OUT NOW: Companion (Drew Hancock, 2025)

When Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) join their friends for a weekend getaway in the woods, the young couple find themselves thrown into a situation that throws the future of their relationship into question:

Can our lovebirds save their love?

Maybe I have seen too many movies like this. 

Maybe I am just getting old.

Companion is a fun movie.

It takes a set-up that could be the starting point for a film noir or a thriller:

Our protagonist learns their lover has betrayed them as part of a scheme to make money.

In this case (spoilers) the patsy is a robot.

 

And unlike noir, the homme fatal is an idiot who manages to make the situation worse.

Despite some pitch-black laughs, this is a straight ahead thriller.

Sophie Thatcher is effective in the lead role, and the rest of the cast are having a good time puncturing their archetypes (Megan Suri is hilarious). 

While Jack Quaid played a similar role in Scream, he has more space here as the villain. Initially it appears his amiable presentation appears to be a schtick, a facade he uses to get what he wants.

As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that he is so good at appearing to be a ‘nice guy’ because he believes he is one.

There is some interesting thematic meat here. The film is trying to be a metaphor for an abusive relationship, and what makes this aspect effective is both Quaid’s casting, and the way he plays the character as a self-pitying narcissist - he is enough of an asshole to use his robot companion as a murder weapon, but he is so self-involved that he feels the need to confess all and try to rehabilitate how she perceives him.

I am not that familiar with Quaid’s work, but on the basis of this performance, I could not help but think of how effective his father Dennis is at puncturing archetypes of masculinity (Far From Heaven is the easy pull, but even in a straightforward allegory like Enemy Mine, he is sending up the idea of the ‘ugly American’).

Here Quaid is playing a shade of toxic masculinity that is distinct from the kind Dennis plays.

Jack Quaid cannot project that kind of brash machismo. Instead he is playing up vulnerability and assumed empathy, a perception of non-threat.

Thankfully, this movie is not some weighty treatise. It is a fun little thriller, nothing more and nothing less.

I wish it found a few more ways to put our heroine in jeopardy. And while there are some clever uses of the machine’s functionality, the film feels like it could be a little smarter.

That last word kind of sums up the movie: it is a solid genre picture that gets the job done, but it does feel like it leaves meat on the table.

It is not nearly as funny or weird as the premise makes it out to be.

But still, on its own terms, Companion is a good time.

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OUT NOW: Harbin (Woo Min-ho, 2024)

The story of resistance fighter Ahn Jung-geun (Hyun Bin), and his plan to assassinate Resident-General Itō Hirobumi (Lily Franky), the Japanese governor of occupied Korea. 

Set against the Korean resistance to Japanese occupation, Harbin was mMade before the recent impeachment, but feels charged with a nationalistic pride in the indefatigability of the Korean people against oppression.

While elements of the film play with genre, particularly the thriller, its focus is not what you would expect.

The film’s most unique feature is that it is centred around a central character who is faulted for his empathy.

That embrace of empathy and belief in people is the film’s guiding star.

There are only a few action sequences, but the film is less concerned with using these scenes to create a sense of excitement.  

The opening sequence foregrounds the inhumanity and horror of combat. The battle turns into bodies writhing about in mud, their uniforms completely obscured, rendering them indistinguishable from each other. There is no sense of glory here.

That scene is the only time our protagonists are shown in victory. The later setpieces (the fight on the train, the ambush at the safehouse) are essentially escapes from danger. 

Our hero’s greatest strength - his belief in people - is framed as a weakness. In a world where anyone can turn out to be a traitor he is a liability.

That theme of radical empathy is an interesting idea for what is basically a war movie, but it is somewhat less cathartic in execution. 

The film makes a lot of use of flashbacks in its third act, to reveal character motivation, and build a sense of empathy and moral ambiguity, but their inclusion does come off a little clunky, if not a little deflating in terms of maintaining tension.

An enjoyable film, although it feels like its themes are teasing a more interesting one.

Related

Phantom

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OUT NOW: Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024)

The pope is dead.

It falls to Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) to oversee the conclave to elect his successor.

Already riddled with self-doubt about his vocation, Lawrence finds himself contending with factional infighting, conspiracy and secrets which might shake the Catholic Church to its foundation.

Conclave is a thriller about political power - the factional infighting, the weighing of different interests.

Considering the film is largely people in rooms, I was impressed at how dynamic and exciting it was.

Based on a novel by Robert Harris, Conclave plays like a great beach read - starting with a great hook and slowly introducing a series of escalating threats that our flawed protagonist seems ill-equipped to thwart.

