Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Peyton Reed, 2023)

MCU #31, and quite surplus to requirements. The character of Ant-Man simply doesn't have the legs, relying entirely on Paul Rudd's likability and the notion that the subatomic universe is an interesting place to eplore. It is not, proven by the two hours we have to spend trapped there with the Lang and Pym families while another generic creation-threatening villain in the form of Kang the Conqueror turns up to menace them aimlessly. Cue a deluge of nonsensical CGI battles between the baddie's legions and the daftly-conceptualised denizens of the quantum realm. There is wit, but it's all allocated to the dialogue, leaving the plot without any and therefore the whole exercise a pointless one.

4/10

I onde dager (Tommy Wirkola, 2021)

An unhappy Swedish-Norwegian couple go to a remote cabin for the weekend with the sole intention of killing each other. So far, so The War of the Roses, but this being Nordic and with the director of schlock horror films such as Dead Snow at the helm, The Trip is guaranteed to be both considerably darker and more ludicrously violent than that. Noomi Rapace and Aksel Hennie give it a decent shot as the bitter duo, but when the cabin is invaded by three fugitive killers, it all unravels rather swiftly, like a Grand Guignol Funny Games. Inoffensive, for all it tries its bloody hardest to offend, but quite disposable.

4/10

Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund, 2022)

Östlund follows up 2017's estimable and startling The Square with something that at first appears to be less complex, opening with some easy jabs at the triteness of the fashion industry and social media influencers, then moving onto the equally easy target of the idle, entitled and amoral rich on a luxury cruise ship. Presented with such an open goal, the vitriolic barbs come thick and fast, with the rich passengers fully exploiting their position to humiliate the crew, who concomitantly accept their lot as serfs. A sea change is brewing, and accordingly, and actual storm breaks out which demolishes the superior airs of the passengers in a graphic and vicarious manner, the Marxist captain emerging from his cabin to get his own back on the cargo he depends on. Then another calamity in the form of a pirate attack leaves a small band of surviving passengers and crew on a desert island and the former social order is swiftly overturned.

It's tempting to think that Östlund got his second Palme d'Or at Cannes for this because the jury were simply too scared of being seen as anything akin to the primary subjects that draw the director's fire. But that would be reductionist: as on many occasions before, Östlund has oodles to say about social mores and disparities, and duly puts forth his arguments on a platter so skilfully as to pick up quite enough points for the award.

Where the film does fall somewhat short is in not nailing its colours to any mast since committing itself would naturally lead to vulnerability. This is reflected in a maddeningly open-ended denouement. But any frustration felt at this has to be offset against the fact that the two and a half hours to get there have provided so much sustenance.

7/10

Nobody (Ilya Naishuller, 2021)

It's clearly last chance saloon for Bob Odenkirk to be an action hero, and he does succeed here in making us forget Saul Goodman within 15 minutes, which seemed improbable at the start, with him stuck in a dull 9-5 suburban family existence, briefly upset by a botched burglary attempt on their house.

Then he cracks, and the ride into mayhem begins. A point of comparison would at first be Death Wish, but really what manner of beast this turns out to be is in the vein of  Oldboy, The Punisher and John Wick. I shouldn't have been surprised if I'd remembered that the director was also behind Hardcore Henry, which had little else than an ambition to hit the highest on-screen kill count in history, but Odenkirk's genial presence both lulls you into a false sense of security and elevates what follows far beyond the norm for the genre, since he's plainly not a run-of-the-mill killing machine.

6/10

Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer, 2019)

The brain-blowing bunch are back, as you knew they would be, with the same sure-fire combo of quip-splat-quip-splat. Again, it takes a devoted watcher of the undead-killing genre and fratboy humour/pop culture refence-laden Family Guy fare to enjoy this, which I confess to being at times (mind you, switching your brain off does leave zombies nothing to hanker after). The comic interludes evenly spaced between the carnage scenes are at least enjoyable, although probably wouldn't work if it wasn't for the likable cast, this time departing residence in the White House on a pilgrimage to Graceland. It passes the time, and the makers don't pretend to be too bothered about anything more, giving the viewers what they want.

5/10

The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022)

On a small island off the west coast or Ireland in 1923, Pádraic (Colin Farrell) meets his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson) for their regular drink to be told that he doesn't like him any more, without any further explanation. This sends Pádraic into a spin as he tries to find out what he has done to be shunned out of the blue, and then Colm takes increasingly draconian actions to emphasise the point that he wants nothing more to do with him.

On one level, this is a dark comedy, with wry, aphoristic asides crossing over into existential observations. Then there's also the backdrop of the Irish Civil War on the mainland, and the fact that Inisherin means 'the island of Ireland' leaves us in no doubt that the sudden rift between the two men is meant to mirror that in the country as a whole. But this isn't hammered home: like so much else in this nuanced and multi-faceted film, from the local priest doubling as the village shrink and the confining nature of living in an incestuously small community where everyone knows what everyone else is doing, to posterity and the purpose of life itself, it's just another layer that is left up to the viewer  to engage with or bypass. The twin leads, reunited by the director for the first time since 2008's In Bruges, play off each other unforcedly and convincingly, and thereby create a small, unpretentious gem of a whole. It deserved every one of the many accolades that it garnered.

8/10

Oxygène (Alexandre Aja, 2021)

A woman wakes to find herself locked in a cryogenic capsule with no memory of her identity or how she got there, and a call centre-like computer voice offering no real help except to give her constant updates on how little air she has left. Sound familiar? Yes, it's 2010's Buried with a sci-fi twist, unsurprising as the French are almost as fixated on futurising everything as the Japanese are, plus the amnesia, so we're as much in the dark as Mélanie Laurent's character is about what's going on and follow her going through the same stages as Ryan Reynolds does in the former film, from denial to anger, determination and despair. But Oxygen brings nothing more to the table apart from Laurent's air-depleting bouts of screaming hysteria and the riddle of who, where and when she actually is. A lot to work through, then, but unfortunately the eventual resolution falls quite flat.

5/10