VOD: The Banshees Of Inisherin (dir: Martin McDonagh, 2022)

"I didn't think we were rowin'..."

Two life-long friends and drinking buddies in a tiny remote coastal village in 1920s Ireland have a sudden and sad falling-out with increasingly drastic consequences in another winner from writer/director Martin McDonagh.  Its simplicity of concept and Beckett-styled dialogue is allied with the depth of feelings in less complicated times, written and delivered with genuine emotion and characteristic streaks of wry humour.  Performances are sublime; Colin Farrell (outstanding here) and Brendan Gleeson are masters of control in finely-matched performances, and Barry Keoghan and Pat Shortt do lovely comedic character work in support (not forgetting the scene-stealing Jenny the donkey!).  With its parallels to the Irish Civil War that is present on the mainland across from this island setting, this seemingly simple fable of an inexplicably fractured friendship digs deep into the characters and their lives beautifully in this whimsical, powerful, moving and hugely entertaining tale that is delivered impeccably.
 

VOD: All Quiet On The Western Front (a.k.a. Im Westen Nichts Neues) (dir: Edward Berger, 2022)

 "Somehow, this isn't how I imagined it."

Netflix's awards-grabbing film is set at the end of the First World War, taking a typical war-genre route of following four fresh-faced, enthusiastic and patriotic young recruits as they are quickly subjected to the full-on horror of the front line and a war that keeps on going.  Amongst the display of very visceral injury and an outrageous body count (with the shockingly casual expendability of the soldiers made very clear), the camera flits between passive observation and single-take immersion to fantastic effect - full credit to DoP Paul Friend and his team - and the combination of painterly artistic stylings and gritty reality-view presentation is at times breathtaking.  Production design is immaculate - this is an impeccably-realised period piece - and whilst the long run time conveys the relentlessness of the experience, there is a slight mid-section sag as the politicking comes more into play, but as the second half of the film moves to more personal traumas the film becomes more emotionally distressing to watch.  The main reason for the film's success is an extraordinarily powerful central performance by Felix Kammerer as Paul, in his first major film role, that shows terrific range and depth.  All Quiet On The Western Front is not easy to watch, but it is highly-accomplished and cinematically very satisfying indeed. 

VOD: We Have A Ghost (dir: Christopher Landon, 2023)

"We are not going to be like every stupid white family in every horror film.  We are leaving!"

In this family-friendly caper from Christopher Landon (who previously directed the excellent Freaky and Happy Death Day horror films), there are clear and knowing elements of past hits, notably E.T. (as well as Ghostbusters, Casper and - alarmingly - The Entity!), with some contemporary twists, in which an amiable family moves to get a fresh start in a fixer-upper, where the alienated and unhappy younger brother (sensitively played by Jahi Di'Allo Winston) befriends an equally isolated creature (here, a mute amnesiac ghost Ernest in the attic, a charming David Harbour) and after a video goes viral finds them having to evade a CIA ghost-capturing programme as well as solving the mystery of what happened to Ernest.  Anthony Mackie is solid as the father, Harbour twinkles, and current go-to favourites Jennifer Coolidge and Tig Notaro do what they do best.  The film is handsomely presented - the lighting in particular is gorgeous - and Bear McCreary's score works nicely.  It worryingly seems to play all its cards in the first act, but sufficient story then develops the basic premise further, although at over two hours the film is clearly far too long, and even then some of the juggling story strands feel perfunctorily finished with.  We Have A Ghost is a cosy and well-presented film if overlong and provides pleasantly undemanding entertainment.
 

VOD: There's Something Wrong With The Children (dir; Roxanne Benjamin, 2023)

"Where did the kids go?"

