Tag: Universal

Review: Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan’s epic biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”, arrives with a moment of quiet contemplation. It’s immediately followed by a literally explosive assault on the senses, coupled with textual reference to Prometheus. In these few moments, Nolan signals how he intends to go on, framing a life like the series of chain reactions that haunt its subject.

Given the vein of quantum mechanics that runs through both OPPENHEIMER the movie and the man, it makes sense that writer/director Nolan tells this story in a nonlinear fashion. As such, we do not start at the beginning, as Nolan takes us back and forth between a private ‘trial’ of Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), his complicated and hostile relationship with Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), and the development of the first atomic bomb.

If it already sounds mildly obfuscating, it’s because it is – and quite deliberately so. After all, it’s Nolan’s brand at this point. On one hand, there’s a straight line from Oppenheimer’s early days – where he is “troubled by visions of a hidden universe” – through to the establishment of his physics career, the Manhattan Project, the development of the bomb, and the furor over his connections to communism after the War.

Almost like a series of jump scares, Oppenheimer’s glimpses of that hidden universe make animalistic leaps at the audience. These are moments that blast us with the sound and fury of the inevitable mushroom cloud. It’s a testament to the practical and in-camera work of visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson (who won the Academy Award for his work with Nolan on Tenet) — not to mention the thunderous sound design — that you can virtually feel the heat emanating from the screen.

This all culminates in the first test detonation in New Mexico. Following a literal ticking time bomb motif, Ludwig Göransson’s enveloping score mixes with the unnerving twitch of a Geiger counter as the fateful moments approach. The cacophony of noise goes chillingly silent during the Vishnu moment: as Oppenheimer becomes Death, destroyer of worlds, there is an odd calm. The tangible blast that follows is both literal and political.

Nolan doesn’t conveniently end his film there. After all, the audience knows how this all turns out for the nuclear arms race. Nolan traces Oppenheimer’s attempts to halt the development of the H-Bomb and nuclear proliferation, a public stance that saw him pilloried as a communist. For the more chronological recent sequences, Nolan and regular cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema take a literal black and white approach, one that’s almost documentary in nature. This isn’t always as dramatically successful as the first two thirds of this gargantuan story, but it’s never anything less than fascinating.

Murphy doesn’t so much play Oppenheimer as embody him. When he dons the familiar hat and pipe, it’s as much a ritualistic act of putting on a costume as one of Nolan’s superheroes. Given that we are constantly reminded of Oppenheimer’s genius, including his relationship with Einstein (Tom Conti), both of his main antagonists (and sort of collaborators) are bureaucrats. During the war, it’s Army man Leslie Groves, played by Matt Damon in his most confident performance in some time, that pushes at Oppenheimer from a place of respect. Strauss is his antithesis, taking any minor slight as a declaration of war.

The two women depicted in this environment – Oppenheimer’s lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) – fare less successfully. Both have stories that feel biopic worthy in their own right, although at various points both feel like supporting objects in Nolan’s hands. Only Blunt really has a strong agency in the final moments of the trial, and is perhaps the one voice in the narrative that can confidently tell the lead to pull himself together.

OPPENHEIMER isn’t a film you watch but one you experience. It may not all work, with those leaps and bounds backwards and forwards through time potentially requiring a few watches to get one’s head around, but that scarcely matters. As with Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project, Nolan has built his opus in the middle of the cinematic desert and it’s up to us to take it from there. Just like its subject, it may take us years to fully appreciate the impact of its detonation.

2023 | USA/UK | DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan | WRITERS: Christopher Nolan | CAST: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 180 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 20 July 2023 (AUS), 21 July 2023 (US/UK)

July 20, 2023
Review: Barbie

The road to the Barbie movie, at least for most punters, has taken us on a range of reactions as diverse as the titular doll’s career. What began as a curiosity, thanks largely to the presence of indie monarchs Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, rapidly gave way to mega hype, followed by acknowledgement of the perfect casting, then some fatigue at the bombardment of marketing, and ultimately back to genuine curiosity again.

