Claire Denis directs Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois and Philippe Katerine in this Parisian drama about a single woman bouncing haphazardly between imperfect men.

We open on a flattering shot of Binoche’s beautiful face and breasts. Everything goes downhill from there. How could a movie made by women come across as so misogynistic in its portrayal of their lead’s weakness and uncertainty, gullibility and lack of self worth? I don’t know… just listen to the pretentious Frenchies talk…and talk… dull-ly… on and on… well past the credits… with nothing to say.

3

Jason Reitman directs Charlize Theron, Ron Livingston and Mackenzie Davis in this family drama about a frazzled mother of 3 who hires a mysterious night nanny to help with her newborn.

Featuring another impressively in-depth and committed central turn from Theron and Reitman’s artful visually astute direction, Tully should be more than the sum of its parts. It is not as entertaining or witty as previous Reitman / Diablo Cody collaborations … it is after all a film focused on postpartum mental health… not the stuff of big yucks. Then again Juno was about teen pregnancy and Young Adult about malignant arrested development and stalking… so… I guess their partnership stands out as they make quality adult dramas for adults with very little manipulation or concession for demographics or studio conformity. Their work compares favourably with the kind of Hollywood New Cinema auteur work that is now overlooked. Their oeuvre shares the craftsmanship, concerns and sadness with work like Petulia, Hal Ashby or Robert Altman. Tully will mean more to some people than it does to me. It has a power I can’t personally tap into but do appreciate. To my unattached eye it feels like [SPOILERS] an underwhelming Mary Poppins meets Fight Club. But I still admire its uniqueness and ambition in the current movie marketplace.

6

John Huston directs Brad Dourif, Amy Wright and Harry Dean Stanton in this southern fable about lay preachers who populate the flop houses and street corners of a feckless city. 

A strong, sleazy milieu and excellent performances from Dourif and Wright make this miserable curiosity worth a watch. Sadly the final act loses sight of all the quirky goodness that the first hour of Wise Blood hums with. Ending a promising experience on a frustrating, open ended downer.

6

Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley direct Ed Helms, Christina Applegate and Skyler Gisondo in this reboot / soft sequel to the 1980s Chevy Chase series. 

I have a soft spot for the original three Vacation films… they were family favourites in our house as kids. They’ve aged terribly but no amount of rust and depreciation will diminish Beverly D’Angelo’s innate put-upon hotness or Chevy Chase’s gormless suave pratfalls. This colourful rehash gets everything right and wrong about the originals on target… the oblivious schmuckery of the Griswolds 2.0, the spirited enthusiasm of the cast (with Santa Clarita Diet’s Gisondo absolutely killing as the sensitive elder sibling), the uneven bittiness of the set pieces, the unnecessary gross-out moments and a decent cameo from Chase himself showing he still has that old Clark Griswold magic. There’s not enough here to make it worth a repeat viewing but as disposable comedies go this has about as many laughs as any of those rose-tinted originals. And they use the Holiday Road theme music. Well done them for that.

6

John Woo directs Damian Lau, Wei Pai and Bonnie Ngau in this Kung-Fu flick about two swordsmen hired to avenge a scheming local merchant.

A solid martial arts flick with two standout action sequences. A fight involving spitting alcohol in a tomb full of candles and another involving a narcoleptic master. This lacks the knockaround slapstick of its contemporaries but is interesting as an early work of John Woo. There are hints of cherry blossom symbolism, the heroic bloodshed dynamism and the romantic male bonding of his later, more famous movies.

6

John G. Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone direct Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith and Joe Spinell in these rags to riches boxing melodramas that spawned a forty year cinematic saga. 

Rocky opens with a stained glass image of Jesus. And that is fitting. As the film shares more with a biblical fable, the trials of Job or the redemption of Saul, than it does with a routine fight flick. We meet Rocky in a bum fight. Then witness 90 minutes of his life outside the ring and he still takes a spiritual pounding. His low rent enforcer work for a local gangster chafes against his juvenile morality. His locker at the dirty, rundown gym, that is his blinkered ambitions and dreams, has been given to a better prospect. The neighbourhood kids mock him. His best friend is an alcoholic who wants more without having to work for it. The woman he loves is shy… possibly “retarded”… but definitely, heartbreakingly shy. And he is about to be used as carrion in a publicity stunt by the World Heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed (a game Carl Weathers). Stallone, the scriptwriter, is aiming for an On the Waterfront style tragedy of tough living. But then rope-a-dopes us and delivers a fantasy tribute to the American Dream. Rocky trains hard, gets the girl and goes the distance in the fight. Bill Conti’s epic score, those jubilant horns, reaches its overwhelming peak, it threatens it presence all through the elongated misery. Then breaks out…

Gonna fly now
Flyin’ high now
Gonna fly, fly, fly

All that manipulative schadenfreude flips into heartwarming, airpunching victory (even though he loses).

