A Simple Favour

Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a single mum, recently widowed, who fills her time with a crafting video-blog, demonstrating decoupage and baking tips to a teensy number of subscribers, plus volunteering over-enthusiastically at her son’s school. When she meets working mum Emily (Blake Lively) and is brought along on a playdate between their sons, she’s impressed by the immaculately dressed, effortlessly cool career woman. But when she does a favour keeping Emily’s son overnight while Emily works late, and Emily later goes missing, things begin to career out of control. Investigating what happened to her friend gets Stephanie into more and more trouble, mixing with fashonistas, the police and Emily’s very attractive husband.

This sorta falls into the middle zone of “Gone Girl” knockoffs – it’s better than “Girl on the Train” but not as good as the original – but it does have a nice gentle whimsy to its distinctly female take on a crime story. If this isn’t really a solve-it-yourself story (there’s at least one twist which comes straight from the desperate writer’s toolkit), it makes up for it with strong casting (Kendrick is a delightfully daggy heroine and Lively drips both contempt and poise as the cooler-than-everybody Emily, in a series of spectacularly fashionable outfits, including one suit that really shouldn’t be containing her boobs) and a nice sense of whimsy and general lightness.

Juliet, Naked

The latest film based on a Nick Hornby novel bears some resemblance to one of his most successful, “High Fidelity” – being a film set in the world of music fanatics and those who love (or don’t love but have put up with) them. But this one’s a little sharper – telling the story of a fanatic vlogger, Duncan, whose website devoted to the one-album-and-disappeared-twenty-years-ago star Tucker Crowe consumes vast amounts of his life, to the chagrin of his partner, Annie. But when a raw recording of the original sessions of his album becomes available, Annie is the first to listen to it, and her reaction causes fractures both with Duncan and, surprisingly, with Crowe, whose reclusive life recovering from the disasters his rock star life left behind gets challenged when he gets in contact with Annie to agree with her dismissive review of his old work. This has a much less gentle view of male self-indulgence than “High Fidelity” did – it recognises the self-regard, obstinacy and entitlement that can live within fan culture far more clearly and mocks it far more readily. The film version is perfectly cast in the three lead roles – Chris O’Dowd’s belligerent nerd, Rose Byrne’s exhausted girlfriend and Ethan Hawke (being a relic of the 90s himself) channelling a little of what worked in the later scenes of  Boyhood as the guy who is resigned to the consequences of the life he picked up when he was too young to know better. It’s maybe a little meandering, but it’s charming and funny and gently wise with a biting final line that ensures you leave the film grinning.

Crazy Rich Asians

Based on the first of the popular trilogy of novels, this is an indulgent bit of entertainment as a young game-theory professor travels to Shanghai for the wedding of a friend of her boyfriend, only to discover he’s a lot richer than she thought he was, and his family has very definite ideas about who’s suitable to marry their boy. To a certain extent this is a “celebration of culture” romantic comedy along the lines of, say, “Big Fat Greek Wedding”, and like that film it’s got some very traditional pleasures along with some shamelessly corny comedy. In this case, director John Chu is a very capable visual director – he makes the opulence glisten and the food-porn of a Shanghai market look suitably drool worthy, and there’s some good stuff in the supporting cast (particularly Michelle Yeoh as the boyfriend’s mother – around her, it can be a pretty marginal comedy, with her, scenes elevate to feel like they’re out of a Jane Austen novel, where social codes and working within them are all-important and taken very seriously). The two romantic leads are a little dull (Constance Wu has a bit of pluck to her but doesn’t really get a chance to cut loose very much, Henry Golding is a very pretty lump of wood but his chest is nicely chiselled), there’s a strong supporting cast (Awkwafina from “Ocean’s 8” does the best-friend job with charming goofiness), there’s maybe a few too many subplots (Ronnie Chieng ends up having basically only one joke and no actual plot, and Gemma Chan, so good on TV’s Humans, gets stuck in a sideplot that presumably meant something in the original novel but feels marginal here), and if you examine too closely you might end up thinking maybe a guy who’s prepared to drop his girlfriend in a situation like this without proper preparation isn’t the guy you want to end up with, no matter how loaded he is. But it’s mostly glossy populist fun with a couple of reasonable twists.

The Happytime Murders

This is a mess. And it’s a mess in very strange ways – a puppet detective movie in a world where puppets are a discriminated underclass in a world mostly run for and by humans, where a series of murders going through the cast of an old TV show bring out a lot of dark and dirty secrets, this could have been a twistedly entertaining romp along the lines of Meet the Feebles or Avenue Q. But instead this is very clunky – the lead puppet, Phil, is a fairly dull compendium of PI clichés, and Melissa McCarthy as his human offsider isn’t really breaking the mould of her recent run of “yell very loud” performances either. Nobody really seems to get the tone of how this should work, which is ridiculous given this is the Henson organisation’s attempt at doing something a bit more wide ranging. None of the puppets really appeal, and the only human performance that even vaguely gets the tone right is Maya Rudolph as Phil’s secretary – she’s got a blissful goofyness that briefly lightens up the screen when she’s on, reminding us this is meant to be fun, not a slog. But her role’s too small to really give this much more than a tiny lift. Very missable.

