"The End of Oak Street" - Just Above the Silver Lake

The year is 1982, and the Platt family are starting to come apart at the seams: father Greg (Ewan McGregor) is struggling with two jobs, mother Denise (Anne Hathaway) is pouring her desire to leave into a secret novel in the cellar, son Brian (Christian Convery) has a crush on a local girl and a vindictive pair of local school kids to deal with, and daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) is attempting to study to get into a science-focused university. Things take a darker turn when their neighbourhood is transported somewhere...

(Photo credit: IMDB)
A bizarre left hook from David Robert Mitchell, director of the best horror film of the last 30 years in "It Follows", into odd family fare, splitting the difference between his unusual, stranger and ethereal past works and a more 12A Spielberg film for unusual results.
When it's following Ewan McGregor fighting a T-Rex with a sledgehammer, and embracing the daftness of its premise? Great fun.
When it's attempting to be discrete with its dinosaur murders and being a family running from dinosaurs in suburbia, taking itself seriously, it's less fun, like a lesser tier "Twilight Zone" episode.
It's a bizarre change of pace for David Robert Mitchell, and had I not known that it was him who made this I would have struggled to figure it out, save for a pretty impressive long take shot of a T-Rex chasing Hathaway and McGregor through a street.
An odd duck, aimed kind of towards younger and family fare (lovable kids on dino adventures to rescue their dog) but focusing too much on cat murder and discrete blood and guts to quite fully land.
Maybe give it a rental?

"Supergirl" - Helen Sleater-Kinney

Lost, adrift and orphaned Kryptonian Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) is celebrating her birthday away from her adopted planet of Earth by having a week of getting shitfaced on a planet with a red sun: the only place where alcohol will affect her. But her carefree, avoidance-based life with her lovable dog Krypto is interrupted when she is forced to embark on a quest for vengeance with recently orphaned girl Ruthye (Eve Ridley) against the space trafficker, bandit and all-round shit Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), who made our orphan what she is, and poisoned Krypto in the process...

(Credit: Kino Check)
The script is ropey, and definitely could have used some work, with the movie feeling a tad flabby as well as undercooked, like a half-stretched spaghetti. But the building blocks are there, and the central performance of Alcock as the jaded, cynical, absolute disaster of a lead with a heart of gold is a winning one, and the film breezes along nicely enough under Gillespie's direction: he's a director I like ("I, Tonya" rules), and the tone mostly works. Its framework is a solid one, and I enjoyed the setting (particularly the cute space bus and grimy, dingy diners, it was fun) and the buddy-cop set up is simple and clear enough to not only follow, but sets it apart from "Superman" (though the excellent Corenswet shows up to remind us that he too is perfect in this part). The villain is dog rough: functional for the plot, but otherwise an empty vessel and bland charicature despite much sneering and snarling from Schoenaerts, who gives him the quirk of constantly snacking to try and make him pop. The themes could use some development and focus.
However, the whole thing is amiable and good fun, and there is a wonderful use of Jimmy Eat World in a fight towards the end (tailor made for me: I adore that song), with an also excellent, soulful, actually pretty powerful performance from David Krumholtz: though I am getting old enough to see the kid from "Numb3rs" and "Addams Family Values" playing dads now, and that scares me...
It's fun, breezy, and a good time. I refuse to engage in bad faith "takedowns" of the film, it's a solid enough work with its own problems, and that I have to clarify that is a sign of how disgusting the poisoned well of discourse has become.
I look forward to more Milly Alcock, she's excellent.

The Van Dammeathon - "Cyborg"

I've delayed this one partially because of work and partially because my thoughts on it are going to be extremely telling not only of my taste, but of how the rest of this is going to go. That, and the stream I initially found of this wouldn't allow screen-capture (oh the joys of modern watching...), and surprisingly I do not own this, but did own "Black Eagle" at one point. Go figure.

