Review: Terminator: Dark Fate

As a rule, the less time a Terminator movie gives you to think about what’s going on, the better a Terminator movie it is. The first one has enough going on for half a dozen regular movies (why we never got a buddy cop series with cops Traxler and Vukovich is a mystery); every one since then has left something out and has suffered for it.

The good news is, Dark Fate is the first installment since Terminator 2: Judgment Day to fully embrace the series’ origins as an all-out chase movie, which also makes it the best installment since T2. Yes, that's a low bar to hurdle (and most of the other sequels have their good points); perhaps it's better to say it's the most cohesive Terminator film since the second one.

This story begins with John Connor (back briefly in CGI form) gunned down as a teenager so now the post-T2 sequels never happened and a distraught Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is still killing Terminators in her early-60s. So you know, win-win for everyone but John Connor.

Otherwise it’s the same deal as usual as Mexico City resident Dani (Natalia Reyes) has been targeted for termination by a Rev-9 model (Gabriel Luna) from the future, with only the mostly human time-traveller Grace (Mackenzie Davis) to protect her. Which is exactly the same dynamic from the first two films and honestly, how much you'll enjoy this depends in large part on how played out you think that dynamic is.

Fortunately director Tim Miller (Deadpool) does a good job with the lengthy action sequences - which you'd think would be the first thing a Terminator movie would get right, but there's a couple of sequels out there that prove that theory wrong - the performances are strong across the board (cranky old Sarah Connor is fun), and while the story isn’t remotely original it still works. 

As does the T-800 model Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger); he’s now a plaid-clad robot dad but his one-liners still kill. It's slightly surprising that a franchise originally built around the awesome spectacle of the human body jacked up to almost ridiculous extremes has become perhaps the foremost cinematic chronicle of one body's age-related decline and decay, but if you're a fan of increasingly complicated explanations for why a Terminator would get old and change his ways this one has a doozy.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Blinded by the Light

It’s a tale as old as time; a young man, feeling alienated from his community and cut off from his family’s conservative values, finds an escape and a way to express his true self in music. It's what music is for - well, that and dancing about, which is currently frowned upon in cinemas.

The twist here is that it’s 1987 Luton and Javed (Viveik Kalra) is a British-Pakistani teenager who discovers freedom in pretty much the most unlikely source imaginable (for him): the then somewhat daggy music of Bruce Springsteen. 

Based on the true story of UK journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, this follows his struggles against entrenched racism, a domineering (yet caring) father (Kulvinder Ghir), and a society that sees Springsteen as yesterday’s man (some of this movie’s best jokes come when Javed’s passion butts up against the reality that in 1987 The Boss is now seen as past it). 

The story hits all the traditional notes, but the family struggles often have an authentically harsh edge to them (the racism they face is not soft-pedalled) and Javed’s connection to the mood of Springsteen’s music feels thrillingly hard-won. 

As the latest in the current cycle of jukebox musicals, this leans more on the music’s message than pumping out a series of toe-tapping beats – though there’s one big musical number on Luton’s streets that’s authentically joyful – and after the gritty drama a heartwarming ending feels satisfyingly deserved. 

- Anthony Morris

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Zombieland: Double Tap and Maleficent: all-sequel Double Feature

It’s been a decade since the wise-cracking zombie slayers of Zombieland burst onto our screens making meta-references aplenty while gunning down the undead - but cool murders are old news now and having these guys back years after everyone stopped caring is a bit of a mixed blessing. 

On the one hand, after a decade the world of zombie-comedy has moved on and simply being snappily dressed badasses (shout out to Woody Harrelson's Man With No Name cosplay at the film's beginning) with a bunch of comedy rules isn’t really all that distinctive. On the other, it wasn’t all that distinctive even back then and as this is basically just rehashing the same old jokes, having a decade pass since we last heard them isn’t such a bad thing. 

Having moved into the remains of the White House, our ad hoc family – Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) – are falling into a rut, The solution: the gals bail, leaving Columbus bereft and Tallahassee looking for the exit himself. 

Things get slightly more complicated with the discovery of airhead survivor Madison (Zoey Deutch) and the news that Little Rock has run off with (shudder) a hippie, but what follows is just another road trip movie with a few decent jokes and some gory zombie-killing along the way. 

