Thor: Ragnarok

Bringing What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi on board was the best decision Marvel made in relation to the third installment of the Thor films. With Thor: Ragnarok, Waititi has taken all that didn't work about the previous films and thrown it straight in the garbage, clearing the table for him to completely reinvent the franchise.

We rejoin the titular God of Thunder two years after the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which time he has been travelling around the universe in an attempt to learn as much about the Infinity Stones as possible. After finding out that it is Loki, not Odin, who sits on the throne of Asgard, Thor confronts his brother and travels with him to Earth in order to find Odin and return him to the throne - but ends up accidentally stranded on the junk planet Sakaar in the process, leaving Asgard vulnerable to attack from Hela, the Goddess of Death.

By pushing the plot to the background for much of its running time, Waititi is able to focus on the bits of the film he's actually interested in, such as the characters and their interactions with one another. It also means that the drama of Thor: Ragnarok is only ever serviceable at best. There's a balancing act going on here that I don't think Waititi executes perfectly, meaning that your enjoyment of Thor: Ragnarok is ultimately going to depend far more on if you Waititi's character direction than on the plot itself. 

Fortunately, I love Waititi. While the film undoubtedly lacks the emotional resonance of his previous films (most likely a by-product of this being the first of his movies that he hasn't also written), his unique voice still manages to shine through thanks to the amount of creative freedom he's clearly been given around the studio-mandated story beats. It's a hilarious movie thanks to the irreverent, naturalistic, quasi-improvisational sense of humour that made Waititi popular and that imbues the film with the kind of energy and originality that some other Marvel films have sorely lacked. As someone who was laughing throughout, I found Thor: Ragnarok to be among the better Marvel Studios films released in recent years.

The Revenant

Set in 1823, The Revenant is based loosely on the true story of Hugh Glass, a man who was left for dead by his fellow hunters after an attack from a Native American tribe. We follow him as he attempts to make his way through the wilderness and back to civilization, where the man who betrayed him remains unaware that not only is Hugh Glass still alive, but also determined to get his revenge.

Beyond the undeniably gorgeous cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki and the impressive "one take" action sequences that are littered throughout, The Revenant deserves none of the critical acclaim it has seen. An undeniably interesting concept, the story of Hugh Glass is wasted in a film that desperately reaches for depth that isn't there thanks to the ego of director Alejandro González Iñárritu. This ego shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone who has seen his previous film Birdman but it was easy to forgive in a movie that was legitimately entertaining, both on a technical level and as an interesting character piece (no matter how misguided its commentary on Hollywood may have been). It is harder to forgive here - winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Birdman seems to have inflated that ego even more, and it has manifested itself in a film that never allows you to forget that you are watching an Alejandro González Iñárritu Picture in all its glory. He's more interested in appearing great than he is in actually making a great film, something which when combined with a great cast and one of the best cinematographers in the world results in The Revenant being deceptively mediocre.

No matter how much DiCaprio went through during filming, his role in The Revenant is nothing more than "good enough", and it's a shame that an actor widely regarded as one of the best working today was critically acclaimed for a role which doesn't actually show why people think that. All the other name actors in the film are significantly better in their roles, something which just further highlights how strange the decision to nominate DiCaprio is. Tom Hardy and Domhnall Gleeson are obviously captivating as John Fitzgerald and Captain Andrew Henry respectively, but I'd also like to make special mention of Will Poulter. Seeing him give a genuinely interesting performance was actually one of the few things in The Revenant that I enjoyed without some kind of reservation, and I hope that we see more of this side of Poulter in the future.

Is The Revenant exactly what Iñárritu wanted it to be? Almost certainly, and at times it shines - but those times are few and far between, and as a whole The Revenant simply fails to be worth it.

Joy

It's time for another throwback month! Two reviews of films that came out at least one year ago. (Yes, I have not had time to go to the cinema this month)

Joy is not a good film. In fact, for the vast majority of its running time Joy is a consistently bad film, a somewhat decent story ruined by a director who clearly has no idea how to tell it. Narrated by the titular character's Grandmother (a decision made after the film had been shot, and it really shows), Joy is very loosely based on the story of Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop, and follows her as she comes up with the basic idea for the mop before creating a prototype and trying to sell it.

