Review: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

David (Colin Farrell) needs to get to a wedding. Problem: his car just died. Solution: the world's quirkiest car rental place, where a pair of maybe-sinister, maybe just hamming it up types (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) rent him a thirty year old car and then go hard on the upsell to get him to add a GPS to the deal. If this doesn't sound all that dramatic to you, bad news: this is pretty much as dramatic as it's going to get.

Eventually he arrives at the wedding, where he meets fellow singleton Sarah (Margot Robbie). They don't hit it off, then they do, kinda. He fumbles the ball, she gives him a regretful look (then sleeps with someone else), and on the drive home his GPS asks him if he wants to go on a "big bold beautiful journey". He says yes and it steers him into a tree.

Just kidding! It instead steers him into a third meet-cute with Sarah, and thanks to her equally old, equally rented car failing to start, he offers her a lift back to the city where they both live. Along the way the GPS keeps directing them to mysterious doors that lead to memorable scenes from their past - some uplifting, others a bit more downbeat - and if you're wondering if they really did die in a car crash or something, rest assured that they did not. They just like walking through portals to the past.

The whole point is a kind of interactive therapy session, where the pair - who both have serious issues with intimacy - go over their past to try and figure out what went wrong and how they can find their way to a place where they can accept that the person sitting across from them is in fact right for them. Fortunately they're played by Farrell and Robbie, otherwise this would be unbearable.

Director Kogonada (After Yang) knows there's not a lot to work with in terms of plot so this goes all-out with the visuals while providing plenty of opportunities for both leads to pump out the star wattage. It's a good-looking movie about two good-looking people flirting away like crazy then pulling away because their broken hearts can't take one more failed romance. What's not to like?

Unfortunately the unreality and schmaltz of it all undercuts the emotion, leaving this as little more than an illustrated version of a 100 minute deep and meaningful conversation that isn't quite as enthralling as the two participants think. 

Hollywood loves to strip "love" down to an imagined essence, a primal force that exists on a plain divorced from the human condition. As anyone who's actually been in love knows, the real world - the background landscape this duo merely drive through - plays a big part in who we connect with and why. 

Here, aside from some family history, we know next to nothing about these characters. Jobs, hobbies, friends, political opinions, they're nowhere to be seen. Without that, this unreal fable carries about as much weight as the balloons that drift away meaningfully at some point for some reason.

That said, sit through to the end of the credits for the shock twist that Sarah voted three times for Trump while David works for a migrant welfare organisation. Just kidding! They're saving that for the sequel.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Long Walk

In an economically depressed version of the USA that never really recovered from "the war" that tore the nation apart almost twenty years ago, the best idea they can come up with to motivate workers into being more productive is to have 50 young men walk non-stop until only one remains. It's starting to make sense why their economy is in the toilet.

Oh, and by "only one remains" they mean "we kill anyone who slows down for more than a few seconds". Add in the fact that the walk takes place through hundreds of miles of grimly rundown countryside, broken only by the occasional gawker (spectators are firmly discouraged until the walk's final stretch) or saluting cop, and that the repeated headshot murders are broadcast live, and it's very clear that something ain't right in the nation led by the drill-sergeant-esque Major (Mark Hamill).

But Stephen King has never been much of one for logic when it comes to setting, and The Long Walk - written by King back in the late 60s and published a decade later under the pen name he used for his more off-brand works, Richard Bachmann - was more blatantly metaphorical than most. A group of young men sent off to die pointlessly by a cruel government while their deaths were broadcast to the nation? Written during the Vietnam War? Not hard to connect the dots there.

That explains director Francis Lawrence's commitment here to an old-fashioned vibe, with cars, clothes, camera and guns all firmly placing this dystopia somewhere between the mid 60s to mid 70s. Together with a barely sketched-in setting (we learn almost nothing about the wider dystopia) it serves to make the whole thing seem more timeless - or just a reminder that this is a King adaptation, with his fondness for setting his horrors in what is usually a more warmly remembered past.

As a King adaptation, this feels of a piece with works like Stand By Me and It, where a group of well-outlined youngsters come together, form a bond, make a bunch of jokes, and face down death. The difference is that there's no outwitting death here, and poking it with a stick gets you a bullet in the face.

With no flexibility as far as the structure goes - after an initial scene with Raymond (Cooper Hoffman) and his mother (Judy Greer) and a flashback later in proceedings, the whole movie is just one long walk - it's the relationships that form between the characters that's basically the whole deal. If we don't care about them, then it's just a bunch of random death along an endless stretch of road.

Fortunately, there isn't a false note to be found in the performances here, especially Raymond's eventual buddy Pete (David Jonsson). Even the ones that seem a little stagey at first are revealed to be bravado or unease in the face of near certain-death. These young men (the entry age is 18, but at least one character lies about that to get in) have thrown themselves into a machine that is going to kill them, and they all realise that in their own way before their end.

Which is to say this is a film where you get to know a collection of mostly likable characters who you then get to see die in the most senseless way possible. Powerful, gut-wrenching and relentless, The Long Walk is a straightforward idea taken to a brutally logical conclusion. This walk will stay with you long after the end credits.

-Anthony Morris 

Review: The Conjuring: Last Rites

The horror genre has delivered a lot of excellent film-making over the last decade or more - seriously, there's no genre out there that more consistently punches above its weight - but that kind of excellence can only thrive when there's a solid foundation of predictable, crowd-pleasing, almost instantly forgettable films audiences can rely on to do a passable job. Welcome to the Conjuring franchise.

There have been a few winners over the years. The Annabelle movies, tracing the history of the evil doll currently caged in the Warren's basement, were about, you know, an evil doll: automatic win there. And The Nun movies, about an evil nun who... possessed a painting? They were often surprisingly full throttle when it came to just throwing scary stuff at the screen.

But it always came back to Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), renowned paranormal investigators - well, renowned unless you actually looked up anything at all about their real life activities, in which case yikes. Pretty much the only way to enjoy these movies is to pretend they're about fictional characters investigating fictional cases, an approach the movies themselves are more than happy to encourage.

Supposedly this film is about their final case; the opening makes it very clear they were well on their way out even before people started spewing up broken glass and hanging themselves in a church. It's 1986 - though it often looks a decade or more before that: one of this film's secret strengths is the way it realises that for most people the world is always at least a few years out of date - and the Warrens are giving poorly attended lectures to disinterested teens shouting out lines from Ghostbusters, which is a much better movie than this one.

The birth of their first and only child Judy (Mia Tomlinson, taking over from Sterling Jerins) was messed up by an evil mirror inherited by a young woman who literally vanishes from the story (when asked about her later, Ed says "we don't know what happened to her"); 22 years later, the mirror turns up in Pittsburgh as a confirmation gift for the Smurl family's teen daughter. It's creepy, she hates it, she and her sister throw it out but uh oh, that only makes things worse. Who you gonna call?

Ed's heart attack (as seen in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It) and Lorraine's worries that she's passed on her psychic gift to Judy mean they waffle about for ages before deciding to help the Smurls, providing plenty of time to explore the relationship between Judy and besotted beau Tony (Ben Hardy). Will they become the next generation of spectre-seekers, battling grunge ghosts in the early 90s? Guess that all depends on the box office.

None of this makes all that much sense but there's a decent atmosphere around the hellish Pittsburgh house (this was filmed in the UK) and the jump scare stuff is mostly effective. It's a long slow build up to an "all hell breaks loose" exorcism ending - evil grannies, an axe wielding farmer, and a holy book that bursts into flames all make an appearence - and while none of it is all that memorable, it's a decent enough amusement park ride through the usual spooky cliches.

The good news for regular church-goers is that this is about as overtly religious as a mainstream US film (currently) gets. The bad news is that all your faith is pretty much useless when a demonic force gets you in its sights. Just ask the spectacularly useless priest in this; looks like we're going to need a bigger crucifix.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: But Also John Clarke

A documentary about John Clarke starts off with one huge advantage: it's got John Clarke in it. The New Zealand born comedian who made Australia his home was one of the most effortlessly likable and charming features of both countries' media landscapes, which possibly explains how he managed to get away with so much over so many years.