This Blumhouse cheapie feels like a throwback drive-in staple, as two bland couples, one with two children, on a weekend cabins-in-the-woods retreat, explore a creepy abandoned building with a bottomless pit, with which the children seem instantly obsessed and consequently start behaving increasingly disturbingly.  The first half-hour is painfully dull, but then a chilling gamechanging moment suddenly promises a more interesting film that is sadly never fully developed or realised effectively.  What does come across well (for a while) is Zach Gilford's portrayal of a man with mental health issues being forced to question his grip on reality in the face of trauma, but the generally flat dialogue, loud and intrusive soundtrack, unsatisfactory development of ideas and at-best adequate performances - with the children being a weak link - fails to engage, the final act proving rather silly and inadequate.
 

FILM: AntMan And The Wasp Quantumania (dir: Peyton Reed, 2023)

"You are out of your league, AntMan."

Quantumania kicks off Marvel's Phase 5 and sets up its new over-arching villain following the very separate movies of the somewhat oddly-muted Phase 4, and thankfully it does offer some promise of what may yet come.  The film has been getting mixed critical reactions, and it is not hard to see why.  The third AntMan film kicks off on familiar ground - warm, funny, lightweight - but it does not take long at all before the whole Pym clan is thrown back into the quantum realm where it becomes a rather more typically straight Marvel actioner, albeit in a CG-fest of bizarre creatures and landscapes, as if the Guardians Of The Galaxy had entered Dr Strange's multiverse trip.  The world-building and the actual quality of the CG work are both extensive and generally high-quality (which is impressive and works well on the cinema screen), as are the packed action set pieces.  Its core themes of family and parenthood are used with as much subtlety as a flying Mjolnir, and its rather simple storylining - they get separated into two parallel-storyline groups when flung into the quantum realm, they find each other, they defeat the bad guy, they get home - does not give the film much heft.  A lot of attention is given to Janet's backstory and her time lost in the quantum realm - crucial to this story - and the excellent Michelle Pfieffer does a lot of the heavy lifting very successfully in her much-expanded screen time here, but the standout is the addition of Jonathan Majors as Kang in a performance that is cool, menacing and powerful and provides the potential of a terrific ongoing threat in the future of the MCU.  This attempted shift of the AntMan series from the more comedic lightweight end of the Marvel spectrum to something more central and serious makes it fall between the two stools to some extent, but Quantumania is nevertheless a well-made and entertaining blockbuster spectacle that flies by, with a mid-credits teaser sequence that sets up the future very positively.
 

VOD: Black Adam (dir: Jaume Collet-Serra, 2022)

"Heroes don't kill people."
"Well, I do."

After an extensive prologue that takes us from ancient Khandaq to the present day (via a link to Shazam!) and sets up the backstory very clearly, followed by a lively introduction to the newly-unleashed Black Adam, the Justice Society is called upon to take him down in typical superhero style and stop a standard villain.  Dwayne Johnson in his passion-project role is a suitable physical presence as Black Adam, but at times his lack of facial expression makes the character hard to read, although his single-minded anti-superhero attitude works well in the story.  It also does not help that the character is torn between being as dark-natured as suggested but has to be portrayed within the confines of a kid-friendly superhero popcorn movie.  The other superheroes suffer by being pale rehashes of other on-screen characters already seen (Falcon, Storm, AntMan, etc.).  Effects are impressive, if at times frustrated by unnecessary slo-mo moments and a flat painterly Snyder-style.  What the film does bring is an interesting point that 'regular' superheroes tend to see things in a clear cut good vs. bad way, which is brought into question when faced with the Black Adam character.  What we see in Black Adam the character is rather like the film itself: serviceable and watchable but simply slightly dull and a bit too straight-laced to land the occasional successful comedic quip and is clearly straining to be let off the leash more.

 

VOD: Your Place or Mine (dir: Aline Brosh McKenna, 2023)

"Oh, God - just stop!"

Even the uninteresting title indicates what you are letting yourself in for with this conveyor-belt rom-com, which finds Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as two smug long-standing best friends (who hooked up once when younger) doing a New York/LA life-swap for a week, with Witherspoon's 12-year-old son thrown into the mix for Kutcher to discover a parental streak and for her to open up to possible romance.  The basic formula has Witherspoon talking lots very fast and Kutcher removing his shirt regularly as the film grinds along predictably, like The Holiday but without Christmas, overlong and vacuous but with the occasional good line that lands.  Your Place or Mine is perhaps not the worst example of the genre, but it does nothing to surprise or to really engage or entertain.
 