The Meg

I’m not too proud to admit that this was a film I’d anticipated at the beginning of the year. Jason Statham versus a Gigantic Prehistoric Shark? This looked like goofy pleasure made right for my stupid pleasure bone. No, Statham’s never going to trouble the Oscars with nuanced performance and emotional transformation, but in meatheaded classics like the Transporter and Crank films, he’s got a certain go-for-broke machismo which can be ridiculously entertaining.

Alas, this doesn’t really fulfil those wishes. It all feels very by-the-numbers and blunted down, whether it’s the minimisation of any actual gore from the prehistoric shark attacks, Statham being in the uncomfortable position of having to be forced into playing both traumatised and romantic rather than just unstoppable badass, the overstuffed supporting cast (Ruby Rose, for instance, has proved she can be a good addition to an ensemble, but in this film she has virtually nothing to do – she’s not even spouting exposition behind a computer screen, the most she does is briefly give the Megaladon an option for a potential feeding frenzy that doesn’t really happen).

Look, this has its occasional moments – a couple of reasonable shark attacks, a cute kid who is, I’ll reluctantly concede, definitely cute, and a half-decent ending. But I hoped for a whole lot more than I got.

Slenderman

The popular internet myth/meme becomes a movie, presumably because the marketing department thought there was a need for one. It doesn’t’ become a very good movie, though – this is sorta a teen “The Ring” retread, with a lot of enthusiastic googling to try to find how to deal with an evil creature that has crept into the lives of four average teenagers. The problem is, these are four very average teenagers with little distinguishing personality beyond “One with a Boyfriend”, “One with a sister”, “Black one” and “The one who disappears first”. And there’s a few surrealistic scare sequences that would fit right in as the most boring element of a lesser Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. But this adds up to very very little – there’s nothing you haven’t seen done better a thousand times before, and it’s a fairly dull non-event of a film.

Mirai

Mamoru Hosada is one of the best anime creators of recent years. In the last decade he’s made multiple classics – “The Girl that Leaped through time”, “Summer Wars”, “the Boy and the Beast” all combining fantasy elements with touching stories of human connection. “Mirai” is on a much smaller scale, from the perspective of a somewhat moody four year old whose desire to be pandered to by his parents is thwarted when a baby sister shows up. And as he plans to get their attention back, he starts to encounter other members of his family in the garden, from different times of their lives – including a teenage version of his brand new baby sister.

Mostly taking place inside one house, this is not my favourite of Hosada’s work – I missed the more outlandish elements that things like “Summer Wars” and “boy and the beast” brought into it, and the four year old protagonist is age-suitably self-centred and whiny for much of the running time in ways that don’t make him easy to take to. But it’s still full of beauty and wonder and gentle soulfulness, and if you like the softer side of anime, this might very well appeal.

Blackkklansman

After about a decade where his films have slipped out of the cultural mainstream, Spike Lee returns to prominence in a major way (he hasn't exactly been idling - he has 12 films and 7 TV credits since his last wide release, 2006's "Inside Man", but for one reason and another none of his work in the last decade and a bit has really gotten out into the wider culture). And this reminds us he's still a major force - he's never been a director to hold back, and this is a film that has a little bit of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink as it portrays the story of a black cop infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan in the 1970s. But there's few directors I'd be willing to follow on a polemic as much as I would Lee - his mastery of montage, of knowing when to hit hard and when to be ridiculous, when to enjoy himself and when to play serious, means this is an engrossing examination of US racial politics. He plays bait-and-switch masterfully - just when we're believing the Klan is a ludicrous historical mistake, he brings everything back to the contemporary world with incisive skill. It's great to have him back ripping into the mainstream with dynamism and skill. He's a voice modern film very much needs, and the best place for him to be is right in every cinema everywhere.

Superfly

"Superfly" is simultaneosly an overly glossy piece of exploitation cinema and a film with a few surprises in it. A remake of the disreputable 70s blacksploitation film which gave a heroic heroin dealer a chance to escape the consequences to a cool Curtis Mayfield soundtrack, this one relocates the action to modern Atlanta and doesn't try at all to soften the material. It definately shows off the high-living and sexy lifestyle of top-end drug dealing in a way that is disticntly uncomfortable, but it's worth sticking with both for some surprising moments of bitter reality showing up about midway and also some fairly frenetic action. Some of the glossier montages early on do get somewhat tedious (it's the same-old-hip-hop glorification of money and exploitation of women), and lead actor Trevor Jackson has a little too much of that too-cool-to-be-interesting thing going on where there's not a lot beneath the teflon surface, but this isn't entirely content to just offer shallow pleasures.

