X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

The Low-Down: In the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the Avengers, it can be hard to forget that the X-Men were actually here first. The hyper-kinetic, gloriously operatic X-Men (2000) made blockbuster superhero movies cool again – plucking several of Marvel Comics’ best characters out of cult comic books and launching them into the mainstream. It’s a shame that such an iconic franchise is ending with a whimper rather than a bang. X-Men: Dark Phoenix is the final installment in the series – because it has to be, now that Fox is merging with Disney/Marvel. But the film does itself no favours in revisiting a storyline that was already told, albeit rather poorly, in The Last Stand (2006).

The Story: We’ve already met the ridiculously powerful cosmic force that is the Phoenix: it latched onto Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey over a decade ago, and decimated a bunch of fan-favourite characters in its fiery wake. This time around, the Phoenix finds a host in Sophie Turner’s younger Jean Grey, unlocking past trauma and present angst as it burns through the childhood defenses put in place in Jean’s mind by Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy). As Jean goes on the run, her former allies rush to find her – some set on protecting her, others on eliminating the threat she poses to their safety and loved ones. But can they save her from Vuk (Jessica Chastain), the ice-cold leader of an alien race hellbent on claiming the Phoenix’s power for herself?

The Good: There’s actually a decent amount of good seeded throughout Dark Phoenix. Most intriguing of all is the film’s darker take on Xavier – he’s usually portrayed as an unequivocally good (and therefore slightly boring) character, devoted to his young charges and leading the fight for a better, more unbiased world. Paired with a fascinating, almost petulant performance from McAvoy, Dark Phoenix reminds us that, sometimes, the road to Hell on Earth is paved with good intentions. Long-time X-Men writer Simon Kinberg makes his directorial debut, and proves more than equal to the task of whipping up fantastically thrilling action sequences. He peppers the film with plenty of lovely imagery and aesthetic touches: from Jean’s hair taking on a life of its own when she’s in Phoenix mode, to Quicksilver (Evan Peters) speed-climbing a whirlwind of debris.

The Not-So-Good: It’s hard to shake the feeling that there isn’t much reason for this film to exist, other than giving Kinberg the opportunity to take a second stab at the same story. (He co-wrote The Last Stand, to eternal fan derision.) Dark Phoenix edges closer to the classic Chris Claremont storyline in the comics, but it never quite fulfils its own potential. The Xavier subplot doesn’t get anywhere near the true depth or darkness it deserves. Chastain is brilliant casting, but for no real reason. If the screenplay had supported her better, Chastain could have transformed Vuk into a properly sympathetic antagonist; instead, she’s stuck in the key of one-dimensional supervillain. We get a peek at Genosha, a mutant safe haven under the governance of Erik Lensherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) – but we don’t linger there.

Phoenix Rising: Turner isn’t given much to do other than glower and fret, but she does it all well enough. The trouble is Jean Grey as a character. In all her incarnations, including in the comics, she gains immeasurable power, but loses all agency. She seems strong, but is actually a frustratingly passive protagonist. That’s compounded here by literally everyone around her constantly telling her what to do – from Charles, Erik and the annoyingly maternal Raven Darkholme (Jennifer Lawrence), to her well-meaning boyfriend, Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan), and the relentless Vuk. Is Jean supposed to master her emotions, to repress her powers, to stay quiet? Or is she supposed to unleash them, to revel in them, to metaphorically shout about her remarkable abilities? It’s a conundrum that exists in the source material – and this film makes a strong case for retiring Claremont’s Dark Phoenix for good.

Recommended? If you’ve ever loved the X-Men, you’ll probably want to say goodbye to this incarnation of these beloved characters before they’re resurrected in the MCU. But this is a decidedly middling installment in the franchise – not as dreadful as Apocalypse, but nowhere near the giddy heights of X-Men or Logan.

A Most Violent Year (2014)

It isn’t often that directors of commercials make a successful transition to movie-making. Telling a story over two hours, you’d imagine, requires quite a different skill-set from selling a product in thirty seconds. But writer-director J.C. Chandor has pulled it off – not just once, but three times now. Like talky financial thriller Margin Call and taciturn man-at-sea drama All Is Lost, A Most Violent Year is a smart, confident film that dares to linger over its ideas and issues. It may not be his best effort – it’s a little too languid and disengaging for that – but it certainly proves, once again, that Chandor can plumb the depths of his subjects and characters with charm and intelligence.

