Review: The Honest Thief

 

There's a level of quality to Liam Neeson movies you just don't get with other aging action stars. It's not just gratitude that he hasn't gone totally off the rails like, say, Bruce Willis: even when a Neeson actioner seems like a fairly basic effort - which let's admit, The Honest Thief is - there's always a couple of scenes or twists that show that somebody somewhere along the line was looking to make a decent movie. And for a film like this, "decent" is pretty solid praise.

Tom Carter (Neeson) is a break-and-enter thief who's racked up a seven-figure haul from various banks over the last few years. Then he meets Annie (Kate Walsh) at the storage center she owns and runs, and despite a fairly average "meet cute" scene, he promptly falls head over heels in love. Time passes, he realises he can't go on living a lie with her, and so it's time for the so-called "In-and-Out Bandit" to give himself up. 

Not being a total sap, he tries to cut a deal with the FBI: he'll hand himself in and hand over the cash if they give him a short sentence in a nearby prison where Annie can visit. Agent Sam Baker (Robert Patrick) and his partner Tom Meyers (Jeffery Donovan) get a decent laugh out of this, and to be fair Carter does come off as a bit of a rube in these early scenes - this is a movie that gets better as it goes along and there is a halfway decent explanation for why Carter seems a little out of touch with the world of crime, but it's a bit of a bumpy ride early on.

Not convinced Carter (who's calling them from a secret location, AKA a hotel) is the In-and-Out Bandit, Sam passes the investigation onto junior agents John Nivens (Jai Courtney) and Ramon Hall (Anthony Ramos), which is when things start to get interesting. Carter sends them to his cash stash to prove he's the man, they find the money and figure "why not just keep the cash and say the guy's a nutcase?" and before you know it everything has gone wrong for everyone and it's car chases and gun battles on the streets of Boston.

Interestingly for this kind of film, it's the bad guys who start out as the smart ones. Niven's plan is a perfectly good one that only goes awry though bad luck (well, good luck for Carter), while Carter is kind of a chump until it's time to turn into Liam Neeson, action hero - and even then there's just enough to his character to give him a handful of scenes that aren't the usual run and gun stuff.

This is a little rough around the edges at times - there are some decent car chases and nice Boston location shooting; there are also a few sets that really look like sets - but there's enough polish on the script (co-written by director Mark Williams) to keep it from feeling completely generic. Character quirks are the kind of thing that add value to this kind of film but are too easily overlooked: whether it's Meyers stuck with his ex-wife's dog or Carter grousing about being dubbed "The In-and-Out Bandit", this has just enough sparkle away from the action to keep things interesting. 

Neeson's action career has largely kept ticking along because he's been willing to push things a little. Bouncing between films like A Walk Among the Tombstones, The Commuter and Cold Pursuit, he's managed to find ways to keep his formula relatively varied while still delivering what his fans are looking for. The Honest Thief is perfectly satisfying for what it is, which is the most generic action film he's made in a while; guess that's one way to keep bucking the trend.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: On the Rocks

Laura (Rashida Jones) is a mother of two who, all things considered, is doing pretty well for herself. She’s got a nice apartment in New York, two adorable daughters who aren’t handfuls at all, and Dean (Marlon Wayans) a hard-working husband who’s caring and attentive. Sure, her daily routine seems to have hardened into a rut and she can’t find her way back into her writing (turns out having kids and being used to writing at night don’t mix), but things could always be worse. 

 

For example, she could start to suspect Dean of cheating on her just when her freewheeling father Felix (Bill Murray) lobs back into her life. 

 

Felix is an art dealer and ladies man who flirts with every woman he sees – and is charming enough to mostly get away with it. Even Laura knows he’s not someone she should be confessing her worries to, but where else can she turn? And once Felix is on the case, she finds herself drawn into what threatens to become a full-blown caper tailing her husband all across New York looking for proof of an affair that probably (possibly?) doesn’t exist.

 

Having writer / director Sophia Coppola back working with Murray again on their first feature since Lost in Translation defined (or in Murray's case, re-defined) their careers is clearly the big draw here. It's something of a surprise then that it’s the earlier scenes built around the rut Laura finds herself in that are this film’s strongest. Murray gives a thoroughly charming performance as a character that plays to all his strengths and he has great chemistry with the equally appealing Jones, but it’s hard not to feel that the film loses something when he’s on the scene, slipping down a notch into a lighter, less memorable mode.

 

Possibly it’s simply that the stakes dwindle once he arrives. Laura’s relationship is central to who she is; for Felix, much as women are to be adored, they remain essentially disposable. The clash between these views is meant to be one of the film’s core issues – which one of the duo is going through life the right way? – but it’s hard to get much drama out of trying to figure out if someone is cheating when one of the team of investigators thinks it doesn’t really matter because men are programmed to roam.

