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

 

 

Review: Drop

 

Drop is one of those thrillers it's become slightly surprising to see in cinemas. Small cast, largely confined to one location, well-written and twisty script; it doesn't have a whole lot going for it but it definitely makes the most of what there is. It'd be nice to think there's still room for this kind of film in between the blockbusters and horror franchises. After all, cinemas still claim to have something for everyone.

Violet (Meghann Fahey) is going on her first date in years - her gun-waving husband is dead, she's now giving guidance to abused women, these dots don't need much connecting - leaving her young son in the care of her sassy sister (Violett Beane). It's a dinner date at a fancy restaurant high above the city, and while she's waiting for photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar) to show she has a number of brief but memorable encounters with fellow diners and staff which you should definitely pay close attention to.

That's because not long after the hopefully happy couple sits down she starts getting text messages from a anonymous file-sharing service called Digidrop (hence the title) that rapidly get personal and aggressive. Turns out there's a man with a gun at her home and there's a few things the mystery messenger wants her to do before the night is out.

Most of the middle act is Violet trying to get help only to find the texter is one step ahead, while the mystery of who it might be (turns out they have to be close by for the app to work) is handled with plenty of misleads but not too many obvious cheats. There's a few surprising moments, but this is a fairly grounded entry in the genre - it's not exactly realistic, but it takes place in a somewhat realistic world.

Fortunately writers Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach, along with director Christopher Landon (responsible for the very enjoyable Happy Death Day series) keep things moving fast while juggling enough subplots (will the sleazy piano player really play 'Baby Shark'? Will their server ever make it in the world of improv?) to ensure things never get bogged down.

There's also the whole first date angle, which is handled deftly thanks in large part to the authentic chemistry between Fahey and Sklenar, but with a nice boost via a conversation which ties Violet's abusive past with what she's going through here. It's nothing ground-shaking, but like everything else here it's just that little bit better than it needs to be.

At a tight 90 minutes, and with an all-action climax that goes big compared to the tightly-wound film leading up to it, this understands the brief and fulfills it efficiently. Centered on an excellent performance from Fahey, who has to get a lot of the drama across while playing a character trying not to let anything show, Drop is 2025's best worst first date.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

The Looney Tunes characters aren't quite as moribund as (ducks aside) Disney's stable of animated stars, but they definitely have the vibe of big name stars waiting for a big project that's never going to come. Which The Day The Earth Blew Up seems very much aware of: it's just an old fashioned movie, not an event (*cough Space Jam 2 cough*) and is all the better for it.

Focusing firmly on the Porky Pig - Daffy Duck relationship - though it's a slightly earlier version of the double act than you might remember, with Porky in the lead and Daffy just that little bit too daffy to be trusted - our loveable duo are forced to deal with a bubble gum related alien invasion when all they want to do is fix up their family farm.

This isn't quite as manic as you might expect. A feature length film needs a very different tempo than an eight minute short (though one segment of the duo's adventures is basically presented as such), so for every frantic battle with body-horror alien goo there's a slightly more sedate scene to let everyone catch their breath.

Unfortunately the material isn't always strong enough to ride out the quiet patches, creating a few moments where kids (and adults) might start fidgeting. They're brief - this does a surprisingly good job of piling on the twists and turns, with the plot still throwing up surprises right to the end - but it does mean this doesn't quite hit the high energy high notes associated with the Looney Tunes brand.

As the voice of both Daffy and Porky, Eric Bauza does a first class job of capturing the personalities of both, which goes a long way towards making this feel like a real movie complete with character development and emotional ups and downs. Also there's evil bubblegum, so it all evens out.

For a relatively low budget effort this looks great; a solid gag early on has Daffy and Porky's adoptive dad only ever appearing as a painted background (trust me, you'll know the difference when you see it), and there's plenty of life and movement in every scene. It may not be right up there with the classics, but what is?

This isn't an updating of the characters (it's a 1950s style alien invasion at best), and it's not the kind of film that'll have you leaving the cinema shouting "the Looney Tunes are back!". It's decent kids entertainment with plenty of charm and wit, the kind of thing that Warners should be punching out at least once a year and making a tidy return both financially while boosting the visibility of these still viable characters.

 Oh wait, they just took all the Looney Tunes shorts off streaming. Guess that's all, folks.

- Anthony Morris

 

 

Review: A Working Man

It's not strictly true that the fashion is the most interesting thing about A Working Man. But it is noticeable that while Jason Statham's Levon Cade and his friends all consistently wear solid workman gear, all his enemies both personal and professional are constantly putting on outlandish and flamboyant outfits when they're not just straight-up hosting costume parties where everyone is dressed like it's pre-revolutionary France.

