One of the podcasts I co-host, the SugaBros, has just completed its third season.
If you are not familiar with the show, the conceit is that my friend Nemo and I review every song the Sugababes released. We have just finished reviewing their third LP, Three.
If this strikes your fancy, you can catch up with the third season at the links below.
Following the events of the last movie, Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) are on the trail of the mysterious Minos Group.
Minos have their own plans for dealing with the survivors - a contest pitting the survivors of previous escape rooms against one another…
I wasn’t planning on reviewing this but after catching Words on Bathroom Walls, I was curious to check back in with star Taylor Russell’s other gig, fleeing enclosed spaces.
Looking back at the original Escape Room, I think I went into it with the wrong expectations.
I expected something smaller and cleverer.
Instead, it was a very silly but well-executed thriller.
I did not think much of the third act or the sequel-baiting tag.
Going into Part Deux, I expected ridiculousness.
And this movie is ridiculous.
It is just a series of set pieces, but it is carried off with such aplomb and imagination that it does not matter. In its colorful production and design, it feels like a cartoon cousin to Italian giallo, mixed with the excess of a Fast and Furious movie.
I loved it.
The movie has a great sense of what it is.
There is no attempt at depth, only pace.
It just cuts to the chase - after a flashback sequence that recaps the last movie, and a scene introducing us to the architect of the mazes, we are back with heroes Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller).
There is an efficient, classic slasher sequel brevity to this opening section, giving more time for the set pieces.
One weird thing about this movie is that I did not realize that I was not watching the theatrical version. The one I watched was the extended cut which features new beginning and ending sequences which completely alter the film. In this version, we get a new antagonist, with the tease of a new villain for a potential part 3.
Based on what I know of the theatrical version, this feels like an attempt to set up a sequel.
Color me interested.
In the future, surgery is the new sex.
But is it also a crime?
Every now and then I debate what this blog should be about.
I try to dabble in multiple genres and get out of Hollywood/American cinema.
The older I get I also feel more conscious of areas of film knowledge and theory that I am ignorant of.
But then there are cases like Crimes of the Future, where I feel like my prior knowledge is an impediment.
David Cronenberg is a filmmaker I was obsessed with years before I saw anything he made.
As a teen, I read books, interviews and plot summaries.
This meant when I watched his movies I did not feel like I could write anything about them - on the one hand, they were not surprising to watch.
On the other hand I was always second-guessing my thoughts about them - was I just regurgitating bits of critical analysis I read when I was 16?
I was also conscious that I had not watched a lot of Cronenberg’s movies - I have not seen anything he’s made since the 1980s.
I tried to catch up beforehand but life got in the way.
Maybe it was good that I was familiar with Cronenberg’s early work because this film feels like a return.
Albeit this is the most hopeful version of Cronenberg’s particular brand of horror.
What is fascinating about Cronenberg’s work is his obsession with bodily transformation - and the filmmaker’s position is not based on a moral binary.
To Cronenberg, bodily transformation is not inherently horrific.
It is merely another form of existence. The humans in this future have begun to lose their sense of pain and grow new organs with unknown functions.
The conflict in Crimes is that these transformations - particularly the creation of new organs - are the ultimate taboo and illegal.
There is a branch of law enforcement dedicated to registering and eliminating them.
What is also similar to Cronenberg’s early work is the script (which he wrote solo) which Carrie’s over certain traits: It is overly didactic, and features a lot of exposition through dialogue.
It also features Cronenberg’s trademark of offbeat character names: Timlin, Wippet, and Saul Tenser.
The movie does feel overly didactic at points, and I found some of the character interactions and decision-making a little hard to follow.
While it goes heavy on the exposition, it does not go too far into world-building.
I loved the bric-a-brac of the backgrounds - the rundown buildings, spare interiors and dead, half-sunken ships dotting the shoreline.
Instead of going into a crowded mode-en-scene, the filmmakers have taken elements away. This creates a sense of loneliness and desolation.
This is a world that is lived in but dying (or at least appears to be).
There are also some great audiovisual moments which carry over the film’s themes without dialogue - the first performance piece manages to convey a sense of the eroticism and rapture of the performers and the audience.
The one real detriment is the use of CGI in the surgery scenes - it is noticeably poor in rendering and detracts from the film’s focus on the flesh
The biggest change from Cronenberg’s early work is the performances.
Mortensen is a worn-down, deadpan centre.
I found Seydoux hard to read - she is as enamoured with the surgery as Mortensen’s Saul, but she seems to yearn for more.
She earnestly believes in their art - a love defined when she rejects the idea of performing an autopsy because there will be no consent.
I liked it but I wonder if it is working the way the filmmakers want.
