Kinds Of Kindness (2024)

It is time, once again, for director Yorgos Lanthimos to present a dark, and darkly comedic, film for fans to be equal parts entertained and repelled by, helped again by writer Efthimis Filippou. If you've ever wondered just how much Yorgos Lanthimos could fit into a film directed and co-written by Yorgos Lanthimos then this might just definitively answer that. ALL the Lanthimosity is here, and it runs through three equally bizarre tales that are presented in 164 minutes of "kindness".

Don't take this the wrong way, but there's not much point in covering the three stories presented here in great detail. I initially considered it, viewing them as separate from one another, but then I came to the conclusion that they are all basically the same story told in slightly different ways. People have their loyalty tested, and they are often in pursuit of someone they believe will fix anything that has suddenly gone wrong in their life. There's also at least one moment of wince-inducing violence.

There are four main cast members - Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Mamoudou Athie, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau - used to portray various characters throughout the three tales, with three of these performers having already worked so well with Lanthimos in Poor Things. Everyone seems to put complete trust in their director, giving the kind of strangely mannered performances that run through the entire Lanthimos filmography, but it's Plemons who feels like the newcomer excelling in a way that will surely see him added to the core group of regulars.

The script is about as odd as anything else that Lanthimos and Filippou have given us, and I am aware of what I am measuring it against. Few things are fully explained, which can lead to a small amount of irritation, but also one or two brilliant surprises, and there's never a feeling of this being in anything close to the real world. It's a Lanthimos world, although this time he seems to have applied a filter to his work that mixes in some David Lynch and Rod Serling. It's a big gamble, and if you don't like the earliest scenes then you are unlikely to enjoy any of it, but it will satisfy those who may have been worried about recent successes softening the edges of the director.

For something so lengthy and strange, there's not actually that much more to say about it. It's . . . lengthy and strange. I think it's a bit over-indulgent, but I was also happy to be entertained and bewildered by every minute of it. It also made me want to revisit his past few movies, which kind of shows how well it fits in with his developing filmography, despite the anthology format making it feel like a bit of a departure from what he has done previously.

Some directors give their fans what they want and it then turns out that they wanted something a bit different. I don't think that is the case here. Lanthimos has found a fanbase receptive to his art, which has afforded him more opportunities to make more of it, and the end result is a win win. I am already growing impatient to see what he delivers next.

8/10

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Civil War (2024)

When I first heard that Alex Garland was delivering a movie titled "Civil War" I had to prepare myself for the inevitable disappointment that it probably wouldn't be a cinematic homage to the great Guns 'n' Roses track from the Use Your Illusion II album. Strangely, I didn't expect to sit through the end credits while wishing that Garland HAD done that. Because that would have been better than this, as far as I'm concerned.

What you have here, unsurprisingly enough, is a tale of a civil war. This particular civil war is happening across the USA though, and it may well end with the capture of the President (Nick Offerman). A number of war correspondents and photo-journalists are travelling across the country as they document the unfolding events, with Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura) ultimately shielding and mentoring young Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), and the film shows how these characters try to remain observers only in a war that will be decided by those actively participating.

I like Garland, having been a fan of his since becoming aware of him through his collaboraions with Danny Boyle, but his directorial career seems to show the output of a man who consistently has one great idea or image that he then tries, and fails, to build a movie around. Civil War is most effective in THAT scene, you know it from the trailer, but nothing else comes close to that, despite the fact that the central premise should be ripe with the potential for commentary on where sowing seeds of division and discontent can lead. 

I have more to say about this, but let me mention the cast first. Dunst and Moura feel wasted, they don't have to respond to events around them with anything other than an interest in how it can serve their own purpose, and it's up to Spaeny to make up for their disappointingly flat performances. Thankfully, Spaeny has already proven to me that she can shine in lacklustre material (e.g. see her be fantastic in the not-so-fantastic Priscilla), and she would be the best thing here if it wasn't for one scene being completely stolen by a terrifying Jesse Plemons. Stephen McKinley Henderson also does well with his screentime, but those are very small crumbs on the side of a main dish that is sadly undercooked and unseasoned.

I don’t fault the cast though. This is Garland’s film, and he is responsible for hanging his actors out to dry. Sadly unable to depict any of the politics and behaviours that would lead to such a situation, Garland just decides to make the film about the idea of people allowing bad things to happen by simply doing nothing, or not doing enough, to stop them. He assembles people around him who would have been more than up to the task of delivering something more thought-provoking and challenging, but all we end up getting are a couple of well-shot moments and some very good music from Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury.

Maybe Garland has one more truly great movie in him, but it is becoming more doubtful with every new feature he directs. Maybe he should return to writing, and leave the directing to those who are more capable of taking risks and piecing together individual moments into an end result that is more than the sum of its parts.

