VOD: The Greatest Hits (dir: Ned Benson, 2024)

"What in the name of Luther Vandross just happened?"

On paper, The Greatest Hits sounds like a Richard Curtis-styled romantic drama in which a grieving young woman, Harriet, finds that certain songs can quite literally take her back in time, using her gift to try to find the precise song that can help her to prevent the death of her boyfriend in this surprisingly sweet and appealing movie.  All five key players here give strong and very likeable performances, and the indie styling and exploration of grief undercut the idyllic past romance and the fragile new budding one nicely. The film is more sombre and reflective than many of its genre with its excellent plaintive melancholic score and carefully-placed flashback sequences, and whilst it feels like the film strains a little too hard at times to be cool and laid-back, it boasts good storytelling, engaging performances and gently respectful feel for its subject matter.

 

VOD: The Wandering Earth II (dir: Frant Gwo, 2023)

"Being alive is pretty great."

Clocking in at nearly three hours, this prequel/alt-story to the 2019 blockbuster Chinese sci-fi actioner from the same director delivers similar ambition in terms of ideas and screen spectacle yet feels a little more restrained and emotional.  Here, Planet Earth is under threat from an expanding Sun, the film following the plan to move the planet to break away from the Moon and travel far out of danger's reach and also exploring opposition faction Digital Life (preserving human consciousness in digital form) from the early spectacular hijacked drones attack on a military base and the Space Elevator to the final desperate attempts to survive.  It is again visually mind-boggling, with its enormous-scale megastructures, devastated cities and disaster scenarios, but the mid-section is notably more restrained, contained and talky, as the AI/consciousness sub-plot is brought to the fore and a new planetary threat emerges, but once the action mayhem returns it is frenetic and spectacular.  Although slightly less frantic overall and  certainly more sombre than the original, the film is packed with characters and plot strands that miraculously are brought together for the ending's crisis to be averted.  Like most big-spectacle blockbusters, the plot and central concepts do not bear any scrutiny, and Hollywood would never commit to something as colossally insane as The Wandering Earth movies, but the sheer ambition and scale of these films, with an attempt to balance with some emotional beats, make them hugely entertaining, if exhausting.
 

VOD: Land Of Bad (dir: William Eubank, 2024)

"Just takes one s**t day to change your whole perspective."

Dreadful title aside, this war/action potboiler sees a rather relaxed elite squad off to Southern Asia to rescue a captured CIA agent, but they find themselves attacked disastrously behind enemy lines, leaving a rookie (Liam Hemsworth) and a drone to save the day, get to an evac site and rescue the captive, guided by a veteran operator (Russell Crowe) back at base, making the second and third act mostly The Liam And Russell Show.  A recognisable if somewhat low-rent lead cast - two Hemsworths, Ricky Whittle, Daniel MacPherson, Milo Ventimiglia -  trade military acronyms and low-grade banter, Liam Hemsworth as ever a professional and committed if unremarkable lead, and Russell Crowe brings some much-needed gravitas as he sits in an office and visits a supermarket.  The film's saving grace is the scenic location shooting, and it does make a salient point about what happens when the military hi-tech gear fails, otherwise this is a very anonymous (if bang up-to-date) example of the genre.  (A thought: if it does well enough to warrant two sequels, will they be called Land Of Badder / Land Of Badderer?!)  

VOD: The Zone Of Interest (dir: Jonathan Grazer, 2023)

"The first thing we did was install central heating.  It gets so cold in winter."

With the intriguing premise of the commander at Auschwitz in World War II, Rudolf Hoss, living family life in their well-appointed house right next to the concentration camp, this awards-winning film is bold, sombre and elegant.  Running through the film is the bewildering juxtaposition of the privileged family's everyday life in their newly-created artificial-looking fantasy home of the time, separated from the atrocities by a simple garden wall.  The film is slow, deliberate and very artfully constructed, the viewer experience controlled very carefully; the horrors are not shown explicitly but conveyed in the coldly dispassionate discussions of gas chamber design and distant screams, gunfire and smoke.  The facade is increasingly stripped away as the film progresses, such as  Hoss being more concerned about lilac bushes than human lives, casual infidelity and the framing exposes more of the camp.  Christian Friedel and Sandra Huller are formidable talents as the lead couple and they dominate the film with their precise character work.  Presenting Hoss as a loving family man, taking his family to the river and reading bedtime stories, together with having the most terrible job and thought processes makes for sobering viewing. The ending of the film is simple but extraordinarily powerful.
 

VOD: Expen4bles, a.k.a. The Expendables 4 (dir: Scott Waugh, 2023)

"Yeah - where the hell is everybody?"

In this increasingly redundant and threadbare series, the fourth entry tries to cover both the legacy and younger fanbases with new and uninteresting mercenaries teaming up with the few remaining beleaguered oldies (with the reliably watchable Jason Statham rightly getting most of the screen action) to take on the coolly ruthless (but criminally underused here) Iko Uwais, who has been hired to obtain nuclear detonators for a major arms dealer.  With a couple of decent explosions, a lot of really dodgy CGI, lots of neon lighting and tired jokes about ageing, It does manage a surprise death at the end of the first act that puts - of all people - Megan Fox in the driving seat of the revenge mission.  With the feel of a franchise clinging on for life, everything seems somewhat underpowered and underwritten in this barely functional throwback actioner. 
 

VOD: BlackBerry (dir: Matt Johnson, 2023)

"So, OK, picture a pager, a cell phone and an e-mail machine all in one thing!"

This fictionalisation of the incredible true-life meteoric rise and spectacular fall of the BlackBerry (the forerunner of today's smartphones) follows the fortunes of the tiny chaotic company that created it and its growth into a major tech player as it joins forces with a steely-eyed opportunistic executive.  Filmed in an energetic, loose, lo-fi reality-TV style, with characters and dialogue delivered in a naturalistic manner, plus an irresistible indie-pop soundtrack of the period, the film captures the freewheeling abandon of the company's aggressive expansion and overreaching in the emerging market up to Apple's fatal blow with the iPhone.  The shift in tone from the early comedic nerdy inexperience to the later high-stakes gloom and fearful desperation is handled very well indeed.  It has a terrific ensemble cast, with standout performances from the great Michael Ironside and a hard-hitting COO and Jay Baruchel as the the brilliant mid-mannered tech creator behind it all.  In this fictionalised version of events, BlackBerry is poignant in that there are real lives behind the story, but it is also quite an  astonishing tale of ambition, greed and mistakes made that is well-made.
 

