Year: 2018 Director: Brad Bird and Christopher McQuarrie

Two old franchises in a surprisingly healthy state. I’ve watched both this weekend.

There’s some weird parallels between the set-pieces in these two films… A motorcycle chase, helicopter crashes, people passing out at high altitude… were they both swapping notes, or are action tropes just becoming less unique in general now?

One other parallel is that both films mine some interestingly murky moral depth before abandoning such pretensions for more conventional action climaxes. The Incredibles 2 questions the fairness of an unequal world where superheroes are put on pedestals. Fallout casts doubt on whether the current world order is actually one worth saving. A shame these strong themes are glossed over in the end, but then again this is mainstream entertainment, not Watchmen. Even when a villain has something interesting to say, they still gotta get punched in the mouth.

Such criticisms are largely irrelevant, however, when the quality bar is set this high on the action front. Fallout probably contains the highest concentration of heart-pumping stunts since that last Mad Max film. Wince-inducing, boisterous brawling with a good dose of free-running, climbing, driving, kung fu, ticking timebombs…. everything is thrown into » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Lili Fini Zanuck

This seems to be the season for guitar greats to release documentaries of their life stories. Following on from the recent Jeff Beck release, it’s now the turn of Eric Clapton to step into the confessional. This film covers the numerous highs and lows of his personal and professional life, and as we all know, the highs were very high (Cream, Derek and The Dominoes) and the lows were very low (drink, drugs, loss of his young son). Clapton is nothing if not resilient though, and he unfailingly gets himself up off the canvas, admittedly sometimes quicker than others, and picks up the pieces of his career. This is a far more personal film than the Beck effort, as Clapton speaks frankly and sometimes movingly about his life, augmented with recollections and anecdotes from friends and family, aspects that were sadly missing from the Beck film. Of course, everything that you’d expect from his musical career is covered too, from his early days on the British blues scene into the Cream and Derek eras and on to his long solo career, illustrated with interviews and performance footage with colleagues and collaborators. These stories though » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Jasenko Pasic & Tarik Hodzic

If you’ve read Bruce Dickinson’s autobiography, published last year, you may well recall a lengthy piece on the concert he played in Sarajevo in 1994 with his band Skunkworks during his period of exile from Iron Maiden.

This DVD documents the background to and organisation of that event, although it strangely doesn’t include much in the way of performance footage from the show itself. The real story is that of the attendees at the gig, the UN aid workers and the British army major who initially put the idea forward. Their reminiscences, combined with those of Dickinson and his band, give some insight into the situation in that war torn city. It is a harrowing tale of their stories, combined with more humorous aspects as, for example, the band are forced to hitch a ride in a van belonging to aid workers, after the promised armoured helicopter fails to materialise due to the threat level being too high. This a a story where the perceived ‘stars’ take a back seat in the light of the daily struggles and efforts of the people on the ground in this brutal conflict.

A serious film » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Sophie Fiennes

Let’s face it nobody wants a Grace Jones film to be a ‘standard’ rock biography, much in the same way that nobody wants a ‘standard’ rock biography of Laurie Anderson or Patti Smith. You expect some degree of artiness or avant gardism, or it just wouldn’t be ‘them’.

But at the same time what you don’t really want — trust me on this — is what you get here: a cinema verité approach where you spend the first twenty minutes waiting in vain for some kind of context, backstory, explanation — anything — and the next hour-and-a-half (it’s a long old film) resigned to the fact that you’re not going to get any, just enjoying the great moments the film does occasionally throw up, and thinking, ‘God, what a lost opportunity this is.’ And, ‘How can anybody make a film about Grace Jones — Grace Jones! — that is so BORING?’

Honestly, I wanted to throw things at the screen. Fifteen minutes of Grace and family sitting around a dinner table having an impenetrable conversation? You got it? Context? Fuck you. I know a fair bit about her, so at least I knew that » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Ron Howard

Checking the reviews and box office receipts, and considering that I thought The Last Jedi was PANTS, I’m supposed to hate this. But with the benefit of lowered expectations and a quarter-full cinema, I actually had a blast. True, there was a huge amount of box-ticking at work. Has there ever been a film whose remit is to explain a single, throwaway line in another film, made over forty years ago? Probably not. And there’s a shitload of ‘this is how X happened!’ — from the Falcon’s distinctive shape to the way that Lando pronounces ‘Han’ — which is no doubt intended to be ‘fan pleasing’, but is in fact a little bit icky, oh, and it’s way, way too long.

But actually, if you can ignore all that — and you can, dead easily — then what you have here is a fairly cookie-cutter action movie, but one that’s done done really, really well.

