Best and Worst Films of 2022

This was the year where I stopped going to see pretty much everything that was on in cinemas. There were a number of overlapping reasons for this, but let's be honest: the main reason is that film reviewing no longer exists as a job. 

Well, as a paid job at least.  Much as I like being someone broadly across everything in cinemas - and I still went to a lot of movies in the cinema this year - this was the year when the financial side of things stopped adding up, even when the actual screening itself was free.

(I live roughly 60-90 minutes travel time from where most free screenings are being held. When they're held during an evening - which almost all major mainstream releases are now; the days of daytime critic screenings are over - there's no public transport for at least one of the three legs of my journey. In which case the taxi fare alone is roughly what it costs to purchase an in-season movie ticket)

That means this years best and worst list is based on a slightly smaller base than usual. Triangle of Sadness and Aftersun are two films I was hoping to have seen by now; After Yang has been around for so long I have nobody to blame there but myself. As for 2023, Tar looks good, as does that Jason Statham spy movie with the overly long title - not a problem anyone will be having with Gerard Butler's upcoming Plane.

On the upside, the world of streaming has made a lot of films available that we'd be lucky to find otherwise in Australia: your views on Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday may diverge from mine, but having it as a viewing option is most definitely a good thing. 

It's also often the only way to see any Australian films that aren't extremely arthouse or aimed at ladies who lunch, even if that just leaves you watching Russell Crowe's Poker Face.

So here's my list of the good, the bad, and the better than average. I've limited this to films that were released / made generally available in Australia in 2022, mostly to prevent this from just being a list of Italian crime movies from the 1970s. Though if you like that kind of thing, 70s Australian heist movie Money Movers finally made it to blu-ray this year and is well worth a look. Enough!

A top ten, in no particular order

*The Banshees of Inisherin

*The Retaliators

*Athena

*Barbarian

*Carter

*Nope

*Confess Fletch

*A Violent Man

*The Batman

*The Drover's Wife

Worth a mention:

*Belle

*Orphan: First Kill

*Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday

*Top Gun: Maverick

*Emily the Criminal

*Kimi

*Avatar: The Way of Water

*The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

*Beavis and Butt-Head do the Universe

*Loveland

 

Perhaps avoid:

*Wog Boys Forever

*Elvis

*Wyrmwood: Apocalypse

*Clerks 3

*Day Shift

*Ghostbusters: Afterlife

*Moonfall

*Fantastic Beasts: The Boredom of Dumbledore

*Ticket to Paradise

*Don't Worry Darling

 

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Banshees of Irisherin

Writer-director Martin McDonagh's career has been a bit all over the place since he hit it big with In Bruges. Seven Psychopaths was wobbly at best; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri did well and featured strong performances, but its reputation has curdled a little over time. The Banshees of Irisherin sees him reunited with In Bruges' double act of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell; it's also his best film to date.

The year is 1923, the Irish Civil War is winding down, and on the (fictional) island of Irisherin Colm Doherty (Gleeson) has decided he never wants to speak to his (former) best friend Padraic (Farrell) ever again. Padraic is taken aback by this sudden turn of events, and every attempt to find out why only makes things worse. 

There is an explanation: feeling the years tick by, Colm (who's a fiddle player of some renown; students come from the mainland to learn from him) wants to focus on creating something lasting, not idle chit-chat. But for Padraic, whose second best friend is miniature donkey Jenny, and whose sister (Kerry Condon) is also chafing against the small island's limited horizons, chit-chat is the stuff of life. 

Colm eventually lays down an ultimatum. If Padraic doesn't stop bothering him, every encounter they have will result in Colm snipping off one of his own fingers with a pair of sheep shears. Can things go downhill from there? Of course they can, and do.

That central conflict works both as a personal clash between two well-defined individuals and as a metaphor for all number of things. Is it symbolic of the Civil War still flickering on the mainland? The struggle between creativity and the mundane demands of earthly life? A reminder that if you''re going to give up everything for your art, "everything" is an awfully big concept? It's all that and more, without ever feeling laboured.

It's easy to pick a side in the split between friends, but this isn't a film about black and white - unless it involves copper Peader (Gary Lydon), father of local gobshite Dominic (Barry Keoghan) and a nasty piece of work all round. Colm's desire to focus on his art has a touch of vanity to it, and an edge that seems as much about hurting others (and himself) as it is about setting boundaries. Padraic's simple straightforwardness conceals a sharpness of its own; neither man comes out of this looking his best.

The suffocating nature of a small community is on full display here, with petty grievances and barely-concealed sins all around. And yet it's also an extremely funny film, long past the point where you'd expect the laughs to fade; McDonagh is an award-winning playwright (this was originally a play, abandoned years earlier), and his ear for a sharp line or scathing observation is on proud display here.

And yet it wouldn't come together without Gleeson and Farrell, two actors who can project charm and warmth with effortless ease and put that ability to darker use here. They're both performers we want to like, and the script uses that against us. 

It's easy to see why each would have been happy as friends with the other, and painful to see them apart; the few brief moments of kindness between them are the times this film really sticks the knife into audiences, a glimpse of a warm and happy world now lost forever.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Menu

A small group of select diners set sail to a secluded island where one of the world's top chefs has prepared a dining experience they'll never forget. If that sounds like the log line for a special episode of some foodie influencer's media programming, that's kind of the point. This is a full-bodied swipe at foodie culture from top to bottom, and if you're worried you might miss the joke don't worry - chances are you know more about food than you think.

Tyler (Nicholas Holt) is a food nerd, as interested in taking photos of his meals as he is in eating them. His last-minute date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) is too grounded; in her book food is for eating, but if Tyler's paying then sure, she'll listen to him go on about "mouth feel" with a smile.

The rest of the guests tonight at Hawthorne are a mix of washed up celebrities (John Leguizamo) and their hangers-on, food critics (Janet McTeer) and their hangers-on, and a bunch of moneyed types, both tech bros and old school businessmen. Having the chef's elderly mother there too seems a bit odd, but on this island what doesn't?