As BARBIE is finally launched on very suspecting audiences, there was still a sense that we didn’t know precisely what to expect in the way of a story. After all, even with the mammoth advertising budget, the trailers told us very little beyond it being a spin on The LEGO Movie’s basic premise — with a splash of the good old-fashioned fish-out-of-water motif.

Which is exactly where Gerwig’s film kicks off. When we meet the Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), the Narrator (Helen Mirren) reliably tells us Barbieland is a place where all the women have come together to make life better for each other. People have their lots in life, and everything is awesome every day. Except Stereotypical Barbie can’t escape impending thoughts of mortality and (shock horror) cellulite.

So begins her journey to the Real World, to heal the rift by meeting the mother and daughter (America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt respectively) whose emotions may be impacting Barbie’s psyche. Ken (Ryan Gosling) hitches a ride in the back seat, learning about the patriarchy and horses in the process. Meanwhile, the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell) tries to contain the escape of their fictional dolls into the real world.

BARBIE the movie is like the doll of the same name. It takes a scattergun approach to its themes, trying them on like so many outfits. As an audience member, it’s almost like watching the storyboarding process in real time. As a visual feast, Gerwig’s film works best when it skewers the plastic world, emulating the effortless imagination of play, and replicating details right down to the decals in the fridges. Here it has broad appeal to younger viewers while allowing knowing audiences in on the joke.

Of course, we saw all that in the trailer, and it takes a while for the film to really get beyond that schtick. Indeed, there’s a whole section in the middle where it feels like it’s just people going back and forth between the Real World and Barbieland. Ferrell’s character feels most superfluous at this point, almost as if he’s only there because Mattel corporate wanted to flex control with a literal representation on screen.

When the film shifts gears late in the third act, centered on an electrifying speech from Ferrera about the impossible standards women are held to, we finally get to the heart of Gerwig and Baumbach’s pitch. It’s a lightning rod moment, and that it came from a major studio picture sponsored by a toy company makes it all the more powerful. Yet this too is almost immediately enveloped by the (admittedly impressive) dance sequences, warring Kens, and last wave of cameos. Like the Kens and Barbies, here is a film tonally at war with itself in its last minutes. This is, after all, still a branding exercise.

Robbie and Gosling are unquestionably perfectly cast as the visual representations of Stereotypical Barbie and Ken, but with the knowing sense of humour to make the self-referential material work. Everyone from Simu Liu to Kate McKinnon, Rob Brydon, Issa Rae, and even Rhea Perlman make for some fun Easter egg spotting. While Michael Cera might play to type as Ken’s buddy Allan, he gets some of the best one-liners as well.

Which cannot be emphasised enough: BARBIE is smart and funny. It’s a sharp take down of the binary paradigm, referencing everything from the Snyder Cut to men who make their partners watch The Godfather. It’s as though Gerwig and Baumbach have quietly absorbed all of the toxic internet behaviours and reflected them back to us. If it’s not clear enough, there’s literally a scene where Mattel executives try to put Barbie back in her box.

Still, it’s really hard to say exactly who the audience for BARBIE might be. If you’re looking for a brightly coloured version of the character coming to life in the real world, you’ll get that – for a time. If you want a timely exploration of toxic masculinity, that’s there too. Younger audiences will enjoy some of the humour, but may tune out for the speeches. Older audiences will wait through two acts of capering before they get to the meat of the piece.

The messaging might ultimately be a positive one, that anyone can be either anything they want, or nothing at all – and that it’s okay either way. Yet in trying to be everything to everyone, it’s a lesson the film itself might have failed to learn. Nevertheless, it’s very vivid acknowledgement that we’re all human, trying to get through this thing called life one day at a time.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig | WRITERS: Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach | CAST: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS), Warner Bros. Pictures (US) | RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 20 July 2023 (AUS), 21 July 2023 (US)

July 19, 2023
Review: The Flash

“The Multiverse,” remarks one Bruce Wayne. “It’s all just a crapshoot.” He might be right, but it was the one defining feature of the DC Comics universe for decades. It tied together colliding worlds, various crises on infinite earths, and more reboots than we can count. Yet when it came to the movies, everyone from the MCU to Michelle Yeoh beat them to it.