 

(Felix does express some minor outrage at the idea that someone would cheat on his little girl, but he can’t sustain it; an angry dad would make this a much less amusing film)

 

On the Rocks prizes a light touch in all things, but there’s a maturity under it all that makes it feel more like a wine night spent with one eye on the babysitter’s clock than a freewheeling romp through the city at night. The lack of Coppola’s usual swooning romanticism is keenly felt; Felix might live in a high-toned world of wheeling and dealing in a string of luxury apartments, but whatever the artworks on the walls they still feel down-to-earth (he is, after all, always doing business), while the New York they explore only rarely looks like anything more than a series of nicely shot locations. 

 

It's a consistently funny film, though the third act stumbles a little. The humour is rarely an end in itself; a scene where Felix charms his way out of a speeding ticket is both delightful and a pointed look at how a certain kind of white male can slip through life (though Murray's self-aware performance never lets Felix off the hook - he knows exactly how the world works). This grown-up mood is central to a film about a woman who may wonder how she got where she is, but she’s happy (mostly) with the result. 

 

This isn’t about escape, it’s about maintenance. The relationships here aren't idealised; there's no bloom of first attraction, just the ongoing struggle to make it work with people you (still, somehow) love. Lost in Translation was about feeling adrift in a life that had somehow appeared around you and embracing the chance to break out; On the Rocks is more about realising you should be be happy with the life you've worked hard to make for yourself. 

 

It's a perfectly reasonable message for this warm and charming film - though being a successful author with a New York apartment probably helps.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Waves

Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is seventeen and has the world at his feet. A high school wrestler looking at getting into college on a scholarship, he has a loving girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), a well-off family, and a life in South Florida that's a whirlwind of cars, friends, training and hanging out. There's the occasional off note - his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) is a self-made man who means well but pushes his son maybe a little too hard - but on the whole? Life is good.

And then it isn't, and while this family drama has more to say than simply "shit happens", the capricious nature of life and the way even the steadiest of good fortune can be revealed to be hanging by a thread is at the core of what's to come. A shoulder injury jeopardises his future; seeing it as a personal failure, he decides to keep it secret. Things get worse, and when Alexis reveals she's pregnant his life begins to spiral out of control. Disaster seems inevitable, and the fallout will shatter more lives than his own.

Writer-director Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night) is as interested in creating a sensory experience through film as he is in telling a story, though the story here definitely stands up. The early scenes with Tyler sees the camera constantly on the move through an at-times glowing, garish world, sliding and spinning through a life lived at precarious speed. Even before the wheels come off, there's a constant tension, a sense of things only seemingly under control.

In the back half of the film the focus shifts to Tyler's little sister Emily (Taylor Russell), an minor presence early on who turns out to have hidden depths of her own. Already quiet, she becomes almost withdrawn after Tyler's trainwreck and the film's visual energy settles down with her (the aspect ratio also shifts to 4:3 after the increasingly claustrophobic widescreen of Tyler's scenes; when her life once again opens up, so does the screen).

Emily finds a relationship of her own, even as her family struggles (and fails) to come to terms with what's happened. After the tension of the first half of the film, we're in the same situation as Emily, wary of new faces, always alert for the damage they could deal out. What follows is surprising in the way it confirms that life goes on, and can even be good; some of the moments would seem forced or melodramatic in a lesser film, but after what everyone's been through any moment of peace and insight rings true.

Often films that focus so firmly on visuals and sound as Waves earn tags like "lyrical", and it's well-deserved here. But there's a raft of outstanding performances as well, from a cast that moves effortlessly from big scenes to subtle character moments. Shults has created a living, breathing world; it's definitely worth a visit.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Endings, Beginnings

Drake Doremus seems like the kind of director who doesn't seem all that interested in what his scripts are about so long as they give him the chance to create a particular mood. That's probably a little unfair: the kind of mood he's usually looking to create is one of romantic longing, so clearly he's not rushing to get hired for the next Bad Boys sequel (though if that franchise were to take a surprise twist, who knows...).

His most successful film to date remains Like Crazy, a romantic drama in which a young couple are put through the wringer because one of them decides to overstay his visa (to stay with his girlfriend, obviously), only to discover that's totally screwed over his chances of returning to the country to be with her.

Having a decent plot that justifies Doremus's fondness for arty shots of attractive young people looking sad is a large factor in its success; every film he's made since then (yes, even the one where Ewan McGregor falls in love with a robot) has had an increasingly slapdash feel to it.

In the case of Endings, Beginnings, that's kind of the point; largely improvised with the help of the cast, it's clearly more about being a free-wheeling character study of a young woman (Shallene Woodley) at a turning point in her life than it is about a gripping plot packed with twists. Which is exactly the kind of film you want Doremus to be making.

Daphne (Woodley) has just broken up with her seemingly perfect boyfriend for reasons even she can't seem to articulate and moved back into her sister's pool house. Her models for relationships aren't great: her sister's relation may be abusive, while her mother didn't exactly provide stability either. Then one night at one of her sister's parties she meets Jack (Jamie Dorman), a kindly Irish writer, and Frank (Sebastian Stan), a fiery bad boy. Who to choose? And they're also best friends!

