Cate Shortland directs Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh and David Harbour in the Marvel prequel espionage thriller where former Russian assassin Natasha Romanoff faces her past.

Marvel has had the proverbial red in its ledger for quite a while now. One of the biggest stars to sign up and commit to underpaid supporting roles within multiple entries has been Scarlett Johansson. More so than Robert Downey Jnr. or Samuel L. Jackson she has proven the franchise’s mainstay over various self imposed phases. After a decade on the frontline of team-ups and falling outs with the Avengers, they finally announced her solo adventure… and then killed her character off. This prequel, set curiously between Civil War and Infinity War, helps to finally fill out her much hinted at dark backstory while giving her a chance to hand the baton over to a future heir apparent. You might expect this ultimately inconsequential late chapter to either create a get out clause to Natasha Romanoff’s big heroic sacrifice or to be a celebration of a character and star who has added so much needed continuity and sex appeal to the ever expanding Marvel universe… but really this is a superhero tinged spy thriller made because everyone realised Scar-Jo deserved her own movie away from the boys and there was a financial appetite for it. Why it has come so jarringly late in the cycle is anyone’s guess -it certainly feels more essential and cinematic than Doctor Strange or Captain Marvel’s origin features, and is a more compelling release than that childish Ant-Man sequel. Whether you approach Black Widow as an orphan of scheduling conflicts or mega budgeted contractual obligation, it is probably fair to say it should have been made in 2017 ahead of other projects. Still… this is easily the best Marvel movie since Thanos clicked his big purple fingers. Catch it at a multiplex on the biggest screen if you can!

Once you can get your head around where this belated piece of the jigsaw puzzle fits into the overall picture, the lack of urgency and impact to the overarching grand narrative proves negligible. It is a really entertaining spy thriller which relies more on stunts and chutzpah than magic lasers and weightless CGI. For the first two acts this plays more like an action movie in the Bond / Bourne / Hunt mode. Maybe not quite as muscular as those series at their finest but certainly of that ilk. Bones crunch, cars rev and you are emotionally engaged with the bodies in flight. The sleeper family on the run prologue is particularly remarkable for its patiently escalating peril and getting young Natasha in the driving seat while introducing her “family.”

Maybe it will annoy the hardcore fanbase but Cate Shortland’s direction is notable for its real world trappings, generosity to showcase the actors natural chemistry and pointed avoidance to give in to the usual Marvel cliches over the first 90 minutes. That doesn’t last – the big finale takes place in swirling, weightless digital debris, the big bad proves a damp squib afterthought and the stand alone nature can’t help but hint at potential THINGS TO COME when it should just focus on telling its own story. I doubt indie director Shortland needed to really be on set all that much once the Red Room begins to self destruct for twenty long minutes but what she delivers before is pretty admirable. We’ve come a long way since we met the Black Widow cleavage first, spilling out of her leather jump suit in Iron Man 2. Who was expecting a decade later to see her in story that references child soldiers, FGM and the disposability and exploitation of young girls out with the white western world? Does it work as a kid’s movie? I don’t know, that’s another question but I appreciated the maturer, dourer and astute aspects of it.

Really though this is should be a showcase for Johansson to shine away from flirtations with the more recognised male capes. She does seem a little subdued, overly happy to share the spotlight with her new cast members. It definitely feels like her character who saves the day ultimately but maybe after multiple movies pitching so other characters can knock it out of the park Johansson is a little too generous here letting other characters steal the scenes. Always the team player? Or maybe just a little bored of the playbook now her place in the queue has eventually come to the front after so long waiting? If this definitely is her last hurrah as THE Black Widow, you kinda wish it felt more definitively her movie or capped her heroics off with a celebratory legacy moment that foreshadows her eventual universe saving demise. It feels weird we are all aware the closing scenes were written and shot knowing her P45 is already filled out and in the post but she just wanders over casually to a superjet as if she’ll be back in the office after the long weekend.

