Avengers Endgame

11 years of films has led to this, the 22^nd in a series of entertainments about various superpowered beings. And this is, at least mostly, an end. For at least some stuff. There’s a lot of expectations and anticipations and guesswork, and this deliberately throws a couple of interesting monkey wrenches in early – getting to a couple of things earlier than you might expect, while holding others off for quite a while. There’s victories and losses, there are turns, there is a LOT of fanservicey moments, there is humour, there is (still slightly clunky) action. And there is a whole lotta payoff. Yes, this one sticks the landing.

I don’t think it’s a perfect movie – in a three hour movie capping 21 other ones, inevitably some characters are going to come across as being treated somewhat lightly, and I do think some of the big action climax is a bit ropey. But never the less this is a satisfying, entertaining, emotionally fulfilling, grand resolution of the Marvel Story So Far. And nope, not spoilering a bit of it.

1985

It’s Christmas, and Adrian is returning back to Fort Worth to be with his family for Christmas after a few years away working and living in New York. He comes with a secret, and with a sense of distance between him and his conservative religious family, and over the next few days as he spends time with them and with an ex girlfriend, he attempts to come to terms with his past and with what he can and can’t tell the people he’s leaving behind.

This is a bit of a throwback both in era and in style of film-making – it’s a black and white indie, shot in 16mm, set in a time when stories like this were a staple of indie film-making. And the nature of Adrian’s secret is not, perhaps, very secret from the audience (though it does take a while for it to be communicated on screen, if you’ve seen films like this before there’s a lot of blatant hints early on). But part of what this film is about is that feeling of separation from the people who you should be able to share this with, the inability to talk about what you’re going through and how you’ve lived and your hopes and your fears. That internal stuff that I absolutely understand. Most of the performances are pretty solid, and while this is in some ways fairly familiar territory, I appreciated the execution and the quiet despair that lies within.

Burning

While delivering goods in a market, Lee Jong-Su is approached by a girl he knew in high school, Hae-mi. Over the next couple of days they rediscover a friendship, which is disrupted when she travels to Africa as part of a relief organisation, leaving him behind to look after her cat. But when she returns, he’s surprised to see her accompanied by Ben, a richer man who seems like an idle playboy. And then things get tense…

It’s probably not wise to reveal too much more about this slow-burn (excuse the pun) thriller, beyond that it begins exactly where it needs to and ends exactly where it needs to, and in between there’s a film that is ambiguous, romantic, beautiful, bewildering, emotional, surprising and tense. All three leads deliver great performances, with Steven Yuen perhaps most highlighted both because of his international reputation (having largely performed in US film and TV previously, this is his Korean language debut) and his character’s ambiguous menace, but Yoo Ah-in and Jeon Jong-seo both also give their characters full dimension. It’s a slow tease that draws you in until you’re completely in its grip, only letting go with the final shot. Absolutely recommended.

Breaking Habits

Sister Kate is a slightly odd nun. For one thing, she’s not Catholic, she’s not really affiliated with any religion, and her main business is selling marijuana derivatives. She does have a fascinating story, though, involving family betrayal, an involvement in the rapidly changing legal marijuana industry in California, political and religious opposition, gunfights, her son’s own crystal meth addiction, impoverishment and potential triumph. Like many documentaries, this is a case of an interesting interview subject compensating slightly for some middling film-making – it’s a little too taken with Sister Kate to really interrogate the more messy sides of her story particularly cleanly, and you do slightly feel that there’s something you’re not being told here (despite a couple of different viewpoints showing up in interviews, they’re never really given enough weight to counterbalance Kate). While there are interesting technicalities at the side about the current in-between state of marijuana sales in the US (where the legal exemptions are limited, local law enforcement is still zealously involved and gangster-like behaviour still remains part of the industry), this is mostly content to coast a little on how charming Sister Kate is. Which … she is, to an extent, but it doesn’t quite make this into a great documentary, so much as a great starting point for a documentary. The execution isn’t quite there.

Hellboy

It’s probably inevitable that any comic-book hero is going to get a reboot if they’ve been away from the cinema for too long in the modern era, and it’s 11 years since Guillermo Del Toro last released a Hellboy movie, so it’s probably time. Del Toro’s movies have a lot of fandom in the geek community, though both have their flaws – the first suffers from an introductory-point-of-view character who is resolutely uninteresting and really kinda unnecessary, the second from a strange backgrounding of its lead character (it plays more like a regular “monster of the week” episode of a possible Hellboy TV series than something that really demands to be a movie) – they are beautiful and have great character moments and some standout performances, but they’re not perfect films. This is… ahem, not that either, but its flaws probably lie more in the “let’s throw in everything but the kitchen sink, never mind coherence, taste or money spent on special effects”. The effects do have a few moments resembling The Scorpion King bits of “Mummy Returns”, and this is very definitely an R Rated Hellboy movie with splattering blood, frequent swearing and a whole lot of ultraviolence. But it does have a pulpy energy to it – David Harbour’s Hellboy plays right into the character’s centre as grumpy-teenage-monster-hero, and there’s some strong moments from the supporting cast – Ian McShane isn’t exactly breaking his personal mould, and nor is Mila Jovavich, but they do their usual shtick damn well. I can’t exactly endorse this as great artistic film making, and some of the leaps from plot point to plot point have got to be described as tenuous, but as big grotesque gory fun this definitely fits the bill.

