IN THEATRES: Wonder Woman

It's been 75 years in the making, but feminist/psychologist/S&M enthusiast William Moulton Marston's creation has finally made the leap to the big screen in her own adventure.

Ya'll know the gist. Sexy man Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crash-lands on an island populated by Amazon warriors. The youngest of them, Diana, decides to return with him to Man's world to defeat Ares and end all wars.

Wonder Woman was the first of the new DC movies I've had any interest in seeing, and I was still worried it was going to be crap. On the one hand, the creative team are solid. Patty Jenkins is no Zack Snyder and the writers had solid pedigrees. Plus it has walking charm factory Chris Pine in it. And there's no denying the novelty of this being the character's first big screen movie. On the other hand, Gal Gadot has not yet proven her acting abilities, Jenkins hasn't made a feature since 2003 and the production woes of previous DC movies made me suspicious that we were being sold a bill of goods.

Well... the movie's good. Really good. I'll have to let it sit for awhile to see how if it sticks, but it's a heck of a lot better than the rest of the movies in this new DC stable.

Thanks to its period setting, the movie insulated from all the previous movies, and Patty Jenkins directs the movie with a completely different style and intent than Zack Snyder and David Ayer. You don't see many action movies where the emphasis is on the effects of the gunfire and explosions. While Wonder Woman is often referenced as being extremely empathetic and moral, Jenkins actually makes that empathy a part of her directorial perspective. Even when the movie is not from Diana's point of view, her sensitivity to human cruelty and weakness is filtered throughout the movie. Unlike Zack Snyder's sterile, pornographic focus on CG destruction, this is a diegesis where pain and death are acknowledged, and don't get pushed aside. Instead, they really are the focus.

First, lets talk  influences. There are two big ones: Superman: The Movie and the first Captain America. The narrative structure vaguely resembles the former - we start on Diana as a child, growing up in Themyscira and learning how to become a warrior. There is also a scene in an alley which echoes Clark Kent and Lois Lane's confrontation with the mugger. If you want to stretch, the film's focus on Diana recognising what her purpose is, is roughly equivalent to Superman's arc in the 1978 movie. 

Because of its period setting, Wonder Woman can't help but remind one of Captain America: The First Avenger. You have a world war, you have an earnest hero, you have German villains and schemes to perpetuate the war with super weapons. You even have a motley crew of soldiers who assist our heroes in foiling the bad guys' scheme; and a final sequence predicated on a major character sacrificing himself by destroying a plane carrying a super weapon.

However, as a movie, Wonder Woman is better constructed, and does not warp its story to fit into a broader narrative (the sequence which derails The First Avenger). While the top and tail narrator segments tie in to Batman versus Superman, the movie is not directly referenced, and there are no cameos from the other movies to call back (or forward) to other movies. It feels like a story with a beginning, middle and end.

One of the biggest surprises is Gadot in the title role. I found her incredibly wooden in the Fast and Furious movies, but here she is far more vibrant and well-rounded than I expected. Over-earnest but not stupid, knowledgable but with no real world experience, Gadot is really good as Diana. She is far more engaging than either of her BvS co-stars, and has the benefit of a solid script and strong direction that (I'm betting) minimised her weaknesses to make sure that her performance was up to par. Her supporting cast help share the load, but as the centre of this story, Gadot is terrific. I don't think she is as instantly winning as Chris Evan's Steve Rogers or Chris Reeve's Clark Kent, but she is really strong. More power to her.

If the movie has an MVP, it is Chris Pine - if he was not in the movie, I don't know if it would work as well. The movie is as much Steve Trevor's development as it is Diana's. Unlike her, he is a spy, someone who is willing to compromise and do what needs to be done to accomplish goals which might not even be that good. Over the course of the movie, as Diana learns about Man's world, Steve begins to view the world through her eyes, and he slowly rediscovers his own sense of right and wrong.

This kind of character arc is a strategy that DC movies should use more often. Unlike Marvel, DC's heroes are less human and more aspirational - they are mythic figures, more like gods than human beings. Outside of their origin stories, having an arc does not make sense for these characters. What Wonder Woman does is give an emotional arc to a human character who is affected by the hero/ine. Their relationship is the heart of the movie, and their shared evolution is what makes this movie as strong as it is, despite some flaws.

