Best and Worst Films of 2021

 

What was the best film of 2021? I’ll be honest: nothing I saw this year is going to top a motorcycle-riding bag snatcher running over a guide dog in the 1976 Italian police thriller Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man, but as that movie is a): 45 years old and b): expects us to cheer two cops who are working as a literal death squad – they constantly gun down criminals before the criminals can even commit a crime – let’s move on.

 

For half the year Hollywood was keeping their big titles under wraps; for the rest of the year they couldn’t get them out the door quickly enough. Making any kind of cultural splash – and then converting that into box office – defeated a number of films that in previous years might have done okay. Unless your movie featured Spider-Man, or possibly giant sand worms, you’re not coming out of 2021 with people clamouring for more.

 

Usually when compiling these lists I find myself latching onto trends as much as individual films. This year pretty much everything stood alone, unless you were an action film with a female lead (The Protégé, Gunpowder Milkshake, Jolt, Kate), or you were me and spent much of the year trying to watch every UK crime film based on a real-life 1996 drug murder in Essex (there’s at least 14 of them, and many are not good at all). Did this relentless pursuit of violent depravity affect my choices? Who can say (yeah, probably).

 

So in no particular order and with no excuses or explanations, here are my top ten films of 2021:

 

*High Ground

*Evangelion 3.0.1.01 Thrice Upon a Time

*Another Round

*The French Dispatch

*Red Rocket

*Pig

*The Worst Person in the World

*Licorice Pizza

*Nobody

*Wrath of Man

 

And here are a bunch of honourable mentions, some of which are probably top ten-worthy but for whatever personal reason just missed the cut.

 

*The Father

*My Name is Gulpilil

*Lapsis

*King Rocker

*Happily

*Oxygen

*Till Death

*One Shot

*Copshop

*Bill and Ted Face the Music

*West Side Story

*Settlers

*Old Henry

*Titane

*The Card Counter

*Dune

*Spider-Man No Way Home

*Matrix Resurrections

 

Actually, some of these near-misses do require a little explanation. The Father was clearly an excellent film but I could happily live my entire life without seeing another film about Alzheimer’s; Spider-Man: No Way Home was a fun experience to watch but 70% of the time it was just an extremely well-crafted collection of guest appearances; Titane was really two very different movies spliced together and the second one was a bit of a step down; I really liked The Matrix: Resurrections but it definitely had flaws.

 

Is King Rocker even available locally? I got a copy via a contact in the UK because I’m a Stewart Lee fan; Oxygen had a brilliant concept but didn’t quite live up to it; Till Death had an ok concept but worked the hell out of it; Lapsis wasn’t the best film but it did an excellent job of literalising the kind of shitty online work that increasingly looks like the future; One Shot was an action movie filmed in one take (with a bunch of blackout moments, so really more like a half dozen takes) which managed to be even better than the concept suggests.

 

Old Henry was a really good western that deserved a higher profile; Settlers was a really good science fiction film that did a lot of things right (even the one obvious thing it seemed to be doing wrong); Copshop had Gerard Butler; Dune was big! Everything else was just plain decent.

 

*

 

As for the worst movies of the year, the problem there is that a lot of the movies that were objectively bad – Fatale, Voyagers, Space Jam: A New Legacy – I liked, if for reasons unrelated to their quality. C’mon, Space Jam was a kids movie featuring Pennywise the kid-killing clown and the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange! Voyagers was horny teens in space; it gets three stars just for being accurately described by the line “horny teens in space”.

 

The other problem is that watching a lot of films that didn’t get a cinema release is a good way to remind yourself that most of the really bad films each year don’t get a cinema release. Even something that was a clear failure – I’m looking at you, Eternals – was still a lot better in just about every way than Essex Vendetta.

 

So it’s hard to point at a film and say “you failed me in every conceivable way” – unless you happened to buy a DVD copy of Die in a Gunfight in the post-Xmas sales. That is most definitely not a good film, and that’s coming from someone who in 2021 willingly watched at least two action movies starring Ruby Rose.

 

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage

 

The Venom movies run counter to just about everything that's made superhero movies such a success over the last decade. Is that why they're also a lot more fun than most superhero movies of the last decade? Let's find out!

For one thing, Venom himself is a murderous supervillain - uh, "lethal protector" - and while he doesn't really get to kill a whole lot of people, he does have an actual direct, on-camera, he just bit that guy's head off body count, which superhero movies have been terrified of since that Superman movie where the internet decided Superman probably killed a bunch of people just off screen.

For another, as Venom memorably said in his first film, Venom is "a loser". And as this film makes clear, so is his human partner Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). Much of the first third of this movie's plot is meant to be driven by Brock's sharp journalism skills uncovering the truth regarding a whole lot of bodies hidden by serial killer Cleatus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) - only as the film makes clear, Brock is kinda rubbish at journalism and it's only Venom's superhuman powers of observation that are getting him over the line.

So while Brock now has a fancy apartment, he can't win back his ex Anne (Michelle Williams), who is now engaged to Dr Dan (Reid Scott), while the local cops - as personified by Detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) - have no respect for him, and Venom himself wants to start eating human (rather than chicken) heads. Then Cleatus develops his own version of the symbiote (named Carnage, naturally) and things get nasty.

Running at a tight 90 minutes, this does what it needs to do and gets out. Much of this would be barely watchable at two hours, but with just about every element shaved down to the bone - only the interactions between Venom and Eddie feel a little self-indulgent, and they're the best thing about the film - this ends up as as an entertaining, if probably forgettable, antidote to superhero bloat.

Hardy (who co-wrote the script) is the big draw here and he's clearly having a lot of fun playing a doofus. If it's a vanity project, it's the best kind: he knows what's fun about the concept, he focuses on that, and he does a solid job of sharing that fun with the audience. The end credits scene suggests a slightly deeper interaction with the Marvel universe might be on the cards: just putting him next to the stuffed shirts that populate the current Marvel line-up should be comedy gold.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Last Night in Soho

As a director, Edgar Wright is good at holding an audience's attention. Whatever his movies' flaws - and you could argue his Hollywood films (Scott Pilgrim and Baby Driver) have their issues - he never forgets to make his films entertaining. But sometimes being an entertainer works against you. Some stories need a bit of a edge if they're going to have an impact.

Eloise Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) - Ellie to her friends, of whom she seemingly has none as she lives in a small town 60's timewarp with her gran - has just been accepted into the London College of Fashion. It's a dream come true... though no sooner has she arrived than she begins to realise she has been living in a dream, as the youth of today are brash, noisy, and consider her 60s affectations somewhat naff. 

