Justice League

The desire to build a megafranchise has been ongoing for a while, but one of the fundamental rules is that you can't actually have a franchise if people don't like the movies. Oh, you may get a large amount of interest early on, but getting them back for sequels and spinoffs is more of a challenge. And the DC movies have, generally, not really hit the mark. Yes, "Wonder Woman" managed to get a fair bit of geek acclaim, but set off against that is the trio of "Man of Steel", "Batman vs Superman" and "Suicide Squad". And while Wonder Woman is back for this teamup vehicle, she can't really carry all the baggage that remains attached, plus introducing three new superheroes into the mix.

Look, this is nowhere near as bad as the worst of DC's work. Yes, the villain is distinctly placeholder, the film's visually ugly, and there's still dull checkins on plot points from elsewhere in the series, but ... there's a little bit of wit and energy in a couple of the characters, a lower level of blatant stupidity (nothing nearly as stupid as the "Martha" moment), and when people brawl they do occasionally. And the running time is almost spot on two hours rather than the bohemoth lengths of some recent wannabe epics. This is strangely the most apologetic film ever to cost a couple of hundred million dollars - it's sorta the filmic equivalent of Warner Brothers Executives crying "please don't hate us" for two hours. Running on fumes and desperation, it signifies "meh" in cinematic form - a film where you can sorta see Ben Affleck mentally quitting from big-budget filmmaking minute by minute.

It's difficult to really praise this film - it feels like a corporate obligation rather than anything made with a lot of thought to what an audience may possibly enjoy, and certainly not like any kinda story telling vehicle or representation of anything in human experience. It's ... just sorta there.

Lucky

This is an odd film in that it's more about celebrating the life of its leading actor rather than really trying to tell any kinda particular story or advance any kind of thesis. Harry Dean Stanton as the titular "Lucky" is over 90 and aging in a quiet desert town somewhere obscure. We follow him around town, meeting friends, hanging out in a bar, and wandering back and forth. IT's the kind of film that works scene-to-scene rather than necessarily as a whole movie - there's minor subplots going on (in particular, a nice one with David Lynch and a pet turtle), but there's nothing really particularly overpowering holding this together.

It's sorta an extended death tease, where Stanton's mortality is front and centre without ever actually reaching the inevitable conclusion. And for me, I kinda need more than this. The inevitable point of comparison, a Harry-Dean-Stanton centred film set in the middle of the desert with minimal plot, "Paris Texas", is a film that has immesurably more going on, partially due to Sam Sheperd's minimalist but carefully structured script, partially due to Wim Wender's deliberate and intense direction. Neither are the case here - instead, this feels very loosely put together, and, thus, is more of a middling memorial rather than a piece of true art.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Yorgos Lathimos' previous film, "The Lobster", was a favourite film of mine two years ago. A deadpan investigation of how people choose to parter or not to partner, it was simultaneously hilarious and deeply melancholy, set in a universe of extremists where happy compromise was not possible. "Sacred Deer" is similar in shape while being completely different in subject matter. the deadpan performance turns out to be one of the best ways to utilise Colin Farrell - a lot of his performances in both hides just below the surface as he's clearly freaked the hell out by what's going on around him but trying very hard not to communicate that to the people around him. But here, the subject is far bigger, about revenge and brutal uncaring justice meted out across generations, and the resolution is both inevitable and grim as fate works its inevitable way through Farrell's family.

I don't want to get into the plot too much, as some of the intriguing factors of the film require you to go in with very little knowledge of what's coming (in particular, the nature of the relationship between two of the characters in the beginning of the film). But if you're interested in something tense and enduring and incredibly appealing, this is definitely worth seeing.

Blade of the Immortal

"Blade of the Immortal" is a striking manga adaptation - using the source to give the large cast strikingly iconic visual differenation in a samurai once-upon-a-time-in-feudal-Japan kinda way. The story is a bit of a variation of "True Grit" - a young girl has her family killed by a gang of bandits and hires a warrior to get her revenge - only, of course, with the location reset and the fights far more epic. Our warrior also happens to be pretty much unkillable due to an ancient curse (though not, it should be noted, impervious to hefty wounding), leading to fights of more than usual bloodyness.

