The Suicide Squad (James Gunn, 2021)

Seeking to capitalise on the moderate commercial success of 2016's Suicide Squad, and blithely ignoring the critical panning that received, what we get is more of the same: gleeful ultraviolence from the homicidal protagonists, the only alterations being an even greater emphasis on milking it for gallows humour, since it's now the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy Gunn at the helm, and a scenario which is more a rip-off of The Dirty Dozen. Of course, the one truly popular character of the first film, Margot Robbie's utterly cuckoo Harley Quinn, has to be there too, and Idris Elba to all intents and purposes is the same character as Will Smith's Deadshot, i.e. a lethal assassin with a problematic relationship with his estranged daughter.

What else? Well, the U.S. Government official who sends the misfits to their near-certain demise is really the biggest villain and there's an alien kaiju they have to eradicate to carry out their mission. All totally ludicrous of course, and accompanied by lashings of the customary CGI overkill. But oddly still more coherent and entertaining than the first instalment.

5/10

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (Zack Snyder, 2023)

Zack Snyder, almost as gravely as Michael Bay, has the unfortunate reputation of his name alone being the kiss of death for the quality of anything he chooses to direct. His shot-by-shot adaptation to screen of Watchmen was a rare exception, but apart from that it's been lunkheaded slo-mo hyperaction with scant regard for plot all the way. Rebel Moon is his transparent attempt to get a piece of the almighty Star Wars pie by nicking as much as possible from Lucas's saga. There is a tyrannical Imperium and a pseudo-Nazi evil villain, an orphaned heroine and plucky band of rebels who oppose them, random weird aliens, anthropomorphic droids and warriors with glowing swords. But Snyder doesn't stop there either with his ransacking of better sources. Seven Samurai, Dune and even John Carter are also pillaged, and to what end? The finished composite product doesn't even have the dignity of Frankenstein's monster, and certainly less right than it did to exist.

And yet, because this got in enough unwary punters, there will still be a second part very soon. Oh joy.

3/10

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (James Mangold, 2023)

Harrison Ford finally bows out of his other big action franchise role, years after Han Solo was killed off. God knows it's been long enough coming, but better than having the actor die on the job, though.

To wrap up the character's story, there are once more Nazi villains and a supernatural gizmo to find, this one being the dial of the title, created by Archimedes to travel in time.

Of course he always neds a sidekick, particularly as he can't be expected to do all the heavy lifting anymore. This is provided in the form of Phoebe Waller-Bridge as his goddaughter, also an archaeologist but one driven by money, and it takes a good part of the film and for her to turn from an antagonist to an ally. Oh, and there's a Moroccan street urchin in tow too. 

The film's interminable running time is just bickering between Ford and Waller-Bridge, which purports to be amusing, and naturally endless preposterous chase and fight sequences.

It wasn't long ago when the director closed the hero stories of Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart in a very satisfactory way in Logan. I assume he simply wasn't allowed to do the same here.

4/10

Leave the World Behind (Sam Esmail, 2023)

Julia Roberts takes her family to a holiday rental on Long Island, where their phones and TV stop working and things get progressively weirder, even before the owner of the property turns up out of the blue with his daughter and stories of blackouts in New York, asking to stay in the basement while the situation settles down. But nothing does settle down and it becomes apparent that the whole country is under cyberattack and descending into a state of utter chaos, the culprits quite unknown.

This was produced by the Obamas, and the connection gradually manifests itself: the unseen enemy isn't so much a tangible external power, but the easy spread of misinformation and paranoia in current America. And the seed for the growth of the societal disintegration that takes place has implicit parallels with the MAGA movement, underlined by their survivalist neighbour, who they turn to for help, laying out all the standard conspiracy theories propagated by the movement.

Structurally it is somewhat of a jumble and the message itself is not a subtle one, but the way it's snuck in under the radar, facilitated by able actors and being difficult to pin down in simple terms of genre, makes it both effective and worthwhile.

6/10

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

Michael Fassbender plays the titular character, narrating us through his modus operandi and life as a professional assassin. This means hearing his Zen-ish mantra of "avoid empathy" over and over again, and indeed it makes him impossible to empathise with, a cold fish for whom the only guiding principle is to be as efficient and business-like as possible, without emotional involvement.

This could be a serious dramatic problem for the film, even when the killer makes a mistake on a job which turns him instead into a loose end to be readicated and means that he has to set about methodically getting rid of those who would eradicate him. But giving him any more vulnerability would actually detract from the character and the point of the exercise, as would allowing any one of his targets an emotive final speech.

This is a dark world hidden in plain view, shot through with detached style, akin to Ryan Gosling's in Drive,  or the even more glaring parallel of Alain Delon in Melville's Le Samourai. Something quite uncommon, a killer who takes no pleasure in his work and all to a soundtrack of '80s tunes by The Smiths.

7/10