Popular Reviews
Archive
Here’s Archive, the debut by writer/director Gavin Rothery, who deserved better than for his film to slip between the cracks, which it did a bit thanks to the Covid restrictions. Instead of getting the big-screen release that was on the cards, it slunk out onto streaming months after it was due to be seen. Rothery’s CV is full of art department gigs. He worked with Duncan Jones on Moon and Archive at first looks like it might be operating in the same territory. Lone guy marooned somewhere, taking orders from a stern voice back at HQ, possibly going mad in the process. Except George (Theo James) isn’t in an off-world location, he’s in … Read more
Western
Western isn’t set out West but out East, in Bulgaria, where a gang of Germans have just arrived to build a hydro-electric system close to a remote village near the Greek border which could probably do with the infrastructure upgrade. Beware, Indians! There have been Germans here before, one of the locals tells the new arrivals, back in the War. Nice, respectful, orderly types, he reminisces. Though this guy is maybe 70 and can only have vestigial memory of the Second World War if any at all. The Germans build a camp, hoist a flag, get on with their work and, in their spare time go swimming in the river. There, the boss, … Read more
Apples
Apples makes clear that, even in 2021, the Greek Weird Wave continues to roll. A retro-scifi story of a world afflicted by an illness that robs people of their memories, it stars Aris Servetalis as Aris (handy), a man who leaves his home one day and then, suddenly, is sitting on the bus unable to answer basic questions like “where are you going?” or “what is your name?” The prognosis appears to be bad. In this world, once the memory has gone it can’t come back. And so Aris winds up in a medical program designed to give him new memories. He’s given a place to live and is asked to follow a … Read more
Ares
There’s a Marvel character called Ares, and a DC one, strangely enough. A Greek god also goes by the same name, as does the hero of Ares (Arès, originally), a dystopian French actioner mainly remarkable for how unremarkable it is. Reda Arèsilla (Ola Rapace), to give him his full name, lives in Paris in 2035, in a country that’s being propped up by payments from the Chinese. Millions are unemployed, neoliberalism has been taken to its conclusion and the “fuck you” dynamics of a devil-take-the-hindmost logic are triumphant. Ares, as he’s known, is one of the lucky ones. He fights for a living, in a culture that prizes its fighters. The bouts are TV … Read more
The Heroic Trio
Too fast and furious, maybe, Johnnie To’s 1993 superhero actioner The Heroic Trio nevertheless has energy and style to spare, and as much of that strange Hong Kong martial-arts weirdness – all leaping and spinning but no contact – as you could want. The plot gets kind of lost in the excess but it’s about a mad scheme to ensure that China has a new emperor by kidnapping a whole series of babies who are born on auspicious days. Eighteen have disappeared so far but it’s when the chief of police’s newborn becomes the 19th that a line is crossed. Behind the kidnappings is a mad cackling supervillain called Evil Master (Yen Shi-Kwan) … Read more
Tenet
After pausing for Dunkirk, a (for him) human-scale drama, Christopher Nolan is back on Inception/Interstellar territory with Tenet, a grandiose exercise in hi-tech bogglement that doesn’t shortchange the fans. It’s spectacular like Operation Desert Storm was. Designed to shock and awe, it’s a technological marvel that would almost rather there were no human involvement at all. Can’t we just get drones to do the acting? Actually, drones have done a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the plot, because rather than come up with anything too new, Nolan has taken a whole load of James Bond bits and pieces and then given a quick wipe over with a massive spend … Read more
God’s Country
Social media is never mentioned in God’s Country. No one even so much as pulls out a smartphone. And yet that seems to be what it’s about – the rush to judgment in a world of hot takes and the corrosive effect that that sort of behaviour has on public discourse. Thandie Newton is the star, now flying under her given name of Thandiwe, a woman we meet in a state of emotional shock after the death of her mother, a university teacher in a redneck world who becomes fixated on the hunters who park their red station wagon on her land before they head off with rifles for a day’s shooting. It’s … Read more
Roadrunner: a Film about Anthony Bourdain
As a film about a person never at ease with himself, Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain sketches a compelling if depressing picture of a man who at first didn’t have it all and was unhappy, and then did have it all and was still unhappy. Bourdain died in 2018 and had been famous since the publication of his 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential turned him into a celebrity at a global level. “It was literally overnight,” he remembers in archive footage, and Roadrunner begins his story more or less about there, barely touching on his years as a heroin addict, a vital piece of the Bourdain jigsaw. And so, merely alluding to the … Read more
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
The day I sat down to watch Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the death of Jim Steinman, songwriter for Meat Loaf, among many others, had just been announced. And it occurred to me about halfway through watching that this epic is a case of same/same: a big, loud, glorious, ever-crescendoing Bat Out of Hell of a movie. Snyder himself pops up before the action gets going, to say a big thank you to the fans who hash-tagged his version of the movie into existence with a #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign. They were disappointed with the original 2017 version, which, having fought a guerrilla campaign against the Warner Bros suits, Snyder finally abandoned after his daughter died. … Read more
The Animal Kingdom
The original title of The Animal Kingdom is Le Règne Animal, because it’s a French movie. That’s why you most likely haven’t heard of it and also probably why it isn’t the global phenomenon it should be. First, let’s be clear that it’s nothing to do with Animal Kingdom, David Michôd’s superbly gnarly Australian crime drama from 2010, or its US TV spin-off, or the metaphysical experimental Irish movie of the same name. The Animal Kingdom is a beast of an entirely different colour, one that’s watched an awful lot of Steven Spielberg movies. Director Thomas Cailley borrows the mood, structures and tropes of Spielberg in playful, corny ET mode to tell the … Read more
The Marsh King’s Daughter
Languid is a strange way to go for a psychological thriller, an even stranger way to go for an action thriller. But that’s how director Neil Burger plays it in The Marsh King’s Daughter, a misfire that looks like a bold experiment gone wrong. There are a a number of people in the cast, among them Brooklynn Prince, Gil Birmingham, Caren Pistorius and Garrett Hedlund, but the only two that really matter are Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn, who play to their strengths – plucky and menacing respectively. Helena is a girl (played at the point by Prince) being brought up brought up in the wilds and taught the ways of the woods … Read more
Napoleon
Ridley Scott does not meet his Waterloo in Napoleon, his headline-hopping spectacular about the man who conquered a huge chunk of Europe under the guise of a liberator. But nor is he covered in glory. This strange film has neither blockbuster smarts, nor arthouse depth, and is little use as a historical resource. If you don’t know Napoleon’s story already, you’ll struggle to keep up with what’s going on. In what are almost a series of sketchlike snapshots, it follows Napoleon Bonaparte the outsider upstart Corsican as the tactically brilliant army officer is swiftly promoted through the ranks. Napoleon saves the French Revolution from itself then mounts a coup d’état. He crowns himself … Read more