At a time when crime is rampant in New York City, in its most statistically violent year yet, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) struggles to secure the future of his family and his heating oil business. He needs to secure a bank loan to finance a massive property deal, even as his trucks are repeatedly hijacked and his barrels of oil stolen for sale on the black market. Through it all, Abel tries to stick to his metaphorical guns – to be as honest and trustworthy as his difficult situation allows – although his competitors are out to get him and his own wife (Jessica Chastain) and attorney (Albert Brooks) advise him to fight violence with violence.

Anyone looking at the title of the film as a promise will be confounded by A Most Violent Year, which unfolds at a resolutely unhurried pace. There is plenty of violence (and corruption) surrounding Abel, but it hovers menacingly at the corner of the frame and seldom bursts through. Instead, Chandor places his characters in long, talky scenes in which they trade words rather than punches: Abel maintains his innocence in the face of District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo), or pleads with a smarmy competitor (Alessandro Nivola) to save him from financial insolvency. It’s why the film can be frustrating at times. The narrative beats are sparse, threaded through a running time that could easily be whittled down.

Give in to the slow, measured spell Chandor is weaving, however, and you’ll find that the film coils itself into a knot of simmering tension by the end. There’s a palpable sense of dread and despair to many scenes, which play all the more quietly for the conspicuous lack of any musical cues whatsoever. The occasional bursts of action thrum with desperation: whether it’s Abel tearing after and confronting a hijacker, or truck driver Julian (Elyes Gabel) whipping out a firearm to fend off another debilitating attack.

But, stately and intelligent as A Most Violent Year may be, it can also be a somewhat disengaging experience. Chandor shoots it remarkably well, in shades of gloom and ochre, but the narrative occasionally drags. By the time a red-hot splash of violence really does explode across the frame, it feels almost empty: too pat and too contrived for a film like this one.

The characters, too, never completely leap off the screen. That’s through no fault of the actors involved – Isaac is fantastic as Abel, unearthing his morality and resolve in a world where it’d be far easier to operate with neither. But, without much more of a backstory than what we get in hints, Abel’s stoicism often strays too close to the realm of naivety. Chastain’s Anna is a fascinating creation, a mobster’s daughter with a steely boldness embedded in her very DNA – but doesn’t get enough screentime to make more of an impact.

A Most Violent Year is haunted by the ghosts of several films. Chandor is evidently well-versed in the likes of The Godfather and Sidney Lumet’s New York crime dramas (think Dog Day Afternoon), and he grounds these influences in a plot that would be perfectly at home in one of the Coen Brothers’ treatises on the futility of human endeavour. The end result is very much its own entity, a determined exercise in mood rather than action. It may not be to everyone’s tastes: some will adore its gentle heartbeat and menacingly slow pace; others might abhor it. But there’s no denying that Chandor is one of the most interesting directors making feature films today.

Basically: Beautifully shot and exceptionally performed, but a little too slow and measured to really grab the heart.

Interstellar (2014)

Not many directors have the clout of Christopher Nolan. Most of them receive notes from their fretting studios: suggestions (or demands) to change plot points or highlight certain characters/actors, which must be adhered to for contractual or financial reasons. With huge, intelligent blockbuster successes like the Dark Knight franchise and Inception, Nolan has deservedly won carte blanche from Warner Bros. for Interstellar – he gets garguantan sums of money and complete autonomy to realise his artistic vision. In effect, he’s making an indie movie on a blockbuster scale. Ironically, this lack of oversight might be just what keeps Interstellar – a very good, occasionally brilliant foray into the furthest reaches of our galaxy and beyond – from greatness.

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former pilot and engineer, is now reluctantly scraping together a living as a farmer on a starving Earth. With sandstorms swirling and food supplies dwindling by the day, it doesn’t seem likely that Cooper’s children, stoic Tom and inquisitive Murphy, will have much of a world left to inherit when they grow up. While investigating a “ghost” in Murphy’s bedroom, Cooper deciphers a message that brings him to a top-secret NASA base. Once there, Cooper learns from his former mentor, Dr Brand (Michael Caine), that NASA is looking for solutions to Earth’s crisis in other galaxies. A recently-opened wormhole has given NASA and its scientists access to a whole new galaxy of planets. Brand appeals to Cooper to pilot the final and most important mission: to determine whether any of three identified planets can truly host human life. But it’s a journey from which Cooper might never return – one that will take him away from his kids and everything he has ever known and loved.

