Film Shapes

A few years ago, we hit the S.S.P. (Superhero Saturation Point). And the best way for studios to arrest, or even maybe reverse, the law of diminishing returns is to JUST GIVE IT A FUCKING REST. There's enough residual goodwill in the fan base to guarantee profits....for now. But, as Malcolm Gladwell said, there must be a tipping point. So into this cinematic avalanche slips The Fantastic Four: First Steps , the first film of Phase Six and the thirty seventh overall! It's quite dull for the first 30 minutes, setting up the characters, ensuring the audience understands we're on a slightly different Earth (828), and a different time as well. It only gets going when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) appears and promises everyone death by devouring. She's not going to eat them, she works for a massive space turd called Galactus, played by Finchy himself, Ralph Ineson. He'll do the devouring. Here's the thing - this film is a perfectly serviceable entry, not brilliant,...

Amazingly, this is a first feature from writer/director Andrew DeYoung, though he's had heaps of experience in TV and shorts. The pace is pretty tight, albeit it's a bit longer than the 'ideal' of 90 minutes for a comedy. This is a bittersweet story about stupid masculinity, loneliness, and performative societal posturing, but it certainly doesn't scrimp on the laughs. Friendship focusses on Craig (pronounced in that annoyingly American way to rhyme with Greg) (Tim Robinson), who sits right in the middle of the Larry David / David Brent / Alan Partridge Venn diagram. He's a totally oblivious tosser, but not in a mean way, he just doesn't know where the line is. Ultimately, he's lonely. He has succeeded in alienating his wife, who has recently beaten cancer, his son appears to tolerate him, but not in an eye-rolling way, and his work colleagues think he's a bit of a dick. Doesn't matter that they are also knobheads. His life takes a turn when a n...

That's it for Rev this year and I can't help feeling I've missed something... Eight films isn't a bad effort but there were a few that I hope I can catch somewhere later. Anyway, here are the films I saw this year, in calendar order of viewing. First up was: U are the Universe   ★ ★ ★ ½ Ambitious Ukrainian film by Pavel Ostrikov about the last person in the universe after an earth-destroying disaster. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is running nuclear waste to Callico, a moon of Jupiter, when he gets the news. His fastidious on-board robot Maxim is his only companion until he gets a message from near Saturn.  There are some lovely moments - 2001 music reveals a replacement office chair floating through space, the Open Me message, the sinister link to 2001 (set up earlier by the music), the tenderness of the burgeoning audio relationship - all leading to a sweet but realistically depressing conclusion. Wonderful pared down, yet grand filmmaking. Of Caravan and the Dogs   ★...

Well, it looks like I'm on the wrong side of recent film history with this one. Quite a few early signs are that this iteration of Superman isn't finding favour with the critics. I have to say, I thought it was a lot of fun. Not a world beater but certainly an improvement over the previous Snyder editions ( Man of Steel , Justice League , etc). One highlight is the editing, by Craig Halpert and William Hoy. It's snappy and witty, and some of the transitions are fantastic - Hawkgirl dropping a wrong'un cuts to a soluble tablet dropping into a glass of water, for example. The fight sequences aren't too ' Transformer -ised' either, that is, it's possible to tell what's going on. Writer/director James Gunn imbues the film with a lightness of touch and the humour, mostly from Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern, works most of the time. The casting is pretty spot on, too. In David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan, it's almost as though Gunn scoured the C...

This Argentinian film (also known as Kill the Jockey ) about a troubled rider in Buenos Aries, promises a lot but doesn't quite deliver. It starts like a rocket but pretty soon loses the run of itself, like a 1000m sprinter in the Melbourne Cup. I could see it fading about halfway through, but the punter can't help the jockey or the horse (or the film). Nahuel Pérez Biscayart plays the jockey, Remo, who seems to have a death wish, for reasons only alluded to. At the beginning of the film, he's found by his gangster boss's henchmen zonked out in a bar, and then returned to the track, where he spectacularly fucks up in the barriers. His pregnant girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó) is worried but also occasionally amused by his erratic behaviour. When his boss brings over a Japanese horse for the big race, the pressure is on Remo to win, and cleanly as well. Considering he's been using horse medicine to get off, this isn't the easiest task. The race doesn't go to...

It's hard to keep track but this is the SEVENTH film in the Jurassic Park/World franchise and, aside from new characters and a couple of nice lines, it's pretty much the same as the others. The first film in 1993 has earnt its reputation as a high water mark in effects cinema (though I've never been a huge fan). To say returns have diminished since would be an understatement.  This film jettisons the 'new' cast (Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard) and the original cast (Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum), who returned on and off, for a fresh bunch of potential dino-feed, led by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali. They play mercenaries who are hired to extract samples from three of the biggest free-roaming dinosaurs left in the equatorial region. The reason? Big Pharma believe these blood samples will help the fight against heart disease, and the trillions in returns won't hurt either. There are quite a few exciting sequences and the film's structure is ...

Well, this is an odd film, and considering all the body horror David Cronenberg had delivered in the past, The Shrouds might just be his most inaccessible film. Straight up, Cronenberg is a great, important director. His style is much imitated and he's become a touchstone for a certain way of filmmaking in the industry. But he is capable of turning out some duds (see, or don't see, the awful Maps to the Stars ). This one has its moments but it feels like a personal project that, while he has earnt the right to make it, perhaps doesn't resonate as much with the wider public. Certainly not yours truly. It's a convoluted story involving graveyard technology, medical amputation, international espionage, conspiracy theories, artificial intelligence and dangerous sex. I realise this all sounds fantastic but a couple of these themes don't really go anywhere. Vincent Cassell plays Karsh, an entrepreneur who runs a tech company specialising in 3D imaging of people's rem...