Fortunately she discovers a surprisingly cheap bedsit apartment in the heart of Soho, promptly moves in, and suddenly starts having nightly dreams in which she's transported back to the actual 60s, where she haunts wannabe singer Sandie Collins (Anya Taylor-Joy). It's everything she hoped London would be, and a marked contrast to the dour real world around her - until things start to go wrong.

Writer-director Wright establishes early on that Ellie is either psychic or nuts (she sees her dead mother, who killed herself after the stress of London life became too much - uh oh). The main thrust of the story is Ellie's rapid unraveling once Sandie's swinging 60s life turns grim under the "guidance" of her "manager" (Matt Smith). Wright has the visual skills to pull off a psychological thriller-slash-urban fantasy-slash-horror film with ease and this is never less than fun, but the story he's telling stumbles more than once.

This is the kind of film where there's plenty of careful foreshadowing to answer the audience's questions once the (many) twists play out, but little effort put in to creating a realistic protagonist we can care about. Even for an isolated country teen, Ellie's remarkably uninterested in asking basic questions, let alone using google to get answers about what's going on around her; her shock at the realisation that Soho in the 60s was actually a grimy den of sleaze leaves her seeming fatally naive (especially as "nostalgia is bad" is the closest thing to a theme this has), while her extended real-world breakdown features at least one public freak-out too many.

Wright's always been a director interested in style over substance - when there's been substance - but here his drive to keep the twists coming actively undermines the story going on underneath the shocks. The message in 2021 that men are abusive sex pests is both predictable and impossible to argue against; Wright tries to use that to blindside the audience, but whatever he gains in surprise he loses in impact.

Fortunately, the cast are entertaining throughout, with McKenzie's performance going a long way towards making Ellie seem like someone who might actually exist. Wright's visual skills create a series of always entertaining scenes, especially early on in his recreated 60s Soho, and while there's never any real suspense on offer it's still a gripping roller coaster ride. Twists and turns this has; heart, not so much.

-Anthony Morris

Review: The Many Saints of Newark

Don’t be fooled by the trailer; while this does feature a young Tony Soprano (played convincingly by James Gandolfini’s son Michael), he’s a minor player in this Sopranos prequel. The real focus here is the trials and tribulations of Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), mid-level player in the New Jersey mob during the late 60s and early 70s; Tony's a looming background presence, slowly drawn into the mob life.

 

While there’s plenty of Sopranos characters lurking around the in the background – some vividly re-created, others verging on parody – it's Dickie who's the star, both of the film and on the streets of Newark. But his troubles with his mobbed-up father "Hollywood Dick" Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), who’s just returned from Italy with new wife Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi), hint at deeper issues.

 

Over the course of the next five years or so Dickie is seen by those around him as a stand-up guy – an image that is far from accurate in his private life - while a series of race riots and social unrest provide an opportunity for black crime figure Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.) to move out from under Dickie’s shadow and start up a rival syndicate. If you've never seen a mob movie before, rest assured that this is not the kind of thing the Mafia is going to just let happen.

 

Written by Sopranos’ creator David Chase, this is a solid but rarely spectacular film that probably would have worked better if it had been turned into a miniseries (or lost a few supporting characters). Individual scenes often stand out and Dickie’s character arc is a strong central theme, but multiple callbacks to events mentioned in the original series leave the film feeling more aimless than it needs to be.

 

Director Alan Taylor and his team do a vivid job of recreating the feel of 60s and early 70s New Jersey, giving this a historical veneer that really makes the turmoil of the era pop. Coupled with a range of spot-on musical choices, the setting feels almost too real for the occasionally cartoony mobsters strutting through it - though this contrast only highlights the brutal fates of some of them.

 

For those interested in this purely as a prequel the film's excesses will be easier to take, though even there some of the big moments feel a little rushed. Tony’s scenes, especially with his mother (vividly played by Vera Farmiga) are excellent and yet still feel like they belong in another project entirely; this a film where you leave the cinema excited about the prospect of checking out the deleted scenes.

 

 

 

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Last Duel

The trouble with Ridley Scott's new movie The Last Duel is that in 2021 the story it's telling can only end one way. I'm not talking about the results of the actual duel - no spoilers here for a real-life 600 year old event - but trying to tell a "there's more than one side to the story" tale about a woman who says she was raped isn't going to fly today.

To be fair, The Last Duel doesn't attempt to have it any other way. There are three chapters in this 150-minute film about the last legal duel to the death in France, each titled "The Truth according to..." depending on which one of the three leads is the focus. The first is Matt Damon's Jean De Carrouges, an old plodder who's good at surviving battles and not a whole lot else, which is a problem because his local ruler, Count Pierre d'Alençon (Ben Affleck) likes winners and partying. 

His version of events presents De Carrouges as basically a decent guy in a rough-hewn fashion who gets in a bunch of battles but finds himself slowly pushed to the outer because of a lack of social skills. Unfortunately for him, his friend Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) has the social skills to pay the bills - literally, as he becomes the Count's tax collector and close confidant.

The once close friends become estranged, which it's easy to imagine adding a layer of tragedy to proceedings if it was about literally anything else but a woman being raped. Said woman being De Carrouges' wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer), who is easily the most interesting character in this film - but we have a way to go to get her yet.

Le Gris' version of events paints himself in a better light, as you'd expect. It also gives us a lot more of The Count swanning around in a 14th century gold tracksuit while hosting orgies (easily the best part of the film), while making it clear that De Carrouges is a brute with no class. There's also plenty of Le Gris going on about how he's in love with Marguerite and can't live without her, which almost certainly would have landed very differently in a version of this film made 20 years ago.

Both men's versions have Marguerite first privately then publicly claiming she was raped by Le Gris, which eventually leads to the duel that opens and closes this film. De Carrouges's take has him believing her out of his love; Le Gris's version is that she wanted it and all her protests were merely to save her dignity. When we finally get her version - her chapter opens the same as the others, only when the other words fade from the screen "the truth" lingers - neither version is shown to be correct.

This kind of film is usually designed to send audiences out of the cinema arguing amongst themselves about which characters they believe and whether justice was served. The Last Duel makes it clear:  Marguerite's version is the truth. So why bother with the others? Who cares what a rapist and a brutish, disengaged husband thinks?