The most obvious is pretty cosmetic. While the action scenes work (and don't go on too long), I'm not a fan of speed-ramping. There's not too much of it, but it adds nothing to the viewing experience.

The main thing the movie is missing is an iconic musical score. I'm meh on the theme they introduced for her in BvS - it works fine as a stinger, but it's not strong enough to hang a movie on.  There is not enough of a melody to it, and it only works as a (brief) action cue. This score needed something more empathetic and, uh, heroic, ala John  Williams' Superman  theme or Alan Silvestri's underrated Captain America March. It just lacks soul.

I'm not even sure if this is a criticism (because I'm still debating it) is the villain. Taken purely as an antagonist, Ares is somewhat flawed. He is introduced extremely late, which means the conflict feels a little under-powered. The main problem is that there is no 'fall in hate' moment - you need a moment, either early or in Act Two, where the hero and villain meet. The movie is based on a concept rather than an antagonist and that is hard to pull off in a movie that requires violent resolution.

In the movie's favour, you could argue that Ares is ultimately is less important than Diana's realisation that the world is not based on an easy binary of 'good' and 'evil'. She has to recognise that ultimately he is not the source of humanity's destructive impulses, merely an agitator of them. In this respect - juxtaposing Diana's naive worldview against grim reality - her arc works far better than the stunted revisionism of the previous DC movies. Here, the movie's emphasis on collateral damage, and the movie's message, is the inverse of the previous Snyder-led movies.

While those movies seemed obsessed with destruction and the negative effects of having such powerful figures in the world, they did not have a strong central focus on their main characters: Superman remains a total blank, and we've had two movies with him already. Wonder Woman is rooted in its central character, her growth, and (most importantly) how that growth is catalysed. During the action sequences, the emphasis is not on visceral impact or making cool shots, it's on Diana's reactions to the violence and pain around her. The Western Front is the perfect setting for her arc, foregrounding human cruelty at its most mechanised and wide-scale.

While the literary Wonder Woman's first war was WW2, setting the movie during the Great War makes thematic sense, by testing her idealism and clearly drawn sense of morality against one of the most immoral repugnant periods in human history.

Those things aside, Wonder Woman is a really good movie that manages to heft some surprisingly meaty thematic content with action, humour and a welcome dollop of humanity. I couldn't give a toss about what this means for future comic book movies. This is a good movie that stands on its own, and incidentally gives one of pop culture's most iconic characters a solid cinematic showcase. 

DOUBLE WHAMMY: War On Everyone & American Honey

The Midnight Ramble takes a look back at two flicks that would and should have been reviewed last year, War On Everyone and American Honey. 

War On Everyone
Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, this was super high on my list of 'must-see' movies last year. His previous movie, The Guard, was my favourite from that year, and the trailers made this movie feel like an American cousin to that flick.

Two corrupt cops (Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Pena) spend their days blackmailing criminals. When they sniff out a bigger fish, the tables are turned...

I am sad to report that this movie was kind of disappointing. There is a hip archness to the whole flick which I could never click into. I've been struggling to get my finger on what my problem with this movie is, and this is the best I can come up with: it feels like I have seen it before. 

This movie feels like a Tarantino ripoff from the mid-nineties: too-cool characters operating outside the law, pontificating on pop culture and philosophy while they engage in drugs/robbery/hesits/porn etc. All the parts are there, but they don't end up amounting to anything. It feels like empty pastiche with no purpose. Compounding this staleness, this movie committed a serious screen-writing sin, in that every character seemed to be speaking with the same voice. Coming from a writer like McDonagh, it's really disappointing. 

For the first forty minutes I was struggling to get invested. Once the plot clicked into view, the movie started to gel. But it was clear I was not going to love these characters like I did Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle in The Guard.

Pena is good in his role, but there was nothing sympathetic or just interesting about him. Meanwhile Skarsgard's character is dealing with some kind of unspoken trauma. This would be fine, but it requires a strong actor whose mere presence can fill out these gaps. Skarsgard is fine, but he does not have that kind of charisma. The pair's dynamic never really comes into focus -- Skarsgard is a bit dumber and haunted, but that's about it. There's no real spark between them that makes you want to watch them.