This kind of blatant signalling - seems bad guys are rich and decadent, who knew - is something this film could have done with a lot more of. It's not like Statham is any stranger to going over the top: his best films and most memorable roles have usually backed right up to being silly, if not gleefully danced on top of it.

Sadly this particular film seems to have taken all the wrong lessons from Statham's recent surprise hit The Beekeeper, an often deeply strange film that audiences gleefully took to because for once the righteous vengeance these action films deal in was focused on a real world villain (online scammers preying on the vulnerable). Turned out people really enjoyed seeing specific dirtbags being punished rather than the usual vague arms dealers and human traffickers and Russian mobsters.

Surprise! Here Cade is tracking down human traffickers, though at least they're home grown and not the evil foreigners from Taken. Though they are weirdly incompetent: their scheme seems to involve kidnapping young women to order and then just keeping them in a basement for a week or so to give Cade time to get on their trail. 

A slightly more thought-out movie would have had someone - possibly Cade's police friend, who gets one scene to contribute almost nothing to the plot - say something like "these guys fly a plane full of girls to Dubai once a week, you've got five days" and hey presto, ticking clock.

Instead, this film (based on a novel by former Punisher comic book writer Chuck Dixon, with a script co-written by Sylvester Stallone) uses the traditional and somewhat plodding structure where Cade, once set on the trail of his bosses' missing daughter, murders his way up the food chain until he runs out of people to kill. Only here, because the kidnappers are actually minor thugs, Cade ends up wiping out half the Russian mob because the movie has almost two hours to fill.

The problems with this structure - which is basically a detective story, only the detective can't go back to re-question anyone because he's killed them and there's no mystery to solve - is that you either get a string of forgettable goons or you get a decent bad guy but he only gets two scenes before he's killed and oh look, there's Jason Flemyng as a Russian mobster turning up far too early in the story to stick around for long.

Despite the obvious flaws, director David Ayers knows what he's doing and everything here is solidly competent in a way that, say, some of the more recent Liam Neeson films can't quite manage. The action is decent, the story doesn't dawdle, and there's just enough colour in Cade's numerous antagonists to make them noticeable (highlights include a Russian goon seemingly toting around an anti-aircraft gun and a couple of corrupt cops who are constantly apologising for handing people over to murderous thugs).

The result feels at times like an attempt to tap into the Jack Reacher audience, which might make sense if you've never actually watched Statham act. Statham's big strength as an actor is his sense of humor; the more a film tries to make him into a bland generic thug pummeling bad guys, the less impressive the result. In his best films he brings a touch of levity to taking out the trash, whether it's through implausible action, some decent quips, or just being in a film that doesn't take itself too seriously. 

Which brings us back to the fashion. The Beekeeper hit big by having real-world bad guys; this turns the dial the other way and works hard to make Cade, a down-home construction worker and vet trying to hold his family together, a blue collar hero for today. And yet, the one scene where Statham really stands out is the one where he has to go to a business meeting in a suit. Turns out looking good works for him.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Alto Knights

Nominally based on the true story of New York gangsters Frank Costello (Robert De Niro) and Vito Genovese (Robert De Niro again) as they waged war for control of the mob in the 1950s, what The Alto Knights mostly resembles is some kind of half-remembered dream. 

Things happen, then they didn't happen or didn't happen the way they were meant to happen and the whole thing is named after a club that plays no real role in the story anyway; best to sit back and enjoy the old familiar cliches washing over you.

Opening with the brutal murder of Costello by a gunman working for Genovese, only to have it revealed that Costello didn't actually die as the bullet bounced off his skull, the story then bounces around in similar fashion filling in the backstory in piecemeal fashion, at times narrated by an older Costello years after the fact. 

The pair grew up as friends despite their markedly different worldviews - Costello was a dealmaker who flourished during Prohibition, while Genovese was a thug who was only interested in collecting, not investing - so when Genovese fled the country to avoid a murder rap he left Costello in charge as the boss of bosses. 

Bad move: WWII broke out, Genovese was stuck in Italy for the duration, and by the time he came back there'd been fifteen good years under Costello's rule and a lot of the mob didn't want Genovese back in the top job. Costello tried to fob him off with a piece of the pie, Genovese wasn't happy with that, then when his whirlwind marriage went sour Vito's wife (Katherine Narducci) named names in a divorce court and suddenly a big fat spotlight was on Costello. 

If there's a theme here it's that sunlight is the best disinfectant, as the more the media and government focuses on the mob the tougher things get for them. You're damned if you plead the fifth, you're damned if you don't.

