Dan Gilroy directs Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell and Carmen Ejogo in this legal drama about a Civil Rights backroom lawyer who finds himself thrust into the dog-eat-dog world of coporate legal work.
Acting wise, this is a career high for Denzel. The plot is a little unfocused – it is film more interested in exploring a fascinating central protagonist… his corruption, his ungainlyness in the modern world. If you come with an open mind then the random thriller elements prove a nice if jarring aside in an ambitious, intelligent, adult piece of old school Hollywood moviemaking.
Lucia Aniello directs Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell in this black comedy about a hen party that is ruined by manslaughter.
Not a Rough Night, more like a rough an hour and a half… it just all feels far, far longer. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what went so disastrously wrong here. Weekend at Bernies (of which this owes a massive debt) was just as crass and unsophisticated but kinda got away with it. Very Bad Things, a film that this essentially is a remake of, had even more detestable, unsympathetic characters yet was darkly transgressive in its trampling vindictiveness. The support cast have been great before in similar roles and I would watch Scarlett Johansson changing duvets for two hours if such footage existed. Yet this proves a really grim and grating, unloveable and sloppy farce. One with barely any redeemable features except Kate McKinnon’s unwavering commitment to lean into a rubbish screenplay long after the others around her have given up.
John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldsteindirect Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams and Jesse Plemmons in this crime comedy where competitive couples find their evening of mystery roleplay unwittingly taken over by a real kidnapping.
A really tight comedy… better than expected. Like the not massively dissimilar Tag, this suffers slightly from the writers caring about the characters “growing” but less time is wasted on such arcs here. More larks than arcs… yay. Bateman and McAdams aren’t the most easily likeable leads (one is a Mean Girl and always will be) but both work to their strengths. Their smugness and self involvement is contrasted nicely with Jesse Plemmons creepily dead eyed neighbour. He, some good cameos and the recklessly sharp dialogue meant that even though I watched this with my earphones on and my wife asleep next to me, I had to suppress a fair few audible laughs.
Barry Jenkins directs KiKi Layne, Stephan James and Regina King in the adaptation of James Baldwin’s classic work of literature about young lovers struggling in Harlem.
I read the book as a teenager and although my memories of the plot were vague I do still remember the beauty of the writing and the anger that bubbled furiously within Baldwin’s words. Jenkins does a serviceable if somber job of recreating that mood, aided by James Laxton’s rich cinematography and yearning urgent score by Nicholas Britell. The young leads don’t fully hold our attention in the slower sequences (of which there are many) but an excellent support cast impresses with pitch perfect performances.
Chang-dong Lee directs Ah-in Yoo, Steven Yeun and Jong-seo Jun in this mystery about an aimless young man who starts a relationship with an old school friend only for her to introduce him to a rich guy with a disturbing hobby.
One of those really pleasurable movie experiences where the less you know going in, the more you’ll get out of the subtle developments and twists. I’m guessing you haven’t seen this slacker thriller based on a Haruki Murakami short story just yet so I won’t spoil anything. It grips and leaves loose end tantalisingly open. Early on, Shin, a wannabe actress reveals that the trick to good mime is not noticing the object isn’t there. And throughout the film we are unsure of the true relationships between characters, whether a cat exists or a crime has even been committed. We just follow these vague yet enthralling loners as they meet each other, uncertain what is engineered, what is a lie and what is in ours and Jong-su’s paranoid imagination. There are bigger themes explored here than just an elusive, unsettling Hitchcockian thriller. Chang-dong Lee explores the fragility and substanceless of young millennials lifestyles in Korea, the economic disparities of the new class system of his country, the hangover from generational anger. There’s a brilliant damning sequence where a group interview at a warehouse entrance treats young workers as products to processed. But the film works best as a constantly shifting puzzle to solve with distractingly gorgeous pieces. All three lead actors are superb… Jong-seo Jun in particular in her debut gives a bright, fiery performance as Shin, one that screams both vulnerability and desirability. She has to, as like our feckless detective, we need to feel her absence and yearn for her return whenever she disappears from the plot. This is a thoughtful, playful, wholemeal thriller out of step with our impatient times but fully aware of current issues. Catch it!
Mike Figgis directs Richard Gere, Andy Garcia and Laurie Metcalfe in this cop thriller about a rookie internal affairs investigator who looks into a murderous uniform cop who has half the department in his stranglehold and his sights set on destroying his new antagonist’s marriage.
A cop thriller that seems more interested in sexual jealousy than shoot-outs and car chases. The action is workmanlike and the plotting perfunctory. Figgis and the actors only come alive when exploring the leads’ desires and jealousy. This makes for a much darker, complex thriller than the one we are sold on but actively at the sake of the simple, easy to deliver pleasures that we bought a ticket for. Metcalfe, as the woman cop in a man’s world, is the best thing in it.
