Movies of 2026 - My Pre-Summer Rundown (Part 2)
Sure, it’s a pirate movie, but you really couldn’t get much further away from POTC if you tried – this aggressively blood-soaked, fast-paced and rewardingly ENERGETIC period actioner produced by the Russo Brothers is far closer to their similarly overblown stunt-centric straight-to-streaming post-modern exploitation thriller franchise Extraction, and like those movies this really deserved to actually try its luck in cinemas first. We may mostly know writer-director Frank E. Flowers for penning the recent Bob Marley biopic, but he shows surprisingly impressive and robust skill at wrangling a suitably SAVAGE array of brutally effective action sequences out of his cast and crew, but there’s a bit more genuine SUBSTANCE backing it all up than you might expect, the deceptively simple premise shored up by a surprisingly complex story of a mother trying to bury her dangerous past who’s forced to fall back on old skills when her sins come calling …
Pryanka Chopra (Krrish, Fashion) is frankly STUNNING in more ways than one as a fugitive pirate, who formerly went by the decidedly fitting monicker of “Bloody Mary”, living an idyllic Caribbean island life with her pre-teen son and baby sister but thoroughly dreading the day a face from her past might show up looking to take revenge. She brings rich and exotic presence to the role, very much as we might’ve expected after breakout small-screen turns in Quantico and Citadel, but even so this REALLY DOES significantly stretch her already impressive action chops, showing that she can be a genuinely LETHAL lioness when roused. Of course an big screen badass is only ever as good at the villain arrayed against them, but we absolutely lucked out MAGNIFICENTLY with an absolutely ON FIRE Karl Urban as Captain Connor, a long-standing rival out to extract a heavy price for her past indiscretions as he sets his sights on an even bigger prize. He’s a FEROCIOUS presence here, chewing whopping great mouthfuls of scenery with unrestrained aplomb and making every moment of his pleasingly ample screentime a joy, while the fierce antagonistic chemistry these two powerhouse leads share is magnificently intense throughout, helping the whole thing build to a highly anticipated and deservedly cathartic climactic showdown. The rest of the cast are thoroughly capable too – Temuera Morrison, Ismael Cruz Cordova (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), David Field (Two Hands, City Homicide) and Safia Oakley-Green (Out of Darkness) all pull their weight admirably well here – but at the end of the day they’re all THOROUGHLY eclipsed by the sheer wattage of mutual star power those two give off as they battle for dominance …
There’s a welcome gritty edge and some really dark themes that make this a lot more interesting than you might expect, ultimately bringing this much closer to Black Sails territory (okay, so it’s not really THAT GOOD, but it still very much surprised me), but even so, this is DEFINITELY a balls-to-the-wall action fest that could easily put the POTC franchise on notice if it wanted to. The performers and stunt-team deliver MAGNIFICENTLY throughout, executing some agreeably robust and frequently wince-inducing fights that also display a rewarding amount of invention and variety, which definitely helps to keep things interesting while the whole thing also manages to maintain a suitably brisk pace once it’s set itself up through an admittedly still fraught anticipatory opening stretch. There’s also a pleasing intelligence and sophistication on offer here,, with more than enough emotional heft to keep us invested amidst all the heavy duty bloodletting. Altogether this is FAR BETTER than the sort of thing I usually expect from a straight-to-streaming offering on Prime – I’m DEFINITELY up for more if Amazon did decide to take a chance on a sequel like the ending clearly wants to set up, while I am DEEPLY curious to see what Flowers is gonna do next now he’s shown what he’s REALLY capable of ...
While this mostly snuck in under the radar, getting talked about in the back-end of the festival circuit but never really building up any MAJOR buzz, I still caught wind of this coming early and was absolutely champing at the bit for TWO major reasons – the writer-director and the star. Ultimately I had to wait until it finally limped onto streaming, but it was definitely worthwhile putting in the time because this turned out to be JUST as much of a genuine winner as I was hoping for – after all, I was properly BLOWN AWAY by Zak Hilditch’s “breakout” feature, These Final Hours, an Aussie end-of-the-world psycho-drama that didn’t offer up any easy solutions or expansive action but simple concentrated on all the intense personal emotions the assorted simple folk the story focused on went through in the last twelve hours before it all came to a fiery end. So I was DEEPLY intrigued to see how he’d handle bringing a similar approach to a zombie flick, and I’m so glad it didn’t disappoint …
Daisy Ridley’s the OTHER main reason I was SO worked up about this – she’s a GENUINE WONDER, I’ve been MASSIVELY impressed with her ever since she made her gobsmacking debut in the first Disney Star Wars sequel and proved that she had IMMENSE natural talent despite having no real prior training, and she’s only gone from strength to strength since, so I knew she was gonna deliver something particularly special here. Naturally, she’s absolutely SPELLBINDING as Eva, an American physical-therapist who’s come to Tasmania in the aftermath of a cataclysmic disaster which saw the accidental discharge of a US military experimental weapon wipe out ALL LIFE on the island. Ostensibly she’s here to volunteer for the humanitarian clean-up crew, extracting the bodies of the unfortunate population for humane disposal, but she has an ulterior motive driving her – her husband was at a corporate retreat on the island at the time of the disaster, so she’s determined to find his remains and hopefully get some closure. But there are two major problems standing in her way – the resort is on the other side of a burning city in a massive exclusion zone, and a small but still worryingly significant number of the dead seem to be inexplicably reanimating …
This is VERY MUCH Ridley’s movie, she largely carries the whole thing on her deceptively narrow shoulders and is MORE THAN equal to the task, delivering PRECISELY the tour-de-force performance I was expecting from her – whatever naysayers there are left who think she’s not really that good should finally be put in their place by this turn, she’s powerfully raw and naked and deeply affecting, absolutely wringing every inch of appropriate emotion from what has to be HER VERY BEST performance to date. The criminally overlooked and underused Brenton Thwaites is great too, largely playing it cocky and irreverent but bringing deeper nuance and vulnerability to his character that make us feel there’s a lot more to him than just himbo machismo, while Mark Coles Smith (Picnic At Hanging Rock) is quietly menacing in a complex and mercurial role that once again proves that, in the best zombie stories, the living dead are THE LEAST of our characters’ problems. Both are excellent here, but they’re still mostly acted right off the screen by their co-star – seriously, if THIS doesn’t finally make people properly sit up and start taking Ridley seriously there’s no justice in the world.
