The Night Before

At one point, the notion of Seth Rogen as a father was so inherently ridiculous that they made an entire feature-length comedy about it. The curly-haired Canadian/marijuana enthusiast has always seemed like every straight American male’s platonic ideal of what a best friend should be: smart, funny, ready to dispense advice and/or drugs at the drop of a hat. He has never, though, been anyone’s idea of dad material. Every Rogen movie is a loving ode to the joys of staying eternally young, and also the build-up towards that inevitable moment where our lovable schlub is finally forced to grow up.

Turns out, everyone’s favourite chuckling teddy bear has grown up. Well, sort of. He actually plays a dad — and, from the looks of things, a (mostly) decent one — in The Night Before, a shambling, sporadically funny stoner comedy that splits the difference between your traditional yuletide yarn and the typical Rogen gross-out-fest where friendships are tested and eventually affirmed, naughty jokes are made and everything turns out to be more or less alright in the end. More often than not, the movie succeeds  and is sweet and silly, with a lightness of touch. However flimsy it is in the grand scheme of things, in the moment it possesses a modest but undeniable charm.

Our trio of bros this time around are Isaac, played by Rogen, Chris (Anthony Mackie) and Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Isaac is the typical Rogen character gone domestic, Chris is a charismatic, hot-headed football superstar with an all-too-predictable secret and Ethan works dead-end catering gigs and remains emotionally stunted after the tragic and untimely death of his parents. With each passing year, their brotherhood of bong hits and bar crawls is solidified by one longstanding Christmas tradition: a night of karaoke, Chinese food, playing the piano from Big and, finally, the attempt to gain access to the Nutcracka Ball, a mythological party that is reputed to be one of the most lavish and elusive in New York City. A few things end up complicating the boy’s quest, however, including the re-emergence of Ethan’s old flame, the wonderful Lizzy Caplan, and Isaac’s wife giving him a pocket-sized box of narcotics that he ingests all too willingly. Throw in a gang of drunk sidewalk Santas, an admittedly rousing live performance of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball and an almost-too-creepy cameo from Rogen’s pal James Franco, then roll, seal, spark and inhale and you’ve got The Night Before.

The director here is Jonathan Levine, who helmed 50/50, his first union of Rogen and Levitt - a flawed but ultimately affecting dramedy about one young man’s battle with cancer. Levine has a gift for naturalistic comedy and an ear for male banter and camaraderie. It doesn’t hurt that our three stars manage to convincingly portray a lived-in, long-term friendship marred by instances of doubt and betrayal. Rogen is especially funny when he’s losing it, although a nasty gag about cocaine blood ending up in a woman’s drink goes too far, while Mackie subtly oscillates between bouts of narcissism and the crippling insecurity of a grown-up jock. Not surprisingly, Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns out to be the film’s heart: his Ethan is a palpable and heartbreaking vision of young male stasis, even when the film’s busy script saddles him with some unwieldy dialogue. The Night Before also features a who’s who of comic talent in supporting roles, including the indispensable Jillian Bell as Rogen’s wife, Nathan Fielder as a weirdo limo driver, Mindy Kaling doing Mindy Kaling, Broad City’s Ilana Glazer as a weed-stealing Grinch and Tracy Morgan in a role that is way too funny to spoil here.

In almost every respect, The Night Before is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a broad, big-hearted trifle whose momentary lapses in good taste are ultimately redeemed by its sweetness.

It: Chapter Two

It feels like a very short two years ago that the 2017 remake of Stephen Kings It hit the big screen. After release, the film very quickly became the highest grossing horror movie of all time, seemingly satisfying the critics just as much the audiences. Almost immediately plans were put into action to film the second half of King’s sprawling 1986 novel. I, for one, was very much aboard the hype train.

Set twenty seven years after the events of Chapter One, It: Chapter Two brings both the audience and the original members of the Losers’ Club back to Derry to keep the promise that they made to one another three decades ago, destroy Pennywise once and for all. The child killing force has returned and only they can band together to stop it. With their memories faded the longer they had been away from their hometown, the likes of Bill, James McAvoy, Beverly, Richie and Eddie and Ben (played by James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, James Ransone and Jay Ryan respectively) face the task of remembering and coming to terms with their past traumas, along with finding the strength and belief to come together and be single-willed enough to rid Pennywise of his fear feeding powers.

Unsurprisingly, my likes and dislikes of It: Chapter Two are pretty much identical to the likes and dislikes that I had for its predecessor. In my opinion, the magic and power of this story lies in the human connection and engagement with characters – not in the cinematic terror that its antagonist generates. This new adult cast brings another enjoyable element to the characters we last saw in childhood and once again I found myself more invested in the moments in between jump scares than in the jump scares themselves. It by its very nature works best on a metaphorical level with themes of childhood trauma and overcoming fear. Where It: Chapter Two fails slightly in my opinion is in dedicating far too much time to horror set pieces that have little to no stakes. Faced with giving equal time to an already large cast of central characters, the film proceeds with a back to back set of horror sequences that all end with a classic hero realisation – Pennywise is not real. You can only hold a viewer’s engagement for so long when they aren’t sure what is dangerous and what is not. Clocking in at just under three hours, you start to feel every single minute about a third of the way through the film. Unfortunately, some moments in this film are really just kind of boring. Which was not something that could be said about the first instalment of the franchise. By the time hour three comes around, there is certainly a sense of satisfaction that this entire two year long cinematic saga has been wrapped up neatly, but for me, the ninety suspect minutes either side of a strong beginning and a rewarding ending are not quite enough to make It: Chapter Two a triumph.

One element of the film that absolutely cannot criticise is the strong and varied performances of its aged up cast. The casting folks behind the scenes have done an exceptional job matching up adult actors with their 2017 child counterparts, in some cases it verges on eery. Jessica Chastain picks up where Sophia Lillis left off in an expert fashion, the young and mature iterations of the character share much more than just simple colouring. The same can be said for James Ransone as adult Eddie – his adopted and shared mannerisms with young Jack Dylan Grazer are extraordinary. Far and away the star of the show, for me was Bill Hader as trash mouth Richie. Now a standup comedian, the character is the source of comic relief. But he does so much more than just provide humour and some of the film’s biggest revelations and poignant moments are provided by both Hader and Finn Wolfhard in flashback scenes.

In a strange way, it feels like Bill Skarsgard, who plays Pennywise, takes something of a backseat in this sequel. As the narrative ramps up towards a crazy ending, we get to experience less of the truly creepy, smaller touches that made him so good in the first and instead get more CGI that didn't really do it for me. Of course, there are more effective jump scares than you can count but ultimately Pennywise just doesn’t have as big an impact as he did in 2017.

Overall, I have to say that It: Chapter Two doesn’t quite feel like the expertly crafted package that Chapter One was but on balance there is probably enough there to please fans of the 2017 predecessor. It’s way too long, with a repetitive middle section that will test even the most patient of viewers but you will walk away from the cinema feeling satisfied with the closure that is provided.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

There never should have been a Han Solo prequel movie. Before we can talk about Solo: A Star Wars Story in any meaningful way, this is a fact we simply have to accept – not only is it a really boring, tired idea for a film, it's also continuing the franchises inability to look beyond the original trilogy in any meaningful way, falling into the same trap of the prequel trilogy by assuming that the more details we know of a character's backstory, the better. Originally released shortly after Star Wars: The Last Jedi dared to do something new with the franchise, this film can't help but feel like a huge step backwards. Around the clumsy references and eye-roll inducing nods at the audience, Solo: A Star Wars Story is at its core just an excuse to see some characters you know and some you don't on a mostly standalone and refreshingly small-scale adventure, and from that perspective... well, it's not bad.

