Bullet Train (David Leitch, 2022)

One should take exception to Hollywood plundering a Japanese novel with Japanese characters in a Japanese setting and populating it instead with American stars, as they commonly do, but it's hard to imagine that a wholly authentic native version of a plot just about assassins on the Shinkansen trying to do away with each other could be all that enjoyable. Casting Brad Pitt as the lead, a hitman coming back to work from a protracted spiritual retreat, is a scream, proving once again that his greatest aptitude actually lies in comedy, just as in the case of his pal George Clooney. And the able cast around him are given stacks of choice lines and personality quirks to work with too,  such as one of them basing his whole judgement of people on Thomas the Tank Engine. Of course the numerous deaths on the way are as as Grand Guignol as anything, but they are inventive enough to slot neatly into the comedy. An unexpectedly guilty treat, provided you are sold on the idea of Snatch put into a blender with Kill Bill and Burn After Reading.

6/10 

Dune: Part One (Denis Villeneuve, 2021)

 

Well, as seen in the outcry by Tolkienistas over the Rings of Power TV series, spraying real ale into their cardigans over each tedious detail of the author's painstakingly crafted world skipped in favour of making the story actually dramatically work on screen, so too did Lynch's condensed 1984 version of Frank Herbert's draw the fire of obsessive fans for mining the source for the outright weirdness therein and jettisoning the chaff. Villeneuve takes a much more cautiously reverential approach, so the end result is, as with his Blade Runner 2049, something more ponderous than its predecessor, relying heavily on entrancing visuals and a brooding atmosphere.  With the story of the novel only half told in two and a half hours, the second part will naturally follow soon and will not be unwelcome, given that it does represent an antidote of sorts to all the pervasive hyperactive sci-fi around, but Herbert's saga hardly has the legs to sustain a franchise that runs beyond that point.

6/10

The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022)

Since Christopher Nolan left the building for good and the attempt at shoehorning Batman into the primary-colour fantasy world of the Justice League with stolid Ben Affleck in the role fell flat on its face, it's time for yet another reboot of the DCEU's most layered protagonist. Emo is now the way to go, and that Robert Pattinson can certainly do, but it's an all-round improvement, with the fewest gadgets on show of any Batman film, and being as close to realistic action and violence as the genre can possibly allow. Even the daft batgrowl of Nolan's films is replaced with Pattinson talking so softly that it forces the viewer to actually pay attention to what he's saying, and the villains, likewise, are stripped of their most cartoonish elements to good effect, including the Riddler, who Batman has to stop from sending the city into chaos by exposing and killing all the agents of corruption within its administration. Not quite just a regulation nutjob, but one with an agenda twisted by America's current fixation with the notions of empty promises and fake news.

It's definitely overlong, which now seems to be the norm for the big hitters in the superhero field, but gets by on not insulting the intelligence of the audience and some captivating visuals in the midst of the predominant murkiness. 

7/10

Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins, 2020)

Considering the paucity of recognisable characters the DCEU  has in comparison with the MCU, it's pretty futile to attempt to compete any more. It won't stop them trying to get a small slice of the massive superhero franchise cake, though. And since the first Wonder Woman film did make a tidy profit, turning out another was a foregone conclusion.

But a decent script would have helped, with the heroine now having progressed to 1984 and having to deal with a dodgy businessman who uses the power of a magical artifact that grants anyone who touches it one wish to - drumroll please - rule the world. And of course the wishes have horrendous adverse effects too, leading to a neat set of bland moral lessons to be drawn once the dust has settled, after two and a half hours of nothing much to engage the mind except spotting the numerous infringements of the film's own internal logic. Gal Gadot still makes for a strong lead and there are some entertaining scenes playing on the bewilderment of her miraculously resurrected lover from 70 years before with the world of the '80s, but that's just about all.

5/10

Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, 2018)

 

54 years after Mary Poppins, Disney finally get around to giving us a sequel. Thank God they didn't go for a reboot, although it replicates the flavour of the original so closely, from the plot to the songs and the hand-drawn animation in the cartoon sequences (in stark contrast to the sterile CGI of most modern Disney productions), that it hardly differs from one.

As before, Mary Poppins is summoned to guide the Banks family out of choppy waters when they face eviction from their house. She takes charge of the children through the tried and tested combination of a firm hand and leading them on fantastical adventures, and  naturally a happy end is never in doubt. The performances by the children, thankfully never quite too cloyingly winsome, Emily Blunt as the titular nanny, ably channelling Julie Andrews, though with steelier undertones and Lin-Manuel Miranda as their Cockney jack-of-all-trades helper, managing the accent a whole lot more convicningly than Dick Van Dyke's legendary mangling of it in the original film, are an obvious strong suit. Spotting cameos from a panoply of veteran stars is also pleasingly diverting.

But a musical will ultimately stand or fall by its songs, so while Mary Poppins Returns is unable to provide any that will linger in the memory as its predecessor did, the choreography of the dance numbers is perky and the sheer wit of the lyrics is a pleasure too. 

In short, not a disappointment or defilement by any means.

6/10

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler, 2022)

 Another MCU franchise trundles on, unsurprising considering the huge commercial success of the first instalment and it's very much a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", with all the same principal protagonists, apart from the original hero played by the sadly-deceased Chadwick Boseman. The film milks his memory for all it's worth, and then moves on to introducing a new antagonist in the form of Namor, the king of a sub-aquatic civilisation with a bee in his bonnet about the possibility of the greedy surface nations acquiring the super-mineral vibranium, the source of both Wakanda's and his people's power and security.

It is sad to see how many people will insist on this again being somehow fresh and divergent from the superhero film norm, when all that's actually different is that the majority of the cast are black. That aside, we still get non-Europeans mostly played by British and American actors, interminable and repetitive fight scenes, oodles of unimaginative CGI (fittingly, the sub-aquatics are really just Na'vi underwater) and all this built on the infantile notion that all a nation needs to become technologically and socially advanced is to be gifted one natural mega-resource. Don't believe the hype.

5/10