VOD: Luckiest Girl Alive (dir; Mike Barker, 2022)

"But my anger is like carbon monoxide..."

The underrated Mila Kunis plays a survivor of America's biggest public school shooting, who has reinvented herself into a top New York magazine writer with lofty ambitions and an impending marriage to a handsome and wealthy young man, but with the past coming back to haunt her in the form of a documentary being made, her facade slowly unravels as she finally faces - and finds - her truth.  Ani is a very well-written and interesting character from the start, with unsettling flashbacks, interior commentary and calculated behaviour that makes her very watchable, and Kunis excels in the lead role, with strong support from Finn Whitrock as her naive and well-heeled fiance, Connie Britton as her mother and Thomas Barbusca as her school best friend Arthur.  The film is uncompromising - the scenes of Ani's sexual assault and the actual school shooting are very strong indeed - with its well-considered examination of big issues such as gun control, sexual violence, privilege and trauma, and the film's artful construction and unflinching eye makes it a thoughtful, unsettling and provocative watch. 

 

FILM: Civil War (dir: Alex Garland, 2024)

"That's the job."

A24's biggest film so far is well worth the resources on display, yet it is still clearly not a big Hollywood studio film.  Four photojournalists of varying age and experience go on a road trip through a near-future civil-war-torn America to try to get to the failing President in Washington for a final interview.  The film ably displays Garland's intelligence and craft, both in terms of ideas and execution on screen, and it is a perplexing experience for the viewer, who has to deal with big ideas and very personal situations as well as the strongly immediate and visceral experience presented.  Transplanting the kind of imagery associated with current Middle east news reports to the American homeland is a bold move that is pulled off very well indeed.  This is possibly Kirsten Dunst's career-best performance which is outstanding, with excellent support from Wagner Moura as her sidekick and Jesse Plemons almost stealing the film with a single terrifying scene.  This film is a tough and rewarding watch, which offers more than just its central metaphor - a camera is a gun - right through to its audacious, haunting and powerful finale.  Civil War delivers on every level.
 

FILM: Abigail (dirs: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2024)

"Now is NOT the time for sarcasm, OK?"

The Radio Silence team delivers yet another fun, commercial horror movie that is slick, efficient and very entertaining.  An eclectic gang is hired to kidnap the twelve-year-old ballet-loving daughter of a notoriously nasty crime boss and babysit her at an isolated mansion for twenty-hours for a huge ransom.  Soon they uncover far more than they expect, the big twist - as unnecessarily revealed in the trailer - being that she is a vampire as they become trapped and picked off as her latest victims.  Balancing humour and horror very well, sound design, set design, SFX and music score all make very strong contributions, and there are some absolutely gleeful Grand Guignol moments.  The ensemble cast generally works well, with Dan Stevens as ever head-and-shoulders above the rest, Melissa Barrera relentlessly adequate and Angus Cloud good fun as stoner-driver Dean.  Pretending to be nothing more than hugely entertaining popcorn fodder, Abigail delivers very well.  Whilst watching it on a cinema screen, a curious throwback thought occurred: this would have looked great in 3D!
 

VOD: Rebel Moon Part Two - The Scargiver (dir: Zack Snyder, 2024)

"I don't think I want to die at all.  But if I must..."

Opening with a voice-over recap of the first film, read by Anthony Hopkins like a shopping list of silly fantasy names, and a standard sci-fi resurrection of Ed Skrein's Admirable Noble, this is very much a Part Two that is - to some extent - an improvement on its predecessor.  To say that this film is a game of two halves is an understatement, as the first fifty-minutes are utterly skippable, unless you have a penchant for slow-motion farming and drearily-told unnecessary back stories for each of Kora's ragtag band of fighters assembled in the first movie.  However, once the baddies come to collect the harvest and the battle begins, The Scargiver picks up enormously and morphs into a terrific, relentless sci-fi actioner with genuine stakes, lives lost and a surprisingly grounded visual aesthetic that works very well indeed.  Whilst the 'one village takes a stand against the Motherworld ' story is worthy, its silly improbability and thinness of actual plot and concept makes the whole enterprise feel rather lightweight.  Nevertheless, if you like huge-scale, noisy sci-fi action then the second half is very strong indeed, and the threat of a hitherto-unmentioned Part Three set up right at the end would hopefully take it beyond the village confines.

 

VOD: Anyone But You (dir: Will Gluck, 2023)

"I feel you can't leave me alone."
"Same reason I slow down at a car crash."

This surprisingly popular American grown-up rom-com hits familiar tropes from the start in an unexpected coffee shop encounter between Bea and Ben - complete with splashing bathroom sink tap that soaks her jeans - and after a perfect night together, an unfortunate overheard conversation the next morning brings the budding relationship crashing down.  Six months later, a frosty chance run-in is followed by a trip to Australia for a friend/family wedding that forces them together into endless snarky dialogue and unlikely comedic situations, as they decide to pretend to be an item to keep everyone happy and off their backs.  It is all very polished, shiny and sunny, peddling the typical fabulously wealthy and good-looking rom-com fantasy lifestyle, but Anyone But You is generally quite well-written and performed effectively - as the lead couple, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell absolutely give it all they've got - and there is a level of self-awareness that makes the film one of the more bearable and entertaining modern examples of the genre.   
 

VOD: Cobweb (dir: Samuel Bodin, 2023)

"Not everything is a s sweet as it seems."