At the very least it's more entertaining than you might expect, especially once you take into account its more than just troubled production. For those not in the know, original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller had been filming Solo: A Star Wars Story for four months before they were unceremoniously fired and replaced by Ron Howard, who went on to reshoot approximately 70% of the film. That the end product isn't a complete and utter mess is nothing short of a minor miracle, one only made all the more impressive by the film somehow feeling more cohesive as a movie than Rogue One (which had a significantly less troubled production) ever did.

Which isn't to say that it doesn't suffer from some of the same problems, of course, merely that they don't affect Solo: A Star Wars Story to such a high degree. Both films open poorly thanks to rushed and messy first acts that fail to draw the audience in or engage them on any meaningful level, but where Rogue One doesn't settle into itself until the finale rolls around, Solo: A Star Wars Story gets there much sooner. By the time Han has joined a criminal gang and teamed up with Lando Calrissian in order to pull off a virtually impossible heist, Solo: A Star Wars Story has found its rhythm, and while it never aims for something not easily within its reach (this might actually be least ambitious movie ever made), it's also rarely outright unenjoyable.

And I recognise that's maybe the mildest praise ever given to any film ever, but in this case it's praise nevertheless. You're not going to walk out of Solo: A Star Wars Story with a new favourite film by any means, but its 2 hours and 15 minutes running time passes surprisingly quickly thanks to the simple fact that it never really stops moving, imbuing the film with a breezy, lightweight, feel-good sense of easy-watching that's hard to be all that offended by. The stakes are low, nothing more than a few thieves trying to worm their way out of a sticky situation, and that can't help but feel pretty refreshing for a franchise in which every other film sees the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance.

That's doesn't mean that it isn't capable of being quite exciting though. You might never be under the illusion that these characters are in real danger thanks to the aforementioned light and easy tone, but the originality of Solo: A Star Wars Story's set pieces alone means they're pretty fun, which is to say nothing of how well some of them are filmed. This, I think, is where the behind-the-scenes troubles seem most obvious, albeit in a good way – a lot of Solo: A Star Wars Story is shot in a fairly pedestrian way, yet every so often there will be a really impressive, kinetic shot or two that seemingly come out of nowhere. I have no way of knowing if these shots are ones left over from when Lord and Miller were directing or shots added in by Ron Howard (I suspect the former, but I wouldn't be hugely shocked to find out the latter), and in truth I really don't care - all that matters is that they're very good, adding a sense of weight or urgency or scale to a scene exactly when it's needed most.

And while a lot of Solo: A Star Wars Story's characters are various degrees of underwritten (some shamefully so, especially those who don't stick around for long), the eventual main cast are pretty good in their roles at worst and downright excellent at best, adding a lot to the film through performance alone. Woody Harrelson is perfect as the rough around the edges mentor figure Tobias Beckett, who feels very much like if someone took his character from The Hunger Games, Paul Bettany seems to be thrilled to have the opportunity to really ham it up as main antagonist Dryden Vos, and Donald Glover is naturally fantastic as both versions of Lando that we see, the smoother than smooth facade he presents to people throughout most of the film and the more vulnerable, human version we glimpse at times.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is an OK film that's unlikely to inspire an all too strong reaction from many people in either direction. It's entertaining in a very gentle way, never expecting too much from its audience and hoping its audience don't expect too much in return, and by and large succeeds on its own terms. Ultimately your mileage may vary, but in spite of everything I was entertained by Solo: A Star Wars Story – and at the end of the day, that's nothing to grumble about.

Godzilla (2014)

It seems there was a lot of criticism aimed at the Godzilla film regarding the use of the titular character as I discovered whilst reading up on the film after watching it last night. Everyone seemed to slate it due to the limited screen time Godzilla, the creature, actually got. I sort of agree, and also very much so find myself disagreeing too.

This film teases us for the best part of two hours, and it does so masterfully. There are some incredibly well shot scenes where Godzilla appears in some of the best and most memorable entrances a giant monster could have – a foot lands in front of a screaming crowd, silencing them, or he is slowly lit up by flares fired from a rooftop – and then it cuts away, leaving you desperately wanting to see more. There are at least three of these jaw dropping entrances before we even get to see him fight, and it means that when we do finally get to see him in action it feels all the more bad-ass. The fights between Godzilla and the MUTO's are short and quick, mostly seen from an up close human perspective or incredibly far away, so we can see these giants battle it out amongst sky scrapers. This choice means that we never lose that sense of scale or size that makes this film so visually impressive. Action fatigue fails to set in because of the restraint the film shows, and it ends leaving you desperately wanting more in the best possible way.

However, if you can't get behind the build up and anticipation, you aren't going to get a lot from this film. Bryan Cranston doesn't get the screen time he deserves, despite playing the most fleshed out character and being the best actor in the cast by a long margin. The main human characters, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen are pretty forgettable, but they are serviceable as the emotional hook of the film and work well enough with the suitably simplistic story for it not to matter a great deal. The film moves at a good enough pace to keep things fresh, with the teases of Godzilla mentioned earlier keeping you interested enough in the story for it to matter when the finale rolls around.

This film is by no means a master class in story telling or even a good lesson in writing characters, but it was never meant to be. Godzilla is all about spectacle, scope and a surprising amount of restraint, and it achieves this in an age of cinema where audiences are expected to get bored if ten minutes pass without an action scene. This film treats you like an adult, with enough patience to sit still and shut up and allow the film to tease you – and if you are willing to let it do that, you will not be disappointed.

American Ultra

It can be hard to write a review. Sometimes I find it difficult to look at something critically because of how much I enjoyed it, and at other times it can be hard to find something good to say about something I strongly disliked. But this time, a complete lack of any feelings one way or the other makes reviewing American Ultra hard, a film so unremarkable in every way that I forgot I had already seen this film when it first came out in the cinema nearly five years ago.

American Ultra is the story of Mike Howell and Phoebe Larson, a couple of unambitious stoners who live together in the town of Liman, West Virginia. Unbeknown to Mike, he's really a secret CIA asset from an Ultra program, a highly trained killing machine who can be activated with a coded phrase. When the person responsible for the Ultra program learns that he is to be taken out by a rival CIA agents operation, she travels to Liman in order to activate Mike and save his life.

Despite this seemingly interesting premise, there is very little of American Ultra that feels at all original or noteworthy. The most obvious problem facing it is that it was marketed as something it isn't – those expecting a mash up of the Bourne films and a stoner comedy are going to be sorely disappointed when they realise that much of the films run-time is dedicated to exploring the (admittedly rather sweet) relationship that Mike and Phoebe share, the infrequent comedic moments being rooted in character and having nothing to do with our heroes penchant for substance abuse, a part of our main characters that really isn't needed. The stoner aspect of American Ultra has no bearing on either the plot of the film or the characters themselves beyond surface level (and I'm talking mainly costume design here), and if anything distracts from the film during potentially important moments. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart bring enough to their characters for this 'humanising' aspect of them to feel unnecessary and the cynic in me sees it as an if not manipulative then certainly questionable attempt to sell the film to a wider demographic – one that has wholly failed, judging by the under-whelming box office numbers that American Ultra took back when it was first released.

On the plus side, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart are, as I already mentioned, really quite good as Mike and Phoebe respectively. Jesse Eisenberg's Mike is the right level of vulnerable to garner sympathy and understanding without alienating the audience, and despite some questionable career choices Kristen Stewart more than proves yet again that she can actually act. Although it isn't a particularly original pairing (the two of them having already shared the screen for Adventureland) it can't be said that it isn't a great bit of casting – a good job too, given how American Ultra is far too content to try and get by on the charms of their lead actors alone.