Good points? A train heist set-piece that’s worthy of anything in the Mission: Impossible franchise; a really good performance by whatsisname in the title role, properly ‘doing’ Harrison; a funny turn from Fleabag lady; a fantastic Paul Bettany, being » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Matthew Longfellow

One of, if not the, most talented, inventive and yet reclusive guitarists Britain has ever produced is the subject of this in depth documentary. Beck is interviewed at length in his home and while tinkering in his garage as he talks through his fifty-year career, picking out the highs and lows along the way. Although he covers everything you’d expect, he’s sometimes frustratingly elusive and vague with his answers, for example his last minute pull out from Woodstock still remains something of a mystery. Nevertheless, he seems an engaging, friendly, articulate guy, if one who prefers to keep his private life just that – there are no appearances by family members or close personal friends to be found here. What you do get is a good selection of archive footage from over the years, plus a series of tributes from luminaries such as Dave Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Ron Wood, and from former colleagues such as Rod Stewart and Jan Hammer. Highlights of the vintage performances include playing with Clapton at Ronnie Scott’s, jamming with Jimmy Page at The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and, tagged on to the end, five previously » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Michael Gracey

A lot of critics had a lot of very bad things to say about The Greatest Showman, but mainly they criticised what it’s not. What it’s not is a serious biography of PT Barnum. It’s not subtle. It’s not at all fleshed-out or characterful.

While these are all points that certainly apply, they’re hardly valid criticism when the film itself shows not the slightest interest in hitting those particular markers. This is a movie where at one point plot exposition is relegated to a sign propped up in the background of a song. Almost all of the important storytelling beats, in fact, turn up during songs, a cinematic sleight of hand that leaves a contemporary musical like La La Land looking positively leaden by comparison. During an early sequence we see the young Barnum grow up fall in love, get married and have kids of his own – all during the course of one song. Meanwhile, a reprise (we’re big on reprises in The Greatest Showman) is sung by his daughter, closing the circle.

In the absence of all that stuff that isn’t there, The Greatest Showman gambles hard on its songs, and on » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Tan Bing

DISCLAIMER: THIS REVIEW IS ONLY OF THE TRAILER.

See first Comment for the review.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

The China Syndrome. Simply because China Salesman is probably a sequel.

Year: 2018 Director: Ray Argall

I have argued previously, on the blog, that Midnight Oil is a remarkable band in the history of politico rock and if not for the fact that they are Australian would’ve /should’ve been massive globally.

That view didn’t change when I saw one of their final shows in the recent world tour – absolutely stunning, and it remains after seeing the movie Midnight Oil 1984 which, in the main, chronicles the performances and political activism that culminated in front man Peter Garrett running for the Australian senate for the NDP while still on tour.

My view of the lack of recognition of “The Oils” was shaken a bit when we had dinner recently with neighbours who had moved from Madrid. “Have you seen any bands since coming to Melbourne” ….” Yes, Midnight Oil, they were fantastic, we love them. And the footage of overseas shows that there is indeed a rusted on global fan base.

There are 3 phases of Midnight Oil and possibly a fourth to come with talk of new music to be recorded. The first is the hard-edged band from the northern beaches of Sydney. Then came the big success of 10, » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Garth Davis

I enjoyed this film released just in time for Easter.

It is a British Australian co-production directed by Garth Davis who made a name for himself with his first movie the highly successful Lion. It stars the elegant and beautiful Rooney Mara as Mary, a dusty dishevelled intense Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus, a strapping Chiwetel Ejiofor as a strapping general like Peter and Algerian actor Tahar Rahim , as a baby faced somewhat naive Judas. Everyone else is fairly peripheral.

MM’s place in life of Jesus has been subject to debate for centuries. From a reformed prostitute as characterised by Pope Gregory in the 16th century and characterised as such from that time on the the alternative view as the 13 th disciple.

This movie focus seeing events through MM’s eyes and clearly positions here as one for whom Jesus holds most affection and she is clearly devoted/ besotted with Jesus. Mary encourages Jesus to talk more to women and address their oppressed situation and at times she interprets his words and actions differently to the 12 disciples. This, of course, rankles especially as they were reluctant to have them join them in » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Steven Spielberg

At relatives over Easter so instead of our usual Cineword or Odeon we saw Spielberg’s latest at the brilliantly straightforward Kavanagh cinema in Herne Bay. Tickets £4.00! A ‘4 sense’ ticket at Odeon is now heading towards £14 in Brum. Also the joy of local graphics done with Windows movie maker announcing ‘ The feature presentation’. But I digress…what was the film like? There’s spotters badges for Digbeth’s arches (standing in for post-slow-apocalypse USA) and a building in the City I used to walk past on my way to the Barbican centre. But I digress…what was the actual film thing like. It’s one of Spielberg’s family adventures like ET or Jurassic Park, rather than those aimed at a more grown up audience. So we get plucky teen protagonists versus the man, and a good deal less sense of jeopardy than being chewed by a T-Rex.