3/10

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Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023)

Sometimes you allow your expectations to dictate your viewing experience, which is how I set time aside to start 2024 with a viewing of Killers Of The Flower Moon, a film I was very much hoping to really enjoy. I ended up loving it. I'd even go as far as calling it another masterpiece in the extensive filmography of Martin Scorsese.

What you have here is a story of greed and white privilege, all stemming from the oil that was discovered under Osage Nation land in 1920s Oklahoma. Not necessarily trusted to manage their new wealth on their own, the government created a system that would allow the Osage people to spend their money while safeguarding the potential for white men to infiltrate, and benefit from, the community. William Hale (Robert De Niro) is a man who claims to be a friend of the Osage people, but he's trying to feather his nest while viewing himself as some kind of criminal mastermind. A grand plan is set in motion when his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns from WWI, leading to Ernest eventually courting Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), with the intention of marrying her and getting himself in line for a very nice inheritance. Things inevitably don't go to plan.

Based on the non-fiction book by David Grann, Killers Of The Flower Moon was crafted into a brilliant and brilliantly intelligent screenplay by Scorsese and Eric Roth. Not only does it tell the story that deserves to be told, Scorsese also acknowledges the problematic nature of the material. It's an important travesty/tragedy packaged for entertainment, to some degree, and it's being told via the perspective of a privileged white man, which is almost a constant issue being explored throughout the hefty runtime. Scorsese actually makes an appearance in front of the camera at one point, and he comes very close to just outright apologising for sharing this tawdry slice of American history in the only way he can.

If you watch the film and don't consider how important, and how unfair, the perspective is, it's worth remembering that many of the characters onscreen are idiots. Some are more obviously idiotic than others (DiCaprio's character being the simplest, but De Niro undermines almost all of his serious and scary moments with ridiculous attempts to maintain a sense of self-importance and a facade that so many around him can already see through), but you could throw a ball of paper at this assembled cast of characters and have a 98% chance of hitting a moron.

It feels like I don't even have to say how good the main cast are. Aside from DiCaprio giving another performance up there with his very best, and De Niro doing what he has done so well for Scorsese over the years, Gladstone is just sublime. She's helped by the fact that she gets to be smarter than so many of the people around her, and there's a sad desperation sighing in her soul as she views a "coyote" as a better option than many other men in the community, thinking that an open admission of greed and laziness will make her situation safer than it could be. Scott Shepherd is also very good, playing Ernest's brother, and also someone even more brazen about his criminality and abuse of others. There are many others who step on screen to steal a scene or two, including Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, and John Lithgow, but the other real stars are Cara Jade Myers (playing the beautifully spirited and unrelenting Anna) and Ty Mitchell (who seems acutely aware of the idiocy of the criminals he ends up working with, but is unable to avoid them).

Every element here is as carefully considered as it needs to be, from the bursts of violence to the score and soundtrack, from the moments that make the bittersweet humour more obvious to the growing and stifling air of tragedy and horror, and I personally felt the three and a half hour runtime fly by (although others have seen this as a major failing). As I said at the start of this review, this is another Scorsese masterpiece.

10/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Power Of The Dog (2021)

I often think that I dislike the films of director Jane Campion, but that's not true. I really disliked In The Cut, and I have yet to watch The Piano (despite owning it for a number of years), but I always forget that I saw, and really liked, The Portrait Of A Lady. Campion has, according to many, been creating superb art for a number of years now and it is up to me to see more of her filmography.

The year is 1925. The place is a ranch in Montana. Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a difficult and unfriendly owner of the ranch, alongside his much more pleasant brother, George (Jesse Plemons). When George marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst), bringing both her and her son (Peter, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) to live at the ranch, things take a major turn for the worse. Phil becomes more and more nasty to those around him, Rose starts to assuage her pain with alcohol, and Peter looks like he may not do well in an environment full of men quick to point and laugh at his perceived weak character. But things take an unexpected turn, which means some characters may be saved from their impending fates.

Based on a novel by Thomas Savage, this is a film that you would think of as, well, typical Oscar fare (which was proven by the love it received in the shape of Oscar nominations). It moves at quite a slow pace, it's beautifully crafted, and the central performances are uniformly superb. There's also a dark and intriguing third act that will make some viewers have to think back to details that were interspersed throughout the rest of the movie. I would, for some reason, see this pairing up nicely with Phantom Thread, and I hope others who see both movies can see why I would make a connection between the two.

Campion puts everything in place, from character details to important, but small, plot details, and trusts viewers to put things together as things play out. It's subtle throughout, in many ways, but also not subtle if you know what Campion is trying to make you notice. Even the start of the potential friendship between Phil and Peter, as the unpleasant man starts to make an effort to bond with a boy he realises maybe shouldn't be faulted for the choices made by his mother, feels entirely plausible, despite seeming highly unlikely during the earlier scenes.

