Film Shapes

Saw this as a birthday treat at the Luna (free double pass with the Privilege Card) followed by a sub-par ramen. That's if you're in the camp that thinks 'sub-par' is a bad thing. To be fair, it may be only golfers that see 'sub-par' as a positive. But I digress. You Were Never Really Here (no shit, I just mis-typed Gere as the last word in the title and there's a whole new film!). More digression. I'll count to 39 or something. So, Lynne Ramsey's fourth film after Ratcatcher , Morven Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin certainly continues the trend of gritty realism but with a neat dichotomy. See, I reckon Joaquin Phoenix's character, Joe, would fit uncomfortably into a Marvel or DC film. He's a kind of chav Avenger, with none of the grandeur or witticisms but all of the emotion. Hawkeye with a hammer instead of a bow. And the film rides on Phoenix's bulky, bruised back. He's outstanding in this. The scene of him cracking...

After a few blockbusters and the like, I decided it was time to go off-road a bit so Roly and I hit a cheap Wednesday showing of The Insult at the Luna Leederville. This is only the fourth film to be directed by Ziad Doueiri (he also co-wrote) but he cut his teeth working as a camo with Tarantino. The film takes place in Beirut. It starts with a molehill and ends with mountain. Local Christian mechanic, Tony Hanna, played by Adel Karam, is miffed when a Palestinian Muslim construction foreman, Yasser Salameh, played by Kamel El Basha, fixes his outdoor water pipe without his permission. Tony breaks it, Yasser calls him a "fucking prick" and thus commences an escalating shitestorm of stubborn men, weary women, exploitative lawyers and opportunistic politicians, all waiting for the scab of religion and geopolitics to be ripped off. The story is ostensibly played out as a courtroom drama but there are lots of other things going on here, including misplaced revenge, tired...

This is the sixth Mission: Impossible film with Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt and only the second to have a previous director at the helm in Chris McQuarrie (the others, in order, being Brian De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird). I enjoyed Fallout , and that's pretty much the same sentiment for all the films in this series. Each one has something better and worse than the others, whether that's an actor, an action set-piece or a shot. My point is that they tend to blend into one another, not necessarily in a bad way. Admittedly, the bonkers-ness of the practical (as opposed to CGI) stunts has seemed to grow exponentially. But that Cruise bastard appears to have aged about 6 years in 22. Plot-wise, it's fairly convoluted. According to McQuarrie, lots of the film was made on the fly. "I'm working on it" (or words to that effect) are uttered throughout the film, reflecting the actual goings-on behind the cameras. Presumably not unusual in films of thi...

It's been nearly two weeks since I've seen this film and I'm as ambivalent towards it as I was right after seeing it. It's not terrible, just mostly inconsequential. I say mostly because there's an angle that slots into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe that'll become integral to the resolution of the whole Thanos business. No more to be said on that. Anyway, Ant-Man and the Wasp brings Paul Rudd's ant back to the margins of the MCU. This time he's joined by Evangeline Lilly's wasp in a story that focuses on personal themes of closure and never losing hope (or Janet, in this case). The 'ant'agonist (eh, eh?) is a multi-phasic herring really, probably one of the most innocuous baddies in these films. Ghost, played by Hanna John-Kamen, is basically just an obstacle to the mission of retrieiving Michelle Pfieffer's (original) Wasp, Janet van Dyne, from the quantum realm. Well, it all sounds like a lot of old rope, doesn't it? ...

A little trepidation escorted us into screen 6 at Morley's Event cinemas for a morning showing of Solo: A Star Wars Story . This was mainly down to the grizzles I'd been hearing about on-set troubles and mis-casting and stuff like that. Also Ron Howard had been hired to 'fire-fight' the film into shape and finish on time. Safe pair of hands is old Ronnie but not the edgiest. To possibly perpetuate a rumour, it appears the previous directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller (of Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs fame), couldn't quite handle such a behemoth as Solo . No matter, as this turned out to be perhaps my third favourite Ron Howard film (not counting the ones he's acted in, like The Music Man ), after Frost/Nixon and Willow . A specific concern of the grizzlers seemed to be the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, first seen getting in and out of trouble on the industrial planet of Corellia. Rest easy, he's fine in this. O...

After Deadpool  had raked in just under $800 million worldwide two years ago, it made perfect sense to have a crack at a sequel. And I think Deadpool 2 is slightly better than the original. Maybe this is because there's less of the TJ Miller riffing, which was intermittently solid but overcooked. In this one, they dialled it back quite a bit, as they did the old blind lady and the taxi driver. All fine characters, and this time, used sparingly. Another reason is the identity of the antagonist. At first, it seems to be Josh Brolin's Cable but then, for story reasons, it kind of morphs into circumstance, I guess. There are several moments when our potty-mouthed hero struggles to keep all the pieces together (metaphorically and literally). In fact, Pool begins to fight more against himself and his 'unkillability', which prevents him from [SPOILER - REDACTED], so you might say Ryan Reynolds' Wade Wilson is the pro/an-tagonist. The direction also seems more assure...

So this, the penultimate episode of the Marvel Avengers series (the third phase at least), is pretty ballsy work. Discretion precludes me from spewing forth on all the stuff that goes on here, but if you don't mind the cat escaping the bag, the podcast below is full of spoilers. I reckon it's safe to say that the ballsiness of the story may well be softened by the end of the 4th film (whatever that may be called). But here, at the midpoint of the two films, misery and desolation rule the roost. Enough said for now. Onto the star of the film - Thanos. This is the guy that has been hanging around in the background for most of the previous MCU films, at least while the Infinity Stones have been in play. He's been referred to, glimpsed, even had a line or two in post-credit stings. But in  Infinity War  he really gets his supernatural funky out down there (apologies to Cinema Prague). Thanos as a universal Malthusian Check is one of the neater conceits in the MCU. In fa...

Monday morning. Kids at school. $10 tickets at the Galleria. All looking good. And then.... Ready Player Wonka. This is Steven Spielberg's latest. It's about a boy, Charlie Bucket Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan, who lives in an impoverished rural  urban setting and dreams of being elsewhere. Enter a mysterious, man-child savant with poor social skills and a hugely popular business enterprise. Said fella wants to give away 'the keys to the kingdom' for one reason or another. Loads of people scramble to find the golden ticket keys. Shit, there's even a scene of the protagonists floating in a cylindrical chamber that's very reminiscent of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory . Like most Spielberg films, this is put together with the skills of a professional technician who knows what he's doing and can call upon the cream of the industry to help him. He has some pull, this guy. But also like most Spielberg films, it doesn't do anyth...