At stake is a virtual space world called the Oasis that was set up by Mark Rylance (a film-stealing cameo) and Simon Pegg, and is now the panacea that distracts everyone from the utterly f====d up world of 2040. Evil masterminds the the 101/I O I corporation want to » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Andreas Neumann, Joshua Homme

‘You risk nothing, you gain nothing.’ That is the mantra of this film documenting the collaboration between Iggy Pop and Josh Homme, culminating in the creation of the Post Pop Depression album in 2016 This is a fly on the wall effort, with lengthy interviews with the two main men backed up with behind the scenes footage from promotional trips and key concerts on the ensuing tour. Sometimes it does score a little high on the pretentious-ometer, as Homme wanders alone in the desert, but it’s redeemed by footage of the pair in the recording studio and on stage, together with Iggy’s candid observations on life, the universe and everything. He also shares some quite illuminating and candid recollections of his old friend David Bowie, who passed away while this was being filmed. There are also some interesting excerpts from the journals Homme and the other band members kept during this period, and some nice still photographs capturing the recording sessions and band rehearsals. Things conclude with footage of a raucous show at the Albert Hall , making you wish the whole thing was a bit longer than the rather meagre eighty minute » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Alex Garland

Natalie Portman’s Lena is a college biology professor whose soldier husband Kane (played by Oscar Isaac) disappeared, presumed killed, on his last secret mission. She’s stuck in grief and refuses to move on. And then, one day, he mysteriously returns. But he’s different, with no memory of what’s happened to him. His health rapidly deteriorates, and he is rushed to a military compound where Lena discovers that he was a part of a Special Forces-esque team sent to investigate the location of a meteor crash in the Florida swampland. The region has been enveloped in “Shimmer”, a mysterious effect that is changing the land under it, and one that is slowly expanding outwards. Kane is the only person from several expeditions who has returned from this location, now known as Area X.

Desperate to know what has happened to her husband, Lena volunteers to join up, and is assigned the next mission, heading into the unknown with a team of scientists, whereupon Annihilation reveals itself as the psychedelic Alien. This small group of explorers stumbling into something huge, unknown, and lethal has the same sense of nature and biology frighteningly out of kilter, but » Continue Reading.

Year: 2018 Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson is back. And it’s business as usual as he scratches another little odd corner of the twentieth century to see what kind of story he can unravel.

Daniel Day-Lewis is back on the roster as well, more than a decade on from There Will Be Blood. This is apparently his swansong. He’s Reynolds Woodcock, a society dressmaker in ’50s London (see? A little odd corner of the twentieth century) and a strange fish indeed. He’d probably be said to be on the autistic spectrum today. Fussy and petulant, he treats his models and clients (the rich and the royal) like mannequins – his detachment from them, his inability to relate to them, is probably the thing that allows him to craft them and sculpt them like works of art. His ladies, in turn, love him. Love the attention he gives them, objectifying and humiliating it may be. He’s handsome and charming, but quite sexless. He’s also obsessed with his dead mother and dominated by his sister (Lesley Manville – a fantastically fuming hard stare of a performance).

But this isn’t a film about Woodcock alone. The focus is his relationship with » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Joe Wright

The opening scene of this historical drama reminded me very much of that from the same era – Downfall. A young niave secretary is shown nervously into the presence of her country’s leader, without any pleasentries he starts dictating a letter. She is so nervous she makes a hash of it but persevered to become an important narrative device with which to view a historical giant. Lily James as Elizabeth Layton is a rare female presence in a world, made clear by her tour of the underground War Rooms, of men deciding the future of Western Europe.

Oldman, under a ton of rubber n glue, may not look much like Churchill in the stark daylight but in the dimly lit corridors, offices and rooms of power he moves and inhabits the man. Only when seen close up you realise it’s Oldman in there but at the dispatch box delivering those speeches or shuffling, slumped and brooding he csptures the essence of the man.

Very much told as one man against the establishment in a struggle to avoid a humiliating defeat and negotiated peace with a man whose name he cannot bring himself to utter » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Martin McDonagh

It’s that time of year where every week seems to bring a film with Oscar buzz all over it. After seeing Three Billboards I’d be very interested to see a better performance than Frances McDormand as the desperate mother of a murdered daughter.

