Review: Men

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Anthony Morris

Review: Top Gun: Maverick

It’s been a long time since Tom Cruise had a hit that didn’t have Mission: Impossible in the title. The less said about 2017’s The Mummy the better: the follow-up to his 2012 hit Jack Reacher was average at best. Add in that his last film was 2018’s Mission: Impossible: Fallout, and you suspect Hollywood is hoping there’s a lot of pent-up demand out there for Cruise – one of the last remaining old-fashioned movie stars - to do something different that’s also decent. Does a sequel to a 35 year-old film fit the bill? Somewhat surprisingly, it does.

 

Usually this kind of film would be about handing the torch over to a new generation, and for a while that seems the case. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) has spent the last few decades stubbornly refusing promotion – his one-time rival Iceman (Val Kilmer) is now the Admiral in charge of the Pacific Fleet – so he can keep flying. Turns out that’s not a career path with much of a future in an age of drones, so when he’s ordered back to the Navy’s top flight school (that’s “Top Gun” to you and me), it’s made very clear to him that this is his final stop.

 

There he’s given details of a top secret, highly dangerous mission to take out a secret nuclear enriching plant that “the enemy” (never named) is using to make weapons-grade plutonium. The deadline to destroy it is only weeks away; fortunately Maverick has decades of experience… that he now has to teach to a bunch of young guns. They’re the ones who’ll be flying it, not him.

 

Yeah, right: one of the more entertaining aspects of this very entertaining film is the way the usual Hollywood conventions around this kind of story (remember, old guy passing on the torch) are gleefully ignored. This is a Tom Cruise movie: the man might be pushing 60, but he doesn’t make movies where anything slows him down.

 

So while he trains the kids – including the perpetually smirking Hangman (Glen Powell) and Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller, in a rare likable role), son of Goose from the first film – it’s clear to everyone but commanding officer Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm, in a rare serious role) that there’s only one man for a mission this impossible.

 

Hang on, where’s the drama if Maverick’s the most brilliant pilot alive? Turns out that Maverick is a bit of a failure as a human being outside a cockpit. His relationship with bar owner Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly) is more about her deciding to give him one more try, as a parental figure to Rooster he’s a dud, and it’s not like he’d even have a career if not for Iceman covering his back.

 

Meanwhile up in the sky, there’s a lot of crazy flying going on. Cruise is notorious for pushing himself to the limit – yes, that’s him in the cockpit – and director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) takes full advantage to go for broke in the extremely impressive aerial combat scenes. Seeing actual planes flinging themselves around the sky remains a very different experience from watching CGI action. This is the rare recent blockbuster that needs to be seen on the biggest screen you can find.

 

Honestly, none of this is even remotely realistic. Well, maybe the late appearance of an F-14 (the now obsolete plane that was the centrepiece of the first film) is; turns out Iran is still flying them. But as a glossy, fast-moving fantasy this hits all the right notes, serving up cliches with a smile and fan service with a wink while still delivering plenty of thrills. It’s a story where good looking people who are great at their job do impossibly exciting things and save the day. What more do you want from Hollywood?

(this review originally appeared on the Forte website)

- Anthony Morris

Review: How to Please a Woman

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Northman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Anthony Morris

Review: Ambulance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Anthony Morris

Review: X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Anthony Morris