That’s not even the half of it – Nolan’s narrative is a sprawling, ambitious one that asks heavy metaphysical questions about the position and role of humanity in the universe, filtered through the prism of a father and daughter whose bond transcends time and space. It’s shot through with complex scientific theories about wormholes and time travel courtesy of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne (who served as a consultant on the film). Indeed, much of Interstellar plays with such philosophical gravity that one can’t help wondering if it’s simply too deep a subject to be effectively communicated in a movie that must also create emotional stakes and real characters.

Clocking in at almost three hours, Interstellar pulses with intelligence and occasional bursts of brilliance. The science and emotion of its story works best on each planet they manage to visit, with Nolan crafting some chillingly smart sci-fi moments amidst the human drama experienced by Cooper’s crew. As badly as Cooper wants to save enough fuel to make the return trip home, Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) has both professional and personal stakes in visiting the planet that’s furthest away from the wormhole. They trade hope for time, the minutes they use to hunt for salvation translating into the loss of decades with their loved ones. The film is at its best when the members of the Endurance – including David Gyasi’s Romilly and Wes Bentley’s Doyle – confront one another, and establish contact (or fail to do so) with the scouting teams that preceded them through the wormhole.

But Interstellar also suffers from a bloated and faintly silly final act. The science of it may be well-founded (who knows, after all, what miraculous answers really do lie within a black hole?) and the concept very cool, but it doesn’t quite translate as such. Instead, the film hyper-blasts itself into a oddly cheerful (and confusing) ending that feels purely fictional and not at all scientific. There’s no denying, either, that Nolan could have carved half an hour or more out of Interstellar without losing any of its narrative or emotional density. Instead, many scenes unfold in an almost obstinately languid fashion, including a moment when Cooper is left gasping for oxygen on the icy terrain of an alien planet. It’s pretty evident, too, that Nolan really wanted to make sure his audiences knew how little greenscreen he used to make the film; for no other discernible reason, his camera lingers in extreme close-up – and far too often – on the exterior shells of the various spacecrafts designed for the film.

Nolan can afford the best when it comes to his cast as well, and it shows. McConaughey anchors the film with a gravitas and tenderness quite unknown before his career McConnaissance, and he’s ably supported by a steely Hathaway, whose character, just like the film she’s in, blends cold, pragmatic science with a churning wealth of emotion. Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon, in roles perhaps best left unspecified to avoid any explicit spoilers, are excellent too – the former radiates quite enough warmth and intelligence to make us believe that she can save the world, and the latter admirably treads in morally grey areas to good effect.

For months before its release, Nolan kept Interstellar firmly under wraps. Everyone speculated that it would be a game-changer – a sci-fi blockbuster as thrilling and thought-provoking as it is entertaining. In some ways, that’s true of the final product: Nolan’s film is brave, brainy film-making, and it looks absolutely spectacular. But, on closer examination, Interstellar loses some of its gloss and varnish – and beneath it all lies an unwieldy script that meanders a little too long and wastes a little too much of the big, breathtaking ideas that underpin its story.

Basically: A good – not great – movie that falls apart the more you think about it.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Right up until the Academy released this year’s Oscar ballot, Zero Dark Thirty was the favourite to snag Best Picture. It’s been universally lauded for being a tense, thrilling drama that very effectively tells the story of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, with surprisingly little bias and chest-thumping patriotism. Sadly, the film’s Oscar chances have dwindled somewhat since its director Kathryn Bigelow was snubbed. It’s a shame, because – like Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker before it – there’s no denying that this is one of the smartest, most challenging films of 2012… all the more impressive because it doesn’t feature a particularly sympathetic protagonist.

At the beginning of her career in the CIA, Maya (Jessica Chastain) is posted to the US Embassy in Pakistan. Once there, she meets and accompanies Dan (Jason Clarke) to his brutal interrogations of Ammar, a detainee with suspected links to Al-Qaeda. As Maya grows accustomed to the harsh realities of her job, she finds a trail that keeps leading back to the name Abu Ahmed – who, as far as she can ascertain, is Osama’s most trusted courier. Over the next few years, Maya resolutely hunts down leads and red herrings, even when the trail literally winds up in a dead end and when everyone around her has given up or thinks she’s finally gone round the bend.  It’s only through sheer force of will that Maya keeps going… and thus stumbles on a lucky break that could finally crack the case she’s been working on for her entire adult life.