Obviously everyone in 14th century France for starters, but Ridley Scott fails to bring to the screen any real sense or understanding of medieval life beyond the superficial. The reason for three versions of the one story is to give us three versions of medieval life, but for all Scott's skill at presenting the surface trappings there's rarely much of a sense here of what life was actually like - a fatal flaw in a film that's a social drama that hinges on highlighting both the differences and similarities between that time and ours. 

This window into the past is murky at best, full of modern language and cliches (the King is a giggling fool, priests are sinister, women are gossipy backstabbers, mothers-in-law are nasty, etc), only rarely hinting at just how different the world of 600-odd years ago was. The point is clearly to make a medieval #metoo movie to show how little has changed - many of the court details and references to abusive priests leading up to the duel could come from a film set today - but without first establishing how different things also were, the similarities just seem obvious and lazy.

Unwilling to make this a clear-cut tale of good versus evil, and unable to present the central events with any real level of ambiguity, all that's left is a repetitive study of an ugly, petty time where thugs and fools ruled and love was just an excuse for crime. Which might have worked if there was any kind of animating spirit underneath it all: while all three leads give decent performances, they rarely connect with each other, giving only glimpses of the grand passions that supposedly are driving them.

On the plus side, the duel itself is thrilling film making and brutal viewing, especially if you don't already know who's going to win. Scott remains a vivid, powerful director - just so long as nobody has to speak.

 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Superhero movies, at least under the Disney / Marvel regime, are largely about taking other genres and putting a Marvel logo up front. It's largely the other studios (including Sony using Marvel characters) that are making "traditional" superhero movies about crazy villains and reality-shattering plots; Marvel's superhero model is to find another popular action genre, drop some superheroes in, make some wise-cracks, and tie it all into the MCU after the credits roll.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings works not because superheroes and martial arts are a logical fit (most superhero fights have at least some martial arts thrown in there somewhere), but because the super-heroic stuff is kept to a bare minimum. It's a Disney martial arts movie that occasionally makes off-hand references to the rest of the Marvel universe, and it's all the better for it.

Shaun (Simu Liu) spends his days parking cars at a hotel in San Francisco with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) and his nights singing karaoke, again with his best friend Katy. Her family thinks they're wasting their lives; his family... isn't mentioned. Then a mysterious band of thugs attack them on a bus looking to steal the jade pendant his mother gave him, it turns out his previously unmentioned martial arts skills are irrepressible, and one demolished bus later Shaun / Shang is off to Macau with Katy in tow to find his sister Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) in an illegal superpowered fight club.

Turns out their father is Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), possessor of the legendary Ten Rings (though what kind of legend are they when everyone knows he has them?) and chief of a thousand year-old crime society. Any resemblance to characters like Fu Manchu are deliberate - in the original comics, Manchu was Shang's father - but this goes out of its way to avoid the yellow peril cliches.

Wenwu put his crime life into hibernation when he fell in love with their mother (Fala Chen), who was the guardian of Ta Lo, a mysterious supernatural village. She's been dead for over a decade - only their father, now back on the evil side of the street, thinks he has a way to bring her back...

A run of decent fights early on and some fun chemistry between the two leads provides some strong bedrock for what turns out to be a fairly solid, if only moderately spectacular, Marvel origin story. Putting some effort into developing the character of the main villain (a definite rarity for a Marvel film) pays off big time as well, though the rest of the supporting cast - with the exception of Michelle Yeoh - largely fade into the background.

Like a lot of recent Marvel movies, there's two axis of comparison here. As a superhero movie it's a lot of fun, a done-in-one package that provides all the required thrills - and a few surprises - while hitting all the required notes with impressive force. As a martial arts movie it's a little flat; the fights are good and generally well framed (so we can tell what's actually going on) but the CGI required for the superhero effects detracts from the feel of seeing real people doing real stunts that makes the best fights so thrilling.

That's possibly why the final act, which swerves into all-out fantasy, works so well. It brings something fresh to the MCU, and provides yet another twist on the usual superheroics. One day Marvel's going to run out of genres to drop superheroes into; for now, it's a formula that keeps on serving up winners.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Don't Breathe 2

Don't Breathe 2 is an odd sequel in a number of ways. For one, it's late: the original Don't Breathe was released in 2016 and slotted into the then-current trend for "elevated horror" (see also: It Follows) despite mostly being a fairly grungy high concept horror where a trio of would-be thieves broke into an old blind guys house only to discover it's full of traps, he's basically Daredevil as far as hearing goes, and there's a twist with a turkey baster nobody in their right mind saw coming.

It's also a sequel where we're supposed to forget all that - or at least, the turkey baster stuff - because this time the bad guy, Norman Nordstrom, AKA "The Blind Man" (Stephen Lang) is... okay, he's not the good guy, but he's more of a badass than a bad dude. 

The real lead is eleven year old Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), who lives with Norman, doesn't get to go out much and spends her days being taught survival tactics because they live in Detroit 2021. Watch out for the roving gangs of murderers hanging around the shelter full of surplus orphans!

On an extremely rare trip to the outside world, Phoenix and Hernandez (Stephanie Arcila), Norman's only link to humanity so let's not get too attached here, encounter a scuzzy group of van-dwelling dirtbags while a TV in the background runs a news story about a missing Doctor wanted for organ-legging. Could these things be connected? Yes, but not in the way you're probably thinking.

The middle chunk of the film is basically a retread of the first film - criminals turn up at Norman's house looking to grab something, only to realise they've bitten off more than they can chew - though because we're meant to be (somewhat) on Norman's side he's not quite the supernatural killing machine he was first time around. He's still a blind man taking out the trash, but he's struggling with it and not all the trash gets taken all the way out to the bin.

Home invasion films (and even just sequences in a film) are pretty much sure-fire as far as tension goes. They're basically filmed games of hide and seek, and Phoenix's survival skills come in handy as she's got to creep around the house trying to avoid the stalker squad. One nice touch is she never runs, just walks quickly and firmly when she has to, which is the kind of minor moment of competency that makes a film seem like it knows what it's doing.

Because this isn't quite a horror film, and the bad guys have an agenda that isn't quite "murder murder murder", it's able to pull off a few minor gear changes during the home invasion scenes that keep things slightly more interesting than the usual "find them and kill them". The small attempts to give the cartoon thugs some character and motivation, combined with a hero who's both blind and on the back foot in any direct physical confrontation (while also still implausibly effective) makes this just a little more suspenseful than it should be.