The trailer suggests this will be a knockabout black comedy battle of wills between McDormand and Woody Harrison’s Sherrie defamed by the titular advertising hoardings. Which kind of sells the film short which is not to say it isn’t blackly comic, that McDormand curses up a storm and has all the best putdowns. It’s just that it a far more violent, nuanced and thoughtful film than that.

It’s a film where motivation is key and the lines between good and bad are blurred and moveable. No one has the purest of intentions and there is redemption and change but it has a twisted take on morality that some may find troubling.

Sam Rockwell’s Dixon is at first glance a typical buttheaded small town bigoted coward who somehow made it through police academy. We learn perhaps why he is this way but the film doesn’t offer that as an excuse or reason » Continue Reading.

Year: 2016 Director: Michael Haneke

So it’s a Michael Haneke film called Happy End. So is it happy ever after for the characters? It’s not a huge surprise to know that it’s not. This late into a career that’s brought us the blowtorch cinema of Funny Games, early video nasties such as Benny’s Video ,and the high water-mark of Hidden, he’s not going to start making rom-coms. Haneke’s style is now as firmly set as a new Noel Gallagher album and Happy End is, as several other reviewers have noted, practically a greatest hits collection.

The film introduces a large cast of mainly related characters revolving around the matriarch, Anne, played by the majestic Isabelle Huppert, head of a loaded haute bourgois family. She is fighting to save the family construction business, that she took over from her father Georges. He meanwhile is infirm and worried about dementia – so much so that he spends most of the film attempting to end his life. Anne’s brother, Thomas, has to care for his daughter 13-year Eve, brought into their lives after her mother, Tom’s first wife, has a drugs overdose. Keeping up? Meanwhile Anne’s drunkard son Pierre is putting the business » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Guillermo Del Toro

Despite being adorable, mute woman Elisa (Sally Hawkins) has only two friends: one, a closeted artist who lives next door (above a cinema permanently showing sword-and-sandal epics), and two: a fellow cleaner at the high-security government facility where they both work.

That’s the opening hook right there: this is a film about cleaning ladies at a top-secret government installation, where the newest asset is an amphibious creature captured by an agent played by Michael Shannon. And it’s a great hook. In the trusty hands of the brilliant Guillermo Del Toro it should be a great film. Should.

The problem is his treatment. Billed as Del Toro’s love letter to movies, that’s mainly because of the downstairs cinema and the fact that musicals are always playing on TV and act as a motif throughout. No doubt the 1950s setting is supposed to evoke the golden age of monster movies, or maybe Frank Capra, but in fact it’s nearer to the steampunk whimsy of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and even Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’, meaning that what the film most closely resembles is a mix of ‘Amelie’ and the director’s two ‘Hellboy’ movies. (And given that the creature looks a » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Pennant Roberts

So the most reworked ‘lost’ Doctor Who story ever gets yet another release – since it was cancelled in 1979 due to industrial action it has seen a VHS release with Tom Baker narrating linking material, a flash animation BBC7 version, a novelization, a fan made animation, a Paul McGann fronted audio drama and now this assembly of the existing filmed material with impressive animation.

Most of what was filmed before the strike was on location in and around Cambridge, a location close to the heart of the story’s writer , Douglas Adams. As you’d expect the tale is full of great one liners, proper science and imagination that stretches the BBC budget to it’s limits. Ok he helps them out with having a 100 ft long spaceship that is invisible yet gets great material from it. Quantum theory, time displacement and molecular entropy all get a look in but not as bafflegab , as zinging ideas.

Tom Baker is on top form, delighted to play the silliness and laughs in Douglas’ work rather than dismissing the script as ‘whippet shit’ as he did so often. His assistant, Romana II, Lalla Ward is simply » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Luca Guadagnino

This is one of those films that I went to see purely based on reviews I had read rather than any word of mouth or knowledge of the actors in it. It is in a way a coming of age film but I think much more than that it is a commentary on relationships and the opportunity to experience something special regardless of the upset when it is over. Elio is seventeen and living with his parents in a Lombardy farmhouse. His father is an archaeologist who employs an American Intern Oliver during the summer months. Elio initially treats Oliver with disdain because he has to give up his bedroom for him and also his perceived arrogance. Elio is preoccupied with his piano playing and composition and there is a nice allegory between his unfinished piano piece and his confused feelings for Oliver. During the summer the local teenage girls come to the family farmhouse for a party and swoon at Oliver’s prowess on the dance floor and he initially appears to be a hit with one of the girls although her advances are subtly dismissed. Elio on the other hand embarks on what appears » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Chris Rodley

Rover. Portmerion. Number 2. Unmutual. The Tally Ho.