The maitre de Elsa (Hong Chau) is businesslike with a side serve of terrifying, the kitchen staff act more like automatons than a bunch of cooks, and celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) openly admits that tonight's lengthy meal is meant to tell a story. But is it his usual examination of class and power dynamics through food (a dynamic the working-class Margot threatens to disrupt), or is tonight shaping up to be something that belongs in the horror section?

As black comedies go this is more conceptual than gag-packed, though it's not afraid to drop a witty line or blunt joke when the time is right. The world of high-end fine dining is basically beyond satire, which doesn't make the food here any less ridiculous - it just means that it's pretty much all stuff someone somewhere is serving up for real.

If the set-up is giving you "tonight, the consumers shall become the consumed!" vibes, don't worry: there's more going on here than some basic ironic punishment tale (though payback is a theme threaded throughout). Julian wants to tell a story with his meal, but that doesn't mean the film is telling the same story, and it's the moments where the gap between the two comes clear that this is at its most interesting.

Being trapped on an island with a chef looking to twist the knife and a staff of (his) celebrity-worshippers that have curdled into a cult is scary stuff, and The Menu does have moments of genuine creepiness. But it's also clear that Julian's scheme is just another version of the trite, pretentious world he's looking to escape. 

He despises what he, and his cooking, has become; the horror - and the comedy - comes from the fact that in his world, the only way out is to go further in.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Ticket to Paradise

George Clooney and Julia Roberts are back on the big screen as a divorced couple who can’t stand each other but are forced to work together to thwart their high-flying daughter’s sudden marriage to a Balinese seaweed farmer.  Screwball comedy at it's finest? Not quite.

When their high-flying daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) announces she's leaving it all behind to live in Bali, her divorced parents David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) decide to put aside their mutual loathing of each other and join forces to ruin the wedding... by pretending to go along with it while sabotaging things behind the scenes.

This is the kind of star focused set-up that should work – it’s not like Roberts and Clooney are without their charms. Yet the end result is little more than a forgettable wander through some scenic countryside (it was filmed in Queensland, doubling for Bali) waiting for the sun to go down and the drinks to come out.

Jokes are few and far between, comedy set-pieces never arrive (the mystery of how Robert’s character slices bananas without opening them is never solved), the central plot is so mean-spirited the film gives up on it halfway through and the characters are so thin they vanish when they turn sideways.

Worse, Lily's marriage is clearly the right move for her, leaving her parents looking like nasty killjoys no matter how well meaning their motivation. They're not cartoony enough to be fun bad guys, Lily is too bland and nice to hold much interest, and by the time the film gets around to just having Roberts and Clooney enjoy each other's company the damage has been done.

Still, they clearly have serious star power and the chemistry between them sparkles. The scenery is never less than nice to look at too: if you're happy to watch what is basically an animated holiday postcard - and don't mind a vague but consistent feeling that this whole thing is a missed opportunity - this is a decent enough way to forget your cares for a hundred minutes

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Barbarian

Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) has a problem. It's a dark night in a scary neighbourhood, and she's trying to get into her Air BnB rental but the key seems to be missing. Turns out it's missing because there's already someone (Bill Skarsgard) inside. 

The place has been double-booked, he's either an overly reassuring nice guy or a creep with something to hide, and while she's being super cautious every step she takes is taking her further inside a house with a guy she doesn't know.

And then things get worse.

Barbarian is the kind of film where pretty much everything beyond the initial set-up is a serious spoiler. This is packed with twists and misdirects, all of which are in service to one thing only: making this the wildest, scariest ride possible.

(so yes, it's best to go in knowing as little as possible)

In practice this means Barbarian goes flat out from scene one. Horror movies usually take things at least a little slow in the early scenes (see: Halloween Ends) because there's hard practical limits to how much tension a human being can take. Barbarian doesn't care about any of that. 

Instead, it ramps things up to "the audience starts giggling at almost everything because that's the only way to let out the tension" levels almost immediately and keeps on going. Then just when things are really getting hard to bear, it leaves you to simmer while jumping in a completely different direction.

There's not a lot of gore here (though you probably won't forget the little there is); much of the horror - rather than the suspense, which is intense and on-going - is character-based. Turns out not all nice guys are jerks, but a nice guy who's a jerk can be more dangerous than he seems.

The ingredients aren't all that new (after the recent run of horror movies set there, Detroit's real estate market is never going to recover) but its the recipe that counts and writer / director Zach Kregger has put together a film packed with scares that never feel cheap or unearned.

Barbarian wouldn't hold together if the moments in between the twists and jumps didn't work. From a series of note-perfect performances (Justin Long, who appears later in the story, is especially good) to a canny use of current cultural concerns to keep Tess on the back foot (police: they're a mixed blessing at best), this is a surprise that keeps on surprising.

And a nightmare that doesn't let go until the very last moment.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Fall

How’s this for a (literal) high concept: two young women drive out into the middle of nowhere to climb a two thousand feet tall disused television transmitter tower… and then can’t get back down. Safe to say those with a fear of heights might want to sit this one out.

After seeing her husband fall off a cliff, Becky (Grace Caroline) has spent the last year down the bottom of a bottle – but now her influencer bestie Shiloh (Virginia Gardner) has a great idea for her latest post (no, it's not "show more cleavage", though that does come into it) and she needs a partner who knows her way around insanely tall objects. Becky is skeptical, but also has literally nothing else to do and what better way to get her life back on track than by risking it for online status?

 

They drive out to the desert, they go up, and they don’t come down. For thrill-seeking movie-goers that’s all you really need to know (though here’s a hint at what comes next: vultures). This is relatively restrained as far as having people dangling off various edges goes; director and co-writer Scott Mann knows that when you're this far off the ground doing pretty much anything is extremely risky, and the "less is (usually) more" approach cranks the tension high while keeping things grounded (pun intended).