(Credit: City on Fire. Man, posters used to be FUCKING AWESOME)
A post-apocalypse knock off in the same vein as "Salute of the Jugger", "1990: The Bronx Warriors", "Yor: Hunter from the Future" (hey Spoony fans), "The New Barbarians" and "Hell Comes to Frog Town", we know we're in for a good time right off the bat because it's from our old friends

CANNON, baby!
Clearly wanting some of that sweet, sweet "Mad Max: The Road Warrior" and "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" runoff money, they decided to have "Mad Max" at home, the Cannon way! I am so excited for more Cannon!
Let's get to it!
Concept:
It is "The Future"

And with a virus known as "the living death" running rampant, things are pretty bad. A scientist named Pearl Prophet has not only cybernetic implants (making her some sort of... "cyborg" if you will) but also a cure, and is on the run with it. To help her not die at the hands of these charming fellows representing me and the boys on the way to watch this:

Pearl hires a "slinger" named Gibson Rickenbacker (played by our man) to protect her across the wastelands. Gibson is reluctant, despite initially saing her life, but soon comes to realise that her quest may line up with his own hunt for revenge...
Concept:
Jean Claude Van Damme protecting a cybernetic lady and a magic virus vaccine across a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

I like it. I mean, it's the sort of movie idea I would have come up with at the ages of 13 and 47, but I like it. It's the perfect vehicle for the man, his talents, some bloodshed and some lunacy, expect kicks, cheese, Canon madness and blood galore. Plus it's a man named after a guitar fighting cyborgs after the apocalypse, that's just awesome.
Concept: 4.
Excellent work so far!
Onto the next part:
Execution:

I'm only partially joking.
The movie wishes to be a "Mad Max" knock off from Canon, and essentially boils down to a vengeance-fulled Van Damme (whose family were slain by the villain, whom I shall get to) pursuing some coslpayers across the wastelands accompanied by an equally vengeful bandit girl orphan:

In practice it's a series of brawls in old, run down buildings, which is a fine way to hide the low budget, but the true crime is the mean-spiritedness of it all. It wants to be about cyborgs and high-kicking mercenaries taking on bandits and having fun, but it also wants to show brutal murders and the barbarous senseless cruelty of a species circling the drain. So there's going to be bloody, unpleasant senseless murder of families, with an admittedly quite good shot of a burning centrepiece in parallel:

Followed ever so shortly by fight scenes with dummies like this:

And fights like this:

Then, spoiler, alert, the cheap nature of it all really showcases the meanspirited nature of the kills and the deaths at the end when his fellow traveller goes to get revenge on the man who killed her family only to die.
It's lower budget, but did give us this gloriously horrifying prosthetic which resembles me whenever I look up Libertarians:

On the whole it's competent enough, but never quite rises above that.
Execution: 2
Now then, Charm!
The lower budget does give us some fun filmmaking mayhem, like the aforementioned sets. We do get this absolutely disgusting haircut:

Followed rather swiftly by this one:

Disgraceful. It's the attempted dark tone which lets it down, because "Gibson Ridenbacker" fighting crime in the Apocalypse is fucking awesome:

Charm: 2.
The Villain!
Vincent Klyn, a profesional surfer apparently, plays Fender Tremolo, and does a servicable enough job roaring and snarling lines about how much he "likes the virus" and "likes the hatred" with a baritone almost parodying Dolph Lundgren.

The real star of note is an early cameo from Ral Moeller as one of the boys.

Villain: 3.
Score standing at 9.
Bonus round!
Future collaborators:
Michel Qissi (from "Bloodsport" and soon to be seen in "Kickboxer" and "A.W.O.L")
So that's 1 point.
Splits!

Final Score: 11.
A mediocre effort Van Damme seemed to not really get behind and regret, but don't worry: soon he'd turn a fucking corner, this was merely a stumble...

"Lesbian Space Princess" - Review

On the planet of Clitopolis, winner of "Most Boring Royal" Princess Saira (Shabana Azeez) is dumped by her bounty hunting, adventuring partner Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel) of two weeks. Despondent, miserable and once again alone: she receives a message from a trio of aliens who have kidnapped Kiki. Unless she brings them a valuable weapon within 24 hours, Kiki will be dumped into acid! Forced into action, and seeing a chance to win her back, the sheltered, self-conscious and anxiety ridden princess must take a ship (Richard Roxburgh) on a quest to find and rescue Kiki, and maybe learn a little about herself in the proces...

