Search Results

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)   On release, I found myself feeling curiously out of synch with underwhelmed audiences’ prevailing response to The Matrix Reloaded; I loved it, for the most part. Indeed, there was but one scene I felt failed spectacularly, and yet it mystifyingly seemed to come in for the most praise: the Burley Brawl, assisted by some of the ropiest CGI in a major motion picture up to that point. So it wasn’t the ponderous exposition – the Architect’s discourse, memorably mocked by Will Ferrell in an MTV awards sketch – or especially the sweaty sexy Zion rave that

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)   The belated arrival of the Ant-Man sequel on UK shores may have been legitimately down to World Cup programming, but it nevertheless adds to the sense that this is the inessential little sibling of the MCU, not really expected to challenge the grosses of a Doctor Strange, let alone the gargantuan takes of its two predecessors this year. Empire magazine ran with this diminution, expressing disappointment that it was “comparatively minor and light-hitting” and “lacks the scale and ambition of recent Marvel entries“. Far from deficits, for my money, these should be regard as accolades bestowed upon Ant-Man and

Ready Player One (2018)   Ready Player One was a major test for the ’berg. Did he still have what it took to rank as one of the big guns of populist modern cinema, or would he be confirmed as an out-of-touch grandpa, futilely attempting to reclaim a crown he’d long since lost? And, in the process, adding insult to injury by attempting to tap into a vein of nostalgia he himself had a hand in creating? The answer is that this is very much cinema from a man with his finger on the pulse of current tastes and trends, one

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I (2010)   What’s good in the first part of the dubiously split (of course it was done for the art) final instalment in the Harry Potter saga is very good, let down somewhat by decisions to include material that would otherwise have been rightly excised and the sometimes-meandering travelogue. Even there, aspects of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I can be quite rewarding, taking on the tone of an apocalyptic ’70s aftermath movie or episode of Survivors (the original version), as our teenage heroes (some now twentysomethings) sleep rough, squabble, and try to salvage a plan. The

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)   The most interesting aspect of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, particularly given the iron fist Lucasfilm has wielded over the spinoffs, is how long a leash Rian Johnson has been granted to tear apart the phonier, Original Trilogy-lite aspects of The Force Awakens. The resulting problem is that the areas where he’s evidently inspired are very good (almost anything Force related, basically), but there are consequently substantial subplots that simply don’t work, required as they are to pay lip service to characters or elements he feels have nowhere to go. The positives tip the balance in The Last

Baby Driver (2017)   Pure cinema. There are plenty of directors who engage in superficial flash and fizz (Danny Boyle or JJ Abrams, for example) but relatively few who actually come to the medium from a root, core level, visually. I’m slightly loathe to compare Edgar Wright with the illustrious likes of Sergio Leone and Brian De Palma, partly because they’re playing in largely different genre sandpits, partly because I don’t think Wright has yet made something that compares to their best work, but he operates from a similar sensibility: fashioning a movie foremost through image, supported by the soundtrack,

Fast & Furious 8  aka The Fate of the Furious aka F8 (2017)   Fun. Brio. That’s what any director needs to bring a sense of to the ever more absurd Fast & Furious franchise at minimum. Action chops are definitely up there, but paramount is an active affinity with how plain silly the series is. And it’s a quality F Gary Gray doesn’t really have, or if he does, he’s never shown it, previously or here. Even his action leaves something to be desired (his The Italian Job remake is far superior in that regard). Which isn’t to suggest there isn’t fun to

True Lies (1994)   James Cameron might not quite yet have been King of the World in 1994, but he was definitely King of Science Fiction Cinema. Terminator 2: Judgement Day had become the biggest movie of 1991 worldwide (luckily for Carolco, which bet the bank on it), and consequently he could do anything he wanted next. And what he wanted to do was mystifying. Perhaps it stemmed from an attempt to show his “range” (after all, his next non-genre offering nabbed him the coveted Best Picture Oscar), but a remake of obscure French movie La Totale!, a spy comedy that allowed Cameron

Midnight Special (2016)   Midnight Special sadly isn’t all that special. It seems those ’80s movies that inspired him didn’t rubbed off enough to leave writer-director Jeff Nichols with a remotely affecting plot, let alone one eliciting a sense of wonder. A chase thriller that is only sporadically thrilling, and a science fiction mystery that turns out not to be so mysterious, there’s no doubting Nichols’ talent as a director, but I’m less convinced of his touch when embracing genre trappings. The picture is at its most effective during the opening stages, with the encouraging decision to set the wheels of