When I say that director David O. Russell has no idea how to tell this story, I mean it. From the films opening moments it is clear that he is out of his depth, a montage of sorts showing parts of Joy's life completely failing to make any kind of an impact thanks to the rushed way in which it is presented, sudden music cues and tonal shifts making it impossible to figure out what the film wants you to feel, never mind actually feel it. Even after that, the whole first act and much of the second is just a series of "and then..." scenes, events simply happening one after another rather than leading into each other, creating a film that fails to actually tell a coherent story for much of its running time. I'm not sure if it is fair to say that David O. Russell is a bad director (the consistent critical acclaim he has seen up until now is a fairly strong argument that he isn't), but his blatant inability to make a good film out of Joy should certainly be raising some eyebrows, especially given the elementary mistakes on display.

In many ways, Joy feels like the first draft of a script that was accidentally made into a feature-length movie. Littered with problems that should have been ironed out before filming started. Rather than trying to make the main character likeable, Joy instead aims to make everyone else so easy to hate that you end up rooting for Joy by default. Not helped by a lead actress that annoys every fibre of my being. I've said before that I've never been overly impressed with Jennifer Lawrence as an actress, the main reason being my inability to see her as anyone other than Jennifer Lawrence.

Too egotistical to play as a straight biopic but too bland and mindless to be anything else, Joy is ultimately little more than a gigantic misfire, a messy, badly directed film that wastes the few good scenes it contains.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

It is without question that the first film, Kingsman: The Secret Service, can be called one of the biggest surprises of the last few years. So, it’s also no surprise that the sequel was met with immense expectations. By bringing back the visionary director, the fun cast, and exhilarating action, Kingsman: The Golden Circle looked to be a worthy continuation of the world the original set up, but did it succeed? Spoiler alert... No, it did not.

Following an attack from a powerful drug cartel that devastates the Kingsman organisation, Kingsman: The Golden Circle follows Eggsy and Merlin as they travel to America in order to team-up with their American counterparts, the Statesman. It turns out that the Statesman have been looking after a somehow still alive Harry Hart since he was shot in the previous film, but the retrograde amnesia he's suffering from means he remembers nothing from his life as a Kingsman. Around the same time, the leader of the aforementioned drug cartel, the Americana-obsessed Poppy Adams, announces to the world that she's been poisoning her product, and won't release the antidote to her hundreds of millions of users around the world until the President of the USA ends the War on Drugs once and for all.

There's a lot going on, and that's just one of the many problems that Kingsman: The Golden Circle suffers from. Matthew Vaughn has admitted in interviews that if he'd known Kingsman was going to become a franchise then he wouldn't have killed off Harry Hart in the first film, but undoing that decision ends up costing a lot more than it's actually worth. We spend a lot of time jumping through hoops in order to explain and attempt to add some dramatic weight to Harry's return, but when all is said and done his character has no purpose in the film beyond merely establishing that he's still alive and available for future movies. 

As far as the American counterparts are concerned, their roles feel rather wasted. Those that received so much attention during Kingsman: The Golden Circle's marketing campaigns are ultimately little more than extended cameos. Channing Tatum may have been a focal point in trailers and posters, but he, much like Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges, has no purpose in the film - Elton John has more screen time than most of the Statesman crew combined, as well as being far more vital to the story. And maybe that would have been forgivable if the plot was more interesting. Unlike Kingsman: The Secret Service, which slowly doles out information about Richmond Valentine's plan to the audience as the Kingsman investigate (which in effect positions much of that film as a mystery), we're told the full extent and intent of Poppy Adams' plan early on in the film, and spend the rest of the time waiting for Eggsy and Merlin to catch up as they get distracted by the Statesman and the return of Harry. It's a pretty fundamental mishandling of an otherwise perfectly acceptable, albeit uninspired, plot that robs it of any urgency or intrigue it might have had, meaning that by the time the finale actually rolls around it all feels totally perfunctory. 

These plot problems are only made all the more damaging by the simple fact that the film-making of Kingsman: The Golden Circle isn't a patch on that of Kingsman: The Secret Service. Vaughn's approach made everything feel artificial and weightless, both physically and dramatically. There are a few action scenes here that could and should have been spectacular, but in attempting to top the now infamous church scene from the first film, Kingsman: The Golden Circle can't help but come across as trying far too hard. This is particularly noticeable during the film's opening and closing action sequences - they're at times virtually incomprehensible thanks to the swooping and diving from the camera, rapidly cutting from extreme close-up to extreme close-up in a way that ends up feeling far more reminiscent of a sequence of live-action comic book panels than it does a well shot and edited action scene.