It’s taken a while for Warner to build up enough cache to even attempt something as ambitious, at least on paper, as THE FLASH. After all, Sony had to reboot Spider-Man three times before they started mashing them up. The DC Extended Universe’s path here has been just as rocky, from a legally embattled star, to cancelled projects and a string of critically and commercially disappointing films. Yes, we’re looking at you Black Adam and Shazam: Fury of the Gods.

Yet THE FLASH, by its very nature and origin, is about tying together loose ends. Christina Hodson’s screenplay is loosely based on the DC Comics Flashpoint event of 2011, and has previously been adapted in CW’s The Flash series and as the DC Universe Animated Original Movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. That series rebooted the whole DCU for a line-wide reboot, but not before having some fun with the characters.

In Hodson and director Andy Muschietti’s version, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is feeling less than stellar about his lot in life. Between being on clean-up duty for the Justice League, and his dad’s (Ron Livingston) pending retrial for a wrongful conviction of murdering Barry’s mother, he is feeling less than valued. When Barry discovers he can use the Speed Force to time travel, he goes back to save his mother, despite Bruce Wayne/Batman’s (Ben Affleck) warnings.

In doing so, he creates a whole new timeline. Landing in an alternate past, he has to seek the aid of his younger self, a retired Batman (Michael Keaton), and Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El (Sasha Calle) to stop this world’s General Zod (Michael Shannon) from finishing the work he started in Man of Steel.

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room: the special effects. If you’re reading this, chances are pretty good you’ve either heard some things about the CGI or have witnessed their uniqueness for yourself. There are some stellar sequences, and the doubling of Barry in almost every scene is flawless. The desert-based climactic battle is actually an effective use of multiple effects elements.

Still, when it goes wrong, it all goes very wrong very quickly. It begins with a nightmarishly rendered rescue sequence, a literal shower of CG babies and a dog. Yet this pales in comparison to the Speed Force sequences, where barely rendered versions of Miller and other DCEU characters loom over audiences like bootleg parade balloons. For a film that reportedly cost in excess of $200 million, one wonders where all the cash went.

We can sort of put the effects to one side though, as it’s not the biggest of the film’s problems. The cameos can be quite cool in places, but once they’ve occurred, everything else is just grist for the mill. Perhaps suffering in proximity to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, THE FLASH doesn’t learn Spidey’s most fundamental lesson: with great intellectual property comes greater responsibility. Hell, the 1989 Batmobile is used as nothing more than an armchair for one of the Ezra Millers.

Which isn’t to say that THE FLASH hasn’t found room to have a little fun. I will be the first (or 500th) to admit how cool it is to see Keaton back playing Batman, complete with little stings from Danny Elfman’s score. There’s a recurring gag about Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly in Back to the Future in this universe. Even watching Barry suit-up from his Flash ring made this fanboy smile.

The issue is that there’s very little connective glue or character development for anyone. Barry simply reacts most of the time, often to himself, and Miller’s choices with the role simply aren’t charismatic enough to justify two of them on the screen. Keaton’s presence doesn’t make a massive amount of sense, but he at least seems to be having fun with what he’s given. Calle steps into the Supergirl role confidently, and we can look forward to her solo film, but her portrayal isn’t allowed to do more than a series of angry punches.

In the end, we’ve just seen it all done before, and better. CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths came closer to capturing the joy of the shared history of these characters, and one has to wonder if Flashpoint’s comic book plotting would have worked better here. In the text, it’s an alternate Thomas Wayne who has lost Martha and Bruce to crime and subsequently becomes Batman. The denouement sees him give Barry a letter to take home to Bruce to give him closure, which brings the Bat’s dark journey full circle. The film goes as far as referencing Bruce and Barry’s joint pain of parental loss, but it’s never developed any further. Like many things in the movie, it’s a missed opportunity.