Run All Night (2015)   I quite like that we’re being “treated” to this never-ending run of Liam Neeson thrillers, some of which aren’t called Taken. None of them have actually been really good, but for a spell several have fooled you into thinking they might be. A common factor in the better ones is Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra, a director stylish enough, but not nearly auteurish enough, to make the unofficial trilogy he’s completed with Neeson feel nothing at all like an unofficial trilogy. Run All Night is the best of the three, and like the others it kicks off with

Midnight Run (1988)   Midnight Run has a lot to answer for. It gave Robert De Niro the impression he was great at comedy. He is great in Midnight Run. It’s easily his funniest performance. But that performance is a consequence of the alchemy of co-stars, script and director and, most fundamentally, that De Niro isn’t playing for laughs. Sure, he’s been funny in stuff since, mostly he’s been mugging off his taciturn tough nut persona, a one-trick pony show that’s usually been milked in undemanding and inconsequential material. Midnight Run is something else entirely; a buddy movie with genuine heart, a road trip that never

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)   A Terminator 3 was as inevitable as Arnold’s waning career. He was never going to stick to his pledge not to do a third without James Cameron (who had already made one too many, even if the second cemented his bankability and gave him a lavish box of effects tricks to play with).  The ’90s saw a steady downward career trend, not reversed by a second of the decade’s collaborations with Cameron and being sent to da coola in the debacle that was Batman and Robin. By the time Rise of the Machines arrived, Arnie was barely scraping

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)   (Director’s Cut) Is it really an “inviolable rule” that T2 is superior to the original? I well remember its feting when it was first released, as I was one of those blown away by it. And there’s no doubt that individual elements remain first rate. But aside from being bigger and more polished, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is inferior in almost every respect. Arnie has been turned into a good guy, which struck me then and still does as a cop-out. Worse, he effectively becomes John Connor’s pet dog (not so much the father figure). Revisiting the movie,

The Terminator (1984)   The Terminator franchise is a mess of jumbled narratives, stop-start continuations, temporal entanglements and ill-conceived recasting, so at least this year’s latest entry looks as if it will be right at home. The original is only structurally tidy in terms of being relatively linear and unconfused about its objectives. Of course, that means that it needs to sweep a lot of internal logic under the carpet to work. But work it does in spite of that. This James Cameron at his leanest and hungriest, in stark contrast to the narrative bloat that has since (quite unnecessarily) consumed

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)   Mad Max: Fury Road is an astoundingly great action movie, a post-apocalyptic cartoon bleeding with sand, wind, fog, mud and mayhem. It’s also completely mental. George Miller has upped the ante so far beyond any other purveyor of action cinema out there, they may as well collectively up sticks and go home. His bold, brazen kinetics are perfectly matched by the most straightforward and linear of plotlines. As ever with Max, Fury Road concerns itself with his long slow road back to humanity, but it is at least as much about the similar quest for atonement of

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)   Time was kind to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. As in, it was such a long time since I’d seen the “final chapter” of the trilogy, it had dwindled in my memory to the status of an “alright but not great” sequel. I’d half-expected to have positive things to say along the lines of it being misunderstood, or being able to see what it was trying for but perhaps failing to quite achieve. Instead, I re-discovered a massive turkey that is really a Mad Max movie in name only (appropriately, since Max was an afterthought). This is the

Mad Max 2 (1981)   Much has been written in praise of Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior over the years, rightly noting its enormous influence (albeit in tandem with a number of other science fiction opuses in the surrounding five years), but mostly concentrating on its abiding status as a remarkably executed, fantastically taut, kinetic thrill ride. This sequel sees George Miller coax and expand the kernel of the original, teasing out the mythical elements therein and producing a big, bold, super-charged action engine. Mad Max 2 is an economical picture in storytelling, terms, just as its director recognises that grand spectacle is

The Big Steal (1949)   Only Don Siegel’s third feature as director, but as confidently-staged and tightly-paced as ever. At a mere seventy minutes, it’s so flighty that you’re left wanting more. It helps that the plot is essentially one long chase, with interludes for hard-boiled banter. Robert Mitchum’s Lt. Duke Halliday arrives in Mexico in pursuit of oily crook Fisk (Patrick Knowles). Fisk robbed the army payroll and the Halliday got the blame. Or at least, that’s what Halliday claims. Halliday’s joined by Joan Graham (Jane Greer) who wants the $2,000 Fisk owes her. Halliday, in turn, is pursued