Running parallel to that is Costello's constant efforts to placate the volatile Genovese even after he tried to kill him, making this feel like a gangster movie where one of the leads thinks and acts like he's in a different kind of film entirely. Rational thinking? From a mobster? Forgettaboutit.

The result is a story that (probably rightly) assumes we know all the gangster cliches and tropes so well there's no real need to tie things together when we all know what we really came to see: a double dose of De Niro playing mobsters who are constantly having circular conversations around topics whether they be deadly serious or wondering if the Mormons were stupid enough to only dig up one gold bible before moving directly to Utah.

De Niro himself does a good job of differentiating his two roles (helped by some relatively subdued prosthetics - Costello has the nose, Genovese has the top lip), but he's not given a lot to work with aside from Costello rarely being angry while Genovese almost always is. His characters only get a couple of scenes together; as an acting partner, De Niro makes sure to never overshadow himself.

But look, you don't care about any of this. You're here to see De Niro play gangsters one more time, and it's just as much fun now as it ever was. Sure, it'd be nice if it was in a film that added up to something, but his performance is worth the ticket price on its own - and during the final act, when this finally finds its feet and gives us both a solid barber shop wacking and a big scene where mobsters flail about like clowns, it even manages to become a solid mob film in its own right.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Black Bag

In Black Bag a personally restrained, glasses-wearing British spy named George whose private life is a matter of public conjecture is secretly tasked with the job of uncovering a high-level mole in his organization; hang on a second, John Le Carre's lawyers are on line two. 

Here Steven Soderberg (in only his second film so far this year) is both riffing on and borrowing from Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, in a way that updates the otherwise familiar material (spy satellites!) while answering a question hardly anyone's been asking: what if this particular George had a wife who was also a spy?

To get the obvious out of the way, Soderbergh's many, many skills as a director are perfectly suited to a spy thriller, and this is one of the most polished installments of the time-worn genre in years. Working from a script by David Koepp, the result provides all of the expected thrills with just enough of a fresh spin to make the whole thing worthwhile.

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) works for an unnamed branch of British Intelligence, where his job largely seems to consist of making sure everyone around him in their fancy office stays in line. His wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), seems closer to the core businesses of doing what it is they do - she's the friendly face, he's lurking in the shadows.

Yes, the mole: after being tipped off that nobody's to be trusted - including his wife - George starts sniffing around. The rest of the staff are rapidly revealed to be flawed in one way or another after a Woodhouse-hosted dinner party in which he's secretly dosed everyone with an inhibition-lowering chemical that makes them increasingly unhinged. Relationships break up and make up, though not the ones you might expect. 

The usual mystery pleasures are once again on offer, as everyone turns out to be a plausible suspect. Salt-of-the-earth Freddie (Tom Burke) is a bit frayed around the edges, while his (much younger) partner Clarissa (Marisa Abela) seems to like pushing things. Colonel Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) acts like he's on the ball, but his relationship with the more emotionally open team shrink Dr Vaughn (Naomie Harris) seems like a weak link. And what about Kathryn?

The element that promises to blow this collection of genre cliches wide open is the leads' commitment to each other. George's love for Kathryn (and hers for him) is so strong - we're told more than once - that it overrides everything, even loyalty to their country. The reason why George is running this investigation so hard is because he needs to know if his wife has gone rogue so he can protect her; much of the tension here comes from the threat that at any moment this could turn into a far more unpredictable film.

Suffice to say that whether your expectations are met or shattered, you'll enjoy the ride. This is a solidly satisfying spy thriller that ticks all the boxes with panache, anchored by a range of memorable supporting performances - including, in yet another slice of meta-fun, Pierce Brosnan as the unit's cranky chief.

Fassbender is the main course here, perfectly playing a man who's all icy restraint on the surface and seething passion underneath as he - and to a lesser extent, his wife - prove to be more interesting characters than the story they find themselves in. Usually that'd be a call for sequels; in this case, those wanting the further adventures of a slightly uptight and buttoned-down spy-catcher named George don't have far to look.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Mickey 17

Mickey (Robert Patterson) has the kind of problem that sounds like it'd be a good one to have: he can't be killed. Well, to be accurate, he can be killed - and often is - but he's then promptly restored from backup into a freshly printed new body. You'd think this form of immortality would be restricted to the elite of society; in Mickey 17, it's reserved only for the dregs.