What an impressive support cast! The Marvel behemoth can afford the best money can buy. If I were Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone or the incredibly underserved Olga Kurylenko I’d just thank my agent for my new swimming pool and not get too bogged down in the sparseness of the part on paper. It is the double team masterclass of scene stealing from Florence Pugh and David Harbour you have to watch out for. Still at a point in their respective burgeoning stardoms where they still feel fresh to audiences, they grab the ungainly aspects of this movie and just run with them. I’m sure their best moments were scripted by a factory of jobbing writers as with all Marvel entries, but they make their quips and little personable bits of business feel more organic than anyone else has managed to in over 22 other films. You relish the scenes where Johansson, Weisz and they get to play off each other and walk away knowing that either could handle this kinda huge affair off their individual backs with flair. If Kevin Feige does plan to spin-off either stand out into their own solo jaunt then hopefully next time he won’t wait until a decade has drained all the essential juice out of the adventure. Ending on the ultimate positive, they make this a summer blockbuster worth booking ahead for.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Thomas Vinterberg directs Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen and Magnus Millang in the comedy where four middle aged teachers experiment with day drinking to see if it improves their stagnant professional and social lives.

The Danish remake of Men Behaving Badly gets the balance between laughs and drama exactly right. You always expect an impeccable standard from Mikkelsen when he is in the lead, but the whole ensemble here is on fine fettle. The unexpected but well set-up finale has to be one the strongest endings to any 21st century movie, leaving you on a buzzing high.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Christopher Landon directs Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton and Uriah Shelton in this teen horror comedy where the final girl swaps bodies with the hulking slasher and has 24 hours to reverse the switch.

Natalie has always chided me for not fully embracing the fun Happy Death Day movies. I think the problem is high concept mash-ups like those films and Christopher Landon’s new movie Freaky are so up my street it is hard for them to ever fully live up to my expectations. They are almost exactly my jam but they have unfussy neatness and brightness I associate more with afternoon telly rather than midnight cinema. The horror elements, for example, could be stronger here, the stalks and survival be just a little more drawn out. I don’t think that tweak would overpower the comedy elements, which fly thanks to a game Vince Vaughn. Freaky is a funnier movie than it is a scarier movie, so easily digestible and sequel worthy that, like Happy Death Day, I can see me rewatching it more often than films I would rate higher.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

So Yong Kim directs Jena Malone, Riley Keough and Ryan Eggold in this romance between two old friends who go on a road trip together before growing apart.

I could watch Jena Malone in anything but this was too slight and ephemeral to hold my attention.

3

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

John Frankenheimer directs Roy Scheider, Ann-Margaret and John Glover in this thriller where an industrialist cheats on his politician wife, attracting the vicious attentions of a trio of blackmailers.

So sleazy it genuinely is a shock to the system. Lashings of nudity, misogyny, exploitation and real life porn stars. Scheider convinces as a man who looks like a pair of well polished brogues but still can pull Kelly Preston’s stripper while not irrevocably ruining his marriage to hot Ann-Margaret. His over-confident protagonist turns the tables on a team of scumbags, getting them to in-fight and show their arses. His brinkmanship in a tight and increasingly deadly spot proves very watchable, the film expresses very few moral judgments on anyone. Rougher around the edges but it acts as a blueprint for pretty much any Michael Douglas star vehicle that arrived over the next 15 years, no discredit to Scheider but it genuinely is weird Michael Douglas doesn’t play the lead here. What really makes this forgotten gem pop though is the antagonists. Three very different but full fat performances from Glover, Clarence Williams III and Robert Trebor. All stand out as well written, juicy villains that the respective character actors clearly had free reign to inhabit with relish. Of course, Elmore Leonard’s source material always showers a plot with great secondary and one scene parts. This is a lot harder hitting than the criminal comedy of manners adaptations that followed a decade later. It really feels more a piece with auteur American cinema like Hardcore and To Live & Die In L.A.. Frankenheimer’s camera is constantly moving, panning, tracking, dangling… when it does stay still for a shot he is making bold choices like split-diopter lenses. It is an excessively mannered slice of directing but it suits the seedy, relentless plot. While it would be easy to dismiss 52 Pick-Up as merely a better acted than average videoshop filler, I almost immediately wanted to watch it again. Hence a generous score…

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Kim Jee-woon directs Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnny Knoxville and Forest Whittaker in this action adventure where a sleepy border town’s sheriff finds himself preparing to stop a fugitive drug baron.