Pet Sematary

Returning to Stephen King’s darkest novel, a story that largely revolves around death and characters who can’t accept the finality that it brings, this redo remixes a few of the elements to reasonable effect, but ultimately doesn’t entirely justify itself. There’s a lot of surface elements of better recent movies from the recent horror renaissance (the early shots of the kids in animal masks, for example) that don’t really go any deeper than a good visual, and some of the plot elements feel distinctly obligatory. The original film version was a middling exercise but with a few good jump scares and a great performance by Fred Gwynne, and, ultimately, this redo proves to again be mostly fairly middling, with John Lithgow proving a good replacement for Fred Gwynne, and some clever twists of the tale here and there (in particular, I quite like the grotesque ending this chooses, which is not King’s original). Jason Clarke continues his run of somehow being hired in international films despite never being a particularly compelling presence on screen, there’s a few decent moments of grotesque makeup, and it does capture some of the tragic inevitability of King’s novel … but it’s still middling fare without a particularly compelling reason to exist beyond that the source material remains good.

The Guilty

This is a simple but effective thriller – set in two rooms and largely focussed on one character, as a Danish police officer on dispatch duty finds himself involved in a case that spirals out of control. Jakob Cedergren plays the development from a bored desk officer to someone deeply invested in how the situation is going to pan out. Most of the film is just him and voices over the phone line, but we’re drawn in as tension builds. Director Gustav Moller has a sure sense for how to keep an audience gripped, playing out the situation largely in tight closeups and in apparent real-time. There are few bells and whistles here – this is a back –to-basics thriller that doesn’t need much adornment, and, inevitably, a US remake is planned shortly. But in the meantime this is an exercise in tension that should not be missed.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote film is over 20 years in the making – such a long period that there’s a classic documentary about an earlier attempt at making the film, “Lost in La Mancha”. And now that it’s arrived … it’s, okay? I guess? I must admit my patience for Late Gilliam has slipped a bit – his most recent film, “Zero Theorem”, lacked urgency or much propulsion, and this suffers a bit in the same way. As the leads, Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce each have moments to shine, but there’s a lot of wandering around the Spanish Countryside without very much development or interest. I can kinda get what he’s going for, in playing with his familiar themes about the desirability of fantasy versus reality, and the mixed price both have on people, and there’s some sparks of the old Gilliam in the later run of the film, but for a lot of the time this does feel more like ticking the box called “I showed them I could make it” rather than a film that feels urgent and passionate. Sometimes you can wait so long to make your dream project that when you finally make it, years of resentment over not having been able to make it sours the eventual product. And that’s probably this one. The finale has a bit more spark to it, but I can’t honestly say this is more than a middling exercise.

Shazam!

The DC cinematic universe suffered a fairly messy launch, with a number of movies that were, to put it politely, not good. Grim, overburdened by the desire to set up a whole lot of other movies, hyperviolent, desperate to be taken seriously but simultaneously kind of ridiculous, they suffered from messy or incompetent execution in ways that neither critics nor audiences really took to. But by arching towards a less continuity-bound approach and looking to just execute each character to the best of their abilities, things have been looking up a bit. I can’t ever claim that Acquaman was a thing of perfect shining genius but it had a charming goofy lunkheaded integrity, and by virtue of being set about 100 years removed from the rest of the DC films, Wonder Woman managed to stand fairly solidly as good meat and potatoes superhero fare. Shazam follows these up by playing one of DC’s more fantasy-laden properties with its own sense of purpose (admittedly, it’s a weird ring-in by DC, originally generated by another comic book company back in the 40s, subject to much litigation and ripoffs ever since, but with a very firmly dedicated fandom). Playing the simple premise of a superhero who’s secretly an isolated teenage boy who can magically transform his body into a muscly, multipowered hero type, Shazam plays a little bit retro in the style of some of Spielberg’s 80’s Amblin kids-flicks (a la Goonies). The kids feel real and central to the story, not just props or plot devices, with a lot of screentime given to young Asher Angel as Billy Batson and Jack Dylan Grazer as his superhero enthusiast friend, Freddy – their relationship has a strong push-and-pull, as Angel gives us a complicated kid who’s unwillingness to get involved with the other kids in his group home slowly softens, and Grazer showing just the right edge of nerdery and enthusiasm with a bit of his own defensive screens. The superhero antics when they come are suitably showy, with a few fairly creepy monsters and a sense of wonder that is earned and feels real.  There are a few bits that feel a bit more “by the numbers” (Mark Strong’s villain starts with an interesting background, but by the end it’s the standard shout-and-fight from him, though there are a few nice twists on the heroic side), and it’s quite clearly a cheaper superhero movie than we’ve become accustomed to, but this makes up for lack of budget with strong character work.