The jokes are rarely hilarious but they're not painful either and the zombie gore is occasionally nasty enough to get a reaction even in 2019. But it's the chemistry between the cast (two-thirds of which barely seem to be trying to give a performance) that makes this work, even if it's just on the level of a hangout movie; imagine what they could do in a film that actually had something to say.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil begins with the news that the previous film’s happy ending didn’t stick: Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) is still feared and hated, even though the human Princess (and her goddaughter) Aurora (Elle Fanning) now rules the fairy kingdom. 

In fact, she’s about to marry Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson), which you’d think would cement the bond between the humans and faeries and turn Maleficent into a kind of grumpy aunt figure. But no: Phillip’s mother Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) has other plans which largely involve a surprisingly distressing amount of murder. 

For such a straightforward story this seems overstuffed with incidents in a way that usually suggests a tortured screenwriting process; for one, it seems Maleficent is part of an entire ecosystem of flying humans who add almost nothing to the story but do make for good cannon fodder during the lengthy battle sequence at the climax. 

Also, and this can't be stressed enough, this is a film that's largely about the wholesale slaughter of every fairy Ingrith's sinister forces can lure into a trap (though the trap does involves some over-the-top organ playing, so it's not all bad news). This probably isn't aimed at little kids, but if they do wander in they might be a little distressed by some of this.

Presumably the creative team thought that the only way Maleficent could look (relatively) good was by making the humans into crazed mass murderers, which suggests perhaps the whole idea of this sequel was somewhat flawed. Wasn't the fun of Maleficent that she was a baddie who didn't really give a crap?

At least Jolie gets a handful of opportunities to be arch and bitchy which are easily the best part of the film; her slightly feral performance throughout suggests an actor putting more thought into her character than the script did. Pfeiffer also does some (slightly more subdued) scenery chewing and a bunch of CGI creatures get to look cute. 

Even for a film as jumbled as this one, the big mystery here is exactly why a fairy tale movie needed to go full-on war movie by the end - unless they had a bunch of Star Wars CGI animators handy with nothing better to do. Considering the potential much of this film shows, they still should have had something better to do than another big battle sequence.

- Anthony Morris

 

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Hustlers and Gemini Man: double feature

For a movie that’s technically about a group of ex-strippers who made a lot of money from drugging guys and charging up their credit cards, Hustlers takes a long time to get around to the drugging and robbing. 

 

That’s because this film isn’t really about that at all; partly it’s about “can people form human connections in a world where every relationship has become commodified?”, and partly it’s about “can you ever have too many shopping scenes and strut montages set to 2010-era bangers?” (the answers are yes and no).

 

Destiny (Constance Wu) is the “new girl” dancer at a New York strip club, while Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) is the experienced elder stateswoman who takes her under her wing. There's money to be made and they're going to make it - preferably while looking good doing it. What comes next follows the Goodfellas template of true-crime stories: good times up front, then eventually you have to pay the price.

 

Only here the good times just keep on coming and the whole “price-paying” thing is covered in a handful of scenes that don’t quite say horny drunk guys deserve to be drugged and robbed, but

do say that if these girls didn’t do it someone else would and these guys pretty much did deserve it anyway. The real twist here is that the crime crew actually seem to like each other: what's at stake isn't their ill-gotten gains, but the friends they made along the way.

 

The whole thing is a good time so long as you don’t think about it too much, and why should you? There’s always more handbags to buy.

 

Occasionally Hollywood serves up a movie that only exists because someone wanted to try out a cool new toy. Usually they bomb, which is possibly why Gemini Man sees Ang Lee trying out two (and a half if you count the 3D) new toys at once: it was filmed at a high frame rate (60 frames per second rather than the usual 24), and it features an all-digital version of a young Will Smith.

 

Surprisingly, both of those elements largely work. The high frame rate (at least when combined with the 3D) gives the action scenes an effective immediacy – especially in an early, lethal game of hide and seek where being able to see with crystal clarity every corner of the frame is really useful. 

 

The digital Smith is also (mostly) plausible and believable, though his actual acting (supplied by older Smith via motion capture) largely hovers around the "tormented and sulking" end of the scale and isn’t anything to get excited about. Unfortunately neither is the actual story, which is an utterly generic and uninspiring spy thriller that would have worked just as well (which is to say, not very well at all) if Smith’s character was being hunted by his son rather than his clone. 

 

But then this movie would have absolutely no reason to exist; as it stands, unless you're really into the technical side of film-making, it just has no reason for you to see it.