So this is a must see straight out the gate. Directed by Clarke's daughter Lorin Clarke, this works on pretty much every level you could ask for. Skillfully crafted personal history, peek behind the curtain at the history of his long running satirical segment opposite Bryan Dawe, potted history of Fred Dagg and by extension the origin of New Zealand comedy and much more besides, it's a constantly engaging look at a creative whirlwind who also seems to have been a top bloke in person.

With access to what seems to have been a seemingly endless archive, large sections of this are narrated by Clarke himself in a mix of public appearances and home movies. His extensive written work gets a solid look in as well, with a lengthy collection of his peers and co-workers (ranging from Andrew Denton and Shaun Micallef to Ben Elton, Wendy Harmer and Rhys Darby) reading out snippets in between providing their own insights and recollections. Lorin herself chimes in at times, deftly reminding us that along with everything else he was also a loving father, and a very inspiring one at that.

Add in an insightful look at Clarke's own personal life (where a lifelong dislike of authority was instilled by a school he hated so much there's a note in the end credits to let us know his views towards the school later mellowed), Sam Neill getting emotional more than once, and a reminder that Farnarkling was a craze that swept the nation, and you'd almost think this was too much of a good thing - if such a view was possible where Clarke was concerned.

Instead, this often gives the impression of barely scraping the surface. Which is exactly the impression a look at a man as talented and creative as Clarke should give. Put together with loving care while allowing Clarke's humanity to shine through, this works whether you're a longtime fan wanting to see your favourite works remembered, someone after an overview of a career that spanned multiple decades and formats, or simply looking for a tribute to a man who always had a mischievous twinkle in his eye - even, as Andrew Denton points out, when he was on radio.

-Anthony Morris 

Review: Honey Don't!

Hitting our shores on a wave of mixed reviews out of the USA, Honey Don't! is the kind of film that definitely has problems if you're looking for them. It also has a fair bit going for it if you're willing to meet it at its own level - which, to be clear, is a pretty shallow level. But when it's a film about a lesbian PI investigating a case packed with wacky types you weren't seriously expecting "deep".

Honey O'Donohue (Margaret Qualley) is a love 'em and leave 'em California small town private investigator who feels bad that she never got back to a client in trouble before she (the client) died in a fairly suspicious car crash. So she decides to dig around, and uncovers a string of over-the-top types vaguely linked to a local preacher (Chris Evans) running a church that's big on bringing people to the lord via sex (with him).

Movies about private investigators have a long and proud tradition of not really making much sense. This barely hangs together, even when it throws in a few twists - Honey's niece (Talia Ryder) goes missing (or does she?), Honey strikes up a relationship with one cop (Aubrey Plaza) while brushing off another one (Charlie Day) - but eventually there's an answer of sorts.

This is a film where getting there is pretty much all the fun. A striking Qualley is largely the (not-so) straight man to a bunch of comedy types who are all playing it very broad but rarely stick around long enough to get annoying. Neither does the film at barely 90 minutes - big thanks to co-writer / director Ethan Coen (working with his wife Tricia Cooke) there. 

Oh yeah, it's directed by one half of the Coen brothers. If you're someone who's been worshipping the ground they walk on for the last few decades then a): good work forgetting films like The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, and b): this probably feels like a pale reflection of past glories. 

While it's true this is operating in a register the Coens made their own without ever reaching the heights of their best work, that doesn't make it a failure. Again, it definitely has flaws. For one, Honey is surrounded by over-acting, which sometimes makes it hard to figure out which deaths are tragic and which ones are more like "guess that just happened".

For another, the plot never comes together to resolve much of anything, which possibly is intentional. Again, often the problem is tonal; some elements are built up but turn out to only be there so something else can happen, while more than once an inevitable development is either ignored or skipped over.

But Honey Don't! is a decent small town noir investing heavily in the idea that a bunch of steamy lesbian sex - or ogling, or even just banter - can make up for its flaws. Better films have skated by on less.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Relay

Sneaking in under the radar, Relay is the kind of small scale, procedure-based thriller that rarely makes it to the big screen these days. Which is a shame; it'd be nice to think there was room in cinemas for something more than big budget franchises and horror movies, even as the box office constantly says otherwise.

The premise is straightforward: if you are a whistleblower who changes your mind - you want to give the incriminating evidence back to the evil corporation and just get on with your life - then Ash (Riz Ahmed) is the intermediary who will keep you safe and handle the delicate negotiations. Not face to face, of course, as a big part of this movie is about laying out the extreme levels of secrecy he applies to his operations. 

For one, "relay" refers to the fact that all his phone calls go through an untraceable phone relay service for the deaf. They're not allowed to record or monitor the calls in any way shape or form, and he never has to speak - he types in the words, the relay service has someone speak them to the person on the other end. And his secrecy doesn't stop there.

This, we rapidly realise, is a good thing. His latest case involves a scientist (Lily James) who has changed her mind about spilling the beans regarding a dodgy strain of wheat. Only she's already being targeted by a squad led by Dawson (Sam Worthington), who want the info back and don't trust Ash in the slightest. 

What follows is a game of cat and mouse (think a low tech version of one of the good Jason Bourne movies) as Ash runs everyone ragged to put all the pieces in place without being identified, while Dawson and his team are constantly drawing ever closer to tearing off his (proverbial) mask.

There is slightly more going on here, but it's also the one area where the film isn't quite as smart as it thinks it is. Fortunately, the whole thing works as a procedural no matter what, and it's more a matter of how the tension is released (either all at once or over a longer period) than the film relying on a big reveal to work.

Out of the three main characters Worthington is clearly having fun as a stock standard highly competent badass, while Ahmed gets to slowly open up in a journey that's constantly engaging even if what's revealed is somewhat predictable. James as a fairly generic damsel in distress is possibly the least interesting of the three, though a close study of her character does reveal a few layers that spice things up a little as her bond with Ash grows.

Satisfying more as a step-by-step look at a bunch of smart people trying to outsmart each other than as a high octane thrill-ride, Relay is the kind of espionage drama that'll always find a receptive audience. Whether that audience is in cinemas or streaming remains to be seen: there's still time for audiences to have their say.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: The Naked Gun

The problem with making a comedy that's more than "merely" a comedy is that pretty much anything is easier to do than comedy. Once you start down the path of making a comedy only, you know, the dramatic scenes are treated seriously, it's not long before you've got a half baked drama with a few limp gags scattered throughout. It takes creatives who take comedy seriously to make a film that's just trying to be funny from start to finish, which brings us to The Naked Gun.

A sequel of sorts to a much-loved and very silly 80s comedy franchise that's currently seen as a high water mark of a genre nobody really misses, this particular do-over has been a while coming. So much so that it initially was surfing a completely different wave, in the form of the brief feature-length comedy renaissance of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, whose success with talking teddy bear movie Ted briefly had him as the saviour of big screen comedy.

Fortunately it took so long to put the puzzle pieces together that MacFarlane himself stepped back to merely produce, and while Liam Neeson (who'd worked with MacFarlane) stuck around as Frank Drebin Jr, new director Akiva Schaffer (Hot Rod) brought in his own writers to create this particular 85-odd minutes of non-stop comedy wrapped around a loose parody of police mysteries and action drama.

And "non-stop" is no exaggeration: that previously mentioned genre that nobody misses is the one where the jokes come thick, fast, and in pretty much every form available. In early examples like Airplane! (Flying High! in Australia), Top Secret! and The Naked Gun, the mix of genre parody and whatever the creative team thought would get a laugh often struck comedy gold; by 2008's Meet The Spartans, nobody was having much of a good time.

