Burke) is a bit frayed around the edges, while his (much younger) partner Clarissa (Marisa Abela) seems to like pushing things. Colonel Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) acts like he's on the ball, but his relationship with the more emotionally open team shrink Dr Vaughn (Naomie Harris) seems like a weak link. And what about Kathryn?

The element that promises to blow this collection of genre cliches wide open is the leads' commitment to each other. George's love for Kathryn (and hers for him) is so strong - we're told more than once - that it overrides everything, even loyalty to their country. The reason why George is running this investigation so hard is because he needs to know if his wife has gone rogue so he can protect her; much of the tension here comes from the threat that at any moment this could turn into a far more unpredictable film.

Suffice to say that whether your expectations are met or shattered, you'll enjoy the ride. This is a solidly satisfying spy thriller that ticks all the boxes with panache, anchored by a range of memorable supporting performances - including, in yet another slice of meta-fun, Pierce Brosnan as the unit's cranky chief.

Fassbender is the main course here, perfectly playing a man who's all icy restraint on the surface and seething passion underneath as he - and to a lesser extent, his wife - prove to be more interesting characters than the story they find themselves in. Usually that'd be a call for sequels; in this case, those wanting the further adventures of a slightly uptight and buttoned-down spy-catcher named George don't have far to look.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Mickey 17

Mickey (Robert Patterson) has the kind of problem that sounds like it'd be a good one to have: he can't be killed. Well, to be accurate, he can be killed - and often is - but he's then promptly restored from backup into a freshly printed new body. You'd think this form of immortality would be restricted to the elite of society; in Mickey 17, it's reserved only for the dregs.

On the run from gleefully murderous loan sharks on a pretty crappy future Earth, Mickey signed onto a colony mission as an "expendable" - someone who could be sent to do extremely dangerous jobs "safe" in the knowledge that after he died a new copy would be printed out. Most of these jobs involve being a lab rat of some kind; the death that opens the film has him alive but at the bottom of a frozen crevice where retrieving him falls into the category of "eh, why bother".

Shock twist: that version of Mickey survives, and makes it back to the colony - which is now firmly established on a frozen planet - only to find another version's been printed out. Good news for his security officer girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who's into the idea of two lovers, bad news for the Mickeys as the existence of two copies makes him a "multiple" who will have all copies (and his backup) destroyed on sight.

There's a lot more going on, in, and around the fairly straightforward plot; at times it feels like this might have worked better as an episodic series. There's Mickey's grim existence on the journey to the planet, the Trump-esque hucksterism of the colony's dictatorial leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his sauce-obsessed wife (Toni Collette), a possible love triangle between Mickey, Nasha, and Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), a dinner party that involves a lot of vomiting and a possible mercy killing, the loan sharks haven't given up on collecting (they'll take a bespoke snuff movie over cash) and there's an alien life form out there the colonists have dubbed "creepers" which may or may not be a threat to every human on the planet. 

Writer-director Bong Joon-ho (working from the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Aston) is not taking any of this seriously: mostly it's a romp, though the comedy can get a little dark at times. It's following in the tradition of any number of frantic, over-the-top science fiction tales, and like most of them it's a bit hit and miss. 

Seemingly promising directions are skimmed over or ignored, supporting characters vanish (then later reappear, or don't), long stretches are given over to sidebars that don't really pay off, occasionally it's time to dip into some pretty blunt satire (Marshall hosts his own tonight show) and the general texture is of one long shaggy dog story where the point never quite comes into focus. Don't go in expecting to love everything you see.

That said, the performances are largely kept in check. Even Patterson strikes the right note of goofy charm, while Ruffalo - who does get to go very big - is at least playing the kind of grandiose buffoon that history manages to serve up on a semi-regular basis. The events are larger-than-life, but the characters mostly stay human, which is probably the right note to strike.

Mickey 17 is a film that spends a hefty chunk of its run time exploring the horrors of being a clone that can't die, and then loses interest in all of that once there's two identical (or are they?) people running around arguing with each other. Maybe a bit more soul would have made it something more than just an unevenly entertaining SF comedy - but then, after 17 times through the printer anyone's soul would be a bit tattered.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Bird

It's been a few years since Andrea Arnold made a fiction film, but documentary's loss is pretty much everyone else's gain. Bird is both a return to social realism and an embrace of the magical - two things that really should go together a lot more often than they do. We all contain both (and more) inside us: any realistic film that ignores that is falling down when it should be soaring.

Twelve year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) is having a bit of a rough go of it. Living in a squat in a housing estate in Kent, her father Bug (Barry Keoghan) is barely an adult himself, running around with the kind of wild get-rich-quick schemes a teenager would come up with (becoming a father as a teen seems to have arrested his development).

