May-June 2021
Well, slight improvement in cineplex offerings but still only a trickle of movies that the studios really want to release.

Movie: Locked Down
Director:  Doug Liman
Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anne Hathaway

Lot of time for Ejiofor and Hathaway, but difficult to recommend. I went in blind and was wondering after 20 minutes if the director was a theatre person struggling with a transition to film. Oops! It’s Doug Liman - director of a few films you may know well: Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity and The Edge of Tomorrow among them and most recently reviewed by me for Chaos Walking. How did he screw this pooch so badly?

Anyway, on the half-way mark, an hour in, Hathaway almost cries, which was remarkably how I had been feeling for many minutes though for different reasons. I had only paid $10 and it was very difficult to resist thinking I could catch the second half on a streamer some day in the far future, but recognising this feeling may have been a deliberate meta homage of the film to lockdown itself I managed to stay seated until the lights came on.

Don’t bother reading other reviews, they all spoil the film and are mostly poor anyway. This is an ‘almost’ film. Almost a few good laughs, almost tension, almost drama, almost a thrill but ultimately it cannot overcome its limited principal photography and lockdown constraints. Again, perhaps it is a meta narrative re the half-lives and particularly half-jobs much of the Western world has been living these last 14 months.

Movie: Those Who Wish Me Dead
Director:  Taylor Sheridan
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Finn Little, Jon Bernthal, Aidan Gillen

I hope Michael Kortya is a better writer than title selector, and presumably there is something in his book that references the title, but it wasn’t here in the film. Perhaps that is just a nicety that you do not really need when you know from the get-go that hitmen are involved.

Aiden Gillen again plays amoral, joined by Nicholas Hoult of all people, who admittedly has the dead eyes for contract killing. Aussie Finn Little (great name for a baby shark) plays the kid who survives the hit on his forensic accountant father. Angelina Jolie’s Hannah encounters Finn’s Connor in the Wyoming wilderness and the rest is solid B grade entertainment.

You can presume that how you feel about Jolie is a solid guide to whether you want to catch this in the cinema.

Movie: The Courier
Director: Dominic Cooke
Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze

I put this off for a long time because I was not keen on seeing yet another Cumberbatch performance, and the previews had not stoked my interest, but it lasted in the cineplex long enough to give me little choice but to go along. A fair crowd too, suggesting some good word-of-mouth. Relatively senior Soviet wants to warn the US about Soviet nuclear capabilities and plans re Cuba and winds up being run by Brits.

Solid film, if a little Cold War historical dreary, and of course the endless unnecessary tinkering with facts - because of course Americans could not possibly be Interested unless you make the Russian’s British female handler into an American. Good casting and writing mean if you have any vague interest in the subject matter it is worth a look.

Movie: Wrath of Man
Director: Guy Ritchie
Stars: Jason Statham, Holt McCallany

Guy Ritchie directs Jason Statham again, but this is no Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels nor a Snatch. It is far closer to Statham’s current branding than those two films, which is disappointing given both Ritchie’s recent The Gentlemen, and Statham’s moments here where he is not playing ruthless hard-man.
As an action flick it is thoroughly watchable, has a largely competent cast and except for one extended sequence does not really veer too far into ‘dark graphic novel’ territory. On the other hand, despite its intentions, it is mostly forgettable pulp.

Movie: Land
Director:  Robin Wright
Stars: Robin Wright, Demiān Bichir

Robin Wright’s feature directing debut, though presumably she cut her teeth directing ten episodes of House of Cards. Fortunately, only one of those episodes was from the execrable final season. This film is tight enough and I thought the pacing was spot on for the subject matter though it has been described as slow. She also stars - as Edee, a grieving woman retreating from the world by buying a cabin in the woods.
Wright carries the film respectably, despite a few nagging dissonances, and then Demiān Bichir’s Miguel turns up to save her, physically at least. Can he help her find her path forward though? As occasionally happens you can make an entirely accurate choice about whether you want to see this by your reaction to the preview.

Movie: Voyagers
Director:  Neil Burger
Stars: Colin Farrell, Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp

Another film with a terrible IMDB rating, 5.4, that I mostly enjoyed. It is solid until deep into the film, and certainly technically proficient, even if thoroughly predictable and they sadly chose to save money by not giving speaking roles to most of the cast.

A ‘young adult’ colonial space-ship crew, bred and raised specifically for the mission, goes off the rails when one of them discovers they are being chemically pacified. Soon enough it is Lord of the Flies in space. There are a few obvious philosophical questions being examined here but not onerously, and you can just watch the pretty young people if you like.

One of the best signs about emerging talents is if you can see them in several films and not really notice that it is them. What is most remarkable about Lily-Rose Depp achieving this, is once you see Johnny Depp in her face you cannot really unsee it, and yet she manages to inhabit her roles effectively enough to disappear.