Much as I expected, this is NOT a full-bore terror-fest, there aren’t any shambling hordes or knuckle-whitening battles for survival as the cast desperately scramble to evade infection or worse. These zombies are entirely removed from the classic tropes of the sub-genre, reinvented in compellingly fresh and rewardingly inventive ways, largely provoking sympathy rather than dread as the film largely focuses on the harrowing aftermath of a devastating event that NO-ONE could realistically prepare for, it can only be endured and survived rather than actively prevented. There ARE palpable horrors here, but they’re played for pathos rather than scares, the film preferring to deliver a tale of grief, regret and unresolved trauma with no real hope for a tidy resolution in the end. The fact that Hilditch is able to wring an impressive amount of haunting beauty and stately grandeur out of it all is an impressive thing, but after his breakout feature I’m not really particularly surprised, it definitely shares a lot of the same highbrow DNA. This is similarly visually arresting and emotionally devastating, and despite its slowburn pace and mostly understated execution it never drags, there’s always something interesting going on to keep you hooked before it finally delivers a genuinely startling climax. Ultimately I don’t see this one really becoming anything more than a minor cult favourite, and that’s a criminal shame because this is a genuinely EXCELLENT work of rate vision and exceptional power that DESERVES to be seen ...
8. 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE
Right off the bat I must admit that this just DOESN’T impress me quite so much as the last one did. That’s no shade to Nia DaCosta, of course – I think she’s great, she’s got a powerful talent and she’s MORE THAN deserving of the high praise she’s largely been denied so far, and I think she did a similarly BEAUTIFUL job with this that she did with her Candyman “requel” and the criminally underrated The Marvels. Danny Boyle just did it BETTER ...
That being said, this IS a very interesting position to be in, as far as this franchise as a whole is concerned. You have to bear in mind that, before this, EVERY ONE of the 28 {Insert Here} Later movies has unapologetically been ENTIRELY its own thing within the sequence, a largely self-contained experience with its own very particular cinematic identity despite their shared lore and overarching storyline (hell, from what I can tell the SECOND ONE has largely been pretty comprehensively DISOWNED from canon narrative by Boyle and Garland themselves, which is pretty scathing really). This is THE FIRST FILM in the franchise to actually DIRECTLY follow what came before, a TRUE sequel that picks up individual characters’ story and builds on these narratives in a direct way, following young Spike (youg breakout star-in-the-making Alfie Williams) on his increasingly fraught misadventures with his newfound “friends”, Sir Jimmy and the Fingers, while also peripherally delving far deeper into the tale of Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) as he tends both his ossuary and a dangerous but potentially fruitful burgeoning friendship with well-endowed Alpha Infected Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), so there’s already a far stronger connection between this and the first Years than any the previous films. So DaCosta was left in the EXTREMELY unenviable position of having to follow on from what Boyle and co did in the “first” one while also making this film her own … and for the most prt I think she managed to do JUST THAT. But also, somehow, I think this GENUINELY being a proper SEQUEL does also rob it of some of the distinctive originality its predecessor had, which is already a mark against it before it even gets out the gate. And that’s not the ONLY problem, but we’ll get to that …
For the most part, though, this works out JUST FINE. Almost everything that worked so well in the last film that’s been transplanted here works like GANGBUSTERS. Ultimately this IS a more consistently COHERENT piece of work than the third film, DaCosta definitely bringing a more even-handed and measured approach than Boyle’s more incessantly FRENETIC and somewhat fevered style, and this certainly helps to ground the events in a grittier, more dark and dirty intensity which fits a significantly more straightforward story. There’s still a clear breathtaking BEAUTY to the piece as well, the cinematography maintaining an agreeably skilful flair and sense of haunting WONDER, while also finding a brittle beauty in the post-apocalyptic squalor and ruin. And the worldbuilding remains absolutely UNPARALLELED, even if, thanks to the more FOCUSED scope, there’s definitely less grandiose SCOPE here than we got in the last movie. But I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to properly get to know our new resident villains this time round … for better or worse …
Jack O’Connell certainly gets to be the most interesting one here this time round – he’s definitely as ferociously TERRIFYING as he was in Sinners, but thankfully Sir Jimmy Crystal is a significantly DIFFERENT character from Remmick, a different kind of self-absorbed evil little cult leader this time round, but no less interesting in spite of it, and his performance is consistently MESMERISING. I also enjoyed seeing SIGNIFICANTLY more of my beloved Erin Kellyman than I ever hoped to, she got to really SHINE in this, landing an enjoyably complex role that really got to play to her myriad strengths, while young up-and-comer Alfie Williams continues to impress after rightly dominating the first Years, and I really enjoyed seeing Lewis-Parry’s magnificently intimidating Samson get a SIGNIFICANTLY expanded role in some VERY interesting and unexpected ways. But at the end of the day, it is, once again, the living legend himself, the incomparable Mr Fiennes, who comprehensively STEALS THE WHOLE MOVIE. The man continues to be MAGNIFICENT in one of his most interesting roles EVER, a fascinatingly complicated but also thoroughly ENDEARING man who manages to hold onto his integrity, kindness and stately GRACE no matter WHAT this nightmarish existence throws at him. I genuinely CANNOT BELIEVE this man STILL doesn’t have an Oscar yet …
In the end this is DEFINITELY darker than its predecessor, which is an IMPRESSIVE feat following a movie which already had SO MUCH NASTINESS in it … but seriously, this is, at times, maybe a bit TOO MUCH, I don’t doubt that one scene in particular will be genuinely overwhelming for some viewers, even if this whole thing’s an absolute TREAT for the gorehounds. Even so, there’s still a certain soulfulness that definitely carried through whole from the third film, particularly in the more interesting of the two main storylines, Dr Kelson’s burgeoning “relationship” with Samson, which frequently lends the whole affair an air of tragic doomed whimsy which I really fell for wholeheartedly. That being said, the fact that the two largely disparate storylines take SO LONG to finally resolve ultimately makes this whole thing feel a bit like two separate films welded together with less skill than I’d really prefer kind of counts against it, but I feel like that's probably more Alex Garland's fault than DaCosta's, and at least when the two groups are finally brought crashing together it leads to a truly GOBSMACKING climax which provides to be one of the VERY BEST sequences in the series as a whole. I definitely enjoyed the musical contributions, too – score composer Hildur Gudnadottir definitely pulls her weight here, while the soundtrack choices are enjoyably idiosyncratic throughout. I love Duran Duran as much as anyone, but as a card-carrying metalhead this film’s use of a particularly well-placed Iron Maiden song is ABSOLUTELY the icing on the cake. Finally the film drops a tease of what’s still to come, and if it turns out to be as good as that epilogue promised then it could be the best of the bunch. Or at least since the ORIGINAL. I guess we’ll just have to see ...