Nobody in the cast disappoints, and Cumberbatch deserves extra praise for not fully mangling the accent that his character has. He also seems to enjoy playing someone who initially seems irredeemably bad. Plemons is a much calmer presence, but also ends up not getting as much screentime. Dunst has to act out some angst and emotional histrionics, but she feels right for her role. Then there's Smit-McPhee, playing the character who arguably goes through the biggest change in the movie. Smit-McPhee is excellent, and he's entrusted with carrying viewers through from start to finish, clarifying the main theme of the film, a thought-provoking and complex conundrum that will leave you weighing up your own moral stance on things long after the credits have rolled.

It feels like too long since I sat down to enjoy some full-on "worthy"drama, the kind of films I do normally try to check out in the run up to the Oscars. I'm glad I set aside some time for this one. I may have inadvertently started with one of the best from 2021.

9/10

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Jungle Cruise (2021)

Look, not every film based on a Disney attraction is going to work. Just see The Haunted Mansion (or don't . . . I didn't hate that film and even I just rated it a 4/10). But the fact that it can work as well as it did with Pirates Of The Caribbean is probably good enough reason for film-makers to see what else they could adapt into a fun movie/franchise. And Jungle Cruise is definitely more in line with the latter than the former. It also has a very similar vibe to Fraser/Weisz The Mummy movies (no bad thing). And benefits from the absolute maelstrom of charisma that is Dwayne Johnson.

Emily Blunt plays Lily Houghton, a daring young woman who is determined to find a fabled tree that has leaves said to be able to cure illnesses. Having upset the proper establishment that doesn't believe in such things, and certainly won't accept such ideas coming from A WOMAN (this is the early 1900s, after all), Lily steals an arrowhead that may help her locate the tree, rushing off on an adventure with her brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall). The two get to South America, where they end up hiring a boat captained by Frank Wolff (Johnson). Danger lurks under every ripple of the river water, especially when they are being pursued by an obsessed and amoral German, Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), who also wants to find the tree. Oh, there are also some undead conquistadors (led by Aguirre, played by Édgar Ramirez) who want a chance to lift the curse placed upon them.

Jungle Cruise works as well as it does thanks to the wonderful interplay between Johnson, Blunt, and Whitehall. All three get a chance to show their comedic chops, and all three get to have at least one moment in which they show the real strength of their characters. Johnson gets to reel off a number of amusingly bad puns (the kind I always enjoy), and he's also a bit of a con artist, while Blunt has an impressively pro-active and savvy approach to her quest, even if she is given extra assistance from Johnson on a couple of occasions. There has been some praise for the fact that Whitehall's character is a young gay man in a Disney movie, but the House Of Mouse yet again make the minimum effort to show that they nowadays realise what a wonderful variety of human beings are out in the world. 

The screenplay throws together Michael Green (who has worked on films such as Logan, Green Lantern, and Murder On The Orient Express) and Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (responsible for writing Cats & Dogs and, ummmm, Bad Santa). That mix ends up yielding a surprisingly cohesive result, with all three men obviously doing their best to please their Disney bosses, helped in developing the theme park ride into a movie idea by John Norville. There are a lot of little details that will please those who have been on the Jungle Cruise ride, the plotting is predictable in a way that doesn't make the adventure any less fun, and it's all just a perfectly-crafted, unabashed, blockbuster to enjoy on the big screen. 

Director Jaume Collet-Serra is generally known for the films that he has directed in the horror and thriller genres (including House Of Wax, Orphan, and The Shallows), but he feels like a great choice to be helming this material, balancing the fun factor with the dark fantasy elements, particularly when the undead conquistadors take the centre stage. It may remain more of a Disney film than a Collet-Serra film, but that is what tends to happen with every Disney movie.

Aside from Johnson, Blunt, and Whitehall, there's a lot of fun to be had with the over-the-top villainy of Plemons, who seems to be having a ball, the nature-harnessing conquistadors, and Paul Giamatti, playing a character who is owed a debt by Frank Wolff that could lead to him taking ownership of Wolff's boat.

The runtime, just over two hours, fairly flies by, there's a decent musical score from James Newton Howard, and the only thing that drags this down is the feeling of "been there, done that" that permeates many of the major story beats. I'd recommend this as superior family entertainment, easily, but I'd also like to think that it doesn't need any sequels or spin-offs that I assume are already being planned.

8/10

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The Post (2017)

Based on real events of the 1970s, The Post shows viewers the battle that the newspapers, and specifically The Washington Post, went through as they attempted to publish extracts from classified documents that revealed damning details of politicians and presidents who led America, step by step, right into the folly that was the Vietnam War.