The Naked Gun (2025) works mostly because the jokes are funny, both in isolation and taken together. They're usually so silly they'd float away if not for the weight of the gruff performance from Neeson and the... not exactly gravitas or sense of legacy, but in that ballpark... that the original Naked Gun has gained over the years. 

Forty years on, the original is seen as a real movie. It's something to live up to, and the fact this clearly tries to do so - even if the way it tries is through a lot of stupid-smart jokes - makes it feel like a real movie in a way that, say, most of Adam Sandler's efforts for Netflix do not.

So jokes so stupid they come out the other side and seem almost smart: this has plenty of them. Not all of them work, and sometimes you can see where the jokes that didn't work were cut, but mostly this gets the laughs it goes for - and it goes for a lot. Pamela Anderson is the surprise MVP here, and it turns out two leads who are good at playing it serious in a crazy world are all you need.

The Naked Gun knows where it's going and it does everything it can to make sure it gets there; would that more of Hollywood's more serious products could manage that.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Weapons

More than a lot of other genres, horror movies don't want you to look back. The point is to scare you in the moment; if that means that later on you realise the scare didn't really make sense, well, here's a new scare, don't think about this one too much either.

Weapons is a story told via a number of characters whose paths overlap. Over the course of their stories, the pace slowly but steadily ramps up: the first couple of chapters (it's broken into a series of roughly 20-minute segments, each open opening with the name of the character we'll be following) take place over days, then hours, with the final one pretty much running in real time.

So as the bigger picture becomes clear, there's less time to take it all in. Which on one level makes this a lot of fun to watch; the stakes get higher, the tension builds, characters are rushing towards situations they don't understand - and we barely know more than they do, just that they're heading into worse trouble than they realise - and the whole thing reaches a crescendo that's both extremely satisfying and pretty ghastly if you think about it.

As for what it's actually about, beyond the basic set up - in small town USA, at 2.17am, seventeen primary schoolkids from the same class got up, ran out of their homes, and vanished - the less you know the better. 

The community is outraged, with much of their ire falling on the children's teacher (Julia Garner), who has a few personal flaws of her own. Distraught father Archer (Josh Brolin) is conducting his own investigation, while inept cop Paul (Aiden Ehrenreich), local junkie James (Austin Abrams), and the only child from the class who didn't vanish (Cary Christopher) and his great-aunt (Amy Madigan) also come into focus.

There's a lot of possible touchstones here. Small town, young children gives a Stranger Things vibe; throw in the big cast and the overlapping chapters and there's echos of Stephen King. Likewise, early on this is happy to feint in a lot of directions as far as possible meanings; mob violence, a metaphor for school shootings, American citizens desperate to latch onto any explanation for the horrors around them. Take your pick.

Even the distinctive arms out run of the missing children has multiple possible meanings, from historical images to kids pretending to be aeroplanes, but writer/ director Zach Cregger is much more interested in making gestures than building anything solid out of them. It's a film of surfaces, gesturing towards deeper meanings then discarding them.

What really matters here isn't so much the explanation (though there is one) as the journey. There's plenty of scares and a growing sense of unease; there's also a surprising amount of comedy, both to relieve the tension and because some of what's going on really is legitimately funny. 

Weapons is a twisty, satisfyingly startling ride that relentlessly pushes you onward - and if later on you're left thinking "hang on a second", you'll probably be too worried about what's behind you in the back seat of your car to look back.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Fantastic Four: First Steps

A consistently entertaining, back-to-basics superhero tale shouldn't be quite so surprising in 2025. But after almost two decades of ever-increasing bloat, cutting things back to the core - likable characters with interesting abilities using them to battle a clear villain - feels like a radical move. All of which is to say, The Fantastic Four: First Steps basically re-invents the wheel, which is handy because Marvel's been dragging their heels for a while now.

Over in Earth 828 - a nice salute to Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby that we probably wouldn't have if Stan Lee was still alive - the 60s are going strong, thanks in part to the super-powered occupants of New York's Baxter Building. A few years back Reed Richards / Mr Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) Sue Storm / The Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm / The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm / The Thing (Ebon Moss-Backrach) went up into space, got pelted by cosmic rays, and came home celebrities with a side hustle in fighting monsters and averting disasters.

All that backstory is covered in a TV special; the new news here is that Sue is pregnant. A concerned Reed (after all, who knows what cosmic ray exposure might lead to?) is using his big brain to come up with devices to constantly monitor her pregnancy, while the ever-cooking Thing (who refuses to say his catchphrase, claiming it was made up for a cartoon) and the always-cocky Johnny work on being the best uncles ever. Oh, and an alien herald (Julia Garner) on a flying surfboard turns up and tells the people of Earth they're all about to die.

The Fantastic Four swing into action, tracking her back to a planet in deep space. Maybe not the best place for a pregnant woman to head off to - but they're a team, they're pledged to protect Earth, and after a journey that sells space travel as a bit more complicated and exciting than these movies usually manage, they reach their destination... just in time to see it eaten by the planet-devouring being known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson).

There's a tonal shift in director Matt Shakman's film from this point - what had previously been something of a light romp gets a bit more serious - but that's to be expected when the fate of Earth is at stake. The lack of other superheroes means we get a lot more of a look at the FF's schemes to save everybody (in a traditional Marvel movie, this part would be replaced by 40 minutes of recruiting other heroes), alongside some reminders that having near-certain death hanging over the planet would be a bit of a downer for a lot of people.

Another beneficiary of the straightforward story are our four leads, all of whom get enough room to exist as actual characters beyond their roles in the plot. The connection between the grounded Sue and the super-smart but a little distant Reed feels real, while the gruff but good-hearted Ben and the (slightly) hot-headed but always focused Johnny are a solid double act while each getting their own moments to be endearingly human.

This isn't flawless - some of the CGI could have used a few more weeks polish - and while the story's simplicity has its charms it's also lacking a bit of the grit that made the best Marvel films work. It's a reminder that there's a good reason why the four previous attempts at a Fantastic Four movie faltered: more than many superheroes, these are good-hearted characters aimed at children, and they need a lot of sincerity (provided here by the idealised '60s backdrop) if they're going to click.

How they'll fare in the wider MCU remains to be seen - though it'll be seen soon enough, with the FF locked into the upcoming Avengers movie. With their biggest nemesis confirmed as the bad guy there, they'll have their work cut out for them: the good news is, First Steps has them off to a great start.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Twenty five years ago, the sleepy fishing town of Southport was rocked by a series of brutal murders triggered by a bunch of teens trying to bury their involvement in a fatal car wreck. The killings were promptly covered up by the local real estate mogul, who realised that a resort town with a hook-handed body count might be a tough sell. And where did it get them? A quarter century later and it's happening all over again.

Okay, there are a few minor differences. This time the cover-up crew are in their early 20s; they're also much less directly responsible for the car crash, which does take away a lot of the "hey, maybe they deserve it" energy the first film had. 

And this is a direct follow on from the first film, with the characters from the original played by Jennifer Love Hewitt (now a college professor) and Freddie Prinze Jr (now a local bar owner) both increasingly involved with events. And yet even now, with their former glories far behind them, they still have way more screen presence than the younger cast - apart from maybe angsty Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), who is clearly being set up to be the final girl. Rich comedy relief Danica (Madelyn Cline), not so much.

But for the most part we've been here before. Which isn't automatically a bad thing, and for much of the run time this ticks along nicely as a not-too-serious slasher film. As such, the kills aren't great, and the film isn't always sure just how serious we should take them - some are a bit grim, most are like "well, that would suck" - but at least the nautical theme from the first film is maintained for absolutely no reason (okay, there are still a few fishing boats in the harbor).

As a whodunnit it works a little better, thanks in part to an orderly kill list: first to go are people with no real connection to the car crash death, then as the killings get closer to the core group you start to notice that hey, we never see this character or that character around during the deaths and then whoops, they're dead too. 

Of course, it all stops making any real sense long before the drawn out conclusion - which also features a development that goes against all logic and common sense once yet another shock twist reveal happens in the very next scene. But if you wanted a movie that made sense you wouldn't be here in the first place. 

