Top 10 films of 2018

This is a top 10 based on Australian release dates only, and includes only films that got genuine cinematic releases in Australia. I'm not including things that got streaming-only releases (though certainly there was quality stuff that was only released as streamers), and I'm not ranking the list. So with those caveats covered, here's the list in alphabetical order

Bad Times at the El Royale - A combination crime-thriller, retro-pile-up-of-conspiracy-theories and memory of the passing of the 1960s, this combines some great actors, great music and constantly twisting plot to make a film that kept me constantly delighted.

Blakklansman - I don't know whether this or "Do the Right Thing" is Spike Lee's best film, but I'm definitely glad he's playing at the top of his game in this clever bait-and-switch of a strange-but-true story about a black cop infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan  - it plays right on the edge between drama and comedy before pulling the rug out ruthlessly to remind us that this isn't just history, this is a stain on the US that still holds true today.

Custody - A tense french thriller that builds and builds from what seems like a simple story of a father and son forced to be together on weekend custody into something far more insidious - a dense character study, and an examination of that thin line between love and destruction.

Isle of Dogs - Wes Anderson is, undoubtedly, a divisive figure, but for me the high styalisation is always matched by an equally strong emotional inner life to his stories as misfits struggle to find their place in the world. In this case it's the story of Bryan Cranston's Chief, a dog with very little time for humans who finds himself brought back into society despite his best intentions. It's visually lovely, plays nicely with its cross-cultural background (the world between the dogs and the humans) and it's more an act of love of Japanese culture than an insult or appropriation of it.

I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl's Story - This got a pretty tiny release despite being a great Australian-made documentary - looking at four different fangirls in four different eras through their fascinations with their respective idols - The Beatles, Take That, Backstreet Boys and One Direction. There's a warm heartedness here that allows the fangirl's passion to be fully explored from their own perspectives - and filming over multiple years allows us to see each of them have their relationship with their idols change and develop. It's a gently human documentary that has that great feeling of just watching life through a different perspective in a way that makes the heart feel larger.

See You Up There - This big French historical epic has heart and soul to go along with the incredible production design telling the story of two friends coming out of the final days of World War I and into the hedonistic 1920s - with a very personal sense of wit and whimsy that never lets the charm soften the rougher edges of the story. There's a dark story of loss and betrayal underneath that never gets lost even as the production design gets more and more beautiful - and there's great payoff at the end. Overlooked but spectacular.

The Shape of water - Yes, it's the year I think the Oscars actually got it right. Guillermo Del Toro's best english-language film and among his best overall, this is a romantic fairy tale with a bite and a twist to it, with an incredible cast (Richard Jenkins is my personal favourite for a performance that is full of heartbreak, but everybody is top of their game here). It's enchanting, scatological, somewhat insane, beautiful and adorable. 

Sorry To Bother You - A knife-edged parody of corporate America, this is smart, savage, disturbing and brilliant. It's got a strong visual style that in some ways resembles Michel Gondry crossed with Karl Marx, and is provocative as hell. I loved it.

Upgrade - A great action movie that transforms as it progresses into an even better horror movie, this is an ever-escalating film that channels the feeling of pure pulp into a ruthless examination of the relationship between human and machine. Spectacular physicality, great twists and turns and a nice sense of ruthlessness make this a great watch. 

Widows - This is a crime thriller on the level of LA Confidential or Heat, with a wonderfully stacked cast in a film that seems to have upset expectations by not having the expected female-bonding-and-light-caper-ness, but instead letting all the characters be spiky, tricky characters with their own independence and personal things to get through. It's emotional, political, thrilling and brutal when it needs to be, and I loved the hell out of it. 

Honourable mentions go to a bunch of films that couldn't fit into the 10 but deserve a look anyway: Can You Ever Forgive Me, Climax, Halloween (2018) Hereditary, In the Fade, Lady Bird, Molly's Game, Three Identical Strangers, Shadow, A Simple Favour and Unsane. 

And two that were streaming only releases that should be seen: Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Night Comes For Us. 

Ralph Breaks the Internet

The original "Wreck It Ralph" was a perfectly pleasant Disney flick playing on video-game tropes for a tale of transcending your position in life through friendship and a little bit of heroism. The sequel is only necessary in that it allows us to get back together with a pair of characters we really like - Ralph, the dopily warm-hearted big lug, and Vanelope, the girl racer who befriended Ralph and got him to be a better person. The plot, such as it is, is sorta a collection of three or four storylines that happen in succession, seeing the pair explore various aspects of online culture, with a little bit of inner growth along the way.

If there's a through-line, it's the relationship between Ralph and Vanelope, which is allowed to develop in ways that do change their status quo permanently in interesting ways. The much-trailered integration of other Disney properties, including princesses, Star Wars and Marvel characters, isn't allowed to monopolise the film, instead just being one of the elements of online culture that the film travels through. So all in all this is a worthy sequel knowing what's worth further exploration in the characters and what can be safely left as casual-references-to-the-last-film, and is definitely worth a watch.

Bumblebee

Returning to the world of Transformers with a notable increase in coherence (I can actually tell the robots apart this time, and I can tell what the action is doing!), "Bumblebee" takes a familiar "troubled teen meets visitor from another planet" storyline and plays it for all the emotional beats it can get. There's a nice warmth between Hailee Stanfield and the yellow-sometimes-a-Volkswagen-Robot-in-Disguise that means that even while this film is resolutely not really exploring much new territory, it's at least getting the fundamentals right. The setting of 1987 is, perhaps, slightly overplayed (there's a succession of about four or five background songs within about five minutes which feels like trying too hard to give the era), although it at least picks some of the less-beaten-tracks to go down. THis is more of a case of "good when judged on the curve of previous Transformers movies" than necessarily "great viewing on its own" - and perhaps it does play things too safe - but it's nicely enjoyable for all that.

Cold War

This Polish production tells of the romance between a composer and a singer across the Iron curtain from the mid 40s to the early 60s, dropping in and out as they move from Poland to Berlin to Paris to several other locations. The problem, for me, is that, though this is gorgeously shot throughout in immaculate black and white, with a sweet jazz soundtrack, I never got remotely invested in the central romance - it all feels awfully shallow, stylish images without anything really going on underneath. Everything's at the level of a perfume advertisement. The tendency of the film to stop-and-start at various intervals, picking them up a couple of years on, never really develops any momentum or shape within the segments or across them - neither of the couple are particularly intriguing seperately or together. Yes, they're physically attractive people, but there's nothing particularly going on beyond that to make them in any way compelling. So in the end, this is classy dullness.

Vice

Adam McKay's latest film works as a hybrid between biopic and documentary-as-political-essay - it does have all the famous-actors-playing-famous people covering the narrative highpoints of Dick Cheney's career, but also has a cynical voice-over narration from Jesse Plemons (as a character whose involvement in the wider storyline isn't revealed until quite late) and is very fond of subjective and highly edited montage to make wider points. It's a very distinct style that I've not seen before, and what it loses, perhaps, in personal involvement in the characters (I don't think Christian Bale has a single "big oscar scene" in the entire film - Amy Adams is probably the only castmember who does), it gains in being focused entirely on making its point about what's being going on behind the scenes in US politics over the last half century. And it's a fascinating, if slightly terrifying, look at how we got to where we are  (and I'm always interested in films that attempt to show a wider sense of how big political movements are put together - that wonkish kinda how-the-sausage-is-made approach always makes me interested).

Of course in a day and age when it appears, we're all too aware of how badly offcourse political power has gone, but seem to not be able to come together to work out any solutions to how to get anything back, the question could be asked "how useful is all this information". And the answer is probably going to vary around different audience members. But for those who want a download of recent political history told with cynicism and verve, this definitely gets the job done.

Collette

This look at the life of the early 20th century novelist Collette and her experiences as ghost-writer with her material sold under her husband's name covers some familiar territory but does it reasonably well. Keira Knightley charts the arc of Collette's growing assurance from innocent wife to sophisticated bisexual in control of her life with vim, and Dominic West as the dodgy husband at least gets a reasonable chance to show why the manipulative bastard of a husband is at least somewhat charmingly seductive during the early stages. And it's nice and glossy and there's a certain charm to it, but this never really drew me in particularly. It's perfectly adequate cinema that probably won't frighten the horses, but I was never more than mildly engaged.