A big test for a film where an immovable object runs up against a force that only seems unstoppable for the first hour or so is how well it can delay the point where it goes from "aw shit, how's he going to survive this?"  to "hell yeah, the bad guys are screwed now". This manages to delay it a lot longer than you might expect for a sequel, as the third act throws in a few twists (including a location change) that may not be entirely plausible for a crime film but work just fine as this slides a little further down towards the horror end of the scale. Everything here is nuts if you think about it, but it's all equally nuts so it evens out.

To be fair, all this is qualified praise: it's still a trashy, over the top home invasion thriller largely held together by Lang's imposing physical presence and a script that barrels forward at a rate designed to prevent reflection. It's a relatively standard, if competently crafted, thrill-ride - until you remember what Nordstrom was doing in the first film, which makes this sequel's (relatively effective) attempts to turn him into a good guy one of the craziest plot twists in recent cinematic history. 

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Summer of Soul

The big question with this kind of documentary is: just how much of a documentary does this need to be? If the selling point is the footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, featuring a cavalcade of the best and most important Black musicians in America across six Sundays, how much explaining and context do we need - especially when every minute of talking heads or historical background is a minute less of the music?

There will always be people dissatisfied no matter what the approach. Personally, fingers crossed that eventually there's a way to release the whole series of concerts (or as much as feasible) as stand alone performances; short of that, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised) is the best result we could ask for.

Presented by director Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson from footage originally shot by Hal Tulchin (and then "lost" for half a century), Summer of Soul does a near-perfect job of putting the event in context while still giving the performances room to breathe. It's a thrilling ride, a backstage pass combined with front row seats to a festival of artists working at their peak.

It doesn't hurt that the backdrop itself is so interesting: the changes in Black America, and Harlem in particular, the social tensions of the time, the shifts in fashion (trad suits popular in week one were in the trash by week six), and the various political and economic balls that had to be juggled just to make the event happen are all intriguing.

But it's the acts themselves that are the real draw here, ranging from gospel groups and all but forgotten one-hit wonders to icons of the hippie era (the mixed race performers in Sly and the Family Stone set some audience members aback) and icons like Nina Simone and a (surprisingly confronting) Stevie Wonder - make sure to sit through the end credits to see Wonder verbally take down an assistant on stage in brutal fashion.

On their own, the performances are always interesting and often outstanding. Taken together, they make up an essential guide to the ins and outs of Black music and culture, reaching back into the past while pointing the way to the future. Talking head interviews with many of the surviving musicians only adds to the insights. Some were thrilled, others nervous; careers were on the cusp of greatness, starting a downwards slide, or just happy to be there.

Summer of Soul stands out as a reflection of an exhilarating moment in history, a record of an outstanding series of concerts, and a chance to see some of the funkiest fashions 1969 could serve up. It's a toe-tapping, feel-good triumph.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Candyman

Right from the start, Candyman has always been about looking at a monster, and not because of all the mirrors. The first Candyman film established that "The Candyman" wasn't just a slasher like Jason or Freddy Kruger; he was a legend, a creature that worked (and the first film worked very well indeed) because of the setting and backstory and what he symbolised at least as much as he did because he looked cool and murdered people. It was a slasher story with things to say; the problem with this sequel (not a reboot) is that at times it has so much to say it struggles to get any of it out clearly.

Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is an artist who's lost his drive artistically and with it his already precarious place in the Chicago arts scene. His girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris) is an art gallery director who's going places, and his failure to keep up is causing friction. Looking for inspiration in his community - well, not his actual community, because his community isn't interesting to white buyers, but in the increasingly gentrified former slum known as Cabrini Green - he hears about the legend of Candyman.

Candyman's angle - his hook, if you will - is that after you say his name five times in a mirror he turns up and kills you. You'd think would rapidly thin out the number of people stupid enough to do that and surprise! This film is (in part) directly about that. It's also about gentrification, black culture and where it's situated in America, cycles of social unrest and abuse, myth-making, and why both cops and art critics deserve to die. 

That's a lot, and the dreamy, almost aimless storytelling early on that enables it to touch on so many different angles is one of this film's biggest strengths. For much of the film the story almost drifts along, scene following scene propelled more by dream logic than anything else. There's two main threads - Anthony's increasingly unstable state both physically and mentally, and the growing bodycount racked up by Candyman as Anthony's Candyman-themed exhibit at a local arts show spreads the word around - each increasingly surrounded by a buzzing cloud of dread.

Eventually it's time to tie everything together, and that's where this stumbles. It turns out there is a reason of sorts behind all this, but it's too little, too late, and too muddled to really pay off on all the creepy promise of the earlier scenes. This version of Candyman is covering a lot of ground culturally, and even a hook-handed killer swarming with bees can't do everything.

(one thing this film does do? Brings back Tony Todd in the role, though he's not the only Candyman we see)

It's ironic that this is a story about a slasher icon that survives across time as a legend, as Candyman creator Clive Barker (Bernard Rose co-wrote and directed the original film) has gone from being the hottest thing in horror when the first film was made to barely a footnote in the credits. This time around Jordan Peele is the big name on the poster, though it's the often striking visuals from up-and-coming director Nia DeCosta (who's already been tapped for a Marvel movie) that make this work.

The opening scene (re-interpreted throughout the film) where a hook handed man comes out of a hole in a wall to offer candy to a child is pure nightmare fodder. Most other horror movies wish they had an opening that strong; if this never quite lives up to that, it doesn't let it down either.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Respect

It seems obvious to state that biopics are largely aimed at people already interested in the subject, but it's easily overlooked when the hype around a film is focused on selling it as a gripping story for the ages. Some incredibly famous and successful people led fairly straightforward lives; just because they get a film made about them doesn't mean that film is automatically going to be good.

In that respect, Respect has a tricky job ahead of it. The things that make Aretha Franklin (played here as an adult by Jennifer Hudson) interesting as a movie character aren't always the things that made her successful as a musician - and her musical career, at least as presented here, isn't exactly high drama. She grew up in an extremely musical household where her talent was recognised from a very early age (by family friends like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington), music labels were competing to sign her, and the only thing holding her back from the success that was her due was a handful of men standing in her way. Like that was ever going to stop her.

So the drama has to come from other directions, which is a different kind of problem because nobody likely to see a film about Aretha Franklin wants to see her getting slapped around by her husband / manager Ted White (Marlon Wayans). Even her overbearing but well-meaning but domineering and gun-toting preacher father C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker) can be a bit much, even if he's clearly an obstacle to overcome rather than a bad personal choice.