Marc Meyers directs Ross Lynch, Alex Wolff and Anne Heche in this teen drama based on the recollections of a cartoonist who went to high school with true life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
A look that evokes Dazed and Confused, Freaks and Geeks and Over the Edge can’t save this dull film. We look at loneliness and the psychology of mental disintegration through a filter of pranks and bullying. It is all too slight, never giving its actors anything but the expected motions to work through.
Robert Rodriguez directs Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz and Mahershala Ali in this sci-fi romance where a cybernetic warrior beauty masters future sport, bounty hunting and teenage boys.
Like Bohemian Rhapsody this is proof that you don’t need a good script to make a great blockbuster. The dialogue clunks, the characters have all the complexity of rats in lab mazes and the plot suddenly develops at a rate of knots just when you want it to tie all of its loose ends off in a neat bow. Though, hands up who is buying a ticket to Alita on the promise of well developed leads or tidiness? No… didn’t think so. So let’s look at what this big hulking beast delivers.
For one: a brightly lit vision of the far future. The Manga comic world Rodriguez and producer James Cameron have brought to life is dense and rich. Thick with humans with robot arms, robots with human faces and other automatons bustling about. It is a film busy with visuals that somehow allows the soapy drama and vibrant action to play out uninterrupted in the foreground. As Alita falls in love, upgrades and picks fights, we see queues for border entry, latino street market culture and patchwork fantasy tech just exist in the frame – painting an Earth 500 years away that demands rewatches and detailed exploration.
The movie is pleasingly violent. Though sometimes the action is a little forced (I assume an extended version will reveal why Waltz’s Dr Ido and Jackie Earl Hayley’s Grewishka rock up at the Hunter Warrior hang out together) yet when Alita gets into her swing you are caught up in it all. This is not a franchise starter bothered about preserving characters (four leads die in the last 10 minutes – some not for the first time) and even Alita suffers brutal sustained damage. She’s crunched and severed and sliced up in both the bounty hunting street fights and the impressive Motorball gladiator battles. The unfocused plot does mean we get a little less Motorball madness than really makes sense. Yet the one-on-one face-offs over personal beefs fill that void. Alita’s “Fuck your mercy” comeback belongs in an 18 certificated film, a lot of the carnage does. If you like gory (albeit bloodless) kills and horrifically designed kill machines (Ed Skrien’s Inca roboback… phwoar!) then Alita is the epic for you.
In fact, the biggest part of the fun in Alita is trying to unpick what is Cameron and what is Rodriguez. Cameron certainly brings a sense of wonder owned by him and Spielberg almost exclusively. Alita waking in her new body and wandering Iron City have a relaxed patience lost on most modern filmmakers. Yet you’ve seen these time out moments of amazement and fascination (mirroring the audience) in The Abyss or Titanic or even Avatar. Cameron’s raison d’être is taking his audience and protagonists to rich, new worlds and allowing these strange environments to evolve the characters into new self-determined others. Rodriguez adds the detailing. He might not have been allowed the production scale needed without Cameron’s oversight, so he works diligently colouring in the gaps. The crowds feel like the extras from a Rodriquez flick… X 10000. The costumes, foods and colours of this world belong to the maker of Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn and Spy Kids. Cameron has never seen a moment he didn’t want to maxisize (admirable) but Rodriguez manages to make the limited courtyard street game and alleyway fights just as kinetic as the grander set pieces later. Neither are creatives bothered about subtlety of dialogue or difficult grey area characters. Their styles and sensibilities chime together nicely.
Do we care about Alita with her mo-capped body and big wet eyes? She’s a strange character. A middle aged man’s idea of what a young woman should be like. For many scenes Alita, with her sexless innocence and memory wiped ignorance of the real world, comes across as THAT GIRL. Crazy! Loco! The kind who stares at you unflinchingly as she holds your hand, climbs into your window to watch you sleep, takes her beating heart out and offers it to you as a gift. When her bland paramour Hugo suggest she could “rip off his arm and beat him with the wet ” (classic James Cameron’s trademark smalltalk), she giggles girlishly yet maniacally at the truth of this assessment. We shouldn’t really like this unguarded, obsessive death machine, should we? The intention is to show a pure heart in a callous, dehumanised world. It works, they get away with it. We want sleek, graceful, lovestruck, awesome Alita to beat all-comers. But Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis and Rodriguez use some pretty strong writing swipes to get us there. There’s a hurried bluntness about Alita that restricts it from being a classic, yet there’s more than enough wow and pow pow to fill a Saturday night.
Paddy Considine directs Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman and Eddie Marsan in this kitchen sink drama about a violent loner and an abused housewife who form a friendship in a community of bullying and aggression.
Well acted but bloody miserable. A wallow in forced tragedy.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 