Much of the high-rise action is filmed from a distance that re-enforces both their isolation and just how little room they have to move; everything else just makes it very clear that it's a very long way down. Do they just sit quietly and wait, or do they have to climb up, down, and all over the tiny platform they're stuck on just to have any hope of staying alive? Let's just say they probably should have brought a bit more rope with them.

 

It’s not all about dangling off a very slender and very rickety tower though, as this also features a fair amount of on-ground backstory that makes this more than just an excuse to give everyone in the cinema a bad case of vertigo - though this is pure nightmare fodder for anyone who's ever been even the slightest bit concerned about falling victim to gravity.

 

Characters are fleshed out in ways that provide (a little) conflict while still keeping them plausible as friends, and as experienced climbers their various approaches to getting down largely make sense - or, to put it another way, they don't ignore the obvious solutions just because the movie needs them stuck, making them the kind of smart characters you want to see survive rather than dimwits you're just waiting to see die.

 

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Retaliators

 

Opening with a sequence so generic it seems like it must be a fake-out - and it is, though not in the way you're probably expecting - The Retailators moves from zombie levels of gore to hard-boiled crime and back again with the kind of ease that films with five times its budget can only envy. It's a surprisingly sensitive look at grief and loss; there's also a woodchipper, and we all know what that means. 

Single dad John Bishop (Michael Lombardi, from Rescue Me) is the kind of cool pastor who'd be embarrassing if he wasn't so earnest... and even then he's still pretty embarrassing, especially when he gets pushed around while buying a Christmas tree by Dante from Clerks. Time to give a sermon about forgiveness, which includes the somewhat ominous line "when man's law fails, God's law prevails".

 

Bishop gets the chance to practice what he preaches when his teen daughter Rebecca (Abbey Hafer) bumps into the Scariest Man Alive, aka Ram Kady (Joseph Gatt) at a service station. She's going to a party; he's a bikie gang member just back from a drug deal that involved him beating up and robbing a man in a wheelchair. But it's when the still alive (just) wheelchair man starts bumping in Kady's trunk - and she notices - that her grim fate is sealed.

The arrival of seemingly stalwart cop Jed (Marc Menchaca) puts a twist on Bishop's grief, when he reveals that not only does he share Bishop's pain, but that he's figured out a way to do something about it. Unfortunately, Jed's scheme - which is well-established, long running, and involves a cavern-like basement full of cannibal lunatics - only really works if the target of his vengeance won't be missed. And thanks to screwing up the drug deal, Kady has his brother and a whole lot of bikies out looking for him.

Directors Samuel Gonzalez Jr and Bridget Smith keep a tight grip on material that tonally moves around a lot: this is a film that features both a realistic look at heart-rending anguish and a lot of raving maniacs trapped in a dungeon. But it's this constant switching things up - on top of everything else, both Robert Knepper and Robert John Burke get show-stopping single scenes as seen-it-all bosses (ones a cop, the other's a crim) - that keeps this so engaging.

Much of this works as straightforward drama; this is a solid crime film before it turns into gonzo horror. People have competing agendas that put them in conflict, while their behaviour always makes sense in terms of who they are - nobody goes nuts simply because the plot requires them to (even the murderous Kady has his own logic). But it definitely doesn't hurt that this also racks up an extremely substantial body count in the third act as our youth pastor hero has to go into murder mode to stay alive.

The Retaliators eventually pays off the cheesy yet bloody opening without sacrificing the drama that led it to such a demented point. It's everything you could want in an exploitation flick: it's even set during Christmas so you've got no excuse not to watch it every single year.

 

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Orphan: First Kill

Orphan was one of the more gleefully demented horror films to make it to the big screen earlier this century, piling on a string of out-there-but-almost-logical twists that left audiences staggering out asking each other "what did we just watch?" It's the kind of experience that's almost impossible to replicate - but Orphan: First Kill has a few tricks of its own up its deceptively child-sized sleeve.

With the first film's twist well and truly out of the bag - that the seemingly pre-pubsecent and definitely deadly demon child Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) is in fact a non-supernatural thirty year-old con artist with a side hustle in murder - this prequel begins with Leena seemingly safely locked away in an Eastern European asylum where everyone is as jumpy as hell and rightly so.

Before long she's escaped in ruthless fashion, and promptly decides it's time to flee the country. Her scheme is simple: adopt the identity of a missing US child and start a new life. Having never seen French doco The Imposter (or for that matter, last year's Titane), the parents of missing Esther, Allan Albright (Rossif Sutherland) and wife Tricia (Julia Styles) fall for her ruse and bring her back home to their mansion and a life of luxury.

It's soon clear that while Allan - who clearly fell apart after his daughter vanished - is uncritically happy to have her back and inspiring his artworks once more, Tricia is a little more skeptical and their louche douchebag son Gunnar (Matthew Finlan) seems almost annoyed to have his little sister hanging around. Esther is going to have to pull out all the stops to keep her scam going.

While at first this seems to be a solid but unsurprising retread of the original that's content to hit many of the same beats - especially Esther developing feelings for a man who sees her as a child - events rapidly spiral down a new and almost as deranged path. Sometimes a pint-sized serial killer just can't catch a break.

A solid supporting cast go a long way towards selling this, with Styles especially impressive as a mother firmly committed to keeping her family together. A pacy script doesn't hurt either, juggling suspense (just how long can Esther get away with it?) and slasher scenes for a roller coaster of thrills, kills, and the occasional rat corpse discovered in a smoothie.

But it's Fuhrman - plus a range of child body doubles and a load of other seamless camera trickery - who makes this so much fun. She's totally convincing in the role, presenting Esther as both an instant horror icon and a semi-believable human being forced into a life of crime and murder by a condition nobody around her seems in the slightest bit interested in helping her with.