This ends up hinting at a more interesting Franklin in a handful of scenes that never quite gel. The Franklin who likes sex, can arrange a world-beating song, and is driven to succeed but is wracked by "demons" possibly linked to childhood sexual abuse never quite comes into focus, even when she's staggering around on stage drunk. Respect ends up feeling like the film equivalent of the authorised biography, where only the best-known dirt gets aired and even then only just enough of it to avoid accusations of sweeping it under the rug.

That isn't automatically a bad thing, and to be fair this is clearly as much aimed at people who just want to hear the hits and see her role in the civil rights movement cemented in the public record as those looking for a dramatic story. For the former, it's good news: the hits all get the respect they deserve. Hudson, who's performance is excellent all around, is unsurprisingly good with the musical numbers, which range from early jazz standards right though her 60s classics.

This film's demure approach to her private life can be confusing - good luck keeping track of her children - but it's very much an approach that's building towards the icon she became, where elements that don't fit (no matter how interesting) are kept to a minimum. No surprise then that aside from recording, performing, and overcoming crappy men, the focus is on her work with the church and with the civil rights movement, both of which are treated with - and there's that word again - respect.

Respect doesn't follow Franklin right through her life. It wraps up with the recording of her 1972 gospel album 'Amazing Grace', which is presented as her turning her back on the drink and the demons that bedeviled her pursuit of material fame. It's a fitting climax; the only way it could have been stronger is if we'd seen more of those demons in the two and a half hours before.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Free Guy

 

Free Guy is the latest movie to try to answer the question "could you please stop playing video games?" Perhaps it's a sign of respect that movies treat video games as an experience to be replicated - like mountain climbing or being attacked by a shark - rather than merely a source of story material (you never see a movie about the experience of reading a book). But if Free Guy is any guide, probably not.

 

The hook with Free Guy is that our lead Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is a NPC (non player character) in a Grand Theft Auto-style world, only he becomes self-aware thanks to the power of love (take that, Skynet) and inserts himself into his dream-girls quest to uncover the dark secret at the heart of Free City.  Said dream girl, Millie (Jodie Comer), is a player from the real world, the dark secret is corporate theft, he has to level up to even get her to notice him and when you spell it out like that then yeah, this movie does have a few dodgy moments around the area of personal relationships.

 

The plot is a bit all over the place, as Guy's journey of self-actualisation doesn't have much to do with Millie's real-world struggle to gather proof that her game design was stolen by Taika Waititi's evil corporate video game company. Fun fact: Waititi's performance here is nowhere near as enjoyable as it should be, and kinda suggests that playing a bossy aggressive loud-mouth jerk comes a little too naturally to him.

 

The two plots do connect at one stage where Guy helps Millie with a heist, though it's just a shoot-out scene rather than an actual heist. Considering how popular stealth missions are in video games, why this plot point - which is literally "we need to steal this item from this heavily guarded place" - didn't have them sneaking around (which movies can and do make exciting to watch!) suggests both a lack of gaming knowledge and faith in the audience.

 

Neither plot really stands up on its own either. Guy becomes a real-world celebrity because he levels up by doing nice things in the game, only his being a celebrity has no impact on the plot. The corporate theft angle doesn't seem to make much sense either as Millie's former partner Keys (Joe Keery) is (unhappily) working for the corporation, which is actually referred to in the movie as giving them all the legal cover they need. The broad strokes are clear, but the details don't add up.

 

On the up side, most of the time this manages to be an interesting car crash of a film. That’s partly because Reynolds is an actual movie star playing a clearly defined character and it’s amazing how far that can go to hold a movie together, and partly because this is a rare recent big budget release that is actually about things, even if what it has to say is often muddled or kind of unsettling.

 

All the male-female relationships here are either quasi-stalkerish or based on extremely unbalanced power dynamics, the plot sets out that oppressed peoples can only gain and maintain their liberty at the whim of a more powerful group, a brief comedy insertion of some Disney IP would be an amusing gag if it didn’t explicitly state that Disney IP is superior to anything created for this movie, and gamers outside of a handful of guest stars are presented solely as little kids or basement-dwelling creeps. But a lot of things explode, in-jokes abound, and Reynolds remains charming, so it basically evens out.

 

Strangest of all, a throwaway line or two at the end of the film suggests that the future of gaming isn’t actually controlling characters in a game world, but watching them do things on their own. So basically like… a movie?

 

- Anthony Morris

Out Now: Till Death

The surprising thing about Megan Fox's recent comeback isn't that she's pivoted to lead roles in direct-to-home action thrillers - she clearly still has enough name recognition to draw in viewers - but that the movies she's making are actually not that bad.  

Rogue turned out to be a decent "it's Predator only in the present day and the monster is a lion" action movie; Midnight in the Swtichgrass features Bruce Willis so let's move on; and now with Till Death she takes a stab - literally - at a high concept thriller.

Trapped in a loveless marriage to possibly-evil, definitely-rich dude Mark (Eoin Macken), Emma (Fox) is pretty much sleepwalking through her life, having just broken off an affair with Mark's underling Tom (Ami Ameen). Come their anniversary, Mark gives her a steel necklace, takes her out to dinner, and then drives her out to their lakehouse, which seems a bit suspicious as it's the middle of winter and the place is covered in ice and snow.

It's pretty much all downhill from there for Emma, who soon finds herself handcuffed to a corpse. With no way to free herself, no way to escape, no warm clothes to put on, and a couple of very dodgy characters roaming around outside, it's safe to say this isn't exactly the anniversary party she was expecting. 

Set almost entirely in and around one house, Till Death is the kind of thriller (verging at times on survival horror) that creates an impact by ratcheting up the twists rather than big set pieces. Within the fairly limited parameters of one house, a handful of characters and no way out, this manages to generate a fair amount of suspense without ever going too far over the top.

First time director S.K. Dale brings a bit of style to proceedings, especially in the early, pre-lake house scenes where it's unclear exactly where things are going. A subtly unbalanced performance from Macken, who seems like a typical dick but also shows moments of tenderness, adds a lot to the early unease.

As the damsel in distress, Fox really only has two gears: depressed zombie early on, pissed-off survivalist later. She handles both well (though in another context those early scenes could easily look like bad acting), and while initially this seems like a thriller with one basic idea - how will she survive the elements chained to a corpse? - the story keeps a few surprises up its sleeve.