If the closure of the DCEU is the point of THE FLASH, then time will tell. In fact, it’s hard to know why this movie survived the great Warner/Discovery cull when Batgirl was deemed to be too unmarketable for the cinema. After all, it too had a Keaton Batman. With James Gunn now helming the next chapter of the universe, we’re yet to see how much this plays into the franchise’s future. For now, it is stubbornly looking backwards, trying to keep a foot in each camp. For a character who runs a lot, surely they know that’s a trip hazard.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Andy Muschietti | WRITERS: Christina Hodson | CAST: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, Michael Keaton | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal (AUS), Warner (US) | RUNNING TIME: 144 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 15 June 2023 (AUS), 16 June 2023 (US)

June 18, 2023
Review: Fast X

Sometimes we need a reminder that these films used to be about boosting DVD players in Los Angeles. In FAST X, the eleventh series outing since the 2001 kick-off, director Louis Leterrier, along with screenwriters Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin, take pains to reiterate this for the audience. Or just let us know they are in on the insanity of it all.

Indeed, after a cold open that takes us back to the glorious vault chase sequence of Fast Five in Rio de Janeiro, it’s LA where we set our scene. Dom (Vin Diesel) and his family are settling into suburban bliss, but no quicker than you can say “and introducing Rita Moreno as abuelita” then they are off on another adventure for the Agency.

Yet all are deceived. Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) seeks revenge for the death of his father in Rio, and is manipulating the family to cause maximum damage. Separated and disgraced, it’s a fight for survival, with a fair bit of driving thrown in for good measure.

Let’s be honest: at this point you’re either all in or it’s not your cup of tea. With our critical radars set to off, what we really want to see is some fast-driving action, some stuff blowing up, and impossible stunts. Given that nobody seems to be able to die in these movies, the stakes are never terribly high, meaning we can happily watch the destruction of a city safe in the knowledge it’s all in the name of our immediate gratification.

Pinging from location to location, the film clocks up its frequent flyer points via splashy title cards for Naples, London, Rio de Janeiro, Portugal, and even Antarctica – sometimes all in the space of ten minutes. The centrepiece sequence is a massive chase across the streets of Rome, with the McGuffin of a large rolling bomb causing chaos and thrills in equal measure. Acting as a microcosm for the series as a whole, and consciously referencing previous films, it’s big and dumb but unquestionably fun.

Yes, it’s very much sturm und drang, but it’s held together by one of the best villains to date. Momoa, dressed to the nines in lavender, laughs maniacally as he takes repeated punches to the face. As an agent of chaos, he’s every bit a comic book arch-nemesis, and precisely the antidote to the stone-faced seriousness of Diesel. (A friend described him as The Joker to Diesel’s Batman, and it’s hard to unsee that – even if they’ll always be Aquaman and Groot). That said, essays could be written on the whether this queer coded character is problematic as a villain.

He’s not the only recognisable face, of course. There are cameos from just about everyone who ever set foot on Universal’s backlot, and it scarcely seems to matter whether they are canonically dead in the series. Helen Mirren, Brie Larson, Jason Statham, and Charlize Theron are all in the mix. Hell, even Australian news reporter There’s so many people, in fact, that it sometimes feels like they’re all operating in separate films. So, you know we’re all waiting for Diesel to yell ‘Family! Assemble’ at some point.

That said, if you’re expecting any kind of resolution, or family-focused barbeque time, to round out this entry then you can forget it. It’s probably no spoiler at this stage in the release cycle to say that this is Part 1 of a bigger story. Which is just fine and dandy with us. Even if we ultimately get diminishing returns on this series, it’s still a hell of a ride every time.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Louis Leterrier | WRITERS: Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin | CAST: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood, Daniela Melchior, Alan Ritchson, Helen Mirren, Brie Larson, Rita Moreno, Jason Statham, Jason Momoa, Charlize Theron | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 141 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 May 2023 (AUS), 5 May 2023 (USA)

May 31, 2023
Review: Halloween Ends

When writing about any long-running horror franchise, it’s almost obligatory that you talk about its many deaths and resurrections. You might make a reference to the franchise being as ‘unkillable’ as its villain – in this case Michael Myers – and the many ups and downs so far. With HALLOWEEN ENDS, requel series director David Gordon Green ponders the very nature of life and death. Sort of.