Everything else about American Ultra is nothing more than mediocre. Topher Grace is competent but unremarkable as the films bureaucratic bad guy. The side-plot dealing with the inner-workings of the CIA is an acceptable distraction to the central narrative. The action scenes are evenly placed throughout the films running time and don't go on for too long. This constant level of 'fine' becomes almost over-whelming by the time the film draws to a close, and results in a movie that I was already forgetting by the time I'd left the cinema. It's a film without highs or lows, a film that should be vivid and full of energy but is instead completely monotone, a film that exists and nothing more.

American Ultra is a perfect example of when the sum of the pieces is less than the value of the pieces themselves - this is a film that is consistently OK, but somehow less than OK when taken as a whole. It failed to resonate with me, it was unable to engage me as an audience member, it was incapable of making me care about what was happening - no matter which way you phrase it, something about American Ultra simply didn't work. I can't say I would or wouldn't recommend American Ultra because ultimately, I feel nothing but pure apathy towards it. And in some ways, that's more harmful than being bad.

The Post

Like a few of Spielberg's more recent movies except Ready Player One, The Post (which sits comfortably alongside Lincoln and Bridge of Spies in what I'm calling Spielberg's "important events in American history" trilogy) is a film with a lot of narrative on its hands. It's telling the story of Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post during the Nixon administration and the difficulties she faced in being taken seriously in a male-dominated environment. It's also telling the story of Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington Post during the release of the Pentagon Papers and, later, the Watergate scandal. And it's ALSO telling the story behind The Pentagon Papers, a decades long deception of the American people by the American government in order to maintain public support for a war they know they can't win.

It's a lot, but it works because much like how Bridge of Spies isn't really about the Cold War at all, The Post isn't really about those things either. Instead, it's about the importance of a free press and the vital role they play in any true democracy, which makes The Post feel extremely relevant in the time of Trump and "fake news". There are speeches given by characters here that may as well be delivered directly to the camera and addressed to 2018 itself, and while that has the potential to come across as preachy, Spielberg's guiding hand alongside Liz Hannah's solid script ensures that's never quite the case, resulting in a film that speaks to its audience rather than at them. It helps, of course, that most of these speeches are delivered by everyone's favourite uncle Tom Hanks, who plays Ben Bradlee much the same way he played James Donovan in Bridge of Spies – intelligent, righteous, and not afraid to speak up in the face of injustice, regardless of the consequences he might face.

But Hanks is just one part of what makes The Post work. Something I'm really enjoying about several of Spielberg's more recent projects is the amount of credible actors and actresses he's able to get involved and The Post offers no exception – you've got Bradley Whitford, Bob Odenkirk, Alison Brie, Bruce Greenwood, Jesse Plemmons and Sarah Paulson rounding out the cast in roles of varying sizes, all of whom manage to leave an impression. But of course it's Meryl Streep who ends up walking away with The Post and an Oscar nomination under her arm, introducing us to Katherine Graham as a nervous and uncertain woman with very little self-belief before transforming her into a confident leader in what is easily The Post's most interesting storyline. It's a shame that we've gotten so used to Meryl Streep receiving award nominations for everything she does – this is a genuinely great performance, and it's frustrating that those who haven't seen The Post might assume that the praise she received for this role is because of who she is not because of what she's done.

Where The Post does falter somewhat, however, is in the actual film-making itself, albeit in very minor ways. Other than an opening scene in Vietnam, the cinematography feels pretty lifeless throughout, and there are a number of scenes where the dialogue doesn't feel as snappy as it should, or a shot feels like it's been held for just a beat too long. It's here that Spielberg's "one big, one small" approach to filmmaking seems to work against him – I can't help but feel that these issues, minor as they might be, wouldn't exist if The Post hadn't been shot, edited and released all while he was still working on post-production for (the god awful) Ready Player One. Given the time and attention that it deserved, The Post could've been a genuinely great movie rather than just a very good one.

But it's also ultimately the worst thing I can find to say about The Post. Even with it feeling as if it were put together in a bit of a hurry, it still easily manages to hit every emotional beat it sets its sights on, and the result is still an engaging, timely and downright important piece of cinema all the same, one that you can't help but get wrapped up in and absorbed by as it progresses. Perfect? No. Spielberg at his best? Again, no. But even as the weakest film in that aforementioned "important events in American history" trilogy, lacking the tension of Bridge of Spies or the sheer craftsmanship behind Lincoln, The Post is still nothing less than an incredibly solid movie that once again proves Spielberg to be one of the most accomplished directors in the industry.

Green Book

Set in the 1960's, we follow New York bouncer Frank Vallelonga (known as Tony Lip to his friends) as he is hired by famed black musician Dr. Don Shirley to serve as a driver/bodyguard on an eight-week tour of the deep South. Naturally then, it's an odd couple/road trip movie, with the two main characters initially bouncing off one another before bonding over the course of the movie. But what's fascinating about Green Book – and not necessarily fascinating in a good way – is the way in which these two characters change over the course of the movie.

Or more importantly, the way that one of them kind of doesn't. Green Book is book-ended by scenes that imply Tony Lip (and somehow his family, possibly via telepathy) has grown as a person during his time with Dr. Shirley, but the movie in between those scenes in no way challenges Tony's worldview or the way he acts – in fact, it validates and agrees with him almost unanimously, possibly because it was written by Tony's real life son, Nick Vallelonga, who naturally wouldn't want to portray his father in a bad light. Instead, it is Dr. Shirley's worldview that is challenged throughout, often on the receiving end of what can only be described as Tony's "white working class wisdom". Over the course of the movie, we see Dr. Shirley go from someone who doesn't respect or appreciate Tony to someone who does – which means that Green Book is, at a fundamental level, a film about a black man learning not to judge a white guy based on appearances.

That's pretty incomprehensible for a film set in the midst of the Civil Rights movement in the Jim Crow South to do, especially when Dr. Shirley's real life family dispute many of the claims made by Green Book, right down to the idea that Tony and Dr. Shirley were ever even friends. This is a film that seems to broadly agree with Tony when he says that he's blacker than Dr. Shirley, who at this point in the movie has been harassed and assaulted multiple times for being black, a film in which Tony helps Dr. Shirley get back in touch with his blackness by forcing him to eat fried chicken. In the years to come, we're going to look back at Green Book and laugh about the fact that it was ever considered a serious movie, let alone a best picture award winner – it's simply an incredibly tone deaf and stupid movie, offering a childish and mollycoddled take on a topic that deserves a far more intelligent and confrontational examination than Green Book is willing (or able, I suspect) to offer.

And yet I'd be lying if I tried to claim that Green Book wasn't at the very least watchable, reasonably well put together on a technical level with nice cinematography and good editing even while it sticks its foot so far into its mouth that it can taste its own kneecaps. Mortensen's Frank Vallelonga is a caricature of an Italian-American but it's exactly what this movie needs, a performance big enough and bizarre enough to keep you engaged where a more subtle performance simply wouldn't. Is it a good performance, of a well-written character? No. But it works within the context that Green Book presents it, much like the rest of the movie tapping into well-worn tropes to produce something so familiar that it can't help but end up feeling... well, comforting, and safe, and broadly inoffensive - as long as it's playing to "the right kind of audience", which just so happens to be the same demographic as the majority of Academy Award voters.

Green Book is little more than a shallow and superficial example of why the recognisable hallmarks of a prestige picture don't mean much at all if they aren't imprinted on something with actual merit, which really shouldn't have come as much of a surprise being as it's directed by one of the guys behind the excruciating Movie 43. With another writer and a different director, maybe Green Book could've been a genuinely good, enlightening movie. But as it stands, it's little more than a film that's only vaguely entertaining at its very best, deeply unchallenging and staggeringly misguided throughout - and if that's what we're holding up as the best picture of 2018, then something has gone very wrong indeed.