Giving the characters a bit more personality (and having that personality play a role in the story) wouldn't hurt, but the plot is solid enough to make sure this is never less than watchable. Dale brings enough flair to the action to make him a director to watch, and Fox remains a performer who can sell a struggle to survive. Gripping in its own right, it's the kind of film that leaves you wanting to see what those involved will do next - even if a sequel titled Do Us Part seems unlikely.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Jungle Cruise

Disney movies aren’t real. Well, obviously – but with other movies there’s usually an attempt to provide audiences with a real experience. Put another way, where other movies generally try to be the movie version of something real, it's fair to say Disney movies aim to be the amusement park version of that experience. And considering Jungle Cruise is loosely based on a Disney ride, you can probably guess where this is going.

 

Things start out surprisingly well, first in 1916 London where Doctor Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) is rummaging through the back rooms of some stuffy explorers club while her brother MacGregor (Jack Whithall) is blathering away distracting them with a failed attempt to borrow an artifact that they’ve just secretly sold to German Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons). And yes, World War One is currently raging, making these explorers also traitors? And nobody in the UK recognised the Kaiser’s son walking the streets of London?

 

These questions are swiftly forgotten thanks to some fun sequences as Lily grabs the mysterious arrowhead then ducks and weaves through the collection to escape. Next stop, the Amazon, where Frank “Skipper” Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) is taking his shoddy boat out as part of actual jungle cruises, which also seems a little ahistorical but he tells a lot of really bad jokes so who cares.

 

The Houghtons want to go upriver to find a mythical tree whose flowers can cure any illness, Wolff wants to get paid so he can settle his many debts, there’s a number of chase sequences as everyone runs around like nutcases, Joachim turns up in a submarine, and the whole first act wraps up in an over-the-top orgy of destruction that would have been the climax of a smaller yet possibly better film.

 

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Commuter, The Shallows) has made his name with films that pile incident atop incident to thrilling effect: character work, not so much. As the action moves up river the film is increasingly split between always engaging set pieces and unimpressive attempts to persuade the audience that there’s some kind of romantic spark between Lily and Frank (MacGregor gets to be the twit who eventually comes good). The banter as scripted isn't bad and they're both likable characters in their own right, but together? Half the time they’re barely convincing as workmates.

 

This is a problem, because flirty banter and feisty arguments are the stock-in-trade of the (older, better) films this is a Disney version of. The lack of risk in this cruise up a supposedly deadly river is a bit of a problem too: the early scenes manage to balance cartoony bad guys (exactly what accent is Paul Giamatti's rival cruise operator meant to have?) with equally cartoony chases, but when things are meant to be getting serious later on this often finds itself with no real way to up the stakes.

A quartet of supernatural conquistadors (with Edgar Ramirez playing their leader) cursed to live forever so long as they never leave the river should fill this role, but murky fight sequences and a plot twist or two largely defuse their threat - though they are at least memorably creepy to look at.

Jungle Cruise is still entertaining, and its flaws aren't entirely the fault of the Disney approach: Johnson can do a lot of things, but playing a human being struggling with romantic feelings isn't one of them. But this kind of lightweight adventure desperately needs something believably human underneath all the monsters and deathtraps. It's a lesson in the limits of how far spectacle can take you without real stakes; the result is a film that too often finds itself up the creek without a paddle.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Old

Considering M Night Shyamalan's biggest hit - The Sixth Sense, which is now decades in the rear view mirror - was all based around showing not telling, it's surprising how little faith he shows in his concept in Old. Based on a fairly straightforward idea, and surrounded by a couple of solid developments, it still never quite manages to feel anything like a natural piece of storytelling.

Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and wife Prisca (Vicky Krieps) head off for a family holiday with 11 year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and six year-old Trent (Nolan River), with the parents well aware that this will be their last outing together. They're going to get a divorce, obviously - why, did you think something creepy was waiting for them at the resort?

Twist! Obviously yes, there is something creepy waiting for them at the (creepy) resort, though it takes a while to get there. First we have to see Trent planning out the rest of his life with a slightly unnerving new friend, Prisca saying an unnamed medical condition doesn't change anything, and the rest of the resorts' guests being surprisingly annoying when they're not saying their name and occupation. Shout out to rapper Midsize Sedan.

It turns out that spending time on the isolated and private beach on the nature preserve side of the island ages you rapidly ("something is going on with time on this beach"), you can't leave without blacking out, and some of the guests have more time to spare than others. It also rapidly heals any wounds you might have, which leads to a gruesome moment or two. All that clunky dialogue along the lines of "it'll be our last time together" was there for a reason after all.

(and yes, there is a third act twist of sorts, though it doesn't upend everything we've seen)

Shyamalan (who makes a cameo here as the bus driver of doom) has had a recent run of decent films (Split, Glass), which makes this misstep - or return to form, if you're a fan of mid-career efforts like The Happening - especially disappointing. He's never been a particularly naturalistic film-maker, but his usual bombast and one-note characters are especially ill-suited here. This needed a more subdued vibe to really dig down into the many horrific avenues the central concept opens up. Instead there's a lot of clunky dialogue and performances that are clearly straining for something they can't quite reach.

Old ages into a film that seems to be struggling against itself. Shyamalan's approach to the material aims to unsettle, with offbeat shot choices striving for an off-kilter mood amplified by his decision to hint at the horrors rather than show (many of them) outright. But the performances and dialogue undercut this subtlety, constantly shifting gears back down to the clunky and obvious.

It's hard to call this an outright misfire; Shyamalan's definitely made worse. The concept - Old is based on the graphic novel Sandcastles by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters - has a lot of scope for a great film. Sadly, this isn't it.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Nine Days

 

In a mysterious realm that manifests itself visually as a handful of suburban homes scattered around a seemingly endless stretch of beach, Will (Winston Duke) spends his days watching a wall of old televisions, each showing life as its lived through the eyes of an individual on Earth. When one dies, it's his job to choose a replacement from a number of unborn souls who turn up on his doorstep; the chosen one (who will remember none of this) gets to be born, the others fade away.

Will is the rare resident of this realm who lived a human life, which - coupled with what he's been seeing on his screens - has given him a somewhat harsh view of what it takes to survive on Earth. As the number of souls is whittled down, those who fail the test are given the chance to have an "experience" of their choosing, faked up by Will and sidekick / assistant / concerned neighbour Kyo (Benedict Wong). These are crude enough to be touching rather than twee; despite his own emotional issues, Will remains a tough but fair judge - until the final choice comes around.