On the run from gleefully murderous loan sharks on a pretty crappy future Earth, Mickey signed onto a colony mission as an "expendable" - someone who could be sent to do extremely dangerous jobs "safe" in the knowledge that after he died a new copy would be printed out. Most of these jobs involve being a lab rat of some kind; the death that opens the film has him alive but at the bottom of a frozen crevice where retrieving him falls into the category of "eh, why bother".

Shock twist: that version of Mickey survives, and makes it back to the colony - which is now firmly established on a frozen planet - only to find another version's been printed out. Good news for his security officer girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who's into the idea of two lovers, bad news for the Mickeys as the existence of two copies makes him a "multiple" who will have all copies (and his backup) destroyed on sight.

There's a lot more going on, in, and around the fairly straightforward plot; at times it feels like this might have worked better as an episodic series. There's Mickey's grim existence on the journey to the planet, the Trump-esque hucksterism of the colony's dictatorial leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his sauce-obsessed wife (Toni Collette), a possible love triangle between Mickey, Nasha, and Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), a dinner party that involves a lot of vomiting and a possible mercy killing, the loan sharks haven't given up on collecting (they'll take a bespoke snuff movie over cash) and there's an alien life form out there the colonists have dubbed "creepers" which may or may not be a threat to every human on the planet. 

Writer-director Bong Joon-ho (working from the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Aston) is not taking any of this seriously: mostly it's a romp, though the comedy can get a little dark at times. It's following in the tradition of any number of frantic, over-the-top science fiction tales, and like most of them it's a bit hit and miss. 

Seemingly promising directions are skimmed over or ignored, supporting characters vanish (then later reappear, or don't), long stretches are given over to sidebars that don't really pay off, occasionally it's time to dip into some pretty blunt satire (Marshall hosts his own tonight show) and the general texture is of one long shaggy dog story where the point never quite comes into focus. Don't go in expecting to love everything you see.

That said, the performances are largely kept in check. Even Patterson strikes the right note of goofy charm, while Ruffalo - who does get to go very big - is at least playing the kind of grandiose buffoon that history manages to serve up on a semi-regular basis. The events are larger-than-life, but the characters mostly stay human, which is probably the right note to strike.

Mickey 17 is a film that spends a hefty chunk of its run time exploring the horrors of being a clone that can't die, and then loses interest in all of that once there's two identical (or are they?) people running around arguing with each other. Maybe a bit more soul would have made it something more than just an unevenly entertaining SF comedy - but then, after 17 times through the printer anyone's soul would be a bit tattered.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Bird

It's been a few years since Andrea Arnold made a fiction film, but documentary's loss is pretty much everyone else's gain. Bird is both a return to social realism and an embrace of the magical - two things that really should go together a lot more often than they do. We all contain both (and more) inside us: any realistic film that ignores that is falling down when it should be soaring.

Twelve year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) is having a bit of a rough go of it. Living in a squat in a housing estate in Kent, her father Bug (Barry Keoghan) is barely an adult himself, running around with the kind of wild get-rich-quick schemes a teenager would come up with (becoming a father as a teen seems to have arrested his development).

Her mother, who lives across town, isn't much help either. Peyton (Jasmine Jobson) has a violent partner and three kids, living in the kind of knife-edge situation where anything can happen and whatever it is, it's going to be bad. Bug's crazy plan to sell toad juice to finance his wedding to a woman he met three months ago doesn't seem so bad by comparison.

So Bailey is largely left to her own devices. Sometimes she's spending time with her half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda) and the gang he's put together to "protect" the neighbourhood. Other times she's on her own, which is when she meets the mysterious Bird (Franz Rogowski).

At first she's wary of this stranger who seems lost and searching for something. It doesn't take long for a bond to develop, but this is the kind of coming-of-age film where tragedy is just as likely as anything else - or at least, it is until a big shift in what kind of film we're actually watching makes itself known towards the end.

The result is something that isn't going to click with everyone. Consistency in entertainment is generally a virtue; any major gear changes are required to exist within the borders of plot and character, not by adding entirely new elements previously unsuspected. So this is a big swerve, but if you can go with adding "magical" to "realism", the pay off is worth it.

And even if you feel the ending does derail things, there's a lot to enjoy. The performances, often from newcomers, are frequently astonishing and consistently enthralling, while Arnold has lost none of her skill when it comes to steeping her audience in a world where struggle and deprivation don't automatically mean a bleak existence.

It's a swirling film, full of joy and grinding poverty, despair and the beauty of nature pushing through ruins. Whether it's fully successful or not we need more films like this, heartfelt and striving.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Long running fictional characters can grow old, or not. Presumably Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt is getting older, it just has absolutely no relevance to his life. Bridget Jones has taken the opposite path, awkwardly passing numerous milestones since she hit the big screen in 2001. Back then she was a quirky take on a young woman living in a world where being under 35 was a complex and nuanced mix of challenges and opportunities. Now in her world young people either look after your kids or shag you.