The Favourite

Yorgos Lathimos' latest film is a bit of a departure from his recent pair, "The Lobster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" - both were very styalised films with a strong sense of deadpan in exploring their chosen genre, whether it was sci-fi-romantic-comedy in "The Lobster" or modern-day-greek-tragedy with "Sacred Deer". The deadpan tone feels a little downplayed in this one, whether it's because the general trappings of an English period drama concentrating on the monarchy already have their own styalisations to them, or because Lathimos didn't write this one. But it's still a fascinating look at powerplays in the court of Queen Anne during the early years of the 18th century, as the Queen's relationship with her trusted advisor, the Duchesss of Marlborogh, is disrupted by the arrival of one of Marlborogh's distent cousins, Abigail Hill. All three actresses have a wealth of material to play, whether it's Olivia Colman's slightly bewhildered Queen, Rachael Weitz's domineering Marlborogh, or Emma Stone's striving-for-survival Abigail. It's a beautifully designed film, too, full of late-restoration era wigs and grand dresses, while letting everybody also get down-and-dirty as the power-plays get more serious. The script is blooming with wit, and there's a formal brutality that Lathimos gets right - this is determinedly unsentimental and prepared to let the main character's ruthlessness show. Absolutely a film worth catching.

Roma

This beautifully shot film tells three intertwining stories in a Mexican household in the early 70s – the breakdown of the parent’s marriage, the pregnancy of one of the maids, and the increasing political unrest in the streets. Full of lush visuals and crowd scenes, in gorgeous black and white, the more personal stories are told with delicacy and care (albeit neither are exactly presented with a lot of urgency). The more political story, though, tends to be only touched on when spectacle is needed (as with a sudden uprising near the end) rather than presented with any coherent information about its causes and rationales – telling the story though the viewpoint of the pregnant maid means that, given she’s not particularly politically active, we can only be nearby observers rather than getting any understanding of why there’s unrest, what it’s coming from and why it’s slipping out of control.

And yes, a film is under no responsibility to particularly represent any individual political point of view – but in this case, presenting the politics as spectacle without actually trying to understand them means we get a fairly shallow view of what could be a complex and intriguing element of the film. It turns what could have been an incisive film into something more sentimental and fuzzy. And as a sentimental and fuzzy presentation of personal history, it’s quite a gorgeous looking film. I just wish the ideas underneath the beauty meant a bit more.

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

We’ve seen an even half-dozen Spiderman movies with three different young men playing Spiderman. But it’s always the same Peter Parker, with the same origin story … until now. Using a distinctly modern art style, this film tells of Miles Morales, an African-American-Latino, whose life gets complicated by the inevitable radioactive spider, plus one very complicated cross-dimensional engine that drags in multiple other Spider-people from other universes. In cutting edge animation that gives the screen a comic-book quality, we get everything from sound-effects to voice-over panels. This level of styalisation has proved a mess in things like Ang Lee’s “Hulk” but here, it works.

If I don’t completely lose my mind over this, it might be that … this isn’t quite the Miles Morales that the comics have given me. He’s a little more urban, a little more street-wise, a little more keen on graffiti and stickers than the more mild-mannered character from the comics. And it’s not necessarily a bad change, and it’s a compelling kaleidoscope of comics pleasure all around, and there’s some really clever choices in there with the supporting cast – but it’s just not quite the Miles that I loved. He’s not a bad character, but he’s just not quite mine any more. And that’s my own baggage to bear.

Peppermint

This is a fairly rote revenge thriller, with Jennifer Garner playing the woman whose family is gunned down in front of her, whose attempts within the system to get justice lead to naught, and who finds herself gunning down vast amounts of Latino gang members. There’s some nice ludicrousness in the setup (her preparation involves disappearing for five years after robbing a bank for $55,000 – that seems an incredibly low budget to be come, basically, Batman), and a few reasonable twists and turns, but this is pretty conventional by the numbers stuff that just doesn’t have a lot of fun with what it’s doing, and doesn’t really provide any new ideas or deep insight beyond the obvious that Jennifer Garner really does deserve to be in more action movies, although probably better ones than this. It’s difficult to argue with the rote racism or vengeance prone politics because the film doesn’t particularly seem to have very much invested in its ideas or in its execution - it’s just going through the motions.

The Mortal Engines

This big-scale young-adult fantasy epic feels a little squished at a little over two hours, but it does the job in combining a distinctly odd premise (a post apocalyptic future where cities-on-wheels roam the land devouring other cities) with a familiar personal story of one girl’s quest for revenge on the man who killed her mother. If this suffers a little from lore-overload (the characters have a tendency to recite backstory if even slightly prodded), there are a couple of subplots and minor characters where it feels like a larger subplot has been chopped down to meet running times (a couple of characters seem to exist largely to get plot from A to B rather than really getting much time of their own to develop), it’s still an intriguing examination of a rich fantasy world. The relationship between the two leads does smack a little of “well, our two leads are opposite genders, so therefore there’s going to be a love plot here regardless of chemistry”, and only Hugo Weaving and Stephen Lang as two of the villains really get much to sink their teeth into acting wise, but the storytelling is constantly propulsive as the leads are constantly on the run and in jeopardy, either chasing or being chased. The distinctly steampunk aesthetic means that there’s always a lot to look at, even if the overall arc is somewhat familiar.

Sorry To Bother You

This modern satire of corporate culture, 21^st century capitalism and the state of interracial America is a winner. Cassius Greene (Lakieth Stanfield) is our bemused hero as he starts working for a call-centre, struggling to make a connection to people across the nation to sell some useless product or other. But when he’s told of the secret power of using his “white voice”, opportunities open up to him – and expose him to more surreptitious ways that corporate America plans to use him and his friends.

Director Boots Riley has a sure visual style here – this is, in some ways, Michel Gondry crossed with Karl Marx, as he captures complex issues in a few deft images and unusual sights. The cast is all-round strong – whether it be Stanfield’s bemused protagonist, Tessa Thompson back again as the artistically inclined girlfriend of the lead (it’s unfortunate in a way that this film has been held back long enough in Australia that it looks like Thompson’s stereotype next to her appearance in “Creed II”, but she’s got enough other things coming that hopefully she’ll be a lead before too long), or Armie Hammer carelessly embodying the don’t-give-a-shit nature of the wealthy as a careless corporate mogul. The satire only gets more extreme as the film goes on yet it’s never enough to break the immersion, for me – it’s a finely provocative look at the modern American landscape.

Can you ever forgive me?

Lee Israel is a biography writer who’s finding it harder and harder to get published. Her distaste for modern writing trends, together with a disposition that sees her liking cats more than people and generally isolating herself sees her running broke in early 90’s Manhattan. But on finding a letter while researching a Fanny Brice biography, she gets involved with the world of collectible memorabilia. And soon it becomes easier to manufacture her own fake memorabilia for the various literary snobs, and with the assistance of her drinking buddy, the vain but impoverished Jack Hock, she starts to pull off a scam that can only end in disaster.

Melissa McCarthy is a bit of an odd case of superstardom – coming reasonably late to the job (while she’s been a working actress for over 20 years, her big break in “Bridesmaids” was only 7 years ago, after the age of 40). And it’s true that some of her recent star vehicles have been less than impressive – such middling nonsense as “Identify Thief”, “Life of the Party” and “The Boss” are less the work of a comedic powerhouse than a hack milking her moment in the sun (It doesn’t help that her husband, Ben Falcone, has been the deeply middling director behind some of these duds). But underneath all that there is a deeply impressive actress who should not be underestimated – when given the right meat to chew on. And this is exactly the right meat – Lee is a fully rounded, complicated human being whose frustration verges but never tips over completely into self-pity. Her erudition, pride and disappointment with the rest of the world gives us a smart heroine whose adaptation to circumstances sees her finding a perverse kinda pride in capturing the voices of her beloved literary celebrities. Richard E. Grant is a worthy companion – the relationship remains spiky and ever-close to dissolving into complete disaster, and Hock’s independent pride that can never quite communicate how desperate his circumstances really are makes him a fascinating figure who keeps his dignity no matter how bad things get. This knows how to choose the “true story” elements and play them so that nothing feels thrown in just because it’s an interesting anecdote – everything contributes to the core portrayal of this character and how she finds herself in these circumstances. It's pretty standard for awards season to offer mildly contrived biographical arcs that feel twisted into fake inspiration – but this feels genuine and immersive and with a smart literary heart to it.