Joe Carnahan’s last film, Not Without Hope, felt like something of a throwback, a real life survival drama that harkened back to the gritty moodiness of The Grey (albeit ultimately in a more overwrought and undercooked kind of way that was mainly saved by its cast), and there’s a bit of that to this one too, seeing him somewhat revisiting the murky dark and seriously grimy corrupt-cop drama of his original breakthrough feature Narc … albeit while also bringing something a good deal FRESHER to the mix as well. Ultimately this one fairs MUCH BETTER than his previous offering, seeing the director deliver one of the very best films I’ve seen from him to date, a taut and ferociously MEATY suspense thriller which plays a VERY sneaky game with its audience. Seriously, this is a TWISTED slice oi EXTREMELY heightened drama indeed, weaving a spellbinding labyrinth of suspicion, duplicity, betrayal and divided loyalties that kept me on the edge of my seat ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) and Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne (Ben Affleck) are two seasoned veteran Miami Dade cops on a narco task force who find themselves under investigation for corruption after their commanding officer is brutally murdered in highly dubious circumstances, so the LAST thing they should be doing is following up on their late leader’s cryptic tip to check out a newly discovered “trap house” on a seemingly routine cash search. But when the haul proves to be SIGNIFICANTLY larger than they were expecting, tempers start to fray as temptation raises its ugly head and nobody can be sure who they can REALLY trust around THIS MUCH CASH … ultimately the MAIN selling point of this movie is, OF COURSE, the much vaunted onscreen shared-lead reunion of Damon and Affleck, two actors who have CONSISTENTLY delivered every time they’ve properly gotten to work together onscreen before, so getting to see them go head-to-head again with something THIS substantial (after so many years of one usually turning up in a much smaller role to support the other instead of just getting to see them properly SHARE the spotlight) is definitely an unadulterated JOY – these two are HITTING HARD and taking no prisoners, both actors ABSOLUTELY bringing their A-game (especially Affleck, who I’ve always felt generally tends to MOSTLY deliver his proper GOOD STUFF when he’s serving under a genuinely talented director who can really PUSH HIM to stretch himself … which, rather amusingly, does actually include HIMSELF), and the results are some of the VERY BEST performative fireworks I’ve seen from EITHER of them for a good long while. It certainly helps they’ve both got rewardingly complex characters to play, being able to dig DEEP into the nuances at play in their respective backstories, but at the end of the day it’s JUST AS MUCH about how well they’re able to feed into each other’s abilities and instincts to really DRIVE their various exchanges, and this leads to many of the film’s MOST intense and memorable moments. It’s an incredible experience and I felt GENUINELY PRIVILEGED getting to watch this unfold, it feels like this may well go down as some of THE VERY BEST acting we’re gonna see this year, PERIOD.
But that doesn’t mean that everybody else gets eclipsed by the sheer star-wattage of the two heavyweight leads – this is definitely one of THE VERY BEST CASTS Carnahan has assembled to date, and EVERYBODY here is pulling their weight as much as the big marquee names. Steven Yeun particularly stands out here, he’s always been a really interesting and enjoyably RICH performer but he’s brought something special to this one, while I got a really MASSIVE kick out of getting to see Sasha Calle finally getting a role that REALLY lets us see her strengths on full display after her opportunity to break out playing Supergirl comprehensively disappeared after the DCEU fizzled out. One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor and Maria Full of Grace’s Catalina Sandonio Moreno make for an enjoyably vital pair too, and I got a real kick out of seeing Scott Adkins getting to really ACT without having to do any fancy punches or kicks for once. But it’s Kyle Chandler who MOST holds our attention here, seeming to go from surprise cameo to far more SERIOUS heavyweight supporting player as the film progresses, his importance and pure PRESENCE almost seeming to INCREASE as the narrative grows more tangled.
Really though, this is a COMPLICATED BEAST of a film, there’s a whole lot of moving parts but they’re ALL very intelligently put together and deployed as the story progresses. The first half starts out already pretty loaded but it takes its time to lay things out and put us in a particularly difficult and morally INTENSE situation, all while very effectively cranking up the tension with a thickening atmosphere of oppressive foreboding and ripe suspicion, before the second hour finally starts to tease out the action side while things go from just twisted to a genuine cinematic THICKET. While this film does put something of a premium on genuine action-based fireworks, what there is here is FULL-BLOODED and pleasingly robust, delivering a particularly fraught and chaotic atmospheric shootout before the film finally builds up to a spectacularly adrenalized two-pronged chase. But the film’s BIGGEST fireworks are definitely much more due to the committed performances and seriously COMPLICATED plotting – this film is a genuine BAG OF SNAKES all the way through, very hard to predict and throwing an almost DIZZYING number of twists and turns our way, but it’s all expertly set up and paid off, something I don’t doubt is really gonna reward repeat viewing. This is proper TOP SHELF STUFF from a director who’s always excelled at more flashy and OVERBLOWN cinema, so I really enjoyed seeing him reining in his showier impulses for once and just delivering a “simple” thriller that trades on SUBSTANCE over style … even if there is, nonetheless, still a whole hell of a lot of THAT in here too ...
6. GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE
This is already turning into one of the great Marmite Movies of the year, and I can totally see why, there is A LOT going on in this one and it’s just A LOT of movie altogether, and sometimes people can’t really GEL with that, even the well-rounded ones coming with good intentions. You really have to be IN THE MOOD for something like this, but at the same time actually really ENGAGING with it is a whole lot more rewarding than you might expect, at least from what it SOUNDS LIKE. On paper this really SHOULDN’T WORK, it’s a genuinely tangled narrative mess with A LOT of ideas that you really don’t expect to mesh very well, and I suspect if this had been made with less attention to detail and some real strong commitment to the glorious absurdity on offer it likely would have devolved into a great big cinematic dumpster fire. But this turned out to be one of those flash-in-the-pan instances where everything actually came together just right, and so those willing to just GO WITH IT will find plenty to enjoy here. Or maybe they won’t, I suspect even some of THOSE people just won’t GET THIS ONE …
Anyway, it definitely helps that everybody involved here was really just as committed to the bit as the suitably mad screenwriter (then again, Matthew Robinson IS the guy who came up with The Invention of Lying and polished Brian Duffield’s script for Love & Monsters, so there’s that … although he did also come up with Monster Trucks, so … yeah, maybe don’t read TOO MUCH into it). Gore Verbisnki was definitely an INTERESTING CHOICE to direct, once absolutely ON FIRE for his top-notch work on the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and the criminally underrated adaptation of Ring, but then fallen SERIOUSLY out of grace with the significantly more hit-and-miss Lone Ranger movie, but while I don’t really see this being the second renaissance I suspect he might have been hoping for for his career, this definitely turned out to be WAY better than I really expected from him – this is a BONKERS piece of work, but there’s genuinely flair and vitality to the whole thing, it’s whip-smart and fast-paced and thoroughly sticks to its guns the whole time, and I have to admire the way he definitely wrangled everything into order so seamlessly despite having SO MANY moving parts to deal with. There’s at least a half dozen initially disparate story elements going on here, but the great genius of the whole thing is that, once all the pieces fall into place, you realise how surprisingly intricate and ingenious the entire tapestry actually is, and this translates far better to the screen than you really expect.