Staring off one week before Halloween, young bullied loner Peter starts to hear noises in the walls of his bedroom.  Dismissed by his scared mother (an uneven Lizzy Caplan) and scary father (Anthony Starr bringing some of The Boys' Homelander menace) but supported by his naive substitute teacher, Peter starts to hear the voice of a girl who (supposedly) went missing one Halloween that moves into something much more sinister.  Familiar Halloween iconography works - the town is even called Holdenfield! - and the music score is mostly effective, but the story is extremely simple and the wheels come flying off around the halfway mark.  As the unconvincing story reveal descends into an oddly-placed home-invasion scenario and a dimly-lit runaround ending, little lasting impression is left.
 

VOD: The Tearsmith a.k.a. Fabbricante Di Lacrime (dir: Alessandro Genovesi, 2024)

"Are you just gonna stare at me?"

Adapted from a YA novel, Italian Netflix gives us this moody classy-looking crack at the Twilight market in another tale of two chiselled young men obsessing over a rather dull young woman.  Orphaned as a child, Nica eventually gets adopted as a teenager from a bleak orphanage together with distant, handsome brooding piano-playing Rigel, the object of her unrequited feelings who harbours his own dark desires.  Add in pretty blond Lionel, the new schoolmate who vies for Nica's affections, and the classic YA love triangle is set in motion.  Muddled fairy-tale motifs drift in and out, the characters have a propensity for talking in annoying metaphor-loaded one-liners, and after an hour of creepy scenes of sexual tension you will snigger at the father's classic unintentionally funny line at the barbecue.  It is somewhat glum and overwrought to the point of absurd hilarity at times, but no doubt its young target audience will take the story and its characters to their hearts fervently. 
 

VOD: The Boys In The Boat (dir: George Clooney, 2023)

"We need an edge, Tom."

Back to The Great Depression in Seattle, when an impoverished engineering student Joe Rantz (a solid and amiable Callum Turner) joins the rowing team to earn money and lodgings, who find themselves qualifying for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.  Bearing some of the hallmarks of Clooney's other directorial efforts - considered, emotionally restrained, earnest to the point of a little drab - it conveys some of the hardship of the era appropriately, but basically it is a handsomely-mounted, glossy, by-the-numbers basic sports genre movie, from forming the team to training montages to major-event underdog status with the usual trials and tribulations along the way and little to surprise at all.
 

VOD: Wish (dirs: Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2024)

"Never, ever, get your hopes up."

Disney's 100-years anniversary animated feature tries to capture the essence of the brand with a story about the power of dreams and wishes, which here can literally come true through a wish ceremony, but when young Asha rebels against the selective system and wishes on a star, she has to become a fugitive and try to save the kingdom from its increasingly-evil ruler.  The animation style has an interesting storybook-illustration quality, the frequent musical numbers are forgettably bland and upbeat, and the film follows the modern Disney template of relegating the male characters to egotistical idiots and minor supporting enablers.  With its feisty female protagonist, talking animals sidekicks and soaring Broadway-style numbers at the expense of plot development, Wish feels like a Disney greatest-hits compilation that is very familiar, unremarkable and not a classic.  The sweet little end-credits scene is a nice appropriate touch.

 

VOD: How To Date Billy Walsh (dir: Alex Pillai, 2024)

"Oh, f**k off, universe!"

This MGM/Amazon Original tries to make a full-on British teen rom-com version of Sex Education with very underwhelming results.  Here, Archie has been in love with his best friend Milly for years but cannot tell her, and in their final term at private school finds a rival for her affections in newly-arrived handsome stereotype American student Billy.  The tired tropes are relentless, from Archie's fourth-wall breaking to the camp gay kid to childish on-screen graphics and its unlikeable protagonist, all leading to the usual improbable end-of-year prom.  Unlike their Elite counterparts, for example, these characters do not seem to inhabit their privilege and merely come across as smug and irritating.  The sweary script occasionally raises a smile, and whilst the film might appeal to its very young and undiscerning female teen audience, this is a very silly and annoying film to sit through otherwise.
 

FILM: Godzilla x Kong The New Empire (dir: Adam Wingard, 2024)

"Buckle up, you beautiful people!"

Probably the most fun entry in the current MonsterVerse series, GxK hits the ground running and - slight mid-section lull aside - keeps on going.  Here, the creatures are mercifully to the fore, notably Kong, and the film does a surprising job of making Kong a character rather than just a giant monster.  Of course, it does not make any sense - especially the Hollow Earth/surface leaping about - but the narrative has a drive and urgency that has not always been present in this series, and it ties in with the mythos so far effectively and even expands it.  For the human element, Rebecca Hall is effectively serious when needed and says 'Oh, my God!' a lot, Brian Tyree Henry provides acceptable comic relief, Dan Stevens is clearly having a lot of fun, and Alex Ferns gets eaten by a tree.  It has some entertaining kaiju action, with a terrific brawl when Godzilla and Kong clash (so long, Pyramids!) before uniting to defeat the enemy in a throw-everything-at-the-screen finale that makes Michael Bay look restrained, featuring a supercharged Godzilla, Kong with a bionic arm and an appearance from a newly-detailed fan-favourite Mothra, shifting from Hollow Earth to Rio, which gets well and truly Emmerich-ed.  Loose theme of parenting aside - including Kong becoming surrogate parent to a Grogu-like Mini-Kong - GxK is a simple, lively, quite fun and entertaining romp.  It will be interesting to see if they can come up with an even sillier title than this one for the next film in this franchise.

 

VOD: The Beautiful Game (dir: Thea Sharrock, 2024)

"Nobody can save themselves.  We save each other."

Inspired by true-life stories, this warm and big-hearted movie follows new player Vinnie (Micheal Ward) as he joins the England team for the 20th four-a-side Homeless World Cup in Rome.  It is anchored by a beautifully gentle Bill Nighy as the coach and another charismatic and sensitive performance by the excellent Micheal Ward, together with a tour-de-force turn by Susan Wokoma as the South African team organiser/nun, but a real strength is the ensemble playing by an engaging group of actors playing the England team.  The characters and their backstories are written and treated with compassion and dignity, focussing on human beings rather than over-politicising.  Mixed with actual football as we follow the team through the rounds and some gentle humour, The Beautiful Game balances simple, clear storytelling with issues in a very enjoyable way, and whilst it may veer somewhat on the side of sunny feel-good romanticism quite a lot, it is a very pleasant and endearing film to watch.