It's a moderately interesting dilemma that holds few surprises. It's no spoiler to reveal that the moral of the story is that girls like the nice guys but they'll sleep with the bad boys, and this does contain a number of what counts as graphic sex scenes for an American film in 2020. But the focus is firmly on Daphne and her journey to a place where she can move forward with love in her life, and both men are really just ways for her to figure out what she really wants.

Doremus is a solid stylist in the underappreciated "films that look like an expensive car commercial" genre, and while that sounds like a cheap shot it's more a recognition of how advertising has colonised a certain strand of emotion-based film-making. Looked at a particular way, Terrance Malick's films also feel like expensive car commercials, and so while the story may occasionally feel like it's spinning its wheels. the visuals always do an impressive job of keeping the emotions we're meant to be feeling on solid ground.

The only real problem with all this is that Daphne herself isn't that interesting. Her dilemma is largely abstract, especially once it becomes clearer exactly why she left her ex. Even purely as fun wish fulfillment (which this clearly is to some extent) it's often not much more than eye candy; while she's torn between two hot guys that's not really a tough problem to have when both of them constantly make sure to respect her feelings and boundaries.

Like a lot of stories that are made up as they go along, it reaches a point where the drama just runs out.

- Anthony Morris

Out Now: Homecoming season one

Heidi (Julia Roberts) is a counselor at Homecoming, an organisation that helps returned soldiers transition back into civilian life. Or more accurately, she was: now she's a small town waitress, which is the kind of comedown that even the Department of Defense finds a little suspicious - especially as she now says she has no memory of ever having worked at Homecoming. This is a series full of mysteries, and over ten episodes the twists and turns just keep on coming.

On release Homecoming didn't get quite the attention it deserved - it stars Julia Roberts! It's directed by the Mr Robot guy! - which can largely be laid at the feet of Amazon, which at the time (and possibly even now) was seen as a streaming service that occasionally came up with the goods but wasn't a must-have addition to your viewing roster. That's a real shame: this is as enthralling a mystery series as any of the more high-profile efforts that have been buzzed about over the last few years.

It's a sign of how television has cheapened the mystery that the term "puzzle box" is pretty much standard for the genre now, but Homecoming is an old-fashioned mystery, one where the puzzle has been thoroughly worked out before the first clue is clear. So while there are plenty of twisty developments here, there's never a sense that things are happening simply for the sake of keeping you watching. It all adds up, which is exactly what you want to hear before making a five hour commitment.

Of course, it's totally possible you're here just to see Julia Roberts (who we don't seem to see enough of these days), and fans will have nothing to complain about with her small screen debut. Even those who might be on the fence after a decade or more of her blinding smile in rom-com roles will be won over by her reserved, nuanced performance here.

The rest of the cast provides solid support, whether it's Sissy Spacek as her small-town mother, Bobby Cannavale as Homecoming's blustery boss (just what is it that he wants Heidi to find out from her cases?) or Stephan James as Walter, a returned soldier who's struggling with survivor's guilt after his tour.

Director Sam Esmail brings his signature off-kilter visual style to what gradually develops into a story of a kind of corporate malfeasance (or is it?), giving almost every scene a lurching sense of subtle menace that amplifies the unease without becoming overwhelming.

The whole production is measured in a way that a good mystery should be, with everything working in balance to build a picture we want to see completed even as we come to dread what it will reveal.

Homecoming season one is out now on DVD through ViaVision

Out Now: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Some movies feel bigger on the small screen, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - which came across as more than a little overstuffed plot-wise in cinemas - seems a much more expansive watch on the small screen. Perhaps that's merely an effect from seeing it a second time around. Maybe it has something to do with plot-heavy dramas being more suited to the small screen experience. Either way, a film that felt a little too breathless on the big screen comes off a lot better at home.

That's not to say the (extremely busy) plot doesn't still have its problems. Pulling in a brand new (yet extremely old) bad guy to round off this trilogy is still a shaky move even if it does tie this final trilogy tighter to the first two. The script's tendency to deliver what should be series-shaking developments (at least two central characters seemingly die) then walk them back within minutes is less than ideal too. And much as we all wanted to say goodbye to Carrie Fisher properly, her role here is little more than an extended goodbye that's more awkward than heart-warming.

But on the whole, this delivers what you want from a Star Wars film (as does the home release: the making of doco that's the big extra is an entertainingly extensive look behind-the-scenes). The core characters spend much of the film working as a team, while most of the new cast make a strong impression. The final act may lack the kind of rigorous logic  many want from science fiction, but Star Wars has always been closer to fantasy anyway. The whole final set-up feels dire, which is all it really needs to do to succeed.

Plus it's a Star Wars movie! it's a successful franchise for a reason, and a big part of that reason is that it's full of locations and characters and just general stuff that's fun to look at. George Lucas didn't invent the idea of a future that looked well-worn but the series he's created has pretty much come to own the concept as far as Hollywood's concerned (just look at the photos release for the upcoming Dune; it's clear the only other option left for Hollywood space opera is the exact same kind of technology only brand new, which is far less interesting to look at).