Utterly inessential viewing for anyone who's not a massive fan of the original and yet still a passably enjoyable time-waster taken on its merits,  I Know What You Did Last Summer is a reminder that sometimes last summer - or summer 25 years ago - is better left in the past. Even if it does involve a bisexual hook-up in an airport bathroom with a true-crime podcaster.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Superman

Superman has always stood a little apart from the flood of big-screen costumed superheroes - or metahumans, as this film likes to call them. Batman is just a guy in a costume, who can trace his ancestry back to earlier pulp characters like Zorro or The Shadow; Spider-Man and most of the Marvel heroes that followed were built as much around a flaw as a power. Superman got there first, and that gave him more gravity, even if you did believe a man could fly.

But now, as they say, all that's changed. The Superman (David Corenswet) we meet mid-battle in Superman is one more costumed hero in a world full of them - and unlike the Snyderverse's Justice League, the other superheroes here are comic book deep cuts, not household names. Superman still soars, but the gloss has come off a little: he's a regular guy, trying to do the best he can in a world where he doesn't stand out quite as much as you might expect.

The story here bounces around a fair bit while the main thrust remains constant: Lex Luthor (Nicolas Hoult) really does not like Superman. Stopping a recent small-scale war without getting government approval has Superman on shaky ground PR wise, while Luthor and his super-powered henchman The Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria) and Ultraman (some guy in a mask) are off looting Superman's Fortress of Solitude and trashing his robot helpers in the process. Which is mostly just finishing the job Krypto started, because that dog (who comes in handy more than once) does not have good manners.

A Superman movie comes with a lot of expectations, and this does a decent job of ticking the familiar boxes. Despite being set three years after Superman announced himself to the world, his origin - as seen in the last two Superman movies - still manages to get a fair amount of air time thanks to a twist in the message his Kryptonian parents sent along with him to Earth, along with a late-stage recovery session at the Kent's family farm. 

Likewise, the romance between Clark and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), now in its third month and with some bumps still to be ironed out, gets a few scenes without ever really feeling like the heart of the film despite Brosnahan's strong performance. And yes, all the Daily Planet crew do make an appearance, though it's ladies man Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) who gets a surprisingly large role in proceedings.

It's all stuff we want to see and writer / director James Gunn does a good job of fitting it all in (even though it doesn't always feel central to the plot) by making this a film that's as much about showcasing Superman as it is about telling a story. The gamble here is that Superman himself is interesting enough to carry a film whatever he's up to, and for the most part it comes off.

This focus on character over plot does give Superman a slightly sprawling feel, as pretty much everyone gets their moment in the (yellow) sun - including the members of the "Justice Gang" (operating out of the cartoon Super-Friends Hall of Justice, though they haven't fully moved in yet). Blunt force Green Lantern Guy Gardener (Nathan Fillion), the equally bludgeoning Hawkgirl (Isabella Merced), and scene-stealing brains of the outfit Mr Terrific (Edi Gathegi) pull focus in the back half as Superman is brought low - so he can come back in the final act, of course.

Superman is usually a solo act when it comes to super-action - we haven't even mentioned Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), who can change his body into any element and that should probably set alarm bells ringing - so having him share screen time with a bunch of second stringers does dilute his impact a little. Again, Gunn steers into that, giving us a Superman who's a bit dorky and a little square (his taste in music is not great), the kind of hero who sees asking for help when it's needed as a strength rather than a flaw.

(also, it seems his Clark Kent disguise now involves "hypno glasses" to throw everyone off) 

Balancing that, Luthor gets plenty of screentime to evil up the place, freely admitting to being envious of Superman for distracting humanity from his (human) greatness while swinging between moments of extreme supervilliany and all-too-grounded brutality. Plus his evil scheme is, on one minor level, something of a callback to the first Superman film: seems Lex just can't resist a real estate deal.

This doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as the recent Snyderverse films, which isn't surprising: there are films about death camps that don't take themselves as seriously as Man of Steel. It's a charming, highly entertaining film that isn't afraid to keep things light (and light-hearted); the mood here is pure comic book, throwing out concepts and characters at a rapid pace with a breezy vibe underlying it all. 

Well, a breezy vibe and an anti-proton river from a pocket universe that flows to a black hole that might destroy the Earth, but that's all in a day's work for your friendly neighbourhood Superman.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Jurassic World Rebirth

What if, after the massive success of Jaws, the only shark movies ever made were sequels to Jaws? Every single movie about a shark was about a shark threatening a small coastal town, no exceptions? Good thing that never happened - sharks are such great movie monsters, it'd be a real shame if they were endlessly corralled into the same handful of scenarios over and over and over again.

On an unrelated topic, Jurassic World: Rebirth is the seventh in the Jurassic Park / World series, and after the last film brought pretty much everyone back for a farewell that was... better than some of the other films in the series... this one strikes out for all new territory. Only joking, it's basically the same movie as at least two of the other ones.

After being a world-spanning threat in previous films, revived dinosaurs have suddenly realised that they're not built for Earth's modern climate and have died off everywhere but a narrow band around the equator - one uninhabited island that was formerly used as a research lab in particular. Just because everyone who goes there dies doesn't mean it's not worth a visit, especially when "worth" is measured in billions because once again dinosaurs hold the key to a world-changing medical breakthrough.

So shady rich dude Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) has hired one mercenary (Scarlett Johansson) and one dinosaur expert (Jonathan Bailey) to in turn hire some disposable sidekicks to help them take blood samples from three different kinds of very big dinosaurs - a flying one, a swimming one, and one just walking around.

Meanwhile, cool dad Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is taking his family on a yacht trip across the Atlantic, just in time for them to get crashed into by an ocean-going dinosaur. Older daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), her stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono), and younger daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda) cling onto the wreck with a new-found dislike of dinosaurs, only to be rescued by the one boat where the crew think going to Dino Death Island is a good idea.

As you might have predicted if you've ever seen any of the previous movies in the series, things do not go to plan and not everyone survives to be wrecked on the island. Those that do are split into two groups - the family, and the professionals - who alternate mildly scary encounters with the wildlife while trying to make it to the abandoned research base where they can either be rescued or eaten by a demonic genetic freak dinosaur we first saw in the opening scene.

To be fair, just because the overall story is a blatant retread of what has gone before doesn't automatically make this a bad film. Director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, The Creator) serves up a number of thrilling sequences and even a few moments of genuine awe, while the script (from David Koepp, back after scripting Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World) does at least drop Isabella into numerous psychologically scarring situations - so much so that her only path back to sanity turns out to be adopting a cute (and confirmed plant-eating) dinosaur.

Friend, playing the superficially charming but eventually amoral business executive that's been a staple of these kind of films since Aliens, does a good job of portraying his character's arc from "maybe he's not so bad" to "hurry up and fall into a dinosaur's gaping maw", while Johansson and Bailey's charisma helps distract from the fact they're basically playing action figures in a child's backyard game. Everyone else is fair game for the dinos, though fewer people end up eaten than you might have expected. 

Being aimed at a slightly younger audience than your average blockbuster usually puts the Jurassic films at a disadvantage, but by sticking to the basics and over-delivering on them this one manages to be both serviceably entertaining and largely forgettable. And if your child is the kind of dinosaur expert who'll complain that the movie versions aren't realistic (where are the feathers?), don't worry - we're told early on that the dinos on and around the island are "genetically modified", so all bets are off.

If nothing else, this does feature an amazing Final Destination-style opening sequence where a dropped Snickers wrapper single-handedly destroys a billion-dollar lab and leads directly to at least one person being eaten alive. Just like life, death finds a way.

-Anthony Morris 

Review: M3GAN 2.0

The first M3GAN got by on attitude.  Killer dolls, killer AIs - it was the killer attitude that separated it from the pack. M3GAN 2.0 continues to exploit the rich, deep seam of previous movies about killbots run amok, and if it lacks some of the original's edge... well, can't a girl grow a little?

