Tom Salinsky

Spoilers are funny things. Sometimes you just guess what’s coming next, which I generally think is bad luck more than anything else. Whenever you’re being told a story, you’re guessing what’s coming next. Anticipation is part of the pleasure, and knowing what’s coming next isn’t necessarily a problem. But if something is supposed to come at you from left-field and on your first viewing, you are able to predict it half an hour out, that doesn’t make for the best viewing experience.

What about stories based on life? Does it harm your enjoyment of Apollo 13 if you know the crew were all safely returned to Earth? Will you refuse to see Napoleon because you know what happens at Waterloo? Anyway. If the phrase “Ferrari 1957” doesn’t stir memories in you, you might prefer to watch this film first, and read this review later, because I had no idea what was coming and in the middle of a crowded cinema, I audibly gasped “Jesus!” But, Michael Mann’s narrowly-focused biopic has problems besides – although a key one is the placement of this historic event.

Early on, Mann does very little hand-holding. About the first twenty minutes of this movie is anonymous people getting on and off trains, leaving one house to go to another, making calls in which one person we don’t know tells another person we don’t know that a third person we don’t know has done something whose significance is uncertain. A few introductory captions or a “new kid” to whom things could be explained would have helped a lot.

Eventually things come into focus, and it becomes clear that Enzo Ferrari is struggling to hold his business together, juggling two families and pinning all of his hopes on winning the famous thousand mile “Mille Miglia” race, the glory of which will regenerate his car manufacturing business. But there’s precious little drama in any of this, and bizarrely having cast passionate, explosive Adam Driver (nominative determinism strikes again!) he’s then encouraged him to greet every turn of events – whether fortuitous, disastrous, bizarre or mundane – with the same dignified glower. It deadens the narrative and is a frankly confounding choice.

Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley feel a little freer – but all of these American actors have been asked to do Chico Marx Italian accents (except Cruz who just sticks with her natural Spanish) which adds an additional layer of absurdity. So after two hours of planning, pontificating, organising and glowering (mainly glowering), it’s race time. And the tired old Hollywood sports movie structure would suggest that this is when Ferrari seizes victory from the jaws of defeat. However, the problem here is that victory is in the hands of his drivers and all Ferrari can do is offer futile advice from the sidelines.

What actually happens – as you very well may know – is that although one of his drivers wins the race, another one has a blow-out at 120 miles an hour and spins off the road into a collection of excited onlookers, in a devastating accident which left eleven people dead, one of them gruesomely bisected. Five of them children. It’s an astonishing moment, and the power of it does galvanise the rest of the film. But if you were hoping to discover the effect that this has on Ferrari – as engineer, as one-time race driver, as family man, as entrepreneur – then you’ll be disappointed because ten minutes later the credits are rolling. Why is this hideous turning point not positioned in the middle of the film, so we can deal with the aftermath properly? (Wikipedia tells me that the court cases rumbled on for years.)

Everything is shot with Mann’s customary style and energy, and this did a decent job of teaching me about a bit of history I had no knowledge of. But it’s weighed down by poor choices in the fundamental organisation of the material, and a hugely disappointing turn from the magnificently talented Driver.

I don’t quite know where to put The Holdovers. Alexander Payne’s style isn’t the rigorous near cookie-cutter filmmaking system of Wes Anderson, which constantly threatens to subsume the material (and often succeeds). But Payne’s recent output does show a sameyness which, sure, is the mark of an artist with something to say, but I left this film having had a decent enough time, but slightly baffled at the rapturous reception this has received in some quarters. Nothing like as vinegar-sharp as Election, this is more in the same vein as The Descendants, Sideways or Nebraska, in which grumpy middle-aged men grouse about life’s petty indignities until the external structure of the story brings them into land.

It all looks lovely, and so seventies, I assume it was shot with mahogany cameras on film made of bri-nylon. At my screening, there was even a (fake) British Board of Film Censors card giving it an “AA” rating. And a walleyed Paul Giamatti (who is being very coy about how this look was achieved) is on suitably splenetic form. Much attention is given early on to prize jackass Teddy Kountze, who is the standout asshole in Mr Hunham’s collection of lonely students who have to suffer Christmas at school. But, thanks to a conveniently-deployed helicopter, it ends up being only Dominic Sessa’s Angus Tully who is left behind, and we only have some harsh sun reflected off the ski-slopes by way of karmic retribution for Kountze.

Over time, Giamatti and Sessa’s relationship ebbs and flows, they learn a little more about each other, confess some secrets and reveal some vulnerabilities. The acting is splendid with great turns also from Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Carrie Preston. But what’s it all for? And haven’t we seen a lot of this snotty-kids-from-fancy-Academies-learn-a-thing-or-two-about-life-from-a-crochety-yet-charismatic-ersatz-father-figure before in films like Good Will Hunting, Scent of a Woman, Dead Poets Society and more besides?

