Midsommar

A couple is teetering on the brink of breaking up when a family tragedy means, instead, he invites her to join him with some friends as he goes to Sweden for a festival in a remote community in the north. As the various rituals continue (including drugs and strange art and costumes and unending days as the sun refuses to sink below the horizon in a far-north summer), the couple and their friends are drawn further and further into the rituals, unaware what’s coming for them.

This is an odd follow-up to Ari Aster’s first film, “Hereditary” – in some ways it’s deliberately seeking to do something different (horror in the bright sunshine rather than the dark corners, with a young couple rather than a family in the centre). And it’s no surprise to research and find out that this is at least partially a reaction to Aster having a relationship breakup (it’s all the most nightmarish possibilities of a breakup you could possibly imagine). And it’s effective at gathering creepiness. But in the final analysis, the ending doesn’t land as strongly emotionally for me – it could be the slightly overlong running time meaning the payout is a bit too drawn out, it could be that we’re never quite as inside the head of Florence Pugh’s protagonist as we were with Toni Collette, it could be simply that we’re aware of the tricks and this time it’s not quite as much a gut punch as it is a “how interesting” kinda film. There is imagery and moments that are still wonderfully effective here – but inevitably, with such a strong first film to live up to, this ends up falling a little bit flatter. Still interesting, just … a little bit harder to take to the heart.

Orphelia

A piece of Shakespearean fanfic, telling the story of “Hamlet” from the point of view of Orphelia, this features some reasonably odd choices – not using much of the pre-existing relationships with her father and brother (both get somewhat short shift), bringing in a couple of plot points from other Shakespearian plays, letting Orphelia be observer to a couple of key moments of plot, and a distinctly different ending. There’s a distinct sense, too, that, if this is a feminist retelling, it’s an odd one as most of the other women around her are mean-girls-cliches – it’s more an “exceptional girl” story. It’s not all bad – there’s some great costuming, and there’s some strong performances in isolation (in particular from Daisey Ridley and Naomi Watts) – but this is a weird case of doing Shakespeare without the language and with a lot of other odd additions on the sidelines. Some of it looks quite beautiful (the shadow-play-within-a-play, a couple of shots inspired by the classic Pre-Raphaelite painting of Orphelia), and it does successfully add depth to a character who’s previous role was to be bewildered, demented and then dead. But this mostly falls into the basket of “interesting failures”.

Fast and Furious presents: Hobbs and Shaw

After Eight films in the mothership series, it’s time for a spinoff. Clearly by popular demand and not at all because relationships within the core series have degenerated to the point that two of the bigger egos can’t bear to be on set at the same time, this pairs up Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnston, nemesis in “Fast Five” followed by an ally of the Fasties in 6,7 and Fate), and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham, Han-Murderer in 6, enemy of the Fasties in 7 followed by reluctant team-member-and-baby-rescuer in Fate) for some nonsense involving amped up versions of a virus, an army of biologically-enhanced baddies led by Idris Elba, Deckard’s sister, Hobbs’ extended family, cameos by two reasonably sized stars who have clearly had no editing applied to their improvs, some weird climate conditions on Samoa, dangerous driving and bike riding, explosions and old-fashioned fisticuffs.

This somehow just isn’t quite as much ludicrous fun as the previous entries have been. It might be that the snarky banter between Johnton and Statham is pretty laboured, it might be that the devil-may-care approach to continuity catches up with them (particularly in the final battle where light-and-weather conditions appear to change between shots in ways that are pretty arbitrary), it may be the overstretched running time or shameless sequel-baiting of the offscreen baddy-behind-the-baddy. There are still a couple of compensatory moments (Vanessa Kirkby as Deckard’s sister fits into the testosterone like a glove, albeit one stuck with a notably unconvincing romance with Johnston – and it probably doesn’t pay to think too hard about the differences between her and Statham’s ages and how it varies between present day and flashbacks, and the bond between Johnston and his onscreen daughter is pretty sweet too), but there is a sense that this one is pushing just a tad too hard, to diminishing returns