It's been two years since the first M3GAN killed a bunch of people and danced around a lot, and the world of AI has kept on moving. M3GAN's creator Gemma (Allison Williams) is now an anti-AI activist appearing alongside Christian (Aristotle Athari) to call for more government safeguards, while also working with first film survivors Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps) to create robotic exoskeletons because they have to make a living somehow.

Or do they? Gemma's house is massive and the rent is super-cheap, which you'd think would be raising alarm bells but she's too distracted by her niece Cady (Violent McGraw), who is getting pretty good with the martial arts and doesn't quite get why AI is so bad.

Someone else who doesn't get it is local tech billionaire Alton Appleton (Jemaine Clement), who wants Gemma's tech for his own possibly nefarious, possibly just sleazy schemes. Oh, and the US military has their own killbot called AMELIA, which has just gone rogue and killed her creators for reasons as yet unclear.  Gee, it'd be real handy if Gemma and Cady had their own lethal robot that could protect them right about now...

Leaving the evil doll-slash-bad babysitter tropes behind, this embraces the wider yet equally well-worn field of the robot run amok, with a hefty side of sinister AI mixed in. Everything from The Terminator to Eve of Destruction to Upgrade gets sampled here - which is hardly a bad thing, as who doesn't love a killer robot? 

The various bodies M3GAN (voiced again by Jenna Davis) gets decanted into provides plenty of scope for comedy as well as action; there's an impromptu musical number at one point that's one of the funniest needle-drops this year. And yes, old-school M3GAN (Amie Donald) gets to do the robot, in a scene which is both fan service and has a decent punchline in its own right.

This is much more of an action film than the first, with the horror largely confined to a lot of nasty deaths. The comedy is bumped up a notch from the first film as well, and it's often broader too - though not so much that this slides into parody.  

None of these elements are world-beating, and the actions tropes are especially well-worn (though a Steven Seagal shout-out is much appreciated), but it's the way this skips from one genre to the next any time things start to feel stale that gets it over the line.

With M3GAN being the only character with any real spark (though the human cast do get some decent lines) this film's anti-AI stance ends up being more like #notallkillbots. This isn't as sharp as the original, but at least the comedy is a bit more pointed - and as this repeatedly makes clear, in a world full of humans rushing to embrace AI, the joke is definitely on us.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: F1

Formula One racing is, amongst other things, an endurance test. Which is why most movies about it - including F1 - tend to take the long view; each race is a stage in a campaign, each individual moment is merely part of a greater whole. It's a tricky story structure for modern Hollywood, which tends to like things simple and focused. F1 doesn't always make the turn.

After flaming out early as a F1 racer, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) has become something of a racetrack ronin, taking any gig so long as its behind the wheel and excelling at it while stumbling at pretty much everything off the track. Ruben (Javier Bardem) is a former compatriot turned chief of a race team that can't get off the starting block, and he's got an offer Sonny can't refuse - though he tries for a minute or two.

The driver Ruben already has is not impressed by his new partner. Joshau Pearce (Damson Idris) is a young hotshot with a manager constantly whispering in his ear, giving him advice - don't trust Sonny, focus on social media - that even Pearce knows is wrong, but there wouldn't be a movie without it. 

Will Sonny mentor the rising star? Will Pearce take his rightful place on the podium to signal the generational torch has been passed? Does anyone remember how writer-director Joseph Kosinski's previous film Tom Gun: Maverick ended?

There are a lot of moving parts here and most of them work. The race footage, much of which was shot inside and from actual race cars, is thrilling; the races themselves are largely focused on tactics (tires are extremely important!), and they're explained well. This doesn't oversell the danger, but whenever something does go wrong it's gut-wrenching - if sometimes only for a few seconds.

Idris balances cocky and insecure in a winning combination, while Kerry Condon - who plays the team's top car designer - injects plenty of spark into a role that is only slightly more than a love interest for Sonny. Who doesn't really need one as his real connection is with Ruben, played with charm and endlessly likable energy by Bardem.

Pitt himself is once again the well-worn expert at his job, someone who's seen it all and taken it in his stride... most of the time at least. It's a generic leading-man role - Pitt is starting to give Harrison Ford vibes in some ways - but Pitt remains magnetic on screen. Good news, adults: he's a laid-back natural leader who's great at his job and winning with the ladies, AKA a fantasy figure aimed at people older than 12. 

If there's a flaw in this two and half hour film it's that Kosinski can't seem to find a compelling story in all these parts. It feels at times like an off-brand Michael Mann film, but Mann builds his stories about men who are driven, not drivers. Pearce has the motivation, but he's in the second seat and he's not fully formed; Pitt, playing a character seemingly tailor-made for him, rarely makes us feel the stakes.

Sonny is helping out an old friend, and also getting one last chance to prove himself, and also being a mentor to the next generation. Which is one too many motivations, especially when at least two of them are in opposition and none of them run counter to him being just a good old boy who likes to go fast. When you're at the pointy end of a multi-million dollar organisation based around hurtling around racetracks across the globe at terrifying speeds, there's such a thing as being too nice. 

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: 28 Years Later

Everyone remembers the superfast zombies (well, technically not zombies, but...) from 28 Days Later. Largely forgotten is everything else. Director Danny Boyle and scriptwriter Alex Garland used the broad outlines of the zombie movie - and a bunch of other British horror: the memorable opening owes a lot to The Day of the Triffids, for one - to lure audiences in to something that was at times fairly experimental. And so it is again.

It's been 28 years since the rage virus was unleashed on the UK (turns out the European spread seen in sequel 28 Months Later was short-lived). The few uninfected survivors live in isolated settlements, such as the island Lindisfarne, where 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams) has two worries on his mind: his mother Isla (Jodie Corner) is ill, swinging between coherency and delirium, and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is about to take him to the mainland for his first kill.

Connected to the mainland by a causeway that can only be crossed in low tide, the island community needs to scavenge to survive - and the only way to survive a scavenging mission is to be ready to kill any infected that come along. After a generation, some infected are now bloated crawling things, while others remain the usual screeching running horrors. 

And then there are the Alpha's, giant killing machines that are almost impossible to stop. Suffice to say running into one of them can turn a straightforward hunting trip into a nightmare, and even they're not the worst things on the mainland. When Jamie and Spike see a fire off in the distance, Jamie tells Spike about a doctor he once knew who went mad and became obsessed with the dead. But all Spike hears is "doctor" - the only person left who could possibly save his mother.

Boyle can still generate the usual terrors when he has to. There's plenty of sneaky zombies, unstoppable zombie hordes, people backed into a corner by zombies, and people having their heads torn off and spines ripped out by Alphas, who are extremely scary and clearly big fans of Predator. 

But there's also a fair amount of experimentation going on, starting with much of the events being filmed on iPhones to continue the digital feel that made the first film stand out (and look extremely dated today). Deaths often occur in freeze-frame, there's night vision footage of glowing-eyed zombies, and the journey to the mainland is sound-tracked by a century-old recording of a Rudyard Kipling poem about marching to war.

Spike's story is more about coming-of-age than merely of survival, as he eventually strikes out from his village - probably a good idea, as the whole place feels a little cult-y in an inbred UK way - in search of the fabled doctor (Ralph Fiennes). After a fair amount of slaughter in the first two acts, the third turns into something closer to a meditation on death and its meaning - before a final twist that sets up a sequel due early next year.

The first film ran counter to the established zombie tradition; two decades later, that tradition is as strong as ever, and this film is even less interested in its cliches. There's plenty of scares here; there's also plenty to think about. It's the most exciting film Boyle has made in years; seems it took the living dead to bring him back to life.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: How To Train Your Dragon

Live action remakes of animated hits are just one head of the remake / reboot / reworking hydra that currently dominates pop culture. With the media so splintered, the only way to get people to notice something new is for it to be connected to something they already know about. Sometimes that's a way to slip something new in audience's diet; other times it's the new version of How to Train Your Dragon.