I admire all the care and craft that’s been poured into this, and the script (an original by David Hemingson) is full of choice one-liners, but it feels as if the director was so keen to evoke a time, he forget to evoke all that much meaning.

The End We Start From couldn’t be more different. If Alexander Payne’s film is a warm bath slowing growing tepid, then Mahalia Belo’s is a blast of cold water in the face. And that’s more or less what happens to Jodie Comer’s young mother whose onset of labour is interrupted not by her waters breaking but by flood waters crashing through her bay windows. Plotted like a disaster movie (script by Alice Birch from the novel by Megan Hunter), this focuses not on the devastation of the UK by unstoppable storms, but on the human fallout. And like all good survival films, the biggest problem isn’t the climate disaster / erupting volcano / hoards of zombies / cordyceps infections / man-eating plants – it’s your fellow survivors and their moral weaknesses.

Indomitably trudging through this bleakness, tiny baby strapped to her chest, Jodie Comer is outstanding, and given great support by Katherine Waterston as the similarly blessed friend she makes along the way. Whether by choice, or as a consequence of the kind of limited budget generally afforded British films, the editing is lean to the point of choppy, with very few scenes allowed to linger, but the score by Anna Meredith (with occasional overtones of John Carpenter) knits the whole thing together, and the result is a harrowing tale which feels all too believable, but which crucially doesn’t forget the power of a good laugh every so often. “Do we really have nothing left to eat?” asks Comer at one point. “Only these delicious babies,” responds Waterston.

None of the characters have names, which I almost didn’t notice until moments before the end, but this gives a dark hint that this could happen to anyone. And all the details of how different people and institutions might react to such as disaster are well-worked out. With strong themes of family, duty, home and belonging, this remarkable film effortlessly transcends its pulpy premise, and adds another to a string of sensational performances from Comer who is surely one of the very best actors working in Britain today.

Two British films drawn from reality about stiff-upper-lipped Englishmen stoically doing the right thing, simply because it’s right. There’s more texture to Oliver Parker and William Ivory’s The Great Escaper, simply because Michael Caine’s decrepit old buffer causes all sorts of consternation back home when he does a bunk from his care home, and therefore it’s possible to attribute negative motivations to his actions. This film also benefits from keeping its stars (Caine and Glenda Jackson) centre-stage for much of the running time – the flashbacks to young Caine are kept to a minimum.

It doesn’t outstay its welcome, but it does feel like it’s running on rails, and ends up reaching for a catharsis which seems forever out of its reach. Its most interesting moments are those when Bernie takes a different path – visiting a comrade’s grave and missing out on the big show which was his ostensible reason for going. Spare a thought for John Standing and Victor Oshin who do nice work but get no plaudits. For one brief moment, as Bernie shares a salute with equally decrepit Germans who were firing machine guns at British troops during the Normandy landings, there’s a flicker of something much deeper, more profound and incredibly moving. But Parker swiftly moves back to the feelgood old-folks charm.

I remember watching the episode of That’s Life in which Esther Rantzen surprised Nicholas Winton with an audience full of the now grown-up children whose lives he’d saved by arranging their escape from occupied Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. It’s practically impossible to watch without bursting into tears. If you want to watch it, a YouTube search will bring it up. Or you could watch One Life which plods its way towards the same endpoint.

Anthony Hopkins is the big ticket here, but the 1930s stuff is vastly more interesting, where we have to make do with Johnny Flynn (hilariously broad in the West End as Richard Burton at the moment), but get consolation prizes in the form of Helena Bonham Carter and Romola Garai. There’s fine evocation of time and place in these scenes, but I was left waiting for Hopkins to come back and then bored by much of what he was doing. As a hymn to the virtues of stubbornness, politeness and diligent paperwork, this is suitably stirring, but nothing can ever come close to the impact of watching that BBC broadcast, despite the best efforts of cast and crew.

Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennot continue the promise they showed in the rather more low-key Shiva Baby. With Sennot now sharing scripting duties, this is a wild, raw, bonkers, coming-of-age story, which faultlessly finds its own unique loopy tone as it plays with the cliches of high school movies and turns them all inside out in short order. In front of the camera, Sennot is joined by Ayo Edebiri, who is having quite the moment after her far more contained and intense performance in The Bear, and her hilarious and all-too-brief cameo in Theater Camp. Both are pushing 30 but manage to pull off the emotional energy of anxious teens without effort. Rounding out the trio is Ruby Cruz who brings a definite Ally Sheedy vibe, appropriate for a film which picks up where various John Hughes movies left off.