Then again, most of them end up dead by her hand so it kind of evens out.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Black Phone

The year is 1978, and teenage boys are disappearing from the quiet streets of a Denver suburb. Everyone knows they're being taken by "The Grabber"; almost nobody thinks they'll be found alive. 

High-schooler Finney (Mason Thames) has problems of his own, thanks to a frankly startling level of violent bullying at his school and a drunken, controlling father (Jeremy Davies) at home. His younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is in the same boat, only with less bullying and more creepy dreams that sometimes come true.

The Black Phone is not a story that leans heavily on surprise. With its supernatural themes, psychic kids, insanely violent bullies, deeply flawed parents, small town vibe, and fondness for catchphrases ("your arm is mint"), this would almost count as Stephen King fanfic if it wasn't based on a short story by Joe Hill, who happens to be King's son.

Once Finney gets grabbed, what follows is basically a puzzle game where the spirits of the Grabber's previous victims provide advice on what escape options turn out to be dead ends. They do this via a disconnected phone on the wall of the basement where Finney is trapped, which is exactly the kind of creepy device we need more of in horror even if it does make you wonder if ghosts are behind all those mystery spam calls everyone gets today.

This is a lean storytelling machine, constantly moving forward in a way that isn't always as scary as it could be but is never less than firmly watchable. If characterisation can't be done in thirty seconds or less then it's not done at all; the ghosts can't remember their names because they don't matter any more.

The fast pace - we haven't even covered Gwen's street level search for Finney - helps skim past some serious questions, like "if everyone knows the teens are being grabbed off the streets because the kidnapper is literally called 'The Grabber' why aren't the police watching that sketchy dude who drives around in a black van?"

Another question is, what if the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) was right? All the teens here are brutally and casually violent, even by King family standards. Heads are bashed with rocks, knives are pulled at the convenience store, and pummeling a bully until your knuckles bleed for hours is a heroic deed. The main character arc of the story is "grow up and kill someone"... so yeah, maybe it's a good thing these kids are being killed before they get old enough to do some serious damage.

Slightly more seriously, Hill is a hardcore horror guy so even though the story itself is basically video game problem solving, he - and director Scott Derrickson - create a strong, dingy vibe to life above ground and below, while fitting in a decent amount of creepy stuff around the edges. At heart The Black Phone is a well-oiled suspense thriller where angry ghosts provide plot shortcuts, but the horror moments can be genuinely disturbing.

The idea of the dead kid's spirits crumbling away in the afterlife is unsettling, while Hawke's masked killer has a personal narrative we only get glimpses of. Hawke doesn't get a lot of screentime, but his off-kilter performance speaks volumes (or at least enough to make him chillingly memorable). He's unknowable while being all-too-human; his biggest mistake might have been keeping decent steaks in the fridge.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Men

 

Alex Garland's latest feature heads out into rural England (the Cotswolds to be exact), and we all know what that means: it's folk horror time. But Garland is a director with more on his mind than just spooky shots of the forest - though this feels at time like he might not have fully worked out how everything on his mind fits into this particular film.

Firstly, Harper (Jessie Buckley) is haunted by the death of her husband James (Paapa Essiedu), the exact circumstances of which are spelt out in a series of flashbacks across the course of the film. All we know starting out is that he died by falling, he fell past their apartment window, and she was looking out as he dropped past. 

Second, she's now taking a break at a slightly too fancy - or at least, very large - rural rental, where the owner (Rory Kinnear) seems decent enough but, as she tells a friend, "very country". There's plenty of nice countryside to wander around in too... or at least, it seems nice until a creepy naked man (Kinnear again) starts turning up in the distance. And why does he - and every other man in the area, and there only seems to be men in the area - have the same face?

Third, there's a very sinister font in the local church (or maybe just a font with a sinister soundtrack) with a depiction of the "green man" on it, suggesting some kind of pagan past the area hasn't quite left behind. 

This seems like it should be the thread that ties everything together, but Garland isn't all that interested in explaining much of anything that's going on here, at least not on any kind of logical level. It's a horror movie titled Men: that's pretty much all you need to know to get the gist.

"Elevated horror" has a bit of a bad rep at the moment: whatever happened to just being scary? (like there aren't plenty of those movies still being made too) Men doesn't care about that - though it is scary, especially early on. It has a point to make and it's going to make it, and if it turns out that a lot of the other questions his film seems to raise are beside the point, that's your problem.

While over-explaining things is the death of creepy horror, under-explaining doesn't always work either. Taken on their own, most of the scenes here work well; the first third or so features some very tense film-making indeed. And the sense of annoyance that slowly builds is most definitely part of the point - it just means this goes from a traditional (and often very unsettling) horror movie to something a little blunter.

Men comes to a head with an extremely weird and extremely graphic - yet so surreal it hardly counts as gore - sequence that recaps the emotional thrust of the film in a handful of minutes. It's a brilliant and unforgettable ending that ends up undermining the film as a whole even as it underlines the point of it; everything leads up to this apocalyptic moment, and yet it's barely related to anything in the story beyond making the same point as everything else.

Being repetitive is at the heart of Men, and the point being made is an astute one; it just might not be one that required a 90-odd minute horror film to express.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Top Gun: Maverick

 

My review of Top Gun: Maverick is now up at Forte Magazine.

- Anthony Morris

Review: How to Please a Woman

 

Gina (Sally Phillips) is in a bit of a rut. Her husband (Cameron Daddo) seems to have largely checked out of their marriage: being good at her job at an insolvency agency seems to be a career drawback. Then she's sacked in a company-wide downsizing that seems to just involve her, and before you know it she's running a male escort agency disguised as a cleaning service. Wait, what?

What actually happens is a little more complicated, but the end result is the same: she turns a struggling removalist company into a cleaning firm, only to discover that one of her staff - former stripper and all round hot guy Tom (Alexander England) - has been providing sex on the side. Word gets round, the clients want more, bingo bango Gina's a pimp.