Climax

Gaspar Noe is one of cinema’s great provocateurs. Experimental in form and in content, he delivers films that are unlike anything else – extreme and astounding and with strange moments of beauty bashing up against intense and disturbing material. And this is him delivering a short, sharp shock to the senses as he examines a dance troupe assembled in the French countryside whose meet-up party spirals out of control when the sangria is tainted by LSD. Noe does things that simply shouldn’t work – putting the credits in at a random point, shooting entire sequences from odd angles (there’s a dance sequence shot entirely from overhead that enthrals, and later another scene is shot upside down), with a mulit-racial, muitl-sexuality troupe of some 25-odd characters each with their own moods, opinions and agendas. It’s a letting go of all inhibitions yet despite that, it’s also a controlled, clever, emotional and intense masterwork – able to be at any moment joyous, horrific, romantic, brutal, political, abstract and precise. Absolutely worth indulging in.

Lean on Pete

Looking at the barely-surviving Midwest underclass in the US through the story of a teenage boy and the horse he relies on as his situation gets increasingly dire, this is not exactly the most uplifting or gentlest of stories. But it has a raw honesty to it, whether it be through the performances (Charlie Plummer’s determined but naïve boy, Steve Buscemi and Chole Sevigny as the resolutely practical trainer and jockey who he works with) or the unfussy style that director Andrew Haigh applies to the film. The film turns the knife a few times more than is necessary in the last 15 minutes - one particular incident about twenty minutes before the end feels like it should be the climax of the film,  and instead the film piles on more events before reaching resolution (and the performances continue to be good here, it’s just … I don’t know the extra material really justifies the screentime in terms of theme or characterisation – I know this is based on a novel, but this feels like the bit of the novel you cut for the movie). That doesn’t completely ruin the film but it does water down my appreciation a little bit.

Creed II

I’ve never seen a full “Rocky Film” – but I have seen the previous “Creed”, and liked it as a smart, populist boxing film about a young man finding himself and coming to terms with his legacy and his desire to excel at his chosen profession. And I’m aware of the Rocky films as a sort of shared cultural memory – the mild-mannered Italian boxer who rises to the championship in the face of various rivals while developing his relationship with his girlfriend, then wife, Adrian. I’m particularly aware of the wildly nationalistic, very very 80s, Rocky IV, which sees Rocky take on Ivan Drago, an evil Russian who kills his former opponent Apollo Creed in the ring before Rocky sets things right in a climactic fight right in the middle of the Soviet Union.

And to a certain extent, the setup for this film is a little gimmicky – Adonis Creed fights the son of the man who killed his father, Viktor Drago. It’s acknowledged early on that this is a cheap marketing ploy on the part of a boxing promoter, but there’s also emotional baggage here – Adonis’ desire to avenge the father he never knew, and Viktor, trained by Ivan to redeem what he perceives as his 30-years-old failure. And certainly the melodrama comes fairly regularly – Adonis also has to deal with his girlfriend’s encroaching deafness, and Rocky’s own reluctance to reengage with the brutality of the  past. This does lack the finely tuned sense of the first Creed, bringing far more melodrama and flat out cheese to the story. But dammit, a lot of this cheese works. I do think Adonis gets a little bit lost in the multiple subplots – the film never quite comes as clearly from his perspective as it did in the first one- and some plot points feel more like they are happening because they have to happen to get us to the next thing, rather than naturally earning them. But there’s still the strong cast – not only Jordan and Stallone, but also the wonderfully engaging Tessa Thompson as Adonis’s Girlfriend and the just plain spectacular Phylicia Rashad as his adoptive mother, pumping out wisdom and authority with every pore. Dolph Lungren is surprisingly good as the returned Drago, communicating the pain and rage of the previous decades (and pretty much embodying the term “toxic fatherhood”), and the climax feels incredibly climactic. So yes, it’s a little less well-constructed than the first film – but still, it is a pretty decent film that (damn the pun) still packs a punch.

The Children Act

This Ian McEwan adaptation gives Emma Thompson the best solo vehicle she’s had in a while, as a Chidren’s court judge who finds her marriage collapsing as she adjudicates for a young Jehovah’s witness boy whose life requires a blood transfusion, something his religion forbids. It feels in some ways like a companion piece to McEwan’s earlier work, Enduring Love – a look at the costs and obligations an apparent act of kindness can impose on someone. And Thompson serves the film well – giving away the emotional tempest that hides under a judicial exterior. But there is a tendency here to play things so emotionally restrained that everything stays at a slight distance – Thompson’s character is so determined to not have the emotional conversation and engagement she clearly needs to have with the people around her. And put next to the pure warmth of Stanley Tucci whose every step shows how ready he is to accept her if she’ll just lower the barriers slightly, the very English resolve gets incredibly frustrating. There are some decent supporting performances here – Jason Watkins, in particular, steals scenes wholesale with a glance as Thompson’s clerk – but this never quite goes beyond a theoretical exercise in moral dilemmas into something more emotionally accessible.

Widows

This is a thick pulp-crime genre piece packed with interest. Three women left behind after their criminal husbands die in a robbery gone wrong, all desperate to get a piece of a five million dollar plan their husbands left behind, find themselves up against rival gangsters and Chicago politics at its most venal. Led by a powerhouse Viola Davis, determined and tough, there’s a great ensemble cast here all playing in top gear (Michelle Roduiguez hasn’t been served material this meaty since her debut in “Girlfight”, and Elizabeth Debecki finally gets her breakthrough from “interesting bit of the supporting cast” to something far more central, this is probably the best Colin Farrell’s been with an American accent, Brian Tyrese Henry brings an intimidating authority and Daniel Kaluyaa a terrifying stillness). Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn have rewritten Lyda LaPlant’s pulp 80s miniseries into an exploration of class, gender, race and power as they come up against each other in a crime movie that serves both the pulpy pleasures, a whole lot of emotional thoughtfulness and a playing out of wider social forces against a group of very distinctive individuals. I’d hoped this would be interesting. I got something that delighted me all the way through to the final shot. Absolutely recommended.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Another attempt for Disney to raid the archive for themes they can use for live action movies, “Nutcracker and the Four Realms” imposes a period fantasy narrative on the Tchaikovsky ballet previously featured in “Fantasia” to mixed results. This has the same girl-coming-of-age-enters-a-damaged-fantasy-land-that-she-can-repair dynamics as the recent “Alice in Wonderland” live action film, and while it’s nice to have a fantasy land that’s Russian-themed (and exposition via ballet), this still sits somewhere below a skilful recreation. Mackenzie Foy has all the externals that a good girl heroine should (she’s inventive and brave and succeeds by her wits far more than any physical skills), but she’s a little stodgy. The supporting cast has a few entertaining turns – in particular, Keira Knightley grabs the opportunity to turn her performance up to 11 as a delightfully hammy Sugar Plum Fairy – silly, sultry and far more exciting than I’ve seen Knightley be previously. But this doesn’t quite make it as quality family entertainment – it’s all a little too desperate to fit into the mould of what’s worked previously, and just not enough fun when Knightley’s not on screen.