The Favourite

"Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power". It's a quote often attributed to Oscar Wilde (as far as I'm aware, no one actually knows where it came from), but more importantly, it's a quote that couldn't help but come to mind when thinking about The Favourite, the latest film from The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer director Yorgos Lanthimos (although Pop. 1280 is now in preproduction at the time of writing this). In The Favourite, sex is seemingly only ever a means of establishing power, whether that be through attempting to create an heir, marrying for a title, paying a debt or even simply gaining someone's favour. It is the latter of these that The Favourite naturally spends most of its time on, but make no mistake – sex and power are intrinsically linked throughout, whether it be staring you in the face or hiding just out of view, obscured somewhat by the norms and systems of society but still very much ever present.

It's a thematic core that in the wrong hands could've easily come across as misogynistic, playing into tired femme fatale tropes without a shred of irony or self-awareness, but thankfully Lanthimos, and writers Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, are smarter than that, able to ensure that we understand this to be a societal phenomena rather than a gendered one thanks to just how much of The Favourite ultimately circles back and highlights this link. Take, for example, a scene in which a naked guy gets pelted with rotten fruit for the entertainment of a group of bawdy male politicians, or one in which another politician sits there "stroking his goose" (not an innuendo within the context of this review but very much a visual innuendo within the film itself) as he and an opponent speak with the Queen – I wasn't over-exaggerating earlier when I called this link "ever present", and the result is a film just as focused and thematically interesting as The Lobster, and equally fascinating to think about after the fact.

Set during the War of Spanish Succession, we follow the once wealthy but now broke Abigail Hill as she starts work as a maid in Queen Anne's court, gaining the job thanks to the fact that her cousin is Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough and the Queen's most trusted adviser. After Abigail creates an ointment that helps the Queen deal with her gout, Queen Anne takes a liking to her, making her a lady-in-waiting and in the process starting a competition between Sarah and Abigail for the Queen's favour – and the power that comes with it. And so it begins, a game in which Abigail and Sarah are constantly trying to outwit and outplay one another in order to become Queen Anne's favourite and achieve their goals, whether they be political or personal or both in nature, and as you might've guessed based on my opening paragraphs, sex plays a major part. The Favourite might not be the most historically accurate film you've ever seen, but then again that's by no means what it's trying to achieve – instead, it's simply using the vague historical theory that Queen Anne may have had a lesbian relationship with Abigail Hill as a kicking off point for an engrossing tale of female rivalry and political machinations in the 18th century.

Queen Anne, Sarah and Abigail are interesting on paper thanks to Davis and McNamara's captivating and often hilarious script, but once you factor in the brilliant performances given by the three leading ladies, these characters all take on additional life and really pop from the screen in ways they simply wouldn't have with different actresses in the roles. You've got Emma Stone as Abigail Hill, who brings a very modern sheen to this initially naive point of view character; Rachel Weisz as Sarah Churchill, who plays her as confident and domineering and downright unshakable in the face of opposition (with a bunch of fantastic outfits to boot - if we don't see Weisz play a maverick pirate captain in something soon, we've failed as a species); and of course the brilliant Olivia Colman as the sickly and deeply unstable Queen Anne, whose instability is first played for comedy (and to great effect) but soon morphs into something quite tragic, showing yet again that Colman is a far more talented actress than she has been given credit for in the past.

Seeing them interact with and bounce off one another is where the vast majority of The Favourite's entertainment value comes from, especially as the aforementioned great screenplay slowly reveals more information about these characters over the course of the films running time, forcing you to rethink whose side your on multiple times as you learn more about them and as their actions get more extreme. There are other characters in The Favourite, of course - I'd be remiss to not at least mention Nicholas Hoult's vile and conniving (but oddly compelling) Robert Harley - but they're very much secondary in nature, only really existing as a way to further complicate this triangle and add external pressure. There's no denying that The Favourite is an incredibly tightly focused movie, after all.

But maybe that's somewhat to its detriment, come the end. I mentioned earlier that it is hilarious, and that's true - but only really for the first two thirds or so of its running time. As tensions mount and Abigail and Sarah begin to go even further in their attempt to become Queen Anne's favourite, the film's increasingly laser-like focus on this story means that there is less time for the kind of character informing (and audience pleasing) humour that defined the earlier parts of the movie, and while the story itself is still strong enough to keep you engaged, it has to be said that I missed the comedy a fair bit.

Add to that an ending that can't help but feel underwhelming and a touch conventional in comparison to the film preceding it and sadly, The Favourite can't help but be a movie that ends not with a bang but... well, certainly not with a whimper, but not quite the extravagant fireworks you may have been hoping for either. Still, I'd be lying if I tried to claim that The Favourite is anything other than a film I enjoyed a great deal, engaging on a number of levels throughout and more accessible than Lanthimos' previous movies without losing his distinctive style or voice – and at the end of the day, that still all adds up to make a movie that's very much worth watching, flaws and all.

Ready Player One

"Come with me / And you'll be / In a world of pure imagination". So goes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory's Pure Imagination, a version of which scored the first trailers for Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One and promised an imagination fuelled adventure in the process – a promise only reinforced by main character Wade Watts' description of The Oasis (a virtual reality where most of the population of Earth spend the bulk of their time in 2045) as a world where "the limits of reality are your own imagination". So with that in mind, how is it that Ready Player One has ended up being one of the most deeply unimaginative and creatively bankrupt films I've even seen?

The answer is simple but depressing: it's a film that seems to be operating under the wild misconception that grouping a lot of recognisable things created by other people's imagination under one roof counts as using your own. It doesn't, obviously, and yet it's so busy doing this throughout that it forgets to do much of anything else, meaning that while those looking for a seemingly never ending parade of pop culture references presented to the audience with all the intelligence, elegance and wit as an episode of The Big Bang Theory are in luck, those looking for an engaging story or interesting characters or... well, a real movie, are going to end up feeling more than just a little bored and frustrated with a film that simply doesn't even seem to be trying.

The story, itself little more than an excuse for a handful of visually extravagant but ultimately pretty vapid action sequences, sees various groups searching for an Easter Egg that will give them control over the Oasis following the death of James Halliday, its creator. One of these groups is led by Wade Watts (in-game name Parzival), whose love for the Oasis and its creator is seemingly endless; another is led by Innovative Online Industries CEO Nolan Sorrento, whose only interest in controlling the Oasis comes from how much money could be made through introducing targeted advertisements, pay to win micro-transactions and differently priced membership tiers.

There's a half-hearted critique of capitalism in there that Ready Player One has all but completely chickened out of by the time the credits roll, but beyond that? It's effectively just a version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory updated for a post-Internet world, one in which Willy Wonka is dead, the potential heirs to the throne know they're being tested and John Cadbury is on the tour alongside the children. In fairness it's a fine, simple structure to hang a film around – but the key to unlocking that sentence is that other stuff needs to be hung around it, which ignoring the aforementioned obnoxious pop culture references, Ready Player One entirely fails to do. Instead, we're left with nothing but cookie-cutter characters, embarrassing dialogue, a plot you've seen a million times before, and actions sequences that are both far too visually busy for their own good and impossible to get caught up in thanks to the aforementioned issues with character and story, resulting in a film that left me by and large bored out of my mind.

I mean, where's the sense of wonder that usually accompanies this kind of Steven Spielberg movie? Where's the heart and soul he's known for, the earnest sentimentality that virtually defines his filmography? Other than one short scene towards the end, they're entirely missing, which means that if not for his name in the credits it would be pretty difficult to identify this as being directed by arguably one of the greatest American directors working today. Instead, it's a bland, unartistic and seemingly entirely passionless affair, the kind of film that feels like it should've been released for free on the Internet as part of a viral marketing campaign for a terrible free to play game rather than a huge piece of would-be blockbuster cinema.