This tight, ninety-minute comedy is stuffed full of good jokes, has just enough genuine emotion not to feel like a sketch show and expertly manages the escalation from fairground teasing to punching in the school gym to… well, that would be telling. Succession’s Dagmara Domińczyk and SNL’s Punkie Johnson are somewhat thrown away, but Seligman and Sennot have the sense not to screw up the film’s lean propulsive momentum by wandering off down backstories for tertiary characters. This is the blood-soaked, feel-good movie of the year and marks Seligman out as a major talent.

Good Grief dropped quietly on Netflix just after Christmas. There are so many movies and TV series coming to this streaming service in particular, that it’s not even hard to keep up any more – it’s hard to notice. For some reason, this one caught our eye, and we decided to give it a spin. Dan Levy (who also writes and directs) plays illustrator Marc whose husband of some years is suddenly killed, and he ends up with best friends Thomas (Himesh Patel) and Sophie (Ruth Negga) in Paris, trying to make sense of it all.

For the first third, this is almost too well-done, a hauntingly accurate portrayal of what a life cut short looks like, and it was almost a relief when the plot took a turn for the slightly more melodramatic in the middle. Be warned, we’re leaving Schitt’s Creek a long way behind. And the story continues to be engrossingly told, keenly observed and well acted, even if it never bubbles over into anything more profound, moving or insightful. Levy keeps his David Rose tics under control, Patel underplays and probably could have stood to do a bit more, as he gets a bit lost. But MVP is Ruth Negga who (allowed to use her natural accent for once) has a whale of a time with the free-spirited Sophie who lights up every scene she’s in, even – or especially – when making terrible life choices.

Look out also for The Crown’s Emma Corrin, national treasure Celia Imrie and Luke Evans who has the mighty task of making us fall in love with Oliver in the ten minutes of screen time he has before his fatal accident.

Paul King is a superbly accomplished filmmaker. As if it needed demonstrating, Paddington 2 proved that Paddington was no fluke. He has wonderful visual flair, a warm sense of humour, an enviable address book of British comedy and acting talent, and a keen eye for storytelling. But Willy Wonka is not Paddington Bear and the approach which worked so well in his two smash hit ursine masterworks doesn’t suit this character nearly so well.

This is something of a disappointment. Wonka The Early Years was always a terrible pitch, but not everyone had faith that resurrecting beloved children’s character Paddington Bear would prove successful in the era of TikTok, iPhones and Brexit, and that worked great in the right hands. However, the problems inherent in the very idea of returning to Wonka’s origins turn out to be insurmountable and they gang up to tear in half this slender and not-nearly-funny-enough movie, which is too silly for adults and quite likely too boring for many kids.

In Roald Dahl’s story (and the 1971 film adaptation starring Gene Wilder, to which this film is almost more indebted) the central character is an ordinary child, and the mysterious, reclusive, magical, dangerous, unpredictable and mercurial Wonka is kept carefully at arm’s length. Having him as the protagonist means making him prosaic, outgoing, amiable, understandable and knowable, all of which are terrible ideas. This conflict between the needs of the character and the requirements of the plot drives a series of fatal contradictions through every beat of this film.

So, Wonka, who is utterly impoverished, is capable of magically producing endless supplies of chocolate from thin air – with a single trip to procure giraffe milk being the only time that any thought is given to the need for ingredients, which he never seems to need to pay for. No, I don’t want my beguiling fantasy wizard to be sending invoices to suppliers, but then I don’t want an entire movie built around his financial fortunes either, so it’s definitely the movie’s fault and not mine that I’m asking these questions. When absolutely at his lowest economic ebb, he is able to whisk up an ingenious Oompa-Loompa trap, despite the fact that he has been plagued by this antagonist for literal years, and has never thought to do this at any previous point, when it would no doubt have been far easier.

Wonka is both given an inability to read, and is required to solve a subplot by identifying the letters on a signet ring and working out what they stand for. His imprisoning by Oliva Colman’s Mrs Scrubbit does far more to solve his problem of not having anywhere to sleep, and also furnishes him with a ready-made gang of acolytes than it does to inconvenience him in any way. His endless chocolate-making is fuelled by  cocoa beans which he stole from Loompa-land where they are in very short supply (why not visit somewhere where they grow in abundance then?). He is able to transform a derelict shop into a chocolate palace overnight and seemingly without effort, but is unable to repeat the trick when it catches on fire. Customers desert him in droves when his chocolate causes bizarre transformations, but this is completely forgotten about in the climax when everybody accepts free candy from the man who wrecked their appearance. And so on, and so on, and so on… What’s weirdest of all is that in the Dahl/Wilder version of the story, chocolates were for kids, as you might expect. Here they’re almost exclusively for adults who are nostalgic for their childhood. And desire for chocolate is horrible and leads to vile obesity if you’re a bad adult, but is a magical and delightful experience if you’re nice.