Not that How to Please a Woman is anywhere near that crude. This is a surprisingly sensitive (considering the set-up could have come from a 70s sex comedy) look at what it is that women want, and it turns out it's a man who's good at cleaning and good in bed. The only thing that makes you a bad guy in this world is not being open and accepting, and even then the only punishment is missing out on all the fun.

There's not a lot of room for broad comedy here; a few mid sexual mix-ups is pretty much the limit, while a scene involving a remote-controlled vibrator and an exercise bike ends up being more about people connecting than getting laughs. 

As far as drama goes, there's not a whole lot happening there either. You'd think running an unlicensed sex service would provide plenty of scope for brushes with both criminals and the law - but again, this isn't that kind of movie. 

Don't expect any of the men involved to have any real problems with becoming male prostitutes either; their only concern is how to be the best possible lover (and cleaner) for their clients. Having Gina develop a relationship with the only employee who doesn't go out on call (Erik Thompson) seems like a bit of a cheat, but it's all part of the fantasy; it's a world where sex and love are two distinct things.

What this does offer is a fun, sunny vibe, as Gina gets her life together, her staff learn to be better lovers (and men in general), the local ladies (including Roz Hammond, Tasma Walton, and Hayley McElhinney) get their various needs taken care of, and the importance of knowing what you want and knowing how to get it - both in the bedroom and in life - is celebrated. 

It's a worthy moral; it just doesn't make for a particularly memorable film. 

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Movie stars playing themselves is nothing new. At least when Nicolas Cage does it, you know he's going to go all in. And so it proves to be in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he plays a struggling actor with almost the same name (he's "Nick Cage") and a similar past who's occasionally haunted by a younger version of himself ("Nicky") who likes to shout and say weirdly compelling things. You know, like Nicolas Cage.

When a comeback role falls through and the hotel he's been living at since he separated from his wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) hands over a hefty bill, Nick reluctantly decides to take the advice of his agent (Neil Patrick Harris, no stranger himself to playing "himself" in the Harold & Kumar films) and accept a million dollar offer to appear at a wealthy fan's birthday party. 

Exactly how Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) made his money remains a mystery - well, it does until Nick touches down in Spain, where a CIA agent (Tiffany Haddish) pulls him aside, lets him know Javi is actually a ruthless killer and arms dealer, and they need him to help find a teen he's supposedly kidnapped to throw an upcoming election. 

Nick, who has his own issues with his own teen daughter (Lily No Sheen) - it seems she doesn't enjoy German expressionistic film-making of the 1920s anywhere near as much as her dad - reluctantly says yes. Two things complicate matters: Javi turns out to be not just a devoted fan but a nice guy (with a screenplay in his back pocket), and Nick is nowhere near as good at this spy stuff as he thought he'd be.

While the "Cage plays Cage" angle makes for a good hook and a lot of amusing references, the real meat here is the double act between Nick (burnt out, not sure about acting, feeling adrift) and Javi (enthusiastic but still grounded, an adoring fan but also someone willing to try for a real connection). The middle stretch of the film, where they're basically just doing a buddy act - occasionally and hilariously on acid - is the strongest part: team these guys up again soon.

Fortunately, even the parts that aren't amazing are still solidly entertaining, and when the film takes a third-act swerve into more straightforward action territory complete with car chases and shoot-outs, it's still always decent action. Nick is above all a likable (if eccentric, and somewhat worn down early on) character, and Cage gives a warm-hearted performance that makes him the kind of guy you really want to succeed.

The meta-textural comedy promised early on never quite materialises, but references to the emotional power of Paddington 2 almost make up for it. This isn't an interrogation of Cage's career, or even a celebration of it; it's just a fun romp about a struggling movie star who just happens to look exactly like Nicolas Cage, a man who after almost 40 years in Hollywood has nothing - not even his performance in 1993's Deadfall, which once seen can never be forgotten - to apologise for. 

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Northman

The secret to The Northman's success is simple: it delivers everything you could want from a Viking movie. Unlike a lot of other genres, Viking movies are fairly straightforward. So long as there's some brutal violence, references to honour and bravery and Odin, a funeral or two, some intrigue and betrayal, and longboats attack a village, you can't go far wrong. The Northman? It doesn't go wrong at all.

Based on the saga that Shakespeare based Hamlet on, the story is a superficially straightforward tale of revenge, as young prince Amleth sees his father, King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) betrayed by his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang), swears vengeance, flees into the wilderness, grows up to be Alexander Skarsgard, and realises that a life as a brutal killer just isn't enough after a mystical encounter (with Bjork no less) reminds him of his fate.

Disguising himself as a slave, he sneaks aboard a ship heading to Iceland where his uncle - who has claimed his mother (Nicole Kidman) for his own - is now living on a glorified farm, having lost the family kingdom to King Harold. On the journey he meets Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy), who becomes his partner in crime as a fellow slave on Fjolnir's farm. And there's a lot of crime to be committed.

Director Robert Eggers' previous films (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) were mostly small-scope exercises in cranking up tension through character. This is more mainstream (with a US$70 million budget to go with it), yet manages to maintain enough of his vision to never feel generic or by-the-numbers. There are plenty of offbeat touches here, but the core of the story - Amleth's quest for revenge, even if it destroys him - is always clear and at the heart of every scene.

Visually this is often striking, especially in the moments of religious power and awe, but it's always in service to the story; Iceland's epic grimness is there to underline the remote and hostile nature of the environment and the people who dwell there. Likewise there's plenty of slaying, but the gore and brutality is rarely lingered on - and when it is, its to show the depths to which Amleth is willing to go to achieve his goals.

If there's any drawback to this relatively straightforward approach, it's that at times the story occasionally feels a little too simple, especially during the lengthy middle section. That said, things become more complex as the film progresses, and the matter-of-fact approach to the supernatural (where it's shown to be a central part of their lives, but not to the extent that magic happens... or does it?) does add another layer to Amleth's Big Payback.

