"Novocaine" - Review

Unassuming assistant bank manager Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) has something of a problem: in addition to his 90s protagonist name, he has CIPA: a condition which means he cannot feel pain or changes in temperature. Living quietly by himself, with a bump-proof house and videogames, his life changes for the stranger when he meets Sherry (Amber Midthunder), a new employee who seems to hit it off with him! But when the bank is robbed, and Sherry is kidnapped, Nathan chooses to take the initiative and rescue her.

I wanted this to be fun, from the trailer and the oddball 90sness of its premise, and the movie delivered. Quaid is excellent in the lead, playing an everyman oddly well despite his lineage (and looking more and more like Sam Lake every day...), and Midthunder is fun! The film never quite reaches the full lunacy of its promised premise, but it has fun with it and embraces the gore and silliness. Bett Gabriel and Matt Walsh turn up to play a fun pair of cops, adding spice to proceedings, (everything is improved by Betty Gabriel) and it was what I wanted the film to be.

"A Working Man" - Review

Former Royal Marines Commando Levon Cade (Jason Statham) has not only the most Jason Statham name, but the most Jason Statham life: he works as a foreman at a construction site under good, clean, Christian, "pulled up by his bootstraps" Joe Garcia (Michael Pena) and his wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez), when their spunky, equally Christian daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped by people traffickers, to be sold bespoke to a vaguely ethnic sleaze. Cade must call upon his skills to rescue her, coming across Russian mobsters and more, in his quest for vengeance and good old American Christian values!

After "The Beekeeper", which he directed so poe-facedly as to make absolutely hilarious, and amazing nonsensical fun, David Ayer had been on something of a comeback for me (the line on the poster and in the trailers proudly boasting "From the Director of Suicide Squad" is not the flex you think it is, studio), and I adore Statham movies: he's the last of a dying breed in the "Action Movie Star" (well, him and Scott Adkins, who absolutely rules. Watch "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning!"). I always know what I'm getting, I know what I'm after, and I know how to separate a good Statham from a bad, even his more experimental fare has its charms: I for one enjoy "Wild Card" as the 70s character piece throwback that it is, "Parker" is actually not too bad an adaptation, and I have nothing but praise for "Hummingbird" and the oddball casting of "Homeland".
This is going to be a ranty one, folks.
You don't see the "keep politics out of my films" crowd talking about this one, funny that...
Action movies, if you want to read into them, and especially the type of 70s macho throwbacks Statham does, are inherently right wing in their scope: a sculpted Adonis growling and snarling their way through (often foreign) bad dudes here to do bad things to our chicks and upholding that ideal of American exceptionalism (odder considering Statham is British and the kings of these, Lundgren and Arnie, are the most Swedish and Austrian men alive, but regardless) in a glorious orgy of violence. Look, I'm oversimplifying it, but if you want to look, it's always there. But I never gave a shit, because the movies are fun, or engaging on their own terms, or they are entertaining and it's never really there or prevalent and only there if you are searching for something.
So noticing it here shows how bored I was.
The movie (written by Stallone, apparently, which... huh) has a bizarre Christian overtone to it all (it's been there in Ayer's previous works, usually in the "urban gangstaness" of it all) from the large looming Christ skull bunker owned by the biker gang leader with a right-hand man named "Demon", to the frequent prayers and the weird side track where the kidnappers (honestly the highights of the movie for me performance-wise: Eve Mauro and Emmet J Scanlon, quite fun characters and performances here!) mock and sneer as their kidnap prays in the car, loudly proudly proclaiming that there is no God.

It's supremely jarring in the greater scheme of things. We have the rather... poorly done trafficking angle to contend with too, oh boy...
So, people traffickers do not spy on, kidnap and pilfer attractive Middle Class good American girls for bespoke buyers in the city, they do it in bulk with poorer migrants, simply lying about jobs in new countries. I know it's a minor thing, seemingly, and nit-picking to gripe with it, but Ayer tries to ground the affair with that usual "gritty flair" which served him (well?) in "The Beekeeper" and was in his other works, rather than leaning into the silliness of the plot as it goes on (Statham ends up doing battle with gold-decked Russian mobsters and charging a barn of sex criminals in the Bayou) so it all feels mean-spirited. Where it could be having fun with it or going for those old-school thrills of a one-man army going for gold, it instead tries to be a gritty gangster thriller with serpentine plots and betrayals and Byzantine double crosses as villains turn on each other, work for other villains and have their own ideas and schemes. It doesn't add depth, because there is none as they are still merely "wacky cartoon villains" who eat babies and enjoy sexual assault. So it just becomes flat and boring.