Her mother, who lives across town, isn't much help either. Peyton (Jasmine Jobson) has a violent partner and three kids, living in the kind of knife-edge situation where anything can happen and whatever it is, it's going to be bad. Bug's crazy plan to sell toad juice to finance his wedding to a woman he met three months ago doesn't seem so bad by comparison.

So Bailey is largely left to her own devices. Sometimes she's spending time with her half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda) and the gang he's put together to "protect" the neighbourhood. Other times she's on her own, which is when she meets the mysterious Bird (Franz Rogowski).

At first she's wary of this stranger who seems lost and searching for something. It doesn't take long for a bond to develop, but this is the kind of coming-of-age film where tragedy is just as likely as anything else - or at least, it is until a big shift in what kind of film we're actually watching makes itself known towards the end.

The result is something that isn't going to click with everyone. Consistency in entertainment is generally a virtue; any major gear changes are required to exist within the borders of plot and character, not by adding entirely new elements previously unsuspected. So this is a big swerve, but if you can go with adding "magical" to "realism", the pay off is worth it.

And even if you feel the ending does derail things, there's a lot to enjoy. The performances, often from newcomers, are frequently astonishing and consistently enthralling, while Arnold has lost none of her skill when it comes to steeping her audience in a world where struggle and deprivation don't automatically mean a bleak existence.

It's a swirling film, full of joy and grinding poverty, despair and the beauty of nature pushing through ruins. Whether it's fully successful or not we need more films like this, heartfelt and striving.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Long running fictional characters can grow old, or not. Presumably Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt is getting older, it just has absolutely no relevance to his life. Bridget Jones has taken the opposite path, awkwardly passing numerous milestones since she hit the big screen in 2001. Back then she was a quirky take on a young woman living in a world where being under 35 was a complex and nuanced mix of challenges and opportunities. Now in her world young people either look after your kids or shag you.

Aging with your fanbase locks them in: it also locks you into tackling certain issues that inevitably come up, which is to say this is the Bridget Jones movie about death. This mortality, somewhat surprisingly, works to the film's advantage, providing useful contrast to the numerous entertaining moments where Jones (Renee Zellweger) does something awkward then awkwardly realises someone she would like to impress just saw her.

The big death, of course, is Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who it is revealed in the first few minutes died four years ago, being exploded as part of his work as a human rights lawyer. It is time, all her friends agree, for her to move on. But how? And where? And will the big pants be required?

Pretty much everyone you remember from the previous films makes a return here - the dead characters are either wordless ghosts or get a final scene in flashback - but the script makes the onslaught of familiar characters seem natural, as Jones first checks in with pretty much everyone before her first love interest, the youthful aspiring garbologist Roxster (Leo Woodall) pulls her down out of a tree. Awkward!

Meanwhile, the local school her children attend has a new science teacher, the whistle-blowing Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Will he get much of a look in around the jokes about having to bring snacks for school functions and dealing with other snobby "perfect" mums?  Wait and see.

Jones also returns to work as a TV producer, bringing in a few new characters (Jones gets a nanny!) and some old ones - and of course, more opportunity for embarrassment. In the whirlwind of friends that makes up her life (and having such a packed social life despite being a single mum to two kids is just one of the more fantastical elements here) only unrepentant sleaze Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) gets anything like a character arc. And deservedly so, as he remains a delight.

The jokes are uneven but enough land to make it work. It's also a bit sad in parts, though at this stage of life anything less would be a let-down. Having Jones back looking for love is just enough of a spine to keep this from being a pointless greatest hits tour; having the grim specter of death lingering over a number of the scenes (the kids haven't yet moved on) is just enough weight to keep this from drifting away.

Put another way, the film has a high mortality rate (there's more than one scene where a much-loved character comes face to face with their mortality in a hospital), while Jones does pretty well when it comes to sexy and/or romantic clinches. Maybe they should have titled this one Bridget Jones: Body Count.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Presence

Does a ghost story have to be scary? On one level, probably not: it's not hard to think of numerous supernatural stories that (intentionally or not) failed to deliver spine-related chills. But the basic premise of a ghost story - conclusive proof that there is a form of existence beyond the physical world - does tend towards the unsettling. So a heads-up: Presence may be about a haunted house, but it's the living residents who'll give you the creeps.

Director Steven Soderberg's gimmick here is that the camera is the ghost's POV - we see what the ghost sees, and (as we later learn) the ghost doesn't know why they're haunting this particular suburban house. So they tend to just wander around watching the new residents, the Payne family.