Anyone looking for a film that glorifies the American hunt for Osama should perhaps wait for the Disney version of this tale. Zero Dark Thirty pulls no punches in making the case for the old adage – ‘the ends justify the means’, or so Maya and her colleagues think, as they subject detainees to humiliation and torture to drag even the smallest nuggets of information out of them. It’s a bit heavy-handed but the suggestion is there nevertheless in the cage of monkeys Dan keeps on the compound: the CIA officers here treat pets better than they do their fellow humans, and grieve at their loss more than they do the suffering of those under their charge. Information is won through wire-taps and bribes.

Most impressively, Zero Dark Thirty tells a truth that most liberals don’t want to hear – there are no such things as human rights when a country is at war. Even more disturbingly, it suggests there are no heroes either: just men and women who are doing their jobs, and treating their enemies as less than human – a fact of war regardless of which side you’re on, and whether the weapons being used are knives, muskets, nuclear warheads or computers.

As a psychological study, Bigelow’s film is also remarkably compelling. Maya is our conduit for the events of the film: she arrives when the first clue does, and stays right until the bitter end. What’s astounding about Zero Dark Thirty is that she isn’t presented as a particularly nice or sympathetic person. Along the way, Maya loses practically everything that would make her human: her sense of compassion, her priorities, the way she deals with other people. She is brash, forthright, and unconscionably rude at times – at one point, she starts carving in red marker the number of days that have passed with no action taken on the case at hand into her boss George’s (Mark Strong) office window. This raises a few giggles in the cinema but it also makes clear that she’s not easy to work with, all angles and anger and confrontation, wrapped up in a bristling time-bomb who’s found her own frontline to wage a war against unseen enemies. Crucially, we don’t have to like her to admire her or to pity her when her world closes in on her as it eventually has to.

At this point, there’s no way Zero Dark Thirty is snagging a Best Director Oscar, and it probably will miss out on Best Picture too – which leaves Chastain to hold the awards fort, and she’s done so as admirably as she has shouldered the entire picture on her slim shoulders. Her Maya is dark, cutting and difficult to love – worlds away from Celia Foote in The Help, the irrepressible ball of adorable energy that first brought her onto everyone’s cinematic radar. Here, she trembles with rage, intelligence and dignity – both well-placed and misguided – and half the thrill of the film comes from watching her character grow ever darker and more intensely focused.

But, while there’s much to chew over in the film, it’s also a difficult one to really adore. For all the tension and suspense in the film, Bigelow never quite raises the emotional stakes to the point that one feels invested in the outcome. There are attempts to make Maya’s quest more personal – she’s fighting not just for her cause but also to avenge the friends she has lost in the ongoing battle. But the film sits firmly in the head and much less so in the heart. A great deal has been made of the pacey final shoot-out conducted by Navy S.E.A.L.S. in the compound that might or might not house Osama, but by this time, the film has been ticking over for two hours. The film could have been even punchier and more impactful with some judicious editing.

In the final analysis, whether Zero Dark Thirty is something an ordinary movie-going audience wants to see is almost beside the point. It’s not an easy watch and sometimes it goes on far too long for its own good, such that emotional impact is left by the wayside. But the story it tells – a mostly fantastic mix of fact and fiction – proves a wonderful companion piece for The Hurt Locker, mixing the same blend of thrills, action, danger and suspense into a narrative that’s smart, dark and profoundly unsettling. Admirably, Bigelow is showing us not the world as it should be, or the world as we imagine or want it to be, but the world we live in. In many ways, it’s wrong and unforgivable, but it’s no less worth the while… which is perhaps the message we are meant to take with us when we leave the cinema.

Basically: A brutal, powerful movie about life and war the way it is – with no heroes, no patriotism and a lot of sacrifice – which troubles the head more than it does the heart. All in all, it’s very good, but falls a little short of spectacular.