If you are into the genre of claustrophobic space films then this is middle of the road fare.

Movie: Nobody
Director:  Ilya Naishuller
Stars: Bob Odenkirk, Aleksey Serebryakov, Connie Nielsen
Meh! Graphic-novel level fantasy violence of the John Wick style – as advertised. If you like Bob Odenkirk you might want to catch this. If you respect him, you might want to miss it. To be fair the bus scene is many a commuter’s fantasy.

Movie: Six Minutes to Midnight
Director:  Andy Goddard
Stars: Eddie Izzard, Judi Dench

39 Steps style pre-war thriller, as a likely “op” to retrieve some German schoolgirls with high level Nazi connections from their British boarding school must be thwarted. I enjoyed this far more than I should have, but a great deal of the critical commentary about its unevenness is true. It never quite seems sure what it is trying to be but does best when presenting its dramatic face.
Eddie Izzard writes and leads, Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent are here, and the ever-intriguing Carla Juli, so you might take a look just for the cast if at all interested in the tensions of 1939.

Movie: Supernova
Director:  Harry Macqueen
Stars: Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci

Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci play a long-time couple confronting Tucci’s Tusker’s increasing dementia. This could be any childless but otherwise creative couple, and the themes are personal rather than political so do not be worried on that front. There is a great deal of critical acclaim for the performances of the leads and it is deserved. This is, however, quite sad, and if you are not in the mood for sad then this is not for you.

Movie: Godzilla vs. Kong
Director:  Adam Wingard
Stars: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall

Slightly under 2 hours of pure popcorn brilliance. I would suggest you have seen 2017’s Kong: Skull Island and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters if you care to have an idea who some of the human characters are, and what Monarch is, but it hardly matters. This is about two titans of inconsistent scale tearing shit up, and a little deaf girl holding the heart of Kong - blondes being out of fashion right now.

For any Godzilla aficionados (and I mean Japanese cinema) there is nothing new here, Kong having met Godzilla in 1962, and a mech-zilla too. Except, of course, for the very latest in special effects and ridiculous, eye-watering budgets.

Honestly, if you cannot have a giggle about a serious actress such as Rebecca Hall giving the line “Kong bows to no one” then I don’t want to know you.

Movie: Judas and the Black Messiah
Director:  Shaka King
Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons

Daniel Kaluuya is a brilliant actor building an impressive portfolio, and for this he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Stanfield was also nominated, and one must wonder if Kaluuya would have beaten out Hopkins for Best Actor if in that category. I would suggest Kaluuya alone is worth seeing this for. The film was a candidate for best film and would be most years, unlike several of the other nominations – including winner Nomadland.

This is family involved so it verges on hagiographic towards Kaluuya’s Fred Hampton of the Chicago Black Panthers, though not unsympathetic to his betrayer, Stanfield’s Bill O’Neal. Nonetheless there are still many valid takeaways, not least in Jesse Plemons’ FBI agent Roy Mitchell. The FBI from inception has been a political entity, covered for by its law enforcement aspects, again shown here along with the perpetual reality of people in careers selling their souls to maintain those careers. Plemons is the most unlikely of actors but has a stillness that works both ways - as criminal (Breaking Bad) and law enforcer - and of course that is not coincidence.

This is a film that was delayed for Covid and hopefully is part of a more widespread shift back to releasing films that the studios actually want to release.

Movie: Crisis
Director:  Nicholas Jarecki
Stars: Gary Oldman, Evangeline Lily, Armie Hammer

Kind of a low rent Traffic except about opioids/fentanyl/next-big-pharma-dodgy-drug, with each of the stars demonstrating separate strands of the issue.

Some elements are good enough, and certainly the swipe at academia is on target, but this is a Sunday night TV movie where you might feel comfortable going to bed without seeing the end.

Movie: Cosmic Sin
Director:  Edward Drake
Stars: Bruce Willis, Frank Grillo, Brandon Thomas Lee

Imagine a film that looks like a series of live action cut-scenes that were prepared for a sci-fi war-based video game, except the game never materialised, and you still could not imagine how astonishingly bad this is. Bring a step counter if you want to have any hope of counting the number of faux-aphoristic cliche lines of dialogue spoken by a cast of cliche characters. You know the sorts, the cashiered general discarded for winning too harshly, his washed-up ex-sidekick pleading for a gig, the female warrior with the funky hairdo and stunningly augmented breast armour, and many more.

Bruce Willis and Frank Grillo. Well Bruce has been banking pay cheques for rubbish as though he wants to take down Gene Hackman’s record on that score, but this is a real low. I did not mind Grillo in Boss Level, and I see why now, because most of his dialogue there is narration, not performing.
2.5/10 on IMDB, and that seems generous.

Juddy keeps busy consuming cultural media while posing as a student at a major Sydney university, thus shirking real work. He hosts pub trivia, and tutors at said university, for beer and book money.