So even if you're someone who's had their fill of lightsabre battles - and if you are, it's surprising you've read this far - staging one on the wreck of a Death Star that's also in the middle of an ocean during a raging storm isn't really something you're going to see anywhere else. Where Star Wars goes from here (the past?) remains a mystery; for now, this remains a perfectly fitting send-off.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is available on DVD, blu-ray and 4K now.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Hunt

A group of people wake up in the middle of the countryside only to discover they’re being hunted for sport. It’s a remake of The Most Dangerous Game (or if you prefer, Hard Target), but there’s a twist; this time the rich evil hunters are rich left-wing evil hunters!  It's Go Woke Go Broke(n Neck) The Movie!

Okay, there’s a lot more twists than just the specific blather the wealthy murderers come out with; this is a film that prides itself on at least trying to keep you guessing, and the multiple surprises - combined with a tight 90 minute run time - makes this an entertainingly fast, if not exactly deep, B-movie. The kills are gory when required, discreet when not, and the fight scenes are decent enough to work as pay offs when the stalking scenes peter out.

That said, it’s the overtly political slant that's the big marketing hook here (as the story unfolds it turns out to be slightly more complex than merely a bunch of Hillary lefties hunting “deplorables”), especially considering a resulting tweetstorm from President Trump resulted in this being pulled from release schedules late last year. 

Now in 2020 scriptwriter David Lindelof and Nick Cuse’s deliberately controversial and intentionally superficial politics seem almost quaint, though many of the jokes still land thanks to director Craig Zobel’s jokey approach. The underlying moral is basically that rich people are dicks and loudmouths deserve what they get, which is something 99% of the audience can get behind, so the chances of anyone being authentically outraged by a collection of online buzzwords being deployed for comedy effect is fairly slim.

But the politics, like the action and the twists, are all part of a whole, and The Hunt moves quickly enough and darts enthusiastically enough from one to the other and back again to make the whole thing firmly entertaining as a kind of polished-up take on what would otherwise be a direct-to-obscurity slice of genre fun.

This isn't exactly the kind of film you watch for the performances, but Betty Gilpin as one of the more durable hunted is a clear stand-out, turning a fairly generic role into a star turn via a likable combination of wariness and world-weariness that's winning. Everybody else gets a flashy death.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Onward

 In a fantasy world that abandoned magic centuries ago (it turned out modern conveniences were just too convenient), teenage elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) is a quiet introvert who really misses the (dead) dad he never knew. Pixar sadness ahead!

Meanwhile, big brother Barley (Chris Pratt, channeling Jack Black in his prime) is a brash extrovert obsessed with the magical past who drives around in a beat up van named Genevieve and chains himself to old ruins in between role-playing sessions. If you were wondering whether Frozen made animated siblings cool, here's the proof (only this time, for boys!) (actually, this really is very much for boys).

It turns out Barley wasn't the only magic-obsessed nerd in the family: on Ian’s sixteenth birthday a spell set up by their dead dad gives the brothers the chance to have him back for one full day. But when it goes wrong and only restores his bottom half, the pair have to sneak off on a quest (okay, it’s a road trip in Barley’s crap van) to restore the half they really need to meet. 

It's easy to see the appeal of the central concept: what if Dungeons & Dragons was (historically) real? But like a lot of Pixar's recent projects, this feels over-thought, with multiple layers added that muddy rather than clarify the premise's core appeal. 

Here that'd be "a young man insecure of his place in the world goes on a quest that helps him figure out that place". This then also turns out to be about his relationship with his brother (and vice versa), plus a side serve of "hey, why did we ever give up on magic", a bunch of "my dad is a walking butt" comedy, and the brothers' mum (voiced by Julia Louis-Dryfuss) racing to save them from a curse they're about to stumble into unawares.

None of this detracts from the film exactly, but there's a a lack of balance throughout that dulls the story's focus. The quest itself is intentionally generic - the thrill is meant to be that they're living out a fantasy for real - but it comes across as slightly half-hearted on screen, a checklist of stages the characters have to go through. Possibly the fussiness around it comes from a realisation that the central story is weak, but it doesn't solve the problem.

The brothers' relationship is the strongest part of the film, but pretty much all the relationships are well-rounded, with characters constantly refusing to fall back on dramatic cliches. Even when people don't get along, they consistently like each other; the big dramatic moment between the brothers is (relatively) quickly smoothed over because they're brothers who get along - and realistically there's never going to be a shock reveal that instantly tears them apart.

Initially Onward threatens to be yet another Disney feature about "the chosen one". The prologue explains that magic died out because it was hard to master, but Ian turns out to be a natural at it. It could almost be a superhero origin story; fortunately this is drawing its inspiration from a very different tradition.

Fantasy adventure, especially in its Lord of the Rings-inspired Dungeons & Dragons form, is largely about teamwork. Your character can be the best fighter or magic user or thief there is, but you're still going to need to join a party made up of other characters to get things done.