It goes without saying that the film is beautifully shot and the performances are strong throughout; the "meaningful" ascetic of this kind of film demands nothing less. Beneath the surface trappings, this kind of fantasy usually falls apart because it's too much of a fantasy; without a grounding in human feelings and situations, what's the point? Despite the pre-birth game show aspects, it's Will's suffering - his sense of failure, and the threat that his injuries will close him off to a vital part of being truly alive - that gives this story real stakes.

There are a number of "life is precious" moments that may strike a chord with some viewers and come off as greeting card philosophy for others, but that's how this genre works. At least by focusing on what happens before people are born it avoids the drama death-trap of the afterlife (where storytelling goes to die), and the range of to-be-chosen souls (including Bill Skarsgard, Tony Hale and Zazie Beets) is diverse enough to ensure that Will is making a real choice... though considering the plentiful range of arseholes currently walking the Earth, some of his fellow judges much have extremely bad taste.

It's still a fantasy that doesn't really say much about life on Earth as its lived, but the range of down-to-earth characters give it a heft these type of films often lack. Will's emotional struggle is real, and while it's hard to warm to him (he often verges on unlikable), as a man struggling with grief and loss over a relationship that was in many ways not "real" his plight echoes - and takes seriously - the kind of parasocial relationships social media encourages. 

Nine Days is the kind of film some people will come out of feeling like they've had some kind of spiritual journey. Those with their feet more firmly on the ground will still enjoy what is basically the story of a man worried he's losing his touch at work. 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Gunpowder Milkshake

Gunpowder Milkshake has the kind of cool but nonsensical title that does a very good job of letting you know exactly what kind of experience you're in for. Excessive violence that's even more lightweight than a John Wick movie set against a backdrop of gangster capitalism so stylised it might as well be a literal cartoon? How'd you guess?

The twist here is that it's women doing the murdering, though this hasn't really been a twist in action movies for a couple of decades now. The plot itself is slightly more complex than usual, but it's really just the usual mix of double-crosses, armies of disposable goons, and shadowy figures from the past back to kick ass that these kind of crime fantasy films always deliver. Just once it'd be nice to see a crime cartel that actually was committing crimes and not just "running the city" by murdering people.

Sam (Karen Gillan) is our central murderer, scarred for life after her murderer mum Scarlet (Lena Headey) bailed on her as a teenager. Now she's doing murders for "The Firm", only she's just killed the wrong dude and her bosses are set to cut her loose. Having also messed up a straightforward "get our money back from a thief" job - the thief stole to pay the ransom for his little girl, and with Sam's family issues she wasn't going to leave the girl to die - it's on for young and old.

John Wick has made this kind of cartoon fantasy action commercially viable, at least for now, and this largely covers the same territory. It doesn't really let the side down violence-wise, but there's a real sense that the market is being flooded with cheap knock-offs. The recent Nobody was at its strongest when it focused on the lead's personal needs (he's a suburban schlub who actively enjoys the violence); the best moments here - and there are too few of them - are when this goes for wacky violence rather than the standard over-the-top carnage. 

There's a scene where Gillan's arms have been numbed but she still figures out a way to swing them around in murderous fashion that's the clear highlight of the numerous fights. In contrast, the moments where this is trying to be "cool" - especially with the arrival of her three "aunties" (Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, and Angela Bassett, who don't get nearly enough to do), middle-aged women who run a library where every second book has a weapon stashed inside - don't work nearly as well.

Like a lot of these recent films (see also: everything with Harley Quinn), there's a much more quirky and entertaining film inside this that was never going to happen because following trends and trying to be cool is how movies get made. It's the kind of film you hope gets a sequel because the first installment didn't push things far enough... but if it doesn't get one, that's fine too.

 - Anthony Morris

Review: Space Jam: A New Legacy

"A New Legacy" is one of those subtitles that sounds like it means something but doesn't, only in this case it kind of does. The first Space Jam was not exactly celebrated on arrival (the mid-90s was a time when the classic Looney Tunes shorts were still the basis of most people's memory of the characters), but over the years its legacy - such as it is - has grown. Basically, the idea here is that even if the kids come out of this thinking "meh", hopefully in a decade or two they'll be forcing it on their kids and the cycle of profit can continue.

If that makes this sound like a soulless business decision, welcome to Hollywood. Fortunately the film itself is just slightly better than the bare minimum requirement for a cross-promotional exercise, thanks in large part to the surprising amount of charm LeBron James brings to the role of LeBron James. The story isn't quite the same as the original - here James and his video-game loving son Dom (Cedric Joe) are sucked into the Warner Brothers "server-verse", home of all their IP and ruled over by one Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle), who is annoyed that James wasn't interested in fronting his latest hacky marketing push. 

For some reason this results in a basketball game, and Al seems to think he's dealing James a bum hand by saddling him with the Looney Tunes characters despite this film existing in the same universe as the first film. While Bugs Bunny has stayed on his home... planet?, the rest of the Tunes characters are scattered across the rest of Warner's iconic IP and have to be gathered up. If you've ever wanted to see the Road Runner and Wil.E Coyote in a Mad Max movie, good news (also, seek medical help).

James himself does an excellent job of holding all this together, even while stuck with a "you kids have to follow the same hardass path to success as I did" subplot (his son wants to be a gamer - a divide Al is more than happy to exploit). This never resorts to poking open fun at James - you wouldn't be watching if you weren't a fan on some level - but it does mix in just enough James-adjacent jokes to make him seem like a decent guy who doesn't take himself super-seriously, and it doesn't hurt that he's animated for a lengthy stretch.

On the other hand, the Looney Tunes characters are poorly served. Bugs is a shadow of his former wiseguy self, while Daffy barely gets to bluster at all. Porky Pig's rap battle as "Notorious P.I.G." is exactly the kind of terrible dad joke this movie seems to require; what it has to do with what remains of his character remains to be seen. Even Lola Bunny is basically superfluous after an introduction where she battles to join Wonder Woman's Amazons. It's hard to think any kid is going to be motivated to seek out the original shorts after this.

And yet, this remains largely entertaining thanks to a fast moving plot, a decent dynamic between father and son, Cheadle clearly having a lot of fun, and a final basketball game that, for some reason, has all of Warners most cartoony bad guys in the audience whether they're kid-friendly or not. Yes, that is Pennywise the child-eating clown and the rapist Droogs from A Clockwork Orange jumping around next to the Schwarzenegger-era Mister Freeze, Agent Smith from The Matrix and The Mask. 