This was Arnie’s big action comeback and it felt a little off the mark at the time. There were too many characters, too much exposition, not nearly enough Arnie. What there is though is great, after all that laborious setting up you get a more than generous wallop of carnage, with the beloved T-800 front and centre, playing a relatively human character. There’s a nice broad sense of humour near constantly at play that is very inviting. It looks gorgeous thanks to Kim Jee-woon unique eye for action and mythology. If you are a fan of Westerns than you’ll appreciate the plotting and form. Now it seems like we won’t be getting that many more pure Arnie action extravaganzas, this proves more than satisfactory in hindsight.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Jonathan Glazer directs Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams and Adam Pearson in this British kitchen sink sci-fi art movie where an alien drives a van in and around Glasgow, hoping to pick up men using her attractive human guise.

I can spend thousands of words in these reviews name checking who brought it to a production or noting who hampered it. I find assigning blame and celebrating individual success the best way to catalogue a release’s merits and faults. So, for example, in this striking and often disturbing one-off it is easy to praise Glazer’s Kubrick-ian mastery, Mica Levi’s hauntingly otherworldly anti-score and Johansson’s bravely unguarded physical approach. Yet the person I want to namecheck the most is my friend, James Mason. As the one person who has a massive impact on how I absorb a cinematic trip is who I watch the film with. I know going to see a slasher, musical or Disney movie with my wife will be a heightened experience due to her enthusiasm for those particular forms. The pleasure of watching a Bond sequel with my boy Davey or the new Star Wars release with my niece and nephew or Jerry Maguire with my mum creates a frisson that elevate a film, focuses the creatives’ best intentions so that they leave a harder footprint on both viewers. Watching the right film with the right person is a life event, forever gilding those particular 120 minutes into your pantheon of beloved movies. James’ response to art, philosophy, body horror and the discombobulating mundaneness of the driving scenes MADE Under the Skin for me. I wouldn’t care about the film quite so much if hadn’t seen it with someone who wears simultaneously both a hard leather jacket and a soft cardigan underneath as a point of pride. Who engages with art with a tactile but educated understanding. I don’t think Under The Skin is a truly perfect movie; those full frontal nudity scenes are unnervingly sexless, it can be esoteric to the point of redundancy. But I first watched it with the right cinema buddy and therefore it means more to me than a five star entertainment.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Stephan Rick directs Patrick John Fleuger, Val Kilmer and Colby Minifie in this horror thriller where three janitors of a sprawling apartment building investigate and suspect each other during a rash of murders and disappearances.

Simultaneously glossy and cheap looking, this has little resemblance to reality. If you cared about any of it, you’d question every single writing and performance choice. Some of it is in service of a relatively well obscured twist. At least the killer’s eventual reveal doesn’t feel like a complete cheat but it does leave more questions than answers. This is not an experience you’ll want to revisit again though afterwards. Val Kilmer’s role is especially hard to get one’s head around. His heavily accented dialogue is all dubbed in due to his throat cancer. This gives his moments an echo of giallo about them, a mood you wish the filmmakers aped more given the often bonkers nature of the plotting. Doesn’t make the movie any better or worse but a happy accident in a pretty forgettable, awful release.

2

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Christophe Honoré directs Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet in this French teen drama where the arrival of a sexy orphan disrupts the various affairs and romances in a posh Paris secondary school.

Based on an 17th century novel but Clueless it ain’t. Everyone be fucking everyone yet this yields minimal nudity and no home life scenes. These characters live their drab little existences in the school courtyard or on street corners. It is winter, get into a bedroom, any bedroom, and enjoy your youth! Boring.

4

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Justin Lin directs Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and John Cena in this action adventure where Dom learns the true meaning of FARM-LEE.