 

VOD: The Wages Of Fear a.k.a. Le Salaire De La Peur (dir: Julian Leclercq, 2024)

"Stay calm!"

This new French staging of the classic thriller retains some of the basic premise, as a disparate group of mercenaries is commissioned to transport volatile nitro-glycerine across hostile desert terrain in order to put out a well fire and save a village, fully updated and executed for today's audience sensibilities.  It is quite well shot on location, but it is very much a case of style over substance, with an unnecessarily overlong prologue, barely-sketched and dull characters, a surprisingly uninteresting music score and a lack of pace, all of which tend to flatten the proceedings somewhat.  Even the order of fatalities is not difficult to predict, and overall the lack of real jeopardy is noticeable as it plods to the finish line.
 

VOD: Five Nights At Freddy's (dir: Emma Tammi, 2023)

"They just wanna play."

Courtesy of Blumhouse, the long-gestating movie adaptation of the popular videogame finds troubled Mike (Josh Hutcherson) trying to look after his younger sister and taking on a night security job at an abandoned 80s pizzeria complex, where the animatronic mascots come to life with seemingly murderous intent. The mise-en-scene is pleasingly authentic to the game, but generally the film is a routine grind through jump-scares and toothless violent scenes with a disappointing lack of tension and indeed few scenes with the giant animatronic creatures. It maintains some interest more than others of its type through some good editing and interesting use of camera, together with a solid performance from Hutcherson who is on-screen almost all the time, even if pacing and tone tend to wander and plot strands never really convince or gel, such as the dour child-abduction sub-plot.  The ending smacks of rather desperate sequel-baiting, but on this evidence there is little to convince that the material would warrant another outing.
 

VOD: Next Goal Wins (dir: Taika Waititi, 2023)

REVIEW No. 1,600!

"I can't believe that pretty much actually happened!  With a couple of embellishments along the way..."

This delightful feel-good comedy-drama follows the fortunes of the notoriously weak American Samoan football team which, following their famous 31-0 defeat by Australia, employs a new (foreign) coach in order to try to score one goal in the World Cup qualifiers.  With its mix of comedy of embarrassment, underdog and fish-out-of-water story, it is consistently gently amusing, and it both embraces its silliness and digs into the emotional drama when necessary to good effect.  It is well played and nicely written with a wry tongue-in-cheek style that is very much Taika Waititi, led by a fun and genial performance by Michael Fassbender and bolstered by a breezy pop soundtrack and sunny vibe. The end-credits gag is also worth a giggle. 
 

VOD: Anatomy Of A Fall (dir: Justine Triet, 2023)

"What do you want to know?"

This award-winning (largely courtroom) thriller has the seemingly simple premise of a writer's husband falling to his death at their secluded chalet in the mountains, the movie then following the subsequent investigation and trial with a bleak elegance and intimate precision.  Exploring the justice system, truth vs. fiction, relationships and the impact of grief together with their interaction makes for absorbing viewing as the evidence unfolds in determining the innocence or guilt of the wife.  Sandra Huller totally inhabits the role of the wife in every frame, on-screen for almost all of the movie and negotiating a not-particularly-likeable character, young Milo Macada-Graner is notable for handling the demanding role of the son well, and director Triet controls the film with a quiet clarity, such as a terrific scene which juxtaposes the huge courtroom arena with the claustrophobia of marital discord in a blistering piece of recorded evidence, also played out in intercut flashback.  Anatomy Of A Fall is a demanding but superbly-executed piece of work.
 

VOD: Thanksgiving (dir: Eli Roth, 2023)

"No-one appreciates subtlety any more."

Eli Roth's output has been of very variable quality, but Thanksgiving - belatedly expanded for the trailer made for the Grindhouse project - is one of his better efforts simply by being nothing more than an adequately-executed generic old-school holiday slasher.  Starting off with a singularly out-of-control Black Friday stampede, the film moves one year later when key players in the superstore massacre start getting picked off by a masked killer, who is also live-streaming a macabre Thanksgiving dinner party.  With its insipidly-anonymous old-looking 'teenage' leads, swift and efficient kills, Patrick Dempsey as the name player doing his best to keep his dignity and a very obvious killer, Thanksgiving sits comfortably alongside its 80s/90s predecessors (with added social media and mobiles of course), with reasonable production values and a couple of nicely-done set-ups for horror fans but little more.
 

FILM: Ghostbusters Frozen Empire (dir: Gil Kenan, 2024)

"Aren't you benched?"
"Aren't you retired?"

With Afterlife re-energising the franchise and passing the torch with a new cast, new setting and sufficient warm nostalgia, Frozen Empire muddies the waters by being an unexpectedly mixed bag.  Whilst it does not fully hand back the torch, the film does take us back to New York, the fire house and a bigger (if uneven) presence of the originals.  The film starts encouragingly with a macabre 1904-set prologue and then a lively chase with the 'new' family ghostbusting team through the surprisingly-empty streets of New York to capture a Dragon spirit, but it then spends a considerable amount of time painstakingly laying out and explaining all of the pieces that lead to the big ending that does not go much beyond what was seen in the trailer.  Swapping out the original easy-going comedy actors' banter for on-trend familial angst reduces the fun and funny lines notably, especially when young McKenna Grace's promising character Phoebe gets sidelined into a dreary friendship with a young female ghost, and with the new and old cast plus some nicely-placed but limited callbacks all vying for screen-time, the film feels a little underdeveloped and lacking momentum.  Kumail Nanjiani and James Acaster are effective additions to an already overstuffed main cast, but sadly the likes of Annie Potts and Bill Murray are given very little to do.  The film even resorts to a 'swirly clouds in the sky' event in the finale!  An original 'baddie' is welcome - even if it appears far too late in the day - but the potential of the new generation is sadly not given the focus and development it needs here.