I don't know that I can entirely defend this  - it's definately an amoral film, and is very easy to take as style over substance. But I think there's a little more substance than is at first apparent - events midway through the plot give a lot more gravitas than is at first expected (while still offering some exploitation delights near the end - one baddies fate in particular is delightful). If you're allergic to hip-hop-self-glorificaiton this may prove not your thing, but if you're willing to go with it there's more than you might expect.

The Equalizer 2

I've not seen the first film of this series, but to a certain extent it doesn't seem to matter very much. Denzel Washington plays a Lyft-driving ex-secret-service paladin, helping out various people he encounters either through the former contacts he has or by using the brutal skills he'd learned in his prior employment. And when someone messes with one of those contacts, Denzel is sure to deliver a whole heaping load of whoop-ass revenge on them.

If I didn't know this was based on a TV show I probably would have guessed anyway - the multitudinous subplots feel very much typical TV - sorta "Touched by an Extremely Violent Angel". Washington has charm to get through the fairly contrived tearjerker subplots and he's old enough now to be in the "old-geezer" stage of his action career, playing closer to the Liam Neeson characters in numerous recent films. And this does mean that this isn't a film that's particulary in a rush to get anywhere in particular - the main plot-thread really doesn't get going for about half an hour, for instance. The climax, during a very-thoroughly-set-up storm, hits some strong action beats, but this is really a case of an action movie not trying particularly hard and not really getting far beyond second gear. Strangely, its extreme old-school conventionality makes it quite an odball film in the 2010s - it's emotional manipulations are quite shameless, but dammit if they don't work anyway. Denzel is really kinda slumming it here but without his charisma this would be a pretty empty excercise - as it is, it does at least give him a chance to show off why he's a movie star, dammit.

The Spy who dumped me

The main pleasure of this film is seeing Mila Kunis and KAte McKinnon play off each other in various spy scenarios that get increasingly ludicrous as the plot continues. As an action comedy, this hits the action buttons pretty well, but the comedy is strangely mostly confined to the two leads - nobody else really gets a chance to get a joke in (though there is some sly mocking of spy movie cliches, from the henchwoman who's both a part-time model and a former gymnast, explaining her ludicrous outfits AND her acrobatic fighting style). And the jokes are pretty good - Kunis as the slightly straighter role of she-who-was-dumped and McKinnon as the friend who's tagged along for the ride but is prepared to go to extreme lengths to help out.

In some ways this is a revisit of some of the territory of Melissa McCarthy's "Spy" from a few years ago, having an unlikely hero succeed against ridiculous odds, although that one shared the comedy around far more. It's quite prepared to go to quite grisly places in both the action and the humour, but as long as things like taste aren't blocking you, you should have a reasonably good time, although literally the only other supporting cast member who has any moments of entertainment at all is Gillian Anderson in British-boss mode, and there are some late choices to drag along one particularly dull character that doesn't serve the film particularly well. Perfectly functional light relief.

Mission Impossible: Fallout

For a series going into its twenty-second year, the "Mission: Impossible" franchise didn't, until recently, feel particularly beholden to the usual modern franchise rules - varied tones as different directors came in and out, with the main thing tying things together a couple of key iconic moments from the TV series ("Your mission if you choose to accept it", the rubber masks, Lalo Schifrin's uber-tense theme tune) with a range of ridiculous stunts for Cruise to indulge in. They've become a tad more sequential since the fourth film made reference to what happened to the wife that Cruise had acquired in the third film, and the fifth made reference to the events of the fourth as reasons why they IMF are completely irresponsible and should be shut down. But this one's the first direct follow-up - it carries over the female lead and villain of the last one and keeps the supporting cast virtually intact (except for Jeremy Renner, who sits this one out) as stolen nuclear warheads lead to a globetrotting adventure that involves releasing last film's nemesis, re-engaging with the last film's femme fatale and even catching up with that wife we hadn't seen substantially for three films.

If there's a criticism it is that the film does kinda believe the audience is far more engaged with the minutiae of previous films than it actually is - but to a certain extent, all gets forgiven as the stunts get increasingly outlandish and the action sequences ever more tense. If the actual plotting gets a bit random, it's hardly the reason you're coming along, and the finale which combines a high-stakes helicopter chase for cruise with a log-cabin fightout between villian, femme fatale and Simon Pegg's tech guy keeps tension high for as long as it possibly can. I don't know that I need another round with Sean Harris' baddie - two films in, he's still more whispering menance than anything particularly intriguing or motivational - though Rebecca Fergoson's femme fatale does have a nice wild-card energy that has managed to get her almost to co-protagonist level with Cruise (she's usually the one more likely to be changed and affected by the events of any one film). Still, this is glossy international spytrotting entertainment done right, and provides all the right thrills.