 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Joker

Is Joker a hollow attempt at provocative posing designed to placate sad sack manbabies by telling them that their grievances against the world have mythic status, or is it a film that actually has something to say about the way neglect of the unfortunate and the underclass can fan the flames of social unrest? Here's an idea; why can't it be both? It'd be only fitting for a film about the Joker - a character so flexible in comic book form that he's been everything from generic gimmick villain to Clown Prince of Crime to demonic force that lives on after death - to be multiple things at once.

Not that the Joker really needs an origin story. There's no real way to get from a recognisable human being to the supervillain we all know and love (aside from Tim Burton's first Batman, but that was Jack Nicholson from beginning to end) and this doesn't even really try to reach that particular end point. This is the story of a regular, if disadvantaged, guy who eventually just gives up and decides to get violent; King of Comedy is the Scorsese film everyone's pointing towards as a touchstone but director Todd Phillips has put a heck of a lot of Taxi Driver in here too.

Sub-par party clown Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is struggling in early 80s Gotham City. He's bad at his job, he has a mental issue that causes him to burst out in inappropriate laughter, his dreams of being a stand-up comic aren't exactly supported by his performances, and as the city increasingly teeters on the edge of chaos his problems only get worse. But that only puts him ahead of the curve; after an impromptu act of vigilante violence makes him - well, the clown that people saw - a symbol of the building anger against the crumbling status quo, the question is, will this beat-down "Joker" cast aside any sense of right and wrong he once had and seize the day?

With the Scorsese influence loud and clear early on, and a lot of the actual Joker material lifted from the comics (between this and Batman vs Superman, about 80% of Frank Miller's classic The Dark Knight Returns comic has made its way onto the screen) and earlier films, this occasionally feels like a greatest hits compilation of elements from an earlier age this film is trying to transport across to the new, superhero-only era of cinema. But that's not automatically a bad thing.

For one, seeing a superhero movie commit so hard to realism - or at least, a heightened realism that stresses the grimy, physical side of things 70s cinema style - is something new. DC at the movies has constantly been looking to find a way to counter the slick family-friendly flash of Marvel / Disney (in much the same way as in the mid 80s DC Comics managed to break Marvel's X-Men led death grip on the comics industry with "grim & gritty" deconstructions of the superhero such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns), and this is definitely their most concerted push in that direction yet.

So Marvel couldn't make this movie; would they even want to? The DC Comic plan worked in the 80s because audiences were growing up and flashy superhero soap operas suddenly felt childish compared to serious takes on costumed characters. These days the idea of "growing up" as far as entertainment choices go is openly mocked; anything without a core of relentless optimism is considered too dark for our dark times. Entertainment, it seems, shouldn't reflect what's going on, it should be an escape from it, because reflecting whats going on only encourages the people who see themselves reflected.

On the other hand, Marvel is just fine with Captain Marvel basically being a hoo-rah commercial for the US military, so exactly where you come down on a movie showing people rioting in the streets because their wealthy leaders are openly mocking them for being poor really depends in part on what kind of power fantasies you want to indulge. If you want to dismiss this film as just edgelord posturing, fine (though you'll have to overlook Robert DeNiro's talkshow character, who delivers an impassioned lecture directly to Fleck on how everything he represents is entitled self-pitying whining) but every superhero movie is pandering to some kind of power fantasy, and many of them are just as distasteful as Joker's - if often more acceptably presented.

If anything, the problem here is that Joker doesn't go far enough. A populist uprising against an oppressive and unrepresentative government is presented as a bad thing, something for an anarchist supervillain - and while this film may initially side with Fleck, there's no denying that eventually our sympathies are expected to drain away - to revel in. A core problem of Batman's dynamic is that a billionaire who solves crime by punching muggers is the good guy; making this particular Joker the face of a seemingly justified working class uprising really doubles down on that.

Still, there's much to enjoy here on a purely cinematic level. The sense of building chaos as Fleck's life spirals downhill is compelling even when the occasional scene or reveal falls flat, the urban grime is atmospheric, the (occasional, nasty) violence actually has weight to it, and any film that might possibly send viewers back to The King of Comedy is definitely doing something right.

Phoenix's performance is what makes this film work. Aggressively grounded in the physical in a way that CGI-heavy superhero movies almost never are, he squirms and writhes through much of the film, and when he breaks out into dance (as he does surprisingly often), its defiant strangeness lifts the film to a whole new level. It suggests an otherness that's new to this (cinematic) version of the Joker, a music only he can hear - even if in the end the tune turns out to be one we've heard before.

- Anthony Morris