Despite these criticisms the movie is not a total loss. A bad John Michael McDonagh is still better than most stuff out there. Stephanie Sigman (Miss Bella) and Tessa Thompson (Creed) are good as our antiheroes' significant others, but they are really just side characters. Theo James is also okay as the bad guy, James Mangin. The problem is that they are all hampered by the same vacuous-ness that runs through the whole movie. The one interesting character is Caleb Landry Jones as Mangin's weedy little henchman, but even then, he doesn't hold a candle to the minor characters of McDonagh's earlier films.

The one stylistic choice that really clicked with me was the use of Glen Campbell's music. Every scene with a Campbell song suddenly brings this movie into focus. Skarsgard's character is defined by his love for Campbell's music, which gives the character his one sliver of pathos. My favourite sequence involves Skarsgard and Thompson dancing to Campbell's 'Rhinestone Cowboy' through his house. It's the one scene where the movie drops trying to be clever and just has fun.

Overall, War on Everyone is not as funny or as clever as it thinks it is. 

American Honey

Written and directed by Fish Tank's Andrea Arnold, American Honey stars newcomer Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf in a free-wheeling story about a group of young'uns road-tripping across middle America.

Unlike War on Everyone, this movie was not on my radar until late last year. I was a fan of Fish Tank, and this looked to be built on similar parts: an unknown lead, and a story about young people at the fringes of society. 

Lane plays Star, a teen who is plucked off the street by a van full of kids led by Krystal (Riley Keogh) and Jake (LaBeouf). This 'crew' go from city to city selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. While learning the ropes, Star falls for Jake, whose daredevil antics and jealous rage become her introduction to adult relationships.

After the wobble of her Wuthering Heights adaptation, Andrea Arnold returns to a story about contemporary youth, in the mould of her excellent Fish Tank. There is very little plot, beyond the core premise, and like that previous effort, a lot of its effect is derived from the pairing of an established thespian with a non-actor.

As Star's lover/mentor, Shia LaBeouf is fantastic. Simultaneously balancing adult urges and powered by childlike impulses, Jake is the role LaBeouf was born to play. A few years away from his various offscreen antics, LaBeouf is back in the business of being a character actor, and American Honey hopefully inaugurates the beginning of LaBeouf being taken seriously.

The heart and soul of the movie is Sasha Lane. Like her character, Lane was literally picked off the street by Arnold, who spotted her on a beach during Spring Break. Lane is so natural and unaffected, it is hard to look away. She has a unique charisma that makes her the centre of every scene. Even when other characters (like LaBeouf) take centre-stage, I found my gaze going to Lane, to register her reactions to whatever is going on. She is really fantastic. 

This movie is over two and a half hours long, and yet you never feel it.While there is no real plot, the movie is always moving and spinning in different directions every few minutes. There is a tension and an unpredictability to the story which make sit completely riveting. Arnold's approach has been the downfall of so many indie helmers, but the difference is that Arnold keeps a tight rein on the movie's most propulsive elements: its characters. 

American Honey has not really received much hype down here, so if you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's worth the time.

Whitney: Can I Be Me

The latest documentary from Nick Broomfield (and co-director Rudi Dolezal), Whitney: Can I Be Me is a warts-and-all retelling of megastar Whitney Houston's life and tragic death.

Whitney Huston was one of the first singers I knew by name. One of my first musical memories is hearing the soundtrack to The Bodyguard blaring from the radio. Other than that, I went into this movie knowing almost nothing about Houston beyond the key bullet points. A few people in the audience seemed to know more of the stories in the documentary, so I'm assuming a lot of this material is not new.

I found it all fascinating. Houston is one of those singers who always felt a little too big and remote for me to latch onto (kind of like Beyonce now), but the way this documentary works is like a sledgehammer, shattering Houston's porcelain image to reveal the fragile humanity behind the hit records and big voice.