Of course, this is still a Paul King film, so things aren’t all bad. There’s the usual roster of familiar telly faces, with such luminous talents as Sally Hawkins, Sophie Winkleman, Charlotte Ritchie and Isy Suttie all in micro-roles, and meatier parts for the likes of Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant, Keegan-Michael Key, Jim Carter, Rakhee Thakrar and Matt Lucas. The songs by Neil Hannon are perfectly serviceable, although shown up by the reprised Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley classics. But, even though the Paddington films took place in an artificial world, the basic strategy of an innocent bear in a familiar environment worked, and grounded the stories, so that when King wanted us to feel something, we did. Here, everything is a candy-coloured cartoon, nothing feels real, and when I’m supposed to feel something for moppety Noodle, it’s impossible because she’s made of sugar and pixels, and when I’m supposed to feel something for Wonka, I fundamentally don’t want to. All of Hugh Grant’s best gags are in the trailer, too. Bugger.

My knowledge of and enthusiasm for Godzilla movies is scanty. As I understand it, some time in the mid-1950s, Japanese filmmakers mashed up King Kong and post-Hiroshima science fiction tropes about radiation-created mutations and came up with a suitably thrilling monster movie which spawned endless sequels and imitations. But more recent American attempts to recreate the appeal have foundered, and part of the problem I think is that the monster has always been the star. Thus it’s very tempting to want to make your 100 foot title character, with rizz to spare, in some way the goodie, which means you need another monstrous antagonist, and before you know it, all the human characters have got lost in the shuffle.

Takashi Yamazaki’s new film nimbly avoids all of these problems. His Godzilla is nothing less than an elemental force, a devastating force of destruction which needs to be eliminated at – almost – any cost. He’s also smart enough to sketch in a roster of appealing, but very killable, plucky humans to go up against it – and crucially gives one of them a personal connection to the monster. And the structure really couldn’t be any simpler, breaking neatly into four acts of about thirty minutes each: Godzilla exists, Godzilla returns, Godzilla on land, final confrontation.

Set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, this positions the action prior to the making of the original Godzilla film. (Hence “minus one” I guess. A black-and-white version is on the way, dubbed “Godzilla Minus Colour”.) But, whether with a view on the home or international audience I couldn’t say, this is also a specifically Japanese version of the story, deeply connected with themes of how war in general wastes lives and how the Japanese involvement and tactics in the Pacific Theatre specifically wasted lives. And while it briefly seems to be celebrating those tactics which it earlier seemed to be condemning, this is little more than a tissue-paper-thin action movie feint.

Add to this preposterously convincing effects throughout – whether Godzilla is rising from the ocean, shuffling through buildings, tossing railway carriages through the air in its teeth, or blasting death rays from its jaws – and you have a hugely entertaining, if occasionally slightly leisurely, kill-the-monster movie. My only qualm is that I’m not quite certain who it’s for, being too slender for grown-ups, and too intense for kids, but it seems to have made a bunch of money, so maybe there’s enough margin between those two points for it to recoup all of its costs and set us up for what will presumably be Godzilla Zero in 2026.

I remember thinking “uh oh, this COVID thing is really serious” when they didn’t release the James Bond movie as scheduled. Since then, the world of cinema has been in turmoil, and now this feels like the first real summer of movies we’ve had, the first year that the top ten films at the global box office will all be ones I’ve actually heard of, the first time that the logjam was finally cleared, even though at least one of the films on this list was shooting during global lockdowns. I hadn’t necessarily planned to write a summer blockbusters movie round up blog post, but I’ve been going to the cinema a fair bit and I’ve been having a good time, so – for what it’s worth – here’s what I’ve seen and what I thought, and yes, we will be ending with Barbenheimer. These are presented roughly in release order. There may be spoilers, you have been warned.

John Wick Chapter 4

My introduction to the Wickiverse was watching all three movies back-to-back during a “snow day” and I had the best time. The series becomes more and more absurd as it goes on, and while by the end of the third instalment I found myself missing the lean, taut ferocity of the first film, the action sets pieces are still a thing to behold and the wider universe that the series creates is absolutely fascinating, as soon as one makes peace with the fact that while the world of these films bears a superficial resemblance to our own, it definitely has different rates of employment for professional assassins and different laws of physics (wait till we get to Fast X). What’s remarkable is how much variety they are able to conjure up without really changing the formula overmuch. The best set-pieces here (the early hotel fight, the long overhead shot, the Arc de Triomphe) are some of the most exciting I’ve ever seen (wait till we get to Mission Impossible) and if it isn’t really about anything… well, was that ever the point? MVP: Rina Sawayama who makes an astonishing debut in her first movie.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

