Destroyer

Seventeen years ago Erin made a life damaging mistake while operating as an undercover cop. Now, as a homicide cop in Los Angeles, she runs across remnants of her past, and must track down Silas, the man who she blames for her current state. But as she investigates, it becomes clear how far the wreckage has been embedded in Erin, and how far she may have to go to revenge herself. This is as much a dark character study as it is a crime thriller, with the run-down industrial areas of LA forming a backdrop for Erin’s own disintergration – she’s like a half-person who’s still trying to numb the pain of her past. Nicole Kidman is practically unrecognisable as the present-day Erin – worn out and broken – though she also plays the seventeen-year-earlier version in flashbacks. This does slightly stretch in the middle as Erin’s various investigations uncover more leads on the way to Silas (though a sequence with a thoroughly loathsome Bradley Whitford is a distinct highlight), but it comes home strong in a powerful final sequence of events. Definitely recommended for fans of grim noirish fare.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Returning to the lego-world about two seconds after the previous film finished, this is another bright, colourful adventure-with-a-message that should play just as easily to lego-obsessed children and their less discerning parents. This does lean slightly more towards being a musical (there’s a fair few songs, including the terrifyingly brainwormy “This song’s gonna get stuck inside your head”), and it maybe hits the message button a bit harder than the first film did, and in some ways it is very much a “second verse same as the first” kind of sequel, with a whole heap of pop-culture referencing, callbacks and general familiarity. And while the first film tended to bounce around several different environments, this tends to stick to three – which means there are a couple of moments in the middle where the film is sorta repeating the same couple of jokes and routines over and over. Still, they’re not bad jokes and there’s a nicely inspired closing credits sequence. Barring a sudden rush of inspiration I wouldn’t mind this being the last Lego movie, but this is a perfectly reasonable, highspirited way to spend an afternoon.

Fighting with my Family

This is a really easy to watch, largely inspirational film about the WWE wrestler Paige, from her origins as part of her family’s wresting promotion in Norwich to the big stages of the US. The early stages, showing the family who fights together, work together and bond together, has a gentle rambunctious energy (yes, mum, dad, brother and sister are all in the same ring on a regular basis), and as Paige starts training in the US (and her brother is left behind resenting that his big chance has passed him by), it keeps its eyes close on the character study (Florence Pugh is a long way from 2017’s amazing “Lady Macbeth”, but there’s still that solitary strength that shines through, and Jack Lowden as the brother impresses in a role that could easily be treated dismissively). It’s in some ways a sugarcoated and slightly sentimentalised look at the world of professional wrestling (you will not hear anything about steroids, abuse or predatory business practices here, and the film tends to slide in and out of remembering that professional wrestling matches have a predetermined outcome), but between the performances and Stephen Merchant’s light hand as writer and director, this tells its story with generosity and warm humour.

Sometimes Always Never

This is a very very british story about a father and a son, and the difficult relationship between them, tied together through scrabble, sharp suits and general British awkwardness. There’s an entire genre of film I tend to call “Bill Nighy movies” – which don’t even have to feature him (“The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” felt extremely Bill Nighy) – it’s slightly understated, it’s intensely british, it plays to an older demographic and it often doesn’t entirely acknowledge that the UK has undergone most of the second half of the twentieth century, let alone the first two decades of the 21^st (either by being set in period or just not acknowledging any changes in the world since then).  “Sometimes Always Never” has that slightly unstuck-in-time feeling – Bill Nighy’s character is a tailor and his idea of bonding with his grandson is to get him a spiffy suit (even more unlikely, this works and the kid wears it to school on a regular basis with no punchings in the face). And while the plot does feature the internet, mobile phones and various other element of modern society, the visual aesthetic is very much curdled in the experiences of the sixties/seventies. Look, this is a perfectly functional film in many ways, with nice moments of wit and pathos, and particularly the byplay between Nighy and Sam Riley as his son becomes quite touching. But it shows a slightly formaldehyded view of British cinema that makes it very strange.