Set several years after the events of the critically reviled Halloween Kills, the story opens on a hitherto unseen moment from Halloween night in 2019. Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is babysitting, but when tragedy strikes the town blames him in perpetuity. Several years later, he meets Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak) through her grandmother Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the pair immediately fall for each other. Yet Laurie begins to suspect something is rotten in the state of Corey. If we’ve learned anything from the Halloween films, it’s to always listen to Laurie.

In Halloween Kills, the people of Haddonfield thought they could stop Michael by committee, and David Gordon Green seemed to think they could make a Halloween film in the same fashion. To his credit, he is consciously trying for something different here, this time focusing on the journey of a different killer. In some ways this makes it more akin to the non-canonical Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), although Green keeps his ties to the main series.

It’s a curious mix of styles though. Mostly eschewing a reliance on the traditional villain, Green takes his time in a leisurely first hour. Swinging from 80s teen romance to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, often in the same montage, one has to admit that we’ve never quite seen Halloween attempt something on this level. Through Laurie’s memoirs, the film asks some pretty big questions about the nature of evil, the notion of collective trauma, and how the absence of a villain can lead people to look for one. (You could probably read this as a commentary on the last few years of divisive US politics, but that would give it too much credit).

Yet Green – along with co-writers Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier and Danny McBride – fail to satisfactorily answer any of these puzzles. Caught between the old and the new, it becomes clear that in the attempt to make something new, the film almost forgets that it is part of a franchise. Scrambling to restore Michael Myers to the foreground, the film slides into a needlessly violent denouement. Yes, this is par for the course (and aimed at servicing the fans who whoop and cheer and every dismemberment), but it only exacerbates the feeling that the last hour of the film is an afterthought.

So, as HALLOWEEN ENDS literally carries the battered corpse of itself to a disposal unit, one wonders if there’s any life left in the old guard yet. For a franchise that has proven to be remarkably resilient over the last 44 years, Green’s latest finale perhaps proves that it’s time for Michael to go to the grave. At least for a while anyway. Halloween ends – and not a moment too soon.

2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: David Gordon Green | WRITERS: Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green | CAST: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, James Jude Courtney, Will Patton, Rohan Campbell, Kyle Richards | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 13 October 2022 (AUS), 14 October 2022 (US)

October 13, 2022
Review: Nope

Since his ostensible retirement from on-screen performance, Jordan Peele has continued to solidify his reputation as a filmmaker. Following breakout hit Get Out and his follow-up Us, not to mention producing BlacKkKlansman and Candyman, we now see him switch genres while maintaining his keen eye for social commentary.

So, as NOPE opens with the implication of a horrific chimpanzee incident during the taping of a sitcom, we know that we’re in for something unique. In the present day, ranch owners and Hollywood horse trainers Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) and his son “OJ” (Daniel Kaluuya) are rained upon by ephemera from the sky, killed Otis in the process.

Months later, OJ and his sister Em (Keke Palmer) still try and maintain the struggling business. They’ve sold several horses to Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who owns a western themed ranch. Things take a turn when the electricity at Haywood Ranch starts going haywire — and there seems to be a UFO parked in a cloud above their property.

If we’ve learned anything from Peele’s previous work, it’s to not assume we know where any of this is going. He did produce and host a Twilight Zone revival after all. What unfolds is a cross between a giant monster movie and an exploration of long-term trauma. Case in point is the character of Jupe, who has buried the memory of an on-set chimp rampage with showmanship and commercialised bravado.

The genre shift in the last acts feels, just like Peele’s previous films, a gear change too far. It never quite brings together the various pieces in a satisfying way. Here the ideas are bountiful and provoking, but they lack focus. A massive set-piece ending showcases Peele’s ability to orchestrate large-scale action, even if the sequence goes on a beat or so too long.

Mind you, Peele’s cast is terrific. Kaluuya downplays Haywood, the antithesis of Palmer’s boundless energy, so that his deadpan reactions to creepy happenings add levity to the terror. Yeun is equally perfect with Jupe’s unwavering belief that his faith will see him right (although one wonders what dynamic original cast member Jesse Plemons would have brought to the table).