But by far the biggest problem with Kingsman: The Golden Circle is that it lacks the kind of spirit, heart and creative drive that the first film had in droves. It's easy to forget that "fun spy flick" was only one part of what made Kingsman: The Secret Service so enjoyable - Eggsy's journey through the British class system and his subsequent rejection of the upper class was the real story of the film, working in tandem with Vaughn's own commentary on the ruling elite to create a surprisingly smart and subversive piece of satire.

Ultimately, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a film that simply lacks any real reason to exist from a creative or artistic perspective, and is instead content to be nothing more than a substandard spy movie. Kingsman: The Secret Service deserves a far better sequel than this.

It

Here we go, the most anticipated horror reboot since the Evil Dead in 2013... at least according to me. As a self confessed horror, thriller, gore, suspense super-fan, the 2017 remake of Stephen King's infamous It, filled me with excitement from the very first casting announcement through to the trailer and up to now as I type after having left the cinema in the dark nearly an hour ago.

Based on the 1986 novel, and thankfully not on the 1990 TV movie, the 2017 reboot is directed by Andy Muschietti with a screenplay from Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. Muschietti also directed the 2013 hit Mama, which was not particularly thought provoking but did it's job with jump scares and creepy children. It follows seven young outcasts who face their worst nightmare in the shape of an ancient, shape-shifting evil that emerges from the sewer every 27 years to prey on the town's children. Banding together over the course of one horrifying summer, the friends overcome their own personal fears to battle the murderous, bloodthirsty clown known as Pennywise.

It is almost as much a coming-of-age film as it is a horror thanks to the way that fears of the self-described "Losers' Club" often represent a more general fear of growing up, and the characters we follow throughout - particularly Bill, Bev, Eddie and Richie - are believable, authentic ones whose interactions with one another ring true. They're so well-developed and enjoyable to spend time around that one has to wonder if It would have still been a decent, entertaining movie even if the horror aspects hadn't have worked - I know for sure that my interest in the second part of this story comes more from seeing how these characters will have grown and changed over the best part of three decades than it does in seeing them fight Pennywise the Dancing Clown for a second time.

Which itself is a credit to It's young main cast, all of whom give great performances throughout - a good thing too, considering how easily the film would have fallen apart if even one of their performances hadn't been up to scratch. Obviously, Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard is excellent as the mouthy Richie, but surprisingly he doesn't overshadow the rest of the cast - with the sole exception of Chosen Jacobs (who unfortunately simply doesn't get enough screen-time to leave much of an impression as Mike Hanlon) the entire "Losers' Club" have their time in the spotlight. Particularly brilliant are Sophia Lillis as Bev, Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie and Jackson Robert Scott as Georgie - Lillis really helps sell a number of scenes that could have come across as clichéd with a weaker actress in the role.

But that's not to say that It stumbles when it comes to the horror - quite the contrary, in fact. For large stretches of it's running time It operates more as a montage of brilliant little set-pieces than it does a traditional narrative. Between director Andy Muschietti's firm grasp of tone throughout, Chung-hoon Chung's gorgeous cinematography and a brilliantly unrestrained performance from Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, It manages to achieve the effect it is going for, whether that be a subtly creepy moment in a library, outright terror in a darkened garage and everything in between. There are a lot of elements in It that could have wound up feeling outdated or even cheesy in 2017 (it's about a child-eating clown who lives in a haunted house, after all), but from literally the opening scene It is performing a careful balancing act that ensures that's never the case.

There are minor nitpicks to made but they do little to hurt It in the grand scheme of things thanks to how enjoyable it is when it's firing on all cylinders. All in all, It ends up being the film that I imagine it was always meant to be - an enormously entertaining and effective horror with slightly more going on under the surface than most, and one I hope to revisit sooner rather than later.

Moana

I have seen Moana 10 times. That means I have watched this film once a month since it was first released in the UK last December. I regret nothing. With that said, I have finally compiled my thoughts and feelings into one small-ish post. 

Moana can't have been an easy film to make. Three years on and it has become all the more clear the kind of impact that Frozen really had - despite being hideously awful... sorry not sorry. Anything attempting to get away with a "one true love's kiss" is going to seem trite and old-fashioned after Frozen went about deconstructing many of the tropes most closely associated with these kind of films, and that puts Moana in a very difficult position. How does a princess movie follow the film that killed the princess movie?

Moana's answer to that question is a simple but effective one - move with the times. The cliches so expertly refuted by Frozen are instead ignored entirely by Moana, making it feel like just as much of an evolution of the princess movie as Frozen does, albeit in a quieter, less obvious way. Our main character is a princess in status only, and there isn't a romantic subplot or a damsel in distress to be found within throwing distance of the film - in fact, she may well be the single most capable female heroine Disney have ever created, a natural leader right from the start of the movie played perfectly by young Auli'i Cravalho.