I'd be fine if there was a sense of effervesence or energy to the fights, but they are few and far between. So okay, maybe it's being a fun detective thriller in the interim? Also no. This convoluted plot continues to go nowhere in two places: a pair of bent cops arrive (not to be confused with the one good cop whom Statham calls for one scene and advice) and help in a kidnapping, ooh boy! Villains and a new threat for us! Only Statham never meets them and they get killed off by a crazy Russian who brings a gold plated tripod machine gun to nightclubs: for you see, killing police? That is a bad thing, even if they are bent (but one feels bad about it, so you know: all good) and thus out "morally grimy world" can't have its waterboarding hero murder police! Because that would be bad!
Oh yeah, the waterboarding.

Between this and "Expendables" (and one of the "Rambo" movies if I remember correctly) I'm starting to think Stallone has a fetish for it. There's lots of effort put into framing it and shooting it, and whilst Ayer adds a sickly green lighting over it, it's still framed as working, as great to do, as something this guy deserves, and also pretty cool. It's just another thing supremely jarringly added onto this rollercoaster with the grace of granite anal beads attached to a motorbike.
The movie has a worshipful, almost beatific belief in the supremacy of the military: not as they are, but this ideal it holds aloft. Again, a classic piece of fare for this work, but taken to extremes: the only people Statham is ever shown being nice to are David Harbour's blind woodsman (who loves the military, though he lost his eyes due to it, unqeustioningly) who supplies him with shedloads of weapons for his murders, and the Christian meth dealer biker when he finds out he was a soldier, so in between the mass murders, Statham manages to place a knife into his throat in a fight more one-sided than the finale of a Seagal flick, and pensively closes his eyes with his hands as a show of respect.

Again, its odd to see it come to the forefront after the rest of the picture, like the one-liners of Jenny when she is kidnapped. I am left bored by the fight scenes, and comotose by the detective work. Even the sillier moments are C-list at best, especially for the genre.
If you're a Statham fan, you're better off with "The Beekeeper" or "Hummingbird" and even "Wild Card". If you're into the mystery or the plot, look elsewhere.

"Flow" - Review

A cat finds the water levels rising, and attempts to escape from it. Along the way he meets various animals.

A spellbinding, gorgeous effort, and a more than worthy winner of the Oscar. Had anything happened to that cat, or that Capybara for that matter, I would have hunted down the Latvian government for sport. A beguiling and heartfelt, lovely little film about kindness and friendship

"Marching Powder" - Review

Jack (Danny Dyer) was once a likely lad, a cocky young hooligan big shot with few ambitions beyond getting annihilated off of cocaine and alcohol with his mates, getting into fights, and being a general menace. But now 45, fatter, balder and irrelevant, that may be coming to an end: arrested for a weekend brawl, Jack is given 6 weeks to turn his life around, win back the love of his wife Dani (Stephanie Leonidas) and figure out where he goes from here. Complicating matters are a crippling cocaine habit, toxic loser mates, an even worse father in law, a brother in law fresh from a mental health facility he has to look after, and the possilbe realisation that maybe he just fucking sucks.