NOPE is stylish as all hell, filled with terrific character building and amazing set design. With this film, Peele begins to make his mark on something outside the horror world, and perhaps pushes sci-fi into smarter thrills in the process.

2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele | WRITERS: Jordan Peele | CAST: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Wrenn Schmidt, Barbie Ferreira, Keith David | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 131 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11 August 2022 (AUS), 22 July 2022 (US)

August 10, 2022
Review: Ambulance

The last decade has been an interesting one for Michael Bay. Although dominated by tentpole releases of various Transformers titles, he’s still managed to pepper his trademark blend of Bayhem throughout fun outings like Pain & Gain and 6 Underground. AMBULANCE, arriving with an energy that doesn’t let up for the duration, is a throwback of sorts to the films that defined him in the 90s.

It opens on a sharply topical moment, one in which war veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is unable to secure medical funding for his wife. After reaching out to adopted brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for help, he is soon dragged along as the driver on a federal bank heist that goes very wrong.

When a cop is shot, Will and Danny steal an ambulance and take EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González) hostage. Pursued by no-nonsense LA cop Monroe (Garret Dillahunt) and FBI Agent Anson Clark (Keir O’Donnell), this series of characters coalesce into a singular railway event that does not stop for a second.

In terms of pure pace and adrenaline, it’s somewhat reminiscent of Speed, a film that came out in the same era as Bay’s first action flicks. There’s a vaguely claustrophobic element to the titular setting, one that adds to the tension of the whole affair, but Chris Fedak’s script operates on the principal of escalation. There’s a pile-on of new elements, from rival gangs to old friends, always threatening to topple over and upend the whole apple cart.

Instead, Bay discombobulates the viewer with the hyperkinetic nature of cinematographer Roberto De Angelis’ photography, pinging around like a kid hopped up on red cordial. A series of aerial drone shots work on the mechanics of a rollercoaster ride, swooping from high to low angles in a heartbeat. Bay’s trademark 360-degree shots have been elevated to featured player. You may scoff, but this is high-concept action cinema at its most immersive.

In the more ridiculous moments, González’s character performs surgery in a moving vehicle while getting instructions via videoconference. Yet this somehow only endears us to González all the more, an actor who does more to ground the film than any of the other players. Which is not to dismiss Abdul-Mateen, a kind of anti-hero for the film who adds gravitas and pathos to every scene he’s featured in. Gyllenhaal, continuing his series of remakes about Danish essential services (after The Guilty), gets to play an increasingly unhinged character he’s clearly enjoying as much as we do.

AMBULANCE may not change the way you think about movies, and nor should you expect this to be a west coast version of Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. Even when swerving chaotically over the highways and byways of the City of Angels, Bay and Fedak know how to stick to the lanes that will drive them straight into maximum adrenaline for that moment.

2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: Michael Bay | WRITERS: Chris Fedak | CAST: Jake Gyllenhaal,Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 136 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7 April 2022 (AUS), 8 April 2022 (USA)

April 6, 2022
Review: Dune

Frank Herbert’s stories have been on the sci-fi fantasy landscape long enough that everyone at has at least an idea of Dune. Whether it’s the endless swathes of sand or just really big worms, it has influenced countless productions and stories. After Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt, David Lynch’s problematic feature, and an under-budgeted mini-series, the book was largely thought to be unfilmable. At least until now.

Herbert’s work is sometimes difficult to follow let alone summarise, but here goes nothing. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) moves to the desert planet of Arrakis when his family accepts control of it. The only source of the highly valuable resource known as spice, their arrival results in betrayal, assassination attempts, the prophecy of a religion known as the Bene Gesserit and an almost mystical force that drives Paul towards the native peoples known as the Fremen.

If Herbert’s novel was a kind of colonialist fantasy, crafting Paul as a white god-king to tribal peoples, then the opening to director Denis Villeneuve’s version aims to establish two things. Firstly, through the narrative voice of Chani (Zendaya) — who Paul sees in prophetic visions — this is a reclamation of the story from the perspective of its fictional native peoples. The other thing that’s apparent is that Villeneuve’s aesthetic vision is a staggeringly beautiful one.