In a lot of ways Moana feels like a return to form for Walt Disney Animation Studios, really managing to recapture the magic of the Disney Renaissance era for the first time. By my reckoning, this is their first film to really explore another culture since Mulan, and Moana makes the most of it. The legends and myths used by Moana feel authentic, and the plot - which sees Moana sailing across the sea in order to deliver demigod Māui to the goddess Te Fiti - is made all the more engaging, all the richer for it. It feels as if there is an expansive history informing everything that happens in the film, helping flesh out this world beyond what we see of it.

Not that what we do see of it is underwhelming - Moana is gorgeous, probably one of the best looking films of 2016 if not 2017 too. There are subtleties to the facial expressions and movements of the characters that make them feel more real than ever, and the vivid colours and inventive visuals on display set the film apart from predecessors, especially when combined with the themes that Moana is playing with and the spiritual nature of the story being told. Whether it be in the wonderful mix of animation styles that accompanies the song You're Welcome or the spectacularly imposing figure of antagonist Te Kā, Moana is a treat for the eyes throughout.

Realistically, Moana almost certainly won't be as popular as Frozen - I simply can't see it registering with that film's primary audience in the same way - but there is no doubt in my mind that it deserves to be. In successfully providing all the heart, energy and charm that you'd expect from a traditional Disney film without bringing nearly 80 years of baggage along for the ride, directors John Musker and Ron Clements have created one of the most purely enjoyable movies of the year, one that really feels like something special even while you're watching it - and one that deserves to be seen several times by as many people as possible.

Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan is often accused of being an emotionless director, and while it's a criticism I've only ever half agreed with in the past, Dunkirk certainly doesn't provide much of a counter-argument. It's a movie he's been wanting to make for the last 25 years, one he deliberately put on the back-burner until he felt that he had enough experience directing blockbusters to do it justice.

Dunkirk is finely tuned and impeccably crafted, but there's simply not much more to it than that. By weaving through three overlapping time-frames that each follow a different part of the evacuation - land, sea and air - Nolan is able to ensure that the pace never dips for even a moment while also giving Dunkirk the ability to explore three very different types of action, and it is this variation that allows the film to remain spectacular throughout. It is, in effect, a roller-coaster, and as such its entertainment value comes far more from the up and downs along the way than than it does actually reaching its destination.

And from that perspective Dunkirk is difficult to fault, keeping its audience on the edge of their seats from its opening scene to its final minutes thanks to Nolan's sheer ability behind the camera. Interestingly for a war film, we only ever catch a mere glimpse of the enemy soldiers, a decision that only heightens the tension - danger could come from any direction at any time, keeping the characters we follow on the back foot throughout as they merely try to survive impossible odds rather than achieve any grand victory. Between excellent staging, a preference for practical effects and some truly brilliant sound design, Nolan ensures that we're right alongside these soldiers as they find themselves trapped on sinking ships or unable to hide from the enemy places screaming overhead, and the result is deeply engaging, at least in the moment. But to what end? All this craft is ultimately in service of a film that feels surprisingly shallow and almost entirely uninterested in the events themselves, to the point where one has to wonder why Nolan even wanted to make Dunkirk. For all the effort that went into making it as historically accurate as possible, Dunkirk could be set on another planet without altering the thrust of the story or its function thanks to Nolan's unwillingness to really have a viewpoint or opinion.

It's this distancing effect that robs Dunkirk of much of the long-term impact it could have had, and while it might not be as big a deal in other circumstances, Dunkirk's lack of characters worth caring about only makes the aforementioned lack of perspective and purpose all the more noticeable. With the sole exception of Mark Rylance's Mr Dawson, the people we follow throughout Dunkirk are less definable characters and more avatars for us to experience the evacuation through - I'd have a hard time assigning any of them with a personality trait or characteristic, never mind remembering their names. And it's not that the performances are lacking - everyone from lead actor Fionn Whitehead to Tom Hardy to Harry Styles are giving it their all - it's simply that there is very little on the page for them to work with.

Ultimately, Dunkirk shows us a Christopher Nolan who rather than testing himself as a director and story-teller has chosen to play to his strengths and all but entirely ignore his weaknesses, and while it still ends up being quite the feat of film-making from a technical perspective, it also means that it never risks being a genuinely great movie.