Anna and the Apocalypse

This Scottish-High-School-Christmas-Zombie-Musical is a fun little entertainment – the story of a girl about to leave her small country town to see the world when one Christmas the zombie apocalypse threatens her friends and family, it combines gleeful songs and choreography with splatter and gore in a mix that is frequently joyously irresistible. If the fun starts to pall towards the end as the film attempts a more serious emotional resolution (and a key human villain ends up being somewhat overacted), and it possibly ends up slightly less than the sum of its parts, there’s still a lot of parts that put a smile on the face. Yes, having two of the characters blissfully celebrate the season while oblivious to the undead lurching in the background is gag not unlike one of “Shaun of the Dead”s most memorable sequences, but if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. And perhaps the songs are a mixed bag, with a few too many wannabe power ballads near the end. But there’s enough here to bring a reasonable amount of seasonal joy.

Overlord

A team of soldiers parachute into Nazi-occupied territory to take down a transmitter. In the storm of battle, they discover something far worse – secret experiments the Nazis have been conducting that could change the war forever. This hybrid of war movie and horror movie is familiar stuff, though done with a reasonable amount of polish. It tends to work better as a war movie, particularly in the first ten-fifteen minutes as the paratroopers fly over Europe under heavy fire and then jump into danger, then later on, as the monstrous experiments are pretty familiar iconography at this point and the squad of soldiers never quite transcend their stereotypes of “the jewish one”, “The Italian one” etc. But while it doesn’t exactly innovate or surprise, it’s still effective in hitting the familiar notes and getting the familiar thrills and action.

I used to be normal: A Boyband Fangirl's story

Four different women of four different era declare their love of boybands. Through the Beatles, Take That, Backstreet Boys and One Direction, we get the sense of how deep and primal the appeal of a decently non-threatening set of boys with interesting haircuts can be.

Things that are targeted directly at a female audience tend, by and large, to get more pop-cultural mockery than things that are targeted directly at a male audience. And there’s no essential reason why this should be so. Yes, it’s undoubtedly true that a lot of it has some pretty heinous views about gender roles, wildly vague and nonsensical lyrics, and is shallow as all get out, but can you really say male-targeted popular culture doesn’t suffer from some of the same issues? This documentary does the admirable thing of taking all four women seriously (yes, even the wildly screaming teenage One Direction fan who gives the documentary its title) – but it also uses that serious access to ask the question – what do they get out of their fandom, what do they read into it, how does that relate to the rest of their life, and where does this lead them. The film’s clearly made over a number of years, meaning we see fandoms develop and morph as different stages of life approach these women, and this gives this an element of something like the “Up” series, as you get a genuine sense of life being lived on camera. It’s warm and happy and sweet-natured and thought provoking and all the good things a documentary should be. Thoroughly recommended.

Fantastic Beasts - The Crimes of Grindelwald

The first “Fantastic Beasts” was a bit of a hodgepodge of a movie. Weaving a story out of the ephemera and backstory of the Harry Potter universe, it tried to combine a charming innocent-abroad-who-just-wants-to-look-after-his-animals story with a deep delving into the hidden backstories of the battles that had rocked the world of wizards before Voldemort came along. It wasn’t entirely successful, but fortunately most of the focus was on the befuddled charming zoologist and his cute beasties, not on the messy backstory, so it remained reasonably charming as it moved the locale from a vaguely contemporary England to 1920s New York and introduced a nice bunch of characters it was fun to spend time with.

The follow up, alas, doubles down on the messy backstory – while still keeping our befuddled charming zoologist and the cute beasties. And the backstory gets very very messy (and indeed, infects the charming zoologist and his friends, all of whom manage to get hit by the stupid stick a few times in order to manipulate them into various positions so that they can be, pointlessly, at odds for a lot of the film).  Eager to almost immediately invalidate the ending of the previous film (so a character who was presumed dead is now alive, and another character who was imprisoned is freed again), there’s a vast number of exposition dumps. There’s some nice costume and art design, but quite frequently we’re rushing past it so much that we can’t enjoy it properly (and the climax takes place in an ugly cellar).  The animal stuff is the one bit that still works, but at this point it’s like gluing the Crocodile Hunter onto the Simirillion – it all feels extremely messy. And by the end of the film, we still feel like everything’s barely got out of first gear – it’s still all preparation-for-battle rather than anything actually happening in this film. There’s a vast detour into irrelevant genealogy for characters who are only ever going to appear in this film and who amount to red herrings in the grand scheme of things. And under the dead weight of all this lore, nothing like an actually fun movie gets a chance to escape. So alas, this is a shemozzle. But with a couple of very cute animals.

Shoplifters

This Palme D’Or winner tells of a family of low-income Japanese people gathered in one house in the middle of an unnamed city. Grandma, mum, dad, sister and brother are joined when mum and dad find a lost neglected young girl on her own and bring her into her family and their hardscrabble existence enhanced by a little light shoplifting. As the seasons pass and she gets more used to the tricks and cons that she’s surrounded by, the little scams begin to appear less like fun and games and more like something risky that could see their family falling apart at any moment.

I must admit for a reasonable amount of the length of this film, I found it a little bit aimless – the scenes didn’t seem to be building so much as just a series of events that could end at any time without much change to the film. Events in the last quarter of the film change that, and there’s a couple of surprising revelations (at least one of which is a little melodramatic). But there’s also some deeply emotive performances across the cast, both young and old, and an unflinching view of the hidden modern Japanese underclass. This is not perfect cinema, and I’m not entirely sure it’s really a worthy Palme D’Or winner, but it provides interesting viewing none the less.

The Old Man and the Gun

This is one of those case where we’re not so much getting a film as we’re getting a retirement gift to one of Hollywood’s longest running leading men. And certainly, as a celebration of Robert Redford’s considerable charms, this does the job well. Playing a bank robber whose repeated thefts see him living his life largely on the run, his entanglement with a woman of roughly his age (played by Sissy Spacek) asks the question whether he can really keep on running.

The chemistry between Redford and Spacek is off the charts, and is the prime reason to see this. There’s some good work in the supporting cast as well (Casey Affleck as the cop on his trail, Tom Waits and Danny Glover as two gang members), but the warmth and joy that exists between Spacek and Redford is the prime reason to see this. There’s little that’s particularly surprising, and it’s another “based on a true story” where the content of the story is more an anecdote than a full narrative, and in many ways this is an exercise that gets by on pure charm, nostalgia, our affection for the leads and some decently nostalgic cinematography. But if it’s a comfortable pair of socks of a movie, it’s at least a good pair of socks to be in.

Boy Erased

After an incident at his college, a young man is taken by his parents to an anti-gay treatment centre. As the sessions continue, he sees more and more the damage this is causing both to himself and to the other people around him, as the centre tries to delve deeper into his psyche to change him into something he isn’t.

This is well acted and a good and interesting topic to discuss, but it never quite develops the power it might. The conversion centre is largely seen as incompetent and unwise – a very banal kinda evil (though there’s one point where one treatment on another patient is extremely intense), but our protagonist is never really put under particularly excessive pressure – and it means that a lot of the power seems slightly removed and displaced – he’s a nice middle-class boy who goes through something that’s a little bit unpleasant but it’s never really the case that he’s in particular danger of anything other than being bored and lectured to for an extended period. There’s details that distract slightly (Troye Silvain does a good performance as one of the other candidates but his hair seems too flamboyant for a guy who’s meant to be trying to duck under the radar), and it’s another film about gay people that seems slightly scared of showing what gay love might actually be like to a mass market audience (much like “Bohemian Rhapsody”, it can’t portray a happy gay relationship beyond mild handholding and loose hugging, and that can only ever be in the margins). Which is not to say this is a bad film – it’s just not what it could be.

The Girl in the Spider's Web

The return of Lizbeth Salander, peak hacker and cyber-warrior, sees her, unfortunately, dropped into a somewhat more generic narrative than the previous stories – in this case, being tasked with helping a programmer recover his nuclear missile control technology to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. When, inevitably, it still ends up in the wrong hands, Salander’s sent on a chase that will see her tangling with multiple security agencies and a mysterious group known as the Spiders – and finally being dragged back into the past she thought she’d escaped.