The film's thesis is simple: the ingredients for Huston's rise and fall were there from the beginning, and her image as a pristine pop singer only exuberated the cracks which were already there. Pre-fame, Houston was just an ordinary kid growing up in New Jersey. While Bobby Brown is treated as her personal Satan, tempting her toward her doom, Houston was familiar with drugs from a young age. With fame and success, her dalliance became a full-blown addiction, compounded by her marriage to self-styled bad boy Bobby Brown. It then fell to her retinue of family and friends, all on the payroll, to get her out of trouble. Too intoxicated with keeping their personal gravy train running, they did nothing, and Huston's demise was inevitable.

This movie had me thinking a lot about the Kuleshov effect (Google it). Watching footage of Houston while various voices from her past attempt to illuminate her personality feels simultaneously immersive and distancing. It makes you consider just what is really going on when the exhausted singer is staring at a mirror after a show, or when Bobby Brown wraps his arm around her friend Robyn Crawford's neck and poses for the camera. The effect is as baffling as it is revelatory.

Forced to construct his subject from the outside looking in, and without the input of her family (outside of existing archive footage), the portrait Broomfield and Dolezal develops of a poor girl with low self-esteem, a driven, religious mother and a conflicted sexuality. The most fascinating conflict is the one within Huston herself -- between the girl she was, and the bland, all American persona she embraced, and then felt she had to reject. It's a conflict that bubbles throughout the film.

In the years preceding her death, Houston had gone from pop royalty to a pop culture punchline, her histrionics as a performer ridiculed and her personal life treated as another celebrity train-wreck. Combined with testimony from friends and workmates (including a stylist and a former bodyguard), Houston emerges as a flawed but extremely sympathetic figure. Rather than an arrogant buffoon, she comes off as a trapped,  immature woman who was unable to pull herself free of the influences that were bringing her down. She is a woman under siege, and every time it feels like she will break free, something will happen, self-created or otherwise, to scupper her escape.

The biggest revelation of the documentary is the figure of Robyn Crawford, Houston's best friend since childhood and -- since she did not participate in the documentary -- rumoured lover. If there is an unsung hero(ine) in this story it is Crawford. The first person to raise the alarm about Houston's spiralling addictions in the eighties, Crawford was shunned and ignored by Houston's family, who were already suspicious of their bond. When Bobby Brown enters the picture, Robyn becomes her guardian angel (at one point, the former bodyguard recalls Crawford beating Brown up). In the end, Bobby won and Crawford disappeared, leaving Houston with no real close friends.

Always portrayed as the villain who brought her down, Brown emerges as a gormless idiot, and a mutual partner in Houston's downfall. Seemingly unable to comprehend his wife's troubles, he seems more concerned with feeding his ego than helping his spouse. Brought together by similar backgrounds, they shared each others' addictions, fed and attacked each other's egos, and sent Huston on a downward spiral she could not get out of.

It's not all depressing. Broomfield and Dolezal utilise home movies and previously unseen footage from an aborted documentary of her 1999 tour to show the Houston behind the perfect veneer: joking with her friends; playing around in her hotel room; going on holidays with her daughter. In one unintentionally meta-textual scene she and Bobby re-enact one of the confrontation scenes from the Ike-Tina Turner movie What's Love Got To Do With It. Midway through, Huston takes over and begins to re-write the scene, shifting the power from Bobby/Ike to Tina/herself, so that both women can win. It's moments like this where Broomfield and Dolezal's movie is at its strongest, letting his star take the reins and run the show. While the interweaving of eyewitnesses and montage work well, it is on-the-fly vignettes like this which feel the most insightful into Huston's personality.

For a movie about someone I knew almost nothing about, this movie is a sucker punch. The finale is a combination of footage and stills, accompanied by a live recording of Houston singing. As the credits begin, the music cuts out, leaving only images of Houston in life smiling straight at the viewer. It's an unsettling effect, and at this point it felt like the full weight of Houston's life hit me all at once.

Like his subject, Broomfield and Dolezal's film is obsessed with finding the real Whitney. And it gets damn close. I would have liked more input from Crawford and Houston's mother Cissy (present via some rather chilly segments from her interview with Oprah after Huston's death); and I would have also like more information about Huston's activities post-divorce (the movie cuts from that moment to her death in 2012), such as the release of her comeback album in 2009 or her long-in-development movie project, the remake of the 1976 musical Sparkle, which was released a few months after her death.