The whole thing kicks off with Sam Rockwell’s mysterious stranger walking into a late night diner dressed in outlandish clothes and threatening the staff and customers with what he claims is a bomb while talking craziness about being sent back from the future over and over again to prevent the imminent emergence of a rogue AI from causing the complete downfall of society and the deaths of most of the population. Gathering up a seemingly random selection of his hostages – Mark and Janet (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz), a pair of substitute teachers who’ve become deeply disturbed by the fact their students are turning into mind-controlled drones under the spell of their social media-powered phones, Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother going through an existential crisis because she was given the chance to resurrect her son, recently killed in a school shooting, using cutting-edge cloning technology, only for him to come back very WRONG, and Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a professional kids’ birthday party princess suffering from a lifelong chronic illness that renders her violently allergic to digital devices, among others – he heads out on a dangerous mission to hunt down and kill the creator of the AI before it can go online ...
The cast are all fantastically game here. This is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT Rockwell’s show, the man is an offbeat quirky GENIUS in everything he does but this role really does seem like it was written especially for him (honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it WAS), and it really just feels like he was given very general direction in each scene and allowed to just GO OFF because it really does feel like he’s just freewheeling it and it’s BEAUTIFUL. Even so, there’s genuine complexity beneath all the showy overacting too – he comes across as a man who’s been driven far beyond his breaking point, but there’s both a steely inner-strength and a deep-seated vulnerability in his turn that make this feel like so much more than just what you can see on the surface, which is a perfect fit here. Thankfully the other main cast members are easily equal to the task, and their characters have, by and large, been crafted with the same impressive care and attention to detail too, so they don’t just get lost in the chatter while their co-star is proper COOKING. Richardson is definitely one of the biggest standouts here, and Ingrid is EASILY the most interesting of Sam’s motley crew, a fascinatingly tragic and troubled young woman who effortlessly tugs at our heartstrings even as she finds the strength to truly rise to the occasion once it gets really messy. Peña and Beetz, meanwhile, are huge fun and have some really sweet chemistry, and Temple is, unsurprisingly, absolute DYNAMITE in another gloriously complex role which goes a really long way to show why she’s rightly become one of the BIGGEST breakout stars of her generation. And Asim Chaudhry is absolute comic GOLD just like you expect him to be …
Once you give yourself over to the sheer madcap EXPERIENCE this really is a deliriously GLORIOUS wild ride of a film, throwing a multitude of fascinating ideas at you while somehow managing to do justice to every one of them without losing sight of the bigger picture. This seems really noisy from the outside, but there’s genuine method to the madness, and the way it’s structured means that the deeper you delve into the seemingly overstuffed story the more sense it manages to make. Like I said, this SEEMS like a collection of seemingly disparate cautionary tales strung together by a much more overblown framing device, but everything has its place and leads to a genuinely compelling climax where all our questions are answered in very clever ways. It’s impressively sophisticated, not just in the execution of the various ideas but in the way it’s all presented, and while there’s a fiendishly subversive sense of humour there’s some troubling DARKNESS at the heart of it too that gives it proper weight and a significant amount of DANGER besides. It’s HILARIOUSLY funny too, while the setpieces are dynamically staged and suitably offbeat to really fit the overall off-kilter vibe. And the film has absolutely NO FEAR about getting really NUTS when it needs to, delivering some of the most spectacularly BONKERS moments we’re likely to see this year, with an ending which is GUARANTEED to surprise you. I promise you WILL NOT see that shit coming, and that is ALL THE WAY a compliment.
Seriously, this is EASILY one of the most original, out there and just purely AMBITIOUS movies I have seen in a real long time, taking particularly prescient and timely themes we’re really starting to get seriously worried about and recontextualising them through one extremely SKEWED LENS in order to really shake us up about this. I’m not at all surprised by all the Black Mirror comparisons, this is DEFINITELY going to do serious numbers with THAT crowd, and I fully support it. Sure, this is NOT going to be the big hit they might have hoped for, and while in a way that’s better – seriously, we NEED properly NEW and FRESH slowburn word-of-mouth sleeper cinema like this to keep us intrigued in this day and age – we are more at risk of losing the opportunity to see any more truly inspired cinema like this in the future than ever, and that’s very nearly as scary as AI taking over and anything else that this movie’s dreamed up …
Okay, here we go, the first PROPER contender for animated feature of the year for me (although it’s since been usurped – you’ll see) … and yeah, it’s really nice that Sony Pictures have really stuck to the clear commitment they’ve made since the tail end of the 2010s to properly show up with seriously HIGH QUALITY family-friendly animated cinema that can be just as impressive and impactful for the grown-ups as the little kids they’re being forced to accompany to see this stuff in the first place. Sure, I may be all about the Spider-Verse stuff, but lately I’ve found myself really responding to a lot of the other stuff they’ve given us outside of that too, from the straight-to-streaming stuff like K-Pop Demon Hunters and The Mitchells Vs The Machines to the stuff that actually makes it to theatres like TMNT: Mutant Mayhem … which is probably the closest comparison point to THIS one, really. And yeah, I can HAPPILY chalk this one up as another strong success story that already has me wanting more …
Will Harris (Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin) is a poor little inner-city goat who dreams of becoming a professional “roarball” player so he can follow in the footsteps of his hero, Jett Fillmore (Gabrielle Union), the black panther star player of his local team, the Vineland Thorns. He’s an incredibly talented kid, too, there’s just one thing standing in his way – as far as everybody else is concerned, “smalls” like him can’t play because roarball is a sport dominated by BIG animals and he’s just going to get CRUSHED as surely as his hopes. But the Thorns haven’t won a season in YEARS, and with the team in desperate trouble their warthog manager, Flo Everson (Jenifer Lewis) is looking for ANYTHING that could give them an edge, so when she sees a video capturing Will absolutely HUMILIATING legendary Andalusian stallion rival player Mane Attraction (soon-to-be Green Lantern Aaron Pierre) in an impromptu one-on-one match, she has a really crazy idea, and our plucky goat finally gets a chance to prove himself. But Jett’s not about to let some rookie steal her thunder, and as good as he is the odds really DO still seem to be stacked against him ...