It's going to be Marmite: it's a Danny Dyer film directed by Nick Love. Every second word is a profanity, its humour juvenile, crass and vulgar, and it focuses on lads doing lad things. It's not normally my sort of thing: most of Nick Love's work has done well to remain firmly in the 2000s (except that clip of him and Dyer promoting "Outlaw", that's timeless peak "Spinal Tap"), and going back to it is the weirdest British time capsule, even if there's stuff to love and respect about them (except "Outlaw", that is still the bad kind of throwback). Having the film be an older Danny Dyer and Nick Love in a throwback, in this day and age, is actually kind of inspired, and I appreciated that angle of it. I'm inclined to say that I enjoy this, erring on the side of respecting it. For all its faults (it still has that juvenile "lads" sense of humour, and very much wants to have its cake and eat it regard to the "coolness" of drugs and alcohol and the football hooliganism) it manages to have just enough self awareness to work. Jack understands that he is too old for this and is out of touch, and the film keeps reminding us that his "wacky" supporting mates are vile, festering dead ends and toxic rejects from society; and then it will also have few sharper things to say about how the sneering classism and unpleasantness has merely warped and twisted itself into new shells and forms (there's also a great racism joke at an art painting class, deftly showing the "middle class, progressive" racism angle). The sub plot of the "mental" brother in law feels like an afterthought, thought it has a sweet little payoff halfway through (though does keep going after that...), and the hooliganism plotline is a B-plot shadow of previous better versions of it like "Green Street", "The Firm", "The Football Factory" and even a bit of "I.D"; it's almost perfunctory in that regard and honestly could maybe have been cut (though there's a good scene in a pub when a rival comes in looking for confrontation and Jack has to bluff with his barman). I do appreciate that Dani wasn't a mere plot point or hollow empty facsimile of a character, and had actual dreams, ideas and an arc and personality. It's a low bar, true, but still a sign that people have learned that maybe women are people too, and Stephanie Leonidas is great in this. Dyer's excellent too, I've always liked Danny Dyer, here he goes a bit "Filth" and "Trainspotting", with some truly vulgar and funny lines and moments, in between darker asides to the camera and little sprinklings of societal commentary. It's not as dark as something like "Filth" (watch "Filth"), but it doesn't truly need to be: it's trying to be a movie for the lads lads lads football crowd who grew up with Nick Love's stuff. It earns its happy ending in between its swipes and jabs, though the aforementioned vulgar humour and crude mayhem is pure Marmite. It is happy wallowing in and celebrating its protagonist with some honestly good encapsulation of working class nihilism and self destruction.

"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.

"Opus" - Review

There is an enigma in the pop world, a celebrated genius who defined the decades, and his name is Moretti. He does neither interviews nor press releases, instead announcing his albums through a VHS release from his agent (Tony Hale) and letting the work speak for itself. This time, Moretti (John Malkovich) is inviting a select group of journalists to experience the album and Moretti. Overlooked aspiring writer Ariel (Ayo Edibiri) doesn't believe the hype, and is along for the ride in this odd commune Moretti has concocted, attempting to figure out when it goes beyond art and becomes dark...

The movie's soundtrack is done by Nile Rodgers: that fact alone absolutely rules. It sounds like something you would believe is the "genre defining" sound of an era, and I would happily listen to this funky stuff for hours on end. The casting of Malkovich is also pitch perfect: he's an actor weird and unusual enough that we believe him as this oddly compelling cult musician but also enigmatic enough to be a compelling mystery in his own right - we don't quite know where he's going and which side of the fence he's on. He really works, especially when performing the bizarre funky music and sexual dances for it. These are bangers.
And Ayo Edibiri is a wonderful straight woman to proceedings: she is drawn into this culty world of celebrity and worship of the "auteur", and is the only one to have read the press releases, the only one to question them whilst her colleagues uncritically absorb it all and relish the celebrity musician's time and efforts: a cute and notable little detail is her mirroring her overbearing boss Stan's (Murray Bartlett) dress sense and being relegated to note taking, whilst also being the only one to actually talk to the people present.
The movie, however, spends too much time stradling twin lanes without committing to one, until it's too late and it falters. We know it's going for a culty atmosphere and there's some excellent horror (a puppet show about Billie Halliday is a personal highlight) including a pretty creative shot of a fight scene with a door, letting the imagination and tension build there; whilst Amber Midthunder (on something of a tear as of late, and I'm excited for "Novocaine") has a fun turn as one of the more intense members of the commune. The fact that Moretti is an eccentric celebrity and recluse makes the reason these star-fucker journalists are staying make sense, and Malkovich is a compelling performer; plus I enjoy the use of the CCTV shots, there's a few spooky parts there. But when it finally chooses to be about the horror and dread angle as everything goes wrong: we've not had a chance to get to know the other journalists. I swear, despite the excellent Juliette Lewis being one of them, I didn't know their names, and they had each had maybe 4 lines iat most? They did their best with the material, but the focus seemed lacking.
But I still err on the side of recommending it, as I rather enjoyed the ending and the ambition.
It ends on a somewhat sinister note about celebrity worship and evolution, and honestly a nice parallel to "Vengeance" and that movie's commentary on society adoring and forgiving criminals and famous people (particularly in today's... climate). Its ambition and reach exceed its grasp for a debut film, but that's refreshing with so many churned out slices of "content" and "product" from studios, and it doesn't always work, but it's a respectable debut from Mark Anthony Green.