Ultimately, Can I Be Me is an extremely empathetic look at a woman who never had a chance to be herself. Highly recommended.

After reviewing Can I Be Me, I went back and listened to Houston's first album. You can find the review here.

IN THEATRES: John Wick, Chapter 2

It has been a few months since its release everywhere else, but John Wick 2 is finally here! YAY! 

The first John Wick re-acquainted me with my love of watching bad people getting shot in the face. Cool, clean and simple, it felt like a glimpse into what a seventies action movie would look like if the eighties had never happened. There is an economy and intelligence to the way those movies (generally directed by Don Segiel  and Walter Hill) were made that we don't see enough of any more (it's the same reason I loved Mad Max: Fury Road and Dredd).

After the events of the first film, John Wick is trying to rebuild his life when he is paid a visit by Italian crime boss Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio). Wick owes him a favour after D'Antonio helped him get out of the game the first time around. With the 'boogeyman' back in the game, D'Antonio is here to collect. Soon, Wick is back on the run with a massive bounty on his head...

Keanu Reeves has made a few great action movies which got sequels. This is far and away the best one. 

Like Raid 2, this is bigger in scope, and like that movie, it loses a bit of the intensity. But this is no Matrix Reloaded. The movie is boatloads of fun, filled with inventive set pieces, eye popping art direction and plenty of pitch black humour.

With his sunken eyes and hangdog face, Reeves is starting to look his age, and that world-weariness works for the role: John Wick is the modern successor to the taciturn gunmen Lee Marvin, Chuck Bronson and Steve McQueen used to play in the sixties and seventies. Like those actors, Reeves is more of a presence than an actor. His range is extremely limited, and his off-kilter delivery has sunk him more times than not. But in a role like Wick, or Neo or Ted, his stiffness gives him an otherworldly quality that works for those roles.

The same goes for Common, playing Wick's rival Cassian. Like Reeves, he is not the best actor in the world, but the minimalist aesthetic of the Wick-verse fits him perfectly. Though it is hard to tell, it looks like he does most of his own action. He moves well, and with no wasted motion.

Playing another killer on Wick's tail, Ruby Rose's scenes feel like clips from Young Rosa Klebb Chronicles. Good female characters are hard to come by in action movies -- they are either victims or sexpots (or both). Apart from one weird butt shot, her character is constructed in the same economical fashion as the other assassins. Her character is mute, which actually adds to the role. I cannot see her Australian accent passing muster in this world.

The supporting cast from the original return. As the Continental staff, Ian McShane and Lance Reddick continue to be terrifically deadpan. The rest of the supporting players are a bunch of familiar genre faces: David Patrick Kelly - of The Warriors and Commando - pops up briefly; Laurence Fishburne chews every piece of scenery as a homeless gang boss; and, in the biggest surprise of all, Italian cinematic icon Franco Nero appears as the manager of the Continental's Italian subsidiary.

Now to the action: it's great. With the bigger budget, the action has expanded, but it is built on the same fundamentals: actors doing the action; shoot in wides; and only cut when absolutely necessary.

We start with a great car chase (complete with a wonderfully deadpan appearance from Peter Stormare) through the streets of the Big Apple, before moving to an outdoor rave, a train, an art museum and, as the finale, a bravura sequence in a hall of mirrors.

The colour palette is vivid and splashy like a comic book, and the set design is wonderfully lush. There is a bathroom in this movie that is one of the most beautifully shot rooms I've seen in a long time. It's a gorgeous-looking movie.

It is also extremely funny. Unlike so many action movies of recent times, this one bothers to have a sense of humour. It knows that it is ridiculous, but has the sense to play everything straight. The high-point in this respect are the two extended running fights between Wick and Cassian that take up the movie's second act. They are filled with wonderful beats: the endless fall down a flight of stairs; the silent gun battle through a busy train station; their final showdown inside the train, which climaxes with the frozen passengers fleeing as soon as the train stops. The movie's sense of timing and tone is perfect.

As I mentioned at the outset, the movie is not flawless.