The title is DEFINITELY just as much figurative as literal, and that kind of multi-layered smarts is just what I like about this one. Yeah, this is EASY to digest for smaller audience members, but there’s some definite nuance for the “bigs” in the crowd to appreciate too. At its core this is a film about following your dreams no matter what the status quo might want to say about how the perceived rules might be set up to keep you out, ANYONE can be a star if they dream (ahem) big enough, but there’s also strong messages about teamwork and listening your friends, not stepping on those around you to get to the top because it’s not just about IF you win, but how you GET THERE. Sure, none of this is exactly galaxy brain, super life-changing revelatory BIG WOW stuff, but it’s at least delivered in such a way that it genuinely MAKES the moments truly SING with impressive power. And it’s definitely a powerfully EMOTIONAL piece of work, a film suitably overflowing with genuine heart and substantial weight, which therefore makes it a good deal more rewarding besides. Kids are gonna go in mostly for the bright colours and talking animals, but they’ll leave with an education they actually ENJOYED getting, while the adults should definitely be pleased that they actually had a good time instead of spending half the time checking their watches and the rest trying not to let the cringe show TOO MUCH. Which is a fine measure of universal success for something like this.
It certainly helps that the characters are very strong, with a lot more going on than just a bunch of rote stereotypical tropes intended to make the message flow through a little more smoothly. And more so that the cast voicing them all are thoroughly talented to boot. Ultimately it’s the titular star who shoulders the lion’s share of the narrative weight here, with Will genuinely being the ideal underdog for this particular story, and McLaughlin is ideal casting for such a plucky and determined but persistently upbeat dreamer given the opportunity to realise his potential despite so much arrayed against him, although I greatly appreciated that Jett (who pretty quickly became my favourite character, flaws and all) was allowed just as much agency throughout the story too, and especially having SUCH a strong character arc too. It was a tricky thing keeping her likeable in spite of her big ego, but in the end I found the prickly edges actually made her MORE endearing because she wound up feeling SO understandable in her deep-down insecurity and determination to not just win but actually be ACCEPTED for it. As for the rest of the team, they’re all absolute keepers, but I particularly appreciated the adorably neurotic ostrich, Olivia (Derry Girls and Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlin), and OF COURSE the truly scene-stealing off-the-wall genius of Nick Kroll’s hilariously unpredictable and unapologetically singular Modo, who is undeniably the most memorably inventive creation in the entire piece. And the rest of the colourful collection of voices impress throughout too, from the truly inspired casting of Patton Oswalt as the team’s coach Dennis to Will’s lovable best friends Hannah (Joy Ride and Shortcomings’ Sherry Cola) and Darryl (Stranger Things’ Eduardo Franco), while Pierre delivers a winningly skilful turn as the film’s nominal villain, giving genuine restrained menace as strong as his more showy bravado-filled celebrity brinkmanship.
All round this was a genuine treat, a SPECTACULARLY colourful piece of work, visually arresting and absolutely GORGEOUS in its consistently vibrant and endlessly inspired creativity and invention, with some FIRE levels of skilful worldbuilding that take the real world allegories and create something that, if I’m really honest, actually OUTDOES what Disney delivered with the Zootopia flicks. Moreover, that signature Sony animation style really POPS with this one, perfectly fitting the rich complexity of the design of the characters and environments, while everything moves with impressive speed and intensity even OUTSIDE of the setpieces. Which are themselves REALLY GREAT too, each roarball sequence delivering something fresh and thoroughly inspired while the choreography of the actual movements is a thing of beauty. The pace is agreeably nippy too and the balance of inspired, sometimes agreeably outlandish humour and genuine heartfelt emotional POWER is pitched to perfection. This is just a thorough, rousing success, and I didn’t have to look around me at the crowd in my screen to know everybody else was enjoying it too because it spoke just as much to my more jaded adult half as the kid inside that, thankfully, has never even TRIED to grow up. This one really is something for everyone, which means it pulled off its intended job JUST RIGHT. And it ended to perfection too – sure, I’d be HAPPY to see Sony come back with more of this in the future, but the way they sign off here means it would be just as fine if this is all we ever get. And I’m really happy with that ...
Oh yeah, clearly this is gonna be one of the year’s biggest Marmite Movies, I can TOTALLY see a lot of people really NOT LIKING THIS, and that’s fair because it is a very STRANGE and decidedly polarising piece, and quite clearly INTENTIONAL TOO. Films like this are not meant for mass markets, not really, they’re intended to spark debate and have people either love them or hate them, they’re not meant to appeal to everybody. But that’s good, because films like this definitely still find THEIR audiences because cults are like that. And this one has future classic written all over it. I’m glad of that, because I’m definitely one of the ones it worked its spell on just fine – I was already onboard for what I figured was going to be a particularly WILD ride, and it didn’t disappoint. It did EXACTLY what it promised to, and I really love it for it.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second directorial feature is certainly an extremely AMBITIOUS piece of work – I haven’t seen The Lost Daughter, so I really don’t have any frame of reference on how it compares, but going from this she really has a very singular voice that really speaks to me as a lover of deeply original takes on otherwise well-trodden ground. Well this doesn’t so much remix tired old tropes as just throw everything out and start completely fresh – Maggie’s screenplay concentrates on the barest bones of Mary Shelley’s TRUE ORIGINAL science fiction novel and uses it to create something ENTIRELY NEW which still feels at once akin to the source, so this definitely isn’t just another tired old case of Hollywood flogging one of its VERY DEADEST horses for a few more dollars. This is spectacularly OFF-THE-WALL, a beautifully bizarre bonkers fever dream of a film, coming right in at the start with a fantastically batshit concept and just running with it while twisting the whole world it inhabits marvellously out of true into a weird pastiche that manages to carry through to a thoroughly unexpected but ultimately still PERFECTLY natural conclusion which is both tragic but also poetically RIGHT for the piece as a whole. Although saying anything about what that actually IS beyond the broadest of hints would do this whole experience a criminal disservice, and I’m ultimately deeply glad the advertising campaign by and large did a really smart job of keeping the spoilers to the barest minimum too. This is best watched just going in cold, so just take my word for it that this is PROPER GENIUS. You might like it, but you might not … that’s not for me to say. But you’ll definitely be suitably BAMBOOZLED …
Still here? Okay then … it’s Chicago circa 1938, where Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) has come in search of mad scientist Dr Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Benning) in the hope that she can create another like him as a partner to ease the unbearable loneliness of his torturous immortal existence. As luck would have it, a suitable candidate has just presented themselves – Ida (Jessie Buckley), a call-girl who was just killed for spilling what she knew about the monstrous appetites of a local Mob boss. But something else has hitched a ride back in the mind of this newly resurrected woman, and as the pair go on the run they leave behind a trail of chaos which is soon picked up by a gaggle of disparate pursuers from both sides of the Law ...