The Northman is an all-too-rare example of a well-made genre film that satisfies on just about every level. Even the lengthy run time - two and a half hours if you sit through the credits - feels earned. It's the story of a shirtless warrior with a magic sword (that can only be unsheathed at night!) murdering his way through the people who took his family from him; what more could you ask for?

- Anthony Morris

Review: Ambulance

Early on in Ambulance one of master bank robber Danny Sharp's crime crew sneeringly asks another casually dressed member "who wears Birkinstocks to a bank robbery?" The answer is, of course, an idiot - as proven slightly later when the Birkinstocks-wearer stumbles in front of the getaway van during their botched robbery, gets run over, and is last seen being dragged out from under going "what happened to my [clearly mangled beyond repair] legs?" while the cops spray the street around him with automatic gun fire.

The thing is, everyone here is - to put it bluntly - an idiot. And not just in a typical action movie way: everyone is aggressively stupid and gleefully makes the wrong decision all the time. The movie wouldn't work - and surprisingly it often does work, though the constant excess is a bit excessive  - if there was even one sensible character who stopped a moment to think before shouting some snarky quip or generic action line. 

This would usually be a problem in a heist movie, a genre where audiences like to be surprised by smart twists and characters who know what they're doing. But this is a Michael Bay heist movie where everything is dialed up to 11; footage from a swooping drone doing barrel-rolls over central LA can hide a lot of problems when your script requires everyone to constantly screw up.

Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) is presumably named Sharp to distract us from the fact he isn't. In fact, his entire multi-million dollar heist - which has to happen RIGHT NOW - relies on him bringing on board his brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a man who has turned his back on crime and is actively opposed to returning to the world of crime both his father and brother occupy. 

But of course Will does (this is America, so he needs the cash to pay for his wife's medical treatment), which is handy as he's an ex-solider with excellent combat driving skills... oh wait, he's not the getaway driver - some chump who panics, drives off, and runs over one of his buddies is. 

And yes, the heist goes wrong, in large part because the LAPD's SIS unit - led by Captain Munroe (Garret Dillahunt) - knew they were coming. Of course, stopping them before the robbery would be too easy; as we're told multiple times, this unit "lays traps"... and then abandons them the second there's a problem.

Danny, Will, and sixteen million dollars manage to escape a closing net by hijacking an ambulance with EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza Gonzalez) inside. They only get out because there's a cop (shot by Will) in back being worked on, which introduces the only interesting subtext (it's the only subtext at all) to this film: cops are brutal murderous thugs.

Throughout the film Danny is constantly worried about the idea of killing a cop, because in this world - and, let's be honest, often in the real world - if you kill a cop, the cops will murder you the very first chance they get. Fortunately for fans of carnage, Ambulance also depicts all cops as complete idiots so desperate to apprehend a criminal they're constantly crashing cars into everything around them, including multiple clearly avoidable accidents that are obviously fatal for the car's occupants.

On screen LA is often presented as a melting pot where everyone has a story, and so it proves here. Even supporting characters get a scene or moment to display their one character-defining trait. Munroe drives around in a tiny car with a giant dog; Cam is a former speed addict who doesn't do emotional connection; there's a FBI bank robbery expert (with a connection to Danny) who asks "do we have to pay for the stupid questions?" during his marriage counseling.

Not that we're expected to care about any of these people; even Will's "good guy in over his head" arc is muddled (he just keeps on shooting people). The real focus in this 136 minute movie is the 100 minutes or so of car chase through LA, though most of the time it's more that the ambulance drives around while the cops merely follow. 

It's definitely entertaining in a shouty way, but while there's always something happening - removing a spleen, dodging snipers, singing along to Christopher Cross - it almost always feels like the same thing. 

Even the moments that should be a diversion from the main action are presented at the same extreme pitch. Bay doesn't trust any other part of this film (not even Gyllenhaal in motor-mouth mode) to keep us watching, so he keeps the camera moving and the explosions coming until everything blurs together and having a bunch of cops shooting at a clearly remote controlled car because they believe the manikin in the drivers seat is a real person is just another part of an average LA day.

- Anthony Morris

Review: X

Horror movies have rarely been scared to throw a little sex into the mix. The slasher genre's 80s heyday was all about teens getting it on before getting offed - so much so that when 90s versions started leaving sex out it seemed more like ditching a cliche than losing something essential. Now writer / director Ti West's X has returned brutal murder sprees to their sexy roots... though not quite in the way you might expect.

The year is 1979, and a group of aspiring porn stars led by producer Wayne (Martin Henderson, giving off serious Matthew McConaughey vibes) and his fame-seeking girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), are in a van heading to a cabin they've rented on an out-of-the-way farm outside Huston. If you're already getting Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original) vibes, congratulations - though a thoroughly messed-up dead cow on the road is a helpfully blunt reminder that we're all just meat in the end.

Farm owner Howard (Stephen Ure) is a crotchety old type who disapproves of young folk and would disapprove even more of what they're getting up to if he knew about it. His decrepit wife (make sure to check the end credits) is off in a world of her own, though there are hints that her view of what the kids are up to would be somewhat different from her husbands.

Wayne's crew are making a porno titled The Farmer's Daughters; roughly the first half of X is the story of a plucky group of free-spirited sex fans getting it on in front of the camera, with the occasional spot of behind-the-scenes drama as would-be auteur director RJ (Owen Campbell) discovers his shy boom-mike holding girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) doesn't quite share his disdain for porn.

There's plenty of creepy moments and ominous foreboding going on (plus a lake with alligators), but this section works just fine as a salute to the golden age of DIY porn filmmaking. The characters are lively and interesting, there's nothing judgmental about their approach to sex, and their get-rich-from-porn plans seem no more deluded than any other get-rich scheme. 