Based on the fourth novel of the series (and the first not to be written by Stieg Larrson, whose death after the third novel resulted in some complex legal shenanigans with his surviving partner, meaning that not even incomplete notes of Larsson’s work made it into this one), this sticks our unconventional modern heroine into a pretty regulation action movie that just happens to be largely set in Sweden. Claire Foy has all the externals that should go into making a good Lizbeth Salander (the cool exterior, detached yet devastatingly direct in achieving her aims) – but the story around her never really gives her much of a chance to stick out particularly. There’s some odd casting in there (Stephen Merchant in particular sticks out in a conventional role as the guy who wrote the program that’s the McGuffin of the story – there’s no particular reason why he’s doing this role other than because it got offered to him), and a couple of decent action/heist moments, but the ending, in particular, is annoyingly pat and doesn’t really give us reason to stick around. Given the English language adaptations have skipped two books, there’s also a couple of character details that seem newly grabbed from the missing two books that are just sorta slapped on screen without any of the narrative support that would have meant they meant anything in particular. Salander’s periodic sidekick from the books, Mikail Blomqvist (yes, Salander was his sidekick in the first book but given her name’s on the title of all of them, he’s slipped back into sidekick territory), is back but he feels pretty marginal and could easily have been removed without anybody particularly noticing. This feels like a reduction of what was a smart thriller series into just another airport novel runaround (much as the recent Jason Bourne felt like it was going through the motions without any real reason to exist), and while it’s never particularly unwatchable, it doesn’t inspire a lot of reasons to go particularly looking for it either.

Susperia

This remake of Dario Argento’s seventies shocker combines modern dance and horror in an exploration of the connections between art, feminine power, control and revenge. It’s a visually beautiful film, and there are sequences that are astounding in their impact – particularly any of the dance sequences. But for some reason it never quite grabbed me emotionally or on a primal level – this is horror as thesis statement, for me, rather than something I feel deep in my soul. I can recognise intellectually the excellence in a lot of this (Tilda Swinton stands out in two very different roles) and it’s never dull to watch. But for some reason I come away from it recognising the skill and art involved, but never quite feeling it. It’s well made, and I’d never call it empty or soul-less, but it’s still a little too distant for me to take to my heart.

Bohemian Rhapsody

This is enjoyable nonsense, in many ways. As a biopic, it’s got flaws running through it – history is rearranged, facts are left out, and at least one dead person is given a portrait that is borderline defamatory – but it has two key strengths. One is that the unlikely story of the rise of Freddie Mercury and Queen is material that is just too fascinating to resist, even when told with some tone-deaf dialogue and clunky situations, and Rami Malek gives the role everything he has and everything the part can take, giving both the wild charisma bomb of a front man and the slightly insecure, isolated boy stuck in the middle of an international phenomenon. And the music is given its appropriate place in the forefront of the story – the plot of the movie basically ends fifteen minutes before the credits and we get a pitch perfect presentation of Queen’s Live Aid set (minus one song that’s been cut for time). It somehow doesn’t matter that none of the other members of Queen get to display much of a discernible personality, that its presentation of the gay scene seems drawn almost entirely from the seedy world of “Cruising”, and that it’s very definitely built as a mainstream audience pleasure machine rather than a deeper analysis of the group (if you were hoping to hear why Queen thought touring South Africa during the apartheid bans was a good idea, you’re outta luck). But as that mainstream audience pleasure machine, it works gangbusters.

The House with a clock in its walls

This is in many ways a throwback to the 80s Amblin era entertainments, with an orphaned child taken in by his uncle who lives in a house full of magic and strangeness. And as he settles into his new home, he discovers a threat lurks within the house, a threat that could endanger everything he knows…

This has charismatic adults (Jack Black and Cate Blanchett most prominently, but also Kyle McLachlan and Renee Elise Goldsberry) and none-too-bad work from the kids either, yet it fumbles into being mostly fairly mediocre. Nothing really builds up a head of steam – this tends to be a series of incidents, rather than necessarily a well rounded plot (even when the backstory is revealed and turns out to have interesting details, it still feels kinda flat) – this just doesn’t have the verve that a good kids fantasy movie should have, as the adventure becomes overwhelming and you’re caught up in the wonder – instead, it just sorta sits there flatly. Black still has the twinkle in his eye, and Blanchett shows a nice sense of wit, but there just isn’t quite enough for them to do, so it all feels like so much sludge.

Rampant

Somewhere roughly between the 1600s and 1800s, a small Korean kingdom is under threat from demons (who behave remarkably like western Zombies - for Korean purposes, they’re demons, but I’ll refer to them as zombies to stop cognitive dissonance). The crown prince, who has been living in idleness in another kingdom, returns to carry out his brother’s last request, bringing his wife and unborn child away from the turbulent court, only to find out the petty politics of succession are the least of his worries, as unrelenting hordes of zombies begin attacking first an outlying village, and then the imperial palace…

My knowledge of Korean history before the Korean war is pretty sketchy, so I spent way longer at the beginning of this film than I should have wondering “when does this take place? Where are all these other cities? What nationality are the westerners who sold the rival warlord guns – they sound Dutch but that could be anything, really”. And then I realised this was not something I should be thinking about, I should be thinking about how well this carries out its goals – yes, this is your standard zombiethon, but it’s got enough oddities of design and presentation to make it a bit more interesting. The arc of our hero being initially a careless playboy who’s pretty much dragged into involvement with the people who he should, by rights, be ruling over, gives us some reasonable character work, and even the annoying-comedy-relief gets noticeably less so as the story goes on. This isn’t by any means even the best zombie movie of the year, but it still functions pretty well as a good meat-and-potatoes version of Korean action with a twist.

Ghost Stories

The multi-story anthology has a pedigree – in the horror genre, “Dead of Night”, “Trilogy of Terror” and “Creepshow” stand out particularly as compilations of short stories with startling twists and turns, some more or less held together by a linking device. This film by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson (Dyson being the writing partner of the League of Gentlemen, Nyman being an occasional actor, along with co-writer and co-director of a number of illusionist Derren Brown’s shows), combines a trio of stories being told to Nyman (playing a skeptical investigator of the paranormal) – though of course it turns out he has more at stake in these stories than we initially know. Unfortunately most anthologies suffer from uneven-ness, and this is no exception. The first story, starring Paul Whitehouse as a night watchmen exposed to startling phenomena, probably works best – the second feels like it wraps up too quickly, and the third really never gets off the ground. And the wraparound, when it reveals its secrets, feels tricksy for the sake of being tricksy. There’s a couple of interesting moments of style (in the shooting style, this sometimes feels a bit like a Ken Loach horror movie – very entrenched in the working class in the north of England, with worn and weary houses and emotional malaise), but this never really got me particularly engrossed.

Halloween

40 years ago, John Carpenter and Deborah Hill, for most practical purposes, invented the modern slasher film. Yes, there’d certainly been films about teens being killed by a silent menace with a kitchen knife or other sharp implements before, but “Halloween” made a lot of the clichés of the genre both effective and extremely profitable, leading to an explosion of imitators and sequels that continues up til today. It also had one of the best “final girls” in the business with Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, a relatable, strong, intelligent and capable woman who successfully fought back to survive the slash-a-thon. After seven direct sequels, a remake and a sequel to that remake, this one follows up by … ignoring pretty much everything in the sequels and getting back to basics. After surviving that night, Laurie’s been living in preparation for it to all happen again – a cagey withdrawn figure determined not to be a victim, in ways that have pushed away her daughter and pretty much everyone else around her. But the combination of two crime podcasters who want to interview the still-institutionalised Michael Myers and a transfer to a new prison means Michael is suddenly loose and has access to that white mask and a set of overalls, and he’s coming back to Haddonfield to continue where he left off.