Jake Gyllenhaal makes a really interesting appearance in this which is ultimately a good deal LESS than the trailers might have you think, but in the end that’s probably for the best – in truth he’s clearly here as a favour to his sister, but that works because his character is really more of a touchstone for a particular character’s personal needs and wants to come across mostly as metaphor (leading to a subtly tragic “don’t meet your heroes” moment that leads to something a good deal more intriguing), and besides, it’s a perfect excuse for him to just indulge in another one of his more … OUT THERE turns. By and large, the film mainly revolves around the narrative viewpoint of TWO main couples, along with ONE particularly notable supporting character who mostly provides intriguing bookends for the main story, but still makes a hell of an impression throughout because of how fantastically ODD she is. Of course, the lion’s share of the narrative thrust definitely belongs to the film’s star crossed lovers, with Buckley delivering an absolutely UNSTOPPABLE tour-de-force performance, absolutely BLOWING EVERYBODY ELSE off the screen, including her co-star … although Bale does, nonetheless, largely manage to JUST ABOUT hold his own against SUCH an astonishing turn since he IS one of the greatest actors of his generation. Besides, his “Frankie” is a marvellously tragic (ahem) creation in his own right, at once needy and somewhat childish in the way his somewhat undirected ideas of what he even wants ultimately manage to kick off SO MUCH CHAOS, but also deeply heartfelt and poetic and sometimes SO DAMN ENDEARING in his sheer awkwardness that it’s impossible not to root for him anyway, and the pair share a truly incendiary chemistry which really does constantly set the screen on fire, whether they’re dancing around each other or figuratively tearing each other apart through sheer frustration. Meanwhile the comparatively underserved pairing of Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz (who arrive a little shy of the halfway point and then mostly dip in and out of the story) came as a genuine happy surprise that I absolutely ADORED, which really just made it kind of frustrating that the world-weary broken down gumshoe detective and his far more bright-eyed and eager rookie partner were ultimately given quite short shrift – they’re a fascinating (sort of) couple, and really deserved to be leading a different movie, some kind of post modern take on a His Girl Friday-esque screwball mystery comedy. Finally there’s Benning, skilfully taking a character who, honestly, is just WEIRD SHIT INCARNATE and turning her into a deliciously tired and cranky but still somehow rewardingly wonderstruck “mad scientist” who just fits so perfectly into this whole fantastically bizarre cinematic tapestry.
This really is a SPECTACULARLY ODD film, a bona fide acid trip that keeps flipping genres even in individual scenes with impressive abandon, and while it really shouldn’t work, Gyllenhaal’s fearlessly ballsy unifying take manages to rein it all in and keep thinks flowing impressively smoothly despite all the baffling eccentricity on offer. There’s a decidedly meta flavour to the whole thing too, the way it’s as much ABOUT cinema as it’s clearly IN LOVE with it, ultimately becoming a gloriously skewed love letter to the silver age of screen musicals and a macabre black comedy reinvention of Depression-era runaway criminal melodramas which were themselves inspired by “Robin Hood” crooks of the day like John Dillinger and Babyface Nelson. For the most part the body horror elements are kept on the back-burner, so while there are some icky moments scattered about, for the most part this is played far more as a darkly off-kilter romantic drama married with an old school crime thriller, while most of the scary stuff is purely PSYCHOLOGICAL, tying into a recurrent storytelling conceit that I know is really gonna IRRITATE some viewers (especially a lot of purists) but is handled with real skill and a pleasing amount of bizarre poetry so for me it just WORKS. Honestly that’s just a microcosm of the film itself – this is a fundamentally MAD MOVIE, schizophrenic and more than a little DANGEROUS in many ways, but surprisingly endearing and touching and genuinely extremely ROMANTIC so there’s true WORTH to what it has to offer, and it stubbornly sticks to its guns THE WHOLE TIME so if nothing else you really have to admire its stubborn COMMITMENT TO THE BIT. We just don’t get enough truly ORIGINAL genre cinema like this any more, not with this big name level STAR POWER behind it, so between this and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die we really should be damn thankful movies like this still exist at all. I for one am happy to champion it as long as I can, it’s definitely worth it.
Now listen, I LOVE Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow, it’s huge fun and a spectacular sci-fi action comedy that is GENUINELY as smart as it thinks it is … but even so, I was REALLY EXCITED when I heard about this new anime adaptation of author Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s original novel which promised a very different and more leftfield take on the core concept – Rita Vrataski, a young woman working on a massive alien artifact fallen from space in a mech suit, finds herself repeating the same day over when whatever it is finally wakes up and an invading force of lethal biomechanical killing machines starts killing everything in sight, leading her to take full advantage of her seemingly inescapable situation to learn to fight back and maybe stem the tide of this nightmarish invasion. Seriously, that whole premise was genuinely MADE for this particular medium, so the prospect of a film really do it all justice was something I couldn’t turn down. So I wholeheartedly recommend anyone who’s seen Doug Liman’s live-action take to check this one out too because you’re gonna LOVE IT, but also anyone else who hasn’t either, just ANYBODY really, it’s too good not to. This is EVERYTHING I hoped it would be …
It’s a magnificently colourful, daring and extremely adventurous piece of work, and I particularly enjoyed the way the particular animation style is SO MUCH outside the stylistic norm of standard anime too. It’s much more in keeping with the offbeat style of some of Studio 4°C’s more singularly outlandish and idiosyncratic work like Tekkonkinkreet, delivering some really interesting and unique character designs while also shaping the way the action is crafted and executed in really intriguing ways too. I love how even in its quiet moments there’s such fascinating dynamism here, and the film is unafraid to merge some really beautiful human moments with some proper surrealist HORROR, sometimes both at once. The creature designs are suitably bizarre and definitely entirely ALIEN, while the tech is quite weird but nonetheless feels like it could genuinely WORK in reality, at least in this kind of situation. And it’s so COLOURFUL, it’s all very bright and striking and opulent, I really vibe with the way this never really gets DARK or moody, even at its most nightmarish everything’s decked out in vibrant primary colours and that FASCINATES me, it’s a gorgeous paradox.