And I can almost see some of you who have already watched Ready Player One sitting there, shaking your heads and silently mouthing the words "but I enjoyed it", and you know what? That's fine. The moment to moment filmmaking of Ready Player One is passable at its very worst and actually pretty nifty at its best, by and large lacking the kind of obvious hallmarks that most people use to identify if a film is any good or not. It might seem fairly harmless, but imagine if every big film had the same lack of respect for its audiences intelligence, trying to skate by purely through tickling the stupid part of your brain that gets excited when it sees something it recognises. We'd quickly find ourselves in a completely stagnant cultural landscape, and while that might've made for an slyly subversive subplot in a significantly more interesting and self-aware version of Ready Player One, it's not a future I particularly want to experience. It's the cinematic equivalent of empty calories, filling you up without offering anything of real value, and while that might satisfy in the moment you have to be able to recognise that it's simply not good for you.

And the message behind all this lazy nostalgia bait? It's not intelligence or teamwork or compassion that matters, but how much meaningless trivia you've managed to commit to memory. It's Gatekeeping: The Movie, pandering to the worst kind of "oh, you like Star Wars? Name everyone who worked on the Death Star" nerd in the process, and it's deeply embarrassing to sit there and see that kind of knowledge treated as worthwhile. Fact is, Wade Watts would be an unbearable, boring asshole in real life, and I really don't have much patience for a film that goes out of its way to glorify that kind of person, especially when they already don't need the encouragement.

But it's the shameless, cynical hypocrisy of Ready Player One that rankles the most. Ultimately, what we have here is a film that pays lip service to the power of imagination while refusing to use it's own, a celebration of pop culture that contributes nothing to it, and an ode to the importance of stories that doesn't have anything new to say. Yes, it probably is the best possible version of itself - but at a certain point we have to look beyond its surface level sheen and realise that what it is simply isn't any good. A bad film made well is still a bad film, after all.

Aladdin (2019)

In terms of what you might be expecting, Disney’s live-action adaptation of their own animated take on Aladdin is much more than a diamond in the rough. Against the odds, and certainly expectations, Guy Ritchie and his likeable and talented cast have managed to deliver a cave of wonders which honours the original classic and yet still manages to find enough new angles to make the story feel new again.

Trapped in a cave after being tricked into going by the ambitious Grand Vizier Jafar, Aladdin, played by Mena Massoud, finds himself in possession of an old lamp – and an all-powerful genie with whose help he sets out to win the heart of Princess Jasmine. In the early scenes, it sticks fairly close to the story beats of the original but gradually it reveals that it has more on its mind than just polishing up Aladdin’s rough diamond. In this subtly updated version, not only does the genie get a more cohesive story arc, but so too does Jasmine. Although the original Jasmine was no fragile blossom, there’s more than just sassy feistiness to Naomi Scott’s heroine. Determined and defiant, there’s an agency to Jasmine in this that results in a much richer and more satisfying conclusion to the whole affair.

While director Guy Ritchie remains a puzzling choice, and never seems entirely comfortable with the musical numbers, he brings enough spectacle and vibrant, colourful action to the screen to keep things moving along nicely. The musical numbers themselves are transformed on the big screen, lively and toe-tappingly familiar even when given a fresh coat of hip-hop, courtesy of Will Smith – arguably the film’s biggest gamble if Robin Williams fans are to be believed. So, let’s talk about Will Smith as our Genie. If you’d seen it in the trailers and hoped he'd be rendered better before the film's release... you are in for a disappointing ride. It’s completely overwhelming when Genie comes out of the lamp as you’re examining the disproportionate head with his body but Smith absolutely nails the role – respecting Williams’ footsteps yet unafraid to add a little fancy footwork of his own – creating something wonderful. This is vintage Will Smith like we haven’t seen in years and reminds us, in case we’d forgotten, just why he was such a bankable box office star in his 1990s heyday.

Alas, not every day’s a red letter and as Naomi Scott’s Jasmine rises and Smith lights up the screen, Massoud’s more sensitive and sympathetic Aladdin fades into the background slightly although he’s still fun to watch. Unfortunately, the internet’s ‘Hot Jafar’ turns out to be decidedly tepid and Kenzari just doesn’t have the gravitas or menace to really pull off the role, hampered by a script which doesn’t seem to know how to write its villain and criminally wastes the voice talents of Alan Tudyk as the unnamed and desperately underwritten Iago. It really could have been anyone voicing the parrot and, in some ways, it really could have been anyone directing this. 

Aladdin never once feels like a Guy Ritchie film, but what it does feel like is a polished, family friendly and crowd-pleasing musical fairy tale and, surprisingly, one of Disney’s stronger live-action adaptations to date.

I, Tonya

"Good artists copy; great artists steal". It's a fairly well-known saying that speaks to the way art evolves over time as the innovations of influential artists seep into the work of those who come along later, but it's worth breaking down what exactly the phrase means by "steal". Mimicry or simple replication isn't enough; you have to make something your own in order to steal it, add your own unique spin or use it in a particular way that stamps your name on it, and that means that I, Tonya – a biopic whose style was quite clearly heavily influenced by the work of Martin Scorsese – doesn't qualify as an act of theft. Appropriately then, it also doesn't qualify as great art – merely quite good.

At the very least it's a vast improvement over the pale Scorsese imitation that David O. Russell has been doing for the last few years, thanks in large part to director Craig Gillespie's much firmer grasp of how to make the particulars of this style – such as the fourth-wall breaking narration, or the eclectic soundtrack – work on-screen. But just as important to why I, Tonya works where films like Joy don't is the simple fact that the story of disgraced American figure skater Tonya Harding is actually worth telling and well-suited to this style of film-making, hitting all the required funny, sad and tense beats as it focuses on a number of vibrant, almost larger-than-life characters who you actually want to learn more about and see interact with one another.

And I, Tonya certainly delivers there, making the decision to spend the bulk of its running time not on the incident that Tonya Harding is now mostly well known for (her alleged involvement in the attack on rival figure skater Nancy Kerrigan) but on the relationships that define her as a person. You've got her relationship with her neglectful at best mother, a cold and uncaring figure who pushed her to be a great skater no matter the cost; her relationship to her abusive and at times downright psychotic husband, who I, Tonya posits as the main reason for Harding's eventual downfall; and her relationship to the world of figure skating, the gatekeepers of which never wanted to give a redneck, working class girl a fair shot. It's a good script that knows when to focus on which relationship and gives equal importance to all three, but what really elevates I, Tonya from being an OK Scorsese-lite into a film that's genuinely worth seeing are the truly great performances given by Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney and especially Margot Robbie, who I simply didn't think was capable of this kind of powerhouse performance. Needless to say, her Oscar nomination for Best Actress was incredibly well-earned it was just a shame she was pitted against the phenomenal Frances McDormand who obviously took the win.

But it's also worth keeping in mind that without lead performances this strong, I, Tonya probably would've been all but forgotten about quite quickly. It might be a good Scorsese impression, but it's still just an impression, never living up to that from which it takes so much and at times feeling oddly forced in its execution. Sure, it's entertaining when these character break the fourth wall in order to talk to the audience, or when the actors play older versions of their characters giving interviews, but neither of these quirks appear consistently enough for them to feel like a natural part of this film when they do show up, and there are a few scenes early on that quite badly misjudge if the events happening on screen should be portrayed for comedic effect or not. Funnily enough, I, Tonya's best and most memorable scenes end up being the ones least like the kind of thing you might find in a Scorsese film, Gillespie dropping the film's borrowed aesthetic in order to simply capture a moment, whether it be an extravagant, monumental victory on the ice or a quiet scene that sees Harding break down as she applies her make-up. This is what Gillespie needed more of to truly make I, Tonya his own - not fake clips of fake interviews or era-appropriate needle-drops, but varied emotional moments that genuinely resonate with the audience.