Woman at War

This charming Icelandic soufflé is purely cinematic in exploring the story of a woman living alone who decides to take environmental activism seriously when she starts disrupting the power lines leading to the local aluminium factory. Much of the film is taken up with her going through her various actions – out in the Icelandic fields, stealthily approaching the powerlines, causing them to fail in some way, then hiding from the authorities. There’s an eccentric rhythm to this, assisted by the klezmer-like score (played by musicians who appear on-screen in the middle of the Icelandic outdoors). And lead performer Halldora Geirharosdottir has a nicely stoic presence that goes well with the slightly oddball antics of the film. It’s a simple study of personal action in a world that can sometimes appears somewhat oppressive and overwhelming, but it’s an effective and charming one.

Galveston

This is a fairly generic thriller, as a low level thug falls afoul of his bosses and ends up on the lam with a young woman. When she brings in her sister, he develops complex feelings for her, simultaneously pulled towards and away from her. But as they get closer, an inevitable reckoning is coming for both of them.

Indie Darling Ben Foster isn’t at his best here (his grumbling protagonist tends towards being fairly self-pitying, rather than engaging) and Elle Fanning’s character largely seems to be seen externally, (there’s not a lot of scenes from her perspective, meaning she’s more a character that other people judge and react to rather than someone with a full sense of agency and purpose). There’s nothing particularly innovative about this, and this doesn’t entirely avoid the more distasteful clichés of the crime genre. In short, it’s not a film I can easily recommend to anyone.

Mid 90s

The story of a young boy growing up in the LA skate-scene in the mid 90s, this plays very much like an indie film of the period. It’s got that loose spirit as the various skaters hang out and chat and skate. Sunny Sujic as the lead is damn good – right on that cusp of being probably too young for this but still wanting to be part of what the bigger kids are into. The rest of the cast are largely skateboarders who have been picked up to act in this (Katherine Waterston and Lucas Hedges play minor roles as Sujic’s mum and brother respectively) – and it’s a credit to Jonah Hill’s direction that I had wondered after the film “how did he get actors to skateboard that well” – their performances seem like they’re acting veterans who can go deep and real. It’s a film that portrays that phase of youth honestly, about how young men do and don’t support each other, about failures, successes, small kindnesses and minor slights that can bond people and break them. It’s touching and funny and sad and heartbreaking and awkward and dramatic. Definitely worth catching.

Us

Jordan Peele’s follow up to “Get Out” is another socially-engaged horror story, albeit somewhat different issues to those he examined in his first film. It starts with one of my favourite expositional devices (also used in “Climax”), a tv showing something plot relevant while the surrounding shelves show videos and books that contain possible relevance to the film that follows, and continues to tell of a nuclear family on a beachside vacation in Santa Cruz, whose idyll is disrupted when intruders show up at the house. Intruders that look unnervingly like themselves…

It's difficult to talk much about this without getting into all the twists and turns that happen, but this is definitely an effective shocker. Lupita Nyongo takes the lead as the worried mother whose prior experiences in Santa Cruz in the opening sequence set her up to fear, and she plays through the fear as things escalate to seize the attention and control of the film. Winston Duke as her slightly goofy husband is kinda adorable and 180 degrees away from his role in Black Panther. This manages the tricky task of being both terrifying and thought provoking – the doppelganger device has a whole heap of thematic resonance that keeps things bubbling away in my head well after the film has ended. Absolutely recommended.

Dumbo

Tim Burton seems to be a case of a director who keeps on working even when any sense of inspiration, originality or creativity has long since dried up. He’s always been a director who leaned towards production design rather than performances, but once upon a time there used to be passion in the production design combined with a space loose enough to allow performers to seize their moments for inspired performances, emotionality and strangeness. Now we just get a dull trudge through things that should feel magical but instead just feel rote.

“Dumbo” brings the cartoon into live action by, largely, foregrounding a bunch of human characters, few of whom really register as much more than ciphers. Eva Green continues her run of being much better than the movie’s she’s in, Michael Keaton’s performance never finds a level or a base so is prone to some overacting, Danny DeVito provides his standard work, Colin Farrell is his standard blockbuster movie self, which is to say competent but nothing exceptional, and the kids largely show that Burton hasn’t improved as a director of kids since “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”. Most damningly, it’s not until close to the end that we get any sense of magic or wonder when Dumbo is flying, which you’d think would be fundamental to getting the film to work. For goodness sakes, this is a film with a circus and a theme park. You’d think this should be joyous and strange and wonderful. But there’s only maybe three or four moments when any sense of wonder or interest ever comes through, mostly in the second half of the film. And that’s nowhere near enough.