(Credit: QNews)

An unashamed celebration of queerness and identity, feeling like a lost 2000s Adult Swim cartoon. The humour is tailor made for me, with rat-a-tat jokes at an excellent pace from all corners of humour: visual gags, puns, background gags, one-liners, insults and screaming incandescent rage about "lesbian phones"; its madness and irreverence are front and centre, and hark back to that "era" of mad fun cartoons and whimsy. Some of the jokes are low hanging fruit (the villains are "Straight White Maleians", bisexuals "don't exist" and Clitopia is "hard to find unless you know what you're doing") and some are tailor made for the "online" (I hate that I understood the joke about the name of Roxburgh's ship...) but criticism of those tends to come from bad faith, so I'm happy to ignore that well of poisoned discourse in a world where queerness and anything differing from the norm is seen as an assault on fascists. Its funny, daft, ludicrous, a blissful ninety minutes which also impresses with its refreshingly mature ending: a thoughtful and all too often overlooked examination of relationships and how maybe it's best we don't leap into them just because we've been denied kindness all of our lives, combining it with a funny but real look at mental health and anxiety.
Highlights include Gemma Chu-Tran as a non-binary Goth musician with absolutely no thoughts and an empty head; Richard Roxburgh (because it's an Australian film: he is legally required to turn up) as the foul-mouthed starship behind the times; Auntie Donna as the villainous trio, who got some of the biggest belly laughs from me, a niche gag about drunk girls in toilets and the powerful wisdom they dispense before vanishing into the ether, and the performance of Shabana Azeez as our titular heroine, who handles her growth and insecurities excellently.

"Masters of the Universe" - Skeletorture Porn

Forced to flee his realm of Eternia after an attack by the skeleton wizard Skeletor (Jared Leto), young prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) resides on Earth as a human relations manager in an ofice, mourning the loss of his sword and home planet... But when his quest leads him to his sword, he finally sees a chance to bust free of this office job and seek his destiny!

(Credit: Kotaku)
An enormously expensive Amazon-backed romp attempting to emulate the camp of the original TV series (and actually rather fun movie), which largely floats by thanks to a breezy tone, pastel coloured backdrop punctuated by "Flash Gordon" style riffs and music (Brian May chips in, weirdly, which does explain some of the budget) and a fondness for its material which verges on the cloying, but remains relatively ernest despite some digs (there's a fairly niche, funny laughter gag/mockery right towards the end, and the naming of characters like Fisto and Ram Man does earn well earned laughs without getting homophobic, and pays off rather well) at the silliness of the material: hell they even have the titular character dressed from that video (you know the one) in his pink shirt, and play the original song from it. It's charming and perfectly amusing fare, and I giggled a fair bit: the film feels like something made with love and affection for the source material. This is a film made by guys who love "He-Man", damn it! Even the cameo early on is from a fantastically game icon, and passing of the torch. It's overly long but for every joke that doesn't land there are at least 3 or 4 which earn a mirthful chuckle, even if they're about memes regarding the show (I rather enjoyed Camila Mendes role as the straight-woman Teela proclaiming that Skeletor "has a skull for a face. It's not that complicated"), and the cartoony buouyancy is in safe hands with Travis Knight of Laika. I'm not sure anybody was rooting for a 40+ years overdue adaptation of "He-Man" (at least, not as many people as the OUTRAGEOUS budget banked on), which cost around 200 "The Raids", but the central performance by Nicholas Galitzine is a legitimately funny joke: a musclebound himbo who wishes to resolve conflicts amicably and with empathic, healing language; only to be granted enormous muscles and galactic power. That central gag is great, in my mind.

"Project Hail Mary" - Lord and Miller of All They Survey

A man (Ryan Gosling) awakens on a spacecraft. The ship's computer (Priya Kansara! Fuck yes! 10/10 for that alone!) informs him that he is the only survivor, and he struggles to remember who he is or how he got here. Our man has a job to do...