This hit all my buttons. There's visual spectacle, entertaining violence, iconic characters, a rollicking heroic story, very bad baddies, and a lot of the red stuff flying about. Takeshi Miike has made 100 films (and, inevitably, some are more phoned-in than others) but this is a master luxuriating in his skill for pure samurai pleasure. I can't really argue that this is going for particular depth - it's pulpy goodness at its core - but I don't care when the result is this much fun.

Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie's never been one of the most respected writers, but her work still has a strong audience appeal - the mixture of clever puzzle plots and eccentric detectives still survives any perceived flatness in the writing. And "Murder on The Orient Express" was successful enough 40-odd years ago with an all star cast that it's not utterly a mistake to bring it back with a new bunch of stars-and-rising-young-things.

This is, however, jigged up a bit to be a bit livelier - we get a prelude mystery for Poirot to solve in what would be a "pre-credits" scene except that there's only abbreviated credits at the beginning, and a tag that suggests a line for a possible sequel (which references the film that followed up the Lumet version). And some of the investigations do send Poirot outside the carriage (including a chase around a railway bridge and a stomp across the roof), giving it a bit more scenery. But all in all this is still the standard "it could be any one of us, Poirot interrogates the suspects and evaluates the evidence, before lining up everyone to deliver the solution. It's a little tonally odd - Branaugh both in performance and in direction plays much of it for jolly larks, but the solution involves a somewhat awkward gear shift into actual drama requiring us to take the paperthin characters and their personal lives somewhat seriously, which doesn't play particularly cleanly.

As for the rest of the stars, there is a slight blurring which means some slip into the background more than others - Judi Dench, Olivia Colman and Derek Jacobi, for instance, only get brief clue-drops, while Michelle Pfeiffer steals scenes wholesale in a delightfully splashy manner. This isn't a complete write-off, but it's not quite as good as it, perhaps, could have been.

Detroit

There's a strong centre to this film, about the incidents that happened in "Detroit" in the Hotel Algiers in 1967 while a race riot burned outside. A tense standoff between the (largely black) residents and the (largely white) police, national guard and security guards sees terrible abuses of power as the investigators go beyond all measure of reason.

Unfortunately, the further the action gets away from the Hotel Algiers (at the beginning and end of the film) the weaker it gets. Kathryn Bigelow's film flounders badly when the characters aren't contained, whether it be in the lead-up getting people to the Hotel (which is a bit too lacksidaisical in the setup - there isn't a great deal of urgency or sense of why this matters) or in the aftereffects as justice fails to be achieved (which takes a substantial time on what's really a detour to tell material that could really have been established with a couple of epilogue title cards- as it is, the film wraps up with title cards anyway). It's a pity that there's a strong film hiding in the middle of this that gets muddled by trying-and-failing to cover too much material, rather than just illuminating the central incident and leaving it at that.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

The backstory to the man behind "Wonder Woman", William Moulton Marston, is an intriguing story - how his experiences as a psychology professor, as a member of a romantic triad and, eventually, with BDSM played a part in the creation of the most enduring female superhero of all time. Writer-Director Angela Robinson puts this unconventional material into the somewhat more conventional structure of a standard period biopic (where the research occasionally feels a little imposed so that characters are reciting elements of their backstory on one another as a way of squeezing facts that aren't otherwise relevant to the story can get in there) - but there's still a power to this story of smart people giving way to their emotions and facing the oppression that results from their breaches of convention.

The performance of Rebecca Hall as Elizabeth Marston, wife of William, is the one that really sticks out - Hall has a great way of playing both the cynical veneer and the more complex emotions below the surface that really shines here. Luke Evans as William and Bella Heathcoate as Olive, the student who becomes a lover to both of them, are a little more low-key, but they do hit the key emotional points. I kinda wish this had been a little more sexy, a little more radical in telling its story, but still, this is a reasonably successful biopic that keeps itself entertaining.