And then the murders begin. This isn't really a brutal gore-fest, though nobody dies easy; the focus is on the suspense of who'll die next and the inventiveness of the kills (fans of actual Farmer's Daughter's sex jokes will enjoy the way they're referenced in at least one death). Tonally the horror is the mirror image of the sex; it's never truly confronting or extreme, aiming more for the satisfaction that comes from seeing a well-crafted tale where all the pieces fit. 

There's the occasional gesture towards deeper themes - it seems getting old sucks when you've built your life on being sexy - but true to its porn heritage most of the fun is on the surface. The characters (and the performances) are strong enough to make sure this avoids the usual pitfalls that come with making a film about film-making, giving the slaughter just enough of an emotional core to keep it from being a collection of flashy slashes; you'll hate to see them go, but you'll love to watch them leave.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Uncharted

Just from watching Uncharted, it wouldn't come as a surprise to learn that Tom Holland was a massive fan of the game it's based on and turning it into a movie was a lifelong ambition - he's constantly giving it his all in every scene while those around him seem five seconds away from taking out their phones to check their social media stats. 

Then again, it's just as likely his management team sat him down and told him he can't be the Spider-Man guy forever and if he doesn't kick-start another franchise soon then his days of fancy Hollywood premieres will be over. Remember that guy who played Captain America? Not any more you don't.

Just look at co-star Mark Wahlberg, who well within living memory was the biggest box office draw on the planet (and was originally cast in the lead here a decade ago) but now seems lucky to be a sidekick in a video game adaptation where his character largely vanishes from screen every time there's an action sequence. It's a weird choice for him, as he's never given off the kind of "lovable rogue" vibes this role requires: you can easily imagine him cheating you and ripping you off, just not the "ha ha, only kidding" part.

The story here is yet another Hollywood treasure quest complete with clues and death traps and codes and maps, none of which make a lick of sense on any level. Seriously, if you want to get any enjoyment out of this film at all do not spend a single second thinking about any of the puzzles; as you might expect, this is a problem for the movie as a whole.

Holland is Nathan Drake, orphan turned bartender and pickpocket, who a): gets a lot of mysterious postcards from his runaway older brother Sam, who shared his obsession with the past and pirates and treasure and so on, and b): has Victor "Sully" Sullivan (Wahlberg) turn up at his bar one evening in a way that might make you think he's really Sam but no, he's a completely unrelated treasure hunter who wants Nathan's help and figures negging him like it was still 2014 is the way to get it.

All you really need to know from there is that Nathan gets into a lot of (not bad) action scenes that require him to be very flexible, there's a running joke about his old cigarette lighter (that doesn't light) that never pays off, and the hunt requires them to go to all the usual locations - you know, fancy auction house, catacombs under a European city, the jungle primeval.

Also, you can't trust anyone when it comes to treasure - including seemingly helpful Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali), seemingly unhelpful Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), and rival treasure seeker Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas). And that all-action flash-forward scene the film opens with? That's about as good as it gets.

Holland is the real draw here and he gives it all he's got, providing a charming, relentlessly likable performance that's easily the best thing about this film (and the only reason to wish for a sequel). Everyone else is fully aware they're in a limp jumble of stale Hollywood adventure cliches; he's the one taking it all seriously, presumably because this is his big chance to show he can make bank out of a Spider-Man costume. 

Or any costume really. If it's surprising how often he either ends up in a soaking wet top or entirely shirtless, that's only because Marvel movies are so remorselessly sexless even the slightest reminder that Holland is a movie star - and those guys are traditionally meant to be objects of desire - now seems more startling than any rusty death trap.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Blacklight

Liam Neeson's last team-up with writer-director Mark Williams was the surprisingly sturdy Honest Thief, the kind of late-career Neeson thriller that stays firmly within the audience's comfort zone while providing just enough quirky character moments and decent action to make it an entertaining 90-odd minutes. Now the gang is back with Blacklight, which seems to promise more of the same but ends up reaching for something a little different.

Travis Block (Neeson) specialises in extracting FBI agents from undercover operations too hot to handle. He's been doing this for years off the books for Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn), who's now the head of the FBI and the closest thing Block has to a friend. But he does have a family: his daughter Amanda (Claire van der Boom), who is more than a little wary of her often absent father, and a young granddaughter, who he's rapidly training to be as paranoid as he is.

Meanwhile, the actual story involves Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), an undercover agent who's had a severe attack of conscience after being involved in an operation that ended in the murder of a high profile politician. He's trying to tell his story to anyone who'll listen, which (as he's clearly a little unhinged) just means online journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Now Block's latest job is to calm Crane down and bring him in without too many car chases through Melbourne's Southbank precinct pretending to be Washington DC.

While Neeson's presence suggests this will be yet another enjoyable opportunity for him to take out the trash, this is in fact a political thriller where Neeson's character spends much of the film playing second fiddle to the genre's traditional leads - the whistle-blower and the crusading journalist. He's given various bits of personal business to keep him occupied, and there are a handful of striking and well thought out action scenes, but at times this feels like he's been dropped into a story that really doesn't need him.

The flip side of this is that he's still the heart of the film, playing a character that's the most interesting thing on screen. Less may be more, but almost everything about Block feels like it deserved more screen time; a sequence towards the end where he panics over losing contact with his family is more memorable than the various generic threats to democracy discussed around it.

Part of the problem is that there's no mystery behind the conspiracy. We almost always know what's going on before Block does, so many of his early scenes are just waiting for him to get caught up. It's noticable that the few scenes that feature actual surprises - or just Block professionally doing his job - are easily the most effective here. 

Despite the at-times stylish direction and strong performances, too often the story in Blacklight gets in its own way: half as much going on (leaving more room for Block to electrocute the bad guys and train a pre-schooler to always count the exits) would have been twice as engaging.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Death on the Nile

The title of Kenneth Branagh's second - and with Disney having left this on the shelves for well over a year, almost certainly last - Agatha Christie adaptation promises viewers two things. Unfortunately, here the Nile is only adequate at best, a mix of average CGI and the occasional cutaway to reed farmers or chomping crocodiles; Death, on the other hand, does more than its fair share of the heavy lifting.