I don’t care about Marvel the way I care about some other properties, like Doctor Who or James Bond. A bad James Bond film is a particular tragedy as there tends to be only about one every three years. But if this Marvel movie / TV series / holiday special doesn’t work, well there’ll be another six later this year. Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania I thought had some bright spots and some fun cameos, but managed to squander the promise that Jonathan Majors showed in Loki (and how Kevin Feige must be ruing building all of Phase Five around that particular actor) and eventually collapsed under the weight of its own silliness. This tries to combine some of that same goofy good-time feel, with the same cartoony anything-is-possible vibe and still try and deliver a backstory with real weight and depth of character and theme. It’s an odd mix, and the elements fight with each other as often as they mesh, but it’s still a pleasure to see this team together again. MVP: Will Poulter, who clearly isn’t needed for the plot to work, but is determined to make his every second on screen count.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods

If Marvel is slipping into irrelevance generated at least in part by overabundance of content, DC is suffering from releasing movies which set up stuff we know is never going to be paid off because the James Gunn reset is bearing down on us. Like a lot of part twos, this benefits from not having to walk us through the standard beats of the superhero origin story, allowing us to get straight on with the adventure, but then is weakened because the whole point of this particular character is the gulf between the two personas, which are brought far too close together now that Billy Batson is used to being Shazam. Dijmon Honsou, Helen Mirren, Lucy Lui and Rachel Zegler are fine additions to the cast, but there are too many members of the super team for me to keep them all straight, especially when they’re all played by two actors, so it was hard for me to stay invested. An uncredited Gal Gadot shows up at the end as Wonder Woman. MVP: Skittles.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

The first Spider-Verse film was such an astonishing achievement that any attempted to create a follow up looked doomed to failure. And yet what’s fascinating about this film is that it takes the weakness which doomed Fury of the Gods and turns it into a strength. By emphasising the importance of the superhero origin story and making the repetition of that the whole point of the narrative, it manages to say something about mythic storytelling, while being visually eyepopping, terribly funny, tightly plotted and tugging the heartstrings. Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Vélez all return and do excellent work as everyone’s favourite local neighbourhood spider-family and new recruits Jason Schwartzman, Oscar Isaac and Issa Rae all find moments to shine. But nobody told me that this was designed as part two of what is now a trilogy so I found the unresolved ending bewildering. MVP: Daniel Kaluuya whose Spider-Punk should be in every movie from now on. Not every Spider-Man movie. Every movie.

Fast X

Listen, I’m a huge Fast fan and this was a big leap up from the doldrums of F9 and even if there’s a slight sense of fatigue setting in as far too many characters circle the plot hopefully looking for a role in it, and even as far too many of them started off as implacable villains needing only one encounter with the Fasticles to turn them into self-sacrificing goodguys, and even if there seems to be an awful lot of standing around and talking for the first hour – when the action does kick in, it’s pretty impressive, with Hulk director Louis Letterier never giving away that he was essentially brought in to steer the ship after it had set sail. Retrofitting a new villain into the plot of Fast Five (still the high watermark of the franchise, although Seven is pretty banging too) is exactly the kind of dementedly convoluted continuity I’ve come to expect from these films and – what a villain! Jason Momoa is funny, scary, hulking, camp, prissy, absurd and clearly having the absolute time of his life and he’s obviously the MVP. But nobody told me that this was designed as part one of what is now a two-part finale, so I found the unresolved ending bewildering. An uncredited Gal Gadot shows up at the end as Gisele.

The Flash

Tired? Try being the Flash. Seeing the shadow of the James Gunn reset looming over you? Try being the Flash. Even by the standards of modern superhero blockbusters this is a very busy, noisy film. Faced with a leading actor who is pretty annoying on-screen and pretty reprehensible off it, Warners has opted make a film with an even more annoying version of the character and I have to say, scenes of the older and younger Barry Allens interacting are pulled off with a degree of aplomb from both a performance and a technical standpoint. But the plot doesn’t make a lick of sense, generally relies upon everyone involved being as dumb as possible and the few good ideas that are present never cohere into anything meaningful or even all that interesting. Yes, sure, it’s fun to see Michael Keaton back and saying his famous catchphrase “Why don’t we be crazy?” but it all feels re-heated, pointless and dull. Possibly this would all have had more impact if we hadn’t already seen multiverse excursions in Everything Everywhere All At Once, recastings of iconic characters in Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and return appearances by veteran actors in Spider-Man: The Third One with Home in the Title. An uncredited Gal Gadot shows up at the beginning as Wonder Woman. Guys. The trick is keeping her to the end. MVP: Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El. I would have watched a whole movie about Superman’s cousin landing in the Soviet Union instead of America.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Tired? Try being an action movie star in your ninth decade, as Harrison Ford is here. The most successful section of the film is the opening, when largely convincing computer graphics return the 80-year-old actor to something like his prime (and when Toby Jones makes a wonderful addition to the supporting cast). But there’s a depressing lack of either innovation or specificity here, and while James Mangold mounts some impressive sequences (one of the best being the very tense sub-aqua scenes, where the primitive 1960s technology really ramps up the anxiety levels) this fails to recapture any of the old magic, and very few of the rest of the supporting cast really register. Shaunette Renée Wilson is a luminous presence who looks as if she’s going to be a key player in the narrative, until she’s suddenly shot dead and never referred to again. Ethann Isidore as Teddy is more often annoying than adorable, and Mads Mikkelson looks like he’s going through the motions. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is given more to do than anyone else – she’s really the only one with anything like a satisfactory arc – and she gives the film everything she’s got, but even she can’t stop the final act from feeling anything other than completely absurd. MVP is Phoebe obviously, but I also want to mention Antonio Banderas who does much with very little screentime.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