Most importantly, though, this is a marvellously HUMAN story. At its core its about two very different but equally damaged and vulnerable young loners finding each other and discovering they can only REALLY solve their problems by working together, and managing to save THE WHOLE WORLD while they’re at it. There’s a great deal of deeply affecting heart and pathos here which really touched me, and I’ll admit that as much as I ADORE the visual splendour and magnificently madcap action and invention on offer here, I know full well I couldn’t have found it HALF as compelling without that very strong emotional connection to keep it all so well rooted. Meanwhile this definitely has as much fun playing with all those videogame-esque ultraviolent time-loop shenanigans as Tom Cruise’s take did, which definitely made so much FUN while we were at it. This is just a full-on TREAT for the artform, easily one of the most memorable and distinctive anime features I’ve come across for some time, and I have great hope for whatever debuting director Kenichiro Akimoto does next ...
I can EASILY see this fantastically ODD little film giving birth to a whole generation of gloriously WEIRD future filmmakers, artists and other brilliant little out-of-the-box creatives – this is a particularly heady mixture of a whole bunch of disparate influences and inspirations that, on paper at least, sound like they’d make some kind of unholy mess, and yet here they’ve been woven together with such magnificent skill that it all meshes with a genuinely intoxicating precision, and the results are a film which is absolutely destined to become a brilliant future gateway horror for an entire generation while simultaneously potentially introducing them to a few other little sub-genres besides. There are elements of Grimm’s fairy-tales in here, a hefty dose of absurdist dark comedy mixed in, with more than a little (intentional) post-John Wick action thriller vibe to make things even more interesting, although here it’s A GOOD DEAL more restrained, clearly geared to be accessible for younger viewers as well as their parents by dialling back the violence and at least SOME of the more adult themes without sacrificing ANY of the edge. This is EXACTLY the kind of formative film I would have ADORED when I was growing up and I KNOW it’s going to be JUST THAT for a great many in the future.
Aurora (Annika and The Chemistry of Death’s Sophie Sloan) is a little girl who’s terrified of the monster under her bed, but her parents don’t believe her protestations until it comes up out of the floor and EATS THEM ALIVE. Certain she’s going to be next, she enlists the help of her new neighbour (Mads Mikkelsen), a reclusive loner who also just happens to be a world-class hitman, to help her get rid of the monster once and for all. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t believe her, but now they’re both in an even more precarious position because as far as his handler Laverne (Sigourney Weaver) is concerned, this little girl just turned herself into a material witness who knows far too much about their business and needs to be eliminated … Mikkelsen is a PHENOMENAL choice for the lead here, bringing his trademark subtle edge of understated suave menace to bear in a role which is SOMEWHAT like the character he played in Polar but with the rough edges more effectively smoothed off, giving him a good deal more quirky charm to eliminate any hints of creepiness. Certainly this is a much more thoroughly WHOLESOME tale of a burgeoning surrogate father/daughter bond than what we saw in Luc Besson’s Leon (a clear influence), and his chemistry with Sloan is MARVELLOUS, easily forming a powerful emotional core for the story to unfold around. The young actress is a REVELATION here, bringing a weight of maturity far beyond her years to the role while still seeming SO adorably innocent in spite of everything her character’s clearly been through, and her wonderfully subtle comedic timing is FLAWLESS. Weaver’s really not in this anywhere near as much as she SHOULD BE, but what we get of her is FANTASTIC, she’s clearly having an absolute blast playing passive-aggressively bitchy charming here and I love how great HER chemistry with Mikkelsen is too, these two really need to work together again. The supporting cast are memorable too – any appearance from David Dastmalchian is a welcome one, and he’s clearly having fun too, while Sheila Atim (The Underground Railroad) is classy and Rebecca Henderson (Russian Doll, The Acolyte) is creepy but still fantastically GAME. In the end, though, this is VERY MUCH Mads and Sophie’s film and they both carry it SPLENDIDLY.
This may be Bryan Fuller’s directorial debut, but I’ve been a fan of his work for ages now, thanks in no small part to his LONG and immensely fruitful collaboration with Mikkelsen as the creator/showrunner of Hannibal, while he similarly impressed through his work on Pushing Daisies and American Gods besides, so it was only a matter of time before he made the leap to directing AS WELL as writing. Needless to say he’s JUST as accomplished on THIS side of the equation, bringing an impressive flair and wondrously PLAYFUL, darkly mischievous invention, crafting a spellbinding air of idiosyncratic heightened reality which artfully skews our expectations in fun and daring ways. It’s really no surprise he famously sited Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie as his very favourite film – I felt right from the opening scenes that this whole thing had a powerfully FRENCH vibe to it, extremely reminiscent of a Jeunet & Caro film (a la Delicatessen or City of Lost Children), and it lends an enjoyably offbeat atmosphere which blends very well with the dark humour and effectively haunting but never overtly scary atmosphere. Ultimately this ISN’T wall-to-wall action like the advertising might make you expect, the film is a good deal more slowburn, but that means it instead does a particularly compelling job of taking its time to introduce the characters, setting and narrative stakes before finally UNLEASHING the more potentially THRILLING aspects with a suitably patient and artful amount of scene-setting. The effects work is striking too, using CGI in clever ways while the creature design is incredibly striking, making the monster itself a brilliant blend of sort-of-scary but also kind-of-cute, albeit in a particularly TWISTED way. And this has artistic style TO BURN, with every scene designed, choreographed and shot with the kind of rare and eye-catching flair that many filmmakers can only ENVY. This is an AMAZING directorial debut for a creative voice I have admired for a good while, and I CANNOT WAIT to see what he’s gonna do next ...