So while Ian is the only character here who fits into a traditional D&D role (Barley might have been a fighter in an earlier draft but here he's just a metal dude; their mum is just a protective mum), the idea of a team (or party) sharing the focus runs throughout the film. 

It's about a community where everyone wins when they work together; some stories are more relevant in 2020 than others.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Current War

As possibly the last major new release appearing in Australian cinemas for a while, The Current War is suddenly surprisingly relevant - and not in a "as the lights go out..." fashion either. It's a film about a lot of things - too many, most of the time - but on thing it does make clear is that human progress is as much about science as it is about business. Knowledge makes money, not the other way around.

The year is 1880, and Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) has invented the lightbulb. Well, a lightbulb; as this movies make clear (often to its detriment), the field of electrical discovery in late 19th century America was a crowded one, and no sooner had someone invented something than a half dozen imitators were selling their wares. Fun fact: the reason why light globes have that strange turn-and-lock arrangement for fitting into a socket is because Edison trademarked the screw-in light globe (which then failed to take off).

One of these competitors is successful industrialist (he makes train brakes) George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), who invites Edison to dinner to discuss ways they can work together. Edison snubs him, leaving him standing on a train station platform while his personal train rushes by. But Westinghouse is not a man who rushes into revenge; rather, he decides to champion Alternating Current (the AC to Edison's preferred Direct Current or DC) in the rush to electrify America's cities. DC is cheaper and safer than gas; AC is cheaper still, and can be sent further. But Edison believes it is too dangerous, and as the publicity war heats up he's desperate for any sales angle he can get.

There's a third player in all this: Nicola Tesla (Nicolas Hoult), who has big ideas and a history of being fired from everywhere he works (including an early stretch working for Edison). For much of the film it's unclear exactly where all this is heading (Tesla mostly lurks on the sidelines), and while director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon does a solid job of storytelling within each scene, eventually it becomes clear that not all of those earlier scenes were heading anywhere.

This scattershot storytelling is The Current War's biggest flaw. Visually Gomez-Rejon does an excellent job, giving much of the film the muted glow of the candlelight the cast are looking to supplant, while the script (by Michael Mitnick) constantly keeps an eye out for the human side of these technological advances - the wonder of mass electrical lighting, or being able to hear your voice played back to you for the very first time.

While the cast is strong all round, most notably Tom Holland as Eidson's 2IC, Tuppence Middleton as Edison's wife and Katherine Waterston as Westinghouse's spouse, it's Cumberbatch and Shannon that carry the film. This is a more sympathetic portrayal of Edison than the norm lately: he's a huckster and arrogant with it, but he also deeply cares about his family and has real concerns about AC's safety - even if he's more than happy to use those concerns for publicity purposes.

Likewise, Westinghouse is a largely sympathetic figure (there are numerous side references to his refusal to fire his workers) who is driven as much by an urge to build a better society as he is to turn a profit. It's clear this is more of a race than a war, and when a destination finally comes into sight - who will electrify the upcoming Chicago World's Fair and display their technological prowess to the world - the film finally finds its way.

But for much of its length the storytelling is muddled by subplots (is AC so deadly it can be used to kill a man in an electric chair?) and side characters (the aforementioned Tesla, who only becomes relevant when he comes up with an advance Westinghouse needs). There's enough material here for a half dozen films; sometimes too much light can blind instead of illuminate.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Bloodshot

As comicbook characters go, Bloodshot's name recognition isn't exactly up there with Batman's. It's not even up there with Bat-Mite's, which kind of defeats the purpose of a comicbook adaptation. Still, Bloodshot's publisher Valiant has stumbled in and out of business for over twenty years now, so the regenerating killer with a mysterious past and a lust for vengeance must have some fans out there. Right?

This film has exactly one twist, which the trailer spoils and is handled poorly in the film itself anyway: after special ops soldier Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) is brutally murdered by a terrorist for extremely flimsy reasons, he wakes up with no memory but a bunch of generic nano-technology powered abilities like super-strength and rapid healing.

No sooner has Dr Emil Harting (Guy Pearce) explained the set-up than Garrison remembers who killed him - and that first he watched his wife (Talulah Riley) die (by a cattle bolt gun no less). Enraged, he races off, uses his new nanite abilities to instantly locate the terrorist, and gets into a moderately cool battle with the bad guy's hired goons before finishing the job. So the movie's over? Not quite.

The basic set-up - dead soldier brought back to life with false memories implanted so he'll kill who he's told and think it's all his idea - was stale when Bloodshot the comic ripped it off from Frank Miller and Geof Darrow's (far crazier) comic Hard Boiled, which itself was using a bunch of ideas left over from when Miller was writing the Robocop sequels. Also: Wolverine. And Universal Soldier, come to think of it.

So original this is not; unfortunately, it doesn't do much of anything interesting with the conceit of a killer who can't trust his memories, tossing aside the idea of his constantly reliving the same moments as soon as possible and not bothering to play with the idea that "the real world" could also be based on fiction. We never even find out whether the story of his death is real - though that may just be leaving the door open for a sequel that seems increasingly unlikely to come.