Hotel Mumbai

Set during the November 2008 terrorism attacks across Mumbai, this sometimes brutal look at the events that occurred in one hotel over a few hours is visceral and brutal. It’s inevitably scaled down and does tend to concentrate on a couple of key experiences, but, probably partially due to Dev Patel being one of the lead actors and a producer, it isn’t a film that completely ignores the Indian perspective of an event that took place in India. As a pure visceral experience this works pretty well – the tension continually mounting as various characters attempt to sneak by the strolling gunmen – and there’s some interesting character moments in several places (in particular, the terrorists get various humanising moments as they talk to their parents, and quibble between themselves, but are still terrifyingly merciless against the various hotel staff and guests). Patel absolutely holds the film together as a waiter whose continuous bravery is unquestioned, and there’s strong support particularly from Anupuam Kher as the hotel’s head chef. Armie Hammer and Jason Isaacs seem to be coming in from a slightly more conventional take on the film as, respectively, genial American and disreputable Russian guests (though Hammer at least plays within the general realist nature of the film, Isaacs tends to ham it up a little). It’s an illuminating look at an event that has slipped in the collective memory to become one more overseas disaster, viscerally and vigorously presented.

Everybody Knows

For me, this film was slightly mismarketed (as a thriller, with the nature of the criminal act in question provided in the publicity) – and if you’re looking for a thriller, this … isn’t really that kind of thrilling. It’s more of a melodrama, as a family gathers for a wedding, an incident occurs, and secrets from the past intrude into the present. There’s some nice performances here (Javier Barden and Penelope Cruz, married in real life, play two friends who are both married to other people and have a comfortable friendly chemistry that treats them as two people who share a past but not necessarily a future), but for me it rarely gets out of second gear in meandering its way to an ending (in particular, the opening wedding sequence kinda just keeps going on and on and there are a lot of red herrings that never really pay off into anything). This all feels very arthouse-by-numbers – nothing really There just isn’t a lot of urgency or, well, thrills. I’ve been told if you go in cold to this, it can be appreciated as more of a drama but that wasn’t what I was expecting and as drama there wasn’t anything so transcendent that it overlooked the lack of proper thrillingness.

The House that Jack Built

Lars Von Trier has problems. A brief study of his filmography makes that very clear. He’s a depressive, he’s misanthropic, he’s angry, he’s tactless, he’s navel-gazing and he’s very willing to mess with the audience in seeing just how much they are willing to take. He’s also a fascinating filmmaker. “The House that Jack Built” is probably not the best example of his filmography – this story of a serial killer presented in five incidents tends to draw out some of his most unpleasant characteristics, as the horrors tend to repeat, linger and grow more extreme in ways that are not at all easy to take. But there’s also an ongoing commentary between the titular Jack (Matt Dillon) and an overheard voice, Verge (Bruno Ganz), on the nature of this behaviour, on art, on society, on the creative act and on what it all might mean. And the last twenty minutes or so, when the repeating pattern ends and the film goes somewhere else, are kinda extraordinary. I can’t necessarily recommend this to people very easily (the subject matter and the way it goes about playing that subject matter means that for vast amounts of people the first two hours or so of this film will be pretty indigestible). And I can probably imagine that to many people this will come off as irredeemably pretentious. But dammit, this is my kinda pretentious.

Captain Marvel

Yep, there’s another Marvel movie out. Fortunately I quite like them as an example of modern competent blockbustering – there seems to be a lot of complaints out there that there are too many of them, that they’re all the same, and they suck all the blockbuster energy out of the rest of cinema but … let’s be honest here, the stuff that makes the most money is rarely the interestingly fringe stuff that most people who write about movies are really into, and integrating spectacle, character work, social commentary and intriguing hints on what’s coming up next in the ongoing saga has turned out to be a lot harder than Marvel have made it look – the number of collapsed wannabe-franchises left in Marvel’s wake is ever-climbing. But as a standalone film, how does this one work out? Well, mostly pretty good. There are a lot of elements in here and not everything is served wonderfully – in particular, two characters who return from “Guardians of the Galaxy” have basically nothing to do (the linkages between Marvel films can occasionally be a little tenuous and threadbare). But, goddam it, you get Ben Mendehlson in his natural accent getting to add to his recent stockpile of villians in an interesting new way, you get Samuel L. Jackson, de-aged back to his mid-90s prime and having the most fun he’s ever had in the role of Nick Fury, and you get a thoroughly awesome ginger cat called Goose who scenes a whole lot of scenes. Plus there’s Brie Larson as the titular female superhero, Carol Danvers, showing guts and determination along with charm and ease, introduced in a deliberately slightly disorienting way in media res as a space soldier who doesn’t really know her own past, and whose arrival on earth proves to be her way of unlocking those secrets and finding a cause she really believes in. There’s also way-too-brief glimpses of Annette Bening who uses her usual sly awareness in dual roles as two different mentors, both only really glimpsed, to suggest she’s full of secrets and they’re probably really interesting (plus one kicker of a cool shimmy to a Nirvana song), another great Stan Lee cameo and some decent character work. For me the pleasure of seeing these films done this well overwhelms any sense that it’s just another obligatory stop along the way to another film in a month and a half.