Rocky II replays the facesmushing, blood spurting final 10 minutes of Rocky’s finale shot for shot. Cheap filler but why shouldn’t it? The VCR was a new technology back then. It had been three years and who wouldn’t want a catch-up. But then Stallone needs to plunge Rocky back into the gutter. He wants to quit boxing and get a job but his illiteracy and the economy and his overspending swallow him up. He is goaded publicly and financially into giving Creed a rematch. Creed is more villainous this time… the media savvy shark becomes the wounded assassin. Adrian is more glamorous, less shy, but then is enfeebled by pregnancy and… we’re training again… we’re fighting again… it is all bigger… more mawkish… like someone has poured tears over a 30 cent burger. Exactly the same fast food but almost inedible by trying to knowingly recreate the recipe exactly.

7/4

 

Anthony and Joe Russo direct Josh Brolin, Robert Downey Jnr and Chris Hemsworth in this Marvel team-up movie where nearly every established superhero tries to stop Thanos from collecting magical stones that will allow him to kill half the universe. 

 

*** SPOILERS ***

 

You are about to be shocked. I’m no Marvel zealot. I have never drank the Kool-Aid. But I can hands down say that Infinity War is one of the best blockbusters ever made. It lives up to the hype. It surpasses all 18 previous installments. It is essential. It is a cultural milestone on a par with A New Hope, Burton’s Batman, Jurassic Park, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings and The Dark Knight. Sure… there are tentpole releases that make more money (Avatar, Jurassic World). And there are tentpoles that I think are better made (Raiders, Die Hard, Kill Bill). But this is a phenomenon. A film that in twenty… thirty…. forty years time people will say they remember going to see it, remember how they reacted to its conclusion. I remember queuing outside the cinema for Twins as a kid. I remember the hush that swept over the cinema as Back to the Future Part II began. I remember how Return to Oz scarred me for life. Avengers Infinity War will be all those memories for an entire generation.  2018 will be synonymous with its glory.

There are movies I look forward to before they are even greenlit. And there are movies I’m aware are on the horizon, I am blasé about, but something grips me on the week of release and I HAVE TO see them on opening day. It only ever happened once before with a Marvel movie. I went into Guardians of the Galaxy with no expectations first thing on a Friday morning. Wow! Best Marvel film ever! But that hyperbole has to take a backseat now. Infinity War has arrived. And my attitude to it was much the same. “Ah the first one was fine but overrated. Age of Ultron was passable… forgettable. What do I care if a bored looking Robert Downey Jnr gets to meet a relegated-to-supporting-character Starlord?” It was destined to be the same as usual. Banter. Team bicker. Banter. A bit of inconsequential infighting. Banter. Disillusionment. Banter (but with a solemn air). Waiting in the wings threat becomes unignorable. Team teams. One mid-table character dies. Modest cliffhanger.

The same as usual. The formula. The template…. Gone. Infinity War still delivers what you all want from a Marvel experience. The spectacle has been predefined over 40 preceding hours of VFX heavy malarkey. Visually, there are no new worlds to conquer. It is like visiting Paris. You’ve been a few times before but Paris always looks wonderful. The jokes are still there… Iron Man gets to catch Peter Parker up on what’s going down mid-attack with a mordant lack enthusiasm. “He came to steal a necklace from a wizard.” Drax describes Thor in blunt, unaware terms. “Like a pirate has had a baby with an angel.” And Steve Rogers meets Groot with no irony or snark. There’s three dozen killer lines sifted within the interactions but the sitcom status quo safety has been destroyed.

And this is all thanks to Josh Brolin’s Thanos. When we meet him he kills two big name actors and defeats The Hulk. Sends the unjolly green giant back to his room, cowering for the rest of the film in Bruce Banner’s medulla oblongata. That’s the first five minutes. Even his henchmen, The Black Order, look scarier than 90% of previous Marvel villains. The franchise has had noteable villian issues. It sidelined The Red Skull and The Mandarin off hand. It over relied on Loki… a character who is more fun as the reluctant anti-hero. Steve Rogers, (the dignity, the muscle and the heart) has fought a computer twice. Things have improved recently… bristling performances from Michael Keaton and Michael B Jordan as clearly motivated berserkers elevated their respective Spider-Man and Black Panther movies. And Brolin gets an antagonist who is both well defined and lethal from the off. Sympathetic even. When you hear his reasoning for mystical genocide, it is hard not to see some light in his fanaticism.