Having enjoyed past Missions Impossible, especially the third and fourth instalments, nothing could have prepared me for quite how good the sixth film was – it absolutely blew me away. It might be the perfect action film for the twenty-first century. Everything about it just works. So, the pressure was on for this one to succeed. And early on, it seems to have just a little trouble getting the sparks to ignite. A lot seems to be happening around the characters we care about, but not to them or by them. Luckily, this doesn’t last for very long and once the chessboard is set up, and the pieces start merrily colliding with each other, the fun really begins. The now familiar team of Ethan, Benjy and Luther is augmented by the winning unpredictability of the frankly incredible Hayley Atwell, who manages to simultaneously embody complete disbelief at the ridiculous things that the IMF is involving her in, with her own sense of self-possession, self-interest and mischief. It’s a star-making turn for a phenomenal performer and it’s a fantastic new ingredient which freshens up the formula without fighting with it. Like Indiana Jones, the McGuffin here is a little outré but Christopher McQuarrie treats it lightly, and keeps the emphasis on what matters most. This time, I did know that this was part one of two (it very helpfully says “part one” right up there on the screen) but by the time that extraordinary final stunt sequence had concluded I was wrung out, and not the least bit bothered by the presence of a few dangling plot threads. A far cry from the other movies which played the same trick which just stopped in the middle. My only other complaint is that the villain was a bit underpowered, but then this series has only ever had one really top-notch villain (Philip Seymour Hoffman). MVP: Hayley.

Barbie

This is a very silly film. It’s disorganised, unruly, and often makes very little sense. It sets up rules and then ignores them. It places great emphasis on where certain characters are and when, and then forgets they ever existed. It seeks to contrast the unreality of Barbieland with the grounded reality of the real world, and then makes some elements of the real world just as loopy as Barbieland. Very few characters have anything like an inner life, or an arc, and you don’t have to wonder what the point is, because it gets spelled out to you with relentless in-your-face clarity. I loved it, and it might be a work of genius.

It’s vital to understand that all the foregoing is perfectly deliberate, just as Gerwig’s decision to split Little Women into two timeframes was, and for all the apparent shenanigans going on here, I believe there’s just as much careful directorial rigour here as there was there. The casting is also perfect, with Margot Robbie sensational as Barbie, Ryan Gosling hilarious as Ken and able support from Helen Mirren, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Will Ferrel, Rhea Pearlman and countless others. Only Kingsley Ben-Adir seemed to be struggling to find the tone – pulling faces when others were just being. I desperately wanted the final credits to include the joke of simply crediting all the Barbies as “Barbie” and all the Kens as “Ken” as was delighted when they did. The “anything goes” approach of this film means that it’s unlikely to resonate deeply inside my soul, but I was thoroughly entertained, I’m thrilled that it exists, and even more thrilled that it looks like it’s going to go on to make a billion dollars at the box office. MVP: a photo-finish between America Ferrera, who maybe has the hardest job of anyone and makes it look easy, and Michael Cera as Allan, whose complete irrelevance eventually comes quite close to being the entire point of the movie.

Oppenheimer

And this is the big one. Big as in 70mm IMAX, 11 miles of film big. Big as in atomic bomb big. Nolan’s films thus far have usually avoided confronting what goes on inside the heads of his central characters: Batman is the costume, Leonard Shelby is defined by his condition, The Prestige is about the tricks, Inception is about the dreamscapes, Dunkirk is about the acts of heroism, rather than who did them and why. The one which tries to deal with who a person is, is one of my least favourites. Who watches 2001: A Space Odyssey and says “You know what would make this better? A daddy-daughter love story.”? No. No, it would make it a hundred times worse. But this film doesn’t present the building of the first atomic bomb as a race against time, or a scientific or engineering problem to be solved, or a political conundrum, although all those things are aspects of the story. It wants to know: who would build such a thing? And what effect would that have on the rest of his life? In a way, it’s new ground for Nolan, who takes sole writing and directing credit for this one.