Greta

Neil Jordan has been missing from the screen for a few years, but he returns for this somewhat outlandish thriller about a lonely woman in New York (Isabelle Huppert) who’s visited by a young woman (Chloe Grace-Moretz) who finds her handbag on the subway and brings it back to her. Things spiral out of control into a saga of dependence and possessiveness that is somewhat unlikely but never the less frequently entertaining. Huppert has plenty of opportunities to go wild here, playing a character who shows less and less restraint as the film goes on. Moretz is franky a bit more of a wet blanket, there to suffer and react a whole bunch – her flatmate, played by Maika Monroe from “It Follows”, is a lot gutsier and more interesting (she also has the best stalker sequence in the film). Because it’s a Neil Jordan film, you get Stephen Rea in a role that probably isn’t really worth him but he’s showing up anyway because his mate is directing. I can’t say that this breaks many new grounds but as someone who enjoys Isabelle Huppert getting to go full on nutso, this definitely works pretty well.

Escape Room

This is an effective little thriller, as six random people are invited to participate in an escape room, one that proves to have an ever-increasingly deadly range of elaborate puzzles. The idea is not exactly new (there was at least two Saw movies with a somewhat similar premise, and the ending twist puts this in a genre that dates at least back to the thirties), but the execution is pretty good – most of the actors are of the interesting type who might be recognisable from TV but haven’t busted through to full lead status (Deborah Ann Wool and Tyler Labine are probably the two biggest names), but they all contribute to what is, ultimately, a well dressed puzzle. The increasingly surreal nature of some of the puzzles and a tendency not to linger too long on the deaths means that this isn’t just another gore fest. And if the ending in particular stretched the credibility to breaking point, for most of the length we’re engaged in our team as exposition is doled out about who they are and what may have brought them to where they are now. The production design is noticeably grand and inventive – I keep on going back to Saw as the obvious comparison, but whereas that was dominated by a grimy, rusty aesthetic, this gives each room their own feel (only one room really has that grotty feel, and even there, there’s a couple of thoughts that mean it’s not just a retread). I can’t argue that this is anything more than an effective but familiar visit through a couple of tropes, but there’s entertainment in doing this kinda thing competently.

Stan and Ollie

This version of the story of Laurel and Hardy, focusing on their last days in showbiz as their final tour of the UK sees them confronting their legacy and the relationship between each other, has a nicely elegiac quality that overcomes a couple of the more clichéd elements and a few moments of contrivance to carve out an emotionally resonant story. It’s boosted by strong performances from both leads - Steve Coogan shows a surprisingly physical skill (it’s always been obvious he’s a verbally capable comic, but in this role he’s able to show off how he can embody one of the best physical comedians of all time), and John C. Reilly has a sweet gentleness as the adaptable Hardy. Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson steal large chunks of the scenes they’re given as the respective wives, and there’s a sweetly sentimental ending that doesn’t feel like it’s overstretching for effect. I don’t want to over-rate this film, it does have moments of cheese and cliché, and as histories go it’s more broadly reminiscent of truth rather than point-by-point accurate. But it’s effective in showing how two old men travel towards an end neither wants to see coming, and that gives it weight and charm.

Vox Lux

This is what happens when an arthouse film kinda fails to have any ideas but never the less goes ahead anyway. There’s certainly themes here – about fame, about violence, about art and about the loss of innocence. But none are really drawn out in a particularly compelling way – it’s all gestures towards significance rather than building something more robust that might really say something compelling. Natalie Portman shares the central role of Celeste with Raffey Cassidy – Cassidy playing her in the first half as a young girl emerging into the world of pop music, Portman as the jaded star who’s attempting a relaunch. They don’t particularly match each other, and Portman also suffers from a more exaggerated Long Island accent than the more reticent Cassidy – there’s a general crudity to the performance that doesn’t suit her at all well. Writer/director Brady Corbett never really finds a compelling reason to tell this story, and slavering over the presentation a few pretentious monologues from Willem Defoe does not help. I stuck around in hope that something clever or enlightening or skilled would emerge, or possibly at least a minor surprise at the end. And while, yes, there is one particularly stupid twist in the tale, it’s not enough to recommend this as anything but a mediocre waste of time.