If how these words connect is a puzzle to you then perhaps you’re not the target audience of this excellent documentary on 60’s mindfuck television masterwork, The Prisoner, but more pertinently the mighty drive and ambition of its star (and sometime, writer, director and producer) Patrick McGoohan. There are a couple of decent “making of” documentaries about the series which may give you more of an idea to the nuts n bolts of how it call came to be. However this is more an insight into the inception of the series and a tiny glimpse into “what it means” via rare interview footage with McGoohan.

In 1983, to coincide with Channel 4’s repeat showing of the series, Chris Rodley, was given the task of producing an introductory look at the show. As a devotee he went big and tried to get an interview with a man who believed the work should speak for itself and hated actors quacking on about their work. Via some suitably cagey and odd encounters he got the man to sit in front of a camera only for a day only for the » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Chris Smith

I’m not a fan of Jim Carey. As a rule I don’t like wacky and his shtick in The Mask, Ace Ventura and Dumb & Dumber feels like 2nd rate Robin Williams. Regardless of that I thought he was pretty good in Man In The Moon, the biopic of US comic actor and performance artist Andy Kaufman. As a kid his character. Latka and Christopher Lloyd’s stoner,Jim were my favourite things about the sitcom, Taxi.

During the making of the biopic Jim Carey’s production company filmed hours of behind the scenes footage which makes up the bulk of this documentary alongside a contemporary interview with a bearded Carey. It shows that Jim went full method by becoming ‘Andy’ on and off camera.

One of Kaufman’s most infamous pranks was to petition the Taxi bosses to hire his friend Tony Clifton, a faded cabaret singer, to be a guest on the show. Clifton turned up drink, abusive and caused chaos and upset all day before being thrown out by security. It only occurred to everyone later that Clifton was Kaufman.

So Jim/Andy also appears as Clifton generally causing trouble on the set of » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Paul King

The first Paddington film rather than trampling over a generation’s teatime TV memories was a terrific, warm, affectionate and funny celebration of Britain with anti Brexit & Daily Mail undertones. Was a little worried that the sequel wouldn’t recreate that warm fuzzy feeling inside this big kid.

I can imagine Paddington giving me one of his hard stares for such lack of faith as I happily report that it’s captured the same kindness, fun and flair for bringing some of those illustrations of the 70s TV series to life. There are clever little visual tricks and steps that other family film would not consider – almost a cartoonists eye for storytelling.

Ben Wishaw’s naive tones are perfect for the bear, the Browns suit the stereotypical image of British life as does the tourist view of London. Portobello Road hasn’t looked so clean and tidy since, well, Notting Hill.

Talking of which, Hugh Grant hams up a storm, channelling Patrick Barlow’s deluded thesp Desmond from National Theatre of Brent as the villain of the piece. There are cameos from British comedy talent throughout as well as a great turn by Brendan Gleeson and even David » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Michael Cumming

Its pretty fair to say that Chris Morris’ ‘Brasseye’ series arrival in January 1997 was like a bomb going off in my head. I was at university and awaited the series starting the year before for it only to be pulled from the schedules at the last moment. I watched the first episode alone and thought I would die from laughing. After showing it to my housemates it became a weekly event as the series aired – I have never seen a room of people laugh so much – people were crying, exploding and convulsing – helpless. I am guessing this is how Python hit the student population in the 60s except we often rewatched the show immediately as we had missed lines drowned out by laughter. In the final year of my degree I used Brasseye as the subject of my dissertation. Yes – that’s how I spent your tax dollars, mercifully without tuition fees.

Oxide Ghosts is an hour of cream from series director Michael Cummings box of mouldy old VHS tapes featuring 70 hours of often timecoded, film and studio rushes. He has assembled a documentary that attempts to show a » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Taika Waititi

Those becoming tired of the MCU might just find themselves a tonic in the shape of the third Thor film, Ragnarok. Directed by Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do In The Shadows), this is by far and away the best of the three Thor movies and, in my humble opinion, the best Marvel since the first Guardians of The Galaxy movie. Waititi brings his own brand of Kiwi humour to the franchise, with some laugh out loud interactions between the main protagonists and a scene stealing turn by the director himself, voicing the rock monster gladiator, Korg. The script is full of quotable lines, and Hemsworth and Ruffalo are a great double act as Thor and The Hulk. There’s a great cast here with Jeff Goldblum having fun as the Grand Master, Cate Blanchett vamping it up as Hela, Goddess of Death and a star turn from Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. For once Marvel has some strong female characters on screen. But such is the pull of Marvel now that you can spot some big names popping up for a two minute cameo (look out for the “play” in Asgard). The look » Continue Reading.