VOD: Shotgun Wedding (dir: Jason Moore, 2023)

"Some things are more important than money, dad."
"That's debateable."

Amazon's Shotgun Wedding is very much a blandly generic action/rom-com star vehicle romp, in which a hugely irritating and unconvincing couple (Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel - who both can be fine given the right material but not here - find their idyllic Philippines island resort wedding hijacked by 'pirates' and the wedding party taken hostage right before the ceremony.  Even the unstoppable Jennifer Coolidge (as Duhamel's clingy mother) with her usual delightful devil-may-care approach is underused and cannot distract from the relentless uninteresting dialogue (simply noise to fill the void) and wafer-thin plot points.  Little of interest happens, the two leads feel slightly past their sell-by date for this kind of nonsense, and the film is a classic demonstration of the general rule that shouting and shrieking and running around does not improve uninteresting writing.

 

VOD: Jung_E (dir: Sang-ho Yeon, 2023)

"The results look odd today."

In this Korean sci-fi actioner, a tech-laden near-future sees Earth wrecked by climate disaster and warring factions, mankind moves to orbiting space stations for survival and one company is developing an android uber-soldier programmed with the brain patterns of a legendary female mercenary, who was the mother of the scientist in charge.  Genre classics, notably The Terminator and Robocop, inevitably weigh heavily on this future tech-noir, propelled by current customary Asian blockbuster hugely-ambitious and expansive GC-effects work.  This is a positive female-driven example of the genre, if a little overblown - female cancer-stricken AI scientist working with her mother's brain patterns for the perfect AI cyber-soldier - and whilst the middle section gets bogged down with less interesting talky company politics and minor personal dramas, the film picks up when daughter finally has an emotional chat with her AI 'mother'.  It all leads to a somewhat deranged throw-everything-at-it final showdown, but overall - oddly - Jung-E feels like a small-scale emotional drama wrapped up in big bombastic blockbuster trappings.
 

VOD: Savageland (dirs: Phil Guidry, Simon Herbert and David Whelan, 2015)

"The whole town is a crime scene."
 

With all the inhabitants of the small Arizona desert town of Sangre de Cristo savagely murdered but with one survivor an illegal Mexican immigrant - was he the killer?  This intriguing set-up sounds it would have been a classic episode of The X-Files, here explained through a rapid-fire and well-made heady mix of found footage, reportage, news broadcasts and interviews that is artfully constructed and delivers well.  As well as the central mystery, big contemporary American issues are crammed in such as profiling, patriotism, racism, the death penalty and the justice system, all of which form part of the background to the story that adds an uneasy depth to the material, and what might be seen as an unsubtle allegory is actually effectively executed overall.  Changing genre directions regarding the identity of the killer(s) do not overwhelm the overall feel (is it sci-fi/aliens/virus/zombies/far right extremists/etc.?), and the gradual introduction of disturbing details, conflicting viewpoints, questioning veracity of evidence (including a crucial roll of camera film) and shifting  sympathy for the key character make Savageland an engrossing if sombre watch,

VOD: Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022) (dir: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, 2022)

"I knew the war would change us all - I just didn't know how much."

Netflix brings yet another adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's scandal-making classic novel, here shot with a very contemporary look (camera off the tripod, intrusive close-ups, curious lighting) yet feels very familiar and largely sticks to the basic story which offers little that is new, other than a slightly livelier take on war-wounded Clifford and a truncated ending.  Emma Corrin is a vapid Lady Chatterley, the reliable Jack O'Connell is a decent enough Mellors if a little flat in this version, and the overall attempt at making the story and action grounded and naturalistic just makes the tale seem somewhat ordinary.