(Credit: AZ Family)
A pleasant, perfectly cromulent and cheery little film, which pinballs between ideas with something of a smooth grace (using "Lost" style flashbacks throughout, though these are welcome in the first half they become superfluous and perfunctory in the second, despite good performances and being useful on paper), buouyed by a lovable performance from Gosling. He's certainly a better performer than Matt Damon, even if his character is only marginally more interesting than the bowl of glue that was "The Martian's" Mark Wattney. When the film settles into (spoilers I guess) buddy cop shenanigans, it really finds its groove and is enjoyable, though some of the methodical stuff beforehand, whilst nothing we've not seen before, is competently executed. At its core the movie is about communication through boundaries, co-operation and working together to solve an existential environmental crises across boundary lines (side note: there's a beautiful episode of "Planetes" called "Boundary Lines" which I highly recommend). It really drags and slows in the final act, and the token woman (Milana Vayntrub is dead before the film begins and gets two, maybe three lines. What a waste), the incredibly talented Sandra Huller, (Holy shit is "Zone of Interest" incredible) is given the stereotype of a German ballbuster who does not understand human emotions and is entirely focused on results and science, not these petty human "feelings". It is a jarring experience in the year 2026, though from what I understand the character is given even less in the book, so once again it fall to Drew Goddard to pull somebody's nuts out of the fire. Weir still can't write a character to save his life, but the performances are still good, and it's a light hearted film.

"Predator Badlands" - Review

Alien runt of the litter Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) embarks on his first hunt, fuelled by vengeance and a thirst to be accepted by his aggressive warrior tribe. Seeking the unkillable Kalisk, the highest honour his hunt could bestow, he heads to its equally dangerous home planet Genna. He encounters a damaged yet still perky robot named Thia (Elle Fanning) and begrudgingly agrees that he may need her expertise and help in this matter. Together they embark on a hunt.

(Photo credit: IMP Awards)
The concept for this got announced and I was rather keen. I enjoyed Trachtenberg's "10 Cloverfield Lane", which was an excellent little bottle movie, and am always keen on simpler, old-school campier adventures like this.
It's a fun ride, very much at home with the buddy cop angle: it's the classic "I'm an edgelord who doesn't need friends" partnered with the "perky cheerful robot who does not understand your silly ways", and much like telling my fiancee they look cute: it always works. Elle Fanning is wonderful as the robot, and steals the show in my eyes, but "second-guess the first name spelling" Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is also excellent, sprinkling a little of Bautista's "Drax the Destroyer" in the lead role, and really having fun as the defrosting, confidently powerful warrior whose heart grows 2 sizes. Their relationship is the staple, and it works, it's competently put together.
The beginning is fucking rough: all CGI blurs and nonsense greenscreen mashing together like a 2000s cut-scene tossed into a blender from a moving car, but once it hits the equally CGI-heavy planet and you turn your brain off, it's fun. The "BRAND!" and "FRANCHISE" stuff is honestly a tad distracting and a damning indictment that we can't even have 80s throwbacks or "Enemy Mine" homages without there being "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY" attached to it (though it's not anywhere near as bad as "Alien Romulus" for its ghoulish nostalgia mask), such is the state of movies...
This was still fun, and will make for a good 9:00PM Film4 movie.
Plot was bollocks and the least interesting part, but its themes of overcoming societal expectations, toxic masculinity and found family elevate it above the standard fare.

"M3G4N 2.0" - Review

Years after her family-friendly toy went rogue and killed several people, robotocist Gemma (Allison Williams) has reinvented herself as an advocate for safety measures for A.I and preaching the dangers of technology one must monitor, whilst also caring for her fellow survivor and now-teenage niece: aspiring tech developer Cady (Violet McGraw). But her life is upended when the FBI approach her seeking help in tracking down rogue robot AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), currently on something of a rampage against creators. Gemma, cornered and under suspicion, is forced to team up with her killer creation M3GAN once again, in order to protect herself and Cady, and stop the evil robot's killing spree...