Villenievue is no stranger to iconic sci-fi, having wowed audiences with Arrival and disappointed others with Blade Runner 2049. Yet from the moment DUNE opens, it’s clear there is something a bit different about this outing, carrying with it an almost mythical weight that filled this viewer with unexpected awe. It’s transportive, from the costume designs (that look more than a little Moebius inspired at times, keeping Jodorowsky’s dream alive) to the stunning vistas. Production designer Patrice Vermette achieved this through a combination of large scale sets and effects, crafting something truly immersive.

DUNE is still a deeply complicated outing, and it’s possible that if you haven’t got some familiarity with the source material you’ll find yourself a wee bit lost at times. The intricate balance between the machinations of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (an almost unrecognisable Stellan Skarsgård) and the will of the Bene Gesserit are hard enough to follow on page let alone in a 156 minute film. It’s still quite the chore here, especially given it only covers part of the book, but when it’s this pretty you’re paying attention the whole time.

Film Twitter favourite Chalamet brings an excellent balance of boyishness and almost otherworldly grace to his Paul Atreides. Similarly, Rebecca Ferguson is a standout as the Lady Jessica, Paul’s Bene Gesserit mother and consort to Duke Leto (a bearded Oscar Isaac). It’s hard to get a bead on Zendaya’s take on Chani, as the film wraps up before he more significant scenes take place. (One review refers to being ‘Zendaya baited’ given her more visible presence in the publicity). One suspects she’ll be a major player in the next chapter.

Being in Australia, where the non-festival release date isn’t until December, we already knew that a Part 2 had been greenlit. While one could argue that this is only ‘half a film,’ being armed with the knowledge that this isn’t trying to cram all of Herbert’s tome into a single picture allows us some breathing room. Indeed, it allows us to simply sit back and absorb this as the spectacle that it is.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve | WRITER: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth | CAST: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS), Warner Bros. Pictures (US) | RUNNING TIME: 156 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 8 November 2021 (SFF), 2 December 2021 (AUS), 21 October 2021 (US)

November 16, 2021
Review: No Time to Die

In October 2005, Eon Productions announced the casting of Daniel Craig. As the sixth actor to take on the role of James Bond in their successful film series, the announcement was not immediately embraced. Anti-fan sites launched campaigns that foreshadowed more commonplace social media assaults a decade later. Yet after Casino Royale was released in 2006, the critics were (mostly) silenced. Now, after 15 years and five outings, Craig’s self-contained saga comes full circle in a satisfying conclusion.

Picking up sometime after Spectre, Bond and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) are hanging out in Southern Italy in extramarital bliss — until things go boom. Feeling betrayed, Bond leaves her on a train and disappears. Five years later, when an MI6 scientist is kidnapped, it’s unveiled that M (Ralph Fiennes) has been involved in the development of a programmable bioweapon with deadly accuracy. It gets into the hands of Safin (Rami Malek), a terrorist leader with ties to Madeleine’s past and his own agenda.

NO TIME TO DIE wastes very little of its time setting the scene before plunging us into the action. Opening with a gloriously shot prelude sequence that plays like a wintery horror western, the pre-title sequence involves an explosion, a bike chase and a bullet-riddled Aston Martin. It’s an acknowledgement of the things that make audiences turn up in droves, continually escalating through a kinetic Cuba sequence (with a wonderful cameo from Ana de Armas) to the inevitable secret lair showdown.

Yet more than anything, it’s about character. Not since George Lazenby’s short-lived stint in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — a film that is referenced several times in this outing — has the notion of Bond been so thoroughly interrogated on screen. It’s there overtly, of course, in the presence of Nomi (Lashana Lynch) as the inheritor of the 007 mantle during Bond’s retirement. Yet in the film’s final act, where Safin characterises their dichotomy as “two heroes in a tragedy of their own making,” the film directly address who James Bond is when you strip away the armour.