Aging with your fanbase locks them in: it also locks you into tackling certain issues that inevitably come up, which is to say this is the Bridget Jones movie about death. This mortality, somewhat surprisingly, works to the film's advantage, providing useful contrast to the numerous entertaining moments where Jones (Renee Zellweger) does something awkward then awkwardly realises someone she would like to impress just saw her.

The big death, of course, is Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who it is revealed in the first few minutes died four years ago, being exploded as part of his work as a human rights lawyer. It is time, all her friends agree, for her to move on. But how? And where? And will the big pants be required?

Pretty much everyone you remember from the previous films makes a return here - the dead characters are either wordless ghosts or get a final scene in flashback - but the script makes the onslaught of familiar characters seem natural, as Jones first checks in with pretty much everyone before her first love interest, the youthful aspiring garbologist Roxster (Leo Woodall) pulls her down out of a tree. Awkward!

Meanwhile, the local school her children attend has a new science teacher, the whistle-blowing Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Will he get much of a look in around the jokes about having to bring snacks for school functions and dealing with other snobby "perfect" mums?  Wait and see.

Jones also returns to work as a TV producer, bringing in a few new characters (Jones gets a nanny!) and some old ones - and of course, more opportunity for embarrassment. In the whirlwind of friends that makes up her life (and having such a packed social life despite being a single mum to two kids is just one of the more fantastical elements here) only unrepentant sleaze Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) gets anything like a character arc. And deservedly so, as he remains a delight.

The jokes are uneven but enough land to make it work. It's also a bit sad in parts, though at this stage of life anything less would be a let-down. Having Jones back looking for love is just enough of a spine to keep this from being a pointless greatest hits tour; having the grim specter of death lingering over a number of the scenes (the kids haven't yet moved on) is just enough weight to keep this from drifting away.

Put another way, the film has a high mortality rate (there's more than one scene where a much-loved character comes face to face with their mortality in a hospital), while Jones does pretty well when it comes to sexy and/or romantic clinches. Maybe they should have titled this one Bridget Jones: Body Count.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Presence

Does a ghost story have to be scary? On one level, probably not: it's not hard to think of numerous supernatural stories that (intentionally or not) failed to deliver spine-related chills. But the basic premise of a ghost story - conclusive proof that there is a form of existence beyond the physical world - does tend towards the unsettling. So a heads-up: Presence may be about a haunted house, but it's the living residents who'll give you the creeps.

Director Steven Soderberg's gimmick here is that the camera is the ghost's POV - we see what the ghost sees, and (as we later learn) the ghost doesn't know why they're haunting this particular suburban house. So they tend to just wander around watching the new residents, the Payne family.

It doesn't take long to see the family haven't exactly created a happy home. Father Chris (Chris Sullivan) is fiercely protective of daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who is on edge after having recently lost a friend to a drug overdose. Older brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) is cruelly dismissive, focused more on his sporting and social success. Overly controlling mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) is firmly on Tyler's side, though she's distracted by shady goings-on at work - the kind of things that have Chris thinking of bailing on the marriage.

All this unfolds in a series of long takes filmed in ghost-o-vision as the "presence" observes the family. Gradually Chloe starts to sense something supernatural; the presence can and does move small objects around, sometimes in a seemingly helpful manner, other times more destructively. A psychic (Natalie Woolams-Torres) is brought in, with mixed results. Tyler's new friend Ryan (West Mullholland) starts hitting on Chloe. The family is freaking out, but what can they do?

With big scares off the table, what's left is an interesting up-close look at a family under stress, with a low-key mystery wrapped around it. What exactly does the presence want? It's the kind of story that in other hands would cry out for a second viewing, but Soderberg plays fair with the audience and the ending is more of a "oh, that's why that happened" than a "wait, I need to go over this again".

The family's fault lines are fairly bluntly laid out; the point is to see which ways things are going to fracture. Everyone here turns out to be capable of a surprise or two, though most of the big moves are in character. Reliable types step up, people on edge make risky choices. The performances are all good, though it's Liang who ends up holding the film together. 

So it's a satisfying watch, if operating largely in a minor key. Possibly the most interesting thing going on is the way the demands of the story require one central character to be both a jerk and heroic. It makes sense - these are members of a family after all - but it's rare to see a character contain multitudes in recent cinema. Most ghost stories require the living to be one thing, then nothing; it's this character's out-of-character choice that will haunt their family.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Companion

Companion is one of those movies with a big, story-changing twist at the end of act one, and you can tell that while the film makers thought it would be a big mind-blowing shock, the publicity department went "yeah, this is how we're going to get people in to see this movie".