David Gordon Green’s film stripmines the original while adding a modern feel. Michael Myers is a genuinely offputting figure even in repose – practical, lethal and very very dangerous. Curtis matches him in effect – we’re never in any doubt of her determination to protect herself and everyone around her, nor that (despite her age), she’ll do whatever is necessary to get resolution. This is formula done right – running like a freight train where you know the tracks, you know the destination but damned if it isn’t effective at hitting every one of the points along the way

Westwood: Icon, Rebel, Activist

Vivienne Westwood is undoubtedly a major figure in the fashion world, while remaining controversial, contrarian and with a distinctly personal vision. She’s also, in this documentary, not a very co-operative interview, and the film that results tends to lack particular depth or analysis or deeper understanding of the subject. Her activism, when it’s presented, tends to come across more as dilettantism, her rebellion feels minor and inconsequential, and she comes across (inadvertently or not) as someone no longer in control of her own iconography, lost in the middle of the giant corporate machine that trades on her brand name. This was, to put it shortly, not a documentary I warmed to particularly – while it puts its subject at the forefront, her reticence to tell her own story means that by the end of it I didn’t really feel I knew or understood much more about her than I did at the beginning. Which to my mind makes it a bit of a flop.

A Star is Born

It’s a story often told, but rarely as well as this. It’s not a complicated story – man meets woman – he’s successful, she’s not, but as they fall in love she rises in their industry while he falls victim to his own demons, and it ends with his death and her survival. This version strips a lot of the accumulated layers away – it’s highly complicated on him and her and their bond of both music and love –but this only serves to make it all the more powerful. Bradley Cooper as the star-who-falls (and as writer-director) has a great ability to show how besotted he is by Lady Gaga as the star-who-rises – his devoted expression shows his complete admiration for her both as a person and as a talent (it even slightly weakens the film in the second half as his increasingly erratic behaviour technically should manifest as cruelty to her but he’s never quite willing to let the undercurrent of romantic devotion go). This one doesn’t go for the big notes of melodrama – the finest moments are small glances and shared intimacies, whether in a bedroom or in front of a Cochella Crowd. And it’s all the finer for feeling real and heartfelt – it’s weird that a big budget remake of an iconic Hollywood classic should feel so very personal and soulful, but it’s incredibly pleasing that it is. This is a sweet little heartbreaker.

1%

This is a somewhat standard biker flick, concentrating on a Western Australian bikie gang, the Copperheads. Their president, Knuck, is just getting out of prison. His vice president, Paddo, is trying to make a deal with rival gangs to save the life of his damaged drug addicted brother. And behind both their wives and girlfriends are positioning themselves for control. But Knuck’s time in prison has changed him and made him paranoid, and soon the tension between the two men will boil over.

Alas, this suffers from a bit of fatal miscasting, as Ryan Corr, playing Paddo, never really convinces as a hard-core criminal type (even the dialogue eventually agrees, with Knuck calling him “a male model in leathers”). He’s not particularly compelling as a centre for the film – everyone around him seems far more interesting and far better motivated – not just reacting to circumstances but driving them, for good or ill. Matt Nable who wrote the script has given himself the prime role of Knuck and he relishes everything the role offers – a truly toxic figure whose own internally suppressed divisions play out across the whole gang – and the script is aware of the latent homoeroticism of this mostly male environment and uses it to interesting effect. And while the setup is a bit ropey, the payoffs when they come still work pretty strongly (although the final twist seems awfully arbitrary). This isn’t perfect pulp but it has its moments of success.

Venom

Yes, there are probably too many superhero films. There used to be too many westerns, and too many teen apocalypse films, and so on. But this is Hollywood and they follow trends until the trend has been bled dry, and there certainly still seems to be a fair bit of blood in this particular stone. “Venom” combines a lot of fairly generic plot elements (Evil Scientist! Bland-quasi-love-interest! Overuse of CGI in the finale so you can’t tell what’s going on!) with a few bits of oddity in bringing a standalone film for one of Marvel’s more villainous characters, the symbiotic creature with big nasty teeth known as Venom, who in this case is domesticated a bit by having him largely kill bad people and fight against worse versions of his own kind. 

In all honesty, this is a bit of a mess when it’s not mindbogglingly predictable, and the action scenes vary between generic and incoherent, but it’s remarkably good at making Venom the standout character in the entire film, despite being either CGI or voiceover for the entire film. Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, the human host of Venom, is your standard dickhead slob protagonist whose apparent crusading activism never really seems to involve having any other allies around him (does he have too much integrity, or is it more that he’s an inconsiderate dickhead? I know they probably want me to think the first, but it’s more likely to be the second), but his Venom voice has a delightful Cookie Monster quality, pure simple enthusiastic hunger, which feeds a very odd mismatched-couple action movie (one’s a knobhead reporter! One’s an intergalactic scavenger! Together they fight crime). Michelle Williams has almost nothing to do in the most generic of crappy girlfriend roles, although there is about thirty seconds when they suggest ways in which she could have been more interesting. 

I did kinda enjoy this despite the very flawed nature of the whole exercise, and the threat that we may be in line for a sequel that probably won’t use the promising elements of this film nearly as much as it will just be a more stupidly bloated version of the worst elements.

First Man

This is simultaneously the story of the process leading up to the moon landings and a very personal portrait of a man who’s extremely cut off from his own emotions. Neil Armstrong was never the most demonstrative or funloving of astronauts (although, fun fact that is dropped in this movie, he apparently wrote a musical! They don’t let us hear any of the songs, though), and this is reflected in Ryan Gosling’s super-detached, stoic performance - through multiple years and multiple missions filled with setbacks and life-threatening danger. 

While this is a story that has been told a few times, it’s not been told from quite this personal a viewpoint before. This has its pluses and its minuses – this is very much not the “rah rah USA” approach to the space program that we’ve frequently seen before, with the result that it never quite has the same pleasures people come to expect from these kinda movies. There’s a lot of tension every time anybody goes into space in this film – despite us knowing that Neil Armstrong lives through this, the feeling of the peril of spacetravel is palpable. It’s a distinctly non-joyful and non-triumphal film, which is, I suspect, not entirely what people are looking for in a film about the space program – but for all that, it achieves what it sets out to do remarkably well.

Shadow

Zhang Yimou has been having a rough couple of years. Not necessarily financially (he’s still producing big scale Chinese epics with a strong design sense, and he got to do the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics) but certainly script-wise “The Great Wall”, for example, suffered from over-enthusiastic catering to the Western market (no, it wasn’t a “white saviour” narrative, but it was a “white people shoehorned into a central role when they’re essentially irrelevant” movie, or more specifically a “why is this guy the protagonist when this woman is a whole heap more interesting” movie), and he hasn’t really had a breakout hit since “Curse of the Golden Flower” over a decade ago.

Due to the vagaries of distribution, this may not break the pattern (it’s only showing twice a day at Hoyts Belconnen at the moment) but it certainly deserves a bit more attention than it might be getting. The setup is familiar – two rival kings fight over a city, and the injured warlord of the city currently-out-of-power finds an impersonator to cover for him and fight his battle for him. And the setup takes a while – there’s a lot of training and backroom politicking to get through for the first 50 minutes or so, and while Yimou’s design sense still shines (in this case, using settings and costumes largely on a black-white-grey palette), there’s a deliberate pacing that can feel a little sluggish. But it all pays off in a slightly bonkers final third when battle breaks out in a frenzy of extraordinary moments that simply have to be seen to be believed. Recommended for anybody who’s been missing the grand Chinese epic battle film.

Bad Times at the El Royale

This is a gorgeously pulpy story of four strangers all spending the night at the El Royale, a hotel right on the border between California and Nevada, a former getaway for gangsters and celebrities alike that has fallen on poorer times as the 1960s draw to a close. Everybody has their secrets, including the hotel, and over the course of one night all of them will spill out in ways most dangerous and bloody.

There’s a whole lot of entertainment here, with a collection of great performances – Cynthia Errivo as a nightclub singer gets to also deliver a great range of soul classics in a voice that shows why she’s won Tony awards, and Jeff Bridges relishes the opportunities in the best role he’s had in years, but there’s not a weak link anywhere else. The narrative twists and turns as the stakes escalate, and how I wish I could tell you of the highlights, which include something with a bottle and something with a number. Writer-Director Drew Goddard shows a sure hand for mood and style in this thrilling little film that hit my delight buttons repeatedly.