And yet in spite of its easily identifiable shortcomings, I still really enjoyed I, Tonya for what it is – a mostly quite well-directed film telling an interesting story that's bolstered by a handful of performances so good that they'd make it worth seeing even if the rest of the film was outright bad, which it isn't. Yes, it's a touch overly derivative and at times stumbles in its attempts to replicate the films that it's quite obviously influenced by, but it's also still a really entertaining couple of hours that I can't see many people walking away from disappointed.

Always Be My Maybe

Written by Park, Wong, and Michael Golamco, and directed by Fresh Off the Boat creator Nahnatchka Khan, Always Be My Maybe is of a class with Set It Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in that it’s charming and, for the most part, middle of the road. The story of childhood sweethearts given the chance to reconnect after drifting apart hits every beat it needs to.

Ali Wong stars as culinary superstar Sasha Tran, who puts her glitzy Los Angeles lifestyle on pause to return to her native Bay Area to open up a new restaurant. But while on this three-month excursion, a temporary detour ahead of her impending nuptials (to Daniel Dae Kim as her pretentious fiancé), she bumps into Marcus, played by Randall Park, her childhood bestie who was also the guy she lost her virginity to in the back of his Corolla. Wong and Park also co-wrote the script with Michael Golamco. To Sasha’s surprise, Marcus is still driving the same car, living in his dad’s house, and playing in coffee shops with his high school band. It’s like time has stood still for him almost 20 years later, while Sasha’s life has accelerated. But it’s all good, because even though the two have significant others (Marcus has latched on to a hippie, spam-loving girlfriend) and couldn’t be more different now, you just know that by the end of this film something will bring them together. True to that same rom-com film formula, though, other people get in the way at first, even after Sasha’s groom-to-be predictably bails on her. Enter one very sexy Keanu Reeves. Shout out to Rich Delia’s impeccable casting, which makes this appearance perfect.

Since the release of Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, the question that’s loomed over the media landscape has been just how the film industry will proceed when it comes to tackling issues of representation. Every aspect of Always Be My Maybe that stews in the realm of mediocrity is given a little boost by points of cultural specificity. For instance, one of the causes of tension between Marcus and Sasha is his disdain for the haute cuisine-style food she makes, citing it as a way of making Asian food trendy for white people instead of actually making good Asian food. The two leads’ relationships with their parents also not only extend beyond stereotypes of tiger mums and the model minority myth, but dig — on a shallow level — into the nuances of how expectations of what is owed and expected can change between first- and second-generation parents and children. As small a detail as it may seem, it’s still extremely novel to see a mainstream film acknowledge that Asian-American culture isn’t as monolithic as it always seems to be portrayed. It’s the kind of thing that sets Always Be My Maybe apart from its otherwise formulaic plotting, with a little additional help from the all-around terrific cast.

If you look underneath the themes of Asian American culture and romance you’ll find messages of success (specifically questions around what really makes one successful) and what’s really important in life. This is a film that may force you to think about your life as viewers may see a lot of themselves in either the characters of Sasha or Marcus. Always Be My Maybe is entertaining from start to finish and is one of the better romantic comedies I’ve seen in recent years. It wouldn’t be a romantic comedy without a feel good ending, but this one has a bit of an extra sentimental twist that may have you reaching for the nearest tissue box. Overall, it is a barrier-breaking piece of work that will hopefully mean more Asian American stories being told on TV and in film. It will also be interesting to see what’s next for Ali Wong and Randall Park as the two showed they have what it takes to write, produce and star in high quality productions that resonate with diverse audiences.

The Secret Life of Pets

Illumination Entertainment's first film, Despicable Me, may have instantly marked them as a company to keep an eye on, but The Secret Life of Pets is just another film from them that indicates their early success may have been more due to luck than judgement. Gone is all the charm and originality that made Despicable Me what it is, instead replaced by a series of barely connected scenes that add up to nothing more than a significantly less effective version of Toy Story.

We follow Max, a dog living a cushy life in New York with his owner, as he tries to deal with the addition of a new dog, Duke. Naturally they don't get on, and it isn't long before the escalating battle between them results in both of them getting lost in the middle of New York city. Imagine if Buzz Lightyear had the same backstory in Toy Story as Jessie does in Toy Story 2. Now imagine they are both dogs instead. Congratulations, you've seen a better version of The Secret Life of Pets. In everything from basic premise to individual plot points – even down to the personalities of various side characters – The Secret Life of Pets owes a great debt to Toy Story and its sequels, cribbing liberally whenever it gets the chance. Where The Secret Life of Pets and Toy Story differ, however, is that one has a strong idea of the story it's trying to tell and the way its characters will change over the course of the film, whereas the other does nothing but repeatedly introduce new, wacky characters and set up silly situations in a futile attempt to keep the audience entertained.

It's a great example of why "and then" storytelling simply doesn't work. There is no sense of cause and effect between almost anything that happens resulting in a film that feels more like the ramblings of a child describing a particularly nonsensical dream than it does a coherent story. That all important structure is totally absent here, and without it what could have been a somewhat moving (albeit wholly unoriginal) story about a dog finding a new home fails to register on any level, never mind an emotional one. There is no end to the list of truly great animated films that understand how to tell a story, which makes The Secret Life of Pets' inability to do so all the more glaringly obvious. This was released in the same year Zootropolis came out so there is simply no reason why films aimed at kids can't be genuinely good, and insisting that we shouldn't expect as much from either animation as an art form or children as an audience is reductive to both.

There are a few aspects of The Secret Life of Pets I enjoyed – a recurring joke involving the dead comrade of an ex-pet militia made me laugh every time, and the highly stylised Manhattan skyline is nothing short of beautiful – but they are few and far between, and do nothing to make up for a film that clearly needed several pretty major rewrites somewhere in production. None of this stopped The Secret Life of Pets from making a metric shit ton of money of course – this is, after all, an animated film about talking animals that can be advertised using Minions – but I can't see anyone, not even the most pet-loving of people, walking away having genuinely enjoyed the film. And when it comes down to it, that's the only thing that really matters.

Crazy Rich Asians

Given that it's been 25 long years since The Joy Luck Club, the first and only other major Hollywood studio film with a Westernised Asian ensemble and a contemporary setting, anyone who cares about cultural representation was rooting for Crazy Rich Asians. So it's a relief that this high-gloss rom-com — based on the bestselling novel of a Singaporean author, directed by an Asian-American and featuring an all-Asian cast — is such a thoroughly captivating exploration of the rarefied question of whether true love can conquer head-spinning wealth.

Director Jon M. Chu, novelist Kevin Kwan, co-screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim, and the appealing cast make the story culturally specific yet eminently relatable. It's a rocky romance dripping in the kind of extravagance most of us can only fantasise about, like a $40 million wedding, for instance. And yet it's viewed from the anchoring perspective of a young woman who comes from nothing and remains true to herself throughout, played with grounded intelligence, backbone and emotional integrity by Fresh Off the Boat's Constance Wu in a lovely performance that gives the film real heart. What will likely sweeten the deal for many voyeuristic audiences is the movie's mouth-watering sampling of guilt-free luxury porn. It's a sybaritic celebration of high-end travel, food, architecture, decor and fashion, but it somehow eschews the vulgarity of conspicuous consumerism. There's flashy excess aplenty, but at the story's core, Trumpian ostentation takes a backseat to proud tradition, family honour, friendship and, most of all, love. The romantic stakes are misinterpreted as gold-digging aspiration only by judgmental snobs, whereas for the couple at the mercy of gossiping meddlers and suspicious relatives, dizzying wealth and all its attendant clubby insularity are an obstacle to be surmounted. The movie is less satirical in tone and as a result it has the necessary depth of feeling to make us root for the beleaguered lovebirds to beat the odds and make a go of it.

