Gaspar Noé's reputation needs scant introduction. The provocateur has seemed to be running out of rope in recent years, his last effort Love critically condescended to alongside the automatic box office failure he's used to. With Climax he has bafflingly resecured some of his cachet, despite a messy and unfocused contrivance of a film. Audiences are introduced to a cast … Continue reading Climax
Representationally radical, Crazy Rich Asians arrives with massive box office success stateside. This romantic comedy tells a straightforward story of love gambled and won, but does so with an impressive all-Asian cast that can't quite elevate a lacklustre script. The terrific, charming Constance Wu is Rachel, an NYU professor going out with the ambiguously minted Nick (Henry … Continue reading Crazy Rich Asians
If it’s tempting to praise the timeliness of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, it’s also worth remembering that America’s issues with institutional and accepted racism never really went away. This sometimes incendiary, but generally tame film could have been released any time in the last thirty years and still summoned the righteous rage with which it closes, … Continue reading BlacKkKlansman
The 1990s, like the countless decades before them, were no time at all in which to come of age as a queer teenager in America. Desiree Akhavan’s novel adaptation, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, takes 1993 as its host year, and charts the stay of its eponymous protagonist at God’s Promise, a gay conversion therapy centre. … Continue reading The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Films are often praised for doing what they advertise on their tin - simplicity is no sin in and of itself. When that tin looks like it'll contain a monster film of questionable quality, though, this straightforwardness is still a burden. Cockney wedge Jason Statham is our hero, a wisecracking and nominally harrowed ex-diver named … Continue reading The Meg
Another week, another countdown set to 15 minutes, ticking down the time to disaster. Except, in Ant-Man and the Wasp, the stakes are rather lower than in other recent blockbusters. A human tragedy is risked, yes, but one involving at most a handful of victims. Scott Lang, Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, is under house arrest, as … Continue reading Ant-Man and the Wasp
Summer blockbusters are by no means a dying breed; if anything, the weight of action dross is ever-growing. Yet quality products are starting to feel rare. With his latest Mission: Impossible film Tom Cruise sprints full-bore into that welcoming niche. This is a spy caper par excellence, stunting its way through cynical hangups. Cruise returns … Continue reading Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Sometimes you simply have to go along with the ride. Mamma Mia! was critically reviled upon its release in 2008, yet stormed the UK box office in outlandish fashion. It still sits a hair outside the all-time British top 10, so a follow-up effort is far from surprising commercially. Here We Go Again is in … Continue reading Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
It can be difficult, on a nostalgic and intuitive level, to criticise Pixar for their attitude to franchises they created and realised with generally breath-taking skill and wit. Yet watching Incredibles 2, despite moments of visual excellence and lacerating irony, one can conclude that they simply don’t know best. This is not a bad film; … Continue reading Incredibles 2
With a somewhat refreshing simplicity at its core and a generously quick pace, Skyscraper is as big and stupid as its titular building, and similarly just about avoids major disaster. The Rock’s box office pull has seemed undeniable in recent months, propping up the mediocre Jumanji and Rampage. In Skyscraper he is Will Sawyer, retired hostage rescuer and family man. In a … Continue reading Skyscraper
