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.
 

VOD: Brian And Charles (dir: Jim Archer, 2022)

"I just started making stuff."

This quirky, funny and utterly charming off-kilter British comedy is an extremely effective expansion of the 2017 short film, in which single and lonely Brian, living alone in his isolated rural cottage, creates strange inventions in his workshop, eventually making a robot called Charles with a mannequin's head and a washing machine for a body, and so the tale of their developing relationship unfolds.  Shot with an effective mockumentary style, our narrator/subject Brian is a quintessentially likeable downtrodden British eccentric, but here he represents everybody's need for friendship and company, alongside providing a big old metaphor for parenthood as we follow Charles from an infant state through childhood to teenagedom.  Essentially a two-hander for the most part, this is an absolute tour-de-force performance from David Earl as Brian, taking the viewer not only on the journey of looking after the initially child-like Charles but also his burgeoning relationship with a local woman and finding the strength to stand up to the local bullying family, and Chris Hayward's comic timing as Charles is superb.  The film has moments of daftness, laugh-out-loud hilarity, sincerity and heart-breaking emotion - you will be amazed how attached you can become to the hulkingly awkward robot - all of which makes this film an unexpected and utter delight.   
 

VOD: Smile (dir: Parker Finn, 2022)

"I promise this is a safe place."
"Not for me."

This delightfully disorientating psychological horror/thriller works through its clever use of camera, unnerving soundscape and convincing performances.  An over-worked female psychotherapist in an emergency psychiatric ward encounters a distraught young woman patient (who claims to be pursued by a sinister smiling figure) with tragic results and then seemingly becomes haunted by the same vision as her grip on reality starts to disintegrate.  Sosie Bacon gives an exhaustingly-committed performance as the unravelling psychotherapist Rose.  Reminiscent of the transferable-curse concept behind It Follows, Smile manages to make smiling utterly creepy, and by playing reactions to this high concept completely straight, Rose's increasing paranoia is effectively credible in this unsettling film. 
 

VOD: Bullet Train (dir: David Leitch, 2022)

"Nut up or shut up, bruv!"

Welcome to Japan for a ride on this unashamed Tarantino/The Raid/John Wick-styled action potboiler, with Brad Pitt as a returning-to-action gun-for-hire on a job to retrieve a briefcase on a bullet train that happens to contain an eclectic mix of wacky characters, including a selection of hitmen-and-women on their own missions, all tied together by the briefcase and crime boss The White Death.  The high concept runs out of steam around the hour mark, but the film has an entertaining self-aware sense of devil-may-care frivolity along with an attractive glossy neon-lit sheen.  The physically-contained but freewheeling violence is slickly choreographed and marries copious blood with humour quite well, all leading to a hugely-ambitious CG-fuelled finale.  The big plus here is a Zen-like Brad Pitt clearly having a whale of a time, but ultimately Bullet Train is throwaway lightweight entertainment for fans of mindless action violence.

VOD: The Pale Blue Eye (dir: Scott Cooper, 2023)

"I don't get round to poetry much."
"Why should you? You're an American."

This well-presented period mystery-thriller finds Christian Bale playing a gruff investigator brought in to look into the murder of a cadet at a remote military academy, who gets teamed with a young Edgar Allan Poe in a Holmes-and-Watson style tale.  The winterbound candlelit mise-en-scene gives an atmospherically chilly feel, the dialogue is wordy and at times dense but builds the story well if in a somewhat over-deliberate manner that insists on taking its time to explain every step very carefully.  Christian Bale imbues the detective Landor with a captivating world-weary stillness, contrasting with Harry Melling's somewhat theatrical and eccentric take on Poe.  The film is rather languorous and occasionally awkward, veering between sincere procedural and sudden melodramatic histrionics, but the overarching mystery is played out cleverly with Christian Bale providing and extremely touching final and clever reveal.