The rest of the cast is impeccable, with only a handful of new friends joining a cast of familiars. Lynch is unquestionably the standout of the new faces, a capable equal for Bond and an indicator of where the series can go from here. Indeed, good money will be contributed to the Kickstarter that teams up de Armas and Lynch in a buddy spy film.

If director Fukunaga’s film stumbles, other than in the field of judicious editing, it is in the development of the villains. A key sequence featuring the return of Christoph Waltz as Blofeld is an excellent coda to Spectre, although it’s at the expense of the ostensible primary villain. Malek has a surprisingly small amount of screen time in the 163 minutes we spend in 007’s orbit, and we learn little beyond his appropriation of Japonisme as an aesthetic. Similarly, most of Seydoux’s progression seems to happen offscreen.

Is it territory we’ve seen partially covered before? A little, especially when you compare it with Skyfall. Is it way too long? As the longest film in the franchise history, undoubtedly. Yet as Daniel Craig’s last outing in the tux, it earns every inch of its blockbuster presence. As an unabashed fan of all things Bond, it satisfied a core part of my being while allowing me to bid farewell to arguably one of the greatest portrayals of the character in his 68 year history. So, yes, it’s a farewell of sorts, but you can always count on one thing: James Bond will return.

2021 | UK, USA | DIRECTOR: Cary Joji Fukunaga | WRITER: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge | CAST: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 163 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11 November 2021 (AUS)

November 10, 2021
Review: Respect

There’s many indicators of a legendary music career. If you’re lucky you’ll have a hit single or two, impressive chart rankings, accolades and performances before the highest offices in the land. Yet the real mark of success is a Hollywood biopic. In the case of filmmaker Liesl Tommy’s RESPECT, no less a subject that the Queen of Soul gets the feature treatment.

Opening in Detroit, 1952 with a pre-teen Franklin, we’re introduced to the future star as a young performer. Her father C.L. Franklin (Forrest Whittaker) is a Baptist Minister and Civil Rights advocate, fond of throwing parties for his influential and talented circle of friends. Aretha is regularly trotted out to sing for the group and it’s heavily implied she is taken advantage of by the older men.

The film then skips to Franklin in her late teens, the mother of several children while trying to break into the music industry. It’s the first of several things that the film glosses over as it jumps through the decades. Loosely painting the performer as both ambitious and insanely talented, she’s also cast as a victim of her father’s domineering ways, and later her abusive first husband Ted White (Marlon Wayons). Rattling through hits like the titular ‘Respect’, ‘Natural Woman’ and ‘Think’, screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson’s cinematic path through her career is the one of least resistance.

Unquestionably one of the greatest musical performers of the last century, Franklin’s story has been told in a handful of other screen outings. Recently played by Cynthia Erivo in the third season of Genius, and featured in a number of documentaries, RESPECT still follows the Bohemian Rhapsody model of simply ticking off subheadings from an online encyclopedia entry. Songs are matched to key moments in her life (‘Think’ accompanies her separation from White, for example), while historic events such as the death of Martin Luther King Jr. (Gilbert Glenn Brown) form the backdrop at other turning points.

Yet the music mostly remains the focus, and for this we can be grateful. While the development of these classic songs are only fleetingly seen — including the introduction of producer Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron in that familiar role he tends to play) — director Tommy gives some space for the showstoppers. Indeed, only Hudson could have played Franklin with this level of (amazing) grace. While few have the singing chops to go toe-to-toe with the Queen at her height, Hudson is a powerful performer that belts out the classics and commands dramatic moments in equal measure.

Building up to Franklin’s historic 1972 live album Amazing Grace, seen at length in the excellent 2018 documentary film, it ends on a high note as selective as any greatest hits package. While we can only ever get part of the story in any biography, here’s a film that almost goes out of its way to remove any nuance from the story of this certified legend. It might TCB, but the Queen deserves a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Liesl Tommy | WRITER: Tracey Scott Wilson | CAST: Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Marc Maron, Tituss Burgess, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Skye Dakota Turner, Tate Donovan, Mary J. Blige | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal | RUNNING TIME: 145 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 13 August 2021 (USA), 19 August 2021 (AUS)

August 11, 2021