You can't blame them - there's no point in your movie having a great twist if nobody is going to go see it, and without knowing the twist there's not a lot obviously going on you can sell Companion with. But it does mean that talking about the movie in any kind of detail is going to require spoilers, which is a shame because the reveal is a pretty good one (even if wikipedia does give it away).

Without spoiling anything then, here's what you need to know: Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris (Sophie Thatcher) are heading out to a fancy cabin in the woods for a getaway weekend with friends. Kat (Megan Suri) is friends with Josh, not a fan of Iris, and is the mistress of Sergey (Rupert Friend) a dodgy Russian businessman who owns the house (and everything around it, including a lake). 

Also staying are Patrick (Lucas Gage) and Eli (Harvey Guillen), who get to watch on as Sergey hits on Iris and generally sleazes up the place. Kat doesn't seem to be having all that much fun either. The vibes are bad; it doesn't take long to realise there's a good reason for that.

Last paragraph without spoilers, so: what follows is more of a "crime scheme gone wrong" thriller than a "cabin in the woods" slasher, though there are a few gory moments. Some characters turn out to be arseholes, some are more decent than they seem, some don't stick around long enough to go either way. It's fun rather than edge-of-your-seat gripping, though there are a number of good twists and once it gets going it doesn't slow down: it's like a lightweight Fargo where you cheer on the character you'd least suspect.

.

Okay: Iris is a robot, and she's been jailbreaked to do something she's not meant to (not sex, she's all good in that department) so Josh can get something he wants. Once she's done what he wants, she's disposable: the rest of the film is about her trying to protect her off switch, only because she's a robot there are ways to hit that switch beyond just shooting her - and in fact, because Josh needs the whole thing to look like an accident, he has to shut her down like you would any other malfunctioning item. No suspicious bullet holes or tire marks.

It's a smart tweak to an otherwise familiar genre, and it allows the story to go all-in on Josh's barely concealed misogyny. It's not robo-shaming - there are other plot elements that make it clear that robot-human love is just fine so long as you're not an abusive whiny creep - and it makes for a nice explanation as to why Kat dislikes Iris. Gold-digging girlfriends are going to have a tough time competing with sexbots, after all.

Writer / director Drew Hancock has come up with a solid noir thriller that's also a smart science fiction story (though don't expect any examination of how sexbots have changed wider society - the action here stays very close to home) with a touch of horror mixed in. It's a tight, exciting ninety minutes, but what really lifts it over the top are the performances.

Quaid artfully walks the line between caring boyfriend and thoughtless creep at first, then goes all in when the extent of his boorish selfishness is revealed; Thatcher all but carries the film as she goes from loving partner to scared victim to determined survivor. She makes every step of Iris' wild emotional (yes, really) journey seem plausible - which is in no way reassuring for anyone watching who might be in the market for a sexbot in a few years time.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Brutalist

Epic both in scope and run time, The Brutalist is one of those rare recent films that gets bigger the more you think about it. It's taking on territory largely ceded to television drama: it's often expected that they'll take the time to attempt to suggest a world beyond their immediate events, while movies are now required to zoom in and burrow down. Which this also does, though perhaps not in the most obvious ways.

The story of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a former and future architect who flees Europe in the wake of World War II for a new life in America, a big part of what makes The Brutalist work so well (aside from its many obvious virtues) is the way it picks and chooses which questions to pose and which ones to answer. The two groups do not always overlap.

Initially staying with relatives, Toth has a wife (Felicity Jones) he left behind but cannot bring over. American capitalism has no use for his skills, and he slides from furniture design to manual labour. It's not entirely luck that brings him to the attention of wealthy businessman Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), but he soon finds himself with a major commission: to build a massive, possibly unwanted, community center (no to a pool, yes to a church) as a memorial to Van Buren's very much loved mother.

The stage is set for a seemingly predictable clash between art and commerce, but director Brady Corbet is working with characters, not types; Toth has a vision but also a temper, and while he knows that working with clients is a vital part of his job he doesn't suffer fools. Van Buren knows enough to stay out of Toth's way - at least some of the time - but it gradually becomes clear that as far as he's concerned he is the real genius for being canny enough to hire Toth, and respect should flow accordingly. 

Things develop in ways both surprising and inevitable. Toth's family is reunited, a drug problem he developed during tough times continues to lurk, cost-cutting is an on-going threat to Toth's vision and Van Buren's veneer of genial civility is at times only loosely attached. 

