Frozen II and Knives Out double feature

 Nobody expected the first Frozen to be as big a hit as it became. Which explains (in part) why this sequel at times feels a bit tentative: when a film becomes a surprise hit, it’s hard to figure out exactly what it is that audiences are responding to. 

Obviously the relationship between out-of-place and superpowered Elsa (Idina Menzel) and her feisty and devoted younger sister Anna (Kristen Bell) was central, and so it is again; living snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) was a big laugh-getter for the kids and so he’s stumbling around again. As for Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), the film makes his why-exactly-am-I-here? status a plus, as he struggles to propose to Anna while wondering if a relationship is even what he really wants (inspiring the film's best song). 

But the story itself is a bit of a mish-mash, tying the origin of Elsa’s powers (which aren’t really explained anyway) in with her kingdom’s unsurprisingly dark colonist past in a way that works reasonably well as a story but still comes off as a bit hollow thanks to some fuzzy motivation and muddled plot points. 

On the plus side it looks great, the songs are strong (if not particularly memorable), and the central female friendship gives the film real heart. It’s a solid enough sequel – just not an equal to the original.

Cosy murder mysteries have been a television thing for so long now that even after the recent success of the Murder on the Orient Express remake this twist on / salute to the genre still feels like a bit of a risk. Which is part of the point: Knives Out starts out as your typical whodunnit before throwing in enough fresh twists of its own that the real fun isn’t trying to figure out what’s going on but just sitting back and enjoying the ride. 

The set-up is classic rather than clever: when a wealthy author (Christopher Plummer) dies (an apparent suicide), his venal children start circling, only to find that a quirky detective (Daniel Craig) and the dead man’s good-hearted nurse (Ana de Armas) are standing between them and his estate. 

Much of the satisfaction here – aside from a smart but not smug sense of humour and a first-class run of excellent performances (the kids include Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans) – comes from the way this piles on the twists without ever cheating or getting post-modern: even at its most convoluted the story is constantly moving forward rather than serving up new information via flashbacks (until it’s time to solve the mystery, of course). 

Even if you don't like mysteries (that would be me), it’s a thoroughly engaging and entertaining ride.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Official Secrets

                       

It’s the season for revisiting the lies and cover-ups around the Iraq War, as this (coming on the heels of The Report) tells another true story of governmental deceit, this time from the UK side of things. Which, as it turns out, is just as sinister and blood-thirsty as everyone else.

It’s 2003, and Katharine Gun (Kiera Knightly) works as at GCHQ as basically an government eavesdropper, going through bugged conversations for useful information. But when she gets a US memo asking for blackmail material to swing an upcoming UN vote to make the seemingly inevitable Iraq War legal she turns whistleblower, leaking it to a friend who eventually gets it to the press. 

This, as you might expect, does not impress the government, and soon she’s right in their sights. There's something satisfyingly sinister about watching the UK establishment gearing up to crush a prole, and soon the traditional mix of bovver-boy cops and toffee-voiced lawyers are looming ominously over Katharine, with her marriage to a recent immigrant in their sights.

As with The Report, a big-name cast gives this straightforward story star power, with Matt Smith, Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans playing journalists trying to verify the leaked memo, Jeremy Northam and Tasmin Grieg as members of the establishment, and Ralph Fiennes as the big gun lawyer Katharine finally finds herself needing. 

The story gradually expands beyond Katharine but she remains central to it, with Knightly’s performance – veering between all-too-human worry and a firm determination – keeping things on a human scale. 

It’s a compelling, at times (justifiably) infuriating, watch.

- Anthony Morris

Charlies Angels and Ford v Ferrari double feature

This latest reboot of the tried-and-true 70s concept is a salute to how resilient that concept actually is: most franchises (cough Terminator cough) would start flailing after a failed TV series, a shoddy video game and a second movie in 2003 that killed off most peoples’ desire for a third. 