Brad's Status

This is very much a "white people's problems" movie - kinda petty and a little navel gazing. Concerning a leftish leaning father whose trip with his son to Boston for college pre-interviews brings up his worries about how he's faring in comparison to his old school colleagues, there's a lot of voice over narration and close ups on Ben Stiller's perturbed face. And the self-evident thing (that he appears to be doing reasonably well and his complaints that he's not super-rich and famous are petty marginal distractions) takes until well after halfway through the film to even vaguely become apparent to him. As internal revelations go, it's not exactly mindblowing.

Which is a pity as writer-director Mike White has proved himself talented at unpacking the foibles of progressives (most noticeably recently with the TV series "Enlightened"). And the four friends that Stiller compares himself too (played by White, a surprisingly sexy Jermaine Clement, Luke Wilson and a particularly unctuous Michael Sheen) are not uninteresting characters and could probably use a bit more depth. But all in all this doesn't really give a lot for the 90-odd minutes of screentime.

Bad Genius

This Thai thriller was one I missed when I was at Fantastic Fest, but the buzz was good enough that, even with Manuka only putting on one screening a day at the not-exactly-user-friendly time of 6:20pm, I wasn't going to miss this. And indeed, this is an excellent example of the genre - a heist movie on the unlikely topic of exam cheating. The familiar heist elements are still there - the carefully worked out plans, and the desperate improvisations that have to take place as various complications arise - but in this case they're executed flawlessly, making what should be dull cinematic material (basically, people filling in circles in pencil), into something tense and compelling.

The largely teen cast are playing archetypes (the smart one, the friendly one, the rich one, the poor but honest one etc), but there's just enough rounding off to make sure that they're not mere plot ciphers - these are recognisable kids in a somewhat improbable situation. And as important, they largely keep our sympathies - yes, they're basically committing fraud, and the stakes are pretty high, but it's also kept clear that there are other forces in play pushing them into taking these extreme actions. And the unusual nature of both plot and location (how many Thai High School Thrillers have you seen before) gives it that extra something - virtuoso execution meaning we're never confused or lost by the constantly-moving plot.

Recommended for anybody who's been waiting for a good tense thriller.

Jigsaw

I have to shamefacedly admit I have seen the whole "Saw" series of movies - it's the only purely horror series that's run more than 4 entries that I've seen all of. And I can't necessarily explain why - maybe it's the somewhat soap-opera ludicrous plotting (particularly for the 5 entries thus far that have taken place after the main killer ended up dying - unusually for a series like this, he's managed to simultaneously stay dead and still make active contributions to the mythology through flashbacks and tapes and suchlike).  Certainly the series is somewhat morally dubious through its convoluted moral justifications for elaborate torture-and-death-traps (although Saw VI's revenge on the health-insurance industry is kinda delightful), and it does start to disappear up its on overly convoluted arse, but never the less there is some kinda sick pleasure in such heftily over-plotted fare (in a genre where a lot of films tend to stick to the basics of killer, victim and chasing around with a sharp implement).

Still, the series eventually took a break with the seventh entry, somewhat hopefully entitled "the Final Chapter". OF course, you can't keep a profitable series down and seven year's later it's back for more, this time directed by the Spherig Brothers (previously responsible for inventive sci-fi/thriller films like "Daywalkers" and "Predestination"). Alas, this is kinda sabotaged by a rather uninventive script - it seems content to do all the bog standard "Saw" things in pretty much the most bog-standard ways. There's a bunch of people involved in a bunch of death traps, there are police investigating, there are a couple of twists here and there, there is a clear sense that these theoretically meticulously planned deathtraps actually only play out the way they were originally planned due to pure luck, and there are a whole heap of flashbacks near the end to explain what was really happening the entire time. But there's not a whole heap of invention here - it's very much going through the motions most of the time, and Jigsaw himself comes across as a bit of a tiresome old bore ranting about the same old nonsense about people needing to improve themselves through survival of elaborate death traps, like a particularly grim Tony Robbins. THere's not a great deal of surprise or delight and the characters aren't striking enough to invest in any of their struggles. Ironically, it's all very mechanical. I can't recommend this as anything but a series obligation for the completist.