 

VOD: Road House (dir: Doug Liman, 2024)

"Again?  Uh...nope."

In this lightweight MGM/Amazon Original take on the less-than-classic 1980s Patrick Swayze action vehicle, Jake Gyllenhaal takes the (surprise) lead as fighter Dalton, who takes on a bouncer job at a Florida Quays road house, taking a young protégé under his wing as he runs up against a local gang/boss who want the bar.  Laid-back to the point of lethargy, the scenery does not cover the fact that the story is thin and uninteresting and not a lot happens - even the much-hyped naturalistic fighting is mostly limp and perfunctory until the throw-everything-at-it finale.  Unconvincing 'live' bands are interjected seemingly at random, dialogue is at times excruciating, Gyllenhaal is lacklustre at times and Conor McGregor's unhinged bad-guy is quite extraordinary to behold.  In its conception and execution, Road House often disappoints.
 

VOD: All Of Us Strangers (dir: Andrew Haigh, 2023)

"Please let me in."

Writer/director Andrew Haigh's much-lauded drama is a wistful and restrained delight.  Living in an almost-empty tower block on the edge of London, Andrew Scott as the isolated and haunted screenwriter Adam is consistently superb to watch, matched by Paul Mescal as his more forward neighbour Harry, with whom he forms a cautious relationship.  Claire Foy and Jamie Ball are also great as Harry's parents whom he visits at his childhood home (filmed at Haigh's actual home from his youth),  preserved as they were at the time of their death whilst their son is now an adult in a cleverly-realised conceit.  Haigh juxtaposes (male) urban alienation and isolation with the burgeoning personal relationship through expert craft and direction, combining the intensity of emotions with an almost dream-like feel.  Beautifully shot and played, this is clearly a very personal project for Haigh, but its themes of  grief, resolving the past and the human need and capacity for love are universal and very affecting - the final half-hour in particular is exquisitely and devastatingly heart-breaking. 
 

VOD: Irish Wish (dir: Janeen Damian, 2024)

"Why don't we just stay silent for a second?  That way I can enjoy the view."

This Netflix rom-com is about as rom-commy as you can get, with book editor Madeline (Lindsay Lohan), whose unrequited love for her author leads to her wedding in Ireland, where she crosses paths with a lone-wolf English nature photographer and - one wish to St Brigid later - finds herself in an alternate reality where she is the one getting married, but is it to the right man?  Lohan blusters through like her recent Falling For Christmas with all the professionalism she can muster, Ed Speleers transcends the material with a genuine performance as the photographer love-interest, and Jane Seymour pops up pointlessly now and again as Madeline's mother, with the rest of the cast filling out the stereotypes and the improbable characters appropriately.  The film's main strength is the picturesque Irish scenery that is shot gorgeously, but Irish Wish will only really appeal to those who are willing to surrender to its fantasy silliness.  

 

VOD: American Fiction (dir: Cord Jefferson, 2023)

"You know, I don't even really believe in race."
"Yeah, the problem is that everyone else does."

An abrasive and failing novelist and lecturer despairs of the publishing world's (and audience's) apparent stereotypical expectations of Black authors, so he writes a pandering novel as a joke that unexpectedly becomes a huge hit and makes his complicated professional and personal life even more difficult.  Propelled by a wickedly smart and funny script, engaging characters and an excellent cast,   Jeffrey Wright is superb in the lead role, with excellent support from Leslie Uggams as his ailing mother, John Ortiz as his dry agent, Adam Brody as the deluded director and Sterling K. Brown as his newly out-and-proud brother.  The film has a great mix of the emotional and the acerbic, making American Fiction an engaging, entertaining and provocative watch.
 

VOD: Eli (dir: Ciaran Foy, 2019)

"Do you know what happened to the boy who asked too many questions?"
"He got answers?"

Starting off as a classic 'boy in a plastic bubble' drama, young Eli and his parents go off to an isolated converted old mansion for revolutionary gene therapy to cure his immuno-disease, and the film then becomes a creepy supernatural-style thriller as pipes creak, doors open by themselves and figures emerge from the shadows, before going in an utterly bonkers direction for an unexpected out-there finale.  Eli is very contained and low-powered overall, until the last fifteen minutes at which most of the budget appears to have been thrown and that you are unlikely to see coming.
 

VOD: The After (dir: Misan Harriman, 2024)

"Just give me a sec..."

In this Oscar-nominated short film (under twenty minutes), the excellent David Oyelowo plays a father whose family suffers an horrific act of violence; his life changes direction as he becomes a driver, quietly observing his passengers, one of whom has a singular impact upon him.  With very little dialogue and set against a nicely-shot London, Oyelowo's focused and sensitive performance is heartbreakingly terrific in this simple, elegant and sincere piece of film-making.
 

VOD: Poor Things (dir: Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024)

"Trust me, you are definitely unique, Bella, in all ways."

Right from the start, every element of Poor Things is designed to be off-kilter, telling the audience not to expect an ordinary film experience.  Emma Stone gives an admirably committed and enthusiastic performance as Bella Baxter, brought back from the dead by a strange medical scientist and who - initially trapped in a full-grown adult body - we see develop rapidly from an infant-like state (played by Stone with childish abandon) through to her sexual awakening, and the arrival of a visiting lawyer (a delightfully caddish Mark Ruffalo) who takes her away to discover the outside world.  Costume and design work are indeed excellent, and Lanthimos is a director with a very singular vision, but for all of the film's cinematic stylisation, its messaging feels confusing (all men are controlling narcissists and women can only rely on each other, yet the female characters themselves are hardly presented in a flattering way here), and its deliberate quirkiness and need to shock is quite relentless over its long running time.  Perhaps the film's boldness makes it one to admire rather than being a film that is entertaining, profound or moving.

VOD: Damsel (dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2024)

"I see she arrives with some wit!"

