The End We Start From (Mahalia Belo, 2023)

Jodie Comer plays a woman who has just given birth when most of the UK is flooded, precipitating a national food shortage and forcing people to leave the cities. Going to her in-laws doesn't prove a long-term solution, so she and her husband are forced to move on again until they're separated when the shelter they find will only take one parent per child. But the country is in utter chaos, so it doesn't end there either.

This would be a standard apocalypse scenario in most hands, and admittedly the breaking down of society is overplayed. However the set-up is more plausible than most due to the very real threat posed by global warming and the focus is squarely on the insecurity of a mother whose child is in danger. Comer also puts in a strong performance, totally erasing any associations with her psychopath role in Killing Eve. In summary, the whole is not perfect by any means, with a lot of dead air, but deserves recognition for trying a different tack to the genre norm.

6/10

Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024)

Unlike with most franchises, it was clear from the start that there would be a second instalment, so little exposition is needed to pick up where the story left off. Paul Atreides continues along his path to become messiah to the Fremen on the most strategically crucial planet in the galaxy while the cartoonishly evil Harkonnen plot to take over the Empire. It's mostly Timothée Chalamet moodily gazing over oceans of sand, for going on for three hours and for no particular dramatic justification. Sure, it looks spectacular and postures at grand drama, but really has very little to present or say that wasn't already covered in the first world-building part.

5/10

Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018)

Loosely based on a true story of an Italian American paid to drive a virtuoso black pianist on tour around the Deep South in 1962,  Green Book is basically a buddy movie also dealing with racial issues. Somewhat of a departure from the rest of the director's output of puerile comedy films, it recreates the atmosphere of the time vividly and does not flinch from depicting the poisonous racial intolerance that pervades society, even the lack of acceptance the pianist encounters from other black people for his educated mannerisms. It has been criticised for being yet another example of the white saviour trope, with the white driver repeatedly saving the pianist from assaults and even introducing him to the music of Aretha Franklin and the pleasure of eating fried chicken, but it really goes both ways, the pianist teaching the driver to write letters properly to his wife and stop characterising black people as a homogenous mass. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, respectively as employee and employer, put in sterling work and the chemistry between them is palpable. It's genuinely affecting and for once, a deserving winner of the Best Picture Oscar.

8/10

Breaking Infinity (Marianna Dean, 2023)

A low-budget time travel piece more in the mould of Shane Carruth's Primer, or Nacho Vigalondo's Los cronocrimenes, favouring ideas over effects, and like the two antecedents mentioned, attempting to make lack of budget a matter of no import. This would work if it managed to be coherent, and it does start promisingly, with an amnesiac man repeatedly waking up in hospital either injured or uninjured, displaced with increasingly regularity to the apparent end of the world. He comes to believe it's within his power to stop that end. So far, so good, but then the film's logic and structure fail badly, which is vital for making it a meaningful exercise. Marks for trying, but unfortunately not for end product.

4/10

The Beautiful Game (Thea Sharrock, 2024)

National treasure Bill Nighy plays against type as a former football coach who takes an assorted bunch from London to the Homeless World Cup in Rome. Naturally, were this a Hollywood product, you'd expect them to triumph against all odds, but although it still ends up a feelgood affair, it's more concerned with mental health issues, principally the sense of stroppy aimlessness felt by the team's star striker. The standard sports drama boxes are still ticked, it goes on for far longer than necessary to make its point and the Japanese delegation at the competition are just used to run through all of Rome's best-known photogenic attractions. So, no great shakes on any front, but the at least the humour is gentle and sweet, making for a reasonable heartwarmer.

5/10

Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)

 

Peele's caustic and scintillating directorial debut, Get Out, set the bar high indeed, and while Us in 2019 was a more conventional horror film, it atill bore enough distinguishing chracteristics, chiefly in its social nuancing. However, all that Nope has to nod in that direction is that the principal protagonists are a black brother and sister who happen to rear horses. As much as I loathe the term 'woke', that alone seems to have scared critics into puring universal acclaim on this film, because it has nothing else to recommend it. The UFO that appears in the skies above their house to harass them has no rational motive and ascribing its poor conceptualisation to an intentional decision by Peele to critique overreliance on gore and CGI in sci-fi films is ludicrously generous. The barbs against the superficiality of social media are tired and blunt, and on top of all that it's overlong and, frankly, dull. I know that the director has much more in his tank, so laziness is the most apparent reason for this pointless exercise.

3/10