On a Viking island constantly under attack by dragons, Hiccup (Mason Thames) does not fit in. He wants to kill dragons like everyone else, but being a nerd more suited to building gadgets than swinging an axe has made him a misfit who's shunted aside for every battle. 

Being the son of the chief (Gerard Butler) doesn't help either, as his fellow teens see him as the islands nepo baby - which hurts coming from determined up-and-comer Astrid (Nico Parker), who shows zero interest in returning Hiccup's crush.

Then when Hiccup's latest invention secretly brings down the most feared dragon of all - a Night Terror - he's forced to face facts: he's just not a killer. In fact, he soon befriends the crippled dragon, naming it Toothless (it does have teeth, they're just retractable). 

The closer the two get, the more Hiccup realises everything the islanders know about dragons is wrong. But will the insights he's getting from Toothless - which are helping him ace the warrior training the teens are going through under the watchful eye of Gobber (Nick Frost) - lead his people on a new path? Or will things go horribly wrong and make Hiccup even more of an outcast until the teens hey look we all know how this wraps up.

Story-wise this sticks extremely close to the 2010 animated film, which is neither surprising (2010 film director Dean DeBlois returns for his first stab at live action), nor automatically a bad thing. That effort (itself based on a book) was a high point in Dreamwork's animation: making this a do-over is a good way to make a good film, which this is.

What it isn't is a great film, in part thanks to the limitations of live-action (even in a film where numerous scenes have enough of a CGI sheen to feel more than a little unreal). The best performances are the most cartoony - that'd be Butler and Frost - while the teen leads make their characters feel grounded and down to earth when a bigger presence wouldn't go astray - they're standing next to dragons, after all.

The big visual scenes still soar. Hiccup and Toothless flying together is thrilling; the epic final battle has some awe-inspiring moments. And the story's big messages around family and acceptance and the pointlessness of tit-for-tat conflict pack a punch. It feels a little unfair to compare this decent live action film to an excellent animated one made a decade and a half ago - or it would, if they didn't both share the same name.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Ballerina

What's a John Wick movie without John Wick? The original appeal of the franchise was that super-assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) was committing all this carnage over a dead dog; take that away and all that's left is a whole lot of action, which is not exactly something in short supply at the movies. 

Sure, there's all the stuff with the tattoos and gold coins and The High Table. But as anyone who saw the prequel TV series The Continental knows, that alone does not a decent story make. So Ballerina (tagline: From the World of John Wick) is doomed to fail? Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Left on her own after a bunch of opening-scene gunplay with bonus explosions, a young girl named Eve is collected after the carnage by Winston (Ian McShane), who is presumably on holiday from running his hotel or something, it doesn't really matter. He drops Eve off at the New York ballet school-slash-murderer academy run by The Director (Angelica Huston), where she spends the next twelve years learning how to dance and kill people, as you do.

Now all grown up (and played by Ana de Armas), Eve starts work as a kind of proactive bodyguard; she protects people by murdering a lot of people around them. But when she finds one of the many, many people she's killed has the same mark as the people who killed her father back at the start of the movie, it's payback time. Which is something the world of John Wick has had a bunch of experience with.

The good news is, Ballerina is close enough to the source material to feel like a John Wick movie, and just different enough to keep the franchise feeling fresh. Having a smaller, self-contained story definitely helps; this also avoids the feeling with the later Wick movies that what we were watching was a string of 20 minute action scenes glued together with some inessential lore and Reeve's charm.

Oh yeah, Reeves makes an appearance here (it's set between John Wick 3 and 4), in a role that's possibly bigger than you might have expected but doesn't pull focus from Eve's story. It feels like Reeves is doing a favour for a friend by appearing here - which is a coincidence, because that's what Wick is doing too.

Otherwise this is your last chance to see the great Lance Reddick (this was his final outing as Charon before his death), McShane is always fun, Huston gets to be a bitchy teacher (also fun), and Gabriel Byrne hams it up in scene-stealing form as the big bad. As for de Armas, she easily sells Eve's angst in the quieter moments while being convincing in the action scenes, which swing between slick professionalism, flustered desperation, and at her most charming, "I can't believe this shit".

The action scenes, which as you'd expect make up a large percentage of the film (which was directed by Len Wiseman; producer and John Wick director Chad Stahelski oversaw extensive reshoots), continue the Wick tradition of combining movement and stylised gunplay with exciting new ways to kill people. Here that includes a fair amount of grenade work and excessive use of multiple flamethrowers towards the end, which is pretty impressive even for a series such as this.

You wouldn't call this a comedy, but there's just enough humor running throughout to provide texture. Early on, someone gets beat to death with a remote control; each blow changes the channel to bring up another influence on the franchise (who doesn't love the Three Stooges?). And it's always entertaining to see John Wick's reputation preceding him.

Backstory and lore isn't enough to create a decent spin-off, and this knows it. If you've had enough of Wick this probably won't turn you around, but if you're already a fan this'll remind you why. It builds (a little) on what came before, adds just enough to stand alone, and then sits back and has some fun with a constantly escalating climax featuring a whole lot of implausible action. This Ballerina's worth a spin.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Bring Her Back

Nobody really expects a horror movie to stand up to serious examination. By their very nature they're often full of implausible stuff: the trick is to get the vibes right and hope that'll put off any serious questions until after the credits roll. For much of the run time, Bring Her Back does a solid job with the vibes - just don't look too hard for a pool fence and it'll be fine.

Blind teen Piper (Sora Wong) and her older stepbrother Andy (Billy Barratt) are out on the street after their father dies in the shower, but good news: seasoned foster parent Laura (Sally Hawkins) is more than happy to take Sora in and yeah, guess she'll take Andy as well if she has to.

Things seem suspect from the start. Laura's shaven-headed nephew Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) is a creepy silent presence, while she's subtly wearing down the bond between the siblings every chance she gets. Andy is already on shaky ground due to a troubled past, and Laura seems more than happy to exploit things to get the result she wants.

But what exactly is that result?  A well-worn video tape showing glimpses of a sinister ritual suggest something more unnatural behind her unsettling antics (having her along at the dad's funeral was not a good idea), while Oliver has to be locked up constantly and that big white line running around the house seems to be there to keep something in.

And oh yeah, Laura's daughter - who was also blind - died not that long ago after falling into the now empty backyard pool. But there's a big rain storm on the way, and that pool is going to fill up fast... 

There's no denying there's some memorably nasty things going on here; it's everything in between that's a little thin. The whole trauma angle is enough to keep things ticking along, but it's not exactly fresh or insightful. You may not have seen it before, but at times it feels like it.

Writer / directors the Philipou brothers (Talk to Me) are clearly pretty canny when it comes to horror, so it's a bit of a surprise that the story here all but fades away in the final act once the various mechanisms to wrap things up are in place. It's more predictable than it should be: once we know what's going on, that's what we get even though there feels like there's room (and need) for an extra twist or two.

Hawkins is, as you'd expect, excellent as a creepy foster mother, and the middle stretch where she's up to no good but it's not quite clear how or why is the film's strongest. Barratt does pretty well too as someone in over his head, while Wong has to wait a while before her time to shine.

It all adds up to a film that features a cast of characters driven by grief in a story that doesn't really have much to say about grief. Piper feels betrayed that her brother has shut her out from his loss, but by the time he fully explains what he's feeling it's too late to have much impact on anything. Likewise, Laura's grief motivates the plot, but because this is a horror movie we just see her acting creepy without explanation until well towards the story's end.

On the other hand, there are some very nasty moments of body horror here that won't easily be forgot. Which is probably more important in the scheme of things than speeches about how having a dead relative really sucks.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Something the marketing for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning doesn't want you to remember is that it's the second half of a bigger film. Don't worry, it goes out of its way to remind you of previous events via an astonishingly sluggish first hour that at times feels like a chopped-down version of something that probably would have made this into a trilogy. But tonally? Once this gets going, it's a final act all the way.