After the surprising success of the solid, fun satire of "M3G4N", the makers have been ordered to make a sequel and thus pulled a "Happy Death Day 2 U" and hurled everything possible at the screen. Fortunately they have recruited Akela Cooper, co-writer of cinematic masterpiece and peak cinema "Malignant" to help them in this endeavour, and have doubled down on the comedy, tossing out the horror almost entirely, for a rather messy film which just about lands on the right side of amusing fun to be enjoyable. Embracing the camp was also a good idea. The second act is a mess, and the mish-mash of ideas mean it's rather scattershot in its approach, but the jokes come thick and fast, Jenna Davis is having a wonderful time as the titular M3G4N, and Jermaine Clement shows up and steals the show as a tech bro shit, which is always welcome. It's a lot bigger than the previous movie, and has doubled down on what fans ask for: there's a dance sequence, M3G4N is Saturday morning cartoon evil but with a budding "family pet" relationship which is rather enjoyable; and whilst the villain is fucking dreadful (aiming for milquetoast but coming off as limp, weak and wooden in parts) as well as predictable, it's made up for by the performance of AMELIA, who adds physicality and straight-woman proceedings to it all. The makers bring in another "James Wan Cop" turned up to 11 in the form of Timm Sharp's FBI agent, and when it goes screw-loose bananas off the reservation, it still remembers to keep it light and roll with it. The writing seems more "tossing out an idea, geting bored with it, tossing it out and moving on" than a deliberate blending of genres, but I liked it well enough. Weirdly they bring back both of the assistant comic relief characters of the first film (Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jenna Van Epps) but keep finding ways to write out the later without killing her, and keeping comedic shenanigans of the first. I enjoyed it, and I'd probably watch it on Film4 in the evening if it were on. Just watch "Child's Play" 2019 if you need this sort of thing, but it's still fun.

"In the Lost Lands" - Review

In the distant post apocalyptic future, a witch (Milla JovoWITCH. Eyyyy!) makes her living granting wishes to others. To accomplish one such wish: she ventures forth into the lost lands of yore, accompanied by a mysterious snake-slinging stranger (Dave Bautista) to hunt a shapeshifter.

More hot trash from Paul W S Anderson!
The movie is exactly what you expect from him: a soupy CGI pile of nonsense and madness (Milla Jovovich outruns a Crusader train and kick flips a man in a bus, before using fire to fend off tree-monster people in a power plant) aimed squarely at 13 year old kids with its mish mash of Goth and religious imagery (Jovovich fights with retractable druid scythes, which is cool, and the main villains are a post apocalyptic oppressive church who dress like crusaders of old), and a simple enough story about buddy cops in the wastes leading into an anti-establishment revolutionary tale. It's absolute nonsense, all green screen and cliches, with rather broad performances across the board. And you know what? I'm okay with it. This kind of thing is absolutely harmless, and par for the course with Jovovich and Anderson, an extended form of foreplay where the latter shows off his hot wife (here covered in tattoos and spin kicking people) and the former gets to do what almost no woman over 40 is otherwise allowed to do in Hollywood: be an action movie heroine. It's actually kind of refreshing and good for the eco-system of films in many regards: pure pulpy fun, and Bautista (in between diversifying his portfolio of performances and proving himself to be an excellent actor) gets to play a gunslinging badass for a few weekends. I don't mind it at all. Meet it on its own low brow, pulpy nonsense terms and as one of the works of Paul W S Anderson, and stick around to hear Bautista yell "Bitch killed my snake!".

"Mickey 17" - Review

In the not too distant future, a down on his luck schmuck named Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is in deep debt to the ultimate loan shark. Alongside his only friend and skeezy business partner Timo (Steven Yeun), he signs up to a colony ship to escape from Earth. But whilst Timo gets recruited to be a pilot, Mickey finds himself enlisted as an "expendable" - somebody whose job is to be cloned and killed again and again to do the dangerous jobs "worthwhile" people cannot be risked on. His adventures in space bring him into orbit with the incompetent science team, the ship's manaical failure of a tyrant Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), his gourmand wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), kind hearted security officer Nasha (Naomi Ackie) and, most troubling, himself (Robert Pattinson), in this satirical tale of class, fascism, capitalism and dehumanising effects of the three.