He couldn’t have asked for a better collaborator than Cillian Murphy, who manages to dig under the surface of the text and unearth a man who goes from nervy student to strident professor to guilt-wracked public figure to quietly malicious political operative. But the film has a lot of ground to cover and in the first third, this felt like the frantic bang-bang-bang pace, which killed Tenet for me, was back, as people marched in and out of rooms, announcing exposition at each other, to the relentless strains of Ludwig Göransson’s ever-present score. Thankfully, after a while, the editing slows down and the feeling of “Last time on Oppenheimer” recedes, and scenes are allowed to breath a little. And there are some remarkable performances here, including a very solid Matt Damon, Emily Blunt bringing much to an underwritten part, Gary Oldman doing his Gary Oldman thing as Harry Truman, and Tom Conti as a cuddly and thoughtful Albert Einstein.

But while the race to build the bomb, leading up to the first test, is absolutely incredible (and it’s great to see this presented as a true team effort, unlike say the absurd The Imitation Game which gave Alan Turing credit for everything that happened at Bletchley Park) and the cut-aways to the senate confirmation and security clearance hearings help fill in other aspects of his character, I do feel that it fundamentally did not work to escalate from the detonation of the world’s first nuclear device to a petty act of political revenge from one embittered man to another. That said, MVP here is clearly Robert Downey Jr whose performance as Lewis Strauss might be the best of his career. I also thought that having Oppenheimer recite his “I am become death” catchphrase during a tits-out sex scene was completely ridiculous, and the kind of thing I’d expect to see in a film like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Right, now I think I need to watch a movie in black-and-white with subtitles about someone who goes for a quiet walk and sees a caterpillar or something.

I was lucky enough to find a cinema still showing Elvis after all this time, and so settled in to the Vue Westfield to watch this superior biopic, blessed with an uncanny central performance from Austin Butler, all wrapped up in Baz Luhrmann’s signature kinetic style. It’s easy to write off all of this frantic editing, multiple images, dizzying camera removes and dense soundtrack as “anything but subtle” but actually, it’s precisely this layering of sound and image which allows for a certain amount of subtlety, mixing in a few shots of the real Elvis early on, for example. But it is an onslaught, particularly the first half hour or so.

As it settles down, we get the basic beats (sorry) of the story, avoiding almost all of the Dewey Cox traps (but I did cringe when the young Elvis was offered pills in the back of a car) and sensibly focusing on a few key areas rather than pedantically ticking every available box. And with Butler’s astonishing physical performance and vocals which blend his voice with Elvis recordings, it’s an amazing recreation of what it might have been like to see the King live.

Using The Colonel to provide a Salieri-like framing device helps to provide context and some (unreliable) narration to move us from plot-point-to-plot-point, but whereas the title character is a near-perfect evocation, Hanks as Tom Parker is a pantomime villain version of the real person, and although Hanks can’t help but elicit sympathy, and exude warmth and charm, he appears to be a refugee from a different movie entirely, which is disappointing.

Casting is also an issue for The Fabelmans, which in many ways is a very fine film: detailed, engrossing, moving, warmly funny, cheeky and nostalgic without being cloying. Gabriel LaBelle is remarkable as the young wannabe filmmaker, being moved from town-to-town by his parents, and struggling to fit in. By and large, the story is told with nuance, suggestion and economy – with one odd exception being one scene towards the end (after the Ditch Day screening) where suddenly everybody just starts announcing their true feelings at each other with next-to-no provocation.

What’s odd is the casting of Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Sammy Fabelman’s parents, in a story which is so concerned with Judaism. The debate is ongoing about the extent to which we want great actors to be able to take imaginative leaps to transform themselves vs the need for the kind of authenticity which only comes from casting actors whose lived experience matches the character, but it is odd how often the decision seems to come down against casting Jewish actors to play Jewish parts. Dano just about convinces as Sammy’s dad, but Michelle Williams, although finding the inner emotional life of the character very accurately, never remotely resembled any Jewish mother I’ve ever met (and I’ve met a few). Perhaps that’s why Judd Hirsch turns up near the beginning of the film, dines hungrily on any available scenery, and then leaves, having barely influenced the story in any way.

The final shot of the film, however, is absolute perfection. If this is Spielberg’s final work, as some say it was intended to be, it won’t be his masterpiece, but it is one I would happily revisit. I just wish the casting had gone differently.

Tár is one of those films built around a single actor. You sometimes hear directors saying “I wouldn’t have made the film if I couldn’t have got X to play the part.” Is that always true? I doubt it, but it probably is here. The intricacies of the performance is the whole point. Just as Lydia fanatically teases out details of classical pieces from her orchestra, so too does Cate Blanchett tease out details of this fascinating, complex, unlikeable, tyrannical, desperate, cruel, selfish and yet somehow relatable individual.