In this intended revisionist take on the traditional fairy tale, Netflix's reliable Millie Bobby Brown  plays the damsel, Elodie, who grudgingly agrees to an arranged marriage to save their failing kingdom, but discovers her dashing prince's family has a very different agenda.  A lively prologue gives way to a necessarily twee first act that plays into fairy tale movie tropes, including sumptuously mounted castles and vistas, as the underbelly of the seemingly-perfect arranged wedding gets revealed, a much darker and potentially interesting movie emerges but is not fully realised.  Millie Bobby Brown takes centre stage at the expense of the other characters and is utterly committed to the role as would be expected, but the second act in particular has rather a lot of wandering around in the dark and the core idea is not perhaps fully developed over the whole of the running time.  The dragon is well realised - the molten lava breath is a neat idea - but overall the film would have benefitted from sharper and more developed writing.
 

VOD: The Blackening (dir: Tim Story, 2023)

"Are there any white people who wanna kill us?"
"Potentially, all of them!"

Eight college friends have a Juneteenth ten-year reunion weekend at a plush cabin in the woods but - as the Scream-like prologue reveals - a dangerous board game in the basement and a masked killer spell trouble.  Taken from the long-held notion that black characters do not survive in horror films and here presenting a lead cast entirely of black actors and juggling horror tropes, comedy and social comment, the film executes the more conventional horror scenes best - it is certainly better than the A Haunted House movies - and there are some nicely witty comments on black culture and experience.  Overall, the film may be very uneven, but it is fun and purposeful when it does hit the mark. 
 

VOD: It Lives Inside (dir: Bishal Dutta, 2023)

"Why are you whispering?"
"It's listening."

In an attempt to bring a slightly different spin on the very familiar ground that is the urban teen horror, Samidha - an Indian-American teenager - has to deal with clashing cultures and an evil spirit that feeds on negative energy passed on to her by a classmate.  With its mix of not-often-used-in-American-horror Indian cultural representation and very familiar genre tropes (right down to lots of rolling thunder and an abandoned house at night), the balance tends to lie with the expected - even her nice boyfriend does not survive a quick kiss and a puff of weed!  Simple and fairly effective in its execution overall, the film relies heavily on the commitment and reactions of its young performers and on atmosphere and suggestion rather than explicit gore, which it achieves quite well, notably the unsettling growling (largely) unseen spirit presence.  Note that the film does fall prey at times to the recent predilection for impenetrably murkily-shot sequences, especially the finale.

 

VOD: Spaceman (dir: Johan Renck, 2024)

"Your loneliness intrigued me."

Adam Sandler (here in his welcome serious actor mode), is a Czech astronaut, Jakub, on an (unlikely) solo space mission to investigate a strange cloud at the edge of Jupiter, who makes first contact with a sentient 'space spider' (voiced by a softly-spoken Paul Dano) that appears in his capsule.  As is usual with his dramatic performances, Sandler is strong, although the role - like the film as a whole - is rather one-note.  Max Richter's music score is mesmerising, the gimmick of instantaneous quantum communication with Earth is useful with his crumbling marriage and impending fatherhood in play, and the lived-in aesthetic of the space capsule works well.  Slow, gentle and contemplative, the bulk of the film is taken up with the interplay between astronaut and alien, which is interesting but hardly made compelling in its relentless treatise on loneliness.

 

FILM: Dune Part Two (dir: Denis Villeneuve, 2024)

"As written."

Not only was the decision to split the book into two films clearly very wise, this 'second part' is even better than the already-excellent opener.  Part One did the obvious heavy-lifting in terms of characters and world-building; this time, mostly desert-bound, the characters fully inhabit their roles and move them forward.  Timothee Chalamet shows more depth in the Paul Atreides role, Rebecca Ferguson brings Lady Jessica's journey to the screen with aplomb, and indeed the whole returning cast do their characters justice, with the welcome addition of a non-blinking Austin Butler as the coldly villanous Feyd-Rautha.    The set pieces are visually epic and have sound design that sets the cinema shaking - Paul's first worm-ride is particularly viscerally thrilling - cinematography is stunning, effects work is generally terrific, and Hans Zimmer channels Vangelis.  There are even a couple of moments that display what passes for emotion in a Villeneuve film.  At almost three hours in length, some will find it slow and impenetrable, but the film is hypnotically engaging and (in true Villeneuve style) every frame is beautifully designed.  The gathering momentum of the story truly pays off in the final act, and Dune Part Two is a particularly skilful and absorbing adaption of a notoriously difficult series of books to bring to the screen.  

VOD: Code 8 Part II (dir: Jeff Chan 2024)

"This one can be stupid."

This sequel to the surprise crowdfunded Netflix hit continues the story some time later as Connor (Robbie Amell) gets out of prison and Garrett (Stephen Amell) is now a drugs baron, trading Psyke in league with corrupt cops.  An underclass of 4% of the population with superpowers, an increasingly police/surveillance state with new robotic dogs, a young girl with extra-special abilities and an older brother who falls foul of the crooked cops... this sort of action/sci-fi potboiler pretty much writes itself, as the young girl falls into the orbit of Connor and eventually Garrett as well, leading to a standard cat-and-mouse chase with the bad cops in tow.  The film strives for a level of coolness that it does not reach, and it is rather slow, underpowered and surprisingly sombre.  Robbie does the pained puppy-dog eyes throughout and Stephen does his diffident grouchy routine, but apart from the nicely-realised robot dogs (although hardly a new concept), the film leaves little impression.
 

VOD: Oppenheimer (dir: Christopher Nolan, 2023)

"There's a way to balance these things."

From his early student days, through World War II and the 1950s Communist witch-hunts, Nolan's Oppenheimer takes a fairly comprehensive look at the theoretical physicist's personal, professional and political lives embedded in the socio-political context of the times.  As Oppenheimer, the reliable Cillian Murphy leads a Nolan film and inhabits the character absolutely and portrays a brilliant, driven but haunted man, and Christopher Nolan's (co-)writing and direction creates a confident and dazzling patchwork of sounds, images and performances that is quite stunning to watch and demands the viewer's full attention throughout.  There are many performances that impress, including Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett and notably Robert Downey Jr amongst others.  What Nolan creates cleverly is an intelligent and thriller that is also nimble and gripping, housed within a brilliantly-realised biopic.  The relentless and exhausting (but fantastic) rapid-fire dialogue and editing gives the film an unstoppable momentum, yet its structure also enables the thoughtful considerations of the ushering in of the nuclear age.  There is an obvious reason why Oppenheimer has been cleaning up the major prizes during the awards season, and it is quite simply that film-making does not get much better than Oppenheimer.