The follow up to "Parasite" shares more in common with my favourite of Bong Joon-Ho's works: "Snowpiercer" and "The Host" (watch that if you haven't had a chance to already: a fun and different take on the monster movie), in that it leans into science fiction and cute critters, whilst family drama goes onto the backburner it is and military/governmental incompetence at the forefront this time around. It weaves and bobs and dips and dives through various events and genres pretty fluidly, I was never bored: one moment we're having Mickey attempting to survive an ice planet, then it's his previous forms and how he got here, then a relatively sweet relationship with Nasha and the way things work on the ship (hint: they don't. Capitalism doesn't work), before it kicks into high gear and its final act becomes colonialism (summed up with in a literal speech given by Ackie, who's excellent in this) and why it's bad. Its themes are not merely set dressing, they tie into the plot and humour as well: from the shitty printer of Mickey and his constant deaths with no regard for his humanity (he's injected with viruses to create vaccines, and people realise it's cheaper to just kill him and toss him away than bring him back safely in one piece) to the constricting confines of the ship and its cold, mechanical machine invoking "Snowpiercer" and abbattoirs in general. The food and slaughter imagery are good standbys actually, I like them a lot (particularly when Toni Collette comes into it all at the end with her need for "fancy sauces" and seeing sentient beings merely as exotic delicacies, much like how she views people) and the film's performers are also strong to boot. Pattinson is joining the ranks of our Goblin Boys (for reference: Nicholas Hoult, Skyler Gisondo, Billiam Skarsgaard, Johnny Knoxville and Sabrina Carpenter) officially after this excellent turn as the titular Mickey: he differentiates between the two with simple body language and looks, and also brings what can only be described as "Johnny Knoxville energy" to the part, it's most entertaining; Ackie is on a tear between this and "Blink Twice"; Ruffalo plays a delightful send up of grotesquerie and fascists, and the supporting parts are lovely too (Tim Key and Thomas Turgoose are in this!), they all have a lovely moment or too. It's less confined and not as tight as "Parasite", "Snowpiercer" or even "The Host", but its ambition works in its favour and I recommend the movie.
Also it has the funniest dinner party sequence in years.

"Companion"

Josh (Jack Quaid) takes his new, smitten girlfriend Iris (Sophie Thatcher) to a cabin owned by the wealthy, mysterious Sergei (Rupert Friend) for a weekend of fun and relaxation. There the nervous Iris will be meeting Josh's friends for the first time, consisting of Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Kat (Megan Suri), the latter of whom has never liked Iris, and Eli's new boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage). But what starts as a weekend away quickly takes a turn for the worst, as the friends turn on each other in a flurry of confusion, bigotry and entitlement...

After a rather lackluster affair until this point of the year, we finally get something fun, sharp, well written and relishing its concept.
I was lucky enough to manage to go into this blind, so when the twist came after 25 minutes, it was incredibly satisfying.

I recommend that you do the same: go in blind and relish the humour and sense of playful fun. It takes its premise and, after that initial shock twist (which I called as a joke after some, shall we say deliberate and loaded lines) it doesn't run out of steam, instead amping up and stretching the premise, pulling it, playing with it and toying with every angle until it snaps. As the characters (excellent performances across the board, particularly from Quaid as he becomes an entitled, petty, vindictive loser, all the while looking like Sam Lake pulling the "Max Payne" face) degenerate and devolve into panicked plotting, scheming and covering up their escalating mistakes, it remembers to fall back on the mayhem, and things it has hinted at, and stays energetic and funny.

One character gets a well-delivered line about "being an ally, but this is a lot of money!" whilst they attempt to kill another. Thatcher (fresh off the back of "Heretic" which I rather enjoyed) anchors proceedings nicely, getting put through the wringer but also allowed to flex her comedy chops with a funny sequence involving German and the police.