How to judge a franchise that delivers the action, the critics hate and has mutated from an average car racing flick to mega budgeted summer mainstay? Does anyone actually love these characters and this very specialised milieu? Or do we watch them as we would a car wreck? Passing the mangled carnage, expecting the inevitable and slightly repulsed by the human toll? Big cars go vroom vroom, physics are name checked but routinely spat on, here’s another character with a flashback that seems to mean something to someone. Don’t forget the obligatory shot of “bitches” dancing around a car park!

This entry emphasises a lot of worst elements of an F&F sequel but rarely hitting the sweet spot that The Rock, The Stath and CGI ridiculo-scale brought to the better entries. It is the release that finally takes the rag tag hangers on into outer space… just don’t expect anyone you care about to be doing doughnuts and wheelies on the moon in a souped up space buggy. The intergalactic section is less Moonraker-inspired finale more extended side mission for the two regulars in the ensemble you always question the necessity of. In a strange way, that little orbit sequence defines this movie. A moment of overlong excess ruined by bludgeoning exposition, idiot humour and populated by the F-Team. I understand the first two elements are there as the writers correctly assume most of us in the audience are drooling knuckleheads but the sidelining of the bigger names proves continually unforgivable here.

OK… so I concede we have lost Paul Walker. The THEs have flexed their muscles and charisma to spin off away into the Hobbes & Shaw universe. Which leaves us with a whole lotta third rung faces who seemingly couldn’t get along with The Rock and can’t open a movie on their own. Sure, Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren and Kurt Russell are cameoing about in the background but these little legacy moments are swamped by the sheer amount of returning characters who the casual viewer of the soap opera with socket wrenches will struggle to name. I’ve seen 8 out of 10 of these at the cinema and I found myself asking too many questions. Wasn’t he dead? Is that what the kid from American Gothic looks like now? Has Cardi B been in this before? Am I even sure I know who Cardi B is in any plane of unreality?

Entire acts go by that you forget lynchpin and top billed Vin Diesel was even in. The plot splits the “family” up, gives everyone but him their own globe trotting task and it often feels like the whole endeavour has been built around an unspoken agreement that he would only be available for a quarter of the shoot. The Edinburgh chase sequence is conspicuous for both its lack of geographical veracity (I’m a local – shoot me!) and the fact that Dom Toretto suddenly appears as it is winding down, the camera and edit only focussing on him once we’ve grown bored of seeing the comedy sidekicks in the driving seat. Most of the meat of his… I’m looking for the right words but can only think of… emotional arc are handled in flashbacks to 1989. Rather than de-age Riddick digitally the producers have cleverly cast an upcoming actor and had ol’ gravel voice dub him. The conceit works well, these scenes evoke Days of Thunder, the first movie and Shakespeare… but again… it appears like the franchise’s big name got a week off rather than add any anchoring presence to all this formless mess. I’m trying my best not to type the sentence “I wanted and expected a lot more Vin Diesel in this film.” Nobody should have to make such a bold revelation. It ain’t all bad, with Dom working flexi, the always watchable Michelle Rodriguez as Letty gets a bit more spotlight. And never before mentioned, long lost brother John Cena makes a decent fist of the villain – who you know will return as reluctant hero next episode. Side note: He’d make a great Fred Flintstone if they ever do another live action remake of that cartoon again.

Which leaves us with the slam and the bang. You’ve seen the best bits in the trailer. It is all a bit top heavy and front loaded. After land mines are raced through, a car is caught mid air by a drone and Dom swings across a precipice on a bit of old rope the stunt team give up on trying to top things. That’s 20 minutes in. There’s just too many mouths gasping for their subplot, flashback, comedy moment for the script to find room for more than three further action beats. The Edinburgh chase involves powerful magnets being switched on and off, as does the endless truck finale. That feels very rubbery and undercooked in the wake of Tenet’s similar moving heist. In a world were the metal bonnets of speeding cars are the only safe space to land you can’t expect any real danger or consequences. Wouldn’t want them! But a smidge more imagination about what “OTT” could be isn’t too much to ask. Previous entries dragged room sized safes around Rio and jumped the submarine, this movie seems happy trundling along until the baddies’ moving base just gives up and falls apart on a side street. Poor. Lowest common denominator spectacle should not be this habitual.

4

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/