It doesn't take long to see the family haven't exactly created a happy home. Father Chris (Chris Sullivan) is fiercely protective of daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who is on edge after having recently lost a friend to a drug overdose. Older brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) is cruelly dismissive, focused more on his sporting and social success. Overly controlling mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) is firmly on Tyler's side, though she's distracted by shady goings-on at work - the kind of things that have Chris thinking of bailing on the marriage.

All this unfolds in a series of long takes filmed in ghost-o-vision as the "presence" observes the family. Gradually Chloe starts to sense something supernatural; the presence can and does move small objects around, sometimes in a seemingly helpful manner, other times more destructively. A psychic (Natalie Woolams-Torres) is brought in, with mixed results. Tyler's new friend Ryan (West Mullholland) starts hitting on Chloe. The family is freaking out, but what can they do?

With big scares off the table, what's left is an interesting up-close look at a family under stress, with a low-key mystery wrapped around it. What exactly does the presence want? It's the kind of story that in other hands would cry out for a second viewing, but Soderberg plays fair with the audience and the ending is more of a "oh, that's why that happened" than a "wait, I need to go over this again".

The family's fault lines are fairly bluntly laid out; the point is to see which ways things are going to fracture. Everyone here turns out to be capable of a surprise or two, though most of the big moves are in character. Reliable types step up, people on edge make risky choices. The performances are all good, though it's Liang who ends up holding the film together. 

So it's a satisfying watch, if operating largely in a minor key. Possibly the most interesting thing going on is the way the demands of the story require one central character to be both a jerk and heroic. It makes sense - these are members of a family after all - but it's rare to see a character contain multitudes in recent cinema. Most ghost stories require the living to be one thing, then nothing; it's this character's out-of-character choice that will haunt their family.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Companion

Companion is one of those movies with a big, story-changing twist at the end of act one, and you can tell that while the film makers thought it would be a big mind-blowing shock, the publicity department went "yeah, this is how we're going to get people in to see this movie".

You can't blame them - there's no point in your movie having a great twist if nobody is going to go see it, and without knowing the twist there's not a lot obviously going on you can sell Companion with. But it does mean that talking about the movie in any kind of detail is going to require spoilers, which is a shame because the reveal is a pretty good one (even if wikipedia does give it away).

Without spoiling anything then, here's what you need to know: Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris (Sophie Thatcher) are heading out to a fancy cabin in the woods for a getaway weekend with friends. Kat (Megan Suri) is friends with Josh, not a fan of Iris, and is the mistress of Sergey (Rupert Friend) a dodgy Russian businessman who owns the house (and everything around it, including a lake). 

Also staying are Patrick (Lucas Gage) and Eli (Harvey Guillen), who get to watch on as Sergey hits on Iris and generally sleazes up the place. Kat doesn't seem to be having all that much fun either. The vibes are bad; it doesn't take long to realise there's a good reason for that.

Last paragraph without spoilers, so: what follows is more of a "crime scheme gone wrong" thriller than a "cabin in the woods" slasher, though there are a few gory moments. Some characters turn out to be arseholes, some are more decent than they seem, some don't stick around long enough to go either way. It's fun rather than edge-of-your-seat gripping, though there are a number of good twists and once it gets going it doesn't slow down: it's like a lightweight Fargo where you cheer on the character you'd least suspect.

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Okay: Iris is a robot, and she's been jailbreaked to do something she's not meant to (not sex, she's all good in that department) so Josh can get something he wants. Once she's done what he wants, she's disposable: the rest of the film is about her trying to protect her off switch, only because she's a robot there are ways to hit that switch beyond just shooting her - and in fact, because Josh needs the whole thing to look like an accident, he has to shut her down like you would any other malfunctioning item. No suspicious bullet holes or tire marks.

It's a smart tweak to an otherwise familiar genre, and it allows the story to go all-in on Josh's barely concealed misogyny. It's not robo-shaming - there are other plot elements that make it clear that robot-human love is just fine so long as you're not an abusive whiny creep - and it makes for a nice explanation as to why Kat dislikes Iris. Gold-digging girlfriends are going to have a tough time competing with sexbots, after all.

Writer / director Drew Hancock has come up with a solid noir thriller that's also a smart science fiction story (though don't expect any examination of how sexbots have changed wider society - the action here stays very close to home) with a touch of horror mixed in. It's a tight, exciting ninety minutes, but what really lifts it over the top are the performances.

Quaid artfully walks the line between caring boyfriend and thoughtless creep at first, then goes all in when the extent of his boorish selfishness is revealed; Thatcher all but carries the film as she goes from loving partner to scared victim to determined survivor. She makes every step of Iris' wild emotional (yes, really) journey seem plausible - which is in no way reassuring for anyone watching who might be in the market for a sexbot in a few years time.

- Anthony Morris