 

VOD: Femme (dirs: Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, 2023)

"This isn't healthy."

This provocative dark British psychological thriller sees drag performer Jules fall victim to a violent homophobic attack by a group of thugs; three months later, an unexpected encounter with Preston, one of the attackers, leads Jules down a path of twisted revenge as he strikes up a dangerous relationship with the closeted Preston.  With two execllent actors in the lead roles - George MacKay giving Preston a disturbingly unpredictable edge, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett successfully navigating the timid Jules and his drag alter-ego - the shifting power-play and nuance of this difficult relationship are conveyed expertly, and the naturalistic style and look of the film makes it feel very immediate.  Even if the narrative trajectory is clearly signposted early on and is rather straightforward, it is the detailed and committed performances of the two lead actors that bring the film to life and lead to the good impact made by the final 'reveal' and its aftermath.
 

VOD: Children Of The Corn (2023) (dir: Kurt Wimmer, 2023)

"Gotta feed the corn somehow!"

Another pointless reboot - this one evidently filmed during lockdown - finds a twelve-year-old girl, Eden, seemingly possessed by the spirit of the cornfields, and she enlists the other children to kill the adults in a small failing farming community.  A rather bland first act gives way to a surprisingly nasty tone (and some good practical horror effects and some weaker CGI ones) as the young children take over the town, gather the adults on the pretext of a trial and duly despatch them en masse, an then turn on the remaining older teenagers.  The basic premise is the same as before, but giving the story a context of poverty-stricken farmers who have to make choice about their crops adds value, but the overall narrative feels rather thin and underdeveloped, with a couple of puzzling narrative leaps evident.  The film is just about sustained by the well-cast Kate Moyer as Eden with her effectively casual disdain, but Elena Kampouris as the lead older teenage protagonist can be rather too earnest.  It is not the worst Children Of The Corn film by any means, but both its strengths and failings are very apparent.  
 

FILM: Wicked Little Letters (dir: Thea Sharrock, 2024)

"Apologies for the language."

A spate of poison pen letters in the seaside town of Littlehampton in the 1920s that became a story of national interest forms the basis of this interesting British comedy-drama.  Pitching the pious Edith (Olivia Colman) against her livelier neighbour and former friend Rose (Jessie Buckley) - the former accusing the latter of sending the letters - the film is much more than a tale of outrageously sweary letters but about the status, role and position of women both in society and the family at that time, which the film explores to a good degree.  Whilst there are many very funny moments, the more dramatic elements of the film are to the fore and the through story is delivered extremely effectively, even if the writing can occasionally sound a little flat.  Olivia Colman is - as ever - superb in her level of control and depth of response she brings to her character, Jessie Buckley is again great as her feisty  counterpoint, Timothy Spall is strong as Edith's overbearing father and a host of recognisable British character actors (including Joanna Scanlan, Hugh Skinner, Jason Watkins and more) give solid support.  It is a very enjoyable and well-delivered film where all the elements come together well, perhaps gentler and more considered than the marketing's focus on the more salacious aspects suggested.
 

VOD: The Abyss (2023) a.k.a. Avgrunden (dir: Richard Holm, 2023)

"Sucked into a sandpit?  That's a new one!"

This Swedish Netflix drama/disaster movie finds the world's biggest underground mine about to cave in and wreak havoc on the nearby town, which is being relocated.  Playing like a low-key and largely TV-level version of its Hollywood earthquake movie equivalents - complete with partying teenagers in the mountains as the prologue shreddies, plucky middle-aged nearly-divorced female head of  mine security with a rebellious daughter and missing son - the film is generally played earnestly and made solidly.  To its credit, the film actually shows how the characters are affected emotionally to the unfolding events (with some uncompromising moments of injury and death), and the lack of a bombastic Hollywood-style soundtrack is refreshing for the genre.  The contained finale is staged well, and Tuva Novotny is fully invested in the lead role both emotionally and physically.  Avgrunden is relatively small-scale and offers little new for the genre, but it deploys its resources effectively and is well-made overall.

 

VOD: Rye Lane (dir: Raine Allen-Miller, 2023)

"You cool?  'cause if you're gonna freak out, I'm gonna sling a sign on you and call it performance art!"

Two young South-Londoners connect after both go through break-ups and spend a day together in this terrifically charming and hugely enjoyable British indie rom-com.  Mostly a two-hander as Dom and Yas go through the day and interact with a variety of quirky characters from both of their lives, the tiny-slice-of-life film delivers a great balance of chucklesome comedy moments and sincere heartfelt drama with relentless well-written sparky dialogue and an endlessly cool soundtrack, made with lovely attention to detail throughout (keep your eye on what is going on in the background of a lot of scenes).  Both David Jonsson and particularly Vivian Oparah bring real warmth and personality to their lead roles, and it is a joy to go along with their characters for the ride.  Put simply, Rye Lane is sweet, warm-hearted and utterly delightful.  Don't miss the funny outtake at the very end of the credits!

 

VOD: How To Have Sex (dir: Molly Manning Walker, 2023)

"Sounds really romantic."
"No..."

Three British teenage girls go for a wild holiday in Malia and have to contend with issues of consent, peer pressure and gender attitudes in this upfront and provocative drama.  The loose reality/documentary style of the film complements the naturalistic performances of the three lively and engaging leads.  Although it could be argued that most of the film plays through the expected teens-go-wild rites-of-passage holiday abroad tropes with woefully thinly-written males, when young Tara (a wonderfully-pitched performance by Mia McKenna-Bruce) is confronted with the realities of sex in a drink-fuelled full-on party-town environment as a young woman clearly out of her depth, the film's mood changes in the blink of an eye and is well-handled by cast and director alike.  The movie offers a sad and sobering reflection on the loss of innocence and it is a promising debut for its writer/director.