Almost from the beginning, Christie's puzzlebox mysteries were scorned by fellow crime writers as bloodless things detached from reality. Branagh seems to have taken this criticism firmly on board, even as, close to a century later, the mystery genre continues to thrive on contrivance and disposable characters. A quirky, self-referential, post-modern take on the genre this is not.

Opening with a WWI sequence that's both a grim origin story for Poirot's mustache and the first sign that this is a tale where love is firmly entwined with death, things muddle around for a while in pre-WWII London and Egypt until Poirot's enjoyment of the Great Pyramids is interrupted by old chum Bouc (Tom Bateman), who drags him along to a fancy honeymoon party where it turns out Poirot knows the main players but not the combination they've settled down in.

Extremely wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot, charming and likable) has just wed hunky lunk Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer, entertainingly solid), who - last time we saw him - was dry humping Linnet's bestie Jacqueline (Emma Mackie, sympathetically tormented) on a London nightclub dancefloor. Now she's turned stalker, Linnet is understandably freaking out, and she asks Poirot to tag along in the hopes his private investigator skills can keep her safe.

Meanwhile, literally everyone else in the party has a reason to be a suspect if something dodgy were to happen while they're cruising the Nile. There's a disgruntled maid, a shady lawyer, a doctor still carrying a torch for Linnet, a couple of old biddies who either miss their former wealth or won't stop talking about how they gave it away, and on it goes.

It's not until the halfway mark that we actually get to the (first) murder on the Nile. That may be too long for mystery buffs, but the attempt to give the roster of suspects at least some life - and a few pre-murder scenes to allow the impressive cast to play their characters as actual people - will be appreciated by those who either know the outcome or guessed it the second the events leading to murder kick off.

Likewise, despite the 30s-era glamour and luxury, everyone here takes everything extremely seriously (even Russell Brand as the lovelorn doctor never cracks a smile). If you're on this film's wavelength and not just wishing you were watching Knives Out instead, Branagh's approach as director is clearly the right way to go. This story is lightweight fluff any way you look at it, a puzzle built around unlikely people and contrivances; pointing any of this out, even for an instant, would make the whole thing collapse.

No wonder then that Branagh's Poirot is - silly mustache aside - a man tormented by lost love, an OCD sufferer scared to let anyone in, trapped on a boat where people keep being murdered and he's powerless to stop it. 

Terrified by the way death follows him and yet only truly happy when staring at the Pyramids (which are, after all, just giant tombstones), the world's greatest detective is definitely the last person anyone should invite onto a pleasure cruise.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Moonfall

One of the classics of (literal) lunacy in paperback form is George H. Leonard's Someone Else is on Our Moon, a book based entirely on blurry photos of the moon's surface which the author has stared at for hours until he finally saw alien machines and hatches and loads of other cool stuff. That's not a joke: he actually advises his readers to do the same. There's a reason why the cover says "Startlingly Illustrated".

Presumably Roland Emmerich felt simply adapting this directly to the screen would have resulted in a film of limited appeal, as it would largely consist of the author harassing NASA scientists while arguing with fellow crackpots about exactly which moons in our solar system were actually alien spaceships ("all of them?"). Instead, Moonfall takes the basic idea of Leonard's book, bolts on a standard space disaster movie template, and drags things out for 130 minutes when 90 would have done just fine.

Ten years ago Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) were happy astronauts on a space shuttle satellite repair mission when Things Went Wrong. A supporting character died, Harper was disgraced, and ten years later he's a earth-bound bum whose wife has left him for some rich dude (Michael Pena), his eldest son (Charlie Plummer) is a hot-rodding delinquent, and who really cares because the moon is about to crash into the Earth and kill us all.

While NASA deputy chief Fowler (who is now divorced but has a Chinese exchange student) is concerned about this top secret news, crackpot loser K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) has also figured out the moon is getting closer by using stolen telescope time to calculate stuff and not by looking at the moon and saying "looks bigger than usual". 

Nobody at NASA will take him seriously for the exact same reasons nobody took George H. Leonard seriously, and by the time we get to see a meeting of the "megastructure" nutjob society ("megastructure" equals "the moon is a spaceship") it really does start to feel like the production company owes Leonard a few bucks.

The moon gets closer, people start to panic, Harper turns out to have been right, Houseman also turns out to be right, everyone else in a uniform is wrong, Donald Sutherland is in the film for maybe three minutes as his character from JFK yet again, and swarms of evil nanotechology are eating humanity's attempts to solve the moon problem. Before long a rag-tag group of previously mentioned heroes are setting off in a spaceship they got out of a museum with "Fuck the Moon" painted on the side to save the day while their loved ones drive around on an increasingly wacky Earth.

Fans of reality will enjoy the way this ignores pretty much everything we know about how gravity and oxygen works, while the big ticket scenes of devastation often lack the required massive carnage and city-wide destruction. Instead, we get meteor showers and giant tides (Chicago gets trashed by both), plus car chases with and without guns, which seems like a failure of imagination in a movie where people are literally being dragged off the surface of the Earth. Fortunately for the plot, more than one extremely heavy object suddenly becomes super-light when the new, closer moon is overhead to lend a hand.

On the plus side, the core cast are likable enough, there are some evil gun-toting rednecks who like to rob refugees, and once the megastructure side of things comes into play in the second half there's more than enough quasi-epic silliness going on to make up for the relatively unimpressive - numerous ominous shots of a giant moon looming over an increasingly shattered Earth aside - disaster on the ground.

As is often the case with this kind of film, the best way to enjoy it is in hindsight as a barely connected series of ludicrous moments. Though even the non-disaster scenes have an enjoyably off-kilter humour to them: if you don't like the scene where the hero literally tries to outright bribe a judge in the lobby of the courthouse, maybe you'll enjoy a trigger happy millionaire Aspen survivalist named (of course) Karen.

- Anthony Morris