Suburbicon

This is an odd duck - a Coen Brothers screenplay that they decided not to make, "improved" by George Clooney and his writing partner Grant Herslov in the filming. The bones of the Coen script are reasonably apparent - it's one of their riffs on genere pics, in particular wandering close to James M. Cain. But Clooney's adaptation seems to serve to lessen the film, ironically by trying to make it do more than it's really designed to bear. 

For a start, as a director Clooney has far more of a mixed record than may be immediately apparent - his "Good Night and Good Luck" is a great film, certainly, but his adaptation of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is lesser work and similarly, his attempts to play light with "Leatherheads" and "Monuments Men" mostly have sputtered. The necessary lightness required to do this kinda suburban satire seems missing, and, particularly in the setup, there's awkward gear shifting between the murderous family deceptions with Julianne Moore and Matt Damon which feel very Coen-ish and the accelerating intimidation of a recently-arrived black family (which feels utterly imposed on the script and weirdly under-served - the black family basically exist entirely to be persecuted). By the middle when it has become apparent what everybody's agenda is, the Damon/Moore plotline accelerates (also gaining particularly when Oscar Isaac as an insurance investigator shows up), but the segregation plotline resolutely fails to mean very much or get us very invested on either side of the divide. 

So this is a disappointment - there really was enough there with the noir-thriller aspects without trying to "improve" it by trying to bring in hamfisted social satire. 

Three Summers

Ben Elton is one of those performers who was big in the 80s and has spent much of the last couple of decades somewhat reviled. And it's true that he's had some high profile crashes ("Live on Planet Earth") and has, even worse, written jukebox musicals of dubious merit (the well known "We Will Rock You" and the lesser known "Tonight's The Night"). But if the ranting outrage has been replaced by something a tad gentler and more consumer friendly, a little bit of the political intention remains behind in "Three Summers", a gentle comedy taking place over three annual folk music festivals in a small Western Australian town.

There's a little bit of subplot overload, such that a couple of the cast on the poster end up with little to play (Deborah Mailman in particular is there to provide very brief support to two characters and never really gets any decent jokes), but the general intention, to use the music festival to reflect various elements of society, whether it be racist granddads, Aboriginal traditionalists, right-on protesters, self-righteous musical innovators, just-getting-by performers, immigrants, career mothers or officious security guards, gives us a range of stuff to tell. And if there's rarely a particularly quoteable one-liner, there's at least a gently pleasant feeling from the main plot thread as a theramin playing experimentalist meets a violin-playing traditionalist and they both soften towards one another. And while there is a thread to parody right-on-political-statements, there's also a little bit of a burst of them as well, presented somewhat more softly.

I can't bring myself to hate this, it's soft and gentle and kinda likeable. But I can't really say it demands to be seen either.

Brigsby Bear

25 year old James has been raised his whole life in a secluded location, his only form of entertainment the series "Brigsby Bear Adventures" which he watches on videotapes, enjoying its strange mix of space adventure and maths and moral lessons. But when he suddenly has to face the world and discovers nobody else has ever heard of Brigsby, he becomes increasingly obsessed with sharing it with everybody he knows.

This is, needless to say, a somewhat unusual story. Star and writer Kyle Mooney is a Saturday Night Live vetran, and like much of the SNL spinoffs, it's a film about an obsessed manchild, but in this case, the obsession is treated somewhat differently, not so much a case of pop-culture cool as something far more personal and fundamental. It's also got a surprising sweetness to it - the situation it describes is somewhat extreme but the film isn't particularly interested in mocking James or anyone else. There's some nice supporting turns too from Mark Hammil in a role somewhat unlike his usual work and Greg Kinnear in one of the better roles he's had lately as a police detective who's also a wanna-be thespian. There's a deeper examination about the role of pop culture in our lives than we usually get - about how it may shape us and how the relationship between fan and creation goes both ways, covering both the joy of engagement and the melancholy that pop culture obsession can be a diversion from. A genuinely sweet film.