It’s lengthy, and it takes a while for anything to “happen”. I mean, stuff happens, but it’s not at all clear for a very long time what the actual point is, and I have to say, even now, I’m still not 100% sure what it’s trying to say. But like a number of other relatively plotless films which take place in very unfamiliar worlds (Gosford Park, The Hurt Locker, The Wolf of Wall Street) it’s the immersion in the details of the world that sustained my interest – although I’m not the least bit surprised to learn that it tried the patience of others.

But if all of the supporting players and the minutiae of a conductor’s life are the orchestra, then the soloist is of course Cate Blanchett who wrings every drop of nuance she can out of what could in lesser hands have been a wildly undisciplined caricature or a thin portrayal which couldn’t summon up the sheer charisma required to make the story work.

Women Talking has even less plot than Tár, and the most dramatic scenes all take place before the movie starts and are generally only described, or shown in brief flashbacks. But Sarah Polley’s unhurried and literate screenplay focuses on the rigour of the debate and the shifting moods of the characters. Essentially, this is Twelve Angry Men, restaged in a Mennonite Barn and where the stakes are far more personal.

Polley’s direction is also clear, unfussy and sensitive. She knows when to just let the words and the faces do the heavy lifting and when a little bit of an extra flourish will be helpful. And she has an absolutely crackerjack cast, led by Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw, but also including a brief turn by Frances McDormand (who also co-produced) and a remarkable performance from Michelle McLeod as the fragile Mejal.

Polley’s control of tone is precise and when things take a turn for the melodramatic in the closing fifteen or so minutes, she’s able to prevent the story from tipping over into action movie or soap opera clichés, but instead remains steadfastly intent on the details of the character interactions, all the way to the incredibly moving final shots. It’s a deeply absorbing piece of work, and what’s delightful about this very strong slate of Best Picture nominees is that it’s hard to think of two movies more opposite in their aims, intentions, methods and influences than Everything Everywhere and Women Talking and yet they’re two of my favourite films of the year. (Top Gun Maverick I guess is the third leg of this stool, but that’s my least favourite of the ten nominees by some distance.)

Lastly, let’s look at All Quiet on the Western Front. Remakes of previous Best Picture winners are rare, but not unheard of (and we had another one last year with Spielberg’s take on West Side Story) but this is particularly interesting. Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel had been conceived as a silent film, and traces of this earlier style of film grammar remain. It’s a testament to the studio’s desire to render the story as accurately and unflinchingly as possible, as well as the skill of the director and crew, that it has as much power as it does. When we watched it for our Best Pick podcast, we were all blown away (sorry) by the sheer force of the storytelling.

But this was a film about Germans in World War One, made by Americans in the inter-war period. The 2022 version is made by Germans, and is made not only with two world wars now in the history books, but also at a time when another conflict is raging in Europe. So, not only is there the opportunity to re-tell this story with the extra detail, sophistication and nuance which one would expect after ninety years of advances in filmmaking, but the time and nationality of the filmmakers gives it extra resonance.

There are plenty of changes from the earlier film, which was a pretty faithful rendering of the novel. Most obviously, this version is in colour, but this is no Technicolor fantasy. Director Edward Berger and cinematographer James Friend shoot it all in muted, muddy reds and fetid, billious greens. Milestone’s version kicks off with the rousing patriotic speech which inspires our young, callow heroes to enlist. Berger knows we won’t fall for that, and gives us the horrors of the battlefield right up front, with the dark irony that the jacket ripped from the shoulders of one unfortunate young soldier has the bullet holes patched up and is then given to the next new recruit.

Some of the episodes from the novel make it through intact, some are expanded or deleted. The most obvious omission is the sequence where Bäumer gets to go home briefly and discovers that he no longer fits back into civilian life. Instead Berger hints at his hero’s disassociation, and keeps him trapped on the front lines. He also gives us a window into the political dimension of the war, pitting Daniel Brühl’s Erzberger against Thibault de Montalembert’s Ferdinand Foch – whereas Remarque’s novel kept us in the trenches with the grunts. This leads to what I think of as an overreach, however, since the final death of Bäumer, instead of being the simple banality of the novel or the famous image of the first movie, is the product of an over-engineered ironic twist, which was such a shift in tone that I suspected it must have been based on a specific real event, but I’ve been unable to find any evidence of that.

However, the rest of the film is incredibly strong, with horribly convincing battle scenes, stripped of the grand tragedy of Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, or the fleetingly optimistic showmanship of 1917, but reminding me more of a more reserved, more European Platoon. And Felix Kammerer as Bäumer is superb, as the enthusiastic idealism of the early stretch is replaced by horror and revulsion, and finally a blank fatalism as he reaches the end. It’s clearly going to win Best International Feature, and although I’ve yet to see the other nominees, I suspect deservedly so.