Harting's squad of tech-augmented semi-super-soldiers are sketched in broad but effective strokes, with morally tortured swimmer KT (Elza Gonzalez) the sidekick in waiting while the others at least get interesting techno-abilities (robot limbs, artificial eyes). They also seem more entertainingly plausible than Garrison, who's just a stocky middle-aged man whose chest glows red if you shoot him too much.

Fortunately his job here is largely to stomp around while people shoot at him, and there's the occasional effective moment here and there where his ability to constantly regenerate creates some interesting visuals. The action is what you're here for and it's the strongest part of the film, which is to say it's the only part of the film that uses Vin Diesel well.

The trouble with pretty much every Vin Diesel movie that doesn't have Fast & Furious in the title is that if you're not extremely careful everyone else in the movie can seem more interesting than him. That's definitely the case here, and even though he's actually meant to be a brick-like unstoppable force that the rest of the plot turns on, every single person in every single scene is still more charismatic than he is, including some of the generic goons he uses as human shields.

Still, at least nobody calls him "Bloodshot".

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Way Back

The main reason to see The Way Back - a competently made and engaging if by-the-numbers redemption story about a losing high school basketball team and the former star turned boozehound who coaches them (and himself) to victory - is because famous celebrity drunk Ben Affleck is playing the one-time celebrity turned drunk. How good is he in the role he was born to play? Let's find out!

The trick when watching drunks on the big screen is to check out the eyes. Affleck has the beady-eyed puffy squint down pat, but you can tell he's an actor drawing on past memory rather than an active drunk. For one thing, his eyes just aren't watery enough - fans of watching a drunk pretend he's not really should check out Jon Hamm in (the extremely forgettable) Keeping Up with the Joneses, in which he plays someone who doesn't take a drink throughout the entire film but most definitely looks like he's on the sauce.

While he looks the part with his slump shouldered stance, the decision to keep the actual drunk acting here to a minimum is a smart one because Affleck's physical drunk acting isn't up to much. He stumbles, he staggers, but it's all pretty pro forma: there's nothing here that comes close to the scene in Bad Santa where Billy Bob Thornton is gradually revealed coming up an escalator and every fiber of his being screams "I am so wasted". Affleck looks like a heavy drinker, but he doesn't move like one.

What Affleck does get right - and presumably he's the one getting it right because the script doesn't call for it - is a vague sense of explosive menace. Being around a drunk isn't a whole lot of fun because you're never quite sure what's going to set them off or what they're going to do once they've been set off. Affleck taps into that, but only briefly: there's a moment early on where he slaps a beer car across the room and nobody really bats an eye, but it's pretty much the only moment where his boozing feels really felt.

Obviously he can't really be a dangerous drunk because this is a heartwarming movie about him coaching teenagers; nobody's going to stick around if he starts slapping the kids. There's even a scene towards the end where he's blind drunk and being threatened by an aggressive stranger and he goes out of his (drunken) way to defuse the situation. He's a drunk who's only a danger to himself, and even then only because drinking messes up his sense of direction.

Reportedly the can slapping moment was improvised by Affleck, and the more you think about it the more out of character it is for him - despite being one of the few deeply felt moments here. That's because the script really has nothing to say about drinking beyond the standard "he's drinking to dull the pain". The more backstory we get, the less interesting and more easily explained his drinking becomes, until it ends up as a simple equation where pain = drinking.

Affleck's presence here is the big selling point and he does give a powerful performance, but his presense also distorts the story. The Way Back is a straightforward and relatively heartwarming tale of a man who's lost but finds redemption in coaching a group of plucky youngsters who help him reconnect to the only meaningful thing in his life (sports). Being drunk is just a plot device and the film has nothing at all to say about it; if being addicted to anything else was remotely family friendly, this film would work exactly as well with him hooked on crack or sex or an insane amount of exercise.

Worse, this doesn't even deliver on what it promises. No doubt Affleck's experiences of hitting the bottle shaped his (again, strong) performance, but the script doesn't allow him to express anything particularly new or insightful about alcohol addiction. All that he manages to get across is that when he's on the sauce he's not having a great time. Hopefully he had a plucky bunch of thinly sketched basketball-loving teens to inspire him to get off the booze too.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears is a kind of film Australia doesn't turn out often.  We're big on sombre takes on important issues; the wacky adventures of over-the-top characters occasionally get a look-in. But this is a straight-up romp: flapper-era private investigator Phryne Fisher (Esse Davis) has globe-trotting adventures in which she all but winks at the camera while getting into scrapes and flirting with handsome men. It's kind of cheesy, but that's part of its charm - but is it as charming as it thinks?

The year is 1929, the place is British-ruled Palestine, and Miss Fisher has taken her crime-solving antics global, jumping across rooftops to rescue imprisoned young agitator Shirin Abbas (Izabella Yena), niece of Sheikh Kahlil Abbas (Kal Naga).