One quibble that grew on me was that is that there is no real physical threat to our anti-hero. While he sustains some damage, Wick is so superhuman that the fights begin to feel repetitive. While they are initially presented as such, neither Common nor Ruby Rose are compatible as physical antagonists. Common initially appears to be Wick's equal, but he is dispatched fairly quickly. That leaves Ruby Rose, whose final showdown is extremely brief. At first I thought her size and looks were a misdirect. I was expecting her to be a real threat, like Mad Dog from The Raid or that little guy from The Simpsons.

Frankly, it would have made more sense to just amalgamate Common and Ruby Rose's roles into one character. You could cut Common from the movie and the movie's narrative trajectory would not be greatly affected. The movie's main villain is totally functional (and rather reprehensible), but he's not that memorable, so the movie ends up feeling a little toothless in the villains department.

These are pretty small nitpicks, but I hope we get some memorable baddies in John Wick 3 who can really put Reeves through his paces.

Overall, John Wick Chapter 2 is exactly what you want it to be. It has got great action, it is beautifully shot and covers everything in a thick (but unobtrusive) layer of irony. The dog is also adorable. It's hard to beat a beagle, but I really liked Dog Mark II - he's basically the dog version of his owner. He doesn't make noise, he doesn't wander off or get up to 'cute' hi-jinx. 

If it wasn't already obvious, go see this movie.

CAUGHT ON NETFLIX: Chewing Gum & Lovesick

I find it hard to get into TV shows now. There are so many shows now, and they have such long runs I find it hard to jump on-board. Here are two examples of recent shows that combine being extremely good, and extremely succinct.

Chewing Gum (2016 - present)
I caught this show a couple of weeks ago -- it's got two seasons, six episodes each, and it featured a few players I had caught on other shows. It's great.

Created by and starring Michaela Coel, Chewing Gum chronicles the adventures of Tracey Gordon (Coel), a 24-year-old virgin who is really keen to get some.

It is rare to see a show based around a sexually frustrated woman. Usually these kinds of shows are based around young men. This premise could make for a pretty simple show, but Chewing Gum is more nuanced than that. The show is basically about sexual desire, and the different expectations people have about fulfilling their own individual desires.

Tracey's best friend Candice (Danielle Isaie) is involved in a long-term relationship, but expresses dissatisfaction with her boyfriend. Her subplot is based on sexual dissatisfaction, and her willingness to explain what she wants and needs from her boyfriend is refreshing. Sexual frustration is not usually a popular subject, and Candice's desire to experiment and try new things is a rare case of a female character being given agency over how she wishes to express her sexuality.

The show deals with race and class but they are woven into the fabric of the show. The primary concerns of the humour is the intersection of these ideas with notions of religion, female agency and sexuality. However, that does not mean these themes are completely ignored -- when it does deal with race, it makes for some of the show's strongest material. One episode involves Tracey's entanglement with a racist white man who is obsessed with the 'exoticism' of blackness. Fetishizing race is rarely pushed to the forefront in dramas, let alone comedies, and this vignette is awesome.

This might sound like heavy material, but the joy of Chewing Gum is how Coel manages to handle these themes with the lightest possible touch. Each episode runs 20 minutes, but Coel manages to pack a lot into these brief runtimes. You would think this would be reductive, but Coel is so deft with how she explores major themes. She will focus on an extremely small but significant aspect of a particular issue, nail it, and get out. The way she deals with the issue of colourism in the relationship between Tracey and Candice is so well-done. Coel recognises that these themes are worth exploring, but in a way that works within the world she has created. To boil it down without spoilers, she is not willing to distort the dynamics of her characters' relationship to address an idea. The ideas are always natural outgrowths of the story, not the other way around.

A series of tight little haikus on the inherent weirdness of relationships and sex, Chewing Gum is one of the best comedies I've seen in recent years.

Lovesick (2014 - present)
Lovesick is a UK sitcom originally broadcast in 2014, and then picked up by Netflix. Originally this show was called Scrotal Recall, a title which encapsulates the premise while completely short-selling the show's warmth, intelligence and humour.

It's not as flat-out funny as Chewing Gum, but Lovesick is great in its own right. An example of strong storytelling and an ensemble of well-rounded characters, Lovesick is a gem.