But the most important thing about Thanos is when he walks on screen, characters can and do die. It gives each battle an formerly unseen brutality. As wild alien beasties rampage en masse at the Wakandan front or Spidey / Stark / Strange / Guardians take on Thanos as a tag team… an overriding air of risk, rather than cartoonish skirmish, defines the battles. This villian kills at will, is stronger than them, has an objective… to collect six stones… when he does all he needs to do is click his fingers… and billions die. It has been a while since a Marvel blockbuster has had such a clearly defined propulsive plot.

And then, despite sacrifice and grit from all involved, Thanos clicks his fingers…

Everyone will remember when they saw Peter Parker cry and disintegrate. The best blockbusters of recent years have had a shared, doomed fatalism… the suicide mission of Rogue One that not even the pessimistic android survived (Remember Scarif!). The relentless, anonymous waiting to be drowned, shot or knocked unconscious by Cillian Murphy meat grinder of Dunkirk. And now this… watching stalwart after stalwart of the Marvel tapestry look confused as they turn to dust. To see the satisfied look on our arch villian’s face that he has won and brought a cruel balance to the universe. To see the characters we thought were expendable due to multi-entry contracts being fulfilled… survive and be shellshocked by the intimate toll of their failure. To watch a teenage Spider-Man beg for his life as he hits “Game Over.” To see the directors’ credits card appear without a glimmer of hope. Ooofff! You’ll believe a man can fly. Dinosaurs walk believably on screen. Come travel around the sinking Titanic. Watch the the Marvel universe betray you out of your guaranteed feel good victory.

Of course, we know that there is a continuation coming. We know there is no way the Guardians or Spidey or Black Panther won’t somehow be revived. There’s no true permanency. But such wholesale slaughter of a franchises’ youngest and brightest, such harsh a turn into a unhappy ending. It ain’t what the families and the fanboys and the people who only go see one movie a year were in anyway expecting when they bought a ticket. Marvel have committed the greatest suckerpunch in cinema history… and they delivered the blow after two hours of machine perfect thrills and giggles. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water… the most predictable movie series has become the most playfully callous.

10

 

 

 

 

Michael Pearce directs Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn and Geraldine James in this psychological drama about a damaged young woman who starts a relationship with a murder suspect.

A film that plays in the same sandbox as Hitchcock’s Suspicion or Shadow of A Doubt. It can be a little heavy handed at times although the middle section is overwhelmingly powerful in representing the lead’s mental turmoil and reminded me of real life tabloid cases from my youth like Maxine Carr. It is helped by very muscular and playfully ambiguous performances from both Buckley and Flynn.

7

James B. Rogers directs Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan and Seann William Scott in this gross out teen comedy sequel about the boys renting a summer lakehouse together before their second year at college. 

With only one great cringe set-piece to rival all the multitude in the original and the girls taking a comedy backseat, this is the epitome of a cash-in. Still that sequence where Jim glues his hand to his dick and his other hand to a porno tape, all to the soundtrack of Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal cover, is a physical comedy belter. Stifler gets more gags, the sweetly dank Hannigan graduates from killer punchline to romantic interest and there’s enough chemistry between the better players to cover those asked back out of sheer narrative loyalty (Hell… even the monkey and Jim’s shit brown short sleeved shirt get comeback scenes). As cash-ins go, this doesn’t inspire any refunds or brand dilution. And you get the killer close-up of Eugene Levy’s face in a hospital waiting room. A visage filled with resigned dread that his son’s life is now a litany of public masturbation disasters.

6

Bertrand Blier directs Gérard Depardieu, Bernard Blier and Jean Carmet in this farce where a potential murderer’s wife is murdered much to the inconvenience of the police inspector upstairs.

A very cold, intellectual comedy set in a city where murder is so commonplace so as to be treated as an impolite transgression. I get the central jokes about our blasé acceptance of death as a fact of life and living anonymously within a rat race full of largely unseen people. But it is academic after a while, a set-up that allows for very little wit or emotional connection to the deadpan farce that unfolds with distancing dream logic.

5