An intermission (the film flies by, despite the three and a half hour run time) provides the opportunity for a time-jump; reality continues to grind away at dreams. Building to an ending that's both satisfying and haunting - and then with a coda that recontextualizes much of what we've seen, even as it raises new questions of its own - this is as soundly constructed a film as one of Toth's own creations. 

The visuals are constantly striking; the barren hilltop that's the site of Van Buren's memorial speaks volumes, while even smaller locations evoke mid-century America in all its grime and bustle. The performances are uniformly excellent, though while Brody is the constant focus it's Pearce's 90% charming Van Buren that lingers, a man solidly built around a pinprick of rot.

Art and capitalism turn out to be entwined, but so is everything else. You can make your mark, but need someone else to explain it to the world. Hopefully they'll be sympathetic to your vision.

- Anthony Morris

Review: We Live in Time

Falling in love is enough to build a movie on, but if you want to talk about an actual relationship you need something more. We Live in Time brings two extras to the table: the story jumps around in time so we don't get to see things unfold in a linear fashion, and someone gets cancer. So a main character dies halfway through the film Pulp Fiction-style? Not quite.

Tobias (Andrew Garfield) is a wet sock of a man, a soft-spoken mid-level nobody at the Weetabix company whose wife has left him (mutual? yeah, right) but fortunately he looks like Andrew Garfield so there's still some hope.

Enter Almut (Florence Pugh), who is so firmly full of life that in another film she'd come close to be a manic pixie dream girl. Here she's one of the UK's top chefs - seriously, at one stage she's recruited to competitively cook for Britain - who knows what she wants and how to get it. Will that be Tobias? Let's wait and see.

This film's strengths are all the obvious ones. It looks like a slick coffee commercial - everyone lives in various forms of amazing homes and is impeccably dressed even when they're meant to be slumming it - and with Pugh and Garfield it has a main cast whose performances overwhelm the average material they're given. You'd watch them together in anything; unfortunately you're stuck watching them in this.

(if all you're after is attractive people in a slightly complicated relationship drifting through well-designed locations while events build to a bittersweet ending, you can stop reading now: We Live in Time delivers all those things in a pleasingly competent fashion)

Narratively the shuffling of scenes adds little to the storytelling. There's no point where the time jumps lead us astray, or provide a contrast that illuminates an aspect of the characters or their relationship. You'd assume it's happening to prevent this from being a traditional romance, only all the big moments - breakup, childbirth, serious news - come at the expected points in the film, so there's never any problem keeping track of things.

This kind of story is usually skewed towards one character or another (they can't both be right all the time), but this largely forgets to give Tobias any positive characteristics beyond being pitiable, while Almut is always right about everything (she dumps him for asking if their relationship has a future, and it's up to him to win her back) and is also so amazingly talented it's revealed towards the end she also had another secret world-class competitive skill only she gave it up because of a family tragedy and if she didn't have video proof you'd have to assume she was some kind of demented fantasist.

Just to make matters worse, the one thing Tobias does want out of the relationship, and that Almut comes around to agreeing to (ok, it's having children), also turns out to be the reason why there's a mention of cancer in the opening paragraph. It's literally the case that a doctor tells her if she doesn't have a procedure she'll almost certainly get cancer, but she knows if she does have the procedure Tobias will be very sad, and there's only so much of Garfield's hangdog expression one movie can stand.

Her storyline is messy in a way that's meant to suggest a strong personality but often just feels muddled, like she's a character that refuses to think anything through. He's little more than a prop, as soggy and shapeless as the products his company manufactures, a background character in his own life. It's not impossible to see them getting together - in a way it makes sense - but it results in a relationship it's hard to get invested in.

Put another way, they both deserve better. They might live in time, but despite a pair of charismatic performances, they're wasting it with each other.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Wolf Man

Leigh Whannell first made his name as co-creator of the Saw films, but in recent years his run of surprisingly effective small scale thrillers has threatened to overshadow his horror roots. 

Upgrade was pure science fiction; his creepy take on The Invisible Man was firmly grounded in technology. Wolf Man might continue his run with the classic Universal horror monsters, but it's also - a brief mention of a virus aside - a return to pure horror.

Blake (Christopher Abbott) grew up in the woods with an overprotective father, a man who, considering what might have been lurking in those woods, possibly had a good reason for his hair-trigger temper. But that was long ago: Blake's living in the city and he's a father himself now. He's trying to do better by his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), even if his marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner) is going through a bit of a rough patch.