The show is based around Dylan (Johnny Flynn), a man in his late twenties who learns that he has contracted chlamydia. Now tasked with contacting anyone he has ever been intimate with, each episode takes us back through time to an important point in Dylan's past. As Dylan's quest progresses, he begins to come to terms with his inability to form lasting connections.

Despite the show jumping back and forth in time, the story unfolds in a fairly linear fashion. Over the course of six episodes, the writers gradually piece together these characters -- where they have come from and where they are now.

While the actors are great, and have really strong, believable chemistry, the male characters definitely feel like they are built out of recognizable types: Dylan is the wet blanket romantic lead, while his debauched mate Luke (Daniel Ings) is your typical womaniser. The secret weapon is Evie, played by Misfits's Antonia Thomas.

Evie is a great character, and a great showcase for Thomas. She was always good in Misfits, but there were times it felt like she was written as the object of Simon's affections rather than a character in her own right. Evie is different -- she is smart, complex and as given to making silly choices as her mates. To her credit, she is (far) faster on the uptake than her friends.

Resurrected and re-titled by Netflix, Lovesick's second season is where the show really begins to grow out of its premise into something far more real, as the writers delve more into our central characters. The best example is Episode Two, which flashes back six-and-a-half years to the day Dylan and Evie first met. This is where we are introduced to an alien character: good Luke. After his girlfriend of three years dumps him at a party, Luke crashes and burns into the douchebag of the present.

Now that we have a second season, the story does feel more fully formed. The season ends with a reversal of the previous season finale -- Dylan is attempting to make good on a long-term commitment while Evie has broken off her engagement. If I had caught this on its original release, I don't know if it would have stayed with me -- Season 2 adds so much that the story really feels complete.

While it is funny, Lovesick is pretty low key for a comedy. As an examination of growing out of your twenties, it's great. Season Three cannot come soon enough.

RAMBLING RANT: James Horner's COMMANDO score is good for your health

Commando was one of the great guilty pleasures of the eighties. A combination of wooden/hammy acting, a brilliantly moronic script and a healthy disdain for anything resembling reality, it's a great time.

Just to catch up anyone who hasn't watched it, the plot is simple. Ah-nuld plays John Matrix, a former black ops soldier living a blissful retirement with his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano). When a former foe kidnaps his daughter, Matrix kills a kajillion bajillion people wearing fake moustaches and gets her back.

Now back to the music.

When broken into its constituent parts, Commando is a bizarre movie. And one of the funkiest parts of the movie is its score, by future Academy Award winner James Horner. I've tried to come up with a way of describing what this music sounds like, and I'm still stuck. It sounds like three different musicians trying to drown each other out in the same recording studio -- one has a bunch of synth keyboards, another has an array of steel drums and the third is just an asshole with a saxophone.

Let's go through this masterpiece, track by track.

Okay, now 'Prologue - Main Title' probably bares the closest resemblance to an actual song you can listen to. Heavy synths, steel drums and saxophone. It kinda works. The second half, which plays under scenes of Arnie playing with his daughter, eating ice cream and feeding a deer, also kinda works. A mawkish melody played on an extremely cheesy electronic piano, it sounds like the opening to an eighties sitcom.

'Ambush and Kidnapping' introduces another trope of this score -- repetitive themes that go on for three minutes with little-to-no variation. Thank Christ for the sax.

'Captured' starts slow, with a low, repetitive synth rumble. Partway through the track it explodes into a completely different synth action theme. Once again, it goes on forever, but it sounds cool. It should be noted that this music plays during Arnie's escape from the airplane taking him to South America. Let's just say that the music is way more exciting than the action onscreen.

'Surprise' is where the score just starts aping whatever is going onscreen. In Hollywood terms this is known as 'Mickey Mousing.' In Commando terms it's known as 'Matrix running'. That joke sucks, but so does this music. Moving on! 

'Sully Runs' is where our three musos are gate-crashed by the music for a Caribbean cruise line. Seriously.

'Moving Jenny' sounds like something made by a human being. A mawkish, slowed-down version of the movie's main theme, it highlights the hopelessness of Jenny's plight. But not really.