American Animals

This is in some ways a fairly familiar heist story, with a couple of interesting details. First of all, the two lead actors, Barry Keoghan and Evan Peters, are distinctly unusual young actors who pair interestingly - KEoghan's slightly nerdy attitude and Peters' youthful fearlessness play well against each other in the early stages. Also there's a clever framing device as this based-on-a-true-story brings in interviews with the real participants, including ones that indicate that the participants don't always agree on the details (which then gets introduced into the re-enactments, as, for example, a disagreement about the location of a conversation means that the re-enactment swaps location from shot-to-shot). But these embelishments tend to drip away as the film continues (yes, we still get the interviews, but they stop interacting with how the main story goes, and KEoghan in particular tends to get sidelined when the heist actually takes place). And the payoff just isn't quite worth the setup - it's ultimately a very conventional heist in most respects, and while there's notes of concern for the victims, it's not enough to elevate this beyond the middling.

Custody

This french film is a tight look at a divorce, as the unreconciled father and mother share custody arrangements with the son of the marriage (the daughter is already old enough to make her own decisions, and has decided she wants nothing to do with dad). The tension underlying the meetings between father and son builds with the small and bigger lies that generate between them as the boy, too young to really be doing this, tries to keep peace between his parents. And there's an enthralling last 15 minutes as everything boils over in a sequence that had me utterly engrossed. It's done in a way that feels unembelished (no background music beyond where music has a source within the scene, no flashy camera work), and draws us into a story that proves as stark as it is intriguing. Definitely something to catch.

The Seagull

This film version of Chekov's plays is one of those points where this and the other blog cross over a bit. Of the big four Chekov plays, "The Seagull" is probably the one I'm least fond of (the two-years-later jump between act three and four contains a pretty messy exposition dump, the titular Seagull kinda feels like it's bashing you over the head with its obvious symbolism, and it's possibly the most navel-gazing in his canon, given of the main four characters, two are writers - there's no other writers appearing in "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters" or "The Cherry Orchard"), but it still has a lot of stuff that works for me. This version suffers additionally from some clunky translations and some condensing that means Chekov's subtext, where a lot of his strengths lie, ends up not getting room to breathe. You need the sense of a languid summer where people's lives are wasting away, and if you're rushing from plotpoint-to-plotpoint, all that goes way.

Still, there's some strengths in the performancea. Masha's not necessarily the most significant character in the play but Elizabeth Moss nails every moment she has - catching that essential balance between comedy and misery that is so damn Russian. Saroise Ronan, usually so good, is a bit sabotaged by overenthusiatic editing meaning that Nina's less a girl whose uncertainty is going to lead her astray than an over-naive girl who gets more and more bipolar - her final scene, in particular, is a bit of a mess. Annette Bening and Corey Stoll are served better by the edit and hit more of Chekov's essential notes. Billy Howle as the fourth main character, Konstantin, also feels overly simplified by the edit, although Konstantin is a very tough role to get (he's a young writer who's not entirely successful and is the one who has to do a lot of waving that symbolic Seagull around). And the choice to cut the final few lines and just focus on Bening's face means the final story point is a little lost.

I don't know whether Chekov really lives comfortably in film form without major reconception, and I kinda dread this may be used as a simple cliffs-notes to a more complex play, but if this is going to be the only chance we get to see some of these people play these roles.... well, that's not all bad.

Fantastic Fest 2018

Back in Austin Texas for another run at Fantastic Fest, the festival dedicated to horror, action, thrillers, and the just plain weird from throughout the world. With several premieres and with cast, directors, writers and producers in attendance, all in the movie palace that is the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, there's not a place I'd rather be for the 8 days and 37 movies I got through. Some truly exceptional film hit the screen this year, and it was a delight to be in the audience for it.

Short writeups for all 37 films follow. I'll write longer ones if/when these show up in Australian cinemas.

Film 1 - Halloween - 40 years later Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield - Laurie Strode is ready - great horror sequel with lotsa good tension and a great final line. 4 stars

Film 2 - The Unthinkable - family drama gets bigger scale as disasters overtake Sweden. I liked the big story here but the lead character becomes increasingly petty and awful and it made it awkward to watch this film through possibly the least attractive angle. 3

Film 3 - In Fabric - new fill from the maker of Duke of Burgundy and Barbarian Sound Studios. Very 70s style thriller about a dress described as "artery red" and the people effected by it. Erotic, hilarious, tense, strange and bizarre. 4

Film 4 - the wolf house - chilean/German animation about colonisation, individuality and creeping everybody out. Found this a little too "wow that's a lot of homemade art" - it clearly took a lot of effort to physically realise this, but as storytelling this came across that little bit too opaquely to make an impact with me. 2.5

Film 5 - Border - a Swedish customs agent is particularly good at drawing out people with contraband but finds herself drawn to a man who crosses her desk. This is a film with huge surprises and depth and emotion and I can't say anything else except 4.

Film 6 - Apostle - brother goes looking for his sister living on a cultist island in 1905 - feels a little overstuffed but has good action moments although less than directors previous (Raid + raid 2). The plot feels a little muddled and there's not exactly a good control of tone - this can get a bit weird for the sake of it. 3.5

Film 7 - One cut of the dead - Japanese zombie one cut story goes beyond delightful in ways that completely surprise. This is absolutely a stay to the very end movie. And you will think I'm insane rating this as highly as I do in the first 15 minutes. 5.

Film 8 - You might be the killer - guy at summer camp starts seeing victims pile up, calls friend who knows their slasher flicks - two likable leads but this doesn't offer much unfamiliar and it's more lightly amusing than wildly hilarious. 2.5

Film 9 - After the screaming stops - Bros, the boyband reform for an O2 arena gig but sibling rivalry continues to play against them - Music Documentaries often contain a fair bit of Spinal Tap, and this is no exception -but it contains enough spinal tap to be both hilarious and sorta moving. Matt Goes in particular is an inspired idiot. 4

Film 10 - Slut in a good way - Quebecois coming of age as a group of girls deal with the complications of teen sex - funny and with incisive ideas on female sexuality and gorgeously black and white. 3.5

Film 11 - Hold the Dark - wolf expert goes to remote Alaska to find an abducted child but more is going on - bigger scale follow up to Green Room is proof bigger sometimes means bloated. It meanders too much and gets too fond of digressions. There's good sequences (particularly one in the middle of the film) but a messy whole. 2.5

Film 12 - Overlord - a ww2 squad is looking to blow up a transmitter but find strange experiments on site - this is big budget pulp action horror and serves up a decent platoon -on-a-mission plus monsters - but after a great opening on board a plane full of parratroopers in the midst of german gunfire, some of the rest feels a bit more rote and by the numbers. 3

Film 13 - the standoff at sparrow creek - a militia has been accused of firing on a police funeral and they gather to find out who's guilty and who can be framed - reasonable small scale thriller (most of the film takes place in one warehouse) and with a good climax but a bit laboured getting to the climax. 3

Film 14 - Shadow - Zhang Yimou directs a story with a commander and his secret double determined to reclaim a city for their king - peak late Yimou (this is up with things like Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower), and while the opening is a little heavy going with all the chinese politics (though a gorgeous black-and-grey design scheme keeps the attention) the final battle when it comes is strange, beautiful and satisfying. 4

Film 15 - Dogman - dog groomer is dominated by local bully until things go too far - strong and intimate with a great supporting dog cast -4

Film 16 - secret screening - suspiria - ballet school in 77 Germany gets a new pupil and things get weird and nasty - beautiful and brutal and strange - it's political and personal and thoughtful and gut grabbing - strong work 4.