Lots of people are giving love to The Post, partly because it has a typical level of technical expertise you would expect from director Steven Spielberg and partly because the battle between the press and the White House resonates with a lot of people watching the current events that have given us terms such as "alternative facts" and "fake news". If ever there was a time for this movie then that time is now.

Unfortunately, and let me say I have thought about this long and hard, it really isn't that good a film.

It works as a statement, as a piece of art created specifically to fire a reminding warning shot to those who think that the press is just expected to relay soundbites without questioning people in positions of authority, but it doesn't work as a satisfying cinema experience, for two main reasons.

First, you have the script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. It's a strangely messy tangle of different strands, from the investigative journalist who first broke the story to boardroom meetings about The Washington Post moving from private ownership to a company with public shareholders, from the relationships between the various writers and staff to the truncated snippets of the trial that would prove so important for the freedom of the press.

Second, you have the cast. Meryl Streep is as good as ever, playing Katharine Graham, owner and publisher of The Washington Post, and Tom Hanks is also his usual reliable self in the role of Ben Bradlee, editor in chief at the paper, but the rest of the cast is either wasted (Sarah Paulson, Alison Brie, Jesse Plemons) or made up in a way that will take you out of the movie as you figure out who is under the heavy make up (Bruce Greenwood, David Cross, Bradley Whitford). Bob Odenkirk and Tracy Letts are two other exceptions, both given decent scenes without having to be heavily disguised.

Third, and perhaps most damaging of all, the film feels too busy being smug when it could be spending more time dissecting the core issue. Those who know the tale, or are aware of The Washington Post, should know the outcome, and they should know, considering the time period, what comes next, so that could have been the background to something looking more closely at how the battle built up on both sides of the divide. Replace all of the talk of the stock market with scenes instead showing meetings in the White House laying out their opposition, perhaps even spitballing ideas that they realised they wouldn't be allowed to follow through on, and the whole thing may have felt more intense.

Maybe it's just me. The film has already garnered a lot of love, and I might remain in the minority here. But I still advise people to approach with trepidation. It's a decent story, and there are some great performances, but Spielberg doesn't create the magic you would expect. Very disappointing.

4/10

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American Made (2017)

American Made is a glossy, lively biopic based on the life of Barry Seal, a pilot who ended up helping the CIA, smuggling drugs, and getting himself entangled in the whole Iran-Contra affair. Or so it would seem. Considering the personality involved, the potential for exaggeration and outright untruths, I am not sure of just how much to believe, and how much to take with a large pinch of salt. So, to be on the safe side, I took everything here with a large pinch of salt.

Directed by Doug Liman, reteaming with Tom Cruise after the superb sci-fi action of Edge Of Tomorrow AKA Live Die Repeat, this is a slick, fun, piece of entertainment. It's also something we have seen done many times before, and usually done much better.

The problems start with the script. It feels lazy, a melange of moments and cliches from recent and not-so-recent biopics. and, despite the runtime (this is about the two hour mark), it all feels a bit sparse. Writer Gary Spinelli isn't interested in the actual mechanics of the lifestyle on display, he doesn't even seem that interested in the risk to life and damage to others until it suits the pacing of the film to throw in a small set-piece. No, he just wants to show what amounts to a greatest hits photo album of the life of a man who was surely more complicated than the charming douchebag depicted here.

Speaking of charming douchebags, who the hell gets Tom Cruise for a role like this and then doesn't let him go full tilt with the bags of charm he has at his disposal? His cocky charm has been put to good use over the years in a number of roles that have allowed him to show more than a hint of danger glinting from that ultra-white smile. Rain Man, The Color Of Money, and Magnolia are the three best examples I can think of, taking his confident persona and turning it, even ever so slightly, against him. This film doesn't do that. It may try to, but it doesn't, perhaps because it seems to always depict the version of events as told by Seal, which doesn't allow viewers to consider how much of his claims may have been exaggerated or distorted to reposition himself in a better light.

The rest of the cast do okay with what they're given, although many of the supporting players are a bit wasted. Alice Eve plays "wife who goes along with things", Caleb Landry Jones is "brother who throws spanner in works", and it's only Domhnall Gleeson who gets a chance to make a better impression, playing a CIA operative making use of Seal without ever pretending that he can be dropped like a hot potato whenever things go bad.

Liman hits all of the notes that you expect him to hit. There are no surprises here, apart from the failure of many scenes to rise above average, and nothing to put this anywhere near the level of most of his other films (even Jumper, which nobody else seems to like as much as I do).

In summation, there's a decent soundtrack in search of a better movie to accompany. You can find half a dozen better movies for both the director and the star of this one. It won't ruin your whole day if you give it a watch, but I expect this to be largely forgotten a year from now.

5/10

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