So did you ever think you’d wind up crying buckets over a space tarantula made of rock? No, neither did I … and yet here we are. Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s first feature gig as directors since their last tour on Jump Street (and indeed their first officially helming a project, PERIOD, since their original aborted gig on Solo; A Star Wars Story crashed and burned through no fault of their own) is not immediately what we might have expected from the guys who made The Lego Movie, although given their CLOSE involvement throughout all aspects of the Spider-Verse movies it’s not really SO unexpected … but anyway, this is, quite simply, an absolute, unadulterated JOY from start to finish, the kind of film that locks onto you in the first five minutes and works its magic so effectively that you’re helpless to escape its spell because it’s all SO DAMN WELL MADE in every aspect but more importantly it’s also just been made with SO MUCH LOVE too. Then again, this is VERY MUCH how it was with The Martian, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of wannabe astronaut-turned-author Andy Weir’s DEBUT sci-fi adventure, which for me was genuinely one of THE GREATEST NOVELS EVER WRITTEN long before it then got turned into one of the most effortlessly adorable and thoroughly engrossing sci-fi adventure comedies I’ve ever seen. So of that Fox seeing sense in bringing original screenwriter Drew Goddard back to perform the same duties on this adaptation of Weir’s most recent offering was an absolute no-brainer, but having THESE TWO directing it too simply turned out to be THE perfect secret ingredient. This is EVEN BETTER than The Martian, which I genuinely didn’t expect to be saying, but here it is … and yeah, it’s also THE BEST THING I’ve seen so far this year too …
In the very near future, an astronaut wakes up from suspended animation with complete amnesia to discover that he’s on an experimental spacecraft several light years from Earth in a distant star system, and the rest of his crew are dead. As he slowly puts the missing pieces of his mental puzzle back together, he realises he’s the only remaining hope for a truly desperate mission to discover why the star of this system is THE ONLY ONE in the known galaxy that ISN’T inexplicably dying and use this to engineer a solution to save OUR OWN Sun before half the Earth’s population starves and the rest freeze to death. But it turns out he’s NOT actually alone out here, a fellow astronaut has also found his way to the system – Rocky, an alien who’s ALSO the sole survivor of his own race’s last-chance mission of discovery. As the pair learn to communicate a close bond begins to develop between them, and they realise the best way for them to save their worlds, and maybe the rest of the galaxy, is to work together ...
Ryan Gosling is the OTHER spot-on secret ingredient that REALLY makes this one work. Matt Damon was SUCH a success in The Martian because he was the PERFECT FIT for that lead role – Mark Watney is cocky and endearingly self-deprecating, but at the end of the day he’s still genuinely heroic along with it, he’s a forthright and courageous man who just happens to also be a MASSIVE GEEK, and Damon fit the mould to a T there. Now Gosling MAY have cinematic astronaut cred of his own having played Neil Armstrong in FINE STYLE INDEED in First Man, but he was VERY MUCH playing against his usual type there – he is MUCH BETTER SUITED for the role of Ryland Grace because he’s SO DAMN GOOD at playing adorable losers, men who are sexy as hell but also spectacularly terrible at EVERYTHING in life, but they make it so loveable precisely because they’re also EXTREMELY self-aware about it too. So yeah, he didn’t exactly need to stretch himself for this role … but GODS BLESS HIM for doing it anyway, because it’s just who he is! Yeah, he brought EVERYTHING HE HAD to this role, so he gets that charmingly pathetic man-failure down-pat perfectly but also brings real heart and pathos to the role too, a powerful vulnerability and rewarding complexity that helps to ground Grace’s impressively nuanced character arc in pleasing realism.
Sure, there are other great turns throughout this film too, with Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest) particularly (rightly) standing out here, although I really appreciated getting to see The Bear’s Lionel Boyce landing a nice meaty role in a major high profile feature film too … but at the end of the day this is PRETTY MUCH just Gosling’s film, and he carries it MAGNIFICENTLY, effortlessly holding our attention all the way through even though vast swathes of the runtime really are just watching him do his thing. That being said, the TRUE emotional core of the whole film, and the reason this all REALLY works as well as it does (I know I keep saying this, but there are SO MANY exceptional lucky accidents all coming together to just MAKE THIS ONE, I swear), is the relationship that forms between Grace and Rocky … and yeah, like I said, it really was a genuine surprise that I fell SO HARD IN LOVE with a weird rocky alien who’s build like a spider and has NO CONCEPT of personal space, but he’s just TOO CUTE and an absolute sweetheart besides, with a heart FAR TOO BIG to realistically inhabit his comparatively tiny body, and yet here we are. Massive kudos must, of course, go to the film’s REAL breakout star James Ortiz, the puppeteer who not only brought the magnificent physical creature to life but also provided his adorably nerdy “computer-generated” voice. And the chemistry that he and Gosling CLEARLY HAD on set absolutely translates FULLY onscreen because you buy it right from the start, which makes us fall even harder for the pair of them …
Anyways, this genuinely is a case of just EVERYTHING coming together perfectly, not just the writing and the directing and the casting but also the design and the cinematography and the score (maybe THE VERY BEST I’ve heard from Daniel Pemberton to date, this) and the glorious physicality of these people doing EVERYTHING they could possibly DO for real (the ships are all REAL SETS and miniatures instead of CGI, so that by and large digital effects are used more to simply AUGMENT what’s already there so the whole thing feels tangible and lived in and we never have to suspend our sense of disbelief for a moment). Even the film’s structure is perfect – the fact that Grace wakes up at the start with NO MEMORY and has to recall EVERYTHING as he goes means he’s finding everything out the same time WE are, which really helps bring us into the thick of the story and action all the way through … and it particularly helps when the really BIG twist comes and it genuinely hits us like a ton of bricks. Meanwhile this is EASILY the most unapologetically CHARMING film I’ve seen so far this year, playing things VERY MUCH for laughs with a particularly CHEEKY and chaotically mischievous sense of humour without EVER undermining the inherent thrilling danger, dramatic weight and sheer emotional PATHOS of everything that happens. Indeed this film really is impressively accomplished at turning on a dime at a moment’s notice to sock us SO HARD in the feels when it needs to, and one scene in particular is GUARANTEED to have absolutely anyone BAWLING THEIR EYES OUT without reservation, no lie at all. But at the end of the day you’re mostly going to just absolutely FALL IN LOVE with it all, because this is one of those movies that’s PRECISION CRAFTED to leave you with big dumb grin on your face by the end. Which, to be honest, is kind of becoming the Andy Weir stock-in-trade … I’d love to see Goddard, Lord and Miller reteam sometime to have a crack at bringing Artemis to the big screen so we can have the whole set. Anyone else?
*PS … once again, many thanks to Letterboxd for the posters.