Back to the action! 'Matrix Breaks In' follows the same sophisticated pattern as 'Captured'. Slow and steady for a minute or so, and then BAM! Action theme! This one is actually pretty good at getting the juices flowing. You can definitely add it to your workout mix while you're doing your reps and getting totally jacked.

'Infiltration, Showdown and Finale' is a 14 minute monster that plays under Arnie's final assault on the bad guys' compound. Right from the beginning, it sounds like Horner ran out of ideas and just decided to play every previous track again at the same time. The one piece that gels is the aural bliss of 0:57 through 1:17, as Horner accompanies Arnie's 'getting ready' montage with a lot of extremely satisfying 'clangs'. It is awesome -- especially if you edit it out in GarageBand -- then you can play it over and over again.

The soundtrack to Commando is a glorious multi-vehicle car wreck. It doesn't work as well without the movie, but if you are in the mood to build your own set of Arnie-sized guns, it might do the trick.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Metro (1997)

Released at the intersection in Eddie Murphy's career where he transitioned from adult comedy star to family friendly funny man, Metro is notable as Murphy's last stab at R-rated action comedy.

Murphy stars as police negotiator Scott Roper. After his friend is killed, Roper gets on the tail of his killer, a psychopathic criminal called Michael Korda (Michael Wincott). However, Roper's attempts to get his man are soon complicated when Korda turns his sights on Roper's ex-girlfriend Ronnie (Carmen Ejogo)...

Directed by Thomas Carter, Metro is a strange beast. While it has sprinkles of the old Murphy magic, the overall tone is more strait-laced action movie than action comedy. And while he has a green partner in Michael Rappaport, there is no attempt at a 'buddy cop' dynamic ala Beverly Hills Cop or even Lethal Weapon.

Even the action sequences are not played for laughs -- the film's most OTT sequence, the tram chase, feels a beat away from some cutaway gag or a one-liner, but we get nothing. The scene is played dead serious. There's even a home invasion sequence which feels like something out of an eighties slasher movie. While it never goes too dark, the tone is noticeably more solemn than Murphy's previous vehicles in the action genre.

Perhaps the Murphy factor is throwing me off. Maybe the movie is intended as a straight action drama. It's just that having Murphy as the star immediately evokes a set of expectations that the movie does not play to. Roper is a cop who is good at his job -- which is pretty similar to Axel Foley. But Roper lacks Foley's sense of fun. Roper is more restrained. When his friend is killed, Roper reacts with anger and dismay. When he goes after the killer, Roper never antagonises the villain or makes fun of him. 

A case could be made that Metro is Murphy's only full-on action movie lead. His character has a few wisecracks, but overall he plays Roper completely straight. Murphy's acting choices work for the role -- Roper is a police negotiator, and knows that every choice he makes when confronting the psycho could cause more mayhem. Murphy's measured, empathetic performance is very good, and it might have gotten more attention if the movie was better.

The movie establishes a series of threads that the movie drops -- Roper is established as an emotionally stunted gambling addict, but once the plot clicks into place, this baggage is dropped very quickly, and it never feeds into his conflict with the villain. 

Speaking of which, Michael Wincott's Korda, with his flash-flood rages and love of mailing cops body parts, feels like a character out of a much darker movie. Wincott is very good, and his antagonism with Murphy works well, but when they are together it feels like they are in a far darker movie.

The action sequences, while competently staged, never really pop. The one exception is the tram car chase, which builds a nice sense of peril and stakes. The finale, involving a bound Ronnie being menaced with a saw, feels like something out of Looney Tunes or The Perils of Pauline.

Another odd note is the relationship between Roper and Ronnie. While they have an easy rapport, the age gap between Murphy and Ejogo creates a disconnect. While one can imagine them being friends,  their relationship feels so platonic, it is a bit disconcerting whenever they get more intimate. 

Overall, what makes Metro interesting is how far it strays from what you would expect from an Eddie Murphy movie. Considering the direction Murphy's career went after its release, with The Nutty Professor and Dr Doolittle, the movie gains a weird poignancy: this is the last time we see Murphy working in the sandbox we were used to. While it has its flaws, Metro is a pretty fun flick, with a strong villain and a legitimately terrific performance from Eddie Murphy.