In practical terms, that means a hefty slice of what traditionally makes a M:I film fun to watch is now in the rear-view mirror. This still holds up as a stand-alone film (just), but it's a much narrower version of previous installments, like star Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie started believing their marketing and decided that so long as Cruise was in a couple of real-life death traps the rest of the film didn't matter.

So the first hour is mostly muddled recap with some half-hearted gestures towards franchise requirements: there's a torture scene, a mask reveal, and a lot of exposition which can be summed up as "an evil computer program called 'The Entity' wants to take over the world's nukes and kill everyone, some people want to help it, some want to harness it, and Ethan Hunt (Cruise) wants to shut it down".

As always, the way to do that requires a fair amount of globe trotting. What it doesn't involve this time is a whole lot of traditional action. There are a couple of fight scenes, plus a shootout or two - almost the only joke in the entire film comes in early, when an especially brutal fight is shown solely in the horrified expressions of Grace (Haley Atwell) and some nasty sound effects. But again, the big action beats (remember the car chase through Rome in the previous film?) are a thing of the past.

Pretty much everyone from the previous film returns (it's a part 2 after all), with evil assassin Gabriel (Esai Morales) now wanting to control The Entity, previously evil assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) now helping the good guys, computer genius Luther (Ving Rhames) now confined to a sick bed and spare computer genius Benji (Simon Pegg) now looking pretty worn down. Possibly because there's multiple leaden speeches here about the power of choice and saving those we'll never meet and so on, like this was a series about teaching serious life lessons and not people constantly pulling off rubber masks.

Angela Bassett is back too, only now she's the President and gets some surprisingly tense scenes as it becomes increasingly clear that the only options left are either she nukes everyone else or The Entity nukes everyone. It's also a reminder that this is a franchise where a large amount of the tension often comes from scenes the star has nothing to do with - they're spy thrillers where Hunt's role is basically that of a human screwdriver, a tool used to defuse the bomb.

Defusing a bomb can be a lot of fun to watch though, and as benefits a film that is basically one big climax to a five-hour story, this features two big dialogue-free set-pieces that make this worth the price of admission on their own. In one Hunt has to navigate the insides of a wrecked sub; the second is a biplane chase that somehow involves Hunt crawling all over the outside of not one but two planes mid-flight.

The big selling point is supposedly "Cruise does all his own stunts!", and fair play, his stuntwork is extremely impressive. But it's telling that the sub sequence (which may involve Cruise inside what is basically a giant washing machine set on spin dry, but did not take place in an actual sunken sub) is just as thrilling as the plane chase, which does involve actual planes flying not-that-high above the real earth. Watching a 62 year-old multi-millionaire risk his life purely for our amusement is fun, but not as much fun as a well-crafted suspense sequence.

More than most Mission: Impossible films, which don't exactly have a reputation for smooth storytelling, this feels like a grab-bag of parts. The good parts are extremely good and build towards a thrilling climax that's a shot of pure adrenaline guarenteed to send you out the cinema on a high. 

The bad parts? Well, if they ever make another one - and this most definitely does not shut the door on that possibility - maybe Hunt could stay out of those endless crumbling brick tunnels he's always running down.

- Anthony Morris

 

 

Review: The Surfer

You can't go home again. If home is A Land Down Under, you're a fool to even try. For Nicolas Cage's unnamed character (okay, he's "the Surfer"), a return trip to try and salvage his shattered life by purchasing the house he spent some of his childhood in goes horribly wrong seemingly for no other reason than, well, it's Australia. Surf's up.

Things are looking shaky from the start. The deal to purchase the house is on a knife-edge, his son (Finn Little) doesn't seem all that impressed with stories of past glories, and when they head down to the beach to hit the waves they're bluntly told that the only thing that's going to be hit is them if they don't piss off. 

Localism (a real thing) is where surfers don't take kindly to outsiders - after all, good waves are a finite resource, and the locals rarely like to share. So they retreat, his son heads off (his parents are separated, obviously; no prizes for guessing which one has moved on with her life) and our hero sticks around to make a few calls from the carpark.

Getting away turns out to be surprisingly difficult thanks to a mix of urgent phone business, some extremely aggressive teens, a local hobo (Nic Cassim) even more hated than the Surfer, and a slowly growing sense that maybe he doesn't want to go anywhere - he was a local once too, even if nobody will acknowledge it.

What follows is a nicely balanced decent into madness as the Surfer takes up residence in the beach carpark, partly to spy on surf thug cult leader Scally (Julian McMahon), partly because events seem to conspire to strip everything from him, and partly because everything seems to be going wrong at such a rapid rate we're not quite sure how much of everything is all in his mind. Maybe even none of it?

Fortunately this is Nicolas Cage we're dealing with, and his ability to finely judge just how over-the-top his performance should be is put to good use here. He maintains an element of desperation throughout that keeps the insanity grounded - he's just a regular guy, with a past that may or may not be as solid as it seems, and while he certainly plays a part in his downward spiral he's still the victim here.

Scally's cult (their big marketing hook is rhyming "surfer" with "suffer") brings in themes of toxic masculinity, but they're there more to motivate the hilariously aggressive locals than provide any real social commentary. What this film is really about is simply seeing Cage become increasingly sunburnt and shabby as the world wears him down. Sometimes the waves carry you out, sometimes they bring you back.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Thunderbolts*

The golden age of Marvel movies was three and a half stars at best. A decade or so ago, when Marvel ruled the screens, the secret of their success was consistency: while they only rarely served up something truly exciting or memorable, they never (well, almost never, looking at you Thor: Dark World) delivered a real dud.

And then suddenly they were serving up misfires, and turning out for every movie in a series seemed a lot less essential when you knew there was a good chance you'd be sitting down to watch something bad. What Thunderbolts* does - and does well - is reset the quality counter. It's not great, but it's good enough: if Marvel can just make another few movies like this, they might really be onto something.

Depressed after the death of her sister and basically just going through the motions of being a professional murderer, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is looking for a change. She's thinking a move to more public facing superheroics might do her good; her employer, shady spy maven Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) sees her as more of a loose end. With political pressure being brought to bear on her in Washington, it's time to tidy up.

When Yelena's next mission turns out to be something of a circular firing squad - with a bunch of fellow shady types including John "U.S. Agent" Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamden) pointing guns at each other - they all realise they've been set up. Figuring out what dazed regular human Bob (Lewis Pullman) is doing there will have to wait: escaping the bunker and getting past the guards is job number one.

Once they do get free, with the help of Yelena's dad Alexi "The Red Guardian" Shostakov (David Harbour), they're still in trouble. Valentina wants them gone; Congressman Bucky "The Winter Soldier" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) wants them to help him take her down. Could there be an even bigger threat lurking in the wings? One that will force this rag-tag group to come together as a team and learn to trust one another? And let's not even get started on the power of love.

Almost none of these characters are original to this film, but there's next to no backstory required, making this feel a lot fresher than most of Marvel's recent output. The usual mix of relatively grounded action and wisecracks is more of the same, but the action generally makes sense and it's surprisingly how well the usual zingers land when they're delivered by decent actors.

The ensemble is Thunderbolts* real strength. Just about everyone here could support a solo feature (c'mon, Dreyfus has already has multiple TV series), while Pugh is a genuine movie star and Marvel doesn't really have a surplus of those. You want to see what happens to these characters, even when it's the usual run of scenes standing around throwing quips at each other; when the post-credit sequence propels them into the next stage of the MCU it's hard not to think "hang on, why can't we just hang out for a while?"