There's also a bunch of Game of Thrones references early on, opening the door to HBO's collection of classic kid-friendly characters. What, no Tony Soprano? Where's Al Swearengen from Deadwood? Seriously, once you realise this movie could have had a cameo from Larry David it's hard to settle for what we got. The Looney Tunes characters now exist in the same cinematic universe as Sex and the City; cameos from The Iron Giant and King Kong just aren't going to cut it any more.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Tomorrow War

Hollywood scriptwriting is all about adding and taking away. Screenplays are built in layers; big ideas and twists are added in and taken out, but traces still remain. There's probably an analogy in there with time travel, but to be honest The Tomorrow War doesn't deserve that much thought: it's big, it's dumb, and it's clear that at some stage pretty much everything interesting or original about the concept was tossed in the bin.

It's December 2022 and science dude / former special forces assassin Dan Forester (an insanely jacked Chris Pratt, who might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION FIGURE) is pissed off that his elite skills aren't being taken advantage of and he's wasting his life teaching bored high school kids. Good news! In the middle of the World Cup a bunch of time traveling soldiers arrive on the pitch to tell everyone on Earth that the future sucks and they need our help.

Soon the whole world is sending their military forces - first the elite, now the dregs - off to the future where they promptly get chewed up by the alien White Spikes and spat out in a way that is not at all a metaphor for how America treats its servicemen and women. For a movie that has climate change as an explicit plot point, this sure is optimistic about how much effort today's world is willing to put in to help the future - but once you stop to think that gee, maybe if one country sneakily didn't send their forces off into the future meat grinder then they could conquer today's world that won't matter so much.

Eventually Dan gets called up, and the "eventually" is a bit strange because you'd think a special forces dude-slash science guy would be someone the world of tomorrow might need, but here's the secret behind The Tomorrow War: literally everything that takes place is in service of various clunky, played-out story beats you'll recognise from a dozen earlier films.

For example, why are the troops only sent forward to fight for seven days? Why is the war thirty years away? Why don't, say, the future dudes come back to today secretly, use their future knowledge to take over the global economy, then use it to mass produce Boston Dynamics kill-bots and send them forward instead? Because if they did, we wouldn't get this particular, extremely uninspired story that once again reminds us that when it comes to Hollywood, it all boils down to family.

There are traces of attempts to paper over the cracks. Old dudes are being recruited because they'll be dead in the future (but if the future is so grim and almost everyone there is already dead, what does it really matter?); there's a brief mention that the alien invaders take one day off a week ("the sabbath"), which presumably explains why all the time travel happens then, though why past people only have a one-week tour of duty remains a mystery until the plot reasoning becomes clear. 

The idea that things are grim is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, especially when the concept as presented poses so many questions: why not send the future civilians back to the present day as refugees? Why not bring future knowledge back to today so when the aliens arrive we'll have better guns and training?

Nobody wants to watch a film bogged down in pointless techobabble, but the whole "the future needs bodies" angle comes across as so sketchy it's a real disappointment to get to the future only to discover that it is exactly as advertised. Especially as it makes zero sense that in a future war where humanity is totally screwed (we're repeatedly told they barely have weeks left) they're grabbing fat losers (sorry) from today, giving them a gun and zero training, then literally dumping them into a war zone that they then napalm ten minutes later.

Worse, this turns out to be yet another Hollywood blockbuster where the whole world gets trashed by an unstoppable force that just happens to have a weak point - though at least here the weak point / reset button makes slightly more sense than usual.

 

[MILD SPOILER IN THIS PARAGRAPH ONLY: Also, if the future already has a toxin that can kill the male White Spikes, why not start spraying that shit around considering the male ones are the ones doing all the fighting?]

 

Aside from all that, this has a few well-crafted action sequences, the monsters are decent, and the always great J.K. Simmons plays Dan's extremely useful survivalist tech-ninja estranged dad. The final act is actually a step up from the rest of the film because it turns into a knock-off of Aliens and The Thing, which are both much better films it's always fun to be reminded of. Dumb films that are secretly smart are awesome; this is a smart film that's secretly dumb, and that's not much fun at all. 

- Anthony Morris

Review: In the Heights

 

It’s easy to write a check list of all the things In the Heights does right. It features a stellar cast of fresh faces (though getting to see Jimmy Smits sing and dance is an added treat), the songs are toe-tapping to a fault, the big numbers are staged with verve and energy, and the whole thing is so defiantly good-natured it’s all but impossible to not feel your spirits soar at the high notes. So why does the whole thing fall just a little flat?

 

In the Heights is the story of Washington Heights in New York, a Latinx neighbourhood undergoing the usual pressures of gentrification and social mobility. Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) owns the local bodega, but is saving up to return home to the Dominican Republic to restore his father’s beachfront bar; Nina (Leslie Grace) is back home from Stanford to the praise of her community (and her father, the aforementioned Smits) for having “made it out”, but in her heart she doesn’t think she can go back.

 

The two stories mirror each other. He wants to leave but forces are pulling him back, most notably Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), a beauty technician who’s dreams of moving into fashion remain firmly local. Nina wants to stay – and her ex Benny (Corey Hawkins), who works at her father’s taxi company, is definitely ok with that – but giving up her one shot to make a difference in the world and her community is a tough choice.

 

Weaving in and out are a range of other characters, all of whom illuminate one aspect or another of the community – the past, the future, the need to belong, and so on. It’s a patchwork quilt where the real story develops from the intersections between characters; if you’re after a dramatic story built around personal choices, this isn’t for you.

 

What sells all of this, and what was no doubt so impressive to see on the stage, is the spectacle of it all. This is a real musical, where the music is at least as much the point of it all as everything else – but on the big screen two hours twenty of song after song can feel a little draining, even though this is constantly mixing things up, refusing to settle into a rut.

 

While its high angle view of a community is perfect for a stage show – where the audience is automatically at a remove from what’s they’re seeing – movies by their very nature are much more up close and intimate. We can’t help but get involved with individual characters when they’re looming large on the screen; despite strong performances across the board, In the Heights just isn’t that kind of story.

 

Ironically for something clearly designed to be experienced surround by people, In the Heights might end up working best at home, where audiences (once they know the story) can dip in and out of it. There are plenty of great moments here; it’s when they’re piled up one atop another for over two hours that the connecting threads start to fray.

 

- Anthony Morris