Wu plays Rachel Chu, a self-possessed NYU economics professor raised by a working-class single mother, played by Tan Kheng Hua, who emigrated from China when Rachel was a baby. Her dreamboat boyfriend of two years, Nick Young, by Henry Golding, invites her to be his date for the wedding of his best friend Colin, Chris Pang, in Singapore and then spend the summer traveling through Southeast Asia. That news pings through the international social-media grapevine of moneyed Asians at dizzying speed in an amusing montage that represents director Chu's effervescent style at its best. Nick has been reticent about his family's astronomical, old-money wealth, evasively describing their situation as "comfortable." Even when he and the wide-eyed Rachel are ushered into their first-class private suite on the flight from New York, Nick brushes it off as a perk of family business connections. But his desire to explore a relationship with Rachel on equal terms, unimpeded by his elevated social status, soon proves naive, especially once his hyper-vigilant mother Eleanor, Michelle Yeoh, gets wind of it. Even before any actual talk of wedding bells is broached, multiple forces are conspiring to separate Singapore's golden child from the perceived interloper.

The comedy is one part Meet the Parents, two parts Cinderella, with those familiar elements reinvigorated by the fresh setting of upscale Singapore, with its architectural splendours embracing both colonial history and imposing modernist forms. Cinematographer Vanja Cernjul shoots the locations in dynamic widescreen compositions full of bold colours that add to the sense of a 21st century fairy tale. The writers also expand the geographical canvas by taking in Nick's globe-trotting extended family and dropping the principals into exotic locations for the pre-nuptial partying of Colin and his bride-to-be. While that couple's fondness for Nick makes them instantly accepting of Rachel, that is generally not the case. But she has a few strategic allies on her side.

Chief among them is her hilariously unfiltered former New York college friend Peik Lin Goh, played by rapper Awkwafina, the scene-stealer of Ocean's 8, who effortlessly repeats that feat with her irresistible insouciance here. Having returned home to her wacky nouveau riche parents, played to the hilt as shamelessly broad caricatures by Ken Jeong and Koh Chieng Mun, Peik Lin sets Rachel straight on the true scope of Nick's family fortune. She then teams with Oliver (Nico Santos), the flamboyantly gay "poor-relation rainbow sheep" of the Young family, to give Rachel the necessary makeover to pass muster with Eleanor. Even more important is Rachel's first impression on Nick's doting grandmother, or Ah Ma in local parlance, played with beatific serenity and just the right touch of inscrutability by veteran Lisa Lu.

Rachel also gets insider support from Nick's favourite cousin Astrid, Gemma Chan, the essence of poise, beauty and sophistication, whose own difficult experience of marrying beneath her income bracket makes her sympathetic to the outsider's discomfort. While screenwriters Chiarelli and Lim generally have been successful at corralling Kwan's vast panoply of characters into a manageable group, Astrid's troubled marriage to Michael, Pierre Png, gets somewhat shortchanged as a subplot, even if it serves to show the fissures that wealth disparity can create in a relationship. Nevertheless, Chan is a radiant presence who lights up her every scene.

The filmmakers stir occasional bursts of raucous humour into the mix, primarily via Peik Lin's family or Bernard (Jimmy O. Yang), an obnoxious overgrown frat boy who takes charge of Colin's lavish bachelor weekend. But mostly, the comedy is breezy, smart and tethered to issues far more universal than the obscenely rich high-society milieu would suggest. Chu has put together a slick, highly entertaining package. Unsurprisingly for a director who cut his teeth on films including the Step Up sequels and Justin Bieber concert docs, Crazy Rich Asians is energised by infectious use of Brian Tyler's big, bouncy score and some terrific song choices. What makes it so genuinely uplifting, however, is the establishment of the central relationship as a union between partners determined to remain on equal footing, far more concerned with each other's mutual happiness than with all the wealth and luxury that stands between them.

Us

I don't think I'm overstating things when I say that Jordan Peele's Get Out ended up being a pretty big deal by any measure. It made just over $250 million worldwide on a budget of less than $5 million; it received the kind of critical acclaim most directors would kill for; it was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), winning Best Original Screenplay; and maybe most importantly, left the kind of immediate cultural impact that can't help but ensure its longevity as both a movie and an important part of pop culture. It is, in short, a great movie - which means that the only real question I had going into Peele's Us was simply this. How can it possibly live up to Get Out?

Sadly, the answer is that it doesn't, but the reason is a little more complicated than "it's just not as good". In many ways, Us is (somewhat appropriately) the mirror image of Get Out - very much still recognisable as a socially satirical horror film, but inverted in a few places to create something that feels radically different to its predecessor. The most obvious of these inversions is that Us is deliberately far less comedic than Get Out, instead focusing its energy on creating the kind of visceral, immediate scares that the more cerebral Get Out lacked - but maybe more important is the films approach to theme, swapping out laser like precision in favour of something less refined but significantly more complex, open ended and further reaching.

The plot itself, however, starts off fairly simple. We follow a fairly average American family of four (the Wilsons) as they holiday in Santa Cruz, which also happens to be where matriarch Adelaide suffered a traumatic experience as a child. That night, four mysterious figures appear at the end of the beach house's driveway, terrorising the family before revealing themselves to be terrifying doppelgängers.

The idea of doppelgängers is one that's been explored countless times in various genres of fiction, but importantly, their inclusion here isn't intended as a shocking twist - instead, it's where Us starts in earnest, kicking off an examination of class and privilege that drives the film throughout. If Get Out was Peele taking umbrage with suspiciously woke liberals, then Us is his rallying cry against capitalist society itself, highlighting the plight of the exploited and the wilful ignorance of those that benefit from that exploitation, all centred around the idea that "there but for the grace of God go I".

I enjoyed puzzling my way through Us, attempting to figure out exactly what Peele was trying to get at, but the themes aren't as well established or fully explored resulting in a film that can't help but feel underdeveloped and lacking much of the clarity and comprehensibility of Peele's debut. For much of the movie, that's not really too big a problem - Us is at its strongest early on, when its main focus seems to be on delivering scares with mere hints towards what it's building towards. It's only towards the end that Peele's ambition ultimately gets the better of him, resulting in a third act that does its best to provide a satisfying conclusion to the plot of the movie while also attempting to tie together all of Us' themes - neither of which it does particularly well.

A good chunk of this finale is delivered in the form of pure exposition from one character to another - worse, it's exposition that ends up over-explaining ultimately meaningless plot details (and in the process raising questions that simply didn't need to be raised) while still leaving the audience mostly in the dark when it comes to what it was all about. Add to that a late in the day "twist" that is so blindly obvious from the opening scene of the movie that by the time it was revealed I'd literally forgotten we weren't meant to know it yet.

A vague sense of dissatisfaction is never what you want to be feeling when you finish watching a film, yet that's exactly what Us left me with in spite of all its earlier strengths. With a better finale Us could've been a genuinely must-see film - instead it's frustratingly flawed, showing so much promise for a decent chunk of its running time thanks to Peele's direction, the subversive themes and a number of fantastic performances (Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic in her dual roles as both leading lady and main antagonist here) before concluding all that with something that just didn't work.

So no, I don't think Us lives up to the expectations set by Get Out. The phrase "difficult second album" can't help but come to mind - it's a less consistent, less certain experience, shaggier around the edges and lacking the kind of images and iconography that helped make Get Out so instantly iconic. But the ideas at play here prove that Peele is still one to watch. 