Kristen Stewart delivers a highly mannered performance which manages to be the funniest character in the film.
It feels like she is trying to repress an orgasm in every scene.
Stewart is the most obvious example but the movie is funny.
Crimes of the Future may be a little slow and clunky, but it has a wonderfully deadpan sense of humour.
Even as the characters’ art might come off abject to our eyes, it is treated as matter-of-fact by the characters.
My mind is abuzz after this movie, but I am keen to watch more of Cronenberg’s work from across his filmography. Watching Crimes - and its parallels with his early work - made me feel like I had only touched the bread on a sandwich I needed to bite into.
The biggest takeaway from the movie is a sense of hope.
Instead of a dying world, we have been watching a snake shedding its skin.
One of the podcasts I co-host, the SugaBros, has just completed its third season.
If you are not familiar with the show, the conceit is that my friend Nemo and I review every song the Sugababes released. We have just finished reviewing their third LP, Three.
If this strikes your fancy, you can catch up with all three seasons at the links below.
ONE TOUCH (2000)
Super spy (Ryan Gosling) realises his employers are dirty.
Evil CIA people (Regé-Jean Page and Jessica Henwick) send a bad guy with an annoying haircut (Chris Evans) to kill our anti-hero.
To give him some weakness, Evil Moustache kidnaps a young girl (Julia Butters) Super Spy is friends with.
Cue many people dying and s*** blowing up.
A 200 million dollar attempt at a new spy action franchise, The Gray Man has plenty of bells and whistles.
Headlined by Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, The Gray Man is intended as an all-star vehicle for Netflix.
Instead it is a case of the Emperor has no clothes for its makers.
There is something lifeless about The Gray Man which I could not shake.
The characters and plotting have been done before.
There is no time to breathe - big set piece moments pass in seconds (while stuck atop a train, Gosling kills a baddie by using a passing reflection from a building window to aim).
Nothing about this movie feels exciting.
The flashbacks to establish Gosling’s humanity are so familiar it gets annoying in its predictability - it is yet another ‘heartless killer bonds with a child’ story, but with nothing new to add.
Gosling underplays so much he is rendered inert.
Chris Evans chews the scenery but his villain feels like the bad guy from a million action movies.
Billy Bob Thornton and Alfre Woodward collect pay checks.
Ana De Armas has found a film that gives her nothing to do beyond shoot and kill things.
The people I watched it with enjoyed it but even they pointed out how familiar the final showdown was.
The movie has a big budget but there is nothing about it that sticks.
Production designer Dennis Gassner - veteran of the James Bond franchise - lends the film some modernist flare (the club in the beginning is eye catching), but it all gets blurred into the background by the pacing and the muddy cinematography.
Like Ambulance, The Gray Man makes a lot of use of drone shots in place of camera movement, but to no real effect.
Increasing the sense of repetition, Henry Jackman’s score comes off as a series of variations of the same chords played on percussion.
What is infuriating is that there is little to differentiate The Gray Man from the dozens of DTV action movies that share its plot. Most of those movies are probably more fun to watch than this bloated mess.
If you are interested in watching an action movie about a one-man-army murdering people to rescue a child, there are better examples than The Gray Man.
Just re-watch The Nice Guys.
For centuries, bands of sailers known as hunters have scoured the seas, at war with the giant sea beasts who live within their depths.
Maisie (Zaria Angel-Hator) is a young orphan who is determined to follow her parents and become a hunter.
Stowing aboard a ship, she ends up thrown overboard during a battle.
Marooned with hunter Jacob (Karl Urban) and confronted by the formidable sea beast Red, Maisie comes up with a radical idea to get them home and, maybe, change the course of history…
Netflix is a gift and a curse.
A gift for discovering new movies I would not otherwise watch.
A curse because it has become a black hole where movies disappear.
The Sea Monster (directed by Chris Williams, one of the co-directors of Moana) feels like a movie that should be on the big screen.
I remember the shorts for this playing on Netflix’s Home Screen and I dismissed it. But then the reviews dropped and I had to check it out.
There is something wonderfully knowing about The Sea Monster. Yes, it is a monster movie, but it is also a movie about conservation, in a manner reminiscent of the more empathetic kid-saves-an-animal movies that came out through the nineties.
On top of this, it ends up being a story about the ways in which history is shaped to uphold empire.
This is not subtext - this is explicit through the film and is articulated by the characters.
It is also just a lot fun.
There is a cute animal sidekick who joins our heroes, but other than that The Sea Beast is all about living up to its title.
This movie is clearly an excuse for its filmmakers to live out their fantasies of monsters, swashbuckling and other seafaring derring-do.
If this movie came out when I was between 7-10, it probably would have been my favourite movie.