The news that his long-missing father is now officially considered dead brings with it the chance for the whole family to head back into the woods and revisit the family farmhouse. Which of course is an extremely bad idea as they promptly get lost, pick up a creepy local, then get run off the road thanks to an encounter with a very strange creature that probably wasn't a bear.

Now the local's splattered, Blake is injured, and the family are trying to make it to the farm house before whatever it is that's lurking in the woods gets its teeth into them. But even if they do make it inside and lock the doors behind them, are they locking the evil out... or trapping it in with them?

There's a few minor twists and turns along the way, but for the most part this is the kind of horror movie where the horror comes from knowing exactly what's to come (and it's all bad). There are some very effective, very creepy sequences, and some strong monster action moments as well, but the horror lies mostly in the story of a man uncontrollably changing into something that's not really human.

In his recent films Whannell has shown his strength is in embracing the pulpy aspects of his subjects, thinking deeply about their core concepts and coming up with twists that make sense while still being surprising and thoughtful.  

The big innovation here is to drag out the transformation and show parts of it from the transformed's point of view. This is more a story about infection than it is about traditional werewolf tropes like the thrill of unleashing the beast or the shock of waking up from a violent bender, and the scenes where a character can feel their humanity being drained from them are amongst the film's strongest.

Otherwise, Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck stick to the basics - this is a film that's largely about three people trapped in a house for one night - which means pretty much everything has to be firing to make it work. The body horror, the gore, and the big action moments largely deliver the goods.

If there's a weakness here it's that the family stuff, which really needs to be the film's solid emotional core, doesn't stand out quite like it needs to. The basics are conveyed effectively enough, and the horror of being taken away from your family by a disease is definitely effective, but the family here is more of a sketch than a deeply felt portrait.

There's also a distinct lack of howling at the moon. That's the real tragedy right there.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Conclave

Conclave is a reminder that there's a good reason why the Best Picture award at the Oscars is given to the film's producers. This is a very good film, verging on excellent: it's also a film that was clearly put together, a puzzle the likes of which Hollywood seems to have largely forgotten how to complete.

Based on a (short, pacy, punchy) novel by Robert Harris (Fatherland), it's the story of what happens after a Pope dies - the cardinals get together, they have a vote and keep on voting until they have a new Pope. Once the election has begun, no-one gets in or out (technically), so the pressure's on.

While the former Pope's right hand man, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) works to keep everything above board, various power blocs emerge. The forces looking to head back to the past - an Italian Pope, masses in Latin, social attitudes out of some previous century - are unified and strong, while those looking to keep moving forward are divided, their votes sloshing behind one candidate then another. 

Lawrence's duty is to the church, though he sides with the progressives. Scandals must be investigated; better to lose a weak candidate than elect a fatally flawed Pope. But all the scandals seem to dog those on his side of the vote; as one after the other drops out, is there anyone who can unite the Church in its time of need?

Harris has been writing thrillers for decades now, and Conclave touches on issues both modern and eternal via a twisty plot featuring a number of memorable characters. The people here are almost all creatures of politics, their words and expressions always looking to shore up their positions - and as in real life, the most powerful players are the ones who don't seem to be playing at all. 

The setting is a mix of vast opulent rooms where people make speeches about charity and piety, and utilitarian stairwells and corridors where the real moving and shaking gets done. Even when the rooms are bland and functional, they're telling us something about the mechanisms of power - and seeing a Cardinal in full costume in a room with modern office equipment is always good for a chuckle.

The credits are full of names (Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati, Isabella Rossellini) who have been perfectly cast, the kind of actors who are subservient to their roles and work within a film rather than trying to go big and be a breakout star. If they're in a bad film, they're rarely the cause or the cure; here, in a good film, they each play their part to perfection without trying to attract attention with over-the-top performances. Except, of course, for those cardinals for whom "over the top" is a power play.

Not everything here is perfect, especially if your attitude to the Catholic Church is a skeptical one. This is a story that admits the Church has flaws, but also sees it as an organisation still capable of good. Within the confines of the film, it works; thinking about it afterwards is another matter.

But the pleasures here are mostly small and nuanced, even at those times when the characters go big. The plot is a well-(holy) oiled machine, carefully laying the groundwork for the next big twist even as the current one is playing out. All the main characters get one big scene, and all the actors take full advantage, a string of Oscar clips that all fit perfectly into the wider story.

It all comes together in a satisfyingly mature fashion, entertainment for grown-ups. It's serious but light on its feet, a good time for an audience that doesn't need everything explained to them but likes everything to be wrapped up tidily. In the current cinematic climate, it's a blessing.

- Anthony Morris