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again came and went from the cinema without much notice from me. But, the night before my best friend's wedding last November, it felt fitting to watch it. Not just because she's a massive musical and ABBA fan! So, we popped open the champagne and laid out some tasty treats and buckled in for some carefree, light-hearted viewing before heading to bed early for our beauty sleep. So, did it help shape a wonderful last night of singlehood for my friend? No. No, it did not - for me at least! It was every bit as terrible as I expected it to be.

Now, before I begin slating this movie, I feel it’s important to stress that I can at least understand why people may like this film even if I hated it myself. Both Mamma Mia and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again are films that, if you’re of a certain demographic or disposition, will unfailingly fill you with joy. They’re a spectacle, they pump you full of rainbows and optimism and they are exceedingly camp, which some people love. To add to this, whilst I despise seeing my childhood James Bond prancing around a Greek island sounding as if he is singing in a back alley karaoke bar, I do find some amusement and respect in the fact he, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard all agreed to partake - and, more to the point, with such gusto. Credit where credit is due. And it was also nice to see Lily James getting a leading role in a big film - she deserves it. Having gone strength to strength in films such as Baby Driver, The Darkest Hour and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society I’m glad to see her career progressing even further – she is fantastic.

However, these factors are not enough to save this disaster piece. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again picks up five years on from the original film and Sophie, Amanda Seyfried, is planning the grand opening of the ‘Hotel Bella Donna’ in memory of her mother. As she does this, nearly thirty years earlier, Donna, Lily James/Meryl Streep, goes on a summer trip which changes her life forever, introducing her to three men who each win her heart on the beautiful Greek island of Kalokairi.

Firstly, the film felt totally unnecessary. Whilst it was vaguely interesting to see Donna’s backstory, it wasn’t anything we didn’t know beforehand. Essentially, that is exactly what the first film explored, just in fewer scenes. More to the point, because Mamma Mia was written as a one-off show (and then adapted into a film) all the best ABBA songs were used already meaning Here We Go Again was left with the ABBA back catalogue that no-one really cares with the exception of super-fans, or, repeated songs that we have already heard in the first film. As a result, the little interest I had in the film quickly waned – especially, given its somewhat indulgent (just short of) two hour runtime.

Secondly, the film was far too long and couldn’t make its mind up as to what it wanted to be. The original Mamma Mia at least knew what it was - sycophantically cheesy and camp - and was unapologetic about it. Here We Go Again, however, is both half-heartedly happy and sad. Some scenes, like the garish, indulgent and skin-crawlingly cheesy rendition of ‘Waterloo’ were reminiscent of the first film’s optimism. A large chunk of the rest of the film was miserable and brooding though – something I don’t consider to be very Mamma Mia-esque. Whether it’s Sophie fretting about the opening of the hotel (essentially, all she does), Sam lamenting his dead wife or young Donna complaining about her man struggles despite having three handsome men pining after her, the overwhelming optimism found in the first is certainly diluted.

Finally, Cher’s cameo has to be mentioned. Whilst I’m sure there are people out there who loved this, it wasn’t for me. Her appearance was completely pointless and added nothing to the movie. After the obvious escalation to her token number, it was utterly underwhelming. Sorry, Cher.

Unfortunately, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is a totally unnecessary sequel that I would not recommend seeing unless you’re a die-hard ABBA fan or enjoy overbearing cheesiness. Whilst, admittedly, I’m a fan of the first, I do think Here We Go Again has genuine flaws which cannot be overlooked – mainly, the ropey catalogue of lesser-known ABBA songs and mundane plot. But, as always, see it for yourself – you may enjoy it!

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Usually, any time that a new Marvel film is being released I get unashamedly excited like a small puppy but as mentioned in my recent Ant-Man review I missed the boat on the whole Ant-Man movement. But with the first film in this series being a surprise hit (with me at least) I was keen to view the follow up pretty shortly after. Here's what I thought. 

I just wasn’t feeling it. How could I be? After Thor: Ragnarok, the cultural phenomenon and record-breaking Black Panther, the heart-breaking Infinity War and the hilarious first instalment of Ant-Man, it didn’t stand a chance. I went in with an open mind and middle to high expectations hoping it would provide the palette cleanse so many reviewers before had claimed it would.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. Ant-Man and the Wasp was no palette cleanser - it was boring and forgettable with a few exceptions which made me exhale slightly harder than usual. I would only rewatch this film if, after seeing Endgame in May, I want to find hidden Marvel easter eggs or references. It's basically an in between film that gets you from one strong Avenger movie to another.

The film begins two years after the events of Captain America: Civil War and during the same time that Infinity War’s storyline occurs. Scott Lang, played once again by Paul Rudd, finds himself bored under house-arrest after helping ‘Cap’, coming up with imaginative ways to entertain his daughter. So, when Hope Van Dyne, Evangeline Lily, and Hank Pym, Michael Douglas, come knocking at his door seeking help to rescue Hope’s mother, Michelle Pfeiffer, who is presumed dead in the Quantum Realm, he can’t resist.

Whilst the plot may sound enjoyable, it’s apparent from the outset that this won’t have the scale, importance or depth that Infinity War had. And that’s the key problem - Marvel has shot itself in the foot by escalating the impressiveness of its films. After the jaw-dropping end to Infinity War which left me speechless, suddenly seeing Scott Lang in a dressing gown trying to make too many jokes felt very out of place and poorly timed. This isn’t helped by the fact the film feels stale too. A lot of the comedy is the same - Luis’s rambling monologues, for example. Whilst Michael Peña is easily the most entertaining character of the film some original humour would have been welcomed rather than variations on the previous films’. On top of this, I couldn’t help disliking Evangeline Lily and Michael Douglas throughout. I'm not against liking the 'bad guy' or feeling conflicted about the 'good guy' but there was something about the pair that didn't sit right in this second film. It's as if I suddenly recognised that the characters had always been under-developed and thoroughly dull. In a film which prides itself on light-hearted comedy and relatable characters, both Lily and Douglas are too cold and blunt - not once while they’re on screen did they make me laugh. Admittedly, Lily kicks ass throughout and it’s exciting to see her adopt the mantle of The Wasp, but their dialogue really brings them down and an actor as prestigious as Douglas felt wasted.

To add to this, the villains were awful. Ghost had some depth but ultimately, was forgettable. We are given a brief insight into her past which aims to make us feel sorry for her - but then, in the same breath, she threatens to kidnap a child which drains any sympathy I may have had for her. Walton Goggins’ southern black-market arms dealer is no better either and acts more as a pawn to further the story than an actual character. This is only worsened when you compare them to other Marvel villains like Thanos, Loki, Ronan and the Winter Soldier (Bucky) to name a few.

That being said, Ant-Man and The Wasp isn’t all bad. For me, the redeeming quality of this film, like in the first, is how the visuals are utilised to cleverly distort the size of objects and people. In the first film, who could forget the iconic Thomas the Tank Engine scene? Well, whilst there was no stand-out scene like that in the sequel, it was amusing to see a gigantic Hello Kitty Pez dispenser hurled out a car as well as an assortment of enlarged functioning Hot Wheels cars which are later used in a surprisingly enjoyable car chase set piece.

Ultimately though, Ant-Man and The Wasp is a minor disappointment. Arguably, this is through no fault of its own – after all, how can you easily follow a film like Infinity War, the culmination of ten years work? That being said, the repetitive, unoriginal humour, boring villains and unambitious storyline didn’t help. I also struggled to see the relevance it had to the overarching MCU storyline other than explaining where Ant-Man was during Infinity War and what occurs in the first credit scene. I'm hoping Endgame has the answers.