 

Exactly how this ties into a series of murders in London, or a lengthy stay at the country home of Lord Lofthouse (Daniel Lapaine), or the mysterious disappearance of an entire village in the deserts of Arabia, or a giant emerald that might possibly be cursed (according to a professor played by John Walters) isn’t exactly a mystery, but there’s little denying this is a movie (directed by Tony Tisle and written by Deb Cox) with a lot of plot.

To be fair, this is a film that needs it: while the costumes are as fantastic as always and various Melbourne locations do a decent job of standing in for various London locations, visually this is nothing to write home about. Possibly any attempt at a more striking style would have been too much of a break from the original television series; it's still surprising that, at a time when even low budget Australian films often feature striking visuals, this is very much a meat and potatoes effort.

This results in the film's strongest stretch being the middle act, which is basically a traditional murder mystery set in an English country manor. Why the whole film wasn't like this is both obvious and annoying; clearly a big screen version of Miss Fisher needed to be bigger than the television version, and yet the closer this gets to the small screen version the stronger it becomes.

Both the scenes in Palestine - which involve a somewhat lacklustre motorcycle chase and a lot of scrabbling around on the roof of a speeding train that is clearly an old "Red Rattler" carriage from the Newport railway museum - and a final act set in the desert feel like the film biting off more than it can comfortably chew, striving for a kind of Indiana Jones energy and ending up closer to Quigley Down Under.

But this is a film where those kind of judgments are largely beside the point. The appeal here is seeing Miss Fisher looking glamourous while sticking it to pompous toffs, throwing quips around, and making the clearly infatuated Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) squirm. On that level, this gets pretty much everything right.

Davis is clearly the shining star here, giving Miss Fisher charm and charisma to spare. If this film has a serious problem, it's that it thinks, however briefly, that widescreen locations are what people are coming here to see. Every moment that Miss Fisher isn't front and center on screen is a moment wasted; she's not just the best thing in this film, she's the only thing that makes it a film, and her fans will find plenty here to applaud.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Professor and the Madman

The Professor and the Madman is not a decent film for a whole range of reasons - which, because they include Sean Penn seemingly cutting off his own dick, I will most definitely be going into later on - but a big part of it is that Mel Gibson is trying to replace how the public sees him with how he sees himself. Last year's Dragged Across Concrete worked in large part because there Gibson was playing an angry racist. Here? He's a living saint.

Based on the true story of how the Oxford English Dictionary came to be, one of the many problems this film has is that while a while lot of things take place, very few of them join up to form a story.  Professor James Murray (Gibson) is a Scottish school teacher who's religious, well-mannered, a loving husband and caring father, and a man passionately devoted to language: who better to take over Oxford university's struggling dictionary project?

Meanwhile, former US Army surgeon turned crazed murderer Dr William Minor (Sean Penn) is acting crazy at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he's been sent after murdering the husband of Eliza Merrett (Natalie Dormer). There he saves the life of a guard impaled on a faulty gate, decides he wants his army pension sent to Merrett to make amens for his crime, and then really gets into helping out Murray (whose big idea to get the dictionary done is to ask the public for help).

Conflicts between director Farhad Safinia (who's had his name taken off the film) and the producers meant this has been sitting on a shelf since 2016, and the end result has some definite rough edges in editing (plus a couple of establishing shots seemingly shot on a handicam from 2004).

But not even a skilled editor could make Penn's massively over the top performance belong alongside everyone else, or change the way that Steve Coogan's character (Murray's biggest supporter) literally just shows up at multiple points to say "I have a cunning plan" and then saves the day via some off-camera scheme. Did I mention Minor ends up teaching Merrett how to read?

It'd be tempting to say the film's biggest mistake comes when Minor - suddenly tormented by his budding romance with the wife of the man he killed - rips a metal strip from a chair and uses it to (tastefully) do something that results in him bleeding profusely from the groin. But does he actually cut off his dick? Whatever he does lop off kills the romance stone dead so it seems safe to guess he's now coming up short in the downstairs department. Did this happen in real life? No. Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put it in the movie? Well, it does star Mel Gibson.

Annoyingly, it's hard to deny that Gibson remains a strong and charismatic actor. He's easily the best thing here as the films moral centre, a man who sticks by his principles, stays true to his friends, consults his wife on all major decisions, clearly loves his children, is well read without being arrogant, is a firm but thoughtful leader and so on and so forth.

But in 2020 the fact that Gibson is an angry man with a dark side he can't hide is so firmly ingrained in the public consciousness - when the public bothers to think of him at all; if being an abusive drunk hadn't killed his career a decade ago his star would probably still be on the wane today - that his warm and kindly performance here feels like the set up for a joke that never comes.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Sonic the Hedgehog

Remember that creepy weird Sonic the Hedgehog design that so freaked out fans this movie was put back three months while the film's effects department went through the entire film and reworked the CGI character to be less... spindly? Out went the smaller eyes and long legs, in came the more compact and cartoony version fans love?

Watching the finished movie, that original design makes sense: this Sonic is, for most of the movie at least, an awkward, hyperactive teen trying to figure out if he has a place in the world. It makes sense that he'd look a bit off; then again, he also looked a bit off, and the new and improved version is a lot closer to the super-fast blue alien hedgehog we all know and possibly have feelings towards.