 

VOD: The Worst Person In The World a.k.a. Verdens Verste Menneske (dir: Joachim Trier, 2022)

"Nothing's ever good enough."

In this awards-winner, an unfulfilled woman called Julie, approaching her thirtieth birthday, navigates her academic and emotional life in Oslo in her middle-class white-privilege feminist bubble.  Presented as twelve chapters of varying length over four years, it really feels like the viewer goes on a journey with Julie that is honest and grounded to the character, set against a beautifully-shot Oslo.  Renate Reinsve was a deserving Cannes Best Actress winner, with her clear and unfussy performance ably conveying Julie's ballbreaking disdain and fragile loneliness, like a reined-in Fleabag without the fourth-wall breaking.  The film is essentially about the class 'heart versus head' dilemma and how the different men in her life fulfil different needs, with Reinsve matched by a thoughtful performance by Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel.  It may be talky and somewhat restrained, but its dissection of adult relationships and reflections on life are raw and fascinating to watch. 

 

VOD: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (dir: Mia Vardalos, 2023)

"The city of Athens!"
"Do we have time to stop there?"
"No."

The company and studio that brought us the Mamma Mia! films obviously aimed here for another slice of that success with this obvious threequel, aiming for the feel of those movies but without the ABBA songs (instead, soundtracked by Greek pop hits) and inevitably falling short, as the extended Portokalos family travels to Greece for a family reunion to take their late father's journals back to his Greek best friends.  Marginally better than the awful first sequel, the formula is still a string of weak and forced jokes and awash with stereotypical characters, not a lot of consequence happens, a rather quick wedding takes place to justify the title and then it ends.  The sunny scenery is lovely to look at and the multi-generational casting is to be applauded, but this film will have limited appeal beyond fans of the franchise and of its style of unsophisticated and very simple humour.

 

VOD: There's Something In The Barn (dir: Magnus Martens, 2023)

"It's f**king freezing!"

"Hey - don't use the f-word!"

"You're right.  I'm sorry.  It's f**king cold!"

An American family moves to remote rural Norway after inheriting a farmhouse with a view to converting the barn into a B&B, but the resident ancient Barn Elf has other ideas...  This unpretentious mash-up of Christmas, creature-feature and fish-out-of-water movie tropes embraces its inherent silliness and has fun with it.  It balances its comedy and mild-horror elements well, the ultra-snowy scenery is attractive, and there are nice nods to the likes of E.T and Gremlins and the zany horror stylings of Tommy Wirkola.  It ends up with a lively madcap finale in which the family finds itself under siege from a gang of angry elves on Christmas Eve.  The film is slight and occasionally underpowered and slow, but overall it is a fairly entertaining slice of festive nonsense.

 

VOD: The Nun II (dir: Michael Chaves, 2023)

"Sound familiar?"

As Shakespeare once said: "Full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing."  Round Two of Sister Irene versus Valak The Demon Nun starts off with a suitably atmospheric French-set 1956 prologue and the death of a priest in a city church, leading to Sister Irene being asked by The Church to investigate a familiar series of murders/suicides.  The set-ups for the supposed scare scenes are somewhat repetitive, apart from one nicely-staged sequence involving a magazine stand, and the film's rather flat feel makes this sequel a rather uninteresting grind through the genre motions that runs out of steam before the half-way mark, all leading to a rather tiresome runaround-in-the-dark screamfest for the finale.  The story's link to the first film works well, but with an uninteresting protagonist and only brief appearances by the titular antagonist, this sequel has little to offer.

 

VOD: The Exorcist Believer (dir: David Gordon Green, 2023)

"We need to try something else.  Something different.  Something new."

With the most recent (TV) incarnation of the Exorcist franchise yielding mixed results (terrific first season, dire second season), Blumhouse/Universal expensively pinned their hopes on this proposed new trilogy-opener.  The original 1973 film's impact both on its release and in subsequent years is a given, just as its sequels are mostly forgettable (except to some extent Heretic, which was not originally written as an Exorcist movie anyway), so this much-touted revival by Halloween saviour David Gordon Green felt like an event but arrived as something of a rather damp squib.  Here, two barely-teenage girl best friends try to summon a spirit but disappear in the woods, lose three days and reappear with rapidly-developing disturbing behaviour from demonic possession.  Rather than a hoped-for smart, modern but respectful reboot, Believer is for the most part an unexpectedly dreary drama throwback, murkily shot and adding very little to what worked well before.  Callbacks are limited and prove unnecessary apart from marquee value, from the arrival of Ellen Burstyn (Regan's mother from the original) which shows promise but is quickly dispensed with, to the brief use of Tubular Bells which feels perfunctory when motifs derived from it could have been more effective in the absence of any strong new musical themes.  There is good work from Leslie Odom Jr (as the suffering father) and Ann Dowd (as the exorcising stand-in), but overall the writing is underwhelming, and what shocked fifty years ago has less impact in a paler version today.  It may be that Believer was conceived as the first of the trilogy to reacquaint audiences with more familiar territory and that the subsequent films might be more creative, but whether or not we get to see them made remains to be seen.   

 

VOD: Orion And The Dark (dir: Sean Charmatz, 2024)

"The trick is not letting the fear get in the way of living your own life."

Orion is an ordinary kid who is afraid of most things, especially the dark.  Frustrated by Orion's depth of fear, one night the personification of Dark pays Orion a visit, with twenty-fours to convince him (together with other anthropomorphised night-time entities such as Insomnia, Quiet, Unexplained Noises and Sweet Dreams) that night-time is actually all right.  Like a cross between Monsters Inc, Inside Out and Rise Of The Guardians, this straightforward and well-told tale - with adaptation input by Charlie Kaufman - is brought to the screen with a pleasing lightness of touch and many lovely visual ideas.  Jacob Tremblay does very good and engaging voice work in the title role, making this an utterly charming Dreamworks animation with the sweetest of endings.