Film 17 - the night comes for us - Indonesian action about a triad guy who tries to quit and the large amount of death that follows. So much violence, just enough plot, and thoroughly fun. It's also a Netflix original so should be visible by everyone and should be watched with a collection of your most violence-happy friends. 4.5

Film 18 - Deadwax -vinyl collectors find a record that is able to kill and must find where it comes from - this was fairly plodding with only a few decent moments - both leads in particular were quite dull 2

Film 19 - school's out - French talented and gifted class get a substitute teacher after their current one commits suicide during class - moody and intense and , I presume, a good demonstration of the psychological effects of spending time with a lot of teenage ennui - solid without tipping over to compelling, though results for teaching professionals may vary. 3

Film 20 - ladyworld - after a disaster 8 young women are stuck underground in a house. As the days pass insanity increases. This feels very student film but has its moments of ott insanity along with a wildly disconcerting sound design that had me look at other members of the audience wondering if there was something physically wrong with them. 2.5

Film 21 - Level 16 - girls are held in an orphanage waiting to be adopted but more is going on - it's very Canadian sci-fi but with some nice moments (in particular when the evil conspiracy turns out to be running less than smoothly) - 3.5

Film 22 - Mid 90s - young kid joins a skate crew and experiences growing up moments - great debut for Jonah Hill as writer director - heartbreaking and funny and full of unwise life choices - 4.5

Film 23 - Climax - Welcome to Gaspar Noe land. It's a dance movie. It's a drug movie. It's a sex and violence movie. It's extraordinarily packed with characters and incidents and it's compelling throughout. 5

Film 24 - Modest Heroes - collection of 3 Studio Ponoc anime shorts - last year's Mary and the witches flower suggested Ponoc was a slightly lesser Ghibli and the first short with two underwater child creatures continued that impression (in particular it had a bunch of crying underwater which seemed weird). But the middle short, Life ain't gonna lose, had a remarkable art style and a sweet story about a kid with an allergy to eggs that got my heart engaged. Story 3, Invisible, about an invisible man finding his place in society, was a bit messy with its metaphor but also pretty tight. 3 for the collection, 4.5 for the middle film

Film 25 - Quit your life - 1971 Korean revenge melodrama about a wrongfully executed man, his friend who tries to persuade the perpetrator to kill himself to save the wrongfully accused man's soul, and the widow who has gone blind with grief. Somewhat cheesy and the melodrama is very hefty to a ridiculous extent but enjoyable in its own nutso way. 3

Film 26 - The Perfection - a cellist returns to her tutor after time away looking after her dying mother - but her relationship with her replacement gets very complicated - twisted and a little bit schlocky but effective as it pulls repeated surprises and just how far this will go. 4

Film 27 - Tenacious D's Apocalypto - this has a lot of dick jokes and bad Schwartzanegger impersonations, all in hand drawn images. It also is goddamned hilarious. 4

Film 28 - Between Worlds - truck driver with a dead wife meets a mother whose daughter is near death, when her daughter recovers she starts behaving like the dead wife - this is Nic Cage exploitation in a bad way - it takes the out there line readings and broad performance but doesn't give proper background support to it so this feels like mid level Zalman King (guy who did 80s crap like Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and similar films that crashed Mickey Rourke's career. At one point Nic Cage's character reads a poem from a volume entitled"Memories by Nicolas Cage". I almost wanted to stick around for the q and a and say "how dare you" to the writer director but sleep seemed wiser. 1

Film 29 - I used to be normal - a boyband fangirls story - Australian documentary tracking four fans of different eras from The Beatles to One Direction and how their lives have been impacted by fandom in surprising ways. Very sweet natured look at fandom and appreciation over a range of women and years. Funny but not in a "laughing at the silly fans" way. 4

Film 30 - Holiday - a Danish group of friends gather on holiday but for one young woman bad things are on the horizon - this is sorta a film of two halves - the events before the bad thing are a bit vague (character relationships in particular are left unclear) - the bad thing itself has some technical issues where a prosthetic is a bit over obvious but after that the relationships crystallise and this becomes more compelling. 3

Film 31 - Donnybrook - various rednecks head to a big fight and along the way have smaller fights - this just felt grim a lot without anything in particular beyond "gee being poor sucks". Won best of the fest but not my thing. 2

Film 32 - Under the silver lake - a modern LA noir with a mysterious blonde, a missing billionaire, a number of mysterious conspiracies and oddness. Intriguing, a bit self indulgent and ultimately a bit silly but I enjoyed much of it anyway. It's playful rather than navel gazing most of the time which makes the difference. 3.5

Film 33 - Cam - Webcam girl Alice is pursuing greater popularity but extreme aftereffects start to mess with her chosen career - an effective black-mirror-ish thriller that aims to not demonise sex work but still demonises the clients a fair bit. It works OK but has a few plot bumps. 3

Film 34 - Chained for Life - on a film set a relationship develops between an actress and an actor that is affected by his deformity - an exploration of genre films use and misuse of disabled/impaired/unconventional performers - frequently funny and a fair bit meta. 3.5

Film 35 - The man who killed Don Quixote - yes I now admit it's really a movie. It's messy and inconsistent but there is magic in there that really works particularly in the relationship between Driver and Pryce. 3.5

Film 36 - Lords of Chaos - the story of the creation of Norwegian black metal , complete with suicide, church burning and generally foolish young men - interesting but it's weirdly un-Norwegian - the leads are Americans, it's in English and there's not a lot of social context or background to where this comes from. 3

Film 37 - Bad times at the El royale - Four strangers check into a hotel. They all have secrets and over one night they will find out secrets about each other and the hotel. I loved this noir flavoured thriller in a late 60s setting - at the centre it has a great launch performance for Cynthia Errivo, one of the best Jeff Bridges performances of recent times, and not a bum note anywhere. 5

The Predator

It's a weird sci fi franchise that's had three sequels (to date) plus two crossovers, none of which even vaguely come close to touching the iconic power of the first one. But "Predator" definitely is a case where there's the original and then there's everything else struggling to keep up. This one probably plays as close to the pulpy 80's origins as it possibly can (with Shane Black, who was in the original, directing and co-writing with a mix of quips and violence that epitomises that era. This still suffers from a somewhat underwhelming lead actor (Boyd Holbrook) and a slightly overstuffed script, plus a little too much cheese. Still, there's a stronger supporting cast (in particular, the gang of misfit marines who help out in stopping the human-hunting Predators), and a reasonably adventurous plot that combines icky horror and a couple of decent ideas. If it doesn't completely satisfy, it at least provides something like a reasonable night's entertainment.

Three Identical Strangers

This documentary tells the unlikely but true story of triplets separated at birth who were reunited in their late teens via coincidence (for two of them) and media coverage (for the third). There's a whole heap of twists and surprises in here (although the fate of one of the brothers is somewhat hinted at by the fact he doesn't appear in interviews), and it's best going into this knowing not-very-much beyond the setup. It turns into a film that's about much more than one bizarre incident, and leaves open big questions about how personalities are constructed, how we form our beliefs and much more. A startling, incisive, clever documentary that does the hard yards of taking a story and crafts it into a narrative. Compelling viewing.

You were Never Really Here

This is a intriguing if slightly too artsy for its own good kinda thriller about a violent man pursuing violent ends in the name of justice in a heavily-overrun-with-criminals New York. It's a familiar setup that Lynne Ramsay breaks up by including almost subliminal flashbacks to the violent past of Joaquin Phoenix's protagonist, and much of the violence is done in a clear-but-allusive manner that means nothing is gratuitously dwelled on. But at the same time, I tend to think this plays more as familiar material with a mildly fresh lick of paint than anything more substantial - Lynne Ramsay's artful noodling doesn't really ever give us much of more depth or more soul than how we've seen it before, and this tends to remove the visceral pleasure of the familiar beats without really replacing them with anythign overly substantial. I left wishing for something more. 

Teen Titans Go! To the movies

A big-screen adaptation of the popular Cartoon Network series, this spoofs superheroes and superhero movies with wild abandon. Five young wannabe-heroes find everybody has a movie but them, and their attempts to get into the movies forms the slim thread tying together a lot of jokes that will appeal to hard core comic book nerds and five year old boys in roughly equal measure. It’s all utterly ridiculous in a way that had me grinning repeatedly – particular during the “I want it to be Oscar nominated” song, “An Upbeat Inspirational Song about Life”, sung by Michael Bolton in the persona of a large white tiger. This is about as meta a self parody as there’s ever been, and if this misses your wavelength I can imagine this being a pretty tedious 80 minutes or so. But otherwise, this is pure fantastic enjoyment.