I love a locked-room mystery and this is a good one.

The fact that it manages to raise the stakes without introducing a gun and only minimal violence (which almost plays like a reprieve from the mind games). 

Taking place in the backrooms of power, Conclave is about stripping aside the idealism from the pursuit of power.

This is a high stakes game, where ideals get tossed aside in favour of hard-headed realpolitik.

Our protagonist tries to preserve a sense of decorum, tradition, and objectivity.

He ultimately is forced to realise that this is a fiction.

The scene of Laurence breaking the seal on the dead pontiff’s chamber is the film’s crossing of the Rubicon.

The actual act is shot from multiple angles, treating this moment as a crossed line.

Beyond this point, all attempts to maintain proceedings are a pretence.  

Leaving the movie, I had only one thought. 

This is great, but watching it on the cusp of a second Trump presidency, and with facism seemingly encouraged around the world, it felt almost naive.

Factional infighting and ideological struggles within institutions will never go away, but Conclave feels reflective of a philosophy and a strategy that has reached its endpoint

In the film, the rabidly conservative cardinal is repelled, and the collective makes a wiser choice than the “lesser evil” strategy the film has been focused upon. .

A film with such clarity about the way politics works, and the way institutions operate, is ultimately an appeal to faith - if not in the almighty, then in the collective will of people to make the right choice.

Well-acted, very funny and carrying its meaty themes with a deft touch, Conclave is a fun time.

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Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

A Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) is attempting to use technology from the future to bring an end to the world.

It falls to a shadowy secret agent (John David Washington) to stop him.

I did not catch Tenet in theatres (for obvious reasons).

I am not the biggest Nolan fan so I just never caught up with it.

I caught a recent IMAX re-release, and I am so glad I waited.

This is cinema on an epic scale, a scale we just do not get any more, in 2020 or 2024.

Just in terms of scope, this movie is incredible - the opera house, filled with extras, the plane crashing into the hanger, the catamaran race, the final battle, even Elisabeth Debicki using her huge frame to open the front door from the backseat.

Everything in this movie is so physically immense.

Nolan is famously fetishistic about using filming and favouring practical effects - this movie totally validates that position.

 

 A movie that is simultaneously aiming to be a crowd pleaser while acting as a complete rejection of contemporary trends among its contemporaries.

I will not be saying anything new, but if all of Nolan’s nods to James Bond, this feels the most evocative of 007’s globetrotting.He even managed to find some new, exotic locations - the freeport, the secret Russian city, even the offshore wind farm are all visually distinctive and different.

It is hard to not spend most of this review on the background and the scale.

Is John David Washington good? Or is it just that he sounds like his dad?

 

There are times where he works as a cool, professional spy (or the star of an action movie about such a character).

He handles the few one-liners well.

It might be a George Lazenby - he is not terrible but he cannot sustain or stretch outside a certain emotional bandwidth.

There are times where he comes across as effectively wry and detached - but in scenes requiring more open displays of emotion, of vulnerability, any scene with Debicki’s subplot.

He rings hollow.

He has better chemistry with Robert Pattinson.

Pattinson - getting to play the Protagonist’s accomplice - is a welcome dose of charisma. He is so charming and conveys such a bond with Washington that their final farewell.

Do the emotional stakes work? Kinda.

The Protagonist is a bit of a cypher.

The final reveal injects a movement of emotion - it does not quite have the emotional catharsis intended. 

I was so overwhelmed by the experience of the movie it did not matter in the theatre.

Watching it over four years after its release, Tenet hit like a splash of cold water.

Thanks to a lot of poorly integrated greenscreen and quickly-rendered CGI, so many blockbusters feel hermetically sealed.

Could I follow what was going on?

Kind of. 

Could I understand what people were saying? No, and I couldn't care less.

I loved watching this movie.

I find I never rewatch Christopher Nolan movies. I am completely sucked in watching them on the big screen.

They are meant to be viewed in a theatre on the biggest screen.

While I found the movie’s specifics start to fade, what lingered were the emotions: Pattinson’s sad smile as he farewells his friend; the nihilism of Branagh’s mission, overshadowed by death.

The movie does not have a powerful emotional motor, a cathartic final impact. It does not land what it believes it is aiming for.

But there is something there buried under the amazing stunts and photography:

A faith in human beings, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the lives of others.

It is an imperfect beast, and not exactly sure how to express what it wants to convey. 

But the attempt is still worth watching.

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