It remembers to stay buouyant and energetic as characters charge through the woods, even whilst covering topics like misogyny, bigotry, the entitlement of male rage (Thatcher has had terrible luck between this and "Heretic") and even that simple, basic awkwardness of being stuck in a house party with strangers you have never met and wondering if you're good enough (not quite as focused on that as the excellent "Bodies Bodies Bodies" was, but welcome at the beginning nonetheless) to be here. Between this, "Smile 2" and "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" I am happy to see Gage doing well too, and Harvey Guillen is always welcome. Rupert Friend is having fun with his part (playing a budget Dan Stevens part and relishing every part of it), and Megan Suri is my favourite, with her casual cattiness and shallow cruelty adding spice to proceedings.
Oh, and it's incredibly B-Movie in its sensibilites too, which is very much my jam.

That last image may technically be a spoiler, but honestly even if you know the twists going in, they're well executed and explored well.
I had such fun with this.

"Alien: Romulus" - Review

Orphaned daughter of miners Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is forced to rethink her life when her work quota at Weyland Yutani Corporation is suddenyl lifted. Alongside her repurposed android brother Andy (David Jonsson), she hitches a ride with a bunch of scavengers: her old friend and ex-flame Tyler (Archie Renaux), his lovable sister Kay (the eternally wonderful Isabela Merced), their utter shithead cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and their pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu) - they plan to scavenge the wreck of the old starship Romulus for the parts they need to leave the star system. But all is not well aboard the Romulus, and things take a turn for the worse...

It's great to have Fede Alvarez back making movies (his "Evil Dead" is great fun, and "Don't Breathe" is his best), and here he has a good time with the film. There's a fun sequence in Zero Gravity involving acid blood, the opening is a solid, faily good examination of capitalist hellscapes and dystopia. We get the very Fede Alvarez character archetypes who do the job wonderfully, the strongest arc and performance belongs to Jonsson as Andy: he moves with an excellent stillness and careful calculation. He easily steals the show, and shows off impressive range. Plus his dad jokes are a cute touch.
There is enough well done planting here to make me think that Alvarez has a future in agriculture, and when everything hits the fan it does so with aplomb: you can tell particularly in the final act that this is from an "Evil Dead" fan. It's a good recommend.
However.
All too frequently there are moments of lazy pandering (Andy says "Get away from her, you bitch!") and lines from "Alien" are quoted verbatim, there are shots designed solely for the audience to go "oooh, just like that movie I'm watching a sequel to!". But the most egregious, pathetic example comes early on as a major plot point when a CGI rendition of Ian Holm is there solely to make you go "Oh! It's Ash! From that film!". A ghoulish sneering, contemptuous blot on an otherwise good solid work.

"Dune: Part 2" - Review

On the run from the Harkonnen family after they murdered his father and burned his house to the ground, Paul Atreides (Timothy Chalomet) is living among the Fremen on the planet Arrakis. Alongside his mother (Rebecca Ferguson), he learns the ways of these people, and dreams of the day he shall enact vengeance upon the Harkonnens. But as he falls for local girl Chani (Zendaya), he finds himself the subject of worship from Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem), who believes him to be a prophesised saviour who shall lead The Fremen to Paradise, Paul must also contend with nightmares up and down his walls about killing millions as a result of this prophecy - yet if he wishes to succeed in his goals, maybe this prophecy must come true...

Spellbinding

"The Marvels" - Review

After destroying the evil AI which ran the planet of Hala, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) now operates as a space lesbian protector. Her grilfriend's daughter Monica (Teyonah Parris) works as an astronaut for an organisation called S.W.O.R.D, under Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) in space, and they haven't been talking in a long time. Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) is an aspiring superhero living in Jersey City, who absolutely adores Carol Danvers.
When space magic from Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) leads to shenanigans, all 3 of these women find themselves swapping places whenever they attempt to use their powers at the same time.

