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.