Marvel movies have to be good at what they do because what they do is pretty restricted. The action can't be too violent, the jokes have to be PG, forget about sexual tension. If this feels like a James Gunn movie without James Gunn, that's because he's the first director since Joss Whedon who figured out how to thread this particular needle - the secret ingredient here being sincerity, as it turns out super-powered beings get depressed too.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Accountant 2

Even back in 2016, The Accountant was the kind of action movie that felt a little behind the times. A complicated plot built around a surprisingly good hook - what if Ben Affleck was fake-named Christian Wolff, an autistic super-accountant who laundered money for top criminals and was also really good at murdering henchmen - it didn't really deliver anything special but it did serve up a lot of it. And now, in a move nobody saw coming, he's back.

This time around the whole "crime accountant" thing is dismissed in a single phone call (the film spends more time on a scene where Wolff rigs a speed dating event, only to find his personality is so off-putting everyone bails on him), leaving the plot mechanics to an overly-complicated set-up involving the abrupt death of a supporting character.

This leads to newly promoted supporting character Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) taking on a mystery only "The Accountant" can help her solve. As she is a high level Federal law enforcement officer, this is the one part of the story that's actually convincing, even if her reason for contacting an organised crime figure is that the investigation is off the books and not because government law enforcement has collapsed in the USA.

They run around, Wolff cracks some heads - much to Medina's dismay - and then he realises he's going to need some help to figure out how to solve what seems to be a human trafficking case. Enter his equally murderous but slightly more socially adjusted brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), who takes time out from being a hitman who's trying to collect a cute puppy to come to LA to use his ability to act like an actual human being to murder the people his brother can't.

Their double act is easily the best part of the film, and while it's unlikely we'll ever get a film that's just one lethal killer trying to help another lethal killer pick up women in cowboy bars, that's Hollywood's loss because that kind of thing is the only time this really comes alive.

Otherwise the story is by-the-numbers in that generic action movie way where everything builds to a big shootout where the stakes are like "eh, whatever", while the few weird elements from the previous film (most notably Wolff's backup team of autistic super-hackers) only get the occasional look-in. Nothing here is actively bad, but aside from the Affleck-Bernthal pairing it's difficult to figure out what exactly about this is meant to be luring audiences into cinemas.

Then again, it is a pretty solid pairing. The pair have strong chemistry, they're both better actors than the material requires, and their characters mesh well together. Wolff gets to warm up and show some interest in Braxton's feelings, and Braxton's tough shell cracks at a moment that actually makes good use of the fact that this is a sequel and the characters do have an on-camera history that goes back almost a decade.

It's rare to see an action movie these days where the action isn't the whole point (what action we do get here is solid but not spectacular), but that means the main plot ends up feeling a little beside the point. It's the buddy comedy stuff that works here.

If someone suggested a version of The Odd Couple with these two leads as bickering roommates who occasionally have to murder a warehouse full of goons, they'd have a winner on their hands; maybe get the Accountant to run the numbers on that project.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Sinners

 

The year is 1932, and the SmokeStack brothers (both Smoke and Stack are played by Michael B Jordan) have returned to their southern home town with a load of money and guns. They're looking to invest in a juke joint, so over the course of a day they buy an old sawmill, source a couple of musicians, stock the place with supplies (the booze they've bought themselves) and get ready for one hell of a good time.

Thanks to Irish vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell), that good time eventually does turn hellish, but the turn is a long time coming. Writer / director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) takes a long time setting things up, and not a moment's wasted: Smoke (the serious one) and Stack (the free-spirited one) split up to get what they need, and their adventures gathering supplies and young guitarist Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) plus experienced blues harp player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), keep the energy levels way up.

Once the music starts this really takes off - literally at one central point, when Sammy's playing reaches across time to bring in the spirits of other musicians past and future. It's the kind of scene that could easily have come off as forced or cheesy, but the joy and power of the music carries it effortlessly. When people call this a musical, they're not joking.

There's a lot going on here before the chord change. The brothers are giving back to a community that's under siege even before the vampires turn up, the music an escape from chains both literal and social. Coogler takes full advantage of the wide open landscapes to craft some gorgeous big-screen visuals before the story shifts to the sawmill. And there's a string of sharply defined women (including Hailee Steinfeld, Wummi Mosaku and Jayme Lawson) drawn to the music and the men who're making it happen.

Then, after a single scene of horror early on to let us know what's to come, the tone changes. The shift when Remmick and his new backing band turn up looking to come in and play a few numbers isn't abrupt, but it doesn't take long for a bunch of new rules to be established.

Now we're watching a vampire movie, and Coogler shifts to playing the classics. There's a few angles he's interested in polishing up - the need to invite vampires in comes up again and again to good effect - but on the whole the vampire stuff is merely good rather than great. Coogler's like a musician who has to run through the hits, but his heart isn't quite in it: it's when he gets to spin his own riffs that he really shines.

Everything in that first 90 minutes - especially the use of music - is pushing things, taking the story beyond the usual limits. And that includes sexually; we're so used to mainstream American genre film being asexual that the easy way this has with sex - both brothers get their ends away, sex advice is casually handed out and skillfully applied, and there's no doubt whatsoever that the music we're hearing only has one thing on its mind - is more transgressive and startling than any horde of bloodsuckers that used to be people.

Coogler draws a very straight line between the music and the beyond. Charlie's guitar playing is so good, we're told, it can pierce the veil between this world and the next and open a door between them (which is why vampires aren't turning up to every juke joint down south). It's just that the music here is so much more vivid than the vampires, supernatural beings or not. We expected something awe-inspiring and terrifying, not a bunch of overly familiar rowdy drunks.

Then again, the vampires like a good tune too. The divide between Irish traditional and the blues seems a bit harsh at first, but it rapidly becomes clear that the film, if not the people in it, are on the side of music no matter who's playing it. 

That's made even more clear in the film's multiple codas (you do not want to leave when the credits start rolling), where the focus is as much on the music that survived the night as it is the people. Seems there's more than one way to live forever.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Warfare

The year is 2006, the place is Iraq, and in Ramadi a US Navy SEAL team selects and occupies a multistory home, smashing their way in and ordering the residents to stay in a single room. There they set up a post covertly observing a nearby market, though it doesn't take long for the locals to realise they're being watched. Many of the locals have guns. Things rapidly escalate.

This story (based on events experienced by co-director Ray Mendoza) isn't entirely told in real-time - the Americans were in the house for a while before things turned violent - but once the shooting starts the focus is on immersing the audience in the moment-by-moment chaos and clamour of modern war. It's loud, it's confusing, you can't see who's shooting at you and you don't know if those around you who've been shot are dead or just wounded.

Co-director Alex Garland has form with this kind of you-are-there look at street fighting (see the final act of Civil War) and this is an extremely tense experience for much of the 95 minute run time. The SEAL team are just distinct enough to be individuals without breaking the illusion of being there as it happens - nobody starts revealing their backstory - and while at times it's difficult to identify who's doing what (being covered in dirt and plaster will do that to you), the confusion is intentional.

There's a lot to unpack here if you can get past the relentless violence and stress of combat (to be fair, that's hard to do at times). The soldiers psych themselves up for combat by watching the notorious softcore porn video to Eric Prydz' 'Call On Me'; amongst themselves they're joking, on the job they're emotionless machines, and the Iraqis whose home they commandeer are an inconvenience at best. 

War itself here is both visceral and remote, the unit a well-oiled machine designed to fire thousands of rounds at distant shapes. It's the small moments that stand out against the carnage - gear needs to be retrieved, superior officers don't want to release needed resources, the shockwave from a low-flying jet is better able to suppress the enemy than any lethal weapon.

Beyond the impressive film-making on display, Warfare stands out for the way it takes the "focus on one day and you'll reveal the subject's entire life" biopic approach to the Iraqi war. The story here is the conflict in miniature: a group of Americans invade a family home for reasons that seem arbitrary, trash the place, get into a massive battle with heavily casualties and loss of equipment, then withdraw having achieved nothing. 

At one point one of the two local troops on patrol with the US forces say the Americans are going to use them as human shields: they are not shown happily waving flags during the end credits.

- Anthony Morris