Lawless (2012)

Movies have a thing for romanticising criminals – probably because the shenanigans they get up to are so wonderfully cinematic (gunplay, midnight meetings, fisticuffs!), and just lend themselves particularly well to high drama and epic romance. After all, if the movie’s (anti-)hero could be ripped from his life anytime by falling prey to the law (whether or not he dies or is just apprehended and thrown behind bars), the stakes are automatically upped. Everything matters just that much more, and time spent together or apart takes on a depth that’s a lot harder to achieve with work-a-day, average protagonists.

Lawless takes that premise and runs very, very hard with it. Set in Prohibition-era Franklin County, Virginia, the movie documents the real-life exploits of the bootlegging Bondurant brothers – the menacing Forrest (Tom Hardy), who leads a remarkably charmed life; perpetually drunk back-up guy Howard (Jason Clarke); and sensitive, wannabe-hotshot Jack (Shia LaBeouf). By nature, Forrest and Howard are better-suited to the rough-and-tumble, literally cut-throat life of bootleggers, but Jack is determined not to let his team down. Together, the three brothers cheerfully trade moonshine and barbs with the local authorities… until the decidedly psychopathic Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up in town and locates the trio firmly in his crosshairs.

It will probably come as little surprise that punk-rock-blues songwriter Nick Cave penned the screenplay for Lawless. The film feels like a poem folded into a script, unfolding in an elegiac way onscreen – there’s a particular sequence when Forrest has been badly wounded that in most other movies would typically be played for high tension and thrills. Here, the dread and fear creeps up slowly, as snowflakes drift across the screen and settle on Forrest as he struggles to stay alive. The film delights in confounding expectations in just this way, which makes the sudden, sharp bursts of violence all the more horrifying and impactful.

The trouble with Lawless is that it doesn’t so much glamourise crime as flat-out lionise it. Perhaps cracking down on the manufacture and trade of alcohol wasn’t the most effective or desirable of policies, but the movie makes bootlegging out to be the stuff of legend – the mythic accomplishments of folk heroes to be passed down to subsequent generations via troubadours. Even most of the people in law enforcement are portrayed as benign supporters of moonshine-makers… leaving only a snarling villain who is technically on the right side of the law, but portrayed as so monstrous and villainous as to come straight out of a pantomime. This is not merely a complete inversion of standard moral codes – which would be fine in and of itself and makes for great cinema – but is also accompanied by a leeching of shades of grey from the film. As a result, it’s tough to warm to any of the characters.

Though that’s not to say they aren’t well-developed. The three Bondurant brothers serve as fascinating character studies. Forrest, in particular, is a fantastic character: a gentle, brutal giant wrapped up in a cardigan but kitted out with knuckle-dusters, unbearably vicious to his enemies yet painfully awkward around the object of his affection, Maggie (Jessica Chastain). His inexplicably, implausibly charmed life is played as much for laughs as for truth: if a man keeps struggling back against all odds from the brink of death, why fear the law? Hardy is ace in the part: he’s handsome enough to headline huge blockbusters, but resolutely remains every inch the character actor, and somehow makes Forrest Bondurant appear and feel completely different from all the other roles he’s played. (Which, to be fair, are extremely varied!) Clarke plays perpetually sozzled very well, and LaBeouf’s green, cocky upstart Jack is deeply frustrating as he tries to prove his mettle and woo the heart of conservative pastor’s daughter Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) – which is entirely the point.

Hardy aside, the most memorable performance belongs entirely to Pearce – another really good-looking guy in real life who prefers sinking his teeth into meatier roles usually played by non-matinee-idol types. His immaculately-groomed, eyebrow-free Charlie Rakes is one of the best modern movie monsters: a sneering, dastardly creature who prowls across the screen in ostensibly human form, scattering hatred and menace in his wake. There’s not a shred of decency in Rakes, which allows Pearce to really just go to town with his downright terrifying interpretation of the part.

All in all, Lawless features an interesting twist in the morality tale: the criminals are practically the superheroes here, reeling off sassy quips and repeatedly defying death, knives and bullets to bring alcohol joy to the masses. Unfortunately, this means that the film doesn’t quite connect as it should or wants to. Most superhero flicks work doubly hard to make their other-worldly protagonists human and relatable. It’s a curiously hollow experience, therefore, when ordinary people believe and act like they’re invincible… because we all know that just isn’t the case.

Basically: The film isn’t quite Lawless – it actually operates under its own set of laws, which makes for an interesting if curiously detached movie about ordinary blokes living every day like they’re superheroes.