           (the original model Sonic - note the legs and tiny face)

Opening mid-explosion in the kind of "that's me - Sonic. Bet you're wondering how I got into this predicament" introduction that even the kids this is aimed at have seen too many times, this rushes through Sonic's origin (alien raised by an Owl, has magic teleporting rings, is sent to Earth to hide out, is given the not at all psychological damaging advice of "never stop running") to get to the status quo: he lives in a cave of the outskirts of the small town of Green Hills, where he spies on everyone and talks to himself in an attempt to prevent the isolation from driving him insane. Good luck with that.

James Marsden was having a bit of a career comeback when he signed on for the role of local cop Tom Wachowski, so that's probably over now. But he remains the most likable man in Hollywood and brings a lot of charm to a largely thankless role as firstly a bored cop and then secondly a surrogate parent to Sonic after an emotional outburst from the depressed and frustrated hedgehog results in an energy burst that attracts the attention of the US military's most unhinged drone pilot, Doctor Robotnik (Jim Carrey).

Carrey is doing a greatest hits tour here, dusting off all the old tics and antics that made him a star twenty five years ago. The good news is they still work, putting the film in the awkward position of having its star hedgehog as the weakest performance in the film. But there are a bunch of decent speed-related action sequences, and Sonic's emotional arc - he knows he should flee the planet but his next stop is a lifeless mushroom planet and he can't keep living alone and on the run - is strong enough to hold everything together.

This is much more aimed purely at kids than last year's Detective Pikachu, and it moves fast enough (sorry) to keep them entertained while the grown ups wonder why Marsden doesn't get better roles. The ending leaves the door open for at least one sequel, though there's nothing much here that'll leave you wanting more; guess Sonic'll have to be happy with the games and comics and TV series and collectable figures and hoodies and phone cases and whatever else the Sega official store is selling this week.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Birds of Prey

It's always a surprise when a superhero movie turns out to be good. That's because most superhero movies are more like Birds of Prey: just erratic and uneven enough to leave you feeling vaguely unsatisfied, even if most of the elements for a decent film are present and accounted for. It's not hard to be better than predecessor Suicide Squad (and this is), but DC haven't cracked the formula for a successful ensemble film just yet.

The hook here is that this is girls versus boys, straight down the line; the days when this kind of film would have a wimpy guy on the good girls team, or the bad guy would have a female assassin so the girls had someone to fight are over. This battle of the sexes works better than something like last year's all-female gangster film The Kitchen did, mostly because the superhero genre is literally about empowerment fantasies - even if Margot Robbie's now-single Harley Quinn is largely a quirky, garish bad guy who snorts cocaine mid-fight to level up.

(she does get something of a redemption arc, but it's slight: you don't make money changing a successful superhero)

Quinn is the lead here, with bad guy Black Mask / Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) in second place camping it up entertainingly when he's not having faces removed or ordering a terrified guest in his club to dance on a table while her date is forced to peel her dress off with a knife. The rest of Quinn's girl gang - Diana / Black Canary (Jurnee Smollet-Bell), Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) - tend to get one character trait each, some of which work better than others. Montoya's 80's cop movie banter falls flat every time, while Huntress' failure to maintain her stern avenger persona is fun.

A movie that contains five - six if you count the main bad guy - origin stories is bound to have a lot going on in the script department. Sensibly, the actual plot is extremely straightforward: everyone wants a diamond that has a bunch of bank account details laser-coded into it, and when a character swallows it then we have a reason for this search across a somewhat gritty Gotham (it's like a sunnier version of the city seen in Joker) to run movie length as the good guys wait for it to be pooped out while keeping the swallower away from the bad guys willing to just cut it out.

(is there an article to be written about movies that use someone swallowing the mcguffin as an excuse to drag things out? It feels like there is)

What is a surprise is that so much of the story is a mess. Initially Quinn is telling it and her unbalanced state of mind after being dumped by the (unseen) Joker kind of justifies the going back and forth, but there's a reason why opening a movie mid-action then freeze-framing while a narrator says "let me explain how I got here" is a comedy cliche, and this does that more than once.

All this ducking and weaving eventually settles down, but this definitely feels like a film that's had a going-over in the edit. The multiple origin stories are either told piecemeal or repeatedly, characters are introduced more than once, other characters are built up then vanish (what happened to the DA?), and the "birds of prey" don't even get together until the final act. While none of this is exactly fatal, if this is trying to sweep an audience along on sheer energy alone then it's not exactly Goodfellas.

The good news is that this does get right the only things we really care about in superhero movies: the characters are mostly memorable and the fights are largely entertaining. Not all the cast get a real chance to shine - this probably could have lost at least one Birds of Prey team member, especially as their girl gang chemistry isn't great - and the fights occasionally feel a little samey, but by the final act it's all settled into a groove that's solidly, if not all that spectacularly, entertaining.

- Anthony Morris