The central concept and rapport between the trio of Marvels is wonderful. They have lovely chemistry and Iman Vellani is one hell of a find: I wish everybody enjoyed everything in life as much as Iman Vellani enjoys playing Kamala Khan. It is a shame that the "Swapping Places" is not the whole film, and is resolved too quickly. The film soars when it is veteran space lesbian, overly keen and adorable fan girl, and unfortunately bland scientist going on adventures and figuring things out. Yeah, Rambeau gets given the emotional core of the film with her relationship to her "Aunt" Danvers (who is fun here, as a spacefaring lesbian with a lot of things on her plate, who usually spaces out and forgets how humans are, due to her frequent interactions with aliens) after her mother's death and how it separated them and the betrayal she felt. But it falls rather flat despite good efforts from the actors due to a half-baked nature of its ideas and plot: Rambeau (a key supporting character from the last film) has been killed off screen (and don't tell me "it's in one of the shows" because this is a film, fuck off), and whilst we can have Khan's powers just be there and have her be a superhero with no context (she's great, I cannot stress this enough), that's fine for her character: this is a core emotional beat and throughline of the film which is effectively an afterthought. This leaves us with the main plot, forgettable despite having the talented Zawe Ashton as the villain, which boils down to "bad hammer lady wants magic thing and is going to 3 different places, Earth is the last one". Fortunately the set pieces (a fight between the trio and some aliens where they swap places between space, Suburbia, and the moon; a musical segment on a water planet with a beard husband and a species who speak entirely in song, again Vellani is too precious for all things; and a sequence set to "Memory" by Streisand) and the chemistry of the leads propel it higher and further than is would go otherwise, and it is a fun, goofy, if underwritten follow up to Captain Marvel.
The pre-credits finale with Vellani is nice.
Mid credits scene is absolute dogshit, however, continuing the trend of movies self-cannibalising. Can this "Multiverse" nonsense piss off already?

"Hypnotic" - Review

Detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) lost his daughter to a kidnapping years ago, and is going to therapy for it. His latest case is that of a strange individual by the name of Dellrayne (William Fichtner, always welcome), who appears to be able to mind control people into doing his bidding. Hot on his tail, Rourke attempts to figure out the mystery of why Dellrayne is stealing random safety deposit boxes, where he got his powers, what he's doing here, and what the hell he has to do with Rourke...

"Paprika" is my favourite movie of all time, and there is something of a fascination in seeing movies which fumble it so badly. What on paper felt like a fun throwback, a stripped back "supernatural serial killer" movie like the exceedingly underrated "Fallen" or that piece of shit "Solace", immediately crumples under a myriad of bad decisions and a script caked in layers of dreadfulness, like Brent Ratner rewrote "Memento" after thinking that "that bit in Inception was so cool, that shit is such a complex movie dude!".
For the first 2 minutes of "Hypnotic" I immediately knew that nothing mattered, an existential despair swallowing me up in the cinema. See, the film plays its card too early: Ben Affleck in therapy, looking out of the window, reminiscing on his tragic past ("Reminiscence" is another one! God, remember that?), and then we get shots of him marching past maze-patterned walls, his daughter in flashbacks telling him her hair is not a braid but a "maize!", and spirals. You end up sat there waiting for when the "it was all a dream!" twist kicks in, and thus you feel absolutely no attachment to the characters. None of this matters, so why are we bothering to care? It's just going to have the rug pulled out of from us anyway... Attempts to be cerebral and "mind blowing" ("Transcendence!" That's another one! Remember that? Jesus...) fall flat, as it wants to be "Inception" when its plotting is "Surrogates" without the charm. There are some flairs (William Fichtner is always excellent, and Jackie Earle Haley is in this for one scene, and does a remarkably good William Fichtner impression, which is one of the most niche talents I have ever witnessed. Touche Jackie!), including in the directing and lighting, but Rodriguez (Oh yeah, it's a Robert Rodriguez movie! I honestly would never have known) and it would have somewhat flourished had it been a stripped back, pulpier, more horror-angled story of how a cop tries to stop a psychic serial killer; but instead escalates and escalates and escalates with revelations less interesting than casting announcements for the humans in a "Transformers" movie. Each one simply makes you think "Why? What is this adding to the story?" And strips the layers of empathy back even further. I kept thinking of better movies, and when the climactic showdown happened on a farm, all I culd think of was "Man, I should read Firestarter again..." and then I remembered the terrible "Firestarter" remake and got sad...
It's a rather dull movie too: do you know how dull you have to be in order to have your villains dressed as Butlin's redcoats be an afterthought?
The best part of the film is a line early on where, due to Alice Braga's accent and delivery, "The synapses start to collapse" reads instead as:
"The synopsis starts to collapse!"
And that says it all really.