Writer-director-star Elizabeth Banks makes this sequel (mostly) work by keeping it simple and (relatively) low key - not having the budget of a big blockbuster probably helped there. The story largely sticks to the basics: when scientist Elena (Naomi Scott) uncovers a way her company’s big invention (some kind of battery) can be turned into a weapon, she also discovers her bosses don’t seem to care. 

Enter Charlies Angels – well, two of them (it’s now a global organisation), as loose cannon Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and former MI6 agent Jane (Ella Balinska) lead the investigation, only to discover things are a lot more deadly at the power company than they first seemed. 

As an organisation, Charlies Angels itself might be bigger – there are at least three featured Bosleys (Patrick Stewart, Banks and Djimon Hounsou) – but the action sequences rely more on choppy editing than big explosions, which puts the focus firmly on the characters and a consistent if occasionally clunky female empowerment message. It’s a largely satisfying yet forgettable addition to the franchise.

To get the basics out of the way: Ford v Ferrari's gearhead take on the battle to win the 1966 24 hour race at Le Mans is a thoroughly satisfying mix of character study and racetrack action.

Director James Mangold wrings tension out of car design details and corporate powerplays while leads Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon, often in a cowboy hat) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale, using his natural UK accent) winningly just want to be left alone to enjoy the thrills of car racing. 

So on that level, it gets just about everything right; it’s a totally entertaining film for the dad and the dad at heart. 

But this is also a film that sets itself up as the underdog versus the big guns… only smug corporate Ford is positioned as the underdog and Ferrari (a company that starts the film out bankrupt) are the big guns. 

The facts of the story – well, the facts so obvious the film can’t ignore them – is that the petulant entitled son of Henry Ford threw cash (of which he had plenty) at the PR problem of winning Le Mans, then managed to largely screw over the people who did the real work. 

It’s a feel-bad story buried just under the surface, and it leave a scratch in this film’s otherwise immaculate paintwork.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep is a lot of things – a sequel, a possible first installment in a new franchise, a chance for Stephen King to get one last kick into the movie version of The Shining and reclaim it as his own – but is it a horror movie?  Obvious it contains scary stuff - kids are murders by supernatural forces, so good news there for It fans - but that in itself doesn't make a movie scary. As shown by the second half of It, for starters.

 

So there answer here is "no, not really". Yes, the story does involve a band of soul-sucking almost-vampires who feed off what we know as “The Shining”, and the now grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) does face down a bunch of ghosts both literal and metaphorical. 

 

But for long stretches this film seems more interested in just hanging out with its cast as the bad guys – led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) - slowly circle in on Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl with a Shining stronger than anyone’s seen. Which rapidly makes her a decent match for the monsters, and when the good guys and bad guys are evenly matched what you've got isn't really all that horrific.

 

Most of the really interesting stuff here involves Danny’s battle with the bottle and his father’s drunken legacy; the monster stuff at times feels like the set up for a so-so series on Netflix. Horror buffs of a certain age might remember when Clive Barker's Nightbreed was considered (mostly by Barker himself) to be radical for treating the monsters as characters; these days it's hard to find a monster movie that doesn't, even if that almost always makes them a lot less scary.

 

Eventually the chase finds its way back to the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and this kicks into a very different gear. It's not exactly a good sign that this only gets creepy when it starts directly ripping off Kubrick, but the differing effects are more a result of differing approaches than outright theft. 

 

For most of this film we're basically being told an fairly straightforward story in a fairly straightforward way (though there are a few nice moments when various supernatural powers are being used). But the scenes at the Overlook are largely concerned with creating mood and tension (the story being pretty much over). They're the first time this starts acting like a movie rather than a television serial, and the difference is startling.

Ironically, mood and tension are what make Stephen King's horror writing work, and they're almost always the first things discarded when adapting it for the screen. Kubrick's film may not have been a faithful adaptation, but it's still the only King adaptation to date (well, horror adaptation at least) to focus on what makes horror in general work: mood and tension. 

 

Being too literal is what ruins most adaptations; not being literal enough is why King's hated Kubrick's version all these years. Dr Sleep splits the difference, and doesn't really leave any mark at all.

- Anthony Morris