Alongside Big Red, we get a kraken, a giant crab and various whale-like entities.
The action is intense and well-directed - the camera emphasises the size and scale of its creatures from the perspective of its human characters.
We get some shots of Red’s facial expressions, but otherwise the filmmakers always view her and the other sea beasts with a human character to create a sense of their size.
Because the virtual camera stays earthbound, it actually feels like characters are in peril.
The cast also contribute to the movie’s grounding.
Zaria Angel-Hator is winning as Maisie. Enthusiastic but clear-eyed, she wants to be a hunter and the movie charts her journey to realising her dream was based on a lie.
Karl Urban is also good as Jacob, a veteran hunter who gets a meaty arc as Maisie helps him begin to reckon with the perspective of the creatures he has dedicated his life to destroying.
Because of her youth, Maisie is not as entrenched to the propaganda of the hunters, and she is able to get a
The standout of the supporting players is Jared Harris as Captain Crow, an Ahab-like captain who is obsessed with killing Red. He gives the character a conflicted sense of honour and vengeance that prevents the character from coming off as a simple villain.
What really marks the movie out is its unwillingness to treat its characters in purely black and white.
The movie is defined by its empathy - one of the key images of the movie is the countless harpoons sticking out of Red’s back.
This movie is built for the biggest screen possible - the set piece with the Kraken; the battle between the giant crab and Red; even the beautiful shot of our heroes watching the luminescence of the jellyfish as they swim past.
It never feels like it is talking down to its audience, with the weight of its ideas, but it is also in love with showing monsters smashing props, scenery and other monsters.
The Sea Beast works however you want it - it is a genuine four-quadrant movie.
The story of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), as related by his vampiric manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks).
This movie is way more fun than I thought it would be.
I think a few things were working in my favor:
Based on the hyperactive trailers my expectations were lowered. I have enjoyed some of Baz Luhrmann’s past work but I mostly find it overheated in its style and primary color emotions.
I am skeptical of most biopics, and a few days before Elvis I watched Milos Forman’s take on Andy Kaufman, Man on the Moon, which summed up my problems with the genre: an attempt to take on all the key events without a clear focus or throughline. It also felt like the film failed to remold the genre to suit its subject.
Anchored by a scorching performance from Austin Butler, Elvis careens through its central character’s life, attempting to mirror the sensation of his rocketing popularity - and his inevitable fall.
One thing I loved about the movie was how it energized key moments of recognition - the two I noticed were a young Elvis becoming enraptured by both blues and gospel within the course of a single scene, and Colonel Parker’s first sighting of Elvis’s effect on audiences.
Those scenes carry a charge that the movie never really reaches again. There is an energy of discovery, of inspiration, of transformation.
As the title character, Austin Butler is great. He has a solid handle on the familiar voice, but he never feels like an impersonator. His on-stage presentation carries a physical energy and sensuality that creates a visceral sense of Elvis’s star persona. Butler is so convincing that the scenes of lust and affection from audiences feel totally justified.
In his debut as a villain, Tom Hanks may have a wonky accent but otherwise it felt like perfect casting. You need someone incredibly likable to get under Elvis’s skin for so long, and Hanks’s projection of decency is the perfect cover for Parker’s hold on the rock star.
The movie is framed by Parker as an unreliable narrator, attempting to absolve himself of responsibility for Elvis’s demise.
While this is an interesting conceit, it does mean the movie falls afoul of the biopic’s key stumbling block - apart from a few moments, we are onlookers at Elvis. We never really get a sense of what he is thinking.
Maybe because the movie is based around a musician, and Luhrmann’s strength is audiovisual, Elvis works as a jukebox version of Elvis’s life. It is long but it never feels repetitive.
One underlying issue with the film is that it is the Cliff’s Notes version of Elvis’s life. Scenes where Elvis interacts with the black artists who built the genre he rode to stardom (including BB King, Big Mama Thornton and Little Richard) feel like missing scenes from the musical biopic parody Walk Hard. The movie highlights the effect Black music had on Elvis as a kid, but that is about it. The movie does include key snippets from across his life where he talks about the history of the genre, but it feels cursory.
The movie does try to bring up the subject early on, when it contrasts Elvis’s performances with the outrage of the white public and government representatives, but the movie loses any sense of Elvis’s place in American society and culture as soon as he is shipped off to serve in the Army. Just like the real-life figure, the movie loses what little edge it had.
Speaking of edge, if you are expecting the film to deal with Elvis’s relationship with a teenage Priscilla, forget about it.
It is omissions like this that make Elvis satisfying as anything other than a fun highlight reel of Elvis